Sunday 7 June

After much charming and asking around following my vow to go fishing on the beautiful Zambezi River, today it finally happened!

A friend of Matt’s, Owen (that being his English name, rather than his Slozi name which is something that has slipped my mind but is saved on the notes on my phone which is now smashed) delivers the mud to us each day for house building, and also indulges in fishing every weekend. Not only this, but he has a reputation of being pretty damn good at it too! He kindly obliged to take me out on the river to help me catch my dinner.

I met with he and a few of his friends at 11am (we had discussed 10am, but you know Africa) and we made our first stop back at Owen’s house to pick up their things.

In a big bowl on the floor outside, was the successful catch from that morning.

Now I wish I wish I wish I could remember the names of these fish, but again this is noted on my phone, which is as previously mentioned is now smashed and the information is inaccessible… I will update as soon as I can!

We carried a couple of these small fish, and the fishing rods, over to where Owen was keeping his boat- a dugout canoe, the traditional boat of these parts.

As one began preparing the bait

Owen proceeded to scoop water and leaves from his boat…

“This happens a lot”, he explained “It’s not a very good boat… OK, let’s go!”

What a welcome!

Still, any nerves I may have had were quickly calmed after a few seconds of bobbing on the Zambezi. It’s a 360 view of total beauty!

So, we stopped the boat close to some reeds and remained there, for an hour or so, trying for some tasty Lion Fish. After about an hour, Owen switched from using an edible bait, to using a glimmer little object that reflected the sun and made big fish think it was a small fish. Unfortunately, that didn’t work either!

We decided we were due a break, so rowed over to a little island on the opposite side, which was technically Namibia! Here, the boys took a little swim, while I lost my flip flops!

We did have another crack at catching something after this, but in the end we just had to accept it. We weren’t going to catch a fish, we weren’t going to be attacked by a hippo and we weren’t going to be eaten by a crocodile! Sometimes in life, that’s just the way it is.

Of course, I did go back with a full story of how I’d caught the biggest fish this village has ever seen!!!!!! It’s just unfortunate a bird came and took it.

When we returned to land, we decided to repair the feeling of failure with another trip to the pub!

And a fine night it was!