I know you’ve all been waiting eagerly over the weekend to hear how it went.
The race consisted of 15 clues, stopping points along the way from the starting point on an empty beach several kilometers down the lake shore to the finish line at our lodge, Eagle’s Rest. Each stop was worth a different amount of points. Rowing a figure 8 around 2 large rocks in the water known as “the pimples” was worth more points than running to the bar at Lake Kariba Inns with a large fish tank. Sometimes we had to figure out clues and aquire things, like buying a smoked fish, or picking up a stone off an island. At the end, they put together our finish times and the cumulative number of points to declare the winner.
The press boats followed us the whole way. That’s right, representatives from ZNBC, Radio Phoenix and various newspapers were there the whole way to watch and record the whole thing. I’m famous now in Zambia. People are stopping me in the streets saying, “You’re that chick from the canoe race!”
Okay, not really. But it is going to be broadcast on TV tomorrow morning and again on Friday evening.
The winning team was a team of three locals who have essentially been rowing for their entire lives. They crushed everyone and won by 20 minutes or so. But coming up into second were my two supervisors, Steph and Jennie, who rowed amazingly well and solidly beat the Fogarty intern Jen and her husband Ben, who we affectionately refer to as “The Bionic Couple.” (In any given conversation with them, you might hear something like, “Dude, that time I did the 24 hour triathlon on Palau, I was totally stoked!”)
Well, I didn’t come in 1st or 2nd or even 3rd, but 13 isn’t bad considering we capsized about 2/3 of the way through the race and lost our clue sheet and the smoked fish. At least we didn’t come in last. Perhaps it was appropriate that we were team “Capital Fisheries.” It seems that we were embracing the spirit of the water. Although from looking at the jazzy shirts they gave our team (see picture), they might have thought we were going to a golf tournament instead.
Other than the race, there was plenty of time for rest and relaxation. Siavonga does not have the advantage of elevation like Lusaka does. It was HOT. The bright sun and intense heat had us all awake by 6 am each day. I think I spent more time in the water this weekend than I did sleeping or eating. But when I was sleeping, I got to sleep on a houseboat, on a bed on the upper deck outside, with just a mosquito net between me and the breeze off the lake, which was pretty darn neat.
The evening after the race, we had dinner and an awards ceremony at a different hotel in town, one that had also sponsored a team in the race. It felt a bit like the Club Med experience I never had, and certainly like nothing I’ve experienced in Zambia. We ate dinner by the swimming pool, large grill with fresh fish, reggae music blaring, surrounded by palm trees, with the waves of Lake Kariba crashing in the darkness below us. There was a definite vacation/holiday spirit, with people dressed up, dancing. I could almost imagine it was a seaside town. Something I’ve definitely been missing in this landlocked country. Post dinner dancing turned into people being hot, which turned into some of the guys jumping in the pool in boxer shorts, which turned into more people being pulled into the pool in their clothes, which became an in-pool clothed dance party, as we listened to a live performance from Crisis, “the best rapper in Zambia,” or so he says. With lyrics like, Damn look at your body lookin’ all blown out, nice titties, beautiful eyes and nice thighs I can really see what he’s talking about.
Like many resort towns by the water though, move a little away from the hotels and it’s a different world. It felt much more like the little villages we passed on the three hour drive south from Lusaka. The cinder block homes, some with thatched roofs, look particularly inadequate compared with the fancy lodges, inns and hotels across the road. The landscape down there is generally brown, dusty, dry, steep hills with patches of green desert plants. The lake makes it humid. Despite the beauty right on the lake, the combination of the heat, dusty hills and humidity would definitely lower it on the list of places I would want to live.
Despite the heat, it was still an enjoyable weekend and as always, when I leave Lusaka for the weekend, I wasn’t particularly in a rush to come back. But compared to the heat over the weekend, Lusaka felt delightfully cool when we returned.
Next Conservation Society Event: A James Bond movie premier gala evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment