Palapye to Francistown (Pictures)

We are now in Lusaka, capital of Zambia, which marks around halfway through our journey to Nairobi, Kenya.

 

Note: We apologize for not updating the blog for a few days, we have been in places with minimal internet availability, but we will be catching up shortly. Enjoy!

 

July 7th, Day 26:

 

During the night, Aaron got really sick and could not sleep at all. He then proceeded to try and find a doctor at 4am, yet we were a good distance from the center of town and it was pitch dark outside, and did not want to risk getting lost. He then decided to try and hold on until 8am when the tourism board office would be open and they would be able to help him find a doctor. At this point, i was feeling pretty lucky because I did not drink that "holy water" and that was the only possible thing that I could think of that had happened during the day that we did both not eat or drink.

 

Anyway, Aaron was able to tough it out until 8am, I don't think he really slept at all, which was unfortunate because the hotel beds were especially comfortable on this night. He made it to the tourism board, and eventually a doctor that told him he would not be able to bike at all on this day, and he needed to get tests done to determine what was wrong with him. While I was sleeping, Aaron was able to come up with a solution for getting himself better and not setting us back too much on the journey. With the help of Ntuli, he was able to also contact a number of Botswana newspapers and schedule a press conference for the next day in Francistown, around 150 kilometers from Palapye.

 

I did not wake up until around 10am, and Aaron was still making plans with the newspapers and hanging out with Ntuli at the tourism board. I quickly packed up my things, went over to the clothing line which I had put my laundry on last night after I hand washed it. To my dismay, most of my clothing was still soaking wet, a few items had been in the sun during the morning and had dried, but the majority of my clothes were still wet. So much for polyester, which apparently does not dry as quickly as I thought. Realizing i was supposed to meet Aaron at 10am at the tourism office, I just threw everything onto the back of my bicycle and headed over.

 

When I arrived at the office, Aaron told me the news from the doctor, as well as the news about our press conference in tomorrow morning. We both came to the conclusion that because he could not bicycle today and we did not want to get behind schedule, we would just hitch a ride to Francistown and hope he would be able to recover shortly there so we could get back on our bicycles. We thanked Ntuli and the rest of the tourism office for all their help and kindness, and headed over to the bus stop where people can hitch rides along the road.

 

Aaron rested on the bench on the side of the road as I tried unsuccessfully for about an hour to hail down a pick-up truck or anything big enough to carry us as well as our bicycles. Many cars and trucks passed by, yet all i got were waves or no response at all. Luckily, after waiting for about an hour and a half, a large truck with an open back parked on the side of the road, and I ran over to them and explained our situation. They said we could put our bicycles on the back of their truck, but there was no room in the front for us to sit. We asked if we could sit on the back as well and they were a bit surprised, but said that it was fine with them. We were thrilled and quickly threw all our gear on the back of the truck and hopped in. No one else hitching wanted to sit in the back of the truck so Aaron and I had the whole back to ourselves.

 

It turned out to be a very comfortable and enjoyable ride as there were some rugs in the back that we laid down on and relaxed as we watched the scenery and cars go by with confused looks on their drivers faces. We were disappointed that we were unable to bike this stretch of the road, but this turned out to be the next best alternative, as we were still able to see the countryside.

 

Aaron had to pee about halfway through the ride, and this turned out to be a pretty hilarious story. He did not want to ask the truck driver to stop because they had already been nice enough to let us hitch a ride with them so the only other alternative was one of our water bottles or going off the back of the truck. We decided the water bottles were too valuable to us and that you could never really drink out of it again if you filled it with your own pee. The problem with going off the back of the truck was that there was another truck that had been tailing us for quite a while and Aaron was worried that because of the wind direction, his pee might glide onto the truck driver's windshield.

 

Fortunately for Aaron's bladder, the truck turned off in a few kilometers and he was able to relieve himself before anymore cars caught up to our truck. We spent the rest of the truck ride waving to people on the side of the road and brushing up on our Sestwana, the main language in Botswana, along with English.

Finally we reached Francistown around 5pm, and we decided to find a affordable guesthouse for the night so Aaron could rest up and go to the doctor in the morning for his tests. This also happened to be the night or morning in LA of Michael Jackson's public memorial so we watched that for a while. Like most memorials, Jackon's was very sad, yet I was glad he was being shown in a positive light for the first time in years. It is disappointing that it took his death for people and the media to recognize his body of work and all he has done in the world.

 

-Eric

 

 

(Ntuli and Aaron)

(Me, Ntuli, and Aaron)

 (Aaron sitting on the side of the road not feeling very well as I hitch us a ride)