There have been plenty clouds around recently – this one, above, taken in Binga, above the water.
I love it when the clouds hang right overhead! This pic was taken just after Kariangwe driving through thick black mud. I’d have liked to remain for hours, but fresh rain on top of that black mud could have been a disaster.
Storm clouds mean everything to us – look at the lucky people where that storm is landing!
Frankie Kay Fotos 
It is a beautiful country, & I am doing my best to stay, having worked very hard on my property that was just a one house plot without surrounding fencing, cultivated gardens or a working well. Now it has all of those things including 3 extra houses that I built using unpredictable street labour. I am looking at an escape alternative though, just in case it all goes terribly wrong here. Hope it doesn’t.
Me too! We lost our home when we lost the farm, but have “made a plan.”
Lovely pictures! Thank you Frankie.
Thank you! Esp for the visit and comment
My husband and I lived at Lusulu in the early 1960s when he was working for Tsetse Control and we used to visit Binga from time to time where the van Jaarsvelds ran a trading store.
There was a Spanish mission at Kariangwe and we’d call in and have a chat to the priests.
The lake was still filling up and kapenta fish were still to be introduced.
There were no cattle there because of the tsetse flies.
Lusulu was a remote but fantastic place with several thermal springs and a herd of roan antelope and many other game species..
In the summer, when the pans were full of water, pigmy geese bred in them.
There is an extensive fossil forest close by. (See my prospecting blog!)
I believe there are plans to build a coal fired power station there !
Oh man! I wish Id read your prospecting blog before this trip! We are dying to find the hot spring. We have asked around before, but no one knew anything. Lusulu is still very lovely – the huge trees and the amazing views!
The hot spring at Binga used to have a swimming pool below it. Local Batonka women used to cook food such as green mealies in the spring itself.
There are several hot springs near Lusulu, plus quite a few ordinary ones.
At one, Tivuli spring, which was in an open area in the evenings guinea fowl would come down in their hundreds to drink and the whole surroundings were covered in their feathers.
Other springs would start flowing after winter frost had killed off the grass and other vegetation in the vleis.
This phenomenon was due to the fact that the live vegetation would use up the subsurface groundwater during evapotranspiration,a mechanism that ceased once the plants were dead and then the ground water would come to the surface.
It was strange to see springs starting to flow long after the rains were over and before the next rains were due .
The Batonka tribespeople were still unsophisticated and followed their traditional ways, with the women topless and hair coloured red.
They filed their teeth into points and had pierced noses in which they wore ornamental sticks. One of our clerks used to keep his ballpoint pen threaded in his nose when he wasn’t writing. The Batonka regularly smoked marijuana and inhaled the smoke through a clay pipe which was mounted on a gourd full of water. These pipes were often quite decorative , with beads and carvings. Your posts of Binga and the surrounds have brought back many happy memories from the 1960s.
Thank you for that most informative comment – we actively looked for hot springs, but no one seemed to know about them. Im in contact with the pastor for that area, and Ill ask him to find out during his wonderings. I know there is a normal spring very near to Lusulu, but the hot spring marked on the map isnt where its meant to be! Some of the people we came across on this trip are very traditional, keeping to the old ways. We saw a few old women breathing through their pipe, and begging, in Binga, not Lusulu. Many of the people who have been brought into the area are overflows from other places. Women we spoke to told us they came from Sipepa, Tsholotsho and Lupane. (Ndebele) Only a few came from the Zambezi
All the pictures are lovely but the third one down with the tree is truly magnificent.
That one is just past Kariangwe before we climbed the last escarpment
Cool selection there – better than my white or grey UK one
I thought you guys were the experts on clouds!
No ours as flat – every now and again we get something that looks interesting 🙂