Livingstone

The Falls have been known to the peoples of the middle Zambezi for far longer than the town: the Leya and Toka villages of the north bank, under the Mukuni and Sekute chieftaincies, lived by farming, fishing and the river crossing. The Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone reached the Falls in 1855, travelling downriver with Kololo companions, and named them for Queen Victoria; the Kololo name Mosi-oa-Tunya has remained in local use throughout.

A settlement grew at the Old Drift, a crossing point on the river above the Falls, in the 1890s, but the site was malarial and deadly. When the Cape-to-Cairo railway reached the gorge and the Victoria Falls Bridge opened in 1905, the town was moved to higher, healthier ground and laid out on its present grid, taking the explorer's name. Livingstone became the seat of colonial administration for Northern Rhodesia and remained the territory's capital until it was moved to Lusaka in 1935, leaving behind government buildings, a main street of shops with deep verandahs and a museum established in 1934.

Losing the capital left the town dependent on the railway, on light industry and on tourism. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century it has seen a resurgence in tourism and has become the usual base for visiting the Falls: lodges, activity operators and a rebuilt airport terminal turned it into Zambia's main tourist town. Growth since has been steady, though it tracks the fortunes of the river and of regional travel, and recent droughts, which have dropped the Zambezi to unusually low flows, are felt in the town as well as on the Falls.

Livingstone is a border town and a tourist town, and both show. Its permanent population is Tonga and Leya in origin, with Lozi, Nyanja and Bemba speakers who came with the railway and the civil service, and traders and workers from Zimbabwe, Botswana and further afield passing through. English is the working language, and a visitor will hear several Zambian languages within a single market.

The chieftaincies around the Falls remain important. Mukuni village, south-east of the town, is the seat of the Leya chief, and traditional authority governs land, ceremonies and much of the craft trade; the Falls themselves are regarded as a place of spiritual significance, and offerings and ceremonies are still made at the river. Carving, basketry and copper and stone work fill the craft markets along the road to the Falls, much of it made in the surrounding villages.

The town's social life runs on churches, football, bars along the main street and music at weekends, with Zambian rumba, gospel and contemporary pop on the speakers. Livingstone is more used to foreign visitors than anywhere else in the country, which makes it relaxed and also brisk: touts and guides work the Falls entrance, and prices for craft and services are negotiated as a matter of course, politely and without pressure.

About 180,000 people live in Livingstone, making it one of Zambia's larger towns and the main urban centre of the Southern Province's south-western corner. Most live in the townships and compounds north and east of the centre — Maramba, Dambwa, Linda and their neighbours — in low-rise housing served by markets, churches, schools and clinics, and travel into town by minibus.

Tourism is the town's distinguishing industry: lodges, hotels, tour and activity operators, guides, drivers, craft traders and the airport employ a large share of households, directly or indirectly. Beyond that, Livingstone lives from trade and transport on the routes into Zimbabwe and Botswana, from government offices, the hospital and colleges, from a little manufacturing, and from farming and cattle in the surrounding district.

The rhythm of the day starts early, before the heat: markets and the minibus ranks are busy by seven, offices close in the late afternoon and the streets empty soon after dark. National electricity load-shedding is felt here as elsewhere, with generators running at lodges and shops, and the drought years have hit farming and household water supplies in the district. Work in tourism is seasonal and often insecure, and the gap between the riverside lodges and the compounds is plain.

Everyday eating in Livingstone is Zambian and unfussy: nshima, the stiff white maize porridge, eaten by hand with a relish of beans, pumpkin or rape leaves cooked with groundnuts, okra, or a stew of beef, goat or village chicken. Bream and tigerfish come from the Zambezi, and dried kapenta from Lake Kariba is fried with tomato and onion into one of the commonest relishes in town.

Market food and street stalls make up much of the rest: roasted or boiled maize cobs, fritters, chips with fried fish, groundnuts sold in twists of paper, and sweet potatoes and cassava in season. Mangoes, bananas, guavas and papaya are sold from stands along the main street. Chikanda, the savoury loaf made from ground wild orchid tubers and peanuts, travels down from the north and turns up in markets here too.

Because the town lives on visitors, its restaurants range much wider than the national norm — grills, pizzas, Indian and South African dishes, and lodge kitchens along the river serving game meats such as kudu and warthog alongside river fish. To drink there is Mosi lager, named after the Falls, Chibuku sorghum beer in cartons, munkoyo, and strong sweet tea with bread at breakfast.