Victoria Falls

People lived along this stretch of the Zambezi long before the falls were known abroad; the Tonga, Nambya, Leya and Lozi peoples of the region called the waterfall Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders, and the surrounding basalt country carries both settlement sites and sacred places. In November 1855 David Livingstone, travelling downriver, became the first European recorded to see the falls and renamed them for Queen Victoria, and his account brought them to European attention.

The town itself began in 1901, when the possibility of using the falls for hydro-electric power was explored, and the railway made it. Cecil Rhodes's Cape-to-Cairo scheme pushed the line north from Bulawayo, the line reached the falls in 1904, and the steel arch bridge across the second gorge was completed the following year, deliberately sited where spray from the falls would drift over passing trains. A settlement grew at the railhead around a hotel and station serving visitors arriving by train, and the falls became one of the recognised sights of southern Africa in the early twentieth century.

Tourism has driven every phase since, and politics has repeatedly interrupted it. Travel fell away during the liberation war of the 1970s, when the border area was militarised, then grew strongly after independence in 1980. The economic crisis and hyperinflation of the 2000s emptied the lodges again, and the shift to the US dollar after 2009 brought business back. The airport's runway and terminal were rebuilt in the 2010s to take larger aircraft, and the town has grown quickly around the tourist economy, with new suburbs spreading south towards the airport road.

Victoria Falls is a border town and a company town at once: its working life is tourism, and its people come from across Zimbabwe as well as from the Nambya, Tonga and Ndebele communities of the north-west. English is the working language, Ndebele and Shona are both widely heard, and staff in lodges and on boats routinely move between three or four languages in a day.

Craft is the visible local trade. Stone sculpture in serpentine, wood carvings of animals, basketwork and beadwork are made in the district and sold from stalls and roadside pitches, and bargaining is part of the transaction rather than a dispute. Guiding is the town's prestige profession: Zimbabwe's professional guide qualification is demanding and highly regarded, and a good guide's knowledge of the river, the birds and the bush is a point of local pride.

The falls themselves are treated as more than scenery by many residents. The river has long-standing spiritual associations in the region, and Nyami Nyami, the Zambezi river spirit of Tonga belief, is part of the valley's traditions downstream. The town's social life centres on churches, football and the bars and grills of Chinotimba rather than on the tourist strip, and the two sides of the town keep somewhat separate rhythms. The town has also staged the Vic Falls Carnival, which in December 2017 saw out the year with African stars including the South African DJ Black Coffee. Cross-border ties with Livingstone are close, with families, trade and work running both ways across the bridge.

About 35,000 people live in the town, most of them in Chinotimba and the newer residential areas towards the airport road rather than near the river. Almost every household depends on tourism directly or indirectly — lodges, restaurants, transport, guiding, rafting and cruise crews, craft selling, construction — which makes the town prosperous by Zimbabwean standards and acutely exposed to anything that stops visitors arriving.

The working day is shaped by activity schedules: early game drives and rafting departures, a quiet middle of the day in the heat, and cruises and dinners in the evening. Water and power supply have the same problems as elsewhere in the country, and lodges run generators and solar systems. Prices in the centre are set for international visitors and are far above what residents pay in Chinotimba, a gap that shapes where people shop and eat.

Wildlife is a constant presence. Elephants cross roads and gardens, buffalo graze on verges, warthogs wander the verges by day and baboons and vervet monkeys raid kitchens and bins, so houses and lodges are built and run with animals in mind and walking at night is avoided. The Zambian border is a normal part of life rather than an obstacle: people cross for work, school, shopping and family, and the bridge carries a steady flow of pedestrians, taxis and freight alongside the visitors who come to look down into the gorge.

Eating in the town divides between the visitor restaurants of the centre and the local grills and canteens of Chinotimba. The restaurants make a feature of farmed game — kudu, eland, warthog, crocodile and sometimes impala — grilled and served with vegetables or sadza, the thick maize porridge that is the national staple. Fish from the Zambezi, particularly bream, appears grilled or fried, and tigerfish is more often caught than eaten.

Local food is Zimbabwean home cooking. Sadza comes with a relish of muriwo, greens such as covo or pumpkin leaves cooked with tomato and onion and often peanut butter, or with beans, dried fish, or stewed beef, goat or chicken. Isitshwala, the Ndebele name for the same maize porridge, is heard here too, and amasi, thick soured milk, is a common accompaniment in this part of the country. Mopane worms, harvested in the woodlands of Matabeleland, are dried and fried with onion and tomato and sold in the markets in season.

Street food is simple: roasted maize cobs, maputi, puffed maize sold in bags, boiled groundnuts, seasonal mangoes and bananas. Drinks run from bottled lagers and Chibuku, the opaque sorghum-and-maize beer sold in cartons, to maheu, a non-alcoholic fermented maize drink, and Mazoe orange cordial. Sundowners on the river, with the spray column visible downstream, are the one ritual that the visitor and local halves of the town share.