Episode summary:
I am at the very edge of the precipitous – and very loud – Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe in southern Africa. It is the world’s largest sheet of falling water and known in the local language as Mosi oa Tunya, or the ‘smoke that thunders’. So you might think it an odd location for a meditation session but there’s method in my madness.
If you want to know ‘what is the best month to go to Victoria Falls’, ‘is Victoria Falls the largest waterfall in the world’ or ‘what does Mosi oa Tunya mean’, this podcast episode could help.
Listen to a podcast about trying to meditate at the very edge of the precipitous – and very loud – Victoria Falls in southern Africa.
Transcript – S3 E9: Noisy meditation in Africa
This week we’re sitting possibly a little too close to the world’s largest sheet of falling water.
I am sitting on a small outcrop of rock a few metres from the rim of the precipitous Victoria Falls in southern Africa.
Here the Zambezi River is about halfway along its 2,574 km (or 1,599–mile) journey to the delta in Mozambique where it finally flows into the Indian Ocean. Some water has travelled from the river’s main source in northwest Zambia but that stream has been joined en route by the Luena and Chifumage tributaries which have flowed east from Angola.
The Zambezi here is wide and the falls’ combined width of 1,708 metres (or 5,604 ft) and their height of 108 metres (or 354 ft) result in the world’s largest sheet of falling water.
The flow changes depending on the season. Right now it’s late March and the falls are nearing peak flow, when the world’s largest sheet of falling water is really falling.
I am getting misted by spray blown off the rim as the breeze catches the curtain of water as it hurls itself into the void.
Noisiest meditation spot, ever!
I came out here to sit and meditate. The waiter at my hotel looked at me incredulously when I informed him of my plan at dinner last night. “But it’s so loud,” he said. “Aha,” I replied, “all part of my cunning plan.” This cunning plan was to channel the white noise of the falls to help me relax – a bit like popping on headphones on a flight and cranking up the volume on my rain noise app.
What I had not bargained for was the force of the falls and – as my waiter rightly predicted – the volume. It’s actually quite deafening sitting here. It’s not called Mosi oa Tunya – or the ‘smoke that thunders’ – for nothing.
It’s a long way beyond white noise and more like brown noise, which – I am reliably informed – is akin to waves crashing on a beach or a steady waterfall. I like white noise and I’m quite partial to brown noise once in a while too. I naively thought this might be somewhere between the two, so came out here to meditate, or at least have an hour of mindfulness.
I realise now how much I underestimated these mighty falls. Is there anything louder than brown noise? If not, there should be. Something like ‘fire-alarm-red noise’ or ‘deep purple noise’ to classify the loudest possible colour of all.
Not learning my lesson
I should have known it would be a bit wild up here because I still have two scratches on my right arm from a whitewater rafting adventure I took part in yesterday just over there, in one of the Zambezi’s gorges south of the Falls, on the Zimbabwean side.
It was touch and go whether our guide would give us the green light – such was the force of the river – but we did go and, at a particularly terrifying rapid nicknamed the Washing Machine, we were all hurled out of the raft and into the tempestuous river – guide and all. Thanks goodness we were wearing helmets as I smacked my head against a rock and then headbutted a friend in the shoulder. She responded by kicking me in the shin and scratching my arm trying to cling to me and we both ended up doggie-paddling desperately to get free of the current.
I am about to give up hope of meditating here and seek solace back at my lodge but then something wonderful happens. The sun breaks through the clouds and there in front of me in the mist from the Falls is a perfect rainbow, glistening in the spray with iridescent colours.
A beatific moment
As the spray intensifies and then reduces, the rainbow changes form – complete one second and segmented the next – but the colours remain vivid, much more so than in a rainbow in the sky.
It feels almost close enough to touch – just tantalisingly out of reach, a few feet beyond the edge of the rim.
I stand up and get dizzy and sit down again with a thump. Of all the places in the world to have a dizzy spell, this is probably the worst. I get up more slowly this time and make my way gingerly across the rocks to the safer ground of the riverbank.
I actually feel relaxed… more so than sounds natural having been in such an exhilarating place and on the edge of a surely lethal drop. Maybe I did meditate after all. I was certainly mindful. It’s pretty difficult to think of anything else when you’re sitting in the mist a few feet from the rim of the world’s largest sheet of falling water.
I was able – temporarily – to forget about the fractious state of the world, the sad decline of flora and fauna species and the destruction of my beloved rainforests.
Instead I focused on the rainbow at my fingertips and the deafening sound of nature all around me.
