I got Lucky in Zambia

Traveling to Zambia was difficult. The boarder crossing in and of itself was a time laden – expensive - dusty - baboon filled (that’s another story) - waiting - passport stamping event. The roads in Zambia were atrocious. Potholes half the size of our car dotted the road and were difficult to see in the dusky conditions. Jessica had a touch of food poisoning so wasn’t feeling well. People lined the streets walking to somewhere, or maybe it was from somewhere – it’s kind of hard to tell the difference. There were more people walking along this Zambia thoroughfare than I saw at the local Mardi gras parade when we lived in Louisiana. There were animals and children running all over the place. So traveling in the dusky (and dusty) conditions, weaving through the pothole slalom while dodging people, animals and children, well, let’s just say it was a white knuckle, hold – your - breath kind of a trip.

It was a very difficult day of traveling. As we were going through ramshackled check points, dodging people, navigating through all of the red tape and pot holes, one of us would make a comment followed by “knock on wood.” The problem was we didn’t have any wood to knock on in our white VW Polo so we made make-shift wooden knocks on the closest thing we could find like my journal since it was made from wood pulp. This would make us laugh and restore the mood in the car. It’s the little things that can change a mood, isn’t it?

The first day in Zambia I had an opportunity to visit a craft market while visiting Victoria Falls. I spoke with a talented carver named James. He was so proud of the animals he could carve from the roots of trees, pods and branches, and he spoke to me with such respect. His grandfather was with him in his cramped tented shop and he would play music on some percussion instrument. I enjoyed the music and hearing about the details from James, so I ended up buying a carved giraffe from him for about $7 US dollars.

When we left Zambia we had to navigate back over broken roads, drive through hordes of people and animals walking on the roadway again. Then Jessica said something followed by “knock on wood.” The frantic and joyful searching began for something close to wood when I remembered I had the giraffe I bought from James the previous day. I unwrapped the giraffe, and both Jessica and Kent knocked on him. We had a wonder trip back through Zambia, and an easy time passing all of the check points and boarder crossing. We all three decided then and there that it was our lucky chunk of wood we now had in the car, so we named the giraffe Lucky.

And that’s the story of how I got Lucky in Zambia.