Our work done for the day we wanted to head back to Monza as soon as possible. One of the fisheries officers advised us that if we followed the tarmac road out of Namwala all the way to the main Livingstone to Lusaka road, we would be faster than tackling the graded road we had come along that morning. Without thinking we trusted his judgement and drove fast and straight along this main route. We certainly made fast progress but after an hour of driving along this road we realised that we were heading a long way south and still had not reached the main road that would take us back to Monza. When we finally turned we were at a town called Choma – still almost 100 km from our hotel. The sky was a glowing red when we reached back to the hotel – second night in a row we were late for dinner.
We packed up from the hotel the next morning ready to head back to Lusaka, but we still had one more meeting with fisherfolk to go. Just west of the town of Kafue, we headed off the main road past the large aluminium smelting plant. Although their office was only a few kilometres away in Chilanga, the Fisheries officers had trouble locating the road down to the village we were to meet, and I had visions of another small cluster of buildings like the ferry from the previous day. I could not have been more wrong.
A different sort of fishery – Ian Cowx photo
When I Went To 