Welcome to Zambia

Our 4^th country on this overland trip is Zambia, and once again, it is worth sharing a few factoids about this country to put things in better context and to educate myself (and you, if needed) a little about this corner of the world.

• As you can see in the map above, Zambia is a land-locked country bordering Namibia, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique (and it touches Botswana too) located between the latitudes 8-18 degrees south, which in terms of distance from the equator is the southern hemisphere equivalent to, say, Columbia and Venezuela in the northern hemisphere.
• Roughly the same size as Texas.
• Roughly 20 million people, compared to ~332 million in the U.S..
• 7 official languages, including Bemba, Nyanja, Lozi, Tonga, Luvale, Lunda, and Kaonde, the latter three being languages of North-Western Province. English is the official language of government and is used for education, commerce, and law.
• Government is a democratic republic, which includes independent executive, legislative and judicial branches with a structure similar to the US, except that the legislature is unicameral and thus contains only a single national assembly. Since 1991 it has become a stable multi-party democracy.
• Official currency is the Kwacha, but many tourist places (e.g., hotels, lodges, etc.) accept US Dollars.
• The major export is copper in various forms, comprising roughly 75% of all exports, and a wide range of less important items include gold and other minerals, tobacco and, you guessed it, diamonds, similar to Zimbabwe.
• It is unclear what percentage of the population self-identifies as indigenous, but there some 73 self-recognized tribes.
• Zambia’s European colonization history is very similar to Zimbabwe’s. The indigenous Khoisan hunter-gatherers began to be displaced by Bantu peoples some two thousand years ago, and the influx of various Bantu peoples continued through the 19th century. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to sway influence over the region during the 16^th and 17^th centuries but never assumed any real colonial control over what was then the Mutapa Kingdom. Eventually, the British arrived in 1855 in the form of English explorer David Livingstone, who encountered the spectacular Mosi-O-Tunya falls on the Zambezi River, and called them ‘Victoria Falls’. Subsequently, in the 1880s and 1890s, British companies, specifically the British South Africa Company, began mineral extraction and eventually consolidated the territory into what they called “Northern Rhodesia”, which became a British protectorate in 1924 when the company charter expired. Northern Rhodesia was forced into a federation with Southern Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (today’s Malawi) in 1953, but this sparked protests and independence movements, particularly in Northern Rhodesia. The federation was dissolved at the end of 1963 and independence activist Kenneth Kaunda became the president of the new independent Republic of Zambia in 1964.
• Did you know that Zambia has termite hills the size of a house – awesome!
• Did you know that more than 70 languages are spoken in Zambia – wow!
• Nshima is a traditional Zambian dish made by pouring maize (corn) flour into hot water, and it is eaten pretty much every day and with everything, but only with your hands if you want to fit in with the locals – no cutlery please!
• Has ~41% of its total land area devoted to national parks, reserves and wildlife management areas – amazing accomplishment and the highest in all of Africa!