Ten things - No.1

On December 24th, 2006 I posted on the blog I had then, a list of ten things I'd done:

1. Bungee jumped from a railway bridge over the Zambezi River at Victoria Falls
2. Got on the property ladder, got married and had three children
3. Having a happy family life
4. Held down employment x amount of years.
5. Got as far as 1st kyu with two black stripes with GKR Karate.
6. 1/3 of the way through a psychology degree
7. Travelled for 56 hours on a train between Delhi and Trivandrum. Chai. chai, chai. chai…
8. Grown a lawn from seed
9. Displayed photography in a public exhibition
10. Addressed an audience of more than 200 people at once.

Not quite 20 years later and thought to add a bit of detail. I shall start as is the custom with no. 1...

It was the Victoria Falls Bridge that links Zambia and Zimbabwe. I'd been travelling down through East Africa. Started in Kenya. Stayed with a friends brother and his family who lived in Nairobi. The plan first of all was to travel overland into Ethiopia. Back to Kenya. Down through Tanzania. Into Malawi. Through Mozambique into Zimbabwe. A flight back to the UK was booked from Johannesburg.

The year is 1996. I was 26/27 years old at the time. I was pretty naive. Did not have a clue what I was doing other than I wanted to do it. Travelled mostly on the top of trucks and cramped buses. Dodged being extorted for money at gun point a couple of times on the way to Addis Ababa. I started out with a friend from England. He bailed on the trip when we got back to Kenya after our foray into Ethiopia. That was after him being 'arrested' by 'plain clothes' police at a pool party near Nairobi. We'd hooked up with a couple of sisters and had been attending a lavish family wedding. I think my friends arrogant behaviour and mannerisms and the attention he was getting from females had triggered a few people. After that I headed down to Mombasa alone with one of the sisters we met. Stayed in one of her wealthy friends houses for a few days. There was a lot of weed, alcohol, miraa/khat and sex. Good times. I was ripped off for a couple of hundred USD on another other occasion in Mombasa. Well it was actually twice. $100 a time but both involved the same scam so I'm counting it as once. As mentioned I was pretty naive.

My plan was to catch up with a friend in Zimbabwe that I trained with (psychiatric nursing) at West Park Hospital in Epsom, Surrey. We started together but he dropped out. He came over from Zimbabwe on a student visa. Some time after leaving the training course he was deported back to Zimbabwe. I met up with plenty people on the way down to see him. Enjoyed the company of mostly Israelis, Germans, Aussies and Kiwis. Arieal, Rob and Yon are names I remember. We shared a couple of interests. Smoking weed and drinking beer mostly. It put us on good terms.

I met up with my friend in Bulawayo. We spent a month or so knocking about together. He was doing what he could to earn a bit of money from small scale gold mining. I got to see and experience some interesting and at times dangerous things. Came close on one occasion to being kidnapped by some disgruntled miners he'd omitted to pay. Another time at risk of being shot and/or savaged by guard dogs at a place where he took the mined rubble to be processed and have the gold extracted. In truth I ended up getting a bit pissed off with him. I think he probably felt a bit like that towards me too. Though we were once good friends life was turning out to be very different for each of us. He was struggling to survive. I was passing through on a jolly. We've not spoken again since I left to head onto South Africa.