We returned to our own hotel for one last night. I was due in Mansa this weekend for more meetings and to start making my map, before I would head back alone on the Proflight (literally the only passenger on the Mansa-Ndola leg this time) and to spend most of the next week locked away in my motel room next to a large new Chinese shopping mall in central Lusaka.
All very different and modern compared to the quiet simplicity of this lakeside hotel. I soaked up the last sunset, the light reflecting purple of the lake, almost placid again after the winds of the rest of the trip. Out in the lake a few dugout canoes contained fishermen setting the night’s nets. My name was called from along the way and I ambled over to find Ian and Mainza tucking in to the tilapia that had been bought near the Luapula Bridge. Here was the resource that we were studying, making regulations about, mapping the area where it would be protected and managed for everyone. It was just a fish, simply grilled and presented, but it was a symbol of the Bangweulu Swamp
We shared the one plate, picking the meat from the bone with our fingers; separating out the spiny exteriors and leaving behind a classic cartoonish skeleton of the fish. It was the best meal I had in Zambia that trip.
When I Went To 