Dreams of Zambia

There's this little term thrown around over here, a concept exchanged knowingly between travelers wherever we've been, called 'African Time.' It's a simple and sort of charming notion that time just works differently in Africa, and when dealing with any kind of schedule – pick-up or departure times, opening/closing hours – things are going to be slightly more, let's say, relaxed. We've found this to be too true, and aside from companies geared specifically at uptight Western travelers (namely the BazBus), to be in a hurry in Africa is to be doomed. Minibusses always leave only once they're full, and it's uncommon to sit in one for any less than 45 minutes before it rolls out (our record is three and a half hours). The coach busses we've bought tickets for have been anywhere from an hour to three hours late. That's a long time to sit with one's luggage in a cramped van or at a bus depot, yes, but this is Africa, it's just how things work. African Time had been until recently a mildly amusing quirk of sub-Saharan culture, like the kid we saw wearing a busted soccer ball for a hat. Until Zambia, that is, where it reared its ugly, sluggish head.

Like good travelers, we bought our bus tickets from Lusaka, the capital city, to Chipata, around 700km away near the Malawi border, a day in advance. Eight-thirty departure time, be there at seven forty-five, easy, no problem. (We arrived actually at more like seven thirty-five, because that's just how good we are at traveling.) Mornings at the Lusaka bus depot are hectic and crowded, but our taxi driver dropped us off right in front of our chosen coach. One tout grabbed our bags while another led us onto the bus. A pair of Zambian men already occupied the best two seats at the front, which they were ordered to vacate so that us tourists may have the finest view. The tout insisted over our protests, proclaiming, “because this is an adventchah!” and the two evictees didn't seem too grudging, so we installed ourselves. I confirmed the departure time, which the tout said was half-past nine, not half-past eight, as we'd been told the day before. But what's an hour in Africa?

We waited on that bus for over SEVEN HOURS. Seven hours, doing close to nothing but staring onto the same patch of pavement for the temporal equivalent of a full session of secondary school, or a transatlantic flight, or four feature-length films. It's important to note that the bus sat idling as we boarded, and remained so the entire day, tauntingly, as though it would leave at any second.

Over the course of the SEVEN HOURS, these are the events that occurred:

• Someone handed me a baby.
• Since there is more than one bus company at a time bound for one destination, we watched the mob of bus touts and their scary-aggressive tactics in convincing undecided customers to board their respective vehicles. This includes much yelling, shoving, the grabbing/dragging of limbs and luggage, often borderline physical abuse aimed both at each other and at potential passengers. Needless to say we were relieved to have bought tickets in advance.
• At 8:30 sharp the driver appeared, sat down, and got nice and comfortable behind the wheel, only to nudge the bus sideways a foot at disappear again, the tease.
• We were subjected to plenty of Christian programming (“the woman's role in the household is that of a helper”) through ear-stabbingly small speakers.
• We turned down a multitude of hawkers who came onto the bus selling everything from electric razors to lollipops to large framed mirrors.
• Alanna (ever the daring one) ventured out and peed three times. I only went once. She also located us some meat pies, the only thing we ate all day aside from unsweetened oatmeal that morning. (Have you ever had sugarless oatmeal? It's an atrocious food.)
• One of the touts came onto the bus to demonstrate Zambian dancing and to discuss the American method of dancing of standing with one's arms crossed and bobbing one's head, which he could still pull off much better than I.
• On one of her urine trips Alanna met two Zambian men whose cunning icebreaker was, “hello! Do you only like white men?” Later when she was reading under a tree across the road they came by to chat, and offered her a free cola. She promised she'd say goodbye to them before we left, she did not keep her promise.
• The woman sitting across from us dispensed a superhuman amount of breast milk into her baby (the one I'd held, though she was not the one to pass it to me – the passing around of babies by strangers is common practice in Africa). We were exposed to a single, yet entirely odour-free, diaper-changing.
• I took a total of zero photographs.

Ready for the clincher? The bus DID NOT LEAVE. EVER. Over the course of the day we learned the bus would only leave when full (hence the touts' desperate measures for gaining passengers), and those in charge, after seven hours of presumably hanging around with their fingers crossed, had decided that a trip to Chipata wasn't likely before nightfall. We were informed of this just before three o'clock in the afternoon.

A fellow disgruntled passenger who was going to be very, very late for a job interview took us under her wing and negotiated for our tickets to be transferred to a different company's bus, one that was full enough to leave that day. Within ten minutes we were on a different coach, I on a heap of luggage in the aisle, as they'd run out of seats (After an hour on the road I did get to sit down properly, but the air conditioning was broken and I endured much of the ride with cold water dripping from the overhead vent onto my crotch).

The seven-hour trip took ELEVEN HOURS. The only point of interest on the drive was a refreshment stop at a long row of stands piled with Zambia's favourite road-trip snack, some form of dried spatchcocked fish. This is where I took the second of our two photos to remember Zambia by:


The coach pulled in to Chipata at 2am (we'd scheduled, doe-eyed that morning, for a 4pm arrival). Alanna had researched a scenic guesthouse for us, but we basically let our cab driver take us wherever he darn well pleased as long as there was a mattress. He dropped us at a sparkly chain motel with remote-control air conditioners. Our bodies and luggage had taken on the scent of dried fish during the voyage, but it all seemed natural, somehow.


And you might ask, "what's your other photo from Zambia? Adorable children? Memorable African architecture? A sunset? At least a sunset!"

Of course not: