The First Visit Ever to Victoria Falls

Today we picked up 25 children at the community centre, in the Book Bus and took them on a field trip of their lifetime. These children live 10 KM from Victoria Falls but most have never seen it.At the city center there are cars and concrete buildings. But the further you go away from the center, the fewer cars you see and the houses make way for huts. Some places seem to hang together of poles and pieces of plastic. Garbage bags make roofs. Feed bags make walls. Everything is red dust and even this gets swept in the morning. The houses don’t have any running water. The children who live here have probably never been to the city center, a 20 minute walk away. 

As the bus reached the pavement of the main road, a cheer went up. Many had never been that far from home or ever left their area. They had showed up in their Sunday best clothes and in shoes. None of the other children wore shoes so this was a special occasion. However, as Kelly told us, the choices here are to buy either used clothes from Europe (which are shipped here as donated clothes from African children, but they have to buy them), or Chinese stuff which doesn’t last long. Most kids have used things, and I don’t think I saw one pair of whole shoes. A teacher wore two different kind of flip-flops; one kid had a broken flipflop which had been fixed with wire underneath but kept breaking. Some kids walked all day on shoes that didn't fit and came off with every step… But they were clean, and proud.

They sang loudly and grinned as they received a bottle of water and a package of biscuits.

When we reached the Fall (our non-resident entrance ticket cost more than all of the local children combined!) we walked down the path to see different parts of the falls. Not much water in it this time of year. During the rainy season the Falls are over 1.5 KM wide and thundering. Their Zambian name is much nicer than 'Victoria' falls: Mosi-oa-Tunya meaning thundering clouds. But even now there were impressive parts, with rainbows in the spray and green puddles at the deep, deep bottom.

The children clung to our hands, sometimes I had three kids hanging on to my arms because they were scared of the heights. They were so excited. If Kelly said “wait here,” they waited. No one ever misbehaved or strayed too far. They marveled at the Falls and loved walking across the bridge into Zimbabwe. We yelled “Goodbye Zambia, hello Zimbabwe!” as we crossed the dividing line and back. Then we ate ice cream, a rare treat for these kids. 

But the highlight of the day was when we found a clear pool of river water, left behind from when the river is higher. With a sandy bottom it made a perfect splashing pool. At first they cautiously tiptoed in the cool water, splashing their hands and faces. But when Kelly said it was OK, they stripped off their shirts and dove in - many with clothes and all. These children have no running water at home and to see them enjoy this pool was pure joy. With huge wide grins on their faces, they jumped and thrashed and rolled in the water. We wrung out shirts and they flapped dry in the wind as we walked on. To see these kids frolic in the water is something I won’t easily forget: it was happiness personified.

When we arrived, the kids spotted a zebra and apparently a giraffe - I didn’t see the giraffe. But there were tons of baboons, many with babies. And, knowing they might steal things from the bus, we lashed it securely closed before we left. But even so, with one of us still on the bus, one baboon snuck in quietly behind us and took off with a bag full of biscuits… the monkey! The kids thought it was hilarious.

On the way home the children sang loudly, making people along the road laugh and wave. They sang a song something like this: “I am so happy today, because…” and then they took turns filling in the blanks: “.. because I had ice cream, because I saw Victoria Falls, because I swam in water, and… because the baboons stole the biscuits!” 

They laughed so hard!

When we get back, they climb off the bus hugging close the water bottle and biscuits we gave them. Most kids didn’t eat them. Take bring them home to share with their family.