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At last Alex gets on the road ... Wednesday, 14 September 2005 "Finally Kelvin and I went out on our first road trip to Chakwenga mine and to find the old Chakwenga village. We left early last Saturday morning as I wanted to get into the park as the gate opened at six o’clock. It didn’t work out like that because within metres of crossing the ford on the Chongwe River I drove the Cruiser into a deep bank of soft sand and buried the back axle... "Once in the park though, we made good time and got up to the hot springs by midday. I had to decide whether or to not to go on to Makumba gate and was in two minds as to whether to go back and leave it for another day as some of the road that we had taken thus far had been pretty rough. We had cleared a couple of trees and had to walk stretches where the road seemed to vanish in the thick bush that covers that part of the valley. "In the event I decided that it would take just as long to go back as to go on and, since we had plenty of supplies we could camp out if we didn’t reach the gate by dusk. It was the right decision because the road from then on was clearly marked. In parts though it was seriously rocky and there were plenty of dangerously steep slopes and ledges with loose stones to further test my four-wheel driving skills... "As we passed points of interest to investigate the next day, I marked waypoints on the GPS unit so that we could find them again easily. The CLZ road map was a great bonus as we were never in any real doubt as to where we were and could easily pinpoint our position on the GIS. That is another tool that we won’t have on our next trip as I don’t know of any maps of the Sioma Ngweze park area and the tourist map is decidedly unhelpful...
"When we got down to where I guessed the village might me we parked up and took a look around but there was nothing there and so I obviously had guessed incorrectly. Undeterred we followed the path used by the mine research team up the Chakwenga River and found ourselves at their well. Kelvin immediately decided that the village must still be nearby and suggested climbing up a gully that came down adjacent to the hole. He was right. At the top of the gully we found remains of pottery that showed the obvious signs of habitation. We also found sable droppings. We had seen a single roan antelope earlier that morning near to the top of the Mwaleshi River. Another first for Kelvin. "Next stop was the research station where we met one of the Zambian researchers prospecting the location for development. He confirmed that they were looking for gold and told me what he knew of the original story behind the mine." Wednesday, 14 September 2005 "Today I stripped down the carburettor of the camp generator because there was water in the petrol. The generator stopped twice yesterday because of it. The problem though may be something else though because the generator stopped again after we had put it back together again when a load was applied." Saturday, 24 September 2005 "Make a plan, adapt it for changed circumstances and then go back to the original plan again. There seems to be a pattern developing here but it may just be that I am so used to things not going the way I envisage that I do not notice things going wrong anymore. "Since I last sat down to write up my journal quite a lot has been going on. To update the generator saga I have now learnt that, in addition to watching for moisture trapped in the fuel tank the power rating is not what it says on the tin. There is a thing called the power factor that needs to be multiplied by the kVA rating to get the capacity in watts. It turns out that my economy drive in wattage has turned round to bite me in that all the loads on the generator are inductive as opposed to resistive loads. The only resistive load is the new geyser which means that only its power requirement is actually correct. The fridge, inverter and all light bulbs, even the computer and chargers are inductive loads which require an additional 30 - 50% power than I had envisaged for sizing. It turns out with the re-vamped set of numbers that I have undersized hugely and should have a 10kVA unit. Hmm.
"I took a bunch of photos though, one or two of which may be useable." Sunday, 25 September 2005 "I woke up this morning thinking about rain. I need two large piece of weather sheeting, one for the kitchen and the other for the bathroom. If I am going to import high quality stuff from RSA, I need to get them ordered now. "The year is passing by faster than I can cope with and I have only managed one road trip so far. Thankfully, we got a decent story, Kelvin and I. Kelvin is currently off in Lusaka on his driving course which means that he is out for three weeks enjoying the bright lights and the big city but has the drawback of leaving camp a little short handed. It is just Patros and me right now. It would be fine but he finds it hard to understand my English and I don’t like going all BBC on him. Thursday, 29 September 2005 "It rained last night! "I went to dinner at CLZ where Ian and Lea were entertaining two applicants for the job of management to take over from them when they leave for Ethiopia. Garth arrived when we sat down to dinner . . . with an interesting tale of his possible discovery of a new subspecies of klipspringer up at the Chongwe Falls. "The rain started after the guests and Lea had gone to bed. Garth had, to Ian’s and my great amusement, stepped on a colony of termite raiding matabeli ants, twice. He was in some pain and we were very much enjoying his suffering when the first drops fell. It wasn’t long before we were gathering the furniture away to shelter as the rain started to fall properly, large sweet smelling drops that instantly changed the whole atmosphere. "I drove back to camp to find Chrispine and Mweemba stowing away the cement under cover. It is a good thing that they were as I wouldn’t have thought of that till this morning when doing my camp checks." |
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© Afrikeye 1999 - 2007 (certain items under permission of original copyright owner) |
"On
Sunday we returned to explore and take a few photos for memory aides for my
story. The mine itself was interesting to say the least. There was a shaft about
twenty metres deep (it took two seconds for a stone to hit the bottom) that was
open and ready for the unwary to fall into. The enormous boiler and crushing
machine stay where they were abandoned shortly after the war. We took a few
pictures as we wandered around and it was all very new to Kelvin who had never
even considered this place being here.
"Today
was Kailala the Gova culture festival. It was actually quite good – but there
was one major lacking element, that being any evidence of Gova culture. All the
dancing was from visiting troops apart from a short lacklustre display by the
women of Muragemeno.