Tag Archives: Zambia
An entomologist walks into a bar…
A tiny rainbow, flitting across the Indian Ocean, like a teardrop fallen from God’s eye, a prism for the sun. I’m awake. Thinking. It’s 2.30 am – or thereabouts. This afternoon, for the first time in a week I checked my … Continue reading
On soap, water and being worth it
We’re bumping along a track through scrubby woodland in a because-we-need-it four-by-four. It’s the end of a dehydrating day spent working in a haze of heat and orange dust. Digging, sieving, scraping. Tstetse flies biting through clothing, sweat bees dipping … Continue reading
The song I know of Africa (who doesn’t know one of me)
Is that a humming sound? Hum becomes buzz. An insect passes by, unhurried. Buzz fades into hum again – and the insect vanishes. A bird on creaking wings utters a plaintive call as it crosses the glinting river and heads … Continue reading
Pirates, pirogues and the pain of the past
Don’t worry, we’re on the wrong side of the continent for Somali hijackers, but I can just imagine the pirates out there, lurking behind this celestial net curtain of hazy sea and sky. There’s a mini-flotilla of fishing boats, pirogues, … Continue reading
Bonfire of the insanities
The track is overgrown with tall grass, but a vehicle definitely passed this way, once upon a time. That should be a comfort, but it isn’t. I peer at the guide book in the yellow light of my torch and … Continue reading
A sinister cave, the Twins at St Clare’s & a rather radical departure
I don’t like caves. There’s one in Zambia I never want to see again, a jagged hole in a shard of grey rock that punctures a flat horizon. At night sometimes it hums. A jackal lives there – he ventures … Continue reading
MEMOIRS OF A HUSK 