Monday I took the 7:30 bus to Livingston, Zambia's tourist capital. I organized a joint business/pleasure trip for myself with marvelous results. This past week there was six day long national soccer tournament held in Livingston at the Dambwa Basic School. 24 teams from all over the country came to play and it was a huge success. This was like no other tournament I'd ever been to because all of the teams slept on the floor of the classrooms at Dambwa. The cooked in the courtyards and come to think of it, I have no idea where they bathed. But apart from playing soccer, I had set up a GRS program with one of my trainers, Ebby. We took the captains from each of the teams and trained them and it turned out great. GRS doesn't usually do tournaments, but because this one lasted for a week, there was enough time to run through the whole curriculum with the kids. I was impressed by how well organized things were run, even though, to the untrained eye the whole tourney might have appeared overly hectic.



All the kids and coaches from Lusaka, had gone down to Livingston on the train, which somehow takes 48 hours. It sounded hellish. I took the bus down and we made it in under six hours, albeit it's a more expensive mode of transport. I went down with my friend Marc who I'd met at the refugee camp. He's from Barcelona and moved down here because his wife is stationed here with Medicines Sin Fronteres. Marc's about to start a job as a government consultant but until New Year's he's just chilling. So we got it and booked a room at the backpacker's lodge, Faulty Towers. It was nice enough even though we soon found out there was an American all-girls teen tour also staying there. While Monday and Tuesday morning I had work to do, in the afternoon, we went to Victoria Falls. I also took Ebby.



The falls are truly awesome. They aren't even at full capacity and I was amazed. On the trip down I realized I have never been to Niagara Falls, so I have little to compare it to, but it didn't matter. It's one of the seven natural wonders of the world and we saw it from all sides except the part of the falls that lies in Zimbabwe. We hiked down to the where the water ends up after it drops. We did everything but take the helicopter ride. Actually, the area is a hot bed for extreme sports. There's bungee jumping, gorge swings, hang gliding, whitewater rafting.

Now's the best time of year to whitewater raft and Marc and I woke up early Wednesday morning for a full day of rapids. I've never really rafting before so 23 rapids with half of them being level 4 or 5 was no picnic. We flipped three times over the course of the day and each time I went overboard I thought I was going to die. The worst was getting thrown under the raft and scrambling to get out from underneath the boat while swallowing water. It instills a sense of panic that for me is not worth the adreneline rush. I survived though, exhausted and slightly disgruntled at the end of the day. Our guide Choongo just didn't do it for me. But after they fed us dinner back at camp, we saw a video of the trip and I was able to laugh at us flipping over and make light of what I thought only a few hours ago was near death.

While on the raft I got a little introspective when I saw that the company that made it was named ark. I was in the front of the boat and somehow was deemed the leader, so everyone was following my stroke; there was no time for slacking. The kid next to me was like, "Oh shit, this is Noah's Ark." I realized that perhaps my dislike for water has something to do with my namesake. I am not a great swimmer and I've never enjoyed being in the water that much, tumbling solo down rapids was no exception. But I love boats, and it all makes sense. I'm Noah; I'm supposed to be on water but not in the water. If I find myself in water that means symbolically somehow I've failed to save the world from the Great Flood. Or maybe that's reading too much into it. Regardless, Livingston was awesome.