Most of our trips aren’t tourist brochure material.
An objective summary of our January jaunt to Mulungushi Dam in Zambia’s Central Province would read something like this:
- A long drive on Friday night, a lot of it in the dark.
- A separate five-hour drive on rough roads where we failed to get halfway to our destination, the still-mythical Wonder Gorge, and ended up exactly where we started. At least we got back in one piece.
- Well, almost in one piece. We did pick up a flat tire while pulling back into the campsite, but knew we’d be able to change it the next day.
- When we tried to change the tire the next day, we found ourselves missing the spare’s key; triumphantly found the key after digging through trash filled with the remnants of the replacement dinner for the chili I forgot to bring; realized that wasn’t actually the key; drove four hours round-trip to Kabwe in our friend’s car while ours sat propped up on bricks; and finally changed the tire in time to get back to Lusaka in the dead of night.
And yet, this trip will stand out in our memories as one of the greatest, entirely because of the many perfect fleeting moments that made it all worth it. Summarized through moments instead of events, the trip looked more like this:
- Gaping at the brilliantly starry sky in the middle of the night halfway to nowhere down a dirt road.
- Spinning ourselves around until we collapsed out of dizziness. For fun. Yes, we’re in our twenties.
- Listening spellbound to a ghost story narrated by the wonderful voice of Will, while cuddled on a trampoline.
- Escalating each pool-based activity into a violent free-for-all.
- Driving into one of the best sunsets of our lives on the way home.
When I look back on my time in Zambia, the moments are what I won’t forget.
