Chishimba – a memory

here’s a little story about this photo –

it was taken in april 2009, just under ten years ago, when we were still living in zambia. the four of us had just spent a beautiful week on the shores of lake tanganyika and faced a 12-hour drive back to lusaka. i had my nintendo DS lite (in pink, obviously), loaded up with an animal crossing cartridge, so i was all set for the road, but we decided to stop about three hours in to do a little more sight-seeing before stopping in kasama for the night.

i did not want to look at waterfalls. i wanted to play video games until i inevitably got carsick and had to stare out of the window for a while.
but off we went, first to the main waterfalls where all the tourists were taking photos with the miniature rainbows that formed over the footpaths, then straying off to a monumental waterfall that no one seemed to have stopped to see. the setting sun glanced off its top, but the rest of it was in shadow, so no tiny rainbows here – only a wall of water flinging itself from a cliff to crash down into the river below.
dad, ever the adventurer, immediately clambered on top of the slippery rocks to feel the spray on his face wash away those hours in the car. he came back from the rock and pulled emma and i up next to him, one after the other, to stand soaked in the cool water. i stared and stared at the waterfall, trying to follow individual droplets and losing them after barely a second, feeling the mist on my skin and hearing the relentless thunder of it in my ears.
11-year-old me was in awe but blasée, having stood under similar waterfalls in similar parks, on similar drives home. 21-year-old me looks back on these photos and realises that my childhood was extraordinary; that these are the memories that are carved into my mind for life.
the next photo on that album is of me and dad looking back at mum behind the camera, arms spread out to catch more of that magic water, grinning like cheshire cats. i think somewhere in her big-little brain, 11-year-old me knew that it was pretty cool, too.

 

[I first posted this to my Instagram in June 2017 but have since deleted my account. I liked the memory and so decided to put this up here.]

 

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