Our Bus Ride Through Zambia

 The bus finally rolls out at about 2pm. Oh thank the baby Jesus in heaven, we were on the road. June, Brandon, Derek, and I were nestled comfortably in the second to last row on the bus with an extra empty seat between June and I in case anyone wanted to stretch out. We soon regretted this choice of location on the bus as we were bounced off our seats at every speed bump. Either speed bumps in Zambia are deadly or the driver was going too fast (forshadowing – we ultimately found out it was the driver.)

About a half hour into our trip we had just exited the city and the bus comes to a screeching halt on the side of the road. Pretty much every single person jumps off and runs into the bush. It was like a mass exodus. Now I don’t know if there was an old lady or a little kid or this was a scheduled stop but we quickly concluded it was a pee break. All we knew was it was the last chance.  I personally did not want to drop trou in the middle of a foreign country’s bush so I did not partake however this was one of the many times on this trip I wished I was male.

The bus starts moving again and I’m so excited and relieved and ugh its so nice however I notice the little girl in front of me staring at her mother silently crying. Like tears flowing down her face. She was really cute and looked about 6 but her big brown eyes were just faucets. Her mother just ignored her and so I thought that maybe she was sad she was leaving Lusaka or that she wanted to sit with her mom or something like that (Hint: it was nothing like that)

Throughout the first few hours of our journey June and I attempt to play cards but our open window doesn’t want us to. I have found out that people here don’t like to have their windows open, like they would rather all suffer and suffocate in the heat and stench of everyone else than breathe fresh air and feel the cool breeze on your face. So we were faced with a really tough decision here and decided to call it quits on the cards. Another justification for ending our attempt at card playing was that we were now traveling through the mountains, twisting and turning up and down, seeing potential death down the cliff side out our window. Now I don’t know if this was just Zambian driving custom and safety standards but as we fly through the mountains every time we pass a vehicle on the opposite side of the road the driver slams on the breaks and swerves half off the road. So in other words, were in an overloaded bus in high altitude taking in the beauty that was Africa when all of a sudden you are slammed forward into most commonly the seat in front of you (unless you were unfortunate enough to stand up and move around at this point) then as soon as you can realize what is going on to then readjust yourself you are thrown to the left on top of the person next to you or into the aisle as the tires of the bus try to gain traction on the mix of gravel and bush and then quickly to the right as the driver repositions the bus on the designated road. I thought to myself that either I was going to die on this bus or I was going to get used to the movement. Neither happened.

Much of the beginning of the bus ride ended up being a lot of staring out the window, self reflection, and talking. We wanted to conserve our electronics batteries and doing anything else was pretty much out of the question. It was fine though, compared to the barren, desolate desert of Namibia, the rolling hills of green in Zambia were just beautiful. The only thing that slightly ruined the little bit of serenity I had was the little girl who was silently crying earlier was now throwing up. The first time this happened (yes there were multiple) I just calmly looked around seeing if I was just imagining the worst thing that could happen on this quickly moving non-stop bus. My friends had their headphones in so I casually looked under the seat to see if there was evidence of my imagination. There was none thankfully so if I couldn’t see it, couldn’t smell it, then it wasn’t real. Growing up with a little sister who got so excited every time we went out to eat that she threw up every dinner my mom and dad bought for her, there was no way I could mistake the sounds of a little girl tossing her cookies unfortunately. It then happened a few more times to the point that we offered the mother a bottle of water and toilet paper but she just casually ignored it like it wasn’t a big deal. Whatever woman.

The sun set and at about 8pm we stopped at a small village with a bathroom and a place to buy hot food. There were little boys selling fresh hard boiled eggs and memes selling bananas for a dollar each. The bananas were delicious, local, and organic, I bought like 10 and ate them all. We jump back on the bus I nestle into a window seat and literally just as the bus starts moving the little girl has her tiny, crying head out the window hurling all over the side of the bus. Without being too graphic, let’s just say I now can’t open the one window I have access to on this stuffy bus. She did this every hour when the bus stopped for 30 seconds to let someone off. I felt really bad for the little girl, she probably had motion sickness really bad which is why she was crying so badly when the bus started moving. However my trusty travel companion told me yes its either that or she has some horrible stomach bug or parasite that we are now exposed to. Oh dear god I am going to die when I am in Malawi. I will get there, get deathly ill and die in my remote lakeside resort. Didn’t sound too bad, as long as I actually made it to the resort. This was probably somewhere around the 12^th or 15^th time on the trip so far that I thought I was going to die.

Aside from the activity going on in the seat in front of me the trip was uneventful until we get to the border. At this point there are maybe 10 people on the bus; the 4 of us, another young European traveler, two Zambians, and the mother with the pukey daughter. We get to the Zambian border post and all jump off to walk across the border where we will meet the bus. We wanted to stretch our legs and maybe find somewhere to use a bathroom. I strangely notice that the mother in front of me makes no effort to move. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that maybe she had some special arrangement where the border guard would come on for her or she didn’t want to leave her children or she had no idea what to do. We exit Zambia, and enter Malawi we’re super excited and we get back on the bus and meme is still casually sitting there. Everyone gets back on the bus and then a border patrol man casually walks on. He immediately goes straight to this woman, she shows her passport, they exchange words, and he escorts her very calmly off the bus while everyone tries to get her children to stay on. The four of us are extremely confused until someone decides to clue us in. Turns out this woman is a Malawian and violated her visa time in Zambia and is now trying to get back into Malawi as quietly as possible in the middle of the night with her sick child. I don’t know the specifics but it gets better, Malawi will let her in but with a bribe. Oh she had 2500 USD on her on the bus and someone stole it so she has no money. Like this woman was the shady-est person we came in contact with. You are on a bus for 12 hours and 2500 USD just goes missing while you are sitting by 4 Americans and you say NOTHING to anyone. Like no big deal my daughter is barfing her guts up in the back of the bus and I also lost all this money and I’m trying to get back into my country with a violated visa. The bus was held there for a bit while she took her dear time figuring everything out and thankfully we weren’t pulled into it with her missing money. Red flags were going up but the bottom of the line is this woman picked the wrong people to tag because we literally had no cash on us. They could have searched through all our luggage looking for this “stolen” cash and would have found miscellaneous currencies of volunteers. Sorry woman.

I wish I could say this adventure was over, it was not. We still had 2 hours to the capital, no where to stay, and no information on buses leaving to Mzuzu which is were we then could get to Nkhata Bay. Thankfully June had been talking to one of the representatives from the bus company for a majority of the ride (which did include how disappointed we were in the service we were given). He said that there was a place that we would be able to stay which was safe and the bus drivers stay there all the time. Perfect maybe this company is slightly redeemable. So about two hours later after a glorious nap across our own rows of seats the bus stops. We are not at a bus station, not even really a parking lot, it was like just a street but a street out of every iconic superhero action movie where someone gets mugged or stabbed and Peter Parker saves the day. Like fires in garbage cans and people sleeping under scaffolding. Now yes we are in the third world and this was a scene you could probably find in downtown Detroit, but being dropped here at 2 in the morning was not gonna lie, kinda terrifying.

Okay we need to get out of here and get to our hotel. Oh this building we stopped in front of is the hotel…. we grab our bags and someone bangs on the door. A big scary bouncer-looking dude opens the door and unlocks the padlock on the metal gate allowing us to enter. We go up two flights of stairs to a small desk that says reception on it and another man shows us to a room. Now at this point there are 4 of us and two other Zambians and this room has one double bed. We are informed this is the only room he has. Seriously dude, this place looks abandoned, there is no way that you are full. Okay well I guess we are all tired enough the 4 of us could share this bed. We didn’t want to sacrifice anyone to the tile floor, it was already cold out and this place probably didn’t have extra blankets. We convinced him we were willing to pay the money for another room if he had it, we just wanted sleep. The bus to Mzuzu was leaving at 7am and it was already 2 we wanted to get up at 5, there had to be SOMEWHERE to rest my head for 3 hours. Oh magically the room across the hall opens up and there’s another double bed. We’ll take it! We go through all the security questions: Let me check the door lock before you walk away, is this the only key to this room, how do we leave in the morning, okay Brandon’s with me, Derek’s with June.

There were a few really interesting details about these rooms, the rooms were really spacious. There could have been more furniture or more beds in each I guess, my room only had one pillow, and there was a mini fridge. I don’t know, whatever. We all slept like babies and in the morning we got out of there as fast as we could for 5,500 MKW each. About 12USD.

It's Like Sky Mall LIVE!

After our break down incident we find ourselves safely in Lusaka at around 5am (12 hours after leaving the border town). The sunlight is starting to break, people are waking up, and a big coach bus filled with out-of-towners is pulling into the bus station. The second the bus is spotted men beginning running. I wasn’t sitting in a window seat and was too tired to take in the whole site of it all but from the glimpses I saw and from June’s commentary of what was going on the running men were not trying to get on the bus. I thought it was like an airline situation where everyone gets in line and pushes each other and cuts in front of one another so that they can sit in their seat that much longer waiting for departure. Not the case here, these men were taxi drivers and bus station workers jockeying for position to get your business. No lies here bus stations are what I imagine people saw when they came up with the phrase “dog-eat-dog world” or “cut-throat” (not in the violent sense, don’t worry.) What I mean is the bus is pulling into the station, like still moving and completely capable of running over a human being and men are seeing June’s white face, pointing at it and saying “white person! Taxi!” and running with the bus next to the window trying to get and keep a hand on the window because they think it means they have their business. It was hilarious, June was dying and I was laughing too but not gonna lie I was kinda scared for my life for a second. It doesn’t help that as the bus is slowing down and coming to a stop at the bus company’s booth we look out the window and who’s face do we see smiling up at us? Brandon J June, Derek, and I now make the horrible mistake of opening our window pointing our fingers at our white man we thought we lost. This now gives the green light for all people outside the bus to now start yelling at us for a taxi or another bus company. We try to ignore them thinking that they will go away, not so much, we then start telling them we do not need a taxi, no thank you, we are not telling you where we are going, we are perfectly capable of finding it ourselves, thank you, please stop talking to me, get out of my face. Now remember, we are still ON THE BUS. Like the door isn’t even open yet.

Once the floodgates were open I got my expected airline experience with everyone in a rush to go nowhere. This situation however had the added experience of the taxi drivers practically stepping ONTO the bus just to ask you if you need a taxi. The people at the back of the bus are pushing to be the first people off, everyone has a bag up top or a baby on their backs, and the damn taxi drivers think that if they come to us while we are trying to step out of our seats I’ll just give them my business. They were pretty good about taking no for an answer but they only heard “No I do not need a taxi” if I was looking them in the eye. Lets just say it was a very overwhelming experience at 5am after a sleepless 12 hour bus ride.

It was actually a decent system that they have, aside from the hoard of taxi drivers at the beginning there are a bunch of people that wait outside the bus and ask you where you are going. When you tell them your destination they are quick with the times and prices and then begin to escort you to the company’s ticketing shack. We settle on the earliest bus we can get that is departing at 1030 (it was either that or 230) and decide to head over to one of the fanciest malls I have been in in Southern Africa to grab some breakfast. We cleaned ourselves up and then dined on a gourmet meal at the only place that was open. Okay it wasn’t really gourmet like you are thinking, it was actually a café that was part of a larger grocery store but like they had sushi and I had a salmon and cream cheese croissant with a mocha (which the mocha was a total life saver for what we were about to endure.) It was like a super treat, and very delicious.

We head back to the bus station and arrived at our bus at around 930. We found ourselves a whole row of seats intending to be as selfish as possible for as long as we could with the extra seat we saved to spread out with. The bus is filling up but as it gets closer to 1030 we think “yeah a whole extra seat to ourselves for the next 12 hours because this bus isn’t packed yet”. 1030 comes and goes and we casually think to ourselves “Well, maybe they are waiting for like a few more people.” The bus station was packed and we were giving the bus company the benefit of the doubt. (Side note: HORRIBLE IDEA)

As we sit there in our excited state of mind that we are traveling across southern freaking Africa we notice that there are numerous people walking on the bus with many items like a giant bag full of lunch size chips, walking up and down the aisles, hissing like snakes, and getting off the bus. I didn’t exactly grasp what was going on until a man shoved a handful of over gaudy watches in my face, I shook my head and then the man behind him shoved a bunch of perfume bottles in my face and goes “would you like?” These men were selling goods on busses to clueless travelers. It’s like having all the one-stop shops at an airport but now I don’t have to get my lazy ass out of my seat to get a pair of headphones, a bag of chips, and some boxer briefs. They come to me! Derek summed up all our thoughts by exclaiming, “It’s like Sky Mall LIVE!.” It totally was. There was even a few men selling weaves, in case I wanted a new hair-do while waiting for my extremely delayed bus.

Ice Cream? Yes please!

At this point we’ll say it is about 1230 and we’ve now been sitting on the bus for 3 hours. I begin hoarding frozen bottles of water because lord knows when the bus will actually start moving. I then began to realize that the amount of water on the seat next to me was going to turn into a super full bladder and a non-stop bus. So I stop buying but the people all realize that I purchased a bunch just to have and then try pushing more on me. I then try to have fun with them and say I will buy all their waters if they find me a mobile toilet to have on the bus. I don’t think they really understood because they just looked at me oddly and walked away. Fun over. I also asked a man selling watches if he had one that told the time the bus was leaving. I don’t think he understood that either.

All the while June is busy trying to figure out when in the world this bus will leave. Our irritation levels were increasing because it was now nearing closer to 2:30 in which another bus was scheduled to leave with a different company for actually a little bit cheaper of a price. The people with this Ronsil company continue to tell us that the bus is leaving in 15 minutes and we should get back on the bus so we can go. After telling us it is going to leave “now” about 3 times we’ve had it. We demand our money, oh you won’t give us the money, let us talk to the driver, oh the driver is no where to be found, let us talk to the manager of the company. The businesswoman in June handled most of this, but at around 130 I was beyond the point of sitting back and just needed to yell at someone. I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere, I was more so doing it to release the rage and frustration that had been building up inside of me before the bus begins its 12 hour journey. I get off the bus and start telling the young ticketing guy how its inexcusable to provide a service like this, and its disappointing that as a first time visitor to this country this is what I am experiencing so I wanted my money back or for the bus to leave now. I was trying to be calm but firm but when the man then continuously decided to ignore me, brush me off, and try to walk away from me as I was having a calm conversation with him I lost it. I don’t really remember what I said but I think there were too many big words. You know when you are really disappointed in a service and you threaten to talk to the manager and when that doesn’t work you ask to speak to corporate or the owner? Yeah well that doesn’t really exist here. The best I could come up with was threatening that I was going to give them a bad review online. I don’t think they even comprehended this concept because the response I got was from a random dude standing next to me, maybe he was friends with the bus wokers, maybe he worked with another bus, I don’t know but all he says is “Oh you know you are so beautiful.” My response was a snappy “Yeah well I’m a lot more beautiful when I smile!” I whip myself around and storm onto the bus. I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere with those guys but it was good to release the rage because we were about to be in the bus ride from hell.

The Beginning of the Journey #brokedownforwhat? – Transportation Adventures

Let me preface this blog post and the following by saying that the traveling to Malawi has been nearly as exciting or more than actual Malawi itself. So lets begin.

We planned to leave Rundu at first daylight because we wanted to make it as far as possible. We knew this journey would take us forever and we wanted to get it done as fast as possible. The first leg of our trip was provided to us by three very attractive men who blew by our outstretched hiking hand signals but then turned around and came back. They were all teachers and one actually worked at the same school as a fellow PCV of ours. I have found that when hiking I am most commonly picked up by someone who knows another volunteer. “OH I saw you with your white skin and your big bag and I knew you had to be so and so’s friend!” It provides a nice conversation starter and I then know that if I end up in a dangerous situation that you probably assume happens with a blonde haired girl on the side of the road, I have a name and a location to fall back on. The guys were all really cool, they drove fast and when we stopped for gas or food they came out to chat with us. They also blared Top 40 from the US so when we did stop 3 large black Namibians unloaded from the car that was blaring Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball. They also loved taking pictures with us, which I didn’t mind because I still looked cute in my “I’m traveling across Africa gear” (This look did not last).

 

6am sunrise and hike 

            We made it to the Zambia border much more ahead of schedule and were prepared for chaos. When we arrived we stepped out of our cab and were bombarded by people suggesting a cab across the border. One thing I have learned about Namibians, and this may apply to others in Southern Africa as well, is that they hate walking anywhere. If you didn’t know that the border was about half a kilometer long, you would have paid a man double the normal cab rate, plus the vehicle fee to drive across the border just to turn the corner and look at the small border building approaching. This is probably a very useful service for people who are doing a lot of shopping on one side or another but for a few Peace Corps Volunteers with giant hiking backpacks, we were pretty capable of walking. This however did not stop every car from following us or stopping next to us asking if we would like a taxi ride. At first we politely said no, then we began adding small comments about how we had capable legs to walk, but then it turned into us just asking REALLY? We can see the building, its like 200m away, are you kidding me? But I guess if you didn’t know any better you would have fallen for it and the dude would have ripped you off. Oh well. We effortlessly enter Zambia and make our way to a family run bus service. The bus was scheduled to leave in a few hours so we had time to relax, make sure to stretch our legs, and grab some Zambian Kwatcha (which did not work because the only ATM available in the Zambian border town conveniently did not accept VISA.)

Welcome to Zambia

            When the bus arrived I was amazed, actually we all were, at the beautiful coach bus waiting for us to board. I’m happy my expectations were so low for the transportation part of this trip because I was so excited to be on a comfy bus for the next 5-7 hours all the way to the capital Lusaka. We jump on and knew that it should only be about 2 or three hours to Livingston where we were planning to meet up with our 4^th person. Brandon was already in Livingston with other PCVs and so we thought it’d be easy for him to just hop on the bus we were on when it stopped. Without cell phone reception we tried desperately to contact him and let him know the plans. If he wanted to ride to Lusaka with us he needed to get on a specific bus. If we missed him in Livingston, there was no telling where he would be or when we would see him next. We all had confidence he would be fine, but if we were in his situation we wouldn’t want to be left either.

            As we soon found out, much of the information regarding transportation to Malawi that we got from other people was incorrect. The first being this short 147km between the border town and Livingstone. When I see 147 km I think less than 2 hours. Namibians dive fast. Like super fast whereas the rest of Southern Africa has lower speed limits that are abided by, and now we are on a coach bus so we are going slower than we anticipated.  To top it off, this road is like the road to hell or at least to a flat tire or totaled car. I don’t know how it got to this condition but the road is littered with potholes the size of tires and cars that are 6 inches to a foot deep. This results in the bus and every other vehicle on the road driving on whatever side necessary to take the best path. Our giant ass coach bus just drove on the side of the road in the bush and on the shoulder half the time. Or at least that’s what we thought, we couldn’t see a thing because it was already dark and there were no streetlights. Obviously.

            We arrive in Livingston after about 4 or 5 hours and we begin to execute our plan of finding Brandon. I am going to run to the bathroom really quick because Lord knew how long the next leg was going to take and scan the area for Brandon, Derek was going to jump out stretch his long legs and watch to make sure our bags underneath stay on the bus, and June was going to hold our seats and wait for me to hurry back so she could go out and ask around for our white person. I climb off the bus and immediately have keys, pointing fingers, snapping fingers, and loud noises all bombarding my senses. A white person stepping off a giant coach bus means they are visiting and need a taxi. I needed to find a white man and a toilet, not a taxi so I pushed them off and began my search for both. I found the bathroom but no Brandon so I ran back to the bus to switch with June. About 10 or 20 minutes go by and there is still no Brandon. After talking to people around the bus station, at the ticket counter, and any other random person who could understand our English-random Bantu words jumble we conclude that he has definitely purchased a ticket with the company we told him, he is supposed to be on the next bus leaving yet there is a possibility he is walking around, maybe drunk, with other white people. There is no way to contact him so we take this information and ask the ticket people to tell him he is on his own, we will see him in Malawi because we are never going to find him now.

            The bus ride was extremely efficient, every hour, on the hour we stopped at a small town where people got off and on. The private coach busses are like the equivalent of public transportation, its what people rely on to get them from one city to the next. All was going good until the bus stops, the engine gets turned off and every male on the bus steps off. No this was not a pee break, we had broken down. It is now conveniently 2 in the morning (maybe), we don’t actually know what time zone we are in, we don’t know how far we are from our destination considering the previous bus ride was about 5 times longer than it should have been, and we are at a gas station in the middle of presumably nowhere. About an hour goes by and I think to myself well, I might as well stretch my legs, go pee, and get some fresh air. There is a small shop at the gas station that I think opened just for the bus being there but we quickly realized that we actually had no Zambian currency on us. We purchased our bus ticket in the border town and they accepted Namibian dollars and ever since then we have been on the bus. Thankfully we packed plenty of food and in all honesty we were fine but we were in the true literal sense of stuck. No money, no phones, and a hammer to fix the bus. I try to find a bathroom, I have no luck unless you consider the great outdoors the world’s largest bathroom (which I have found out is a common mindset for many people here because civilization is so far spread out and if you have to go, you have to go). I look to one side of the gas station and there is bush and weeds and lord only knows what kind of scary African wildlife and critters hidden there. I look to the other side and there is what I assumed was a homeless man sleeping, alright straight to the tree on the side of the road we go. This was the second of many times I wished I was a man on this trip.

In about 2 hours we were up and running and back on the road. It was a nice break to stretch our legs and find a tree to pee on. This unknowingly and exhaustingly long leg of our journey was only the beginning.

It's a Whole New World - Crossing the Red Line for the First Time

Well my first term of school is officially completed and to celebrate my friends and I were headed to a small beach village on the coast of Lake Malawi. It was a very successful term, nearly all my students passed which is really good because without passing English a student fails the whole year. So I now have much better grounding for the upcoming terms to really make sure my students are successful. I also suggested and implemented compulsory afternoon study for the school. It was super effective! because for the first time in the school’s history all the grade 10’s passed their first term. The staff and administration attribute this to the new afternoon study and foresee even better results in the future. So there was certainly much to celebrate over my holiday.

            Adventures began in Windhoek; I needed to get a visa to pass through Zambia and was able to purchase a multi entry one at the consulate. As with many things in Africa, there are certain weird hours the office is open, you need exact change to purchase your visa and extra passport pictures. If you do not know all this specific information you have to take the time to go there one morning have some one tell you what you need, leave and collect the items like a scavenger hunt, and then if you are lucky enough to complete all items in the short three hour window the office is open, you can go drop off all the collected items but you cannot collect your grand prize until the following day. So I was pretty much stuck in Windhoek for the night. The following day however my friend Brandon and I picked up our visas and made our way north to Rundu where we were meeting other friends.

I was so ridiculously excited to be on the road because I had not been this far north in Namibia yet. I live in the southern part of the country, which is vastly under-populated, full of sand, and pretty normal looking living accommodations outside of the corrugated tin shacks of the locations. In the north though, we have half the nations population, humidity, green things that grow out of the ground, and MUD HUTS! Mud huts are a pretty normalized for many Peace Corps volunteers because that is what they live in, but I am an abnormality and was about to cry when I saw the traditional homesteads made of mud buildings and thatched roofs.  The memes carried the babies on their backs, the groceries on their heads, and everyone had a garden of crops on their plot of land. I REALLY LIVE IN AFRICA!

I spent the weekend hanging out with June and Derek, cooking delicious food, running around Rundu, and celebrating Easter. It is technically “fall” here so Easter dinner was a roasted chicken with carrots and squash and garlic mashed potatoes. It was lovely. We also found this gem Celebration Juice. No joke this was the name of our Easter beverage. It had the British flag on it, was bottled in Belgium, imported to South Africa, bought in Namibia, with Russian and Arabic labels. Truly international.

For actual Easter day we went to June’s host sister for a traditional Kavango meal of mutatae and pap, which was a ridiculously delicious sautéed bush weed and porridge. Before that though we shared some American cultural traditions of Easter with the three little kids of the house of egg dying and an Easter egg hunt. Holidays in Namibia generally consist of shops closing down, people going to church, and maybe the family will get together for a meal. It is very low key, much different from how I grew up celebrating holidays in the US, and very surprising because families here are HUGE. Regardless, the kids absolutely loved coloring eggs and then finding them hidden in their yard with a small pile of candy. We then spent the rest of the afternoon watching a music channel and catching up on all the hot hits coming out of the Western world. We had no problem watching this for the whole day because the little girl in the house who spoke very little English knew too many words to “Loyal”. To say we were surprised when she sang “These ho’s ain’t loyal” is a bit of an understatement. All in all it was wonderful to be taken in by a women who did not know Derek and I and be fed the traditional food after exchanging American cultural traditions. Very Peace Corps-y if I say so myself.

Catching up on all the latest HipHop in the world.

Meme in training learning how to make pap (porridge)

Easter Dinner!

On the Kavango River. I had my eyes peeled for hippos and crocs but I knew if I saw either I might be killed

The sunset over the Kavango River 

Hello Angola

In Namibia taking a picture with Angola