A strange piece of Zaire (Congo), called the Pedicle, sticks down into the middle of Zambia. This odd-looking bit of land came about as a result of the Belgian owners of the Congo realizing before the British did that valuable copper and cobalt minerals lay buried there. During negotiations over the Congo/Zambia (Northern Rhodesia at the time) border they managed to pull a fast one so they had mining access to these valuable resources. As a result of this strange border quirk, when travelling between Northern Province and the industrialized Copperbelt area of Kitwe/Ndola, the shortest way was to cut across the Pedicle. Since the Luapula River (a tributary of the mighty Congo River) marks the boundary along one side of this anomaly, it required the use of a local ferry service to travel this route. Most of the traffic was by the locals, since Zambia was not a big tourist destination back...
By Car
by Bwana_Brown
When I first arrived in Zambia, I had just enough money from my last summer job in Canada to buy a used car. It turned out to be a smallish Peugeot 204 station wagon that served me quite well considering the lack of maintenance that I performed on it!One of its interesting features was that the key was only needed for it's doors. Once inside, you merely turned a knob to start the car! I am still amazed that I managed to keep it for two years without it being stolen! It was such a big problem in Zambia that people often took the rotor-arms out of the distributor cap overnight so the car could not be started. The larger Peugeot 404s were a really popular target because they were mainly used for taxis that were always in need of some cheap spare parts.I took this old beast to Luapula Province on two of my trips as well as to Malawi and Victoria Falls a few times. Here, I'm in Luapula...
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