Destination: Siavonga

Combine a four day weekend, a pair of thrifty individuals, a lack of wheels, a Zambia Lonely Planet and what do you get? A trip by minibus to Siavonga!

Hoping to get an early jump on the weekend, we caught a minibus by mine at 7:30 am, skipping out on the morning coffee ritual due to the long bus trip ahead. Big mistake. Getting off one minibus, we were led by a kind-hearted soul through the streets and alleys of downtown Lusaka to City Market, the departure location for minibuses to any possible destination in Zambia. 200 well cleaned, poorly maintained blue and white buses filled the overflowing parking lot; names of the buses cheerfully inscribed on the windshields: 'Don't be Jealous,' 'Normal Life,' 'Keep Da Faith.'

There is no order to the madness - buses park haphazardly on all sides of the compound, with few signs indicating the destination. Each bus has a driver and a pimp. The driver, well, his job is obvious. The job of the bus pimp to fill the bus with passengers, from the onset of the journey until its termination. There are no scheduled departures for minibuses, they leave when they fill up. If two buses are headed to the same destination, they don't fill up one, followed by the other - rather, its a competition between the pimps to see who can fill their bus first. This usually causes the departure of both buses to be delayed, and they end up leaving around the same time, much later than a single bus would have. If this sounds like something that would drive you crazy - you are not alone. Luckily, we only found one bus heading to Siavonga.

Our intentions to leave early were quickly thwarted. We were passengers number two and three. We had plenty of time to take in the sites of the bustling station: men and women hawking anything you can imagine, knocking on windows or peering into the open sliding door inquiring for buyers - Want some socks? How about Ice Cream? Children's books? Here is a nice brush with a built-in mirror? I know someone selling slacks the next bus over. Interested? The market also provided a station for the loading / unloading of goods - like 20kg bags of mealie-meal. Huge bags of the maize were lugged by over-sized wheel-barrels and on the heads of women gracefully maneuvering through the terminal. C-van containers normally used on large shipping vessels had been turned into shop fronts. The people watching was fascinating - but after an hour, then a second hour, that cup of coffee, or another few extra hours of sleep for that matter, sounded pretty darn good.

The bus filled up around 10:30. Full is a term that you may not think is open to interpretation. Think again. A typical Zambian minibus with 3 rows will regularly have 20 people inside; sitting 4 across on benches, knees jammed into the seat ahead, children on laps and bags underfoot. After about five minutes you are intimate with your neighbors. It also seems like the driver and pimp have established some sort of business trail along their route. Every so often the bus will pull over at seemingly random locations. The driver will get out, have a smoke, exchange some money, and get back in. There is also the ever present fear that the full bus will become more full, as people alongside the road are anxious to get a ride and the bus pimp hangs his head out the window at intersections inquiring after interested parties. If no one gets off, there is a good chance that ANY extra room is quickly taken by new passengers for a few miles - or the duration of the journey. Needless to say, this lengthens the time it takes to get from location A to destination B. What would take 2 hours in a car took 4. When we arrived in Siavonga at 2:30 that afternoon, relieved to have made it, and thrilled to get off the bus.

To our surprise, we weren't greeted by a gaggle of inquisitive taxi drivers or aggressive sellers of local vegetables. Maybe that's a sign we've been in the big city too long. The weekend turned out to be relaxing and quiet. The location, beautiful. The scene of a tragic past, the damn flooded an extensive portion of land, displacing the local population from a fertile farmland and condemning them to the barren highlands. Fishing small kapenta is a primary occupation. Families once separated by a river are now separated by a border with Zimbabwe and one of the largest man made lakes in Africa. We were told that a number of the fisherman make the journey to the Zimbabwe side for better fishing, despite the chance that border guards will greet the fisherman with bullets. Like so many of the locations here, modern beauty can be clouded by a tragic past.

Where's Matt? Or his sunglasses?