Life on the riverbank – Livingstone, of course, didn’t have the benefit of lifejackets, inflatable kayaks, backup teams and some of the best white water guides in Africa. Dom, Titus and Sven not only doled out safety instructions and directions but also titbits of river lore. Here, the river serves diverse functions: border, road, water source and larder for the villagers living alongside its implacable sweep. We watched fishermen poling mokoro laden with glittering riches – fish. “Daninga fish migrate upstream,” explained Dom. “Last night these men set conical traps in the rapids to catch them. In the mornings they return to collect the fish, drying them in the sun to eat or sell.”
The Zambezi offers fun as well as food: we passed several yelling gangs of kids leaping into the murky shallows, stopping to wave and shout greetings as we hove into view. We covered 24km on that first day, passing the Kazungula ferry crossing where Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia meet, and arriving at our campsite by late afternoon. A lumpy, grassy glade between scrubby copses, it was close enough to the water to lend it a ‘what if the crocs come ashore in the night’ thrill. That night, after an impressive feast of campfire curry, sleep came quickly: the combination of exhaustion and the glockenspiel calls of the reed frogs proved a powerful sedative. But I woke at regular intervals, jolted by elephant trumpeting and what I could swear were leonine roars carrying across from Zimbabwe’s Zambezi National Park on the opposite bank. At least, I hoped it was the opposite bank.
The right sort of rain – Next morning my fellow paddlers seemed equally bleary-eyed as we packed up canvas and poles before pushing out – swiftly, of course -into the middle of the broad, relentless Zambezi. Today’s slice of the journey would cover a similar distance, but with more confidence (if not prowess) in my paddling, I was able to glance around a little more and absorb the surroundings. If the sky was drab and grey, the wildlife certainly wasn’t. Emerald-backed, Zorro-masked little bee-eaters emerged from their nest burrows in steeper sections of the sandy banks. Reed cormorants adopted crucifix poses atop tree stumps in the river, wings spread out to dry.
Flocks of egrets stilt-walked through the shallows. On small islands, trees were adorned with dozens of weaver-bird nests dangling like Christmas decorations, while on the Zimbabwean shoreline a bickering troop of chacma baboons raided the waterberry trees. After a lunch pitstop on a midriver island, the glowering sky delivered its load as threatened. A rat-tat-tat of raindrops stung my bare arms and drummed the otherwise still water, as if a celestial deity had emptied a sack of pearls onto a sheet of glass. Prepared to be miserable, instead I was mesmerised – it was rain as I’d never seen it before. And in the warm Zambian air, the downpour was as refreshing as it was transient, clearing up within half an hour.
