River Of Monsters

The Zambezi River flows to the sea through some of the most spectacular bush country in Africa. The valley through which it flows is approximately fifty miles wide, and the river itself has a mean width of about a mile. It flows through a few gorges with rocky shale beds and deep dark fast moving water. Stretches of white water rapids occur in a number of stretches. They could be the delight of the rough river rafter as the thrill of shooting the massive rapids should be the best in the world.

The area in which I hunted stretched from the confluence of the Kafue River to where the Chongwe River joins the Zambezi. Boating upstream from the Kafue confluence, one reaches the Chirundu Bridge, and further upstream is a deep dark and dangerous gorge which will take you clear up to the Kariba dam. The water flows fast, and the sides of the gorge are high and steep with dark slippery rocks with a black oily looking river flowing through them. At every bend in the gorge there are large beds of pebbles that have washed out with the yearly floods before the Kariba Dam was built. Now they are washed when the dam sluices are opened, and when that happens they are under water for days at a time. The Gorge is a favorite fishing spot where the river Tiger fish can be caught as well as bottlenose and small mouthed bream. On occasion I have ventured into it in a motor boat and let down my fishing lines.

Those pebble beds always attracted me because I would sit with my line in the water and while watching the float I would daydream and imagine that they were full of diamonds, but I never took the chance to get out of the boat to examine them as it took quite a while to reach the spot from my downriver camp, and only a few hours could be spent fishing, when the sun would pass the zenith, and the gorge started to get dark, then the lines needed to be reeled in and the journey undertaken to camp before it became totally dark along the river. This was necessary because of the numerous herds of the worst tempered hippos awaiting the unwary at almost every bend in the river, and we did not relish meeting any of them in the dark.

There was one pebble bed that I would have liked to explore, as it was big and almost level with the river, and one day as we were tied up to the bank opposite it, and the fish were on holiday somewhere far from where we were, I made way straight towards it and pushed the nose of the boat onto the shale. My companion who was the son of a local chief saw me moving towards the nose of the boat ready to jump out onto the pebble beach and shouted at me in an almost high pitched scream.

"What are you doing? You cannot get out here!" he shouted at me. "You are putting your life in great danger."

"What are you talking about?" I shouted back at him, restraining myself from taking the jump. His words of caution were always well worth listening to.

"Firstly, those stones are loose, and you cannot run on them, and secondly there are monsters in these water just waiting for someone stupid enough to come along and jump onto the pebbles, when they will come out of the black water and grab you and pull you under to their foul lair before you can reach the side, and even if you do, you cannot climb the sheer walls of rock so that you will be well and truly caught in their trap.

"What monsters?" I retorted sarcastically, "There are not even fish here, let alone anything else! You are trying to frighten me."

"Hau Bwana!" He said, "The largest and most vicious Crocodiles live in this gorge, not to talk of the massive snakes that can drown an elephant if it ventures into the water, and never mind the other scaly creatures that dwell in this evil spot. There are so many other good fishing holes along the river, and I don't know why you ever insist on coming here where only the Tokolosh and the weird witches and wizards are at home!"

Not wanting to upset him by phoo phooing his superstitions, I thought better of it and turned the boat for home while it was still quite early. Lo and behold as we rounded the next bend in the gorge a massive crocodile about five meters long from tip to tail and as wide as a barn door weighing roughly a ton stood up off the next shale bed and scrambled into the water with a mighty splash, causing such turbulence in the water that the boat slewed over the waves and it took all my skill to keep it on course. We were so close to the monster that I could see its yellowing teeth in rows in its jaws as it came hurtling past us. The scales on the animal were large and black and stood out so high off its hide that it seemed that it had on a suit of glistening armour, which indeed it did. Had it been slower or had we been faster and it caught us broadside on, then I am sure it would have sunk our boat as surely as if it were a torpedo.

When we got back to camp Edward disappeared, and about an hour later he reappeared with a wizened old man from the direction of the nearby village. The old man was tall but bent over and walked with the aid of a crooked staff, his legs looking as bent and knurled as the staff itself. Yet he walked almost as fast as any younger man would. His face was a maze of wrinkles, and the bones of his chest and shoulders stuck out as if he were in the last stages of starvation. He had a cap of snow white wooly hair that gave him a decidedly distinguished look. He had on a khaki shirt and a pair of khaki shorts that were clean and well pressed, with sandals made from motor car tyre. Over his shoulder he carried a sling bag in a material which looked like canvass but which was black with age.

"Bwana, this is my great grandfather, his name is Kaputula, which in the Soli language means short pants. I have asked him to come along and to tell you some of the true stories about this river and the creatures that inhabit it. He is over ninety years old, and could well be one hundred years, as his father was a child when Livingstone died here and was carried to the coast by his two servants. He has lived his life here on the river, and made his living catching fish and hunting game."

Always ready for a story, I pulled up a few camp stools to the fire and asked the old man to sit down, which he did. I went to the work table and collected three mugs and a bottle of Cape brandy. Pouring three generous slugs I handed each one a mug, and we proceeded to sip the amber fluid. Brandy is sipped neat in the bush, and slowly so that its aroma and warming properties could be appreciated.

The pot of hunter's stew was bubbling away next to the fire, and a fresh pot of maize meal porridge was standing ready for serving. I indicated to Edward to bring the bowls of water to wash our hands in, and he did so handing a bowl to the old man first as he was our guest and the eldest. Now this washing of hands before a meal is quite a ritual. The bowl of water is put before the person, and if he is an honored guest it must be warm but not too hot. He will then rinse his hands properly, and dry them on the small towel his host presents. The host then does the same and so on till all the hands are washed and dried. The water bowls are then cleared away and the large bowl of unsalted maize meal porridge is placed in the centre of the circle .This porridge is like a stiff but fluffy lump, which fills the large bowl to overflowing and is molded into a nice round mound. Another bowl with the salty meat stew is placed next to the maize porridge. Starting with the elder, each one takes a handful of maize meal, and it is squeezed into a small ball with a deep depression in the centre, then it is scooped into the stew and the depression is filled with the gravy and the lot popped into the mouth and consumed with loud smacking of the lips and nodding of the head. This is repeated till the person has had his fill. And then only will a piece of meat be taken out of the stew bowl and eaten. Thus it is indicated that the meal has been enjoyed, and it gives everyone the opportunity to eat some meat. While eating there is no time for talking, and when the dishes, only two of them, are cleared away, and everyone is full and relaxed, then the brandy is poured again and the story telling commences.

And so it was with old Kaputula. He sat down on his stool and took a piece of newspaper from his bag and tore off a sizeable piece which he put on his knee. Next he took out a blackened length of native tobacco and broke off a bit into his palm; he started to crush the tobacco into small bits and poured them into the newspaper, rolled it into a long cylinder and pinched off the ends. Picking a blazing twig out of the fire he lit the end of this cylinder inhaling deeply and blew out a cloud of foul smelling blue smoke. Blowing out the small flame at the end of his stogie he sat down and gave a deep sigh of contentment and waited for me to open the conversation.


Sitting on my stool I watched the sun descending in a big ball over the eastern escarpment creating hues of red pink and purple in the clouds, and a fiery red through the sickle thorn trees, with reflections of red and gold on the ripples of the great river.

"So you know this river very well, Kaputula?" I said quite lamely knowing that he had spent every day of his life on this river.

"Yes, I know it and I know every crocodile from here to the Chongwe personally. Edward tells me that you had a close call with one in the black gorge today?"

"A monster, he passed me by as if we were nothing. He was bigger than my father's Angus Bull. Scared me shitless."

"You must know that the crocodile is the cleverest of all the animals. He also has the best eyesight. He may be lying on the opposite bank of the river, and you will be walking on this side, but as soon as you show yourself he will see you and slide into the water. You think that the crocodile is sleeping, but do not fool yourself, he is watching for prey, and as soon as you walk towards the water's edge he will slide into the water, and you thinking that he is afraid of you and has gone to hide away, you unwittingly move closer to the water perhaps to take a refreshing drink, and as soon as you bend down to scoop a handful he slowly rises right in front of you and when you put your hand into the water for that refreshing drink, he shoots up at you like a bullet from your rifle, and grips you by the hand, his jaw shutting like a steel trap and his powerful forelegs dig in to the mud and propel him backwards into the deep water. As soon as he feels depth below him he goes into his death roll and spins you round and round so that you cannot catch a breath and within minutes you are dead from drowning. Then this monster drags you to his secret lair which is normally a hole in the bank under some grass overhang or perhaps under a fallen log. He then stows you into the lair and waits for your carcass to ripen so that when he grabs a bite the flesh comes away easily, because you see the crocodile cannot chew, and has to tear off pieces which he then swallows whole.

Although the crocodile is an opportunistic feeder, taking any prey that comes his way, he does have some preferences, for example if some men are swimming or wading across the river, and they have dogs with them in the water, the crocodile will always take the dogs first. They have been known to leave the water at night and walk right into the hunter's camp to catch the dogs lying at the fire, and rush back into the water with them. Also because the monster is so large and heavy he seems to be slow on the ground, his legs being short and thin compared to his broad and weighty body. Do not be mislead, that dragon can run much faster that any man, and will not hesitate to attack if he sees that you are helpless and he can drag you back to the water. The best escape then is to climb a tree. It is known that they will also walk many miles to deeper waterholes when the holes they are in begin to dry up and they cannot stalk their prey without being seen.

This river is full of crocodiles, and it has been known that they will attack the dugout canoes and toss the occupants into the water to take one or two at their leisure. That is why we always steer close to the bank so that if that happens we can scramble ashore without having to cross deep water.

We never take our dugout canoes into the gorge, those crocodiles are man eaters, and they will not stop at turning over the canoes just to get at the people inside. Since the white men started to hunt them all over the river here, they have taken refuge in the gorge, but there was a time that they terrorized the villages all down the river to as far as the Portuguese territory. There was a half caste Portuguese slave trader, a man named Pereira who used to catch slaves along the Zambezi and ferry them down to the islands off the Chongwe mouth and keep them there before shipping them to Beira and off to the lands that purchased them. Any weak or sick slaves his Machukunda guards would throw into the river for the crocodiles to devour. They became partial to human flesh, and even till this day the crocodiles on this stretch of the river are all dangerous to humans. The ones in the gorge are older than two hundred years, and had the taste of human flesh firsthand. You dare not even put your hand in the water without the danger of being taken by a crocodile

Not too long ago a woman from our village was doing her washing at the river when a croc grabbed her on the wrist. She had no husband but had a young son about eight years old, and if the crocodile took her she would have no one to take care of the child, so she fought the crocodile which was luckily not too large, but quite capable of pulling her into the river, and she started to scream loudly. The child sprang at the beast and bit him on the snout with all his might his sharp teeth sinking into the animal's flesh. Suddenly the monster let go, and splashed back into the river leaving the woman with just wounds to her arm."


Late into the night the old man told tales of the animals along the river, and we went to bed with my knowledge of crocodiles and the other dangerous game having been given an injection of sage good sense, and much more respect for the monsters of the river. As I lay on my bedroll my thoughts drifted to the many times in which I had taken horrendous chances, swimming and bathing in waters not knowing what lay beneath the surface, and with this new knowledge of the crocodile's feeding habits, I resolved that from now on I will become more aware of these dangers and would take proper safety precautions....