Indeed life is unpredictable and very dynamic as it can suddenly change. Anything is possible and can happen in life. Four (4) months ago before the advent of the #COVID19 pandemic crisis, I would never have imagined that we in the management team of our tour operator business Lochinvar Safari would be the ones in the fore front undertaking tour guide services for our dear customers. With a “skeleton” staff now at our disposal with many still away on forced leave, we the office managers have now been given the rare opportunity of experiencing what we have been missing doing in a long time. Doing firsthand visits and experiences to some local interesting tourism sites with our guests. In short, we all have been forced out of our comfort zones, from behind our computer desktops to the bushes. I think this is for the better for all of us in the management team to get re-oriented once again to the basics of good hands-on tour business operations. This will enable us offer a better service in future to our customers once tourism business re-opens and returns back to normal.
Hosting such high profile people normally makes us in the operations department a bit apprehensive with anxiety. There is this fear that we mighty do something wrong unintentionally and reported to some high ranking government officials for reprisal. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, as business owner, I took it upon myself to handle this assignment from start to end. I crafted the most polite and professional email correspondences to his excellence the ambassador to inform him how most welcome his wife and himself were to visit the Lochinvar National Park. I went an extra mile to inform the local district fire officer and medical officer to be on standby just in case this dignitary accidently got burnt at a camp borne fire and must urgently be attended to. Others l informed of this visit of a diplomat are district police and security intelligence officers for the protection of this VIP. Still not to be outdone, I booked them a Presidential Suit at a nearby executive lodge in the nearest town of Monze. Hours before their arrival, I quickly dashed into town to buy glass bottled mineral water as opposed to plastic bottled mineral water. Guess what? If I had the means, I was even prepared to bring down the skies nearer to my guests as they had also expressed an interest to do stars watching at night, something very akin to me! Mind you, this is me an African doing everything within my means and power to impress a very important person (VIP) western diplomat.
In my absence, my special guests the ambassador and his wife arrived at the lodge they were booked in. The lodge receptionist called me on my mobile phone that my guests had arrived. Sweat started dropping from my arm pits. How could this be? From my calculation, I had anticipated a four and half hours’ drive for them from Lusaka to Monze. Well, here there were. Already arrived in Monze in three hours’ time of driving instead of the expected four hours drive. At a break neck speed, I arrived at the lodge in a twinkle of an eye. I surveyed the car park. There was no indication among the many cars parked of a special vehicle befitting one carrying His excellence the ambassador. All vehicles were simple ordinary vehicles in private number plates. Without wasting any time, I took two steps at a time to enter the reception area and immediately after entering the room, I quickly scanned the sitting area to see and meet my VIP. From my quick personal profiling, no one seated in the room fitted my imagination of how an ambassador should look like. I had expected a large flush ministerial type vehicle parked outside with detailed security presence all around guarding it. Inside I had expected to see a very important looking person with a body guard standing next to him. So I raced up and down in panic thinking my special guests could simply have decided to have returned to Lusaka seeing there was no one to welcome them. I went back to inquiry from the receptionist on duty on the whereabouts of my guests. The receptionist pointed to a surprising simple looking couple seated totally relaxed and their faces fully masked up who a minute ago I was standing next to them looking around for my guests. I was extremely baffled to see such humble looking people being the VIP guests I was expecting who I guessed where much younger than me in age. In Zambia, even the most junior government official even on a private visit in a rural place would usually throw their weight around and want recognition and so much personal attention. So you must understand my misplaced behavior to impress this VIP foreign dignitary couple.
I finally approached them with an apologetic but guilt smile that could have earned me an Oscar award. After a non-contact greeting procession, something very strange phenomenal for me. In Zambian, handshaking is a must do first greeting procedure when meeting someone for the first time. However, I fully understood this only bowing and nodding at each other greeting given the coronavirus circumstances we are were living in. I tendered my sincere apology for my late coming. They said it was fine and that I should not worry at all as they drove quite fast so as not to miss our appointed time of meeting. I then proceeded to offer them glass bottled mineral water, they politely turned down my glass bottled mineral water and pulled out their plastic bottled mineral water from the madam’s hand bag. You could see the shame on my face after having taken all the trouble driving into town to get them glass bottled water. I then lead them to see their room, a Presidential suit, at the far corner of the corridor. After surveying the room with all its beauty and comfort, the ambassador said it was a very good room to sleep in. As an afterthought and like lightening without warning, the madam commented that it was not really necessary for them to be booked in such a big comfortable air conditioned room. She said they could have settled for a camping tent in the quite bushes. I pretended I had not heard her comment. Instead l requested that we go outside to collect their luggage from their vehicle. After picking all their luggage, I offered to carry all of them myself to the room. To my surprise, they said it was fine as they would carry their own luggage to the room themselves. They requested me to wait for them in the reception area. This accorded me the opportunity to quickly assess my situation and decided to change down my “gear” of diplomacy from level 3 to 1. After all, these were just human beings wanting to be treated as ordinary visitors and not as VIPs and enjoy themselves in a quiet and peaceful environment, l reasoned.
We traveled to Lochinvar National Park and eventually arrived at Chunga lagoon at midday, home to thousands of different bird species. They were such an easy going couple I have ever come across and we had a lot to talk about on our one and half hours journey from Monze town to Lochinvar National Park. We left our game viewing vehicle under the watch of game guard. Under the escort of an armed game scout, a trainee tour guide, we all started off walking along the shores of Chunga lagoon of the Kafue River where we saw plenty birds, hippos and crocodiles. My guests carried all their cameras and binoculars and refused to be assisted in carrying their electronic gadgets. We covered a long distance walking and they both got carried away capturing on camera as many birds as possible before we realized it was getting dark. They were an extremely physically fit as they never at any time complained of being tired during the long walk. We arrived back in Monze quite late in the evening. They requested that they rest for at least two hours before starting our next special extra night activity of star watching at the nearest mountain within Monze town.
The star gazing excursion was all done by the borne fire was such a hilarious experience I must say. Whilst the madam and myself sat by the fire warming ourselves, the ambassador spinned around endlessly gazing up in the sky, pointing to as many stars as possible. He shouted out aloud, “look! there is the southern star cross, the lion, the rabbit”. Well, being their tour guide, I had to stand up every time he shouted to see what he was talking about. To be quite honest, I had to make a serious effort to see and understand what he was pointing at in the sky. Of course I saw the Southern Cross star arrangement, but for others such as a rabbit, lion stars arrangement, it was an exercise in futility for me. Nevertheless, I was impressed at his great interest in star gazing that got him standing for close to two hours non-stop. After such long hours of association and familiarity, I almost got tempted of calling him by his first name as l had enough of addressing him as your excellency the ambassador during the entire trip. It was beginning to choke me in my throat. Anyhow after three hours of star gazing, they decided to leave for their lodge to sleep. I together with the trainee tour guide went home to sleep as well. It was a day well spent though tiring for all of us.
The following second day was quite an interesting one for the entire team. We decided to spend the day in the countryside outside Monze town. We visited a local village in an area called St Marys (catholic is the most commonly practiced religion in this area, thus the name) for our guests to see how rural folks live and learn their culture. We visited at least two village homesteads. At one of the homestead, we found a relatively young looking man married to two women who were happily eating food together. This encounter amused the madam who questioned the young husband how he manages to live a peaceful life with two wives. This got the young man in a fist of laughter and said it was as easy as having just one wife and that he was managing the situation very easily. We saw a food security storage barn which was full with corn maize which is the staple food. We also visited the cattle kraal and found a herdsman milking the cattle. Before we knew, we were surrounded by a mob of children around the village looking at us in awe shouting “bakuuwa, bakuuwa, bakuuwa” meaning “white people”, white people”. Our guests simply waived at them smiling. When they attempted to take photos with the children, they scampered in all direction in fear of “bakuuwa”.
We drove back into town for lunch in readiness for our next visit later in the afternoon to the local African market called Hamusonde market. Before going to visit this African market, I had serious problems convincing myself whether it would be safe to take these VIP visitors to these noisy and uncoordinated market place. When I consulted with them, they said why not. So upon arriving at the market, I first went to report to the market chairman who was well known to me. He provided us with market security personnel who escorted us as we toured as many food stands without any disturbances from a curious crowd. They bought some traditional food stuff from excited women marketers who heaped some extras in their plastic bag. After a full two days safari tour, it was all done and dusted. Our trainee tour guide was given a heft tip whilst I was given a large sized pizza in appreciation of the excellent personalized tour guide service we had offered our VIP guests. We parted company happily and we have been in constant touch ever since then.