A LIFE IN THE AFRICAN WILDERNESS

As a young man I found myself working in a remote wilderness region in central Africa. The terrain - river, swamp and sandy soil - sheltered a wide variety of plants and trees. I recognized Phoenix reclinata, or wild date palms, with their bunches of date fruits dangling from the crown of the tree, growing in profusion near the river, and Egyptian papyrus grew densely along the riverbanks. There were large stands of fever trees tinged a greenish-yellow, Acacia xanthophloea, growing on low-lying terrain at seasonal swampy areas. Where they grew, fever - that is, malaria - was endemic, thus their name. There were many deep-rooted camel thorns, Acacia erioloba, the darkest of all the acacias, with their very noticeable seed pods. The umbrella thorn, Acacia tortilis, that most noble and iconic of the acacias, was ubiquitous, as was the baobab tree, Adansonia digitata, with its upside-down appearance, and its multiplicity of uses - including, at Katima Mulilo, the nearest shopping town, a lavatory outhouse built within the living tree during the second world war, and still to be seen. (The journey by four-wheel drive to Katima Mulilo and back, allowing for the time spent shopping in town, took almost the entire day). Jackal berry trees, the Diospyros mespiliformis, a large, noble tree, with a very hard wood (they were sometimes known as the African ebony tree) were scattered across the landscape, and I was to see stands of several jackal berry trees growing atop the giant termite mounds that dotted the terrain. Leadwood, the Combretum imberbe, another hardwood tree, was also common. This tree provided a much sought-after firewood, and a campfire that is meant to burn all night should be made up of leadwood timber, for the wood burns very slowly, with an intense heat. Mopane, Colophospermum mopane, with its beautiful, autumnal-tinted leaves, favouring light, clayey soil, formed a major part of the woodland, along with Combretum, or bushwillow. These were the most common ground cover in the terrain. Each of these many species has its uses for man and beast both. (Almost all the acacia species bear highly nutritious seed pods of varying sizes and shapes).

The bird life was superb. On and near the river there were a variety of kingfisher species, including the lovely little malachite kingfisher, the impressive giant kingfisher, the black and white pied kingfisher, the delightful dwarf kingfisher, and, in the bush itself, the woodland kingfisher, with its beautiful turquoise plumage. Almost the very first bird I spotted was the paradise flycatcher, with its impressive pennant-like tail. There were white fronted bee eaters and carmine bee eaters nesting in communities of small holes hollowed out in the earthen cliff-faces at the bends of the river. These brightly decorated birds were a spectacular sight when you drew up quietly in one of the boats, then clapped your hands loudly, or revved the engine, and they flew en masse from their nesting holes, a palette of colour in motion. There were herons of every description, including the Goliath heron; there were African jacanas, such dainty lily-trotters, on their extraordinarily long-toed feet. Pygmy geese, so cute and comical, were also found on the water. There were hornbills, both grey hornbills and yellow-billed hornbills, who made such a drama of coming in to landing in the trees; there were splendid lilac breasted rollers, with their acrobatic flight. The grey louries - the “go away bird” - made a call like grizzling babies in the bush. There were coucals, which, though not members of the corvus family, reminded me of crows in their intelligence. They were brightly coloured and easy to tame. If you looked above you, you could often see, infinitely high in the sky, the silhouettes of vultures circling, and if you were fortunate enough to chance upon a kill, you could identify these huge bush scavengers as white-backed and lappet-faced vultures. The list of avian species ran into scores upon scores. But for me, the king of all these avian species was without doubt the African fish eagle, with his brown and white plumage. Their cry was iconic of the region, as they sat in the crown of a tall tree by the water’s edge, on the alert for their prey.

Of the animal life, the huge herds of elephants were the most spectacular. One afternoon, when there happened to be no guests staying at the game lodge, I went walking alone in the bush. This I often did, when I found I had a morning or afternoon free. On this afternoon, I spotted what at first I thought was merely a family group of elephants approaching, so I sat down beneath a trio of jackal berry trees atop a giant termite mound, my bare knees drawn up beneath my chin, alone in the bush but for the animals and birds around me, and what I had at first thought was a family group became (and the dust raised in the air should have alerted me) a column of elephants passing by, perhaps one hundred feet distant from me. The big mature bulls kept watch to either side of the column, and the column of elephants contained adults, adolescents and babies. I began counting the animals, but I lost count after three hundred elephants had already passed by, and the column of migrants had not yet come to an end.

I experienced something like an epiphany in that extended moment, living wholly in the present, all my senses attuned; my bare legs and arms conscious of the warm air, my nostrils alive to the spicy aroma of a sun-warmed Africa, my ears conscious of the background of multiple bird calls, and the deep rumblings I could hear from the elephants as they communicated with one another. Watching these great animals as they progressed on their bi-annual migration between Botswana and Zambia, crossing the East Caprivi on their way, I felt joy mingled with awe. I was conscious of a blessing having been bestowed upon me. The dust they raised in their passing hung golden in the air, illuminated by the late afternoon sun, already low in the sky. I think that in that endless moment in time I knew what that first Adam, in that first wild Garden, must have felt.

There were great herds of buffalo also, and I could walk past them, no great distance away, and they would raise their heavy-bossed heads and stare incuriously at me, just like cattle. I knew however to avoid the lone buffalo bulls, or the small groups of two or three bulls together. There were leopards hunting at night. (I sometimes heard their coughing, snarling growl as dawn was approaching, and I was waking up in my rondavel, knowing that I would shortly have to walk through the mopani and bushwillow to the main lodge building, to light the stove and prepare tea and coffee and rusks for our guests before setting off on a dawn game drive). Lions, however, only rarely crossed the river from its Botswana bank, but the river itself was home to many hippos, who came ashore at night to graze, and whom I had to evade before dawn every day, when I left my rondavel.

Out walking alone one day in the bush, I came across a pack of Cape hunting dogs, Lycaon Pictus (painted wolf): these were the first wild dogs sighted in the region since the war had ended, during which so many animal species had been slaughtered. When I returned to the lodge towards day's end, I made exact notes of the sighting in the game book - the location (as best I could ascertain) and the number of adults and pups I had counted - and the details were radioed the next day to the department of game conservation in the capital.

I drove old Land Rovers. The Series III was my favourite, although sometimes I drove a forward control, ex-SADF army Land Rover. The nearest town - Katima Mulilo, on the Zambezi River - was almost 100 miles away, along a road that was dirt for part of the way, and the nearest commercial airstrip was located at Katima Mulilo. The lodge, however, had its own small runway of rough grass and dirt, where light aircraft landed, bringing in guests. Often, these aircraft would have to buzz the runway first, to encourage herds of antelope and zebra - or sometimes, buffalo - to vacate it. I was to get to know some of the bush pilots, and once one of them allowed me to sit in the co-pilot’s seat and take the plane up from the dirt strip, and head west along the Caprivi strip for fifteen minutes, before circling and returning for a landing - which the pilot himself then took charge of. When my time in the bush was over, I returned to the capital in one of these tiny aircraft, and the pilot, a friend, allowed me to take the controls for almost the entire distance. However, as we were approaching the airstrip outside the capital city, he took over the controls again, and landed the aircraft himself.

Our guests were usually wealthy, educated, middle-aged couples from Britain, Europe, and North America. I took them out on a dawn drive very early every morning, an old army service Lee-Enfield .303 rifle in its rubber-padded brackets across the top of the Land Rover’s dashboard, the sun rising in a splendid, technicoloured sky which seemed to be catching fire by stages. In my short-sleeved bush shirt and short trousers, with open sandals on my bare feet, I could feel almost cool for a little while. The rest of the morning would be spent in routine maintenance tasks around the lodge, and in chatting with the young black man who assisted me. I had picked up some Lozi, the regional language, and he had some English. Then I would have my second shower of the day, changing into my second set of clean clothes. The only hot shower I took each day was the pre-dawn ablution, and I would shave also, by the light cast by a paraffin lamp (for there was no electricity at the lodge, except that from the diesel generator which ran during the later morning, primarily to power the radio-telephone, and again, during the second half of the afternoon). I began the day having dressed in an outfit of clean clothes. The man who did the laundry and ironing was busy all day long. The water for the row of rondavels would be heated from before dawn by a wood-burning furnace).

Between November – April, it was hot and humid, with the temperature in the lower 30s Centigrade. I perspired heavily in this weather, but my perspiration struggled to cool me. Between May – October, it would be cooler and drier, with the temperature somewhere in the upper 20s Centigrade, and the early mornings could feel almost chilly. After what was always an enormous lunch, with the white staff and guests seated together at one big table beneath the high thatched roof, the sides of the room open to the air, I would have a long nap in my rondavel, almost naked beneath the single sheet which covered me. It was only during the night that I let down the mosquito net over the bed.

In the afternoon, around about four o’clock, I took my guests on a river cruise in one of the boats, arriving back at the lodge as the sun was falling to the horizon, the sky turning scarlet and gold. Well into the tropics as we were, the sun fell almost vertically towards the horizon, and it fell so fast: one moment it was still daylight; the next, it was night. There was no dusk at all. As the sun was tumbling towards the rim of the earth, flooding the sky with bands of colour, from the palest lemon yellow to the fieriest crimson, there would be a frantic shrieking and gobbling, cawing, hooting, and calling, from birds and animals, and then the night sounds would take over.

When I saw a hippo pod ahead, while out on the river with guests in the fast ski-boat during the later afternoon, I would move the gear lever until we were holding stationary against the current, and then I would wait for seven to eight minutes, by which time each hippo in the pod had surfaced at least once, to breathe. Once I had fixed an image of their disposition in my mind’s eye, I would warn my guests to have their camcorders and cameras ready, and then I would ram the throttle forward, and get the boat up on the step, and speed through the pod. Then I would spin the boat round on the other side of the pod, and all the hippos would be roaring in our wake, their great gapes wide, their huge peg-like tusks visible. I called this “hippo slalom.”

Sometimes the boat’s propeller (or propellers, on the big twin-engined double-decker barge) would be fouled by river weed, and I would have to remove my shirt and go over the side, and use the serrated edge of my bush knife to hack away the weeds, coming up every now and then to gasp for air. There were crocodiles in this stretch of the Kwando, but not many. But only twenty miles downriver, at a neighbouring game lodge, a young ranger, celebrating his twenty-first birthday, went for a night swim in the Kwando, and disappeared. His remains were found a few days later, lodged between the roots of a tree on the riverbank, just beneath the water. He had been seized and partially eaten by a crocodile.

I looked after an English guest once, a man in his later middle age, who was visiting with his pretty young wife. He and I walked out into the bush one morning, after the dawn drive. I did not have the rifle with me - why, I cannot recall. The only weapons I carried were my bush knife, and the short, broad-bladed, locally made stabbing spear which I favoured when I was out walking alone. (In fact, I was accustomed to walking alone in the bush without a rifle). The Englishman wanted to get up close to buffalo, and I thought I knew where I could find an old bull, an mzee (Swahili, “old man”), and his two askaris (Swahili, “soldiers”), the younger bulls who kept him company. I found their spoor after a couple of miles’ walking, and the two of us followed their trail, and after a while, having come across some very fresh dung, I tested the air: there was the hint of a wind, and I left the spoor, to get well downwind of the buffalos, and the two of us swung out in a wide arc.

I found my guest his three buffalos. We had seen a massive termite mound some distance ahead, and I felt certain that the animals were close by the other side of it, and - still downwind of them - my guest and I crept closer, and leopard-crawled up to the crest of the termite mound. The three huge animals were there, only yards away from us, below the termite mound: there was a massive old bull, with a great heavy boss and double-curved horns that spanned almost four feet in breadth; he was so close that I could see the fat purple ticks gathered in the folds of skin at his throat, and behind his ears. His two younger companions stood watchfully alongside him. The Englishman and I lay silently, flat on our bellies just below the crest of the termite mound, peering over the top, and we gazed with wonder at those magnificent beasts. I had not allowed my guest to bring his camera - the click of the shutter would have spooked the buffalos, and possibly put the two of us in danger. So the older man and I simply gazed at the three buffalos for a long while, admiring, hardly breathing.

Walking back to the lodge, after a long silence, my guest remarked, “That beats deerstalking hands down. I’ll never forget this experience, Rob.”

And sometimes, as I lie sleeping in my bed, in a cold land in the far north of the world, I dream at night of the Africa I knew as a young man.