Day 9, 13 July 2012 (Friday), En route from Chipata to South Luangwa National Park, Zambia - "Well it was down in Louisiana, just about a mile from Texarcana in them old, cotton fields back home... " As you can see life passes in a stream of images and songs and over the last couple of days we've seen many fields of "White Gold". Cotton is a cash crop here and the locals love it - they are paid for the bales of cotton and also the cottonseed oil and, at the end of a crop the Zambian government provides free seeds for the next harvest. If it sounds like an idyllic agricultural life, let me be clear, that was not my intention. Poverty is ever present - poverty to our western eyes that is. Mobile phones are everywhere, but airtime is sold from shacks at the side of the road. Whilst there are many churches, schools and aid organisations, it seems many children are running barefoot in glass and rubbish strewn streets. In the most glaring generalisation that has occurred to me thus far, it's lucky African has wildlife and the Victoria Falls, because otherwise tourism would shrink from the many to the few; the few in whom the milk of human kindness flows strong. Truthfully, we don't know that we'd be amongst them.