Of Crocs and Kings

Our last couple of days in Siavonga largely seemed to centre upon the hunt for the killer crocodile. Peter, the camp manager, had convinced the Zambian Wildlife people that the crocodiles in the creek where the boy was killed were a serious liability and therefore needed to be killed. The wildlife rangers arrived with their AK-47s and the hunt for the crocodile began. The rangers, some villagers and Pete took boats out into the creek while we all spotted from the shore for the crocodile. The rangers kept their AK-47s trained on the creek, awaiting a sighting. A crocodile (not sure if it was the right crocodile) was hit and dived.
Later that evening Peter, the rangers and a couple of American camp guests (Texan missionaries) left with AK-47s, 9mm pistols, a case of beer and a boatload of testosterone to find the crocodile again. At 5 a.m. they finally found a crocodile and killed him. The croc was dragged ashore by the villagers who were awoken by the shooting and much celebration ensued.
Ben and Hugo went to view the 3.5m long (12 ft) croc before he was taken to the taxidermist so his hide could be sold, the meat donated to the killed child’s uncle (weird, I know) and the skull hung in the camp bar.
We left the camp later that morning to head to Lusaka. I had been trying to withdraw money from the singular bank machine in Siavonga for 3 days but each time I arrived, there was a line up of more than 20 people waiting to withdraw their monthly wages so I gave up on multiple occasions. As I went to the bank machine, Fiona went to the bakery to find us all some lunch. The baker-lady invited her to try some of her lunch (pap, mealies etc.) and sample a bunch of the foods that the bakery sold… As she was tucking in, a well-dressed, besuited elderly man asked Fiona what she was doing, as it is not often that a white lady is seen in town tucking into a local’s lunch. “It’s my lucky day,” Fiona responded, “I’ve been offered all this food.” “It’s really your lucky day,” he responded with a wide, wry smile, “you’re also meeting the King of the Tonga”. The Tonga are the predominant tribe in Southern Province (from Livingstone to Kariba) and he was their tribal king. Fiona and he chatted about how he wanted to promote development in the area, attract more tourists and more – and then he was introduced to me, still in the line for the ATM staring at the bank’s promotional poster: “Zamanco Bank: Big, Strong and Reliable” – sophisticated stuff. I was tempted to indicate to the king that more than one ATM in town would be helpful but held my tongue and we exchanged pleasantries instead.
We’re now just outside Lusaka staying in a safari camp. We had intended to go to South Luangwa this morning but we checked the map that Venetia and Schalk gave us in the Kalahari and concluded that we had better head north to Tanzania instead. If we went to Luangwa, we’d have to drive to Tanzania via Malawi and we want to spend time in Malawi on our way back, not up. So we headed off a bit late, spent a lot of time refilling our camping gas bottle, bought a new portable DVD player (Oliver kicked the other one AGAIN!), had a guy crack the DVD region coding and then decided that it was too late to leave Lusaka. So tomorrow we’re off to a game reserve (forgotten the name) on the Great North Road that will eventually take us to Tanzania.
We’ve entered a period in the trip where we will be doing a LOT of driving – averaging 6 hours a day. We have about 28 hours of driving ahead of us before we get to the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti – our next major destinations.