Sara Dunn - Appointment in Zambia

Appointment
in Zambia

Appointment
in Zambia

An African Adventure

Sara Dunn

Copyright 2012 Sara Dunn

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To Ross
For the dream and for getting us there.

I felt catastrophe snapping at our wheels. Wed suffered a disastrous day, and the next one looked no better.

Lying side by side in the night, the moon brilliant through the windscreen, neither of us had voiced our thoughts. Worry wouldnt let me rest. I wondered if Ross had managed to drop off. I shifted position and covered my head with a tee shirt to gain darkness. The Sahara crouched in silence on the other side of the car doors like a monster waiting to consume us. With a longing to lie flat I pulled up our shared blanket against the cold which still surprised us after the oven-blast heat of day.

Impatience had brought us to this. A few more weeks of waiting for our sea passage to Cape Town would have rewarded us with the trip of our dreams and money in our pockets. Ross could be concentrating on his prospective job in Chingola. Instead wed run up a debt of a thousand pounds and had possibly ruined our pristine Hillman Hunter into the bargain. Driving to Zambia from North Africa bore no relation to touring up from Cape Town in the South. The new job would be far from Rosss thoughts now, being replaced with simple survival on a road through purgatory. If anything happened to him wed be truly stuck. I couldnt drive. I tortured myself with the realisation that our recklessness was astounding. A toxic mix of adventurous spirit, ignorance, impulse and naivety lured us into believing in our own invincibility and wed heedlessly, and dangerously, ignored all the warnings! Now wed have to dig ourselves out of this mess. Literally and without a shovel!

I shifted position again to ease my shoulders tingling from sunburn and aching from hours of scraping sand from behind and under the wheels.

Take care when youre scraping under the car that it doesnt fall on top of you! Ross had shouted in warning a few hours ago.

The car jack wed been using didnt look as if it would suffer much more abuse. Perhaps hed dream up another strategy in the morning, like hed thought of driving over the spare wheels to escape the soft sand when nothing else had worked.

Until then wed been confident and excited about the challenge. Particularly after the official at the Sous Prefecture assessed the cars suitability to make the Sahara crossing and declared bien with a reassuring smile. It took just one day for serious misgivings and doubts to invade our ingenuous heads. One day in the proper Sahara and it looked like we might have to go back. What a shameful failure it would be, falling at the first hurdle, and tomorrow we could be forced to have a rethink.

Wed met only one solitary vehicle going in the opposite direction since we joined the piste. The driver had slowed and wed had a brief exchange of, Bonjour. a va? Oui merci, et vous? Au revoir, bonne route! before driving on. If this was an average over twelve hours, at least one person would be travelling nearby the next day. The main highway into southern Algeria was not a busy one. But wed had to leave the main track on unmarked diversions, so travellers could easily miss each other and hence that single chance per day of communication with another person and civilisation.

The Sahara measures twice the area of the Mediterranean Sea. Heat shimmer can reduce visibility to two or three hundred metres and like ships in a fog another distant vehicle might pass unseen. Our choice of Golden Sand for the colour when wed ordered the car back in April was a joke of destiny. We couldnt be camouflaged better.

I adjusted the tee shirt and looked at Ross, his face illuminated in the moonlight. An oily smudge from working under the car marked his cheek. Toilet facilities were a luxury of the better petrol stations as we travelled through France and Spain. Here it was a wipe down with a damp flannel and this evening it had been cursory. He snored gently. Thats good, I thought. At least hes getting some rest. Hell need it for another day of hard driving. If were lucky enough to get over the river bed! We really must buy a shovel if we ever get the chance.

I spread the tee shirt back over my eyes and tried to clear sand from my ear without success. Brushing hadnt removed the sand from my hair either.

The last six months had been a roller-coaster. The excitement of a job in Africa, choosing a new car, my twenty-first birthday, the end of four years study, and our first wedding anniversary followed each other in quick succession. Then wed disposed of unnecessary possessions, which meant all of our furniture from our two-roomed flat, and wed felt liberated. Wed expected news of a booking on a Union Castle Line ship to arrive any day through July and August, and the frustrating weeks of waiting became too much to bear. Yes, impatience was to blame.

Britains new Prime Minister Edward Heath was being interviewed on television on that fateful evening only six weeks earlier.

We could always go overland now that we have wheels, Ross had suggested out of the blue.

Id pulled out an old atlas and wed traced a route down through Africa through countries still marked with their colonial names. Only two strips of water interrupted the flow of land between Edinburgh and Chingola; the English Channel and the Straits of Gibraltar. Wed played with the idea for a while. Fourteen months had passed since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon so Africa couldnt be that difficult, could it? By the time Samantha was twitching her nose in Bewitched the seed had been sown and the dream became wild. A month later we boarded the ferry for Calais.

I felt something on my neck and brushed it away. It wasnt impossible for a scorpion to find its way into our cosy nest.

Another thing to worry about.

I changed position again and concentrated on blanking out the errant thoughts swirling through my mind.