Tour d'Afrique - Cairo to Cape Town by Bike

The people:
• Once again, very friendly. Similar to Malawi in that people would stare out of curiosity, but would quickly lose interest and continue doing what they were doing.
• Hard working. Though the population density seemed quite a bit lower through Zambia the people we did see were working away in the fields, doing their urban occupation in urban areas or cutting the roadside grass by hand. Most of the roads we travelled were lined by grass which was 2-3m tall at the highest points, but was constantly cut by hand!

The landscape:
• Very green, very rolling, perfect for cycling! We were doing some bigger distance days in Zambia which were made a little tougher by constantly rising and falling, but it was very welcome as it offered beautiful scenery. Once farther west in the country, things started to flatten out a bit, but always slightly rolling which was nice.
• Of course Zambia shares with Zimbabwe the amazing Victoria Falls. I already babbled on about my amazing experience around the falls so I’ll let you read that post. Wow, exhilarating!

The countryside:
• It seemed that the way things are organized in the country is that there are many small settlements (smaller than villages) scattered over the countryside. The villages that we had become used to were fewer and farther between. These settlements appeared to be family-based as they were typically a collection of thatch huts with a small dirt courtyard between them and farmland behind them. It is a good reminder that us humans don’t need a whole lot to be happy; roof over us, enough food and good company all available in these little settlements.
• Once we did hit major centres (Chipata, Lusaka, Livingstone) they were extremely westernized. Arriving in Lusaka in particular was a shock to the system in that there was all of a sudden massive factories to start along with a great deal of traffic, the traffic seemed to be of vehicles that appeared to actually be road worthy (as opposed to up until now city streets were littered with vehicles perpetually on their last legs, but keep going), and a few air conditioned shopping malls. What a contrast to the simple country life we witnessed outside of these major centres.

Education system:
• I can’t compare since I only became familiar with the system here. It seems that schools have to get to a certain state of repair before they are taken on by the government. It is supposed to motivate communities to care of the maintenance of their schools, however this is very difficult for communities to do on their own. Once schools drop below a certain level, they are dropped by the government and you end up with kids sitting on benches beneath trees trying to get some sort of shade while they learn. This is an ideal non-funded situation since usually once the funding stops, the teacher’s funding reduces and their residence is not maintained (normally only one teacher per school). It is very difficult to woo teachers toward schools.

I thoroughly enjoyed Zambia; what a haven for cycling! Okay, at times the roads were pretty rough, but one doesn’t travel to Africa looking for pristine pavement.