When you are a landlocked country like Zambia, road connections become your lifeblood. Right now the roads west, to DRC, Angola and the Atlantic, is seriously dangerous. We met a former truck driver who used to drive that route and he carried a sackful of dollars to pay off the various militias along the way, sometimes every few miles.
The alternative roads to the sea are east to Tanzania and Dar és Salaam or south through Botswana to South Africa. It is this second trade route that we are driving now.
On both sides of the Zambia/Botswana border it’s is an excellent and fast road - dead straight and flat as an elephant’s ear. Now there are many fewer villages - in Botswana hardly any at all - the land is given over to beef farming. Alex and I stopped for petrol at a farm house (not quite as bonkers as it sounds out here) and the farmer told us he had 3,000 hectares for cattle - that’s 30 square kilometres, a monster farm by British standards.
But they are cow crazy out here, with frequent vetinary inspection points on the road designed to stop the spread of animal diseases.The Botswanans have erected huge vetinary fences that stop wild animals infecting beef herds. These fences have also stopped wild animal migrating and destroyed ancient ecosystems.
At the border between Zambia and Botswana the concept of a vital trade route disintegrates as every vehicle needs to cross the Zambezi on a tiny and ancient ferry. We had to wait two hours whilst the vessel was repaired (with a hammer). Trucks have to wait days or weeks to make the crossing. It’s an embarrassment for both countries.
But Chinese money is building a new road bridge that will dramatically change things. In the future trucks and people will be able to move freely between the two countries.
For the wild animals caged in by the vet fences however, moving freely will never be possible again.
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