Not Quite Cape to Cairo

Rhodes straddling Africa

At the end of the nineteenth century, Cecil John Rhodes envisaged a solid block of British territory running from Cape Town in South Africa to Cairo in Egypt and linked by a railway line – the Cape to Cairo railway.  Of course, the dream never became reality, and now much more serious problems than a plethora of different railway gauges beset a concept that would require a route through nine or ten independent countries.  Still, it is possible to travel a long way by rail if you’re willing to put up with corrupt border posts and warm to middling hostilities between the countries along the way.  Wikipedia claims that only the section across Sudan is missing.  Perhaps one needs to switch to Camel Gauge for that part of the route.

The proposed line and colonies

I’ve done the section from Johannesburg to Victoria Falls by rail through Botswana, and that is now a regular tourist route.  There is even a very high class tourist train which undertakes that journey, but then it turns around and comes back.  My only experience on more northern African trains was in the early sixties. 

After a particularly disturbing period in South Africa, my parents decided to emigrate and, unwilling to leave Africa immediately (we eventually ended in Australia but that’s another story), my father accepted the headship of the mathematics department of the University of East Africa at Nairobi.  We moved there in 1960 just after Kenya’s independence from Britain, and lived there until 1964.  During that time my mother and I explored the wonderful wildlife areas of East Africa in her long wheel base series II Land Rover -christened Brontosaurus - while my father proved mathematical theorems.

My mother, Teda, with Bronto

We also drove down from Nairobi to Johannesburg and back twice, quite an undertaking for a woman with a teenage son too young to share the driving on the 5,000 mile journey.  But my mother was like that.  As long as she had her Bronto and Africa, she was fine.  And, of course, I loved it!  We had some adventures, but somehow we always got through … except once.  Driving back to Nairobi in 1962, we hit a wet season which was extraordinary.  All the roads were unpaved, of course, and, as one approached Lake Tanganyika, they deteriorated into sticky clay.  As we headed into southern Tanganyika (as it was then), we found ourselves skidding through ruts and passing a variety of bogged down vehicles, forlornly awaiting rescue.  Eventually we made it to a town near Lake Tanganyika, and adjourned to the local hotel for food and news of the way ahead.

It was not encouraging.  The roads along the lake – not highways at the best of times – had deteriorated into swamps.  We would need to backtrack a long way and then head through the center of the country to try to get through.  Eventually another plan was suggested.  There was a goods train that ran through the town and would travel the whole way up the lake and across to Mwanza on Lake Victoria.  There we would be on the doorstep of the Serengeti and out of the mud.

I’m sure that nowadays a variety of regulations ranging from safety and health issues to red-tape formalities requiring multiple costly signatures would prevent such an adventure.  Then, a few calls from the hotel manager to the station master and the next day the Land Rover was nicely settled on a flatbed truck and we were off. 

It was three days and two nights before we reached Mwanza.  And this was only a goods train so we had to ride in the vehicle.  Our view was from the Land Rover windows as we headed north through the sodden landscape, the lake unfortunately out of sight.  Luckily we were prepared for camping with food and a bed which spread across the back of the vehicle, but when the train stopped at a station, there would be a rush to the toilets.  The train driver knew about us, and waited till the station master waved the all-clear when we were back aboard.  Until the last morning.  Unbeknownst to us, the driver had changed overnight and the new driver was not aware of his unusual cargo.  At the first station in the morning, we emerged from the facilities relieved, only to watch the train and our vehicle pulling out of the station.  Only the quick thinking of the station master in switching the signals saved the day.

Mwanza today

When we reached Mwanza, we checked into the Victoria Hotel and enjoyed baths and cooked food before continuing the trip in a more conventional way.

And Bronto?  After that her tires didn’t leave the road again until she sailed for Australia…

Michael - Thursday.

Will NyamiNyami be reunited with his wife?

And if he is, what will be the extent of the tragedy?

David Livingstone, intrepid explorer that he was, was probably the first white man (in the 1850s) to see the falls where the mighty Zambezi plunges 110 metres (365 feet) on its way to the Indian Ocean.  He named the place Victoria Falls after his monarch.  The locals knew it as Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders, from the plume of spray that sometimes rises several thousand feet in the air.

If you go to Vic Falls, as they are generally known, not only will you see one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, but you will also be at the site of some of the planet’s best whitewater rafting.  A day’s rafting below the falls will take you along the bottom of a series of gorges – the falls of earlier times - over 19 rapids, many of which are rated 4.5 or higher.  When I last rafted the Zambezi, we had to portage around one 6.0 rapid – too dangerous to attempt.

Generally the rafting trips start just below the Boiling Pot, where the river changes direction at the base of the falls, from First Gorge to Second Gorge, creating a swirling, roiling, turbulent cauldron.  The Rafting Companies will tell you the Boiling Pot is the home of NyamiNyami, the river god, protector of the river, with the face of a fish and the torso of a snake.

NyamiNyami

But the Rafting Companies are wrong, according to the BaTonga people, who have lived in the Zambezi valley for centuries.  They say that NyamiNyami lives farther downstream in what is now Lake Kariba, the vast expanse of water behind Kariba Dam.  And they believe he is angry.

In about 1950 the governments of Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia) started to build a hydro-electric dam across the Zambezi, at a place called Kariva, which means trap, which was the home of NyamiNyami and his wife.

The BaTonga elders objected, not only because most of their people would have to be relocated to higher ground, but also because NyamiNyami would be angry.  They predicted that NyamiNyami, protector of the river, wouldn’t allow the dam to be built.

Kariba Dam

In 1957, with the dam making good progress and the waters of the lake beginning to rise, the Zambezi experienced a 1000-year flood, way beyond anything in living memory.  Much of the dam was washed away and a number of people died, including whites.  When the bodies of the whites couldn’t be found, the BaTonga were asked to help since they knew the river better than anyone else.  A white calf was killed as a sacrifice to NyamiNyami and floated on the river.  The next day it was gone, and the bodies of the white workers found – something that has never been explained.

In 1958, the Zambezi flooded even higher than the previous year, and again major parts of the dam were washed away.  The BaTonga knew what was happening.  NyamiNyami was angry at the disruption to his river and, to make things worse, the dam had separated him from his wife.

But construction continued and in 1960 the dam was completed and electric power started to flow.  And continues to do so even today.

The BaTonga still believe that NyamiNyami will destroy the dam, pointing to the recurring tremors and earthquakes (over 20 with a magnitude of over 5) in the area which, they say, is NyamiNyami trying to be reunited with his wife.  And if NyamiNyami is successful, it is difficult to imagine the catastrophe that will ensue.  The lake is now over 225 kms (140 miles) long and up to 32 kms (20 miles) in width; it covers an area of over 5500 sq. kms (2,150 square miles) and has a maximum depth of 100 metres (320 feet), with an average depth of about 30 metres (95 feet).  Not only would huge areas be suddenly flooded below the dam, but there is a chance that the huge Cahora Bassa dam downstream could be damaged.  And if it broke as well?  Mozambique would suffer another tragedy.

To give some indication of the potential catastrophe, in March 2010, the sluice gates of Kariba had to be opened to cope with the flooding Zambezi.  Over 150,000 people had to be evacuated from the floodplain. What if this or worse happened without warning?

So what do you think?  Will NyamiNyami succeed?  Will he be re-united with his wife?

I do.  But I hope not.

Stan - Thursday

PS.  Even though the rafters are wrong about where NyamiNyami lives, almost all of them wear his pendant for good luck on the river.