Forget everything I said about Livingstone being civilisation… the 3G is too slow here to use for updates, and the power’s been off all day, so we haven’t been able to use the connection at the backpacking hostel we’re staying at to do any work either. There are photos to go with this post, but I’m not sure when I’ll have time to upload them.
Since the hostel’s borehole is electric there’s been no water there either.
Still, gave us a good excuse to get very wet at Victoria Falls in lieu of a shower, where we did a couple of pieces to camera for Nerys. There’s a bridge which runs in front of the Falls over to an island in the middle of the river – it’s like walking through a cloud to a tiny tropical jungle. The spray from the Falls is a wall of water which rises way above the top of the cascade, and can be seen from Livingstone itself. There are rainbows everywhere, and every now and again there’s a gap in the mist through which you can see the top of the waterfall. The noise… there’s a reason the local name translates as ‘Sound of Thunder’..
This afternoon I’ve been transcribing some of the more in depth interviews we’ve done at Simakakata. There are two stories ready to go onto the LearnAsOne blog which I’m really proud of. Don’t want to post too much here as they’ll be going up unexpurgated on the main site, but Shabby is the leader of the nearby blind community, and without a school nearby for his kids he’d be begging on the street. Sonia is a teacher at the school and simply one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met. Since she lost both parents she’s put herself and all of her five brothers and sisters through school, and somehow managed to sponsor three of them through college as well.
She’s passionate about the reasons education is the single most important thing people in the rural areas need. Once that’s there, everything else falls into place.