The Guest Mate Inn

Despite what some guide books say, Livingstone, Zambia is not a tourist town.  Sure, it has a few backpacker hostels, but these are basically self-contained units, that provide everything a traveller needs.  Even then, a vast majority of tourists who come to Livingstone skip the town altogether and head ten kilometres down the road to the swanky hotels that line the banks of the Zambezi river near Victoria Falls.  (Although these people are missing out on a lot, I don’t judge them too harshly.  Culture shock would soon hit me like a sledgehammer, and shake my confidence as a traveller).

My wife and I, however, had chosen to stay at the Guest Mate Inn, which had been booked by my wife’s friend who lived in Livingstone.  According to what little literature I could find on the place, it had once served as home to British Army officers back during the days of Empire.  The walled compound consisted of the main house, with an opened walled bar at the back and five or six detached dwellings.  One of these had been reserved for us. 

Upon check-in, we were told that we must pay for the room in advance.  It was only then that we learned about the recent law forbidding the use of any currency except the local kwacha. Bad news for my pocket full of US Dollars.  Thankfully, in true Zambian style, the woman behind the desk, just smiled and told me I could pay tomorrow, or the next day.  I did managed to pay the next day – 2,140,000 kwacha (about $400) for the nine-nights we stayed there.

Our little dwelling consisted of a comfortable bedroom, containing a mini-fridge, an air-conditioner/heater, and a television that received three channels.  We also had a bathroom, with a nice, hot shower.  Although the room looked a little tired and worn, at the time, we didn’t realize what kind of luxury this represented.  As near as we could tell, very few tourists stayed at the inn; its main clientele appeared to be passing businessmen.

Our room also came with a complimentary ‘continental’ breakfast.  This consisted of Roos tea and toast with butter and jam.  The butter and jam came on a plate, four rough lumps of butter around the edges, with a plop of jam in the middle.  A couple of mornings they were out of jam.  Sometimes, the toast was only toasted on one-side.  For $4 you could order a ‘Full English’ breakfast.  We tried this once, and although they made a valiant effort at sausages, eggs, bacon, and baked beans, we decided to just stick with the toast from thereafter.

In the nine nights we stayed at the Inn, our room was never cleaned.  One morning, one of the women who worked their asked if ‘today we wanted our room cleaned’.  Somewhat caught off-guard by the question, we replied that it wasn’t necessary.  ‘Maybe tomorrow, then’, she replied, and that’s the last we heard of it.  We did, once, have to ask for more toilet paper, and our bin was a bit overflowing by the end, but it was fine.

With all of its little quirks, the Guest Mate Inn quickly became a little home to us.  It was a wonderful retreat when the busy chaos of Livingstone town became too much for us.  At night, when we would wander in from the pitch black road outside, we would say good-evening to the gate-guard, and he would respond, ‘thank you, thank you, thank you.’

Should you ever find yourself in Livingstone, and there are many reasons to go, consider staying a night or two at the Guest Mate Inn.

(To be continued...)

Miniature Friday – Egyptian Avatar

Over the last couple of decades of miniature painting, I have tried out lots of different sizes and scale of miniatures, but I always come back to 28mm.  Not only do I find it the most ascetically pleasing size of miniature, but also the most enjoyable to paint.  That said, occasionally a ‘28mm’ miniature depicts something so large or so small, that it is essentially like painting a miniature in another scale.  Such is the case with this week’s miniature.

I can’t remember the official name of this miniature, but it comes from Reaper, and I purchased it at the Troll’s Cave in London.  I have no specific need or use for it, but it caught my eye, and it will make a nice center piece should I ever do any kind of Egyptian warband. 

It actually sat on my lead pile for quite some time before I worked up the nerve to tackle it.  Not only is such a large figure quite an undertaking, but it also requires slightly different painting techniques.  Essentially, the larger a miniature gets, the more subtle the shading and blending of the colours needs to be in order to achieve a realistic finish.  As most of my practice has been done on smaller miniatures, I wasn’t sure how I would cope with such a beast.

I use a lot of black-lining in my miniatures, and it perhaps came out a little too harsh in some areas of this one, where it is separating light colours.  Also, it would have been nice to get a subtler shading effect on the skin tone.  Neither of things are as noticeable on the actual figure as they are in the photograph.  Of course, neither is the nice subtle blending I managed on the beak.

All and all, I’m pretty happy with how my Egyptian avatar turned out, and he looks pretty darn menacing looming over the puny ‘normal sized’ 28mm miniatures.

Arriving in Zambia

This summer, my wife and I travelled to Livingstone, Zambia, partly as a vacation and partly so she could help the Book Bus charity on a new project working with local teachers on how to better utilize books in the classroom.  I had never been to any part of Africa before, so, despite my broken collar bone, I was greatly looking forward to the trip.

Our guest house can just been seen at the end of this road.

After much debate, we decided to travel British Airways the whole way.  We could have saved nearly £400 flying with other airlines, but BA have always proven dependable, and we didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances.  Our flight from London to Johannesburg was long, but uneventful.  On arrival, however, I got my first shock in Africa – it was cold! I mean, it was really cold.  In fact, the day before, Johannesburg had actually seen its first snow flurries in more than a decade. 

Apart from a couple of stores selling colourful African knick-knacks, and a decent bookshop, there is not a lot going on at the Johannesburg airport, and we were happy to board our small plan to Livingstone.  As we soared above the African plains, I looked out of the window and saw great plumes of smoke rising in several places, the result of large bushfires brought on by the dry conditions. We flew directly over Victoria Falls. The pilot even tilted the plane to either side to give us a better look, but from above, I was never quite sure what I was seeing.

Finally, after about twenty hours of travel and waiting, we touched down in Livingstone, Zambia.  At immigration, my wife and I were each charged $85 for a double-entry visa. I don’t begrudge the country its money, but there is something a bit odd about charging money in a currency that can no longer be legally used in the country (more on this in a later post).

One of Livingstone's nicer side streets

Outside of the airport, we were met by a smiling cab-driver holding a sign with our names on it, a welcome sight arranged by the woman who runs the Book Bus.  Our cabby spoke to us in heavily accented English as we rolled out of the airport.  At first, I was impressed by the quality of the roads and the infrastructure, but this was an illusion that quickly vanished.  The Zambian government has obviously put a lot of resources into this initial impression to tourists, but the closer we got to the town of Livingstone, the more things started to fall apart, quite literally, in fact.  The roads became worse, sometimes crumbling around the edges, sometimes bulging in the middle, as though squashed by giant trucks.  The buildings, which dotted the road side, went from nice, to run-down, to dilapidated.  Everything, good and bad, was covered in fine, orange dust.

By the time we turned off the main road up the hill to our guest house, the road had nearly given up.  The surface we drove up had once been paved, but appeared to have been smashed with the hammers of giants, leaving gaping, rubble-strewn holes, and jagged, crumbling edges.  Even dodging the biggest holes, the taxi bounce up and down as though the road were a speed-bump testing zone.  It was with the greatest relief to my pounding head, and aching arm, that we pulled into the dirt drive of the Guest Mate Inn.

(To be continued...)

Bruised and Broken on the Bypass

Two days before my wife and I were due to fly to Africa, I broke my collar bone.

The day started innocently enough.  I cycled into work along my normal route and had a busy day getting items cleared up in preparation for my lengthy holiday.  I didn’t finish everything, but I still had a day of work to go, so I left work in good spirits.

It was a nice day, cool but clear, and free from the rain that had washed away most of the Oxfordshire sporting season. My legs felt good, and I found an easy rhythm on the bike.  It would have been nice to cycle straight on home, but I had one errand to which I need to attend. I had decided to that my tennis shoes were just too old and too worn to face an African safari and would have to be replaced. So, somewhat reluctantly, I pulled into the large Go Outdoors store, a few miles from my house.  As luck would have it, I quickly found a nice pair of shoes, for a good price, and was out of there in record time.

It was then that I made a very poor decision.  A few weeks earlier, I had bought another pair of shoes from the same store.  Unable to fit the shoebox in my bag, I had discarded the box.  However, when I latter determined that the shoes didn’t fit nearly as well as I had thought, I was unable to return them because I didn’t have the box.  Unwilling to risk that happening again, I decided this time I would cycle home with the shoebox bag dangling from my handlebars.  After all, I had cycled with bags on the handlebars a dozen times before and never had any problem.

Back on my bike and feeling good.  As I came up onto the large cycle path that runs next to the southern bypass, I gave the pedals a few extra kicks to get my speed up – and disaster struck.  As the bag bounced around underneath my handlebars, the bottom of the box hit the top of my knee.  Had the bag contained something soft, or a lot of small items, probably nothing would have happened, but since the box was solid, my knee drove it up into my handlebar.  This caused the handlebar to jerk to the left, turning the front wheel nearly perpendicular to my direction of travel. I can’t say exactly what happened next, other than I tumbled off the bike and landed hard on my left shoulder.

This was probably the third or fourth time I’ve come off my bike and every time it has hurt, a lot.  At first, this crash didn’t feel any different.  I got up, walked around a second, and then picked up my bike.  As I lifted the bike, I felt a disturbing ‘grating’ in my shoulder. For a second, I thought I had dislocated it, but then I reached up and felt a bump of bone that hadn’t been there before...

I called Steph, my wife.  By this point, I was sweating so profusely that the phone was slippery in my hand.  I asked her to come pick me up from the nearby parking lot.  She said she would, but that if I was really hurt, I needed to call an ambulance.  Hanging up, I tried to push my bike, but the chain was so badly mangled that the back wheel wouldn’t roll. It didn’t matter; I couldn’t stand up for much longer anyway. Sitting/laying in the grass, I called an ambulance. Steph found me before the ambulance, either because she came so quickly, or because I gave the ambulance bad directions.  By that point, I was in enough pain, that it was hard to think.  Steph called the ambulance again, and eventually they found me.

The paramedics made a sling for my arm and gave me a canister of laughing gas to suck on.  The gas made me dizzy and sick, but it did help control the pain, which was necessary on the bumpy road to the hospital.  They dropped me off in the A&E ward, where Steph eventually found me after loading my bike, bag, and new shoes into the car.

At the hospital I was given some proper pain killers. My shirt was cut off so they could have a look at my shoulder.  After an hour or more of waiting I was x-rayed.  An hour or more after that, a doctor confirmed what I had already suspected; I had broken my collar bone.

Although I was in pain, my real worry the whole time was that I had just ruined our trip to Africa.  However, this was not the case.  They can’t put a cast on a broken collar bone. They just put it in a sling and let it heal itself.  Thus, there was nothing to prevent me from flying.

So, feeling ‘lucky’, Steph drove us home, some five hours or more after I had left work.

In a final stroke of irony, my newly broken collar bone meant I couldn’t tie my shoes.  Thus, I ended up taking my old shoes to Africa, as I could slip these on and off without untying the laces.

* * *

It is three weeks later now.  My shoulder seems to be healing nicely.  I have nearly a full range of motion in the arm, although it has no strength and still spends most of the time in the sling.  The doctor said it would take 4-6 weeks to heal.  I have to go back in another three weeks for follow up x-rays to make sure it has healed correctly.

All and all, it could have been a lot worse.

A Day at the Olympic Games – London 2012

Well, my day for the Olympic Games arrived yesterday, the first official day of competition.  Not only did I have tickets for the women’s basketball, but my wife also surprised me with tickets to see the women’s handball in the morning (also purchased through a reseller).

With all the warnings of huge crowds, transportation delays, and lengthy security checks, we decided we would have to set out extra early in order to make our 9:30 handball start.  We woke up at 5 AM and were out of the door by 5:20.  We reached Oxford train station in plenty of time to catch the 6:30 train to London.  I admit, I was slightly worried that we hadn’t booked ahead, but this fear proved groundless.  The train wasn’t full, although it had plenty of people, including several groups obviously headed to the games.  There were some guys dressed in cycling jerseys, apparently heading into London to see the Road Race.  A small contingent got off the train in Slough, where the rowing events are being held.

We got into Paddington Station just a little past 7:30.  There are several ways to reach the Olympic park once you are in London.  We decided to take the tube to Liverpool station and then a train down to Stratford. There were lots of Olympic volunteers on hand at Paddington (and all the major stations) to give advice and assistance to anyone who might be lost.  The tube was un-crowded and so was the train.  In fact, everything ran so smoothly that we arrived at the Olympic park just after 8:00, well ahead of our 8:30 prediction.

Walking up to the park was a pretty magical experience.  Beyond the gateway, we could see the Olympic Stadium and the strangely alluring Orbit.  The Orbit is a strange structure, a tower of swirling metalwork, designed in such a way that it appears to have grown organically from the ground, carrying aloft a huge concrete bunker.  While the £14 entry price seemed rather extortionate to me, I was glad to see it from the outside, and believe it really added to the effect of the entire park.

Arriving so early, we breezed through security.  All of the volunteers and the numerous military personnel were all cheerful, friendly, and efficient.  It would be interesting to see if they can continue those levels through three weeks of crowds.

With nearly an hour before our first event, and finding ourselves near the BIG Olympic store, we thought it would be good to pop into that first and not have to face the crowds later. The store featured all the stuff you would expect to find, most of it junk, but many items featured the very attractive logos that have been designed for each sport.  My wife bought a black t-shirt with the purple and gold basketball logo, and a Team GB, Olympic basketball which is sure to thrill her school basketball club. I purchased a pair of pins with the little sports logos.  I meant to buy the pins for the sports we were going to see, but somehow managed to make it home with Basketball and Volleyball.  Oh well, they are still really nice.  Another cheerful volunteer checked us out, and checked her watch to make sure we still had time to reach our first event.

From the store, it was just a short walk to the Copper Box, the building built to house Team Handball.  For those who are wondering, the sides of the rectangular building are covered in coppery metal plates, an odd, but not unpleasing design.  With a bit of time yet remaining, we decided to stop and get food.

Food actually proved the big let-down of the day.  Despite having more than enough volunteers to man the stand, the poor people seem to have little idea what they were doing.  They struggled to serve anyone.  When we finally reached the front of the line, with time counting down, we ordered a couple of sandwiches and drinks.  I’m pretty sure the calzone-like sandwiches we were given were supposed to be heated, but no matter.  I was in too good a mood to care.  Later in the day, we twice encountered stands that didn’t have the food they had advertised, and more workers who didn’t seem to know quite what to do.  Still, it was the first day.  I’m sure most of these bumps will be sorted out.  The food was universally mediocre and overpriced, but no more so than one expects at a major sporting event.  The selection was also disappointing, which I believe is down to the ‘Corporate Sponsorship’.  You couldn’t get a decent ice cream in the place.  However, this is a bigger debate than I want to get into here today.

Having got our food, we walked into the arena proper, probably the best moment of the day.  In that one second, I felt like I had arrived at the Olympics.  The lights, the colours, the fans and flags.  The athletes warming up on the rubberized court.  We had amazing seats, second row of the second level, right on centre court.  We were right on top of the action.  In truth, the Copper Box is such a small arena, I don’t think there were any bad seats, but ours were special.

Our first match was Angola vs. Russia and it turned out to be a nail-bitter.  If you’ve never seen a game of Team Handball, I suggest it.  It’s a very fast, action-packed sport, with lots of scoring and athleticism, and a lot more contact than you might expect.  The shooters throw their bodies around with an abandon rarely seen in other sports.  It’s actually surprising that the game has not caught on more than it has.  While the predominately British crowd got behind the Angolans, they just couldn’t quite pull it out against the Russians, losing 27-30.  I don’t think either team is generally considered the best in the sport, but it was fun to watch.

Our second game pitted Spain versus Korea.  Although lower scoring, the game was still a hard-fought affair.  However, Korea showed better teamwork, and had a really stand-out player, number 11, a solid rock of a woman who fired home at least 9 goals.  Korea took the lead early and despite a few close moments, never really relinquished it.

Riding high off the adrenaline of our first Olympic experience, we left the Copper Box with big smiles, and an hour-and-a-half to kill before our next event.  This gave us a chance to wander around the Olympic park.  Since most sports were still in session at this point, the park was full, but not what I would call crowded.  Let me tell you, the designers of the park deserve special praise.  How they managed to construct such a beautiful, well designed, and enchanting place right in the middle of London, I will never know.  We walked down broad paths, through nice gardens, with loads of benches and grassy banks to sit upon.  There was an outdoor amphitheatre with a huge screen showing action from the sports.  There was a waterfall pouring down from one of the bridges over the Thames.  There was a stage where bands played.  And all around, were the amazing buildings built to house the events.

The most intriguing of the buildings is definitely the Velodrome (although people are taking to call it ‘The Pringle’ because of its similarity in shape to the potato chip.)  Considering that there were no events taking place in it on our day, it would have been nice if they would have let people inside to have a look, but I suppose they were still getting it ready for the competition.  Wisely, the park designers had kept the food stands confined to a few areas, so that they didn’t mar the beauty of the rest.

After the slight disappointment that was lunch, we arrived at the basketball arena.  This building is the one architectural failure of the park.  A huge box, covered in wavy white plastic, the whole thing appeared cheap and temporary.  I’d be interested to know if it is going to stay beyond the end of the games.  Our seats for this event were not the best.  We were way, WAY, up.  In fact, we were one row from the ceiling, off in one corner.  This meant that we were behind one of the display boards, and blocked from seeing the other.  Still, our view of the court was unimpeded.

In an amusing coincidence, our first game once again featured Angola.  This time, the poor Africans were totally destroyed by the Turks.  The Angolans didn’t score for most of the first period, and the game would have become laughable, if the Turks didn’t also have some problems putting the ball through the hoop.  More interesting than the game, was the slow realization that most of the crowd had little understanding of the game.  The announcers did their best to explain the rules as the game went along.  Growing up along Tobacco Road, I was born in a culture of basketball, so it never even occurred to me that people wouldn’t know the basic rules of the game, but there you are. 

On the downside, because basketball is such an American game, they tried to bring an element of Americanization to the presentation.  I didn’t mind the loud music, but the silly man, who picked up the microphone during every time out to shout meaningless gibberish at the crowd grew tiresome very quickly.  It also meant that every break between quarters and during halftime we were treated to performances of mixed level.  Actually, the jump-rope team, whose name I missed, were incredible, a great testimony to kids who work hard.  Still, I kind of wish they would just let the sport speak for itself, and not worry so much about having to ‘entertain’ the crowd.

The second game was more special to me: USA vs. Croatia.  While London 2012 is my second Olympics this is the first time I would see a US Team in action.  Not only that, but this USA team is supposedly one of the best ever assembled.  That said, Croatia is no slouch in basketball. Both teams started a bit tense, and the first quarter featured lots of missed shots.  Midway through the second quarter, the game was tied at 21-21.  When the half finally ended, the USA was up by 3.  The crowd, again primarily British, loved the underdog.  I usually like to support an underdog myself, but not today.  I wanted my USA women to send me home with a victory.  The third quarter was a tense, hard fought affair.  It went back and forth, with the US unable to shake Croatia who hung around, always around 3 points down.  Then, at the start of the fourth quarter, the US coach unleashed his secret weapon.  He subbed out all five players, and put an entirely fresh team on the court.  All the fresh legs proved too much for the Croats. In a matter of minutes, they were down a dozen.  When the coach put the starters back in, now rested up, they continued the damage, increasing the lead to twenty and putting the game out of reach.  I admit it, I loved it.  The Croats played a brave game, they just didn’t have enough depth to keep up.

Escaping the building just before the final buzzer, we got the jump on the 20,000 or more fans who would be leaving the building.  Exhausted, but elated, we decided it was time to call it a day on our Olympic experience.  Exiting the park, we encountered our first real crowd of the day, in a bottleneck created by one of the bridges and the channel through a shopping area, but even this we passed through quickly.  Once it widened out again, the crowd dispersed to the numerous forms of transportation. At the nearby station, we hopped on a waiting and un-crowded train that whisked us back to central London, and from there, we had an easy trip back to Oxford.

I know these Olympics aren’t perfect, and there have been complaints about this and that.  But there are few events in the world (if any) that require organization on the scale of the Olympics and a few problems are inevitable.  For my part, I think the organizers did an incredible job, and deserve huge praise.  For my wife and I, it was a near-perfect Olympic day.

Legendary Swords and The Nibelungenlied

I am currently crawling my way through The Nibelungenlied (The Lay of the Nibelungs), the German Medieval romance that tells the story of the great hero Sivrit.  These days, the story is probably best known for its connections to Wagner’s Ring Operas and the story of Siegfried. 

For the most part, it is really dull.  There seems to be endless descriptions of clothing, the making of clothing, the acquisition of clothing, the giving of clothing, and, of course the comparisons of clothing.  I take it that clothing was a big deal back in those days.  Still, I persevere mainly because it is an important primary source for medieval myth and legend, and for the occasional mention of some strange, fantastical or otherworldly something.

One of the little details that made me smile was the name of Sivrit’s sword.  As mentioned before on this blog, I have an interested in named swords.  So much so, that I really ought to write them down somewhere. That somewhere, I’ve decided is here.  So I’ve created a new page on the blog for legendary swords, which can be accessed by the tab on the top.

Sivrit’s sword is called ‘Bulmunc’ and it is described as follows. ‘an elegant broadsword, which was so sharp that it never missed its mark when it struck upon a helmet – its edges were of fine quality’. 

Olympics Tickets - Update!

Still basking in the glow of my Olympics tickets, I got some more exciting news.  I checked the official London 2012 site and found that the second game in my session includes The United States of America!  So, not only am I getting to go to the Olympics again, but, unlike Atlanta, this time I get to see my country participate in a team event!  And this isn't just any team, this is one of the best women's basketball teams ever assembled.  The twelve players have a combined twelve Olympic gold medals (Four players with two each, and four more with one each). U-S-A! U-S-A!