CHOMA

Choma is a market town in the Southern Province of Zambia, lying on the main road and railway about 285km / 177mi from Lusaka and 188km / 117mi from Livingstone. It is home to the Choma Museum and Crafts Centre, a small museum dedicated to the cultural heritage of the Tonga people of southern Zambia. The centre highlights jewellery, beadwork, weaponry, pottery and other artifacts. The Nkanga River Conservation Area lies nearby. This consists of crop and livestock farmland as well as a fenced game area.

The main road runs through the centre of Choma, with shops, a market, cafés, central post office, petrol stations, and branches of the major banks. There are a few small hotels and on the main road in and near the town, guesthouses in the suburbs and a couple of excellent spots on farms just outside of town.

About 5km / 3mi before Choma, as you approach from Lusaka, there’s a signpost on the road to Nkanga, 20km / 12km away. There you’ll find a conservation area that’s been set up across a number of farms. It protects plains game including sable, eland, puku, hartebeest, wildebeest, kudu, waterbuck (both the normal and Defassa sub-species), tssesebe and many other species. Other activities available include fishing for bream and barbel as well as birding.

Crops include maize, coffee and tobacco while both beef and dairy cattle, as well as sheep, are farmed here.
Much of Nkanga’s game, including sable and zebra, can be spotted in the immediate vicinity, where there are some good walks; game drives can also be arranged. The area is also one of Zambia’s important bird areas (IBA), with a total of 439 species noted here, including Zambia’s only endemic, Chaplin’s barbet.

The habitat comprises miombo woodland and riparian thicket along the Nkanga River, interspersed with dambos and open grassy plains. Barn swallows congregate around the hot springs during the first rains. Corn crakes and great snipes are summer migrants. Six species of francolin (or spurfowl) are found here. Occasional sightings include pallid harriers, lesser kestrels, slaty egrets, lesser flamingos, wattled cranes and black-winged pratincoles.