9/18/17 Kashawe Camp Zimbabwe

We took the land rovers to the airstrip where we boarded our small bush plane.  We landed in Livingstone and took a small bus to the border with Zimbabwe.  We picked up another bus on the other side of the border.  There was some confusion at the border point and the clerk asked for all of our passports at once.  She went away from the window to process them and took a very long time.  At one point I looked over and she was at a window on the other side processing people who were entering Zambia.  Finally she came back to our window and handed all the passports to me.  I carried them through to another checkpoint where I had to surrender them again.  This time was quite quick, however, as he was just making sure that all of them got stamped.  I counted as he checked them to make sure I got them all back and was happy to surrender them to Vimbai so she could return each one to its owner.  She would have been the one to do all of this, but she was helping to get our luggage onto the new bus.  Each duffel bag had to be put into a large black garbage bag to protect it as we were driving through coal country.  We stopped at the hotel in Victoria Falls to pick up our school packages we had left there at the beginning of the trip.  We also went into the lobby for a half hour to use wi-fi and to meet the fellow who is going to make tee shits for those who want to purchase them.  We then stopped at the grocery store and picked up lots of items to take to the village.  We bought many pounds of flour, a case of cooking oil, candles, brown sugar, etc.  We were then on our way to our new camp.  We stopped in Hwange to pick up one of our driver guides and give him a ride into camp.  We then drove through a coal mining area.  There were many coal fires burning and the air was quite smoky.  I was glad we were in a bus with closed windows.  We drive go the park entrance (Hwange National Park) and transferred to land rovers.  Our driver/guides were Abiot and Mafuka.  The drive there was quite bumpy and dusty.  This is the driest place we have been.  Eventually we got to Kashawe Camp.  Our tent had two twin beds side by side and a bathroom with included a shower stall, sink, and toilet.  There was also a front porch with two chairs.  The camp is on a hillside looking down into a valley with a waterhole.  The small gift shop was stuffed with items made by the workers of the camps and their families.  We went for a walk around the camp after tea.  We stopped by a hole that had been freshly dug and Mafuka said it was made by an aardvark last night.  We came out of the trail next to the land rovers and had our sundowner next to another ridge.  On the way back to camp, we spotted a lone giraffe (this is called a corp according to Abiot).  We saw a large group of guinea fowl roost in a tree for the night.  I tried to take a photo, but there wasn't enough light for my camera.  It would have been a lovely picture as the tree was backlit in a pink glow from the sunset.  I hope that someone else got the shot.  On the way home, we saw a night jar bird in the road.  We have to wake up early tomorrow (5:30) in order to get to the village we are visiting before it is too hot.  We will also visit St. Mary's Primary school tomorrow.