The road to Mpulungu

Amazingly, the bus left Lusaka only five minutes late on Wednesday afternoon. I climbed over crates and boxes to reach my tiny (5 seats across the width of the bus) seat, while outside noisy arguments continued about the squeezing of more luggage - bags, boxes, mattresses, sacks of maize - into the now non-existent space.

The road was good, the driving not too alarming, and I watched Lusaka recede. It was dark by the time we made our first 'comfort stop' - thank heavens I'd put myself onto a severe dehydration regime. When it was time to set off again, I found myself being hussled onto a minibus instead - it turned out that it was necessary to transport eighteen of us separately to a spot beyond the weighbridge so that the bus wouldn't be too overweight when checked. An interesting ploy, which did work (safety concerns aside, of course), as we were dropped off in some gloomy laybye and picked up by our bus without incident.

On we went into the night, sleep made difficult by the constant ear-hammering blaring of gospel-pop, which was even loud enough to drown out my headphones which were trying to feed me a rather good audiobook. Pee stops involved communal squatting around the bus on the open roadside, under a night of glorious stars. As we picked up more passengers, they sat in the aisle on boxes and bags, the bus groaning.

At dawn we reached Mbala, where the roads were full of bare-footed children walking to school in torn uniforms. A good few passengers got off, a few got on. As we left Mbala, the road became very narrow and potholed, twisting down towards the lake. Behind me, something squawked. A chicken! People often refer to overcrowded buses in Asia and Africa as being the sort with chickens in the aisle, but I'd never encountered one myself. Despite the noise, I was delighted. The old woman behind me sat with a basket of six tomatoes on her knees and a chicken tucked into her clothing. Were these her goods to sell at market? It seemed so little.