Leg Two: Kwacha Kum'mawa

When the sun rose over Chipata, it revealed an eloquence I hadn’t expected for a trans-shipment border town on the very edge of Zambia’s eastern frontier.

Hulking trucks from Malawi ploughed their way through the river of cyclists navigating the bustling downtown strip, pleasantly lined with purple-flowered jacaranda trees and ringed by brownish tree-topped mountains. According to Binion, the Ngoni people – fleeing the genocidal Zulus in South Africa – settled here in the late 19th century in the protection of the surrounding hills.

Cool winds swept down into the valley from over the mountains, giving the air a refreshing, if dusty, quality. At least it wasn’t Lusaka’s alveoli-destroying combination of diesel exhaust and burning garbage.

That’s what I thought, anyway, until we left the confines of the guesthouse and fumbled our way to Kwacha Kum’mawa, the magazine whose staff we would be training over the next three days. The only regional print media in all of Eastern Province, their office is located behind Kapata Market’s smoldering garbage dump. A dubious locale for a workshop to be sure – their production room/internet café had been converted into a ‘conference centre’ fully equipped with a small blackboard and no chalk.

Computers were piled everywhere because the room they were supposed to move them into was also being converted – into a hair salon for re-trained commercial sex workers. Obviously, Kwacha Kum’mawa interprets its role as a community stakeholder differently than most publications. The magazine is on the frontlines of a program that physically goes around to bars at nighttime distributing condoms and leaflets to help curb Chipata’s appalling 26 percent HIV prevalence rate. As I wrote about for JHR, they also offer skills training programs for sex workers who want to be journalists.

In speaking to some of them who had come for the training, I was surprised that they considered commercial sex work a natural segue into community journalism. I’ve heard those ‘I became a journalist by accident…’ stories before, but this? They need basic literacy and reporting skills, but who else gossiped more, had as many contacts and was used to getting information out of people?

And they were just part of the motley (see photo) crew – poets, plumbers and homemakers all turned up, basically anyone who was loosely connected to the magazine and wanted some free training and lunch. It made the workshop frustratingly hard to design – how do you teach layout to someone who’s never used a computer before? – but there was something exciting about the difference-making potential of working with such raw reporters. For once the experience differential was enough on my side for some knowledge osmosis to take place.

Safari Relay, Leg One: To Chipata

I knew it would be a fun ride to Chipata when Binion, my usually straight-laced colleague, showed up at 9am last Sunday morning with a Castle firmly in hand. "I get excited when I'm leaving the city," he explained. That made two of us.

Of course we got off to a horribly late start, spending the next two hours dilly-dallying around Lusaka making sure we had enough booze and music for the 600km drive. If road trips with friends aren't fun enough, being allowed to drink excessively in the vehicle is the best thing ever.

What was obviously not the best thing ever was eating shitty mayonnaise, again. About 100km and six beers into the journey, the crappy fried food we'd choked down leaving Lusaka was causing some serious distress. Every mountain climb felt steeper, every bowel-shaking pothole more reverberating. After loosening every possible ligature around my guts - seat belt, belt and pants, in that order - I had achieved some sort of gastro-intestinal zen that allowed me to block out the awfulness and enjoy the trip. Innard peace, if you will.

The more Binion drank (pictured above with telltale cider and partial Canadian tuxedo), the more he was a like a schoolteacher in our little portable classroom. Flora, fauna, mountain ranges, river valleys, the sites of gruesome road accidents; he knew them all. We couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably when, whizzing past a seemingly normal-looking cow at 140km/h, he looked back sagely and declared it to be two months pregnant.

The late start proved to be a scenic, if annoying, boon as the sun scorched our backs over the hump of the Central Escarpment, just beginning set as we descended into the Luangwa River Valley. The scraggly leafless landscape of the highlands gave way to the banana and palm trees of the riverine scenery. The only problem, other than the ever-present threat of my bodily fluids spraying everywhere, was that it was dark and we had only made it halfway to Chipata.

Usually, driving at night isn't that big of a deal. It isn't in Zambia either, unless you're driving the last stretch of the Great East Road (actual name) to Malawi. Potholes that were easily spotted in daylight become bone-jarring axle-breakers. The moon and stars become legitimate illumination. Bandits hide in bushes at the side of the road waiting to ambush good Samaritans unlucky enough to help fake vehicle breakdowns.

All that to say when I collapsed in my bed in Chipata, a full 10.5 hours after leaving Lusaka, I was epically exhausted but excited to arrive. Not because I was anticipating a professionally-rewarding training workshop with in-need Zambian journalists; I could finally undo my pants all the way.