"Dad?" I tapped my dad on the shoulder. We were waiting in line at the Victoria Falls airport to get our visa for Zimbabwe. It was supposed to be an easy process, but something had made it a little more complicated: "Did you know that getting a double visa for Zimbabwe and Zambia was an option?"
"What?"
I pointed at the banners and signs advertising the double visa. Chaos ensued. Would we need a double visa if we were to go rafting on the Zambezi, which functions as the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia? Would the Zimbabwean half of the visa expire if we went to Zambia only for an hour or two on the package deal? So many questions, so few answers. We decided to stick to the single visa for Zimbabwe, which was already quite expensive. Then, the minute we got through customs, we met our tour guide, who told us we'd just screwed up our only chance on this trip to go to Zambia.

I sulked for the rest of my first day in Zimbabwe. It was my fault that we couldn't go to Zambia, I had failed to find us the information we needed. Now I'd never see Zambia. It had never been part of the plan, but it still stung that I missed out on the opportunity to add another country to the list of places I've visited. I couldn't just let it go. I was confronted with my failure for the entirety of the next morning, when we went to the Victoria Falls. Looking at them meant looking at Zambia. But when I thought all hope was lost, one last loophole saved the day: I could cross the Victoria Falls Bridge into Zambia without a visa.


The Victoria Falls Bridge was built over a century ago. Construction started in 1904 as part of a plan to connect Cape Town to Cairo by railway. That railway idea was quickly abandoned, but the bridge was finished in 1905 and has been serving Zimbabwe and Zambia well ever since. Tourists staying in the town of Victoria Falls can cross the border to visit the bridge and the café on the other side, which is on Zambian territory. All is good as long as you don't follow the road into Zambia and go past the border post; Doing that means your Zimbabwean visa expires and you'll have to get a new one to get back to your hotel or camp.
My parents and I went up to the Zimbabwean border posts, where we spoke the magic words: "We want to visit the bridge." A government official gave us a white slip with a stamp on it and we were ready to visit the outermost edge of Zambia.

As soon as we left the border post behind us, I felt like we'd entered the real Africa. Victoria Falls tries its best to craft a comfortable illusion for its tourists, where poverty and politics are kept to a minimum. If you want to, you can stay inside the safe tourism bubble without seeing the mile-long line for the gas station, that only sells gas at night, or without noticing the kids running around in shoes that don't fit. That bubble bursts when you decide to visit and cross the bridge. The amount of white and Asian faces between the Zimbabwean and Zambian border posts is minimal. All of a sudden, you find yourself in the hustle and bustle of an actual border town, where import and export are managed and where locals are busy at work in transport and trade. People stand in line with their bicycles waiting to enter the other country. And here and there, you'll also see street vendors trying to sell their goods to the tourists who dare to leave their bubble, though most of these vendors stay on the actual bridge. They got on my nerves, to be honest, but apart from that, I enjoyed seeing normal people living their normal lives. I liked this small excursion. Until I set foot on the bridge.


Crossing the bridge is risky business when you have vertigo. Crossing a century-old bridge that shakes and trembles when any motorized vehicle crosses it is even worse. Let me just say that I wasn't the happiest of happy campers when I walked slowly towards Zambia. The view made the walk worthwhile, although I was fairly sure it might just be the last view I'd ever see.
Right in the middle of the bridge, a yellow sign let us know that we were "NOW ENTERING ZAMBIA". Without a visa, but with the magical slip that got us here.

Just after I'd set foot on the Zambian side of the bridge, another truck made the whole thing tremble. It made me nervous, so I picked up the pace more and more until my dad and I ended up in a race to become the first of the Fisher family to set foot on Zambian soil. I won.

There wasn't much to see when I took in my surroundings. A small hill blocked my view. While I waited for my mom to reach this end of the bridge, my dad went to have a look. He told us there wasn't much to see on the other side of the hill either, except for the road to the Zambian border post. It didn't matter. The fact that I'd actually made it to Zambia was enough.


We went to the small café right next to the bridge for a drink. For a few moments, I considered spending $45 there on the zipline that would take me across the gorge and back to Zimbabwe. It looked amazing, flying high over the Zambezi and crossing an international border in the process, but I couldn't justify spending the equivalent of seven hours of work in my current job on a minute of adrenaline. I settled for a bottle of coke and reminded myself that I was lucky to be here. Lucky to be in Africa, lucky to be in Zambia. I sat down at a table with a view of the bridge and Zimbabwe, where another family from our tour group was waiting for their lunch to arrive. Like us, they'd decided not to spend an entire month's worth of rent on rafting and bungee jumping. They were the only people in the group that didn't make me feel bad for being a working-class kid.

We sat there for a while, all seven of us, drinking, eating and taking pictures of the monkeys that had decided to come and steal some French fries. We enjoyed the calm, the quiet, the occasional rumble of a truck crossing the bridge. When the other family left to take a look at the Victoria Falls in the late afternoon light, we stayed a little longer. I was quiet, taking in the moment. I couldn't comprehend yet that I, a nobody from the Netherlands, was enjoying a coke in the faraway country of Zambia, despite all my mental issues, despite my mistakes with visa.
"Glad we came to the bridge?" my mom asked just before we went back to Zimbabwe.
I nodded.
"I'm sorry we couldn't do more in Zambia."
I smiled and raised my coke bottle. "Mom, this was exactly what I wanted from Zambia. Good company, a cold drink and a nice view of Zimbabwe. I couldn't wish for anything more."

I woke up to cold feet, sleepy voices and the sound of tent zippers. It was early in the morning of my first full day in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe... I never thought I'd get this far away from home. As a kid, I heard stories of economic disasters and dictatorship in Zimbabwe, told by South African expats. So far though, the only negative thing Zimbabwe had brought me was a very cold night. I pulled my legs up and buried my face in my pillow. All around me, people from our tour group were getting ready to spend hundreds of US dollars on rafting, ziplining and bungee jumping. Those activities were far outside my price range. I tried to shut the excitement of the other out and fell asleep again.

When I woke up for the second time, I heard the typical sound of helicopters in the distance. The flights over the Victoria Falls had started for the day. Rich white people were spending a fortune on views I'd never see. But to be honest, I was not particularly interested in those views anyway. I'd seen the Victoria Falls on tv once, when I was watching a documentary with my mom. Helicopter shots showed the fast currents of the Zambezi, the camera rapidly approached the falls - then, the biggest cinematographic anticlimax ever. A small gorge, barely visible falls, some sad trees, bland colors. If Vic Falls hadn't been the starting point of this tour through southern Africa, I would've happily lived my life without ever seeing the Victoria Falls. But now I was here. and I was going to make the most out of this day with the limited funds I had.


After a small breakfast, my parents and I left the Shearwater Explorers Village behind to take a look at some of the most famous waterfalls in the world. We walked through Victoria Falls, the town, then followed the road to the falls. It was a short and safe walk. All the while, helicopters circled high above us. At night, we'd been able to hear the roar of the falls, but the helicopters drowned it out during the day. I felt like I was living in a weird bubble where anything was possible with some dollars, where money and status were more important than actually living in the moment. I tried not to think too much about it, but the helicopters were a constant reminder of the extreme inequality in Vic Falls, with rich tourists and poverty-stricken locals kept apart as far as possible.

We soon reached the entrance of Victoria Falls National Park, where we paid $30 per person for a ticket printed on receipt paper. It was still quite early in the morning, and the park was almost deserted. We had the paths almost completely to ourselves, apart from when a monkey decided to come down from the trees every now and then.
My parents and I decided to walk to the far end of the park first, then work our way towards the other end and the Victoria Falls Bridge. The vegetation changed as we came closer to the falls. The trees were greener, the shrubs less brittle. We passed a statue of Livingstone, looked out over the Zambezi, then went to the closest fall, nicknamed "the Devil's Cataract". On our way over, we spotted stairs leading down to a viewpoint. I quickly skipped down the steps, eager to see if the falls were better in real life than they'd been on tv. The roar of the Victoria Falls filled my ears. Spray suddenly fell over me, a fine mist of Zambezi water catapulted back into the air crashing into the gorge separating Zimbabwe from Zambia. My mind failed to catch in words what my eyes saw. Millions upon millions of liters of water fell into the gorge that showed itself to me in all its beauty. Hundreds of meters of waterfalls were at my feet. A sheet of mist rose from the depths of the gorge. I was speechless.


The sound of the crashing water was deafening. I could not stop looking at it. The spray of the Victoria Falls left tiny translucent pearls of water on my hair and camera. The place was nothing like it had been on tv, and I cursed myself for being stupid enough to judge the falls before I'd seen them with my own eyes. I couldn't get enough of them. Suddenly, I felt grateful for being too broke to go rafting. It was a blessing in disguise: Now I had all day to take in the beauty of the Victoria Falls.

My parents and I continued our way along the edge of the gorge. The views never got old. Every time I thought I was about to get bored, I saw something new. A rainbow, a bird, a ray of sunshine bouncing off the falls. We had it all almost entirely to ourselves that morning. The few tourists that were already there were mostly Chinese, and although most of them didn't speak English very well, my dad managed to become friends with a family from Shanghai. I became a legend among their tour group when I saw them taking pictures of my dad, who was helping an older lady get down a slippery bit of the path, and told them: "Pictures one dollar!". They found this hilarious and kept telling each other the story every time they spotted me.

As the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, more people came to the park. I was glad we'd come so early, as we still had big chunks of the park almost to ourselves. I found myself smiling and joking and being passionate about the pictures I was taking. It felt weird; For the past two months, I hadn't felt that happy. I'd been wrapped up in university work, the loss of my grandma and the family issues that followed. My mind had been a dark and dreary place, but the African sun finally brought back the light. When I finally put my camera away after taking dozens of pictures of the waterfalls, the spray and mist enchanted me. They steadily fell on me, like the world's finest shower. I felt like they were washing me clean, clean from all the emotional baggage I'd carried all the way from Rotterdam to Victoria Falls. I let it happen. I needed it to happen.

I stepped forward and spread my arms. The fine droplets of Zambezi water engulfed me. I let it come over me, I let it wash away all the negative memories that I didn't want to take with me into the future. I briefly thought of my grandmother, and all the pain she'd caused me for most of my life. In my mind, I held those memories in my hands and released them, so the spray could take them away. I smiled, raised my head towards the sun as droplet continued to fall on me. Rebirth, renaissance, call it whatever you want. I had been looking for a fresh start for so long, and the Victoria Falls gave me one as I hummed a line from an old song.
"Let the rain wash away, all the pain of yesterday."

I spent my first hour in Zimbabwe in a seat so uncomfortably close to the seat in front of it that I would've turned noseless like Voldemort if the driver hit the brakes unexpectedly. The window next to my seat was half-covered up with a sticker. The best seats on the truck were occupied by a cooler and some luggage. It was my first ride on the truck that would bring me from Victoria Falls to Cape Town. By the end of that road trip, I would be fearing for my life every time I got on.

Our truck's name was Madiba. Most of the trucks that take tourists on a road trip through Southern Africa have a name, so you won't get into the wrong one because you forgot the numbers on the license plate; Names are much easier to remember. I won't forget the name Madiba for the rest of my life. Apparently, our truck was named after Nelson Mandela, who was nicknamed Madiba (I did not know this until I was on the plane back home). Mandela left us all years ago and the truck that was named after him seemed ready to do the same. We were barely on our way to Cape Town when Madiba started falling apart.

Madiba's seats were the first thing that betrayed the truck's approaching departure from this planet. Some people could feel the springs poke into their legs, others had reclined their seats and couldn't get them into an upright position anymore. I was lucky enough to claim seats that were fine. No one else wanted to sit there anyway, because the illogical seat plan meant that there was no legroom there, while other seats had legroom to spare. I was happy with my seat though. It didn't poke me in the butt, it didn't slam back at random moments, and the lack of legroom meant I was seen as a selfless saint for voluntarily sitting there almost every day.

We made it out of Zimbabwe without any issues. We got through Botswana just fine. But we did notice a crack in the floor before we reached Namibia. It was a warning for what was to come. Madiba was an old, tired truck and the Namibian roads ahead of us promised nothing but trouble.

Namibia and infrastructure have a weird relationship. There are very few asphalt roads. Namibia can afford asphalt roads, but won't spend money on them. One of the reasons, my tour guide told me, is that private businesses are in charge of construction and maintenance of the roads and the Namibian government "can't just take over these tasks". The second reason is that the government thinks that asphalt roads will damage the ecosystems of Namibia's deserts. As a result, every tourist visiting Namibia gets treated to an "African free massage": The rocky dirt roads full of potholes will shake you until your bones turn to jelly. Madiba, nearing the end of its life, was not fit for a challenge of this size.

It started in the north of Namibia. The crack in the floor grew. Madiba had to take us on a game drive through Etosha National Park, where every bit of the truck was under constant strain. The truck made so much noise, peeping, screeching, that I expected Madiba would move on to the afterlife right then and there. But Madiba's guardian angel was doing their job very well: The only thing that didn't make it out of Etosha was the door handle.

I wasn't too worried about Madiba when we arrived in Swakopmund. We'd made it to the halfway mark. We'd fixed the door handle (although it kept falling off and we almost lost it a couple of times). When it fell off again, our tour guide would just open the door from the outside. We were fine. Madiba was fine. Everything was fine.

Everything was far from fine less than two days after we left Swakopmund. The African free massage intensified. Madiba peeped and groaned every second of the trip now. And then it all went wrong on our way to the Sossusvlei. Bits and pieces broke off. Tanks started leaking. Dust filled the air inside the truck. We couldn't assess the full damage until we'd made it out of Namib-Naukluft National Park. When the dust settled, we saw we'd been lucky to make it out at all. The driver's windshield had cracked. The radiator was leaking. The small iron ladder under the door had broken off on one side. The chainlink of the cage that held our cooking supplies was gone. One of the diesel tanks was dripping fuel at an alarming rate...


We moved on as if nothing had happened. One family traveling in our group had brought duct tape for emergencies. Soon enough, Madiba was covered in duct tape bandaids. The shaking, creaking and groaning worsened. Blackish goo spread over the windows on Madiba's right side; The leaked diesel was sprayed all over the truck. Those windows had to remain closed, which was horrible in the middle of Namibia with no AC on board. And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the situation escalated.

A loud bang echoed through the truck. People shouted. A dark object flew past my window. Madiba abruptly skidded to a halt. The African free massage was suddenly over. Chaos reigned. People who'd sat in the front came rushing to the back. The windshield had cracked.
What had happened was absurd. The roof hatch on the driver's cabin had been locked shut with a tree branch. I am not joking. This branch had become so relaxed from all the African free massages that it slipped away, unlocking the hatch, which then flew off and crashed into our windshield. The window didn't shatter, thank god, or people would have been scarred for life, literally. Eyes could have been lost, brains could have been damaged. And our tour guide wanted to drive on as if nothing had happened. We protested, almost planned a mutiny. Then one of the other tourists undermined our position by saying: "He just wants to stick to his schedule. He has a schedule to follow today, you know!"
"Well, I have a schedule for my life," I said. "And dying at 23 doesn't fit into that schedule." That's the last thing that was said about the incident. The duct tape was pulled out, a mattress was taken out of the back of the truck, and Madiba was fixed up as far as that was possible in that situation.


After crossing the border into South Africa, Madiba's cracked windshield was covered up with cardboard. The diesel tank was fixed. We had no more African free massages ahead of us. Still, I didn't believe we'd make it to Cape Town - at least not with Madiba for transport. I didn't feel safe anymore. Everything hurt from sitting in a cramped, dusty space for days on end. Even on asphalt, Madiba didn't make a good impression anymore. I couldn't believe it when I finally saw Table Mountain on the horizon after three long weeks. I'd never experienced such a relief in my life.

The story still isn't over though. Madiba had to bring us to the airport after we'd spent some time in Cape Town. While we were still out and about, our tour guide got a phone call from Namibia: another truck had broken down. Madiba was needed to rescue the stranded tourists. This meant we were dropped off at the airport hours earlier than the original schedule had said. I couldn't help but laugh when I heard that these poor tourists in Namibia were waiting for Madiba to rescue them. It was so sad. On the way over to the airport, we lost the door handle again. One of the seats lost its headrest. Every meter was a challenge for this poor old truck, but that didn't matter apparently. In fact, Madiba is still out there now, road tripping with a bunch of tourists who are probably afraid for their lives. So if you ever find yourself in Southern Africa, ready to get on a truck with the name Madiba, I have one piece of advice for you: RUN.

I'd never been to Africa. I traveled the world from Australia to Hawaii, but never set foot on African soil. Subsahara, the Islamic countries in the North, the islands... it doesn't matter, I didn't even come close to those places in the first 23 years of my life. Not that I didn't want to visit Africa. The problem was financial in nature, as well as not knowing anyone who was willing to visit the virtually uncharted territories of southern Africa. That all changed when my parents decided to book a tour through Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa and encouraged me to do the same. So a few weeks after my 23rd birthday, I finally got to visit the continent I'd wanted to see for so long - and discovered another reason why my parents steered clear of Africa when I was a kid: The sheer distance between my doorstep and Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, took over 24 hours to bridge and shortened my life by at least 5 years.

It all started in the Rotterdam area, where a major malfunction of railroad systems on the Sunday of our departure threw our entire schedule off. The trains to Schiphol Airport were canceled, as well as most other trains going in the direction of Amsterdam. So while I was still in the middle of sending a few important e-mails, my parents made the decision to leave. Now. Jump on the very next bus.
I rushed out of the house, forgot to take my watch with me and almost left my bus pass behind as well. We then missed our connecting subway train. Trains were still being canceled left and right. I was seconds away from calling my granddad to beg him to drop us off at the airport, when I noticed that there was one train going to Schiphol Airport just minutes after we would arrive at Rotterdam Central Station. So we made a run for it. Somehow we managed to get on one of the very few northbound trains leaving Rotterdam that day. That was only the very beginning.


It usually takes 30 minutes to travel from Rotterdam to Schiphol if you travel by Intercity Direct. Our train was a regular Intercity, meaning we stopped in a million different places. Just as I was about to die of boredom, an elderly lady from Surinam got on the train. She told stories about her family, her grandchildren and her life as a black woman in the Netherlands. She was amazing. Before I knew it, we were at Schiphol and I sadly had to say goodbye to her.

Once we'd left the train station, I realized that we were now about four hours early for our flight to Frankfurt. Four hours of still not feeling like I was on my way to the last permanently inhabited continent that I hadn't visited yet. I killed those four hours with repeated book store visits and bathroom breaks, because I'm terrified of airplane toilets. Lucky for me and my airplane toilet phobia, the flight to Frankfurt took less than an hour. Yet by the time I got off that plane, I felt like I hadn't eaten in years. It was 7 pm and I had no idea if I'd get dinner on my red-eye flight to Johannesburg. So I did what everyone should do in Germany: get myself some good German food.


With dinner out of the way, it was finally time to get ready for the main leg of our journey: a ten-hour flight transporting me from good old Europe to exciting and unknown Africa. I made sure to claim a window seat and had to keep myself from bouncing up and down in my seat with excitement as the plane took off. Black Panther was playing on my private screen to get me even more hyped up about the continent I was about to get to know. Night fell, and I closed the window knowing I'd finally see Africa when I'd open it again.

My daydreams about lions and Bantu languages and Table Mountain were rudely interrupted by a tremendous shock. Left, right, left again, free fall. We were experiencing some turbulence, nothing I hadn't experienced before. Or so I thought.
The cabin crew sat down. The captain made his announcements. And then I started praying. Although we were told that the turbulence wouldn't last long, we didn't seem to get out of the angry bubble of air. We were thrown from left to right for minutes at a time, often making short free falls. The plane started creaking. A sound I'd never heard a plane make suddenly came from the wing right outside of my window. I'd never been so scared on a flight before, but didn't want anyone to know that I was almost shitting myself. So I continued to watch my movie, eat my snacks and smile while the minutes of extreme turbulence turned into hours.

I managed to fall asleep in between two pockets of rogue air, although "asleep" might be a big word for the half-conscious state in which I found myself. Every time I came close to that nice deep sleep I needed, I was shaken by the turbulence to the point where I believed I had no internal organs left, just reddish goop. As the hours dragged on, I became more and more sure that I was going to die. The plane would crash, I just knew it, but at least I wouldn't be alone in my dying moments, I thought as I put my head on my mom's shoulder and closed my eyes.


Four agonizing hours later, I woke up high in the air somewhere above what I guessed to be Congo. The plane had stopped shaking. I sighed with relief. My neck was unbelievably painful and I needed the restroom asap, but at least I was alive. Better yet: We'd finally left the turbulence behind us! I quickly went to the dreaded airplane toilet and found out I'd spoken too soon. Before I could even flush the toilet, the plane went bobbing around like a mad balloon again.

Another three hours went by. They felt as endless as this blog post, but with more opportunities to get bruises all over my body. I couldn't sit in my seat anymore. My first looks of Africa had been a disappointment, as the air above the continent was hazy and almost solid-looking. I was very grumpy by the time we finally landed in Johannesburg. Oh, and I got my period right then and there as the cherry on top. It didn't help either that all logic left us once we left the plane. Knackered, I didn't feel ready to claim my luggage and check it in again for the flight to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. I dragged my feet and came close to hysteria when I discovered that getting my luggage on the right plane meant going through customs, getting a South African visa that would only be used for 30 minutes, finding my luggage, finding the British Airways counter hidden away in a corner, checking my luggage in again and going through customs yet again. It was illogical and exhausting. I could only laugh about it as I dropped my tired body like a sack of potatoes in my window seat on the plane to Zimbabwe.


The plane ended up departing with a delay of almost an hour. But when we took off, the view was much better than it had been a few hours earlier. No turbulence, which was great too. I tried to see as much of the landscape as I could, but my eyes were burning; I'd been on the go for almost 24 hours and just wanted to sleep in a real bed. Time lost all its meaning. When I spotted the Victoria Falls airport from afar, I almost couldn't believe that I'd reached my destination. The plane landed, skidded and bumped towards the terminal. Dead on my feet, I struggled through immigration and got on the truck that would be my home for the next three weeks. Everything around me was new and unknown. Every tree was interesting, every bush fascinating. As I sat back in my chair, exhaustion and happiness washed over me. It had taken me 24 hours. I'd woken up in my Dutch hometown and one bus, two subway trains, a train and three planes later I was finally here in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. My African adventure could begin.