Sand, heat, and Internet

As Roland said when he saw the Western Sea ... "Cuthbert, I'm in the West." I'm finally at the evening horizon of Zambia. Though the country continues for another 100 miles to the west, the Zambezi has weight as a physical boundary. On the far side, an endless vista of green: the Barotse Floodplain, which extends to the Lutona forests marking the border of Zambia and Angola.

But here on the eastern bank, our feet bake in the sand. Sometime in a distant, drier past, an immense drift of sand blew up from the Kalahari. This drift remains; though it is more well-watered than the past and features any number of trees (of which I'm still familiarizing), it is still fundamentally sand. Meaning fundamentally tough to walk through. Also, sand has that strange capacity to radiate heat back up at you. This is a surprise from my past experiences in Zambia (Kasempa and Serenje) ... I think in those cases, tree cover (in the case of the former) and altitude (for the latter) kept the hot, dry season from ever feeling too hot. Here, there are fewer trees, it's strenuous to get around, and the heat is Philistine ... needless to say, I sweat nearly 24 hours a day.

The sand is interesting w. regards to the F. albida stands here ... unlike Monze, there are few upland trees, and most are clustered along the slope adjacent to the Zambezi River. Only found one upland, so can't yet characterize the tree's behavior in these sands. Oh well ... those that are there along the river are fascinating ... especially given that they have shed many of their seeds and are slowly losing their leaves.

One cultural note ... though the tree has been popularized under its Tonga / Nyanja sobriquet, musangu, the Lozis I've spoken to who've heard of musangu don't associate the tree with that name. I've heard it called a few different names ... will need to pin down the local names.

Other than that ... miracle of miracles, the organization I work for has satellite internet. I'm a bit out of my head by posting, tweeting, sipping Roibos tea, whilst in the reality (?) of Western Zambia. As long as it doesn't get in the way of learning siLozi, I think I can balance the two.