Zambia World Wide

It was the best of times, the very, absolutely wonderful, best of times. I was escaping the languor of Livingstone, over-sexed Jaapie roommates, beer-swilling Neanderthals, dimly lit, dismally dull, sorting offices and muscular virgins in possession of an insurmountable determination, where I was concerned anyway, to maintain their unsullied status; plus the mind-numbing tedium of a locale with a single, albeit magnificent, watery point of interest.

Roll on the fleshpots of Lusaka, 300 miles northwards and a claimed several decades away in social enlightenment.First, however, I had to prepare my knackered conveyance, the far-from-perfect-Prefect, for the arduous journey to the Capital.

The seedy Asian service shack I used, was located in what passed for a back street in the town, although it easily could have been mistaken for a shebeen in the native township and may even have performed that function, after the day�s greasing was done and the evening�s was about to commence.

The proprietor, on learning of my motoring plans, called all of his cohorts together and, in his barely comprehensible, sing-song style, vocalised the intention of this loco sahib to attempt a Lusaka expedition up and over the many sheer drops of the intervening escarpment. Moreover, his conveyance was what appeared to be the vehicular equivalent of a consumptive lemming. The stunned silence that followed this disclosure then provoked energetic mirth in the scruffy assembly. Oh how they howled at the likelihood of my imminent death by plunging over the edge of a cliff.

Huffily, I decided to find an alternative set of technicians.

This was not a problem. Around the corner from the first service station, lurked several others, each owned and run by denizens of the sub-continent, displaced to Central Africa, their mechanical ingenuity to visit on impecunious car owners like me. Clearly, the phone line from his (probable) cousin had hummed with a message on how to handle the crazy traveller with the would-be hearse.

�Of course this magnificent example of Ford engineering will be coaxed into undertaking the simple journey up to Lusaka�, dissembled the dusky head incompetent. A turn of a spanner here, a dab of grease there, an application of some wondrous mineral oil not yet known to the car marque�s main dealer would transform this sturdy little car into a motorised magic carpet, that would lightly whisk the naive sahib to the nation�s�premier city�in �a very short jiffy, cash before leaving, of course�.

And so the wobbly rust bucket and I�embarked northbound�at midnight, the better to take advantage of the cooler night air and traffic-free tarmac. The Bishop of Livingstone being unavailable, the entire register of Mess occupants saw me off, with blistering Anglo-Saxon and Afrikaaner oaths and a parting gift of a terrifyingly proportioned black cat that someone had found wandering the garden, devouring wildlife. The clutch engaged and Livingstone and I were permanently parted; no tears were shed on either side.

The feline, which I�was convinced was part panther, decided that my shoulder was�his preferred�lounge for the journey and a single look into�a set of�menacing eyes was sufficient to convince me that argument was futile. So, like a motoring Short John Silver, sans eye patch or parrot,�it was up and into the enveloping darkness that bounded the town, the little Prefect purring contentedly in time with my unwelcome companion.

Uneventful mile after starry mile was eaten up surprisingly easily and, before I knew it, we were at the foothills of the escarpment where the road started to elevate, at first gently, then sufficiently that the little engine commenced groaning in protest, then so alarmingly that all three of us made up a noisy trio of unharmonious sound: the motor screaming for relief; the cat meowing for escape from this rackety Hell; with both added to my strident, totally discordant renditions of pop songs, in an attempt to drown the pain of having to listen to the noise of the others.

Forward movement up the rising slopes was only achieved by overuse of first gear and I was grateful for the absence of rain, which at least enabled forward vision, and for the teeth-chattering, external chill, which kept the engine temperature at a high, but still operational, level. Edmund Hillary felt no more exhilaration, when he breached the summit of Everest, than did I, when I discerned that the road was starting to point downwards. The escarpment had been conquered, at least one side of it.