ugly statue of Dr Livingstone apparently hewn from solid copper. You decide whether or not you need a raincoat and boots, and then follow one of the little paths towards the noise.
Perhaps Victoria Falls is the ultimate triumph of the British Empire in Africa; you are told its other names and they are all older, truer, sound more beautiful, say more and show more, but Victoria Falls is as mighty as English itself and as surreal as the great White Empress hurling herself off the greatest cliff on the continent and plunging to her death with all her petticoats billowing. The locals call it Mosi-Oa-Tunya: the smoke that thunders.
A man sold me a statue. She was beautiful: the first Queen of Victoria Falls, he said. I asked her name. Mukuni, he said, named after her people.
âSo they should be called the Mukuni Falls!â I cried.
âYes!â
In fact he named her after the first Chief Mukuni who came down from Congo in the eighteenth century, conquered the Baleya people (who were originally of the Rozwi culture in what is now Zimbabwe) and founded Mukuni village, which is to this day presumed to have been the largest village in the area when Dr Livingstone arrived. The rest is history, or rather politics, as there is still a Chief Mukuni ofMukuni and you may visit him there and mix with his people, the Toka-Leya, many of whom are artists.
She was a tall, slender woman, and weighed less than 100 grammes. Her people call the falls Shungu Mtitima and perhaps her name was actually Bedyango, the high priestess of Mukuni, who has final say on who will be the next chief. But this was a wise man, so he gave her to me in return for a little understanding, not too much, and I carried her from then on, neatly swaddled in the middle of my emergency toilet roll, believing her to be the true queen.
I began the business of organising my next transport. Hiring a car took a day and a half, a small fortune and multiple trips to the airport, half of them through magnificent downpours. The rain was always preceded by a thick green-red smell, which seemed to steam as if from cracks in the earth; then the sky turned grey-black, sometimes shot through with silver-white sun lances, and it would seem even hotter, under the cloud, and then the rain would come.
I was not much enamoured of the car. White with a fake velour-like interior, it was made God Knows Where, but was unmistakeably Japanese. It was all electric. A boot lid that would cut your fingers off if you were careless, automatic transmission, quite a lot of oomph and no doubt thirsty, it had Grande or Classic or something in curly-wurly writing near the bank of its red and gold tail-lights. Power steering, with a ride like a feather mattress sliding down a spiral staircase, sod-all clearance and, it felt, twice as wide as the Mousebird (God help us if Livingstoneâs pot-holes were anything to go by) there could be only one name for it: the Pimp.
The traveller showed up at the hostel around supper time. He was so wiry and quiet he was almost difficult to see; he achieved a beer in seconds and eased himself onto the list for the cookâs supper, though in theory it had closed a while before. Roan is a chef, a snowboarder, a Kiwi, about twenty-four, and he was coming to the end of three months on the road: Tanzania, Kenya (âItâs a great time to go to Kenya,â he said, phlegmatically: the country was in flames and thewhole world was wondering if either Kibaki or Odinga could see a way out), Malawi, Zambia, and, next, Caprivi. He was on his way to Canada, via South Africa.
âMan, Iâd love to see you in three monthsâ time!â he laughed. âYouâll be thin, covered in shit, you wonât care what you eat, youâll be obsessed with your ass â it gets really out of hand, like someone says woah! I just did a beauty â like â you can go and see it if you want, itâs still there! And youâre like no, really . . .
Perhaps Victoria Falls is the ultimate triumph of the British Empire in Africa; you are told its other names and they are all older, truer, sound more beautiful, say more and show more, but Victoria Falls is as mighty as English itself and as surreal as the great White Empress hurling herself off the greatest cliff on the continent and plunging to her death with all her petticoats billowing. The locals call it Mosi-Oa-Tunya: the smoke that thunders.
A man sold me a statue. She was beautiful: the first Queen of Victoria Falls, he said. I asked her name. Mukuni, he said, named after her people.
âSo they should be called the Mukuni Falls!â I cried.
âYes!â
In fact he named her after the first Chief Mukuni who came down from Congo in the eighteenth century, conquered the Baleya people (who were originally of the Rozwi culture in what is now Zimbabwe) and founded Mukuni village, which is to this day presumed to have been the largest village in the area when Dr Livingstone arrived. The rest is history, or rather politics, as there is still a Chief Mukuni ofMukuni and you may visit him there and mix with his people, the Toka-Leya, many of whom are artists.
She was a tall, slender woman, and weighed less than 100 grammes. Her people call the falls Shungu Mtitima and perhaps her name was actually Bedyango, the high priestess of Mukuni, who has final say on who will be the next chief. But this was a wise man, so he gave her to me in return for a little understanding, not too much, and I carried her from then on, neatly swaddled in the middle of my emergency toilet roll, believing her to be the true queen.
I began the business of organising my next transport. Hiring a car took a day and a half, a small fortune and multiple trips to the airport, half of them through magnificent downpours. The rain was always preceded by a thick green-red smell, which seemed to steam as if from cracks in the earth; then the sky turned grey-black, sometimes shot through with silver-white sun lances, and it would seem even hotter, under the cloud, and then the rain would come.
I was not much enamoured of the car. White with a fake velour-like interior, it was made God Knows Where, but was unmistakeably Japanese. It was all electric. A boot lid that would cut your fingers off if you were careless, automatic transmission, quite a lot of oomph and no doubt thirsty, it had Grande or Classic or something in curly-wurly writing near the bank of its red and gold tail-lights. Power steering, with a ride like a feather mattress sliding down a spiral staircase, sod-all clearance and, it felt, twice as wide as the Mousebird (God help us if Livingstoneâs pot-holes were anything to go by) there could be only one name for it: the Pimp.
The traveller showed up at the hostel around supper time. He was so wiry and quiet he was almost difficult to see; he achieved a beer in seconds and eased himself onto the list for the cookâs supper, though in theory it had closed a while before. Roan is a chef, a snowboarder, a Kiwi, about twenty-four, and he was coming to the end of three months on the road: Tanzania, Kenya (âItâs a great time to go to Kenya,â he said, phlegmatically: the country was in flames and thewhole world was wondering if either Kibaki or Odinga could see a way out), Malawi, Zambia, and, next, Caprivi. He was on his way to Canada, via South Africa.
âMan, Iâd love to see you in three monthsâ time!â he laughed. âYouâll be thin, covered in shit, you wonât care what you eat, youâll be obsessed with your ass â it gets really out of hand, like someone says woah! I just did a beauty â like â you can go and see it if you want, itâs still there! And youâre like no, really . . .
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