Zambia3

Oct 5th ; Had a nice breakfast with Ros and then started the drive back to Lusaka. Sue and Chris had arranged to have lunch with some friends so we headed off the theirs.
Has a very nice lunch of braaied chicken (home grown chicken no less as they lived on a large poultry farm then supplies Zamchicken).
After lunch we played boles, well that was so funny. After being plied with yet more alcohol we could hardly toss the balls straight let alone get them close to the small wooded ball!!
This was followed by a game which Julia suggested which turned out to be very funny and great fun.
We begrudginlgy left theirs and went home via Chris's dad's place to drop off some chicken poop.
He was going to take the poop off for analysis to see if it is viable for use a fertiliser on the farm.
Back at Sue and Chris's I phoned home to wish my Dad a happy birthday.
I was doing fine until my mum told me that Jazz (my dog at home) was not well, then the tears started!! She has got a problem with her back and is on anti-inflammatories. The worst of it is that she can not go for a walk for a week, this would not go down well with my dog, she is a nutter!! Mum said that Jazz was already climbing the walls!!

Oct 7th ; Chris had to go into town so Patrick went with him, so that he could go inot Nissan.
I stayed on the farm sorting pictures and video clips of the laptop.
Around 7pm, a farm help called over the radio to say that there was a fire in the farm!!
Sue phoned Chris, who was in town still, to tell him.
The two of them finally arive home at 9pm, smelling of fire. They had spent the last 2 hour fighting the fire!

Patrick had news of the car too. They had changed the oil filters yesterday and that was it! Not only had they done nothing to the car all day, but by changing the filters they had made the oil leak 10x worse!! So Patrick popped the bonet only to see that they had fitted the wrong filter in the car and the oil was visably dripping from there!!!!!!!
Not a happy Patrick!! We had told them that the car has got 2 different filters, given them the part numbers for both filters and still they managed to fit the wrong one!
As always, they could not do anything today as it was too late to get the correct filter so it would have to be done tomorrow.

Oct 8th ; Patrick was on the phone to Alex, the Aftersales Manager at 7.30am, to try and sort things out.
After a cock and bull story from Alex, we are told that they do not have the correct filter and will have to try and get one in town. Alex promised to ring back at 9 with an update.
The phone rings and Patrick is told that they have not found the filter yet but are still looking.
At this point Patrick's blood is boiling and he wants to speek to the chap incharge. He is finally put through, and explains everything to the boss.
Well the boss was a bigger arse than Alex!!! We at Nissan can not possibly use any parts other then Nissan parts, the filter that was put in must be correct because it came from Nissan etc.....
Patrick tells the chap that the part numbers ARE DIFFERENT therefore it can not be the same filter!!!!!!!!! This did not go down too well!
He is put back through to Alex who is still "trying" to source the filter.
In the mean time Chris is looking in the phone book for a Fram or GUD filter delaer in town.
Patrick phones the Fram Head Office next, hoping they can help. They do not have a stockest here BUT they give us the part number for the GUD equivalent filter!
Result - as Patrick gets the GUD number, Chris has found a GUD dealer and is on the phone to them.
Even better, they have "lots of those filters in stock sir".
At last things are starting to look a bit better!

Julia and Ryan have invited us all over for dinner. We get there a bit earlier to go for a game drive around their farm, then have the wonderful roast Pork dinner!
With very full stomach's Chris drives us home.

Oct 9th ; After yet another sleep less night worrying about the car we are awake at 5.30 waiting to go into town to get the filters and sort out Nissan!!!
Sue kindly takes us into the GUD dealer where they hand over 2 perfect filters. They are the correct size and shape with the right number of breather holes in the top too!! At last something has gone right for us!!
Sue then drops us off at NIssan and leaves us to fight for justice.
Like Knights in armour we storm into the reception - it was empty apart from 2 members of staff behind the reception desk!!
No big boss man, no Alex, no-one!
This makes Patrick even happier! As he is getting ready to kills some one, Alex saunters up to the man next to us and starts talking to him.
On seeing Alex everything become so much clearer as to why we have had so much trouble getting things sorted.
He has got S.S.S. (Short Shit Syndrome). It can be a potentially life threatening syndrome - especially when combined with a "I am greater than thou" attitude!!!
Now it is very unfortunate because Alex has got very serious S.S.S. combined with an even more serious case of "I am greater than thou".

We finaly get the correct filter fitted into the car and OMG it is not a Nissan part so Mr Boss will not be happy!
After Patrick argued with Alex that they owed US money for the incorrect filter that was fitted, we are given our money and car keys back.
AT LAST WE HAVE OUR CAR BACK!!!!!!!

We took her for a drive and all seemed to be fine with the car when we got back to the farm.
This does not mean that the drive back was uneventful!
100m before the turn off for the farm there is a Traffic Police road block. We are stopped and the Police man starts looking all around the car.
He comes back to Patrick's window and asks for Insurance Papers.
Now we are in shit, we have taken all of the papaerwork out of the car while she was in Nissan and forgot to bring it with us this morning!
We politly explain the situation which is graced with the reply "You are refusing to produce Insurance Papers on demand. This is a prosecutable offence"
Patrick explains that all of the papers are on the farm, we can go and get them and bring them back is nec.
What Patrick says next shocked me - "I can leave my wife behind here, go and get the papaers and come back."
Well my shock was nothing compaired to that of the Police man.
With a look of horror or disgust (I'm still not sure which!) he replies " We can not impound humans only cars. You will have to pay. What can you give me?"
Patrick calmly says that the car repairs have cost more then we thought and so we do not have any money with us, it is all at the farm.
This seems to do the trick as we are ushered on without a second thought!
We were very lucky, driving without papers is not the done thing in this part of the world!! Nor, it would seem, is trying to leave your 'wife' on the side of the road with 6 Police men!

Oct 10th ; Went into Lusaka today to give the car a run. Sue gave us a list of things to get so we had a busy morning doing the "To Do list".
Chris was in town as well today so we meet him for lunch. As we pulled up and parked we noticed that the sky was looking a bit grey and overcast, we were joking about have a huge downpour when Chris joined us and said that same thing.
The 3 of us carried on with lunch until Patrick says "look it is raining". Well that was the biggest understatement I have heard in a very long time!!
The rain came down so hard that the car park was flooded within no time!!
Lunch over, rain still coming down hard but thinking the worst had passed, we left to finish the "To Do" list.
We were very qucikly proved wrong!! As soon as we were in the shopping centre the rain got heavier and the thunder started. OMG it was so lound it sounded like gun shots going off!! One was so sudden and lound my instincts kicked in and I hit the floor, much to the delite and entertainment of the other shoppers!!!!!!
The storm went on for well over an hour whilst we were in the centre, then we could but it off no longer, we had to go back to the car! There was now an ankle deep river flowing through the car park and around the car!
We waded trhough and got into the car. We sat there for a bit and did some people watching - it was very funny! People were walking around as if they would die of they got their feet wet!!

Chris meet us and we all drove of Julia and Ryan's for Volley Ball a get together which happens every friday.
It was a very fun evening of volley ball, and guess what our team came last. No suprise realy when everone else was taking it sooooo seriously and we were goofing around having a laugh!!

Oct 11th ; I spent the whole morning repacking the car to get ready for the off tomorrow, whilst Patrick sat and watched me!!!
Sue had been running around on the quad-bike all morning to and from a cow that was not looking so good.
As I finished packing the car Sue said that she was going to have to operate on the cow and could Patrick help.
Sue had been watching her for a few days and thought she had a foreign body in the rumen (the 2nd stomach) that would need removing.
So everthing packed in her car we went off to see the cow.

It was the most bizarre shaped cow I had ever seen! Its rumen was bloated it was sticking out on the left of her abdomen! She looked like she needed to have a godd fart!!!!
We put her in the head crush where Sue and Patrick examined her. They were umming when Chris drove past and stopped. We got a 3rd opinion and it comfirmed that we would have to do a rumenototmy (open the rumen and have a look).
Sue scrubbed, made the incision and had a good feel around the abdomen - nothing abnormal there - so she cut into the rumen.
Well as soon as Sue put the scapel blade into the rumen the gas started to come out - partially digested, fermenting fart smelling gas!!!!
As the incision got bigger more gas came and the when the incision was big enough the stomach contents came pouring out.
The whole thing looked like a volcano erupting out of the side of the cow!
Once things had subsided to a trickle Sue went feeling around to see what was going on. Well she came out with something in her hand that looked like stomach lining! It kept coming and coming until she had pulled out a 1.5 metre long foreign body! As soon as the foreing body was out the volcanic stomach contents started again!!

By now poor Sue was past her ankles in frothy grey/brown foul smelling stomach conetent, with a good splattering of blood and stomach contents all over her face and body!!!!
After one more feel around Sue started the tedious job of suturing the wound.
After washing it, the foreign body turned out to be baling twin that had not been cleared from the field. It had done a good job of baling all of the food the cow had eaten and keping it in the rumen!!!

Oct 13th ; Our aim for today was to go and visit Kalambo Falls then stay the night in Mpulungo.
Gerty the GPS said that it should be a shrot drive and with and ETA of 2pm.
The drive from Kasama to Mbala was the most bone shaking, suspension braking potholed tar in the southern hemisphere!!!
Luckily we turned off of the "tar" onto a dirt track to get to the falls. The track was beautiful, as it wound around and down the escarpmemt we were teased with glimses of the crystal clear blue waters of Lake Tanganyika.
The entrance to the falls was at the bottom of the escarpment, so we parked and walked down the steps to the view point.
Kalambo Falls is a 221 metre drop, making it the second highest, single-drop falls in Africa! The view was amazing, on the right was the falls, plummeting into a misty rainbow and off to the left was the Kalambo river, which twists and turns its way to Lake Tanganyika.
We made our way back up the escarpement and back to the fork in the road where we had seen a sign for Isanga Bay Lodge on the lake. It was 20kms from the road so we thought we would go and have a look.
We had gone 3km's when the track was blocked by a fallen tree, not a biggy, we drive around that and carried on.
Another 2km's on and suddenly the track narrowed to the point we could just fit through and started to climb at a 45degree angle over large jutted rocks! After what felt like hours but had onlt been 5 mins we decided that it was not such a good plan, truned around and crawled back down the hair raising rocks.

Back onto the potholed tar and into Mpulungo we went. On the way into town we saw a sign for Tanganyika Lodge. A quick look in the Lonely Planet revieled that it was "In a superb spot on the lake, A bar abd restaurant are attached".
So having not learnt our lesson with the last sign we took the turn off which dissapeared into the bush.
After driving for 20mins and not seeing a single sign we were very worried. We stopped in a village and asked for directions and were off again in the right direction.
After 15 min of driving on what was now just car breaking rocks, I saw a small sign which said "Lodge" and pointed off down a steep rocky path. After a "duscussion" about which lodge it was supposed to go to we took the turn.
Well after 2km's of this horrible rough road I was starting to worry we were in the worng place, Patrick was swearing until he was blue on the face and the poor car was shaken to the core!!
We finaly arrive at the Lodge around 5.30pm!!
It was not what we were expecting at all!! It is run down and shabby looking place and when we ask were we can camp we are shown to the pebbled shore of the lake!!!!