To Chirundu and back again
it is a sense of adventure; an anticipation of doing something different, of exploring, of learning something new, of discovery. Then you begin to realise the nothingness that surrounds you. You are travelling on a road that becomes a gravel “road” long before you come to terms with your new surroundings. There is no scenery; just desolate, open, flat, dry land and a few less-than-roadworthy opponents on the gravel road. Your life expectancy has decreased buy a factor just in that realisation. The two comforts you receive are; regular road blocks and the knowledge that there are no other roads so you absolutely cannot be heading in the wrong direction as a result of no signage. Finally I reached Chirundu North region in the evening. I was given directions to my accommodation; told to turn off onto the dirt road and continue straight for 20 Km. Wait, what? Turn off a gravel road-that had already shifted my kidneys into my chest area-into a dirt road...being a 4x4 enthusiast I embraced this crazy idea and went ahead-finally a chance to prove my manliness and stuff like that. When I got to the end of the dirt road I had to park my car off and wait for the lodge that I was staying at to send across a boat. I was too late to catch the pontoon (a big onthe-verge-of-sinking thing that takes your car across the river and is predominantly broken down and makes you wait at least two hours while they repair it daily) and my accommodation could only be accessed by crossing the river. (Continued on page 14)
As part of the NorthStar Alliance mapping project of health services in the SADC region Wentzel Kruger and myself travelled through to Chirundu South (Zimbabwe) and Chirundu North (Zambia) where there are two NorthStar wellness centres that cater for health services for truck drivers and sex workers at the major trucking arterioles. Thus far we have been gathering information about health service providers from South Africa off a desktop and that was found to be insufficient-and we now understand why. This was an interesting learning experience and one that we would like to share. From the moment you land at Lusaka International Airport or Harare International Airport, you are immediately confronted with a very striking reality; this is absolutely nothing like South Africa. It is rare to come across more than one or two airplanes at once, and
this includes the one you flew in on. You get your rented 4x4 at the airport (and for the work we are doing, anything less than a four wheel drive will not find its way back to the rental agency) and start making your way through the main city toward the border. The main cities are nothing like what we are familiar with. Buildings rarely creep over five or six stories tall, the road infrastructure is ridiculously easy to navigate, the main roads are referred to as highways and traffic is less-than-pleasant (even in comparison to Johannesburg). Two things become immediately apparent: firstly; South Africa is a very different country and cross country comparisons should have stayed on the plane and secondly; these cities have a pulse, they have a heartbeat but one that beats to a different rhythm to what we are accustomed to. As you travel out of the city, you very quickly begin to feel the isolation that I later came to understand. Initially
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