Victoria Falls

We presented our paper this morning, and the conference ended after lunch and then we all went to Victoria Falls.  No matter how many times I go there, each time is different. It really is one of the most beautiful places on earth – mystical and natural, and the Ministry of Tourism has managed a nice balance between making it accessible and keeping it original. The fence that separates the path from the edge is made out of a local vine that has nasty long spikes so that it is a reasonable deterrent but doesn’t stand out from the background.  A determined person could certainly climb over it, but my Zimbabwean colleagues are of the mind that if you do that, you get what you deserve.  It’s a very different perspective on our Canadian approach to protecting idiots from their destiny.

Victoria Falls was “discovered” by Doctor Livingstone and at one end is a large statue of him and a wooden canoe that he reputedly arrived in.  It’s an interesting interpretation, since one assumes that the Falls were here long before he was, and the local people certainly knew about them because his guide told him about them, so discovered, in this case, means something like got a story about them in the UK press.

From Livingstone’s diary: “no one could perceive where the vast body of water went; it seemed to lose itself in the earth, the opposite lip of the fissure into which it disappeared being only 80 feet distant. At least I did not comprehend it until, creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambesi, and saw that a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet, and then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen or twenty yards.”

He describes it far better than I ever could.

Because there have been unusually heavy rains the water level is very high.  Rocks which were above the water last time I was here are now deeply under water, and the noise of the falls is incredible and unrelenting.  It was a brilliant sunny day, so there were rainbows at every corner, and in many cases, you could see both ends.  I even walked through one, and although my companions said they could see the colours of the rainbow on my jacket, there was no pot of gold.

At the other end of the path is the bridge to Zambia.  Before the bridge was built, people crossed on rafts pulled by a cable, something that looks unimaginable to me…travel today is so staid.  The bridge was part of Cecil Rhodes plan to build the Capetown to Cairo highway, which was never completed.  It now carries heavy traffic carrying copper ore, since Zambia has no seaport.  The trucks travel in convoys, many from Chinese companies with Chinese drivers, making a person question the contracts with the Chinese that are supposed to ensure work for qualified local people.

As we were admiring the bridge we saw someone bungee jumping off it.  I’m just not that brave, as we watched her swinging back and forth under the bridge, upside down, until someone was winched down to turn her over and winch her back up again.  All I could remember was that in 2014 the cord had broken when an Australian woman had jumped from there.

Eventually we had to leave, although I could stay there for days,  Back to the hotel for our final party, at which I discovered that my Russian speaking friend was actually President of the association that hosted the conference, as well as host of the party.  Ended up chatting with him quite late, as he tried to encourage me to consider the Zimbabwe Open University as my next employer.

Tired, happy and time for bed.