Holgate, team set to reach ‘Heart of Africa’

AS ADVENTURER and explorer Kingsley Holgate makes his way further north, ending this leg of his journey in Zambia, he told Cape Times’s sister paper The Star about his continued quest to make it to the Heart of Africa.

“Bloody tsetse flies! We’re under attack from the little bastards,” said Holgate while slapping is heard. “The tsetse war continues.”

He paused to reassess this. “Truth be told, tsetse flies are Africa’s best little conservationists. Without them, our parks would be filled with cattle and people.”

The team made their way through Kafue National Park towards the border northwest of Zambia.

“Three Landies in a row led by ‘Indhlovukazi’, the big 130 Defender, no boom or Ranger post, as we travel from the South and we cross an imaginary line in the bush where an old yellow brokendown sign tells us we have entered Kafue.

After coming across lion, leopard and hyena tracks, the group pushed on through the beautiful Miombo woodland and open Dambos to camp at Nazhila Pans.

Holgate and his team finally made it to forest area where the little spring of the Zambezi River begins in north-western Zambia, close to the country’s border.

They will be edging along Angola into the Democratic Republic of Congo and to the Heart of Africa in the Republic of Congo.

Holgate hopes to carry a symbolic Zulu calabash given to him at the Lesedi Cultural Village, filled with water taken from the Cradle of Humankind, and empty its contents on to the spot that “marks the beating heart of the continent”.