May Day in Zambia

I arrived back in Zambia on May 1st, which is a national holiday, like many other parts of the world. As I hadn't seen Andy for three weeks, it was lovely to be able to spend a whole day together.

The Christian Vision farm is situated on a plateau and the land extends almost as far as the Kafue River. The residential area sits high on the plateau and one of the homes has this spectacular view across the farm to the river in the distance. On a clear day the river can be seen as a pale blue line, but I doubt you will be able to make it out in this photo.

What you can see, though, are the new antennas which have recently been erected on the radio site, to broadcast into Northern Africa. This service will come on line later in the year when the Africa service is relaunched.

We decided to go exploring on the farm to see how far we could get along the road down to the bottom of the farm. Andy had been here before many years ago, so couldn't remember exactly which track to take.

However we finally found it and travelled a couple of miles parallel with the boundary, opening and closing make-shift fences, until we reached a gate which we couldn't open. The track appeared to be deeply rutted also, so we decided to stop and turn around.

All along the boundary are very tall straight gum trees, the trunks of which are used for telegraph poles.

This odd looking tree is the trunk of a palm tree, minus any branches.

Earlier in the day we had taken a long walk from the residential site to 'Mount Zion', the highest place on the farm, off the road back towards town. The transmitter tower acts as a repeater for the fm signal to Lusaka.

Andy recalled that when the tower was being installed the area was full of snakes and scorpions. The crazy paving steps leading up to the tower were laid after a way had been made through the thick bush vegetation.