Rekkie

To ensure that the proposed route is viable expedition leader Simon Wild arranged a reconnasance trip. Some suprising discoveries were made.

DAY 1 - 23 July 2005

We left Siankaba at 07:00 and drove to Kazangula, 10 Kilometers downstream of Impilila, one of the points Livingstone mentions as an overnight stop. Collecting canoes supplied by Run Wild, we launched two kilometres down stream from the Border Post and began canoeing. The river at this point is wide, deep and slow flowing, the current running at 4 Km/h and the journey to Katambora, a total distance of 13 km took 2.5 Hrs. Guy and Russell took one of the canoes down into the rapids to explore them while Simon proceeded along our intended rout for mapping purposes. The river splits up and runs among some islands that are thickly wooded before plunging into the rapids and this is a very beautiful portion of the river. Above the rapids we disembarked, as Livingstone walked from the rapids down to the Island of Chundu. Mapping this section we found that the route was fairly flat and rocky and a total distance of 33 Kilometers. This meant that the total distance to be covered in this day would be about 56 Kilometers and at that time of year we expect temperatures in excess of 40 Degrees Celsius. Averaging 5 km’s we would need to be travelling for over 11 hours through the heat of the day and we finished the journey with grave doubts about the viability of this task.

DAY 2 - 24 July 2005

Leaving Siankaba at 07:00 we were joined by Expedition member Donald Chikumbi to map the section from Old Sesheke (Mwandi village) down to Mambova, just above Impilila Island. We drove upstream for two hours and launched the motorboat after having to dig the truck out of the sand where it got stuck while trying to reach the river. The river at Mwandi as it is called today, looks just as it would have in Livingstone’s time with blindingly white sand banks silhouetting fishermen paddling up and down the river positioning their nets for the days catch. The terrain around is completely flat and featureless, the horizon broken only by the occasional Acacia tree with a cluster of huts beneath its welcome shade. This area is a huge flood plain which, when viewed from the air, is littered with oxbow lakes, ancient evidence of the rivers wandering course. We discovered that the significance of this for the expedition is that, although the distance from Mwandi to Mambova as the crow flies is just 40 km’s, by river it is 75km’s!! If we include the section down to Impalila, the total distance that we would need to cover on the first day would be 80kms and this we concluded was an impossible task. We finished this day convinced that there must be something amiss with our understanding of the chronology of Livingstone’s journey.

DAY 3 - 25 July 2005

After having to wait for permission to enter the Mosi O Tunya National Park we finally received the go ahead at 10.00am and launched the dug out canoes just above Kalai Island. Having travelled downstream about two kilometres and skirted a pod of Hippo we landed on the North Eastern tip of the island and set off on foot to explore. Much of this island, we found to be covered in short scrub, and as we walked, we were drawn towards a large copse of trees on the South Eastern corner. As we arrived Simon noticed a grouping of heavily weathered, teak railway sleepers buried upright in the ground.  We were stunned to realise that the remains of Chief Sekote grave were still visible after 150 years and even today the place has a tangible aura about it. Livingstone described this grave in great detail but we had no expectation of finding any visible sign of the site after all this time. The young paddlers who were accompanying us knew nothing of the site and it was only later, when we questioned an elder of the tribe, that he told us the story. He recalled years before that the descendants of Chief Sekote had marked the site with sleepers after the original fence, consisting of large Elephant tusks, had weathered away completely. Adjacent to the gravesite, is a large mahogany tree under which we plan to camp when we return. These trees give fantastic shade all year round and given the scarcity of any other large shade trees on the island is almost certainly the very site that Livingstone used.

Later that afternoon Guy and Russell went down onto Livingstone Island to gather material for Guys’ paintings and GPS coordinates. The view of the falls from here is unparalleled and Guy was in artist’s heaven. Simon, having been tasked with more research, returned to camp and began going over the reference material we had gathered, to try and find where we had gone wrong with the chronology. Armed with the information from the first two days of reconnaissance he worked backwards from Livingstone’s departure from the Falls on the 20th. It soon became clear that in fact, Livingstone’s journey had taken 5 days and NOT the 3 as we had originally thought. Livingstone states quite clearly that he left Victoria Falls on the 20th of November after taking two days to explore the falls themselves so working backward he must have sighted them for the first time on the 18th. He had departed old Sesheke on the 13th and therefore the journey must have taken 5 days. This discovery really put the cat among the pigeons! We had never questioned the date of the anniversary as the centenary had been celebrated on the 16th November 1955, and although there was supposed to be some controversy about this date, the 16th appeared to be generally accepted.

Guy and Russell arrived back in camp to be greeted by a highly agitated expedition leader. This discovery had thrown our plans into disarray and we now had some major decisions to make, not least of which was the fact that the commemorative plaque had already been cast in Britain using the 16th as the date! We decided to sleep on it and visit the Museum the following day and see if they could shed some more light on the issue.

DAY 4 - 26 July 2005

We departed camp to do the final section from Chundu to Kalai and were on the water by 09:00. This section of the river contains some large rapids and we were keen to confirm that they were navigable. The average speed over this section was 6 km’s and this varied between 4 km’s over the flat section to 12 km’s in the rapids. Shooting the rapids in these dug out canoes is an interesting exercise as Simon learned, that paddlers stand at the stern and these sturdy craft bounce off rocks as they fly down steep chutes through the Basalt rocks. Having completed this leg of the journey in just 2,5 hours we loaded the canoes and drove wet and muddy to the museum to try and iron out our problem’s with the schedule. We arrived at lunch time, (never a good time to visit officialdom!) and the sight of the three of us, sun burnt and bedraggled heading for the back entrance of the museum bought the security guard out from under the shade of his mango tree in the garden with alacrity! We managed to negotiate our way in and burst into the office of Mr Friday Mufuzi the Senior Historian. He looked somewhat alarmed but was pacified when he understood why we were there and graciously agreed to help us. His office, as one would expect with an academic, is lined with bookshelves piled high with reference books, files and documents and yet, once he understood our conundrum, he went unerringly to unearth the very document we needed to see! What we learned was that the debate over the date was an old one and had been laid to rest on the centenary when Mr P.C.G. Adams (London Missionary Society) had unearthed correspondence from Livingstone stating that he was CERTAIN that the date on which he first viewed the falls was indeed the 16th November. Friday told us that when Livingstone finished his Trans- Africa journey in Mozambique he discovered that it was four days later than he thought it was. We surmised that he may have revised the date on which he saw the falls but used his original dates for ‘Missionary Travels’.
We had established beyond a shadow of doubt that this journey, from old Sesheke to Victoria Falls, required five days according to the chronology set out in ‘Missionary Travels’ and the distances involved. Set out below is the revised schedule for the expedition based on the new findings.
We departed the museum feeling that, as the first people on record to recreate this portion of Livingstone journey, that we finally have a workable schedule, that will accurately reflect the journey that Livingstone undertook 150 years ago.