John arrived a few days ahead of me.
My parents asked John if there was anything which he would like to do during his short stay, and, to my dismay, he said he would like to go to Wankie Game Reserve. We had last visited the reserve when we were children, but it was not an experience I wanted to repeat. I had been terrified of the animals and hadn’t liked being in the middle of nowhere for days on end. However, I had no choice in the matter since the rest of the family was keen on the trip.
My mother made the reservations required for the rest camps. Wankie covers 5000 square miles. It is teeming with animals, living in the wild, lurking in the bush, dozing in the shade when the sun is at its height. It is so huge that it takes two-three days to drive across it. The plan was, like last time, to visit Wankie first before driving onto the Victoria Falls, not far away. The Falls were on the Zambezi River, which forms the border between Rhodesia and Zambia.
So it was that we set off. I wasn’t happy about Wankie but didn’t mind as much seeing again the Victoria Falls, which were an awe-inspiring sight. I remember we could hear the water from miles away. We call also see the enormous clouds of mist rising above the rain forest around the Falls. The Africans call the Falls Mosi-oa-Tunga, the Smoke that Thunders. It was here, in 1855, that journalist and explorer Henry Stanley eventually found Dr. David Livingstone, a British medical missionary and explorer, whom Britain considered lost. Upon locating him, Stanley greeted him with the now well-known phrase, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” How many other white men were there in that region at that time?! Not one.
I remembered that the Victoria Falls were a majestic sight, especially when the Zambezi River was in full flow. The Falls are a mile-wide and the water falls 350 ft., from a hard basalt edge, rather like a huge slit across the river, before the spent water winds its way into various chasms and channels. The noise is thunderous, almost beyond belief. The Devil’s Cauldron is a swirling mass of water. There is nothing glitzy or tourist-oriented about the Falls, either. Tourists simply walk through the rain forest, with its beautiful flowers and lush tree foliage until sightseers emerge at the edge of the Falls, visible to all in their natural splendour. Nothing has changed since Livingstone first saw them, claiming that they were “scenes so wonderful they must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.” He was so impressed that he named them after his monarch, Queen Victoria.
When many decades later, my husband and I, newly resident in Canada, took our two children to see the much-vaunted Niagara Falls, I was surprised at how different these famous falls were. “That’s the Niagara Falls?!”, I exclaimed in amazement. “I can’t believe how small they are! WOW! The Victoria Falls are so much better!” My husband, who had also seen the Victoria Falls, agreed with me.
