FIRST CARTOGRAPHER OF THE VICTORIA FALLS

By Ndubi Mvula

THE Tourist Capital Livingstone, has the undisputable status of being the “THE LEADER” of tourist destinations of choice in the country. To this effect, there are some unique features that make it claim that status as NDUBI MVULA shares in this week’s write in this Tourist Destinations piece focusing on an exception of this great explorer, the first Cartographer of the Victoria Falls.

BY now many of you are aware of one great Scottish missionary and explorer who traversed the continent of Africa mostly below the equator and spread the word of God in the country… Dr. David Livingstone it is.

His name today is still alive in that town of Livingstone, the only one still maintaining a foreign name in the country.

To mark the occasion and bring to light the importance of the explorer, in 2005, the Czech Republic and Austrian Republic in conjunction with the local authority through the Livingstone Events Organisation (LEO) unveiled the Statue, which can be seen today outside the Livingstone Museum.

The occasion was characterised by pomp and splendour, becoming an eye opener to many that did not or knew very little about this yet again great explorer who once lived amongst the local people of this Southern and Western parts of Zambia.

Then Southern Province Minister Mrs. Alice Simango pointed out that history was very important in daily human life hence the need to honour those that devoted their time for mankind as a way of appreciating them.

He visited Victoria Falls twice in 1875 and together with his newly wed wife ten years later.

This man is a Czech traveler Emil Holub whose statue was unveiled on Saturday for the first time in Livingstone for all to see, marvel and learn about his works while in Zambia.

“Even the greatest literary masters would certainly have fallen silent facing such majestic and ever-changing scenery. A Human being is totally incapable of describing Mother Nature where she performs with such a mighty as at the Victoria Falls – there, man just has to adore her!” wrote Emil Holub about the Victoria Falls.

However, during his first great African voyage in 1875 whose aim was to cross the Zambezi and travel to the Northwestern province (then Barotseland) and further on, preferably up to Luanda, Holub saw the visit to the Falls as an unwilling obstruction and time loss, but his famous trader George Westbeech resident in Pandamatenga persuaded Holub to join him and his friends in a trip there.

Although this was an unwanted trip, Holub truly fell in love with the falls and he spent all his time there busy working on study of the region and the falls itself.

The first published result of his work was a booklet he published in Grahamstown in 1879, the first such work on the Victoria Falls ever published. Holub’s other important work was the detailed map of the falls and the surrounding region, which he had drawn in 1875.

For unknown reasons, Holub did not mention the drawing of the map in his booklet and it was only in 1880 when professional re-drawing of it was published in both Czech and German editions of his first travelogue seven years in South Africa.

The English translation which appeared in London the following year was praised for Holub’s detailed accounts of the lands and the people of this part of Southern Africa, and became a standard reference work on the Zambezi region.

Emil Holub came to see the Victoria Falls already, 20 years after Dr. David Livingstone, but such a trip, although not into the unknown lands, was then still a real adventure.

Without George Westbeech who could be given the honorary title of the first guide to the Victoria Falls, neither Holub, nor the rising number of visitors could visit the falls.

Then Czech Ambassador Jaroslav Olsa Jr. who witnessed the occasion pointed out that in his write up that majority of the visitors to the waterfalls with Westbeech or his partners, or at least with his support and advise led to the increase in the number of visitors, so significantly in the mid of 1870s.

You might be wondering as to how it happened that some Czech from the Austro-Hungarian empire could get as far and as deep into the soon-to-be British domains in South Central Africa?

Olsa Jr. recounts that although the Austrian empire once in the 1770s tried to occupy parts of today’s Mozambique (and Austrian marines even shortly succeeded to push off the Portuguese from Delagoa Bay), the empire itself had no interest and also not strength enough to take part in colonial ventures anywhere in the world.

It had Consuls in South African ports and Sudan already in the 19th century, but it was Holub’s personal interest, which took him to Africa.

Born on October 4, 1847 in a lower middle-class family as a son of a physician in a small Bohemian town of Holice, the chance that Emil Holub would become an important explorer of Africa was close to none.

But then came the German edition of David Livingstone’s diaries into his hands, and his fate was determined. Since then, as he mentions in his memoirs, he was literally obsessed with Africa, the Zambezi and those unknown people living in the heart of the black continent.

With no tradition of studying Africa south of the Sahara neither in Bohemia nor in the whole Austro-Hungarian empire, he had no chance to find any significant support and he had to find his way to Africa by himself.

While following David Livingstone, studying medicine at Charles University, Prague, Holub became a part of a circle around Volta Naprstek, a man of many occupations, talents and ideas, one of the promoters of Czech national progress and supporters of Czech communities all over the world.

Naprstek befriended Holub and with his assistance, limited though it was, Holub could fulfill the first part of his dreams, to get to his beloved Africa.

At the age of 25, on May 18, 1872, Emil Holub set his foot on the African soil in South Africa with almost nothing except of his medical instruments and learned knowledge as he landed in Cape Town enroute to the interior where he hoped he could earn some money by practicing his medical profession.

Barely ten months upon his arrival in South Africa he set foot in his journey into the hinter bringing him up the then Barotseland where he met Litunga Sipopa who received him with pleasure and gave him his support.

All that Holub wanted was for Sipopa’s approval of him to travel deep into Barotseland, as the only European who got beyond Sesheke and its immediate surroundings before him was Dr. David Livingstone.

Sipopa was naturally more prepared to deal with traders and hunters and Holub was a man of difference, therefore it took Holub weeks of persuading to receive Litunga’s approval.

It is noted that Sipopa did not like Holub’s plan to go upstream the Zambezi as far as possible and later on travel towards Angola, and tried his best to change Holub’s mind but with no success.

He noted bad seasons and malaria but Holub seemed not to listen and after a tiring trip when he had to cross literally hundreds of rapids and after losing one of his boats with precious collections he contracted deadly form of malaria and had to return after getting close to the entrance to the Barotse plains.

The Lozis and Tongas were of Holub’s support but after entering the Ila territory and with the affection he had for them he wanted to get to their country and be the first European.

However, like always said in this column, get up and pack your bags and take some time to visit some rich tourist attractions dotted all over the country, in the same manner to the needful so that you have a full picture of Holub and his adventure.

Come to Livingstone, do get to the Museum, located where the Ministry of Tourism is and get to know the man behind the first Cartography of the Victoria Falls…Holub is there!!