Chilled Out At Chipembele

Greetings from Zambia!

Taking to the skies once more we flew to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. We had a 4 hour wait for our connecting flight, so called Max, a jovial and helpful Taxi driver whom Steve Tolan had recommended. Piling all our ‘too much stuff’ in his boot -  we drove to The Arcades, a modern shopping precinct with two things in mind. Lunch and flowers. Yep, flowers.

The cumulus clouds rolled in over the lunch hour and the temperature dropped suddenly as a cool breeze sprang up. Bristling with a beautiful big bunch of gerberas, snapdragons, bud roses and cat-tails and two litres of milk (for Kaye!) along with our 50 kilos of stuff, we boarded the 16 seater twin prop plane, for the hour long journey to Mfuwe in the Eastern Province. Flying through cumulus cloud and sunshine, we broke free from the cotton-wool occasionally and were, once more, awe struck at the vast tracts of untouched heavily wooded land. One can imagine (and hope!) below the continuous cover of trees that elephants, antelope and the myriad critters of the African bush roam unmolested…

As we approached the South Luangwa Valley the fat river bed of the Luangwa hove into view. Our hearts leapt as we saw her again, she is however unseasonably dry as the wet season we short, sparse and has left her this year, a shadow of her former self.

As we touched down at the Mfuwe airport at 4:10 pm we felt like we had come home. Last off the plane as we were collecting all our “cabin’ baggage (consisting of two day packs, two camera bags, a bunch of amazingly well preserved 3 hour old flowers, a bottle of Amarula cream and two liters of milk, we resembled domestic camels packed for a desert crossing, as we walked the tarmac to the Mfuwe International Airport arrivals hall. Anna was waiting for us and after hugs and cheers and excited twitterings we presented her with her flowers. She was thrilled, this is the first bunch of flowers she has ever received in the Valley in 12 years of living here!

Our journey back down the Mfuwe road bought us to familiar territory, and we visited the vegetable market for a few potatoes, onions and tomatoes. It was so late in the day there was very little left – but Anna tells us there is usually a good abundance of fresh veggies to choose from. The 16 kilometre drive over the rough Malama Road took us another 45 minutes! All catching up on the news since we last spoke – Anna went to the UK on April 7^th and we had not had our daily catch up emails so there was LOTS to tell. With us was Victor a new staff member at Chipembele – a driver mechanic. Sure he must of been perplexed at the three muzungu women talking their heads off and barely drawing breath.

At Chipembele we presented the flowers to Steve (ha ha), patted the excitable Jack Russels, Molly and Coco and met Betty Baboon and Changa Bushbaby. The rest of the evening was punctuated by gales of laughter at their antics. Betty suddenly decided it was time to sleep, she shut her eyes and with her middle finger firmly shoved in her mouth up to the  middle joint, she became catatonic in Anna’s arms. The flowers had to come and live with us in the bush house because of Hurricane Betty. She is agile, fast and leaps, swings and jumps around the entire house – walls, curtains, shelves and ledges – within a nano-second she has traversed the room and knocked over anything in the trajectory. Flowers would have been a great curiosity and fantastic jumping castle – so they live with us now… Our very own “Welcome to Chimpembele’ flowers ;-)

Getting to sleep, well after Midnight was difficult, over excited and too many coffees – we lay awake listening to the myriad cicadas and crickets – punctuated occasionally by the eerie call of Hyena.

Sleeping eventually in our beautiful thatched house – we knew we were in the right place, at the right time. Waking to the dawn chorus - day one at Chipembele started. It’s the weekend so we are ‘on offs’.

Livingstone at Last!

Greetings from Zambia

Finally! No more countdowns. Sure you are relieved about that!

It started on Saturday, when Jude’s brother, Rob and his wife, Kara arrived to pick us up to take us to the airport. We were, understandably under a bit of pressure but Rob and Kara, calm and collected, helped immensely by doing last minute hanging-out-of-washing, changing a light globe, and making us a cuppa. Nice. Thanks you two. XX. Dave arrived – he is the fur-kids ‘uncle’ for 3 months living in our home and looking after Patti and Bronte. He is calm and dog savvy so we expect all to be well on the home front! Yay! THANK YOU Dave, your contribution to our “Going for Good” trip is much appreciated. XXX

Off to Perth and we were so excited to arrive at Grandview B&B – a balcony with awesome view of Perth, nestled into bush land on Gooseberry Hill. The B&B was beautifully appointed, Geoff and Leanne our hosts, lovely people – but BEST of all was a deck stretching across the back of the house with a lounge where we could smoke and take in the view.

Amazing and much appreciated was the bird life there. Three Kookaburras came and sat on the rail at the far end of the deck. Beautiful parrots, called locally “28’s” visited the bird bath. Best of all was a lovely young Grey Butcher bird who landed on the deck railing about a metre away and sat and watched us very thoughtfully for a long time, before hopping down to sit on the lounge arm about 8 inches from Jude’s face. Magical moment! Wildlife encounters before we even left Oz! Whoo Hoo! Bodes Well for Africa…

Our trip to Africa started so well – if we were prone to believe in ‘omens’ then our stars had aligned.

The Qantas / share South African Airlines flight was only half full. We asked for an exit seat for Jude’s long legs, but they were all taken. Crestfallen we asked, with little hope, if we could have a row of four to ourselves. Yes! So after a meal, and a wee bit of help with a Serapax we passed out for 6 hours and before we knew it arrived in very familiar territory at Jo’berg airport. After a fight with the reception clerk at the Mondior hotel about a smoking room – we got what we wanted…Up at 3.00 am Monday we smoked our heads off until breakfast at 6.30 and onto our Zambia flight! Whoo Hoo.

The lodge we are staying at is called Bushbuck River House, a lovely semi-self catered place (Breakfast and tea included, lunch not) right on the Zambezi River about 16K’s upstream from the mighty Mosi-O-Tunya, The Smoke That Thunders… aka Victoria Falls.

Today has been an adventure of waiting. We are sure that ‘Africa” in translation means “Wait”. So we are practicing our ‘waiting skills” neither of us having had much practice before. Twenty minutes to buy a scone and two coffees when there were only three people in line, 10 minutes to be served, then 30 minutes to get our burger and chips for lunch. That’s nearly an hour of waiting! The anticipation of the drink and food is much enhanced by having to wait for it, so much so that the goods tended not to live up to the enhanced expectations! :-P

The other adventure is the currency. $1AUD = K4500 such an easy conversion… (The exchange rate for Australians wanting to buy bananas is excellent, though, costing only K2,250.)

We went to MTN (Internet and phone company) to buy a mobile phone and a ‘dongle’, this cost us K855,000. You do the math. God knows Jude tried and did some serious damage to her neuro-circuitry. We will get the hang of it though, for sure. The young women who served us at MTN thought we were hilarious and took pity on us, loading the sim card and the dongle with everything we would need for speed. Well, for a connection in Zambia, anyway. A far cry from the mad dashes, pay by the minute in internet cafés on our previous trips to share our news with you all. We feel incredibly competent having managed to navigate Livingstone, find the MTN store – make our purchases and catch a taxi back to the lodge. Small triumph but heartening for us as we prepare to ‘live’ in rural Zambia on our own account for two months.

A lovely serendipitous moment happened while Kaye was sitting outside Shoprite where Jude was in doing more confuzling maths at checkouts. A white woman walked by Kaye and the woman smiled at her – Kaye said G’day, of course and the woman was overjoyed to meet another Aussie and hear an accent from home. Pippa is travelling on her own, so we have arranged to meet her at the Waterfront Hotel, where she is camping in the grounds there, for lunch tomorrow. Another Africa-Nut who is ready to sell her house and move here lock, stock and barrel. We have much in common!

We sit now on the first floor balcony of our thatch-roofed room with a pleasant breeze blowing from the Zambezi River. We are surrounded by splendid trees – huge cassias other natives. In one a pair of Hooded vultures are making a nest. This is their territory, we wish we could sit and wait and watch for the eggs to be laid and the chicks raised. Not much wildlife about here as they are all skittish from the many pressures of people and poaching ‘for the pot’. We have seen impala and dead waterbuck in a waterhole, which miraculously disappeared overnight – no doubt for the pot. We have a gorgeous foam frog living on the white ‘carriage’ type light outside our room. It is a pure white frog today – they are chameleon-like and change their colour to suit their surroundings. We would love to put one on a multi coloured rug and watch him change! J but won’t because you don’t want to interfere with the wildlife!

Last night just after dinner, during the second blackout for the evening, we looked at the massive dome of the African Night Sky awash with stars – the Southern Cross front and centre. A lion roaring way off in the distance on the Zimbabwe side of the river. Magic! Must be in Africa at long last.

With love and warm waves to you all,

Jude and Kaye

PS: Extra special love to our wonderful Mum’s Shirley and Evelyn XXXX (HUGS)

Foam Frog staking out our balcony light! 

Chameleon like it is white because of the lamp colour.

Two Weeks and Counting...

Jude and Kaye - Pom Pom Camp
Okavango Delta 2008

Kaye and I are flying to Southern Africa to begin our fourth trip to this amazing continent on Easter Saturday. That is exactly 14 days, 4 hours, 33 minutes and 22 seconds from now. Whoo Hoo!

In 2005 we went on our first ever overseas trip. We went camping for three weeks through the wilds of Botswana - Here is a naive and bouncy 'Trip Report' about that trip.

Falling head over heels and planning to once more immerse ourselves in Africa became our reason for living/working/breathing. In 2008 we super-sized and travelled for 60 days through Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.  There is a tiny selection of our 10,000 photographs from that trip here

In Zambia we visited Chipembele Wildlife Education Trust, a small NGO located near the South Luangwa National Park. We were amazed and blown away by the Wildlife Education Centre Anna and Steve Tolan had built in 2001- and their projects and programmes teaching local children the value of their wildlife so it may be conserved for present and future generations...

We decided on our return to do anything we could from here in Adelaide, South Australia to assist Anna and Steve in their work. graciously they allowed us to help out with some online activity - social networking,updating the website and assisting with funding applications and other admin work we can do from 11,000 kilometres away. 

                                                  
Three years later we are permanent volunteers and very much part of the Chipembele Team. 

We are heading to Chipembele in just a few short weeks to volunteer our time in helping Chipembele to celebrate 10 years of achievement of wildlife education excellence as the official "Cheer Squad" leaders. 


So we are kind of  Going for Good 

How very privileged and lucky are we to be  living at Chipembele? We will be close by to our good friends, Anna and Steve. We will awaken every morning in this beautiful landscape, living in a great bush house in the South Luangwa Valley. And the most exciting bit of all... with Elephants wandering by... *heaven!

We hope to be able to bring updates from the field...

So please watch this space as we share being...

At Large In Zambia...

*Of course, we can say 'heaven' because we won't be trying to grow our own food there. The local people, majority subsistence farming - are at the pointy end of the wildlife human interface. They live and grow their crops bang up against the beautiful wild and thriving South Luangwa National Park. Human wildlife conflict is inevitable and the Communities, Chipembele, South Luangwa Conservation Society, Zambian Carnivore Programme and  the safari tourism operations form an important coalition in protecting, educating, researching and conserving this rich and diverse eco-system. We so look forward to living and working in this community.