Seventh stage

Before starting off last Friday all my bones were hurting, those I had broken myself, those broken by others, even those which had always enjoyed excellent health, but already on Friday at the first push on the pedal everything had gone, now at the end of Zambia and with 730 km behind me, I have a few small aches and a sun tan difficult to imitate: from the tip of my toes to a bit higher of my ankles white, then a very cool color up to 10 cm on top of the knee, again white to the shoulders, neck and face tanned, to complete my mise a pair of natural gloves estending from the wrist to the tip of my fingers. The Danish sun blocks left by Michelangelo are working to perfection, for now it is still a bit cold and I poured some water on my head only once.

Today’s stage was short and on bumpy terrain. Bumpy is a euphemism. Gravel roads which have always been gravel even when battered they have a sweetness of their own afterall, following the tracks of bicycles which have passed before you can cycle with continuity, if you enter a pothole you come out elastically, on a downhill you can dare and have fun without fear of getting sandpapered too much. Gravel roads which once were tarred, like the rich who becomes poor, cannot get used to the new situation, they are prickly mischivious, when you enter a pothole, or you pass where of the original tar all is left is some stripes, you are jolted and jerked, arms, back and bottom suffer unpleasant rebound, on a downhill you have to go slowly and stay often on the pedals.

Today’s road belongs to the second category. Between the road and the shortness of the stage I never managed to get to the right rithm. Tomorrow I will enter Malawi which is here at 17 km, an old man with a long white beard told me ‘kilometers I do not know, but it is 9 miles’. The troupe who tomorrow is going back to Kafue, has found accommodation, in a hotel in the shape of a castle, in front of the Lundazi river, built in 1952 and declared national monument, but nobody has managed to explain to me which was its original function … probably a small fort for the English since in 1952 Zambia was still a colony of her Majesty.

I am about to exit Zambia and it is time for some reckoning, maybe I am a bit behind on my schedule, but I count on being able to ctach up in the next more flat stages, and these are the stages:

Yesterday i have used the Ipod for the first time, with a low volume not to miss the words of the people and not the end up smashed by a truck, I had loaded music ‘not mine’ and of different genre from Eminem, to Pausini, passing trhough Foofighters, but all the songs fitted as a soundtrack for these people and these landscapes.

Probably the choice to pass through Lundazi, was not only arithmetical, a handful of kilometers less than through Lilongwe, was not only the desire to see new places which I had never seen before, but it has been the unconscious will to stay a bit longer in Zambia

Kawinga Kamkwesi Basic School S12° 42.571’ E 32° 55.083  – Lundazi S12° 85.496’ E 33° 20.196’

57 km