Vic Falls was Incredible, the Trip was Horrifying.

This past weekend I went to Victoria Falls. I decided to only take the bus as far as Katima Mulilo and then I was going to have a co-worker from the Katima field office drive the two hours from Katima to Livingstone. In retrospect, this was a bad idea. I honestly think I would have been safer, and definitely would have been cheaper to have taken the bus the full way, spent the night in Livingstone and take the bus the full way back.
However, this is not what happened. I got to the bus stop in Rundu around 3:15am, we were supposed to be there by 3:30am… the bus did not arrive until 7:15/7:30am. When I got to the bus stop in Katima, Leonard, who was supposed to pick me up was no where in sight, luckily I found a woman from Finland who let me borrow her phone, I called no answer. I call Vincent, another co-worker in Katima, no answer. I call my co-workers back here in Rundu, no answers. So I finally call everybody’s boss, our Chief-of Party in Windhoek, an ask him to keep calling people, since the woman was needed to return to the bus. Eventually Vincent arrives. He takes me to his house which was pretty large for a Namibian family. He has 5 daughters and 1 son; they were all extremely friendly and welcoming. I started feeling very sick that night so I skipped dinner and went straight to bed. I had run into Leonard that afternoon and he said he would pick me in the morning between 5:30 and 6am. Which would give us just a few hours at the Falls before we would have to get back for me to catch the bus back to Rundu at 4 that afternoon. I wake up get ready and wait… and wait… and wait. Finally I wake up Vincent and he goes to look for Leonard at his house, he’s not there. So then Vincent starts driving around town to find him. Eventually runs into him and brings him to come fetch me. By this time it’s around 8:30 or 9. We eventually head out of town, but Leonard is not the one driving, instead some other guy I’ve never met is driving. That made me uncomfortable as is, entering into other foreign country with a driver I have never met is fairly nerve-wrecking. We get to the border and the border fees are way more than I was told they were, and of course the two guys I was with brought no money, even though we said we would split border charges and gas, oh and I paid for all the gas as well. The driving was making me uncomfortable so I told them I thought maybe I would try to catch the bus in Livingstone, playing it off like that way they would have more time at the Falls. We get there at 11:30am, I tell them I want to leave at 12:30 to go find the bus. The two of them totally take off. Around 12:30 there were still gone, I wander the trails for a while trying to find them and after some time I decided to just sit at the entrance and wait for them. Another 45 minutes pass, now the time we would have to leave to head back to Katima anyways, and they are still missing. A security guard, who had been sitting with me for some time and knew I was waiting for them, finally said we would look for them while I stayed at the entrance. I gave him descriptions and he went wondering. About 15 minutes later, now past 1:30pm they show up, meandering slowly. I tell them we need to go, now. They were like “the bus doesn’t leave until 4, you’re fine.” I told them I needed to be there by 3:30pm and to get in the car. They finally comply. Then instead of getting on the highway, they drive into town to say hi to some friends. We eventually get on the road a little past 2pm. It takes 2 hours to get to Katima, plus we still have to deal with border crossings. After a little time on the road it becomes obvious that they had been drinking during the time they disappeared at the falls. I’m furious, but there’s very little I can do. There are no busses to catch, they had all departed earlier. I have no local currency because we were only there for the day. And we are now in rural Zambia where I know no local languages even if I did decide to bail out of the car. Instead I decide I will just try to backseat drive as much as possible. They guys become mad because I was "not being a happy passenger and that is making it hard for them to drive.” To this I responded that “it’s hard to be in a foreign country with a driver who had been drinking.” They really did not care at all. It was honestly the scariest time of my life. We finally are getting closer to the border… I’m already pretty sure we are going to miss the bus. (Since Katima is the first stop it was highly unlikely that the bus would be off schedule already.) They pull off the freeway and drive for a few minutes. When I question if this was the way to the border they told me that they wanted to buy fish. The fish they wanted to buy would have been from the Zambizi River, the same waters that people in Katima fish out of, why they had to stop when we were already late was totally beyond me. They start chatting with the fish monger and I yell at them to get back in the car. I told them that we do not have any time to waste and that they “need to get to the border. No more stops!” We get to the border on the Zambia side, I hop out get my passport stamped for departure, and by the time I got back in the car they had not even exited the vehicle yet. Then we have to stop at the Namibian side of the border, same story there. It’s already 4 and we’re still a few minutes from the bus stop.
We finally turn the corner and the bus is beginning to pull out, I told them to pull in front of it (at this point I really did not care if their car got bumped) luckily they listened and parked in front of the departing bus. I jumped out of the car and am waving at the drivers. One gentleman, an extremely friendly man who had helped me load the bus the day prior, jumps of the bus and goes “Rebekah!” this was saving grace, this kind driver who I don’t even know remembered me and was more friendly then the two guys I got stuck spending all day with. I was so happy to get on that bus. The day had been a total nightmare. Here I am promised safe transport from a co-worker and instead it was the most tense I have been in my whole life. The trip ended up costing between double and triple what I was told it would be, and while Victoria Falls was honestly the most amazing thing I had ever seen in real life the experience was a complete disaster.
Oh, and then when I get back to Rundu at 11:30 at night, and my host mother had promised to pick me from the stop, she wasn’t there. I managed to get a ride, from a kind stranger. The woman next to me on the bus told me she didn’t want me to take a taxi alone at night. So she departed the bus with me and went up to the first guy she saw and asked him if I could get a ride home. Turns out he lives real close to the house and agreed.

I’ll be so thankful when this experience is over and it can all be in the past. I leave Rundu tomorrow; I’ll be in Windhoek for my last 2 weeks.

On a much lighter note, I have started to pack and trying to lighten the load I brought little by little. In doing so I have opted to give most of the things I am leaving, not much, to Teresia, the house keeper. She workers harder than any of the formally hired persons I have met here, but still makes little. (I haven’t felt comfortable asking how much, but I know it’s close to nothing.) I pulled together a bag of things to give her last night. It included a bar of soap, a fleece blanket I acquired on the plane, a bag of spaghetti noodles, a pair of flip flops, a package of baby wipes, and of course, a white T. I unpacked the bag with her to make sure she knew what they all were (there were some medicines I also wanted to include but I worry about dosages and what not because she cannot read any English, and only speaks very little, I won’t even be bale to explain it to her.) As those of you who see me regularly, you know I wear Hanes Tagless V-neck White Tees on a religious basis. When we got to that, I pulled it out and handed it to her. Her face lit up, and without a second’s hesitation she ripped off the vest thing she was wearing and through it on. She was so thankful and I could tell she had thought about asking for one but just hadn’t. At that I ran back into my room and grabbed and second one and brought it out to her.

[Earlier this trip I tried to giver her a pair of flats. I had hit the wall when she came to my room to say good bye one day and saw what she was wearing to walk the 10 km home. Two right-footed shoes, one was a flip flop a couple sizes too small, and one was an old man’s business shoe a couple sizes too big. However, after her putting on the shoes we both immediately saw that by feet are significantly larger than hers. You could tell she really wanted them. But after walking a few meters in them she slipped them off said that you and handed them back. Even though my flip flops are a little big it’s not as noticeable, because, well, they’re flip flops!]