I was picked up in a bus with eight other people: three elderly couples from S.Africa, UK and US and two women - one an elderly widow and the other middle-aged. Let's just say there was no question who was the youngest there. The Botswana border crossing is just 30km from Livingstone where I'm staying, and it was a beautiful drive with lush scenery on one of the smoothest roads I've ever been on in Africa (probably due to its use for shuffling tourists between the borders daily). As we approached the border crossing - which is a river - we passed nearly 200 hundred semis lined up on the sides of the road waiting to cross. And when I say semis, i mean double semis - think of a garbage truck with a semi attached, and some times two garbage trucks plus a semi all attached. Our driver explained that it usually takes 3 days between the time a trucker arrives and the time it his his turn to cross the river. If the ferries are broken, which is not uncommon, it can take up to a month. The trucks on the Botswana side heading into Zambia are mostly coming from S. Africa, and are making their way slowly up to places like the DRC, Malawi, Rwanda etc - it was overwhelming to think of how long this journey must take with all the borders. But much more overwhelming still was what I envisioned when I saw that row of trucks - bored, lonely truckers stuck for 3 days to a month with nothing to do...but sleep with sex workers on the border.
In public health, border crossings and major truck routes are known as "hot spots" for the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. To actually see it in action reinforced everything I learned in grad school. These truckers then return to their villages and spread these infections to their wives and girlfriends. Livingstone, where I am working, has a high HIV rate due to the convergence of the borders and tourism, a volatile whirlpool of poverty and opportunity. Kazungula, the border town we crossed through, is no exception.
Luckily, unlike the trucks in line, we were able to cross quickly after going through emigration. We bordered a small speed boat and crossed the mighty Zambezi river. This river crossing is actually fascinating: it is the point where the Chobe river joins the Zambezi river, and the one place in the world where four borders meet: Zambia to the north, Botswana to the south, Zimbabwe to the east and Namibia to the west.
The elderly man from UK could not understand why there wasn't a bridge built across the rivers. The boat driver explained that Zambia and Botswana had been in talks about this and were both interested. the problem was that Zimbabweans and Namibians also used this border crossing, but neither of those two countries were willing to put in any money for a bridge. Thus the countries were currently stuck at an impasse.
On the other side of the river, we went through Botswana's immigration before boarding another transport bus to Chobe Safari Lodge where we would board our first safari of the day - the Chobe River safari!
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