Livingstone in 1898 picture gallery (under construction!)
150 years ago this November, 2005, David Livingstone “discovered” the Victoria Falls. 100 years ago this year also, the town of Livingstone was founded by the British South Africa Company and moved from the Old Drift settlement on the shores of the Zambezi to its present site.
When I arrived at the Tongabezi Lodge in February 2005 to enjoy a long weekend (and write an article for the Sunday Telegraph) I took with me an old album of photographs I had found in a second-hand bookshop at Hay on Wye, the booktown in Herefordshire. I am not giving the shop a link here because they were not very friendly and refused to bargain with a poor writer over the ridiculous price they had put on the album. I had to buy it because my husband's grandfather, (Bill Cory from Milborne Port in Dorset) worked as a carpenter in the diamond mines of South Africa at the turn of the last century. We know very little of his life but he has always intrigued me. There are some wonderful photographs of the diamond mines in this album so I wanted it as a present for my husband. The album has sat on the shelf at home for a few years.
It was only as I was packing to go to Zambia that I remembered the album also contained some attractive old photos of the Victoria Falls and naturally I photocopied them to take with me. Funnily enough, my father-in-law had just died aged 94 and I had been searching among my things with Cory links for the talk I gave about him at his funeral. Dad often spoke about his own father and his travels in Africa (Bill Cory caulked Shackleton's ship The Discovery when it was at Simonstown Bay in South Africa) so it was rather fitting that I flew to Zambia the day after his funeral. It was only when I arrived that February afternoon at the Tongabezi Lodge that I realized the old photographs taken at the Victoria Falls are actually very special. The Bookshop in Hay was right to charge a fortune! The town of Livingstone is celebrating its centenary this year but these pictures are dated 1898. Strangely they even show the railway station at Victoria Falls (which officially according to the history books, opened in 1904. So much for official history!!). Everyone I showed the photographs to was astonished and intrigued. I promised to let so many people in Livingstone and at the Tongabezi have copies that the easiest thing seems to be to put them on the web.
So, Livingstone, Zambia - the attached picture gallery is for you. And for all my friends at the wonderful Tongabezi Lodge where I stayed in the Dog House (yes, I did! all the luxurious thatched houses have fun names) and also at the Sindabezi, the island in the middle of the Zambezi where I slept the night in a mud hut, not unlike the ones in the 1898 photos. And listened to hippos snuffling all night. If only I had a violin. If you do not understand the reference to the violin, have a careful look through the pictures. Above all, these pictures are for the children of the Tongabezi school. If anyone finding this web page would like to do something very constructive and direct for Africa, rather than attend pop concerts etc, why not send some books and funds to this wonderful school where every penny will go to educate and feed Zambia's biggest asset - its children....
