Oupa Grysbaard Vertel..

Mists of the Ituri Forests.

2009-03-19T05:35:00.000-07:00

We were lifting Potatoes when he came walking up to me as I was busy weighing the filled pockets. He was shorter than short; a shock of tight wooly curls on his head and his skin was so black that it had a purplish shine to it. He was stockily built with well muscled arms and legs. His most striking feature, though, was his smile. It was a smile full of pointed teeth as if they had all been filed to sharp points, and it gave his face the effect of a Halloween pumpkin.

Planting himself squarely before me he smiled his wide Halloween smile and said. “Jambo Bwana, My name is Jam, and I am looking for work. I may be smaller than other men, but I can work much harder than them.”

Lifting potatoes requires labor, so I engaged him immediately, and told him to fall into the line of pickers. He worked like a dynamo. Soon there was a stack of filled bags at his station, and he would move up to help the next person in line ahead of him.

My stepfather was driving the tractor powered potato lifter, and when he came level with Jam I could see him reel at Jam’s toothy smile. He said nothing, and kept on with the lifting. Jam worked and sang a song which only he could understand. He had spoken to me in Fanagalo, the lingua franca of black Africa, a language which had no defined origins, but believed by some to have sourced in the mines of South Africa, and spread all through southern Africa. When the vernacular was not understood by the Europeans, Fanagalo was spoken and the parties could communicate. His greeting of “Jambo Bwana,” was Swahili, the language of East and Central Equatorial Africa.

Jam worked like a demon, and throughout the two weeks we spent lifting the crop he was handy at every aspect of the job. I liked his friendly banter and his cheerful disposition. My stepfather did not. To him Jam looked like a cannibal, and he treated him with utmost suspicion. I had a room vacant in my backyard, and I allowed Jam to move in there. All he had in the way of belongings were a bedroll composed of three really threadbare blankets and an old feather pillow. He also had a cheap cardboard suitcase with a change of clothing and a wet bag which contained a piece of soap and a face cloth. A duiker skin bag which contained some bones and other paraphernalia of the witch doctor completed his outfit.

I needed a house boy, and when Jam told me that he had worked as a cook for a Safari company in Kenya, I immediately employed him to work in the house. We had cement floors, and they needed to be polished once every week. Jam would be on his hands and knees waxing and polishing the floors till you could see your reflection in them. He worked out a rhythm with the polish brush and the soft cloth as he progressed over the floor. My daughter was two years old, and would ride on his back while he polished, screeching with mirth. Jam would smile his toothy grin, and seemed to enjoy the game as much as she did. He spoiled her terribly, and as far as he was concerned Michelle could do no wrong. My parents were concerned that he was a cannibal, and unsafe with my young family, so one day I asked him, “Jam have you ever eaten human flesh?” “Ndio Bwana,“ was his affirmative reply, “I have, but that was when I was very young, and now the government has stopped that practice, and I have become a Christian so that it is no longer something I would want to do.” When I enquired as to which part of the human body was the tastiest he slapped the palms of his hands and said, “Here,” and taking me by the under part of the upper arm grinned his evil grin and stated, “This is the softest part.”

One day after Jam had been with me for about a year He came to me and asked me for leave of absence to go home to his village in the Congo. I enquired where his home was, and he said it was in the Ituri forests near the shore of Lake Tanganyika. He said that his mother was a Babenzela pygmy of the Mbuti peoples, but his father was a Bantu who lived at the edge of the Ituri forest. I asked him if there were Gorillas near his home, and he replied that they were his neighbors. This prickled my interest, and soon I was making plans to accompany him in my Land Rover. I had not had a break from the farm for about three years, and decided that a trip of this nature would be very therapeutic. The first thing I loaded was a forty four gallon drum of fuel for the Landy, and then two bags of maize meal and about fifty pounds of coarse salt. I had a wooden crate which housed my tinned food as well as my eating utensils. A sturdy suitcase held a few changes of clothes, a pair of extra velschoens and my toiletries. My rubber mattress was wrapped together with my two blankets and a sleeping bag into a small tarpaulin. This would serve as a ground sheet for my bed. A ten gallon cream can was filled with clean borehole water for drinking and cooking.

I purchased a range of gifts such as hand mirrors, combs, face cream, hair oil, glass beads, assorted cheap knives, four axes, a few hoes and two bow saws, and a few lengths of cloth for wrap around dresses. Then also some assorted pieces of clothing like shorts and shirts, Head scarves, belts and socks. Tobacco, sugar, matches, hard candy, snuff, Wilson’s toffees, and gob stoppers (Known colloquially as “Nigger balls”) completed the gifts.

I had a sizeable medical kit with bandages, gauze, iodine, aspirin, Quinine, burn ointment, zinc ointment and a large tin of zambuck herbal salve, including a big jar of petroleum jelly, a large bottle of castor oil, some Epsom salts and boracic crystals. A Fitzsimmons snake bite kit made up the complement of medicines. A case of forty eight quarter bottles of cheap brandy was loaded with four half bottles of gin. I also included two bottles of better brandy and a bottle of good scotch in case we had some discerning visitors.

After some contemplation I decided to take my Brno .22 hornet centre fire rifle, mainly because it had good hitting power, and the ammunition was easy to carry. I could bring down a kudu with it, and it was adequate for smaller game for the pot. It was put into a padded bag and sequestered behind the seat rests. A hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition seemed enough for the trip. I did not contemplate hunting earnestly.

We set off at four a.m. on Sunday. I had serviced the Land Rover which ran like a Swiss watch. The two tanks located beneath the seats, each holding ten gallons of fuel were full, and with a forty four gallon drum extra I reckoned we should go far before filling up again. Driving through the farmlands I skirted Lusaka and met the Great North Road at Mkushi, heading for Mpika and ultimately Abercorn at the tip of Lake Tanyanika. It was a three day trip to get there, and we passed through some really desolate countryside. The villages along the road were so poor that they did not even have fowls, and I spied one emaciated dog scavenging for scraps near our one camp. It seemed the villagers survived on porridge cooked from the cassava root, which was a glutinous mess that was most unappetizing. Fortunately we had enough food so that we could eat without having to barter for some of their Cassava.

Travelling along the Great North Road the country was devoid of all animal life. The forest along the sides of the road was composed mostly of tall miombo trees and dense scratchy undergrowth. Where the forest opened up the grass was tall and coarse. At dusk we selected a camp site and Jam soon gathered up a pile of firewood for the night while I broke out some provisions for supper. I placed my bedroll next to the back wheel of the Landy while jam nestled down close to the fire. With the dawn we would pack up and be on our way. The road was corrugated and dusty, and I tried everything to alleviate the dust barreling into the canvas tent of the vehicle and covering everything with affine layer layer. The best solution was to roll up all the sides of the canopy, but the dust still permeated everything and by the day’s end we were still covered in the stuff.

Late on the fourth day we came over a rise and there lay Abercorn ahead of us. We found a shady spot just outside of the town and made camp. I splashed some of our precious water into a basin and washed off as much dust as I could, and when the sun set we went to sleep. I was utterly exhausted and slept like the dead. When we awoke we made a leisurely breakfast and cleaned out and repacked the Land Rover, and headed out for the town. The first stop was at the filling station where we refilled the fuel containers and the water can. Then I went shopping to replenish some groceries before setting off for Lake Tanganyika.

The night was spent at the tip of the lake where the Northern Rhodesian authorities had a fishing camp at Kasaba Bay. It was a beautifully clear day that we awakened to, and the Lake sparkled in the early morning sun as we drove off around its tip heading north with the lake on our right hand side. We hugged the shoreline, sometimes using motor tracks, and at times single footpaths. There were many small settlements along the shore where fishermen launched their dugout canoes to go fishing using gill nets which they set at night and emptied in the morning. They would be back at about ten in the morning, and it was a chance to buy some delicious tilapia fish. This fish, gutted and cleaned and basted on the coals using some butter, which I carried in tins, was the most delicious I had ever tasted. The fishermen were friendly and cheerful, and sometimes would not even accept payment for a fish or two, so I traded them for tobacco and sugar.

I did not have a passport, so I stayed out of the towns and travelled on the minor paths. Jam knew the countryside, and spoke the language, so I had a ready interpreter, as well as a shrewd trader. The people were friendly and always smiling, and gave Jam all the relevant information as to the movements of officialdom. I had found a John Bull Printing kit which consisted of rubber letters and grooved wooden blocks and by inserting the letters any form of rubber stamp could be made. With three stamp pads in green, black and purple a letter could be filled with a variety of stamps making the document look very official. I also had a few letterheads with some very smart looking symbols, and with the use of my portable typewriter I had written a few letters asking the assistance of any officials to which they were presented. I had discovered that all Africans are suitably impressed by rubber stamps, and the more a letter carries the more impressed they are by it. I therefore carried a number in my bag, and had never found them not to work.

Our progress north up the lakeside was good, and each evening we made camp in a scenic spot. I enjoyed the lake scenery, putting out a fold up chair next to the fire, sipping a scotch while contemplating the waters of one of the great lakes of Africa. When Jam declared that we had reached the turnoff point I was very reluctant to leave the lake. How he knew where exactly we needed to turn away I cannot tell because all the tracks turning away from the lakeshore looked alike to me. But I bowed to his superior knowledge and followed his directions.

As we drew further away from the lake the road began to deteriorate, and soon the tracks became two ruts with massive potholes and the going slowed to a crawl. The track we were following ran in a north westerly direction, and we soon found ourselves in a vast grassy area. The grass was often as thick as my forefinger with creepers entwined around the stems. The grass had fallen over the road and the going was slowed even more.

“Bwana now is the time to take out the rifle, as there is much game here, and some fresh meat will be welcome. Also we are near to my father’s village, and if we can bring them some nyama (meat) they will be very pleased.” Jam rolled back the canvas from the windshield and stood on the seat with his head and shoulders above the screen while he surveyed the plain. I had clipped the rifle into the holding brackets against the dashboard, and soon he bobbed down and touched my shoulder. I stopped and climbed onto my seat and looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a small group of Topi not thirty yards off. Sighting over the screen I gave a fat cow a neck shot, and it collapsed in its tracks. Jam was off like a hare and ran straight to where the animal lay. He could not even see over the grass but he ran absolutely true.

We gutted the Topi, and loaded the carcass to be skinned out at our next campsite. The weather was hot, and I was afraid that it may spoil before we could cut biltong strips and cure the meat. Jam was not worried however, and when we reached an isolated patch of bush I insisted on putting up camp and cutting up the carcass. That night I hung out the strips of meat so that they could dry in the wind and form a hard film on their surface. The bony cuts Lam smoked over a slow fire. I hoped that we did not have too far to go, because that smoked meat was not very well done and I feared the stench it would create as the day became hotter.

Around mid morning I saw a flash of sun on a corrugated iron roof, and Jam announced that it was his father’s house. In The distance I also spied a line of dark green, and he said that it was the start of the Ituri Forests. I could scarcely contain my excitement. We rolled into the swept yard of the small group of buildings, some thatched rondavels (round buildings), with a brick built iron roofed house dominating. I could not help feeling that an iron roof was impractical in such pressing heat and the thatch so much cooler, but it was also the prestige that counted. Parking in the shade of a spreading hook thorn tree I got out stretching my legs, and Jam approached the house.

A tall spare man came to the door, and when he saw Jam he smiled broadly and held out his arms to welcome him. Jam clapped his hands respectfully and knelt on one knee. The man pulled him up by the elbow and pounded his back. His name was Mlambo, and he was Jam’s father. When he grinned at me I saw his rows of pointed teeth.

We made camp just outside the village under a few Camel Thorn trees, a nice shady spot, and while Jam cleared and swept the ground I stretched some wire and hung out the biltong. The meat Jam had smoked was carried into his father’s house. That evening the old man and his wives came and sat at our fire, bringing with them a large pot of Pombe, the local brew made from millet. I took a courteous sip, and passed on the pot. Afterwards I poured a shot of scotch and sat listening to their chatter. Now and again Jam translated for my sake, and I gathered the old man was asking if my rifle was strong enough to down a warthog. Jam gesticulated the slaying of the Topi, and assured the old man that in the morning we would find him a warthog and bring it home.

We set out at the crack of dawn, and about two miles from the village I saw a massive warthog boar standing watching us with tusks raised I aimed for the base of the neck and when the shot sounded the boar went down kicking up a cloud of dust and immediately got to its feet and ran off at top speed. Jam grabbed his spear and set off after it running like the wind. I followed in the Land Rover, and soon came up to where the pig had gone down. Jam was standing a few yards away and I could see that the pig was not quite dead yet, but was lying on his chest grunting furiously. I stopped and gave it another round high up on the head and it rolled over on its side. Jam ran up to the pig and slashed the neck just below the jaw severing the jugular vein and the pig bled out profusely.

We loaded the pig and headed back to camp using a circuitous route along a crystal clear fast running stream. We encountered a large Reedbuck ram, and it succumbed to a neck shot. This was a welcome find as I am very partial to Reedbuck meat. Back at camp I skinned the buck myself, and carefully cut a saddle for pot roasting. The rest was cut into biltong strips, and the bone cuts again went to the village. The warthog was presented to Mlambo, and he showed his pleasure by displaying his set of pointed teeth. I supposed pork tastes almost like human flesh, so that the pig was a good substitute, and must have reminded the old rascal of days gone by.

We stayed three more days at the village, and every night the feasting and dancing lasted well into the small hours of the morning. By the third day I had had enough of all the nightly racket and I told Jam the time had come for me to move on. We packed up the camp late the third day, and slept on the ground next to the Landy. With the dawn we were off heading for that unbroken line of green, the track becoming worse with the Land Rover swaying and crashing through the deep ruts. I was afraid of breaking a spring, so I took great care to negotiate the best path. Late that day we entered the forest and it was like going back in time to primeval days. Massive trees reached for the heavens with the canopy closing in over our heads. Dense undergrowth hemmed us in from both sides. The track became ill defined and the vehicle could scarcely proceed without being stopped by undergrowth and trees in its path. In places Jam needed to walk ahead to find a suitable route. We crossed a myriad of small streams where only a few logs served as a bridge.

Abruptly we came to a clearing next to a giant of the forest and I could see a number of crude huts dotted around. They were constructed of bent saplings and covered with broad leaves. There was no one to be seen, and Jam got down and started to call. Soon the Pygmies came back by ones and twos as they regained courage and curiosity. We had arrived in the Ituri Forests. It felt as if we had gone back in time to the dawn of creation. The forest was overwhelmingly big in every way with tall trees of huge girth sporting vines as thick as my arm, and the undergrowth was thick and almost impenetrable. Jam cleared a spot for us not far from the Pygmy village, and we set up camp. I sat on the campstool and waited, and soon some pygmies came shyly towards us. They were a bit smaller than Jam, but not as small as I had pictured them to be. The children came up to me when I offered them some sweets, and could not resist feeling my hair and touching my white skin. I noticed that their teeth were not cut into points and their smiles were sunny and cheerful. I instructed Jam to dole out some maize meal and coarse salt to them and hand them a pile of dried biltong.

The men had been told to look for signs of the gorillas as they hunted in the rainforest, and about nine the next morning a small cluster of them came to our camp and told us that a family group had been seen not far from where we were. We set off immediately, as the ground mist had started to lift, and I had to crouch and duck through all the undergrowth fairly running to keep pace with the Pygmies. Suddenly the leader stopped dead in his tracks and pointed forward with his spear. Crouching I moved forward and looked in the direction in which he was pointing. I could see nothing, just vegetation and the bole of a huge tree. He stood stock still pointing, and I sighted down the length of his spear. As my eyes focused I suddenly made out the bulk of a massive ape. He was sitting on his haunches eating the pith of what looked like a banana tree. He sat serenely like an elder at a meeting, while gazing fixedly at us. I had not seen him because I was intent on looking at least twenty yards further than where he actually was. The ape stood up on bent hind legs yawned wide, showing a dangerous set of teeth, and beat on his chest with cupped hands. Then he turned and sauntered off into the undergrowth turning his back on us. I could see the silver hair on his lower back, and his shoulders gave the impression of immense power. Carefully we stalked forward, and soon we spotted the rest of his family. They were in a shady glade sitting and grooming each other. We stopped just inside the dense bush and the pygmy leader motioned for us to sit down. Maintaining silence we watched the family sitting in the shade, and I marveled at their beauty. To me they were an attestation to the brilliance of our Creator’s ability. After about an hour the Patriarch got tired of our presence stood up on all fours, gazing at us he lifted his brow a few times as if to say, “Follow us if you dare,” grunted and led the group of into the jungle. I had seen a sight which very few people are privileged to behold.

Over the next few days we saw the group four more times, and then they disappeared further into the rainforest and we did not see them again. I was satisfied, the sightings I had enjoyed were sufficient. The old silverback was etched into my memory, and I will always cherish the encounter as one of the natural wonders I have had the fortune to experience.

On our way back to camp we also spotted an Okapi female standing broadside on before melting away into the forest. Jam had urged me to shoot it for meat but I refused feeling that it would be sacrilege to kill such a perfect animal. But later that day we drove back to the plain and I shot another warthog, and on the way back a big bushbuck ram.

The following day we broke camp, and after handing out some gifts, Knives for the men and cloth and beads for the women and sweets for the children, we headed back to Mlambo’s village where we spent a few hours. Jam presented him with a bag full of maize meal and I gave him some tinned meat and two packets of biscuits; then taking our leave we went off the way we had come. Before leaving the plain we saw a herd of about fifty Eland standing well within rifle range, but I refused to shoot at them with the low caliber rifle I had with us. I explained to Jam that we had achieved our objectives for this trip, and next time I may again come back to view the Virunga range of volcanoes and to see the Ruwenzori; the Mountains of the moon.

This time we travelled through the pedicle (that strip of the Congo which almost dissects Zambia) after crossing the Luapula River by ferry, and showing the guard at the barrier my “travel document,” he raised the boom and we were off to Mufulira and back home again. The road this time was tarred and we made quick time to the farm. I was just in time to start plowing for the coming maize crop. The trip into those dark damp forests will live in my memory forever. Jam stayed with us for another year, and then the restlessness overtook him and he left for fresher pastures. We never saw him again, and years later I heard that a skeleton had been found in the long grass next to the road leading from our farm into the native reserve, and the skull had pointed teeth. Jam had come to a tragic end. He was a good friend, but did not fit in with the local population. I will however remember him with fondness. His killer was never found.

An Unsung Hero

2009-02-23T06:38:00.000-08:00

Johnny Deintje was my father in law. At five foot eight inches he was
not a large man, but he was wiry with a pair of thick hairy arms and
well developed shoulders of a boxer, with thinner legs and a firm
muscled chest. I know that he considered me a softie when I started to
court his daughter. During World War two he had served in the navy on
a minesweeper, and I am sure he did not rise above able seaman,
because he took nonsense from no one. He was also the all services
middleweight boxing champ. I know because I saw his trophies; a whole
row of polished silver cups stretching the length of the mantelpiece.
His role model was Jack Dempsey, and he worked hard at emulating him.

One Saturday afternoon I pulled in to his home in the mining camp at Luanshya on the Copperbelt of Northern Rhodesia, and as I stepped out of the car he was coming out of the house on his way to the pub.
"Coming with to the pub for a few beers?"
He did not ask, rather it was a summons, so how could I refuse?
Opening the passenger side door he climbed into my Zephyr Zodiac and waved me to carry on to
the mine club bar. We arrived and I parked right in front of the bar entrance, got out from the car and walked through the door which sported a set
of batwings as if it was prepared for a cowboy movie. The interior was
dingy with a long wooden topped bar running the length of the room. At
one end there was a full size snooker table where some men were
playing a game of snooker, and at the other end was a dart board with
a game in progress. Low chairs and tables were lined up along the wall
in such a position that the occupants could watch both the snooker and
the dart games.
There was one spot open at the bar, and Johnny headed
straight for it and perched on the stool. I moved in next to him and
stood with one foot resting on the copper foot rail at the bar. Johnny
turned to the dude sitting on his right and whispered something in his
ear. He was a big miner with a square unshaven chin and a pair of
hands so large and rough that he could have used them to rip the rocks
from the tunnel face in the mine shaft. The miner leant forward over
the bar and glared at me as if I had some contagious disease. Johnny
turned to me and said, "I told him that if he did not pick up his ass
and move over to the tables by the dart board you would rip off his
leg and beat him over the head with it."
I had just opened my mouth to say something to Johnny
when the miner picked up his glass and walked round to confront me.
Somehow I knew I was in trouble, and I would have to fight my way out
of this one. I was not exactly ignorant of barroom brawls, having been
in a few of them myself; I was very fit as I worked on the farm and it
was all manual labor. I knew that I dare not let the miner take the
initiative as then I would be lost, and would sustain some real
damage. As he came level with me I swiveled on my heel and fetched him
a hard uppercut right to the point of the chin. It felt as though I
struck a piece of granite, and the man backpedalled and went down on
the seat of his pants. Before he could gather his wits I picked up his
wooden stool and swung it at his head. It glanced off his shoulder and
caught him right on the ear, and he fell flat on his back. When he
regained his composure he put his hands in the air and gestured at the
empty stool and got up walking to the empty table at the dartboard and
sat down nursing his bruised ear. Johnny looked at me under those
shaggy eyebrows. "What are you drinking?" he asked casually as if
nothing had happened.
We finished a few beers, and Johnny left the bar and headed
for the door. The miner got up from his seat and walked over to me.
"Sorry for the misunderstanding. I just wanted to tell you that you
were welcome to my seat. I know what Johnny is like, but I should have
known that anyone going for his daughter would be worse." With that he
took my hand and shook it in a farewell. "See you around." He said and
returned to his place at the bar.

Some months later I married his daughter, and he did not
object, but I really cannot say that I managed to become one of his
bosom buddies. He sort of just tolerated me, and about a year later
when I invited him for a visit to the farm near Lusaka I was quite
surprised when he accepted the invitation.

By that time he had moved south to South Africa and flew to Lusaka. I met him at the airport and after checking in his rifle we set off for the farm. I still had some work to complete before we left for the Luano Valley, and we had to spend two more days on the farm while I completed the planting of a potato crop. The afternoons were free, and we would set off into the bush just to get oriented and to see if we could find a Kudu or two. I did not like to shoot the kudu on the farm, and knew that there would be plenty game in the Luano and Luangwa hunting areas, but it was an opportunity for him to get some walking done in the bush in
preparation for the later trips. I was very fit, and I walked him till I could see that he was ready to drop. He did not complain, and doggedly matched me step for step and although he sacrificed stealth for speed we did not get a shot at the kudu we encountered. A large
bushpig boar was not so lucky, and fell to a shot from Johnny's 7x57Walther
Two days later we set off to pick up my neighbor Dirk Ferreira who would accompany us into the Luano Valley with his Wartime Willys Jeep. When we arrived he stated that the Jeep had broken down and that we would have to make the trip in one vehicle. I knew that we would be a bit of a crush in the short wheelbase Land Rover, and that we would not be able to shoot much game as we were almost overloaded as it was, and there would be little room for meat.

The trip down the mountain into the valley was rough and steep, in fact so steep that we could not take a trailer down with us as it would be impossible to bring it back up again. We came down that precipice and into the flat valley, and had not gone two miles when we
spotted a massive Kudu Bull standing about fifty yards to our left. Dirk had his rifle ready and jumped off the vehicle and stalked the animal. We heard his shot and the Kudu rose into the air and fell down stone dead.

We loaded the bull and set off for our campsite next to the Mwapula River, and on arriving and having set up our camp we skinned the buck and hung the quarters on the slaughter pole while we got the camp ready for about five days stay. Here I must tell you how the camp was organized.

It consisted of an open area beneath some large leafy trees with a tarpaulin stretched across two horizontal saplings tied fairly high up against two big tree trunks. At the back the tarpaulin was stretched to the ground with another sapling placed on the tarpaulin on the inside, and then it was taken forward to form a groundsheet. Our bedding was placed with the pillow up against the sapling so that our heads were up against the vertical part of the tarp with our feet
towards the fire burning just outside the groundsheet. The fire was built inside a ring of large flattish boulders with a fold out table next to it and three fold out chairs positioned around the fire. We had two cast iron three legged pots, one for porridge, stiff maize meal, and one for the hunter's stew which would consist of all thesucculent pieces cut from the carcasses of whatever we bagged. We had brought along some luxuries such as tinned peaches and tinned cream,
as well as condensed milk and a cooler box with some lamb chops and a string of Boerewors; that sausage sold by the yard. In this case it was made by Dirk who was an expert at its formula. Our drink in the bush was instant coffee as it was the most convenient, and for this
purpose we had a big enameled kettle which we filled with water and
set next to the fire to boil. If the Land Rover ran on gasoline, we ran on instant coffee, the horrible cheap variety. A sack of rusks completed the pantry so that we could dunk them in our early morning coffee in lieu of breakfast. I was designated as camp cook, and that first evening I
grilled the lamb chops and made up a tasty pot bread which I baked in the one cast iron pot. The method was to bake the bread on the coals, with some coals on the lid to give it an all over brown crust. The logs we used were Mopani, and they made the best red coals in the fire, so the pot bread came out beautifully. All three of us ate a full meal and we went to bed and slept like the dead. As the dawn broke the next morning we were up and Dirk and Johnny stripped all the parts that could rattle off the Land Rover. These included the doors, the windshield and the tailgate chains. I made a Thermos flask of coffee, and loaded a packet of rusks which we could dunk along the way. We set off as the eastern sky started to turn pink, and followed the river, going in a westerly direction. This would put the sun at our backs and we would be able to see better without being blinded. Sunrise is spectacularly beautiful in Africa and startlingly rapid so that soon the sun was blazing down with all its power.

Near the camp there was a resident herd of Roan Antelope
about sixteen strong. We were used to seeing them grazing at the edge
of a long dambo, and they were very tame, and as we neared them the
bull picked up his head and stared at us with his long ears cocked.
The face markings and the enormous ears reminded one of a clown in the
circus. We loved that herd and it would never have entered our minds
to shoot at them. At that time very few people knew about the valley,
but after a few years when others came into the valley the herd
disappeared altogether. A great pity! There were some people who could
just not pass any game without killing as many as possible.
There was a small herd of elephant in amongst some reeds,
and we gave them a wide berth, not wanting to disturb them, and
continued in a north westerly direction. In a stand of Miombo forest
on the side of a hill I noticed a big Kudu Bull browsing on some
bushes. Getting off the land Rover I stalked him behind a massive
Marula tree. A shot to the neck laid it low, and as I got up to it I
noticed it had only one horn. The other was broken off clean at the
base. We loaded the bull, and proceeded along the same path when we
came across the rest of the herd about a mile away. Johnny got out and
stalked the herd while we sat in the Landy waiting to hear his shot.
After what seemed an age a shot reverberated and we heard Johnny call.
I started the Landy and drove closer. Johnny was standing next to the
carcass of a big cow. He had given it a head shot. It was risky,
because the animal just has to turn its head for the bullet to miss
completely. When I mentioned it to him he just said that he did not
want the Kudu to suffer.
Moving back towards camp, Dirk shot a large common Reedbuck
ram, and then again two guinea fowl, which made welcome additions to
the Hunter's pot. On that first day of hunting we had as much as we
could carry home, and we spent the rest of that hunt just driving
around the valley and viewing the game. A small herd of buffalo about
sixteen animals strong grazed without even lifting their heads, and we
drove past without them taking fright. We had cut up the biltong
strips and had hung them out to dry and cure, and two leisurely days
in camp watching the birds and listening to the sounds gave us a good
rest before we needed to tackle the steep and rocky road out of the
valley.
Arriving back at the farm after we had dropped off Dirk we
started to get ready for the main event; the trip to Luangwa. Johnny
had fifteen days left before he had to get back, and Luangwa was the
final destination.
The valley through which the Luangwa River meanders runs
roughly in a north to south direction and is an extension of the Great
Rift Valley which runs down the backbone of Africa. On the west it is
bordered by the Machinga escarpment and the river forms a tributary of
the mighty Zambezi. The Luangwa is one of the four major rivers of
Zambia. Its two major tributaries are the Lukashashi and the Lunsemfwa
rivers. The Lunsemfwa is the river running through the Luano valley
into the Luangwa.
During the dry season when food in the escarpments becomes
scarce the game congregates in large numbers near the river where lush
grasslands supply fodder and cover for the vast herds. Most of the
bigger antelope species abound, but the Luangwa is known for its many
Elephant and Buffalo. Because the river meanders, and when the rains
arrive it is subjected to mighty floods. New channels are cut leaving
many oxbow lakes, the joy of Hippos and crocodiles and diverse species
of water birds.
On the banks of the river and of the oxbows tall leafy
trees grow supplying many shady spots where it is a delight to camp.
Lions are an everyday spectacle, and the other predators such as
leopard and hyena are seen and heard almost daily. The Valley is
filled with birdlife and some exotic species abound in vast numbers.
Thousands of Carmine Beeaters make their nests in the high clay banks
of the river, creating a dazzling sight all along its length. Egyptian
Geese fly overhead in groups emitting their hissing call, and big
Spurwing Geese strut around the sandbanks in pairs keeping a watchful
eye on hunters passing by.

I borrowed another Land Rover from a friend. It was almost
identical with mine, but ran on diesel and we found it to be much
slower, making only about 45 miles per hour at top speed. It was also
very underpowered and I had to hitch the trailer to my Landy. Tuesday
we packed early and set off along the Great East Road for Petauke the
jumping off spot for the Luangwa. It was a full day's drive, and when
we arrived at about nine in the evening the guest house was full and
we had to sleep in the bush. After making a temporary camp we had some
food which had been precooked, and fell into an exhausted sleep.

Before dawn broke we were on our way along the track
leading to our controlled hunting area at Kaoma. The motor track wound
along the base of the escarpment through stands of Miombo forest, and
when we started to notice the Mopani bush we knew we were in the
valley Mid morning brought us to within a few miles of the river, and
as if to tell us we were nearing our destination a big Roan Antelope
bull stood watching us as we drove past. Suddenly the river was before
us, and we knew we were in our hunting grounds. There was a nice stand
of riverine forest nearby, and we decided to pull in and make camp.
The river was about three hundred yards off and from our camp spot we
had a nice view of it. We had passed a village of about ten thatched
huts some distance before the river, and had picked up a tracker and a
guide there. Between the four of us we set up the camp and unpacked
the vehicles. I had seen some sign of Impalas in the Mopani, so Johnny
and I left the two helpers to collect firewood while we went off in
search of a nice Impala for the pot.
Johnny had his 7x57 Walther while I had taken my .222 Sako.
Johnny's rifle was a real beauty with a clip on Zeiss scope. He had
carried it in a walnut case that was polished to a high shine and
itself cased in a padded canvas sleeve. My rifle had seen better days,
but the Nicol scope was set in at one hundred yards and was deadly
accurate.

Ten minutes out of camp we spied a small herd of Impala,
but they were running when we saw them, and it seemed that they would
never stop. Johnny stepped off the Land Rover and started to follow
their spoor. I sat waiting for twenty minutes that seemed like ten
hours when I heard a shot off to my left, and almost immediately
another. Starting the vehicle I drove slowly in the direction of where
I reckoned the shot to have been, and soon I heard a shrill whistle. I
stopped and Johnny came sauntering out of the bush. He had shot a
lovely big Impala ram. Again he had gone for a head shot, and had
missed when the ram turned its head. Then he had taken it with a shot
high up on the shoulder, and the ram had dropped where it stood.
We had a late breakfast of Impala liver and kidneys with
scrambled eggs and toast, washing it down with strong hot coffee.
Johnny as always was not very conversant, and I had to stimulate the
conversation while he answered in monosyllables punctuated by the
occasional grunt. Then in the afternoon we each took a local man with
us and moved off in different directions with me driving along the
river upstream from the camp and Johnny going in the direction of the
Impala kill.

I drove along slowly, keeping the river to my right and
negotiating a number of gulleys and dongas. The floodplain was wide at
some places and there were many Puku grazing on the short grass. They
stood around singly or in small groups, and stared at us
inquisitively, reminding me of Reedbuck but with black tails, while
the reedbuck had a white powder puff tails. At one wide open space we
could see where the game descended to the river to drink, and when we
walked over to the place we could see fresh Buffalo spoor. They had
been at the river, a big herd, not two hours ago. The tracker said
that that were already on their way to where the lie up during the
heat of the day, but if we came back with a circuitous route the next
day we would be sure to encounter them. I wanted Johnny to be with
when we confronted the herd, as I would like him to shoot a nice bull.

Back at camp we found that Johnny had another kudu, and we
decided to call it a day and get an early night so as to be fresh for
the Buff hunt the next day. Johnny pulled out a bottle of Vat69 Scotch
whiskey, rough stuff but his favorite, and we each had a few pegs. I
grilled two beefsteaks and some lamb chops which we ate with baked
beans and tomato salad. Later we turned into our bedrolls and to the
serenade of a woodland owl I drifted off to sleep.

As dawn broke we were up and ate some rusks with coffee,
and I took up the .500 nitro express by Army and Navy which I had
borrowed from my friend Dick. It was a lovely weapon and had a kick
like a mule, but I knew that whatever I aimed at would go down. Johnny
only had his Walther which was a bit light for Buff, so I gave him my
9.3x62 Brno open sight rifle which I knew was as accurate as one could
want, and packed a good punch to boot. Within half an hour we were off
towards the drinking place, and soon arrived where the pathway to the
river started. When we arrived within sight of the river we could see
that the place was empty, and we walked down to the water's edge. The
ground was still wet where the herd had dripped water onto the loose
earth. We backtracked and found that they had turned off the path
parallel to the river. We mounted up again and drove on. Hardly two
miles farther and I sighted some white egrets diving towards the
ground, a sure indication of a buffalo herd. Johnny took up the 500,
and I took the Brno and we advanced on foot all along the edge of the
river. I could see egrets wheeling near the ground, and as we came
over a rise there was the herd not a hundred paces away. There were
about fifty animals with a number of cows with small calves.

Four old dagga boys grazed in a tight group nearer us,
about sixty paces away. There was no ground cover between us and the
four, and we decided that we should take a shot from where we were.
One of the four was a young bull in his prime with a fair spread of
horns, and I gestured for Johnny to take him, tapping my hand on my
shoulder to indicate where he should aim. Johnny sat down and resting
his elbow on his knee he sighted the rifle at the young bull while I
knelt with the Brno at the ready behind him. His shot took the young
bull on the shoulder and we could see the mud blow off him where the
bullet struck. He rolled right over and lay with his legs in the air
for a few moments then he rolled over and let out a mournful bellow.
The rest of the group ran for cover of the bush which was about two
hundred paces to our left, and they came past us at about fifteen
paces. As they passed, a young cow was broadside on and I shot her
just behind the shoulder. She staggered and ran on for about fifty
paces when she went down onto her chest and remained still. The others
carried on running and gained cover in the tree line.

The cow was very fat, and made the best biltong one could
wish to make. Because the bull was young, his meat would also be most
palatable. We spent the next two days cutting up the carcasses and
salting and hanging the biltong strips. The two helpers received all
the bony cuts, and busied themselves cutting and smoking the meat over
slow fires. Two Buffalo and a kudu was an awful lot of meat, and we
were exhausted by the time the last bit was hung out to dry. I had
purchased an elephant as well, and we started to prepare to take a
nice bull if we should come across one.

In the meantime we enjoyed the camp near the river. Johnny would go down for a swim and a bath on a
shallow sand bank in the river every afternoon while I stood guard
with the Brno. The Luangwa has more crocodiles per mile than any other
Zambian river including the Zambezi, and I preferred to take my bath
in a basin, but Johnny came through it unscathed. Maybe the crocs were
afraid to take a bite at him, I really cannot say.

We drove upstream next to the river, and as luck would have
it we spied a lone Elephant bull browsing on some trees across a deep
donga. Stopping the Land Rover I took up the .500 and Johnny the Brno,
and we stalked towards the donga. The donga was deep opposite the
place where the bull was standing, but it broadened out towards the
river. The bull was leisurely plucking branches and moving slowly
towards the river, and I surmised that he wanted to cross the stream
over to the other side The wind was in our favor, and we moved towards
the river to intercept him when he came into the flood plain. He was
totally unaware of our presence, and came onto the plain next to the
river not twenty paces from where we were concealed. I moved forward
with the double .500 at the ready. Johnny stayed about half a yard
behind me, ant stepped right into my footprints. Something alerted the
bull and he swung round presenting a broadside view. I would have
preferred to get a little closer, but being afraid that the wind had
shifted and within a second the bull would turn and run, I lifted the
heavy rifle and sighted right into his ear hole and pulled off the
shot. The bull's hind legs collapsed and he sat down hard and then
rolled over. I dropped the barrel, opened the breach, the spent
cartridge popped out over my left shoulder and I reloaded with a fresh
round. The bull gave a feeble kick and lay still. Johnny had not
moved, and stood with the Brno rifle at the ready. I walked over to
the elephant, and taking out my pocket knife I cut off the tail. The
heavy .500 bullet had entered the brain and the bull was dead.

Johnny drove the tracker back to the village to collect
some men to butcher the elephant carcass, and after cutting out the
tusks they commenced the job of cutting up the meat and carrying it
all back to the village. The job took them two full days. In the
meantime we packed up and left early for the long drive home.

When we got home I saw that Johnny had cut a cluster of
buffalo beans which he had put into a peanut butter bottle and placed
into his case. Later he told me that they had been confiscated at Jan
Smuts airport in South Africa. He had warned the officials not to open
the bottle, but I am sure their curiosity must have got the better of
them. It boggles the mind!

.An Emerald In The Desert

2009-01-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

From the air the Okavango Delta comes as a sudden surprise. The flight from Gaborone, capital city of Botswana, to Maun at the edge of the Okavango Delta is drab and monotonous being mostly Kalahari type countryside; dry and uninteresting with scattered native Kraals, the grass roofed huts surrounded by log palisades to keep out wild animals. The ground is crossed by myriads of footpaths made by people, cattle and wild game animals. Ripples of wind blown sand covered with sparse brown grass and the occasional stunted tree can be seen to go on for miles as the Piper Cherokee wings its way towards Maun, the launch point of our safari into the Okavango Delta.

I had met Paul in the hotel he owned in Lichtenburg in the far western Transvaal. I was in the area engaged in selling huge one way disc plows to the local farmers in the Western Transvaal which is one of the maize growing areas of South Africa. Paul also owned a company which sold tractors and implements, and I had done some demonstrations to the farmers using his tractors which were well suited to the plows I sold. The result was that we sold a number of units, and the week had been most successful. The manager of the tractor company and I were celebrating our success in the bar when Paul walked in and joined our conversation.

The discussion soon drifted to Paul's passion, hunting, and he was impressed by the fact that I had had extensive hunting experience in Central Africa. We talked about the various game animals, guns, calibers and hunting vehicles. The best hunting areas were debated and he asked me if I had ever hunted in Botswana. I told him that I had never hunted in Botswana, but I believed that it was as pristine as can be encountered anywhere in Africa. With that the gathering broke up and I went off to bed. The next day I departed for my base in Johannesburg.

It was a few days later that my boss called me into his office and told me that he had had a call from Paul who demanded that I accompany him on a two weeks trip into Botswana where he had certain business contacts, and that he required my presence at a few of his meetings. My boss told me that he had consented to the request, and that I should get ready to leave for Lichtenburg the next morning. A three hour drive brought me into Lichtenburg, and I went up the stairs to Paul's office. He ushered me into his office which was large and sumptuously furnished with many trophies adorning the walls.

"Do you see what is missing here?" Paul asked, waving at all the stuffed heads. I shook my head. "A massive buffalo bull!" He transfixed me with a glare as if it was my fault that he did not have a stuffed buffalo head amongst the rest. "I have arranged for us to go hunting one in the Okavango Delta. We fly to Gaborone at four this afternoon, and tomorrow we will land at Maun. I have arranged licenses for you from a buddy who cannot make the trip. If there is anything you need for the trip I suggest that you go out now and purchase it as we will take off at four sharp."

We took off at four as promised, and after two hours landed at Gaborone where we cleared customs and immigration and then booked in to the Holiday Inn. I settled in to my room, and at seven went down to the bar to see what had happened to Paul. The barman informed me that he was in the gambling hall, and there I found him playing blackjack. I am not much of a gambler, and by eight I went off to have supper and go off to bed. Paul continued to play, and as I walked into the dining room the next morning for breakfast he came out of the gambling hall, and joined me for breakfast. He had not slept all night, and informed me that he had lost a king's ransom; his mood was not good.

Taking off from Gaborone airport he set the autopilot and said to me. "I am going to take a nap, but if we stray from the road, just wake me, and when you see the Okavango Delta on the horizon wake me so that we can land."

Mile after mile of Kalahari countryside sped beneath the Cherokee while I sweated watching in case we strayed from the main road to Maun, and Paul snored softly while he slept. Suddenly there it was on the horizon! A green contrast to the monotonous drab Kalahari stood out like a mirage ahead of us with a burst of color. I leaned across and shook Paul awake. He sat up wide awake and took over the controls.

Paul put the Cherokee into a wide turn and I gazed out over the massive delta. Green papyrus with channels of clear water interspersed with stands of riverine forest, dark leafy trees clustered among wide patches of Mopani woodland. From the air I could see that the campsites would be as good if not better than anywhere in Africa, together with the crystal clear water it was a veritable paradise. A thrill of anticipation coursed through me; it was one of the greatest sights of the bewitching continent.

We approached the airstrip and Paul put the Cherokee down like a butterfly alighting on a flower. His driver was waiting with his Land Rover, having been sent on ahead.

Our first stop was at the Crocodile camp, a delightful lodge just outside of Maun. We broke out the camping gear and set up sleeping facilities in a reed enclosure on the banks of the river. The night was clear with stars sharply visible and after climbing under our mosquito netting we fell instantly asleep. Paul's driver had already presented our licenses to the authorities at Maun, and collected the tracker and guide who were to accompany us, so that an early start was in order.

We awoke before the dawn, packed up the camp, and took off for Toteng, a village on the shores of Lake Ngami. The lake is more like a pan with water knee deep in most places after a season of rains. When we arrived the lake was dry as a bone, and the naked children running around the village were covered in a layer of grey dust that disguised their natural color completely. Washing was a luxury they could only afford when the lake was full. The rest of the year dust baths are in order. If the elephants can do it, so could they, and one could see that they enjoyed it immensely. I never saw one with body sores, or rashes of any sort although I will add that I never got too close to them.

Leaving Toteng behind us we travelled in a North Westerly direction deeper into the delta. The waters had started to recede and many of the channels were dry with only the deepest streams holding water. The grass was lush however, and the trees were full of green leaves. The bush was full of spoor, and it was not long before we encountered a small herd of Impala. A beautiful big ram stood looking at us about thirty yards off with long lyre shaped horns held aloft. He snorted at us and stamped his front feet in indignation at the intrusion of his territory. Paul took up his rifle, a magnificent 6.5 Manlicher full stock, fitted with a Pecar Berlin scope, and I surmised that the Impala had breathed his last. Paul stood two paces from the vehicle and took aim through the telescope. The ram kept standing and after what to me seemed an age the shot went off and the dust flew about five yards behind the buck. With a leap the Impala was off, and Paul let off another two rapid shots at him which both missed by a mile. "Just hunting jitters," I thought to myself. "He will come right after a few shots." The next animal we encountered was a large Warthog. Paul leapt out of the Landie and let fly at the hog. The bullet kicked up dust under the hog's belly, and the animal took off tail in the air and kept running. Again Paul sent two shots after it, but they were so far missed that we could not even see a strike. He took the rifle and threw it to the ground. Fortunately there was thick grass and the rifle did not strike the ground directly. I went and retrieved it, and wiping the dust off with a cloth, I stowed it behind the seat.

We arrived at the camp spot at about midday, and set up camp. Paul had brought a massive tent which his driver pitched for him under a large leafy tree. I had to take my bedroll and stow it near the fire in the open. We set up a large fold out table and some camp chairs, and Paul brought out his rifles. He had a beautiful .416 Rigby, a .378 Weatherby Magnum, and the 6.5mm Maanlicher.

"Sorry," He said, "We could not organize any hunting licenses for you, so you will have to only be an observer. However you can back me up when we shoot the Buffalo, and then you can carry the 378."

"You mean to tell me that I have come all this way and now I cannot hunt?" I was livid. "Now I must sit here for ten days just watching you do all the hunting. Why could you not convert the licenses which your pal could not use?" I knew that the Game department would not have had any objection to that.

"Well my pal said that he would use them for another occasion, and therefore he would not release them to me."

"You mean to tell me that when we left Lichtenburg you knew that there would be no hunting licenses for me, and yet you let me get on board your plane without telling me?"

Suddenly I was totally irritated, and my attitude showed it. Paul however was quite nonchalant, and let my mood run off him like water off a duck's back.

"Look at it this way," Paul said, "You are in the bush with all the animals around you, and not trying to chat up some stingy farmers to buy your implements. You can get rid of some frustrations and absorb some tranquility; in the meantime I will get that Buffalo head for my collection."

He was quite right. I was not paying for the trip, and even though there would be no hunting for me this time I was in one of the gem areas of Africa, and I would have the opportunity of observing and relishing the unspoilt wilderness and the freshness of the environment with its many animal, bird and plant species. My mood lifted, and I resolved to make the best of the observer status which had been assigned to me. I had brought a notebook, and using it as a journal I started to record every interesting aspect of the trip as it happened.

As soon as the camp was set up and enough firewood gathered and deposited at the fire pit, we had some lunch consisting of corned beef sandwiches and a mug of coffee. I helped Paul to load his rifles, and took the Manlicher to the edge of the camp, and setting up a target at one hundred and fifty yards took a shot. I hit the target dead centre, and then took two more shots to make sure that the scope was set properly, and had not sustained any damage when Paul discarded the rifle. My conclusion was that Paul still suffered from the jitters, and he should take the shots comfortably and relax when taking aim. I mentioned it to him, but he pooh poohed the idea.

When the afternoon started to cool off we took the Land Rover and drove along the track deeper into the Delta. Skirting a channel which was drying fast we came to a wide vlei. The ground was damp, and we could see that towards the centre where the Papyrus stood high and luxurious there must be a pan of water. Avoiding the wet ground we drove along the edge of the vlei, and as we came to the opposite edge we spotted a group of about twelve Blue Wildebeests and four Tsessabys grazing at the far edge. Paul and the tracker alighted from the Land Rover and stalked the group through the Nile grass and Papyrus while I stayed at the vehicle and observed their progress through the binoculars. Paul had taken the 378 Weatherby, a fine weapon, and soon I saw him sink down to a kneeling position taking aim. There was a fine bull which stood broadside on and I surmised that Paul was aiming at him. When the shot sounded I saw a Tsessaby calf behind the Wildebeest fall. And the herd was off at a gallop. They were not wild so that it was plain that they had not been shot at often, and about two hundred paces away they stopped and stood watching Paul who was running towards them He again sank to his knees and took aim. The shot echoed and a wildebeest went down, got up and ran about fifty paces before collapsing and started to kick with all four legs in the air.

We drove the Land Rover around the vlei and up to the Wildebeest. I could see that it had taken the shot in the belly the heavy bullet striking it down. It had then angled forward and exited just behind the shoulder blade. The meat was a mess, and had the rifle been a smaller caliber the poor animal would have suffered dreadfully.

Returning to camp I assisted in dressing the meat that could be used, and cutting up the biltong while Paul's driver prepared supper. After a tasty meal of tsessaby liver and kidneys with stiff maize meal porridge we called it a day and I turned into my bedroll next to the campfire. The far off roar of a lion made me pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders as if that could protect me from an assault by that king of all predators. With the call of a pearl spotted owl sounding softly from the trees nearby, I eventually fell asleep and dreamt of great big buffalo bulls all gut shot and charging down on me while I battled to run away on rubber legs.

As the dawn broke, a Copper Tail Coucal called nearby with deep dooo, dooo, dooo, tones sounding like water being poured from a bottle. I lay in the warmth of my blanket listening to the calls, identifying the new sounds as the delta became alive with a myriad of birds.

Paul came from his tent as I was busy washing my face and informed me that he was going to Maun and would be back only the next day, and I should amuse myself while he and the driver were away. Without even waiting for breakfast he got into the Land Rover and sped of in a cloud of dust. I must say that I was not very sorry to see him go. The Copper tail Coucal had inspired me to spend some time observing the birdlife in the delta, and after a breakfast of hard rusks and coffee I took up the 6.5 Manlicher and a pair of binoculars, and the tracker and I strolled off into the forest chasing the various bird calls. The tracker, who's name was Watson, knew many of the species we encountered. There were shrikes, both the red breasted and the long tailed, tiny flycatchers all sitting in a row on a reed hanging over the channel, flocks of green pigeons in the wild fig trees and Meyer's Parrots clowning about in the branches of a dead Mopani tree. Near the water I spied a big Marabou Stork standing like an undertaker at a funeral. Iridescent sunbirds flitted about among the flowers of a lucky bean tree. We could hear the trumpeting calls of a group of Crowned Cranes not very far ahead of us signifying the proximity of a vlei not far off, and we walked towards the sound.

A deep gulley crossed our path, and as we entered it I saw that there was coarse washed sand in its bottom. There in the sand lay the impressions of a massive lion that had passed not one hour ago. The prints in the soft sand were shiny with newness, the edges crisp and defined. No sand had been blown onto them although there was a fair breeze blowing. Watson followed the spoor for a few paces and whistled softly to me. He was looking at a jumble of tracks overlaying the male's spoor.

"These are the tracks of a whole pride of lions see here the many juvenile spoor. It shows that there are cubs of varying ages with at least five lionesses in attendance. I am sure they are up ahead probably drinking at the pan in the vlei." He looked up at me as if to indicate that we should clear out sharp shoot.

I had the rifle with me and there were five rounds in the magazine with an extra five rounds in the breast pocket of my bush jacket. I certainly did not relish an encounter with a whole pride, so we retraced our steps back to camp. The vlei was about half a mile away and even that was too close for comfort. The trees were tall with thick smooth trunks, and would be impossible for me to climb even in the direst panic. I did the best I could and broke out the 378 Weatherby and twenty rounds of solid tipped ammunition and put it ready on the table while I sat in the camp chair nearby reading a book. We had plenty firewood, and the two black men stoked the fire while they put on a three legged pot of water for the day's porridge. That night we sat up at the fire till the early hours listening to the roars sounding as if they were at the very edge of our camp. I sat with my back against a tree trunk and eventually drifted off to sleep while the other two continued to sit at the fire putting logs on to keep the flames high.

Paul arrived back at camp about eleven the next morning, and I could smell on his breath that he had enjoyed a good night of partying. After eating a good lunch he retired to his tent and slept till early afternoon. At about two in the afternoon he emerged and called for the Land Rover, and after putting the two heavy rifles in their carry racks we made of into the bush. We skirted the dry gully and emerged into the vlei. The crested cranes were still there, and sure enough there was a large pan of clear water with a small beach of washed rough sand where the gully entered the pan. The lion spoor was plentiful and the tracker announced that it was a favorite drinking spot. Buffalo tracks were all over the lion spoor showing that they too favored the pan. The pan was empty of wild life, and we slowly drove around the edge and headed for a stand of forest on the other side. There we encountered a path which we followed. There was a big termite mound covered in dense shrubbery and two tall trees, and as we approached it we saw a leopard raise its head and quizzically peer at us. When we came too close for his comfort he bounded out followed by his mate which had been hiding in the short grass at the base of the mound. They had been mating when we disturbed them. We took the opposite tack and left them to their courtship.

As we drove through the forest there was a stand of scrubby Mopani stretching for about a mile. The Mopani scrub was about five feet high with here and there taller bits bushing out from base trunks that had been damaged by elephants but had then grown out again forming clusters of tall shoots. The tracker hissed and pointed and I stood up to see what he was pointing at, and saw eight buffalo bulls grazing about three hundred yards away. There was a nice young bull amongst them with a fair spread of horns. They were grazing leisurely and the wind was blowing from them in our direction.

We parked the Land Rover, and Paul took up the 416 Rigby while I took the .378 Weatherby, checking that the magazine was loaded with full jacketed solid cartridges. We started to stalk the group and with all the scrub we had plenty cover so that after a slow stalk we got to within about twenty yards from the group. The young bull was slightly behind another one, but they were grazing from our left to right, and I indicated to Paul to wait till he emerged and then to give him a shoulder shot. He knelt down and sighted, and I could see the bull come out ahead of the others to present a perfect shoulder shot. Paul continued to sight for what seemed an age.

When the shot sounded the whole group took flight straight for where we were crouched They had taken fright at the sound of the shot and came past us with the speed of a freight train I could of shot the young bull point blank as it passed me. Paul took fright and started to run towards where we had left the land Rover. The group of buffalo ran for about a hundred yards and stopped in a tight knot while one split off from the rest and made for some dense bush at the edge of the Mopani scrub. I concluded that it was wounded. The afternoon had progressed to about five o'clock, and soon the sun would be gone and the darkness would come suddenly as it does in the African bush. Paul returned to where we were standing, and I said that if we wanted to get the buff then we would have to take its spoor right away and dispatch it before the sun went down. This he refused and said that we should first get the Land Rover so that we could follow the animal with the vehicle nearby as a refuge in case of a charge. By the time the vehicle arrived the sun was already sinking towards the horizon and we got to the forest too late to further take up the spoor, and had to abandon the chase till the next morning.

With sunrise we were at the spot where we had left the spoor, and with the tracker and I leading along the spoor while Paul rode the vehicle behind us refusing to take a chance of facing a charge on foot. Twice we came on places where the buffalo had gone down, and where he had regained his feet and struggled on. The tracker carefully surveyed every dark spot in the bush before moving on along the spoor. Suddenly we saw movement ahead and he froze intently staring at the source of the movement. I saw a hyena scurrying away, and knew that the buffalo was dead and the hyenas were feeding on the carcass. Sure enough there lay what was left of the beast, and as it turned out it was an old bull with one broken off horn. Paul had again shot the wrong animal. Had we followed it we would have come up to it to find it already dead as the shot had penetrated right through the right side and the bullet had lodged in the left side shoulder. The hyenas had eaten the carcass and Paul was left with the head from which even the ears had been chewed off as a trophy for his hunting collection. What an anticlimax to his buffalo hunt!

At midday we broke up camp, and returned to Maun where we slept the night and the next morning took off for the return trip home. As we gained height I asked Paul to turn over the delta for a last look, and this he did flying over the spot where we had camped before making for home. That was my last view of the Okavango Delta, and the memory is firmly entrenched in my mind. It is one of the true jewels of Africa and a wonder of the natural world. I will always remember it as such and hope to one day visit it again.

Hunting Hazards.

2008-10-16T13:33:00.000-07:00

Hunting in the African bush is fraught with hazards. Uncanny things happen, things that the hunter cannot plan for, that can seriously affect not only his hunt and the pleasure of his stay in nature, but also his very life.

If hunting were as easy as a walk in the park, many more folks would be doing it, and the bush would be full of hunters chasing after the few animals trying to escape their efforts. Many people go off to the gun dealers and buy the rifle which he recommends, and take off into the bush in their 4x4 vehicle, license in hand and with all the latest camping gear. All they need to do is come across the animals stated on his license, haul out his new rifle and let fly. They see themselves posing with one foot on the neck of their victim and holding the rifle in an appropriate pose with the camera clicking so that a framed print can hang in the den to show their friends what a Nimrod they really are, and how much testosterone flows in their system.

Of course posing like that with a lovely Impala ram does not have exactly the same impact as a buffalo or even a lion, and ultimately having the head mounted and fixed over the fireplace in the den would supply hours of conversation when the cronies come visiting. Then the host can show off the trophies, and all the photos, and he would grow in stature and be the admiration of all the beautiful damsels in his circle of acquaintances.

Two friends, one an Italian named Giovanni, the other a Jewish fellow named Maurice each acquired an elephant license and made ready to hunt their elephants in the Gwembe Valley of the Zambezi River. They came into the business premises of Boet Oberholser who repaired and sold used Land Rovers. It was a Friday afternoon, and a few of us were gathered there having some beers in anticipation of a leisurely week end.

Giovanni was tall and broad with a shock of dark curly hair. He was friendly and laughed easily, and could put away copious amounts of beer. Maurice almost had the shape of a ball, as round as he was tall, with short legs and a premature bald head. He was full of restless energy and had quick nervous movements.

"We each have an elephant license." Maurice stated while quaffing his beer and surveying the gathering.

"Oh yes." George Lyon said. "Where are you going to hunt them?" George worked for the Game department as a tsetse control officer, and knew all the hunting areas intimately.

"In the Gwembe." Maurice retorted. "Do you know the area?" He knew that George had worked in that area quite recently, and it was a stupid question.

"Do you two clowns know the elephants of the Gwembe?" George looked at Giovanni pointedly. "Even the old hunter, Selous said that the Gwembe elephants were the most vicious that he ever encountered. And I know from working there that they are even more so now than in his day, especially if you encounter cows with calves.

"We have not been hunting since yesterday only." Maurice said with disdain. "Also we each have an adequate rifle therefore I cannot see what could go wrong." George nodded his head and finished his beer. He stood up and said, "Good luck with the hunt, come and show us the tusks next Friday." He walked out the door to his Land Rover.

Monday morning Boet phoned me. "Did you hear about Giovanni and Maurice? They went hunting on Saturday, and Giovanni tells me Maurice is still in bed sick. Apparently they encountered a small herd of elephant with a good bull accompanying them. Maurice decided to take the shot, and when the bull presented a good side shot He let him have it in the ear hole, and the bull went down like a sack of potatoes. The rest of the herd, instead of running off started to mill around till they got the pair's scent and then they all charged the two hunters en masse. All they could do was to turn and run. Well, you know that a man cannot hope to outrun a charging elephant and they could see that the herd was gaining on them, and even the small calves had their trunks at full extension till the tips were sharp as needles reaching for the hated men.

Fortunately they encountered a deep donga crossing their path, and the two dived into it and ran up the other side. The herd came up to the deep ditch, and started to run up and down trying to find a way through, and that gave the two hunters enough time to get away. They had to come back the next day to cut out the tusks, and Maurice was so pale around the gills that he went straight to bed when they got back to town."

Who would have expected the whole herd to charge at once, and had that ditch not been there, the two companions would not have outrun the herd, and they would have been trampled to tiny bits and pieces.

Insects too pose a definite hazard to the hunter. I had taken the long week end of the Rhodes and Founders holiday to accompany Dick and Henry to the Zambezi Valley for a Buffalo hunt, and we were well equipped and raring to go. We entered the valley floor, and had hardly gone two miles when a massive Roan Antelope bull ran across our path. It ran for about two hundred paces and stopped, standing broadside on. Dick jumped out of the driver's side, and took a snap shot at the Roan. We could hear the thump of the bullet striking, and the Roan turned around and ran off at full speed. I saw it disappearing behind a large Baobab tree, and did not see it emerge from the other side. Taking up my 30-06 rifle I ran towards the tree, and there about twenty yards away lay the Roan, stone dead. I had run past the tree so fast that I had failed to notice a black man lying next to the massive trunk on his back. Having cut the animal's throat to bleed it out, I happened to glance at the tree and saw the man lying there. Walking over I saw that he had been robbing a bee's nest in the trunk of the Baobab tree, as he had leant a sturdy sapling diagonally against the trunk and had carefully cut steps into it. His small native axe was still embedded into the wood of the baobab, and the bees were working at the opening he had chopped in the trunk. It was obvious to us that the man had seen the hive in the trunk of the tree, possibly guided by a honey guide bird, and when he started to chop the opening to enlarge it, the bees had attacked him. Swatting the insects he had lost his footing, and fallen and broken his neck.

We all stood around the body contemplating it and discussing what we should do next. To go back to Lusaka for the police meant a drive of about one hundred miles, and then we would be obliged to bring them back to the scene. Arriving there, the cops were sure to implicate us in the poor man's demise, which meant that our weekend would be over and the hunt a wash out. And we would have to bring them to the scene at our own expense. No, that just would not do! We then decided to leave him right there and continue with the hunt. The Roan was loaded and we continued on our way.

Monday, after a good hunt we came back along the same path. Arriving near the spot where the Roan was shot we decided to leave the vehicle in the road and walk down to the Baobab. The corpse was gone. Drag marks showed where a lion had picked it up and carried it off to a dense bush where it had been devoured. Nothing was left, only a bundle of clothes, some assegais, and the axe stuck in the tree. I climbed the sapling, and shining the beam of my torch down the hole, I could see many honey combs hanging in the hollow trunk. Some were black with age, and the honey was dripping down the inside of the trunk.

I have always been good at robbing bees' nests, and after smoking the insects to make them dizzy, I continued to take out the honey. We filled two five gallon cans full of honey combs and leaving some behind to encourage them to stay at the nest we drove home. For that poor man his quest had definitely proved hazardous indeed.

During one hunt, north of the Zambezi, a place called Chakwengwa, we had set up camp in the late afternoon, and as usual had collected a huge heap of firewood, and built a merry fire. I was designated camp cook, and soon had a meal cooking. Well, I needed to put some wood on the fire, and grasping a fairly thick log I tossed it on the fire. There was a crack in the log, and my hand encircled the crack. As it left my hand I felt a painful sting on the side of my palm, and as the log hit the fire a small red scorpion scuttled out of the crack and fell into the glowing coals, sizzled, squirmed and died. My hand and arm burnt like the fire itself, and soon became numb. It was my first scorpion sting and I was soon feverish with my heart palpitating like mad. The pain shot up my right arm and into my shoulder, and I became dizzy and disorientated. I had to lie down on my bed, and the only medcine I had to take were some aspirin. I was out of action for the whole weekend and that sting put paid to my hunt. The third day I could get up and move around a bit in camp. I have been stung a number of times since, and every time the experience was less painful as if I had built up an immunity, but that first experience will always be inscribed in my memory, and I can recall it as if it happened yesterday.

Most of our hunts took place during the winter months. This made the insect problem less troublesome as the deadliest enemy, the mosquito, was less likely to bite. But there were mozzies around, and they did bite, and the chances were good that the one which bit would be the malaria carrier, the deadly Anopheles mosquito. Most hunters contracted malaria at one time, and that could be deadly serious. Many hunters have died as a result of this animal's bite, and often they only know they have the disease after having left the bush, and they do not even know where they were bitten.

Another insect pest is the Tsetse fly. A little larger than the normal house fly, and of a brown grey coloring this pest bites with grim determination. It is so fast that the natives say that when it alights on your arm and bites, when you react by striking it, it leaves your arm and bites you on the palm of the hand cocked to strike it. I cannot vouch for that one, but will say that it reacts faster than any other insect I know of. During my time in the bush these pests loved to bite me, and there was hardly a spot on my body where they had not bitten me. The bite itches and burns, and there is nothing that will stop that burn. It has to fade away normally. The down side of the tsetse bite is that the pests carry the dreaded sleeping sickness which if not treated promptly leads to a lingering death.

Another hazard a hunter faces but never thinks about is snake bite. I know of a case where a hunter was stalking some kudu, and had to pass through a stand of long grass, and as he brushed through the thick grass he was bitten on the thigh by a black mamba. The snake struck him twice almost on the same spot, and he staggered back to the edge of the grass and collapsed. Before his companions could get him back to camp he was dead. They had the anti venom in camp, but the man was already dead by the time they could get at it. He had died within twenty minutes of being bitten.

Often we would make our beds on the ground, and cutting some long grass as a mattress we would spread the blanket over it and then sleep on top with another blanket as covering. I know of a few cases where when the blankets were folded after a night's rest, a thick puff adder emerged, having spent the night in the warmth of the sleeper's body. I have never heard of one being bitten by the unwelcome bed mate, but the thought of sleeping with a deadly snake is quite enough.

On one hunt up in the north western section of Zambia where the trees are tall with leaves right at the very top, we were hunting the elusive yellow backed duiker, and moving cautiously through the forest with a thick carpet of dried leaves on the ground. Slowly stalking, carefully putting one foot forward at a time, I suddenly saw the leaves move right where I would place my foot. Something in my subconscious warned me, and I did an about turn in mid stride. There was a dreaded Gaboon Viper, wound up like a coiled spring, ready to strike.

The color pattern of that snake was so camouflaged that it was almost invisible among the browns and reds of the fallen leaves. It was a monster of about three feet long, and as thick as my calf. The head was as large as my fist, with fangs a good three inches long. Had it sunk those fangs into my leg I would have died of fright before the venom had time to take effect. In those days there was no anti venom available for this snake, and a bite would have proven fatal. I still turn cold with goose flesh when I think of that incident.

Many Native hunters go off into the bush and never return. The people in the villages do not go out to look for them as they know that a search would prove fruitless. There are just too many dangers confronting the lone hunter, and a disappearance is merely written off as being lost. Life in the village goes its normal course and the hunter is soon forgotten.

Lions In The Darkness.

2008-10-01T08:24:00.000-07:00

When an American thinks of Africa, the first thought that comes to him has to do with lions. He imagines the cities with streets where lions prowl around, and most of them man eaters at that. The perception is that everyone has to carry a rifle just to defend him against these man eating lions that will attack at sight, and that everyone becomes adept at shooting lions in their back yards.

We travelled up to Mufulira from Johannesburg in 1945.Mufulira was one of the northernmost mining camps close to the border of the Belgian Congo, and had just recently been established. The camp was very neatly laid out, with lovely cool bungalow type houses for the mine staff, well laid out roads and beautiful gardens planted and maintained by the mine management. There were a few shops, a mine club which housed a dance hall and a cinema. Every last Saturday in the month a matinee film was shown for the kids and entrance was free. At the door we each received a packet of sweets and a cool drink I never missed a Saturday movie, and particularly liked the cowboy films, and would take up position in the front row, and we would boo the baddies, and cheer the good guys. The noise was deafening. Kids would run around, screaming and fighting. Forming their own groups they would attack each other and act out the movie as if they were part of the show. I shudder to think how the theatre staff ever hoped to keep control of the mob.

When we arrived at the camp it was well into the rainy season, and by four in the afternoon the rain would start to fall and continue well into the night. I can remember hearing the cries of wild dogs and the mournful howls of hyenas amid the flashing lightning and the pouring rain. Often we would hear of lion sightings by the truck drivers along the road to Ndola where all our provisions were obtained, and then some of the miners who knew all about hunting would be out after the prides. I never saw any shot, but heard the grown ups speaking about all the close encounters

Our next door neighbor was a tall blonde dashing man named Steve Barry. He was every ladies idea of the perfect heartthrob, tanned and muscular with a no nonsense attitude. He had two sons, Alfred and Ivan, both dark complexioned and slight of build with impeccable manners. In their back garden was a massive termite mound on which grew a few large trees, and one morning when Steve came out to drive to work at about four thirty, he found a big male leopard sitting on the mound, and contemplating the neighborhood dogs. Steve went back inside, collected his rifle and dispatched the cheeky leopard. I can remember viewing the carcass and thinking to myself what a beautiful soft animal the leopard was. When I lifted its lip however I could see a set of very formidable fangs. Those big round soft pussycat paws also concealed a set of powerful claws.

After three years in Mufulira we moved to Lusaka, the capital of Northern Rhodesia, and the main agricultural centre of the territory. My stepfather took up farming, and there I became exposed to the hunting fraternity, and all of the farmers had encountered lions. They were cattle raiders of note, and as our farm was near the Zambezi Valley, which was full of lions, we often heard of them in our vicinity. I had heard them roar in the early hours of the morning, and travelers on our farm road had chanced across one or two.

Our farm was located to the East of Lusaka along the Great East Road, which ran from Lusaka to Fort Jameson. It was a dirt road in those days, and ran through dense bush. One could almost say that the countryside was jungle, but it was not so in the real sense of the word, but tall trees and thick scrub lined both sides of the road and there were no fences at all. Our district was known as Chalimbana, and a few miles further on along the road was the Rufunsa district. Rufunsa was a small administrative centre set just off the main road at the start of a range of steep hills. The main road ran over the hills and there were a number of very long steep inclines to be negotiated. In the late forties and early fifties there was a main contractor with the government plying the road to Fort Jameson transporting all the provisions from the railway line at Lusaka across some three hundred miles of dirt road; the carrier was named Thatcher and Hobson, and they used huge Leyland Diesel trucks carrying some thirty tons each, and pulling a ten ton trailer along behind. The trucks would proceed to Fort Jameson carrying building materials, machinery, soft goods, and all other goods required by the community in the eastern districts, and would return with agricultural products such as maize and tobacco bound for the markets in Lusaka.

About fifty miles from Lusaka they would encounter a series of steep hills, and often the truck would break down with clutch or gearbox troubles. The driver and his assistant would then stop the truck, and after putting some large boulders behind the wheels to prevent it rolling down the hill, they would make camp next to the road while they waited for another truck to pass and they send word via him to their depot for mechanical assistance. They would then wait next to their fire until a tow truck arrived to tow them in to Lusaka.

Late one afternoon a truck broke down at the spot and the two men secured it and went of to the campsite to prepare the evening meal and get ready for the night vigil. The driver lacked a bit of courage and decided to sleep in the cab of his truck. He slept soundly, and awoke with the sunrise and sauntered over to the fire where his assistant had bedded down in order to get a warm cup of coffee. The assistant was nowhere to be seen, and soon the driver came across a boot lying some distance from the fire. When he picked up the boot he found to his horror that there was a foot in it. Lions had arrived in the night and taken the assistant without the driver even awakening, and had feasted on his carcass not twenty feet away without him even being aware of his assistant's plight.

Another time a truck broke down at the same place, and the two men also made camp around the fire, and when night fell the driver also decided to sleep in the truck, but the assistant bedded down under the trailer. They had lost the hitch pin attaching the trailer, and had substituted a long piece of steel shafting which protruded way past the bottom of the tow hitch. During the early hours of the morning a pride of lions arrived at the truck and noticed the man sleeping under the trailer. With a mighty roar the lion flew in under the trailer intent on attack. The poor man crawled from his blankets forward under the truck and took up hiding behind the rear differential and the lion dashed forward after him and struck its head a crashing blow on the protruding hitch pin which brained him. The assistant scrambled into the truck cab, and there the two waited until the sun was high before emerging. The lion was dead and already stiff by that time, and after skinning it they tied the folded hide to the bonnet of the truck, got it going and departed post haste for Lusaka. Hunters were sent out to Rufunsa to shoot the lions, but they never caught up to them, and after the road was tarred, the steep rises were eliminated so that trucks never broke down on that stretch of road again. And the lions disappeared never to be heard of again.

In the early days lions did get into the town streets however, and they were always quite a threat. Broken Hill was a small mining town some eighty miles north of Lusaka, and one day four male lions entered the town and caught a donkey in the main street. They were promptly dispatched by one of the local hunters. In Lusaka too, while they were busy constructing the railway station a pride of lions harassed the workers and had to be eliminated before work could continue.

The farm we lived on was named Rooiwal which means Red Banks because of high red clay cliff like banks on the Chalimbana River which flowed on the border of the farm. The farm workers would walk around searching for honey and wild fruits, and they often told us that they saw lions there in the thick bush, but we discounted their stories as imagination, until one day while hunting wild pigs I happened to be on the top of the banks when I saw a large lioness drinking at the river. All I had with me was a .22 rim fire rifle, and I dared not try a shot at such an animal so that I made for the house as fast as my feet could carry me.

The bush around our farm was full of lions, and it was good to be camped next to the Mwapula River and hear their roar at night around the camp fire. They were also not the fat lazy circus type of lions, rather they were lean mean and super alert, and would not hesitate to attack a person sleeping in the camp.

A neighbor of ours, Kannetjie Davel and his brother Robbie went hunting in the Southern Luangwa valley, and while they were in camp sleeping a male lion came into camp and attacked one of the workers jumping onto him while he was wrapped in his blankets. Robbie had to run up to the lion and shoot it on top of the man. They were compelled to motor miles through the bush to a mission hospital to have his wounds treated. The man was half dead from shock as well as from the mauling the lion had given him.

Another friend of ours, named Boet Greeff, had moved into his wattle and daub house on his marriage night. The house had no window glass, only openings where curtains were hung, and while the couple was sleeping a bushbuck jumped through the window pursued by a lioness and took refuge under the couple's bed. Boet always slept with a loaded rifle next to his bed, and in the moonlight he shot the lioness and cut the bushbuck's throat, so that they then had a lion skin to use as a rug next to the bed, and had plenty bushbuck meat in the meat safe.

Oom Tom Ferreira told us the story of a hunting trip he took together with his brother in law Ewart Nel into the Zambezi valley. They had travelled down with Tom's light truck, and on the way while crossing a dry stream bed they shot a young male lion. When they reached the valley they picked up some men of the Tonga tribe to accompany them to the river which was not far off, to assist with the camp chores and also to act as trackers and skinners. The usual arrangement was that they would work for a share of the meat, which they would smoke over a slow fire, and if the hunting was good each man's share would be quite substantial. These Tongas however, as told by the hunter F.C.Selous, were the dregs of humanity; dirty, sly, thieving, totally ungrateful and definitely not to be trusted. The day before Tom and Ewart were ready to leave for home the three men came to them and demanded money as payment in addition to the piles of meat they had been allocated.

Well that night Oom Tom said to Ewart that they would have to make some plan with these scallywags as they had only enough money for fuel to get them home, and if they still had to ferry the three back to the village they would be sure to make trouble for the two white men.

That night when the three were snugly rolled into their blankets Oom Tom took an empty four gallon tin can and wrapping himself in the lion skin he climbed a crooked tree which reached almost over the three sleeping wretches. Oom Tom let out a few loud roars into the tin which reverberated as if all the demons were let loose. One of the three awoke and sat up, and Oom Tom let out another roar. The man was still half asleep but he shook the other two awake. Then Oom Tom let out a mighty roar and shook the tree. The three looked up to see this apparition with the mane flying, and they took off towards the river. Next morning Oom Tom walked down to the sand bank where he saw their tracks. They had run so fast down the river bank that their footprints were nine feet apart, their courage had totally departed and they were not seen again. Oom Tom and Ewart packed up their truck and headed home laughing all the way.

Lions in the darkness have been an integral part of Africa, and have caused havoc amongst the human population on many occasions but today things are more civilized, and we need not walk around with our rifles expecting to see a lion around every corner. However there are many lions being bred on game farms, so the population is increasing, and in the future there may still be happenings which will bring to our notice that the lion is truly the king of the beasts.

Enter Dick And Henry

2008-09-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

He came into my office, a big man, broad shouldered and tall with a fleshy face and dark straight hair brushed back from the forehead. He had slightly protruding eyes, and a congenial smile.

"I am looking for a job. I hear you need a diesel mechanic. I have all the experience you need." He was not just saying something; rather he was making a statement. He looked at me as if he already had the job.

"Sit down. When can you start?" I looked at him; he was dressed in a khaki green shirt and a brown pair of shorts, long socks and tan loafer shoes. Neat and clean. "Would you like some coffee?" I called the tea girl and ordered two cups of coffee. "Tell me about yourself, starting with your name."

"My name is Dick Combrinck, and I did my time as a diesel mechanic with the Public Works Department. I have worked for them for the past ten years, and I feel that I can do with a change."

I had taken a job with an agricultural implements company in Lusaka. The firm catered for the small subsistence farmer, and supplied mainly ox drawn implements. By the time I joined they were selling tractors on a sub agency basis from the Massey Ferguson dealers, and were making very little commission in the process. It had been decided that we would find our own agency, and as fate would have it the very next week a tall gent with an American accent walked into my office and promptly offered us the John Deere agency. I hurried him into the managing Director's office, and soon we had the agency signed up. Orders were placed for a range of tractors, and we also ordered a mechanical cotton picker for a large cotton scheme in the country.

It was June, and the farmers were in the throws of the maize harvest, which was very good that year and tractors were very much in demand. Sales boomed, and we found that we needed an extra man who could handle tools desperately. I had been promoted to workshops manager, and now I had to employ another mechanic. That was when Dick walked into my office.

The cotton picker had arrived, dismantled and in six large timber crates. They were stacked in the back yard one on top of the other. Not only were they in the way, but we were afraid that if the engineers from the J.D. Company did not arrive soon enough the rains would come and the cotton growers would wait till the next harvest before buying and paying for the expensive equipment. Dick was duly employed and we started to clear the backlog of jobs in the workshops. We worked together on the various projects, and within weeks they were all cleared out. The awaited J.D. engineers had not yet arrived.

"Let us try to assemble this monster." I told Dick, "We can pack all the bits and pieces on the ground, and using the manuals we can assemble it piece by piece. The next day we started and soon the cement yard was littered with pieces like a massive jigsaw puzzle. Taking up the manual we started on the assembly. Bit by bit it came together, and soon all we had to do was mount it on the tractor which had arrived to take the unit. This was done, and the machine was parked, and when the two engineers arrived all they needed to do was to adjust the timing of the machine. They were astounded that we could assemble the machine as fast as we did and without a glitch. Little did they know the sweat blood and tears we had shed in the process. Dick and I discovered each other during this time and what is more we found we had a passion for the same thing: The bush and the hunt. The Boss was so impressed that he gave us an extra long weekend. We decided to go hunting.

I pitched up at Dick's home the next morning in the old Land Rover, and found him waiting with all his camping equipment ready. With him was a weird looking character whom Dick introduced as Henry van Heerden. The minute I clapped eyes on him I immediately thought of Tweedle Dee. Henry was dressed in khaki shorts and shirt. The shorts were two sizes too big, and his legs protruded from them like those of a Maribu Stork, he wore a pair of calf high boots with buckles at their tops that clinked when he walked. His head was large and round with thin sandy hair, and he had an apple shaped body. Henry had an engaging smile and pale blue eyes. His handshake was firm and brief. "Dick asked me to accompany you on this trip, I hope you don't mind." He said while looking at me expectantly.

"Plenty room," I replied, a little unenthusiastically. "I have a trailer which we can collect if needed. But I think we will get it all into the Landie." We loaded up the equipment and soon set off with Henry sitting in the middle and Dick next to the window. I did the driving.

The minute we passed the town limits Dick reached into his suitcase behind him and came out with a bottle of Limousine brandy, and breaking the seal he took a long swallow. "Care for a toot?" He said, passing me the bottle. I took a small swig and the tears came rolling out of my eyes. It was real rotgut stuff. I passed it back to Henry, but he declined and passed it back to Dick who took another long swallow. After that, the bottle stayed with him, and every now and again he would lift it and pull at what was left.

"I want to take you to the Luano Valley." Dick said. "Instead of turning off to the Zambezi, carry straight on along the Great East Road till you come to mile 54, and then wake me up if I happen to be asleep."

We ran at a steady pace along the Great East Road, which was all gravel and quite corrugated. The dust flew in whirls behind us and the interior was soon chokingly full of dust. We had to stop and roll up the canvas sides to let the air in, and then we resumed the journey. No sooner had we started when I heard snoring coming from Dick. The bottle was half empty, and he held it between his feet as if he were afraid it might break.

One and a half hours later we arrived at the mile 54 marker, and I brought the vehicle to a halt Dick awoke with a start, and said,"Carry on till you get to the graded water run off to the left" About two hundred yards further we came to the run off ditch. "Turn in here," Dick indicated a left turn, and I took the Land Rover into the ditch and carried on along its curve. A little way beyond the end of the drainage ditch a track suddenly appeared, and we continued along it.

After about ten minutes Dick stopped me and got out walking into the bush a way in order to attend to a call of nature. When he got back to the vehicle he brought out his rifle stashed behind the seat. "We must be alert now, these hills are full of Kudu, and also Roan Antelope" He sat with the rifle leaning against the seat between Henry and himself

After about ten miles we arrived at a barrier across the road, and a black man in the uniform of the tsetse control stopped us. Dick got out and handed the man a packet of cigarettes He took a clipboard from him and started to fill in our vehicle details while the guard walked around it with a small net in his hand looking for possible tsetse flies. He then lifted the pole barrier, and we resumed our trek. After almost nine miles we came to the edge of the escarpment. The descent was appallingly steep and rocky, dropping about one thousand feet within a mile to the floor of the valley. At the bottom of the descent the road leveled out into the valley with stands of Mopani and raisin bush alternating with open savanna patches .The tracks became sandy but quite hard, and the going was smooth and easy. We picked up a bit of speed, and cruising around a wide bend we almost ran smack into a massive old buffalo bull. He shook his head and ran about twenty paces into the open bush and turned around facing us with his horns back towards his shoulders. The Land Rover came to a sliding halt and Dick hopped out of the cab and took aim over the hood. The rifle lifted as he squeezed the trigger, and the buffalo staggered back and turned to run off, but it was sorely stricken and it staggered and went down onto its chest. A long bellow erupted from his throat and its head flopped forward.

"Our camp spot is not very far from here," Dick said as he cut the bull's throat to bleed it, "I suggest we hasten to it and off load and then we can come back for this fellow."

Within fifteen minutes we arrived at the campsite next to the Muapula River. There were tall shady trees, and I could see that it was a favorite site because the grass had been cut and a place cleaned for the fire with the normal ring of boulders forming the fire pit. We offloaded the vehicle and stowed everything onto the ground next to the fire pit. As soon as that task was accomplished we set off for the Buffalo carcass. Arriving at the spot I took the Landie right up to the carcass, and we all alighted and started to inspect the beast. It was an old bull, and quite unsuitable for biltong, and his roasts would be like carving a block of hardwood, but it would be good for rations for the farm laborers who would eat anything, and we decided to quarter the carcass right there and transport it to the camp where we would skin out the quarters. The bull had a nice spread of horn, and Dick decided that he would take the horns home with him.

Back at camp Dick took over and within a few minutes I could see that he knew how to organize a camp. A long sapling was cut and positioned horizontally between two trees and the tarpaulin was thrown over and suspended like an awning and pulled tight with a large section let down the back against which our bedrolls were set so that our heads were against the canvas and the Landie parked on the other side so that no predators could surprise us from that side.

While Dick arranged the rest of the camp, Henry and I skinned out the quarters of the old buff. The skin over the neck and withers was so thick that I needed to sharpen my knife at least three times before it was finished. We cut the quarters into more manageable pieces and suspended them from low branches out of the reach of lions and hyenas. The bits of hide were discarded about fifty paces from the camp, and as the sun was setting we started to break out the rations for supper. Dick had built a friendly fire in the pit, and I started to heat some meatballs which my Wife had packed for the trip, and a pot of Putu (a crumbly maize porridge) was soon cooking in the three legged pot.

Henry had saved the bull's testicles complete with the scrotum, and these he skinned out leaving the bag intact, then he split each ball and washed them out nicely in the stream after which he salted them and put them onto the grid so that they were barbequed to a fragrant brown turn. The scrotum he took and pulled it over an empty beer bottle hair side out. He tied it off at the top and put it into a fork of the tree under which we were camped. After eating and washing the dishes in the stream we sat and talked over a scotch for Henry and myself, and the balance of the brandy for Dick.

When Dick's bottle was empty he tossed it over his shoulder towards the rubbish pit, and stood up, stretched, yawned and walked over to his bedroll and promptly went to sleep. Henry and I looked at each other and decided it would be best to join him. I lay awake listening to the far off call of a jackal, and the chirrup of the Scops owl, and soon I was fast asleep. The moon was full and high in the sky and lit up the camp and the surrounding bush in a silver eerie light.

I woke with a start. There was a rattling of dishpans and pots. I took up my spotlight which I kept next to my bed, and directed the beam to where the dishes were stacked. An enormous hyena stood and flashed his large round green eyes at the light, and then he took off at a leisurely gallop, his bristly tail held over his back. I switched off the light and settled back into my blankets, and hardly fell asleep when the din repeated itself and in the beam of my light there it stood again. I stood up and taking up a piece of wood from the fire I sent it in an arc of sparks toward the creature. With a whoop he turned and galloped off Just before dawn it was back again snuffling at the place where we had skinned the buffalo quarters. I awoke and sent another stick after him, and as the sky was turning grey in the east I put on the coffee pot and went down to the stream to wash my face and brush my teeth.

"What a pest that hyena was during the night." Henry lamented. "I hardly slept at all We should of shot the beast!"

"No, Henry," Dick said, "They are pests around the camp, but at least they will tell you if Lions are around by their nervous cackle, and they will not attack you if there are a few persons in camp." Tonight we will put some innards of whatever we shoot some distance from the camp to keep them busy."

As we drew some distance from the camp I noticed that the hyenas had dragged the neck skin of the buffalo into the open, and had chewed away the edges, but the thick skin was too much, and they had left it out in the open.. We had stripped the Landie of the doors, the tailgate, and the windscreen, to eliminate rattles, and so that the screen could not flash light into the bush and thus frighten the game. Dick was driving, and Henry was seated next to him with me on the outside. We were travelling through the bush when we passed a wide open space with a dry tree at the edge. There were a few vultures perched on the dry branches. As we drew near we could see that the birds were intently watching something on the ground. We came up to the tree and saw a large termite mound a few paces off, and in front of the mound, there were the remains of buffalo carcass, but there was nothing else to be seen. As we drew closer the vultures took of with a flapping of their wings, and Dick stopped the Landie under the tree. I stepped out of the vehicle and walked over to the remains to study the ground for tracks. Henry walked up the side of the mound. It was covered with short knee high grass, and as Henry stepped into the grass a lioness flew down the opposite side of the mound with a mighty roar, and Henry ran back to the vehicle in a few bounds. It all happened so fast that although I had my rifle in my hands I could not even sight it on the lioness. Henry of course was speechless with fright.

About a mile ahead we saw a herd of kudu, and I dropped a young bull. We loaded him into the vehicle and continued on our way. Passing through a dambo two reedbuck rams ran off and stopped about a hundred paces from us. Henry took up my light rifle, a .222 Sako, and when the shot rang out one buck fell as if pole axed.

All the way back to camp Dick derided Henry for his near miss with the lioness, and by the time we reached camp Henry was quite annoyed at all the banter. Before we rode into camp Dick stopped at the piece of buffalo hide which was already quite dry and curling at the edges. "Pick it up and throw it in the back, and tonight we will set a trap for the hyena." Was all Dick would say. I picked up the drying bit of hide and threw it into the back of the vehicle.

We drove into camp and stopped at our skinning spot where we offloaded the two antelope, and while Henry and I started to skin them I saw Dick take the buffalo hide and walking about thirty paces from the camp he started to cut the hide, and then he came back for a pick and dug a hole some twenty four inches in diameter and the same depth. By the time we had hung the carcasses, He came over and gripping the innards, minus the livers and kidneys, and walked over to the hole where he deposited the guts. Next he took the hide and fitted it over the hole, and it fitted with about a foot overlapping the hole all around. Then he cut a few holes around the edge, with a small hole in the centre From the centre hole he slit the skin about six inches diagonally over the hole making four cuts. Next he fashioned a few stout pegs out of some hardwood and fastened these through the holes at the edge of the hide. The hide was thus stretched over the hole containing the innards, wit the small hole and the diagonal slits right over the contents.

That night the hyenas did not come, and Dick said that they were probably finishing off the remains of the carcass which the lions had left, and we slept in peace. The next day we spent in camp cutting biltong and hanging the strips out to dry. It was hard work and after we had washed up in the steam we sat and had a leisurely drink and I prepared a hunter's pot and sawed some marrow bones which also went into the pot. Before we retired to bed I took the torch and walked over to the trap and inspected it. The edges around the hole were hard and were curling in towards the hole. I could also smell the ripe smell of the guts inside the hole.

We were still sitting around the fire with a whiskey each when we heard the patter of feet on the skin, and I shone the spotlight onto the hide. The Hyena was there with its head down the hole, and it was busy trying to gobble up the intestines down the hole. We could see that the skin had gripped it behind the ears, and stuck fast. It stood with its head down and its behind in the air Henry got up and walked over to our woodpile where he selected a stout stick, and walked over to the hyena. "You damned animal." He growled. "Tonight I will teach you a lesson for keeping me from my well deserved rest." Positioning himself behind the hyena he fetched it a mighty swipe on the behind, and came round for another shot. The hyena let out a loud wail, and Henry smacked it a third blow. Up went its tail, and it vented its bowels all over poor Henry. He was taken utterly by surprise, and turned around and dragged himself to the fire.

"Get away! Get away!" We yelled at him. All he could do was to pick up his suitcase and walk over to the stream. Then we heard him splashing as he washed off in the cold water. When he emerged he took his soiled clothes and put them on the fire with a totally disgusted look on his face. Then we heard a commotion and the hyena ripped the hide from the pegs and we could hear it falling over its feet as it disappeared into the bush, the piece of buffalo hide flapping like a sail around its neck. The last we saw of it, it was headed away still clutching the guts in its mouth.

The next day we headed for home, but every now and again Dick would sniff and say, "What smells like hyena shit?" Eventually Henry got fed up "Ag Dick, can it! How was I to know the thing would shit on me?" I don't suppose it ever again entered his mind to give a troublesome Hyena a whacking.

Days Of Schooling. 2.

2008-08-19T13:33:00.000-07:00

The Land Rover pulled into the farmyard, and we proceeded right to the big thatched shed where we offloaded the kudu carcass, and hung it on the slaughter pole next to the shed by its hind legs. We stowed the four tusks in a corner of the shed and covered them over with a pile of empty potato pockets. While Edward started to skin the kudu, I took the Land Rover and trailer to the pump and started to clean them washing off the blood and dust. I opened the hood and hosed down the engine and cleaned it thoroughly to make sure that no buffalo beans were stuck in some crevice to blast us when we least expected it.

Buffalo beans are the bane of a hunter's life, and the Zambezi valley was full of them. Every donga and river bed was full of this menace. These beans climb up the elephant grass and scrubby shoots always in the way of the hunter when he is creeping through the bush stalking his prey. They hang in clusters on their vines, short stubby beans almost the shape of a broad bean, and they are covered in tiny hairs which have a barb at the end. As soon as the grass stem is disturbed, a cloud of tiny hairs descend on the unsuspecting hunter and are deposited on his skin and down his neck, and soon as he starts to sweat they start to itch. Itch? No, it is a torture devised by the Devil himself. Scratching the itch only makes it worse, far worse. All sorts of remedies have been tried, calamine lotion, petrol, mud, old engine oil, and a few pharmaceutical concoctions, but none of them work. All the hunter can do is grit his teeth and wait for the burning itch to go away, and be aware of the danger for the next trip and be wider awake.

On one trip to the Valley I had two young novices with me. One was a young Italian friend named Luciano Bertonotti, and the other an English speaker named John Weinand. Luciano had a new series two Land Rover fitted with a canvas top stretched over a pipe frame. What they lacked in experience they made up for in enthusiasm. I can say that they approached the hunting scene like a bull at a gate.

We had removed the canvas top, but retained the pipe frame, and after making camp the two hunters were keen to get at the animals roaming the valley. Each wanted to bring home a buffalo bull, and each had the vision of an enormous buffalo head mounted over the bar in the den. They had new rifles of the best calibers, and had worked up their eager enthusiasm by reading articles in the men's magazines, and listening to accounts by their friends who had, or claimed to have had, experience of buffalo hunts. Consequently they were raring to go, and this was the first morning actually on the hunt. We left camp and drove along the left bank of the river; the going was easy, as the grass was quite short, and it was easy to see where we were going. Then we came across a donga running across our path into the river bank. The bottom of the ravine was full of elephant grass I was sitting at the back of the vehicle, and as we approached the donga I stood up to be able to see over the windscreen which was still erect. I had told them to remove the screen, but they knew better, and left it up. As we travelled, the windscreen caused a turbulence which sucked in all the dust thrown up by the vehicle's wheels, which was most unpleasant, and with me sitting at the back, I got the worst of it.

Here we were then ready to enter the donga, and I could see masses of buffalo beans on almost every stalk of grass. My shout of warning was lost in the urgency to crash through the donga and get to its opposite bank, and the vehicle rushed through the long grass scattering buffalo bean pods all over the place. When we reached the level ground again I was sitting on top of the frame and shouting to them, "Watch out, buffalo beans!" Too late we were through them and John turned to me and asked: "What are Buffalo Beans?" Two minutes later they found out. Luciano had stepped out of the vehicle and was starting to scratch his crotch inside his shorts, and John was scratching his neck. I also started to itch, and it grew into a burning intensity that became quite unbearable. The Zambezi River was about thirty paces to our left, and a large sand bank stretched into the water "Lets wash it off!" John shouted, and both ran for the water as if a swarm of hornets was chasing them. Diving into the shallow water they pulled off their clothes and started to rub the coarse sand over their bodies. Of course this only intensified the problem, and I ran up to them shouting for them to beware the crocodiles. They were sitting with the water reaching up to their necks, and howling at the itch.

"Stuff the crocodiles!" Luciano shouted, "At least if they catch us this burning will stop." He redoubled his efforts at rubbing the wet sand over his inflamed skin. In the meantime I rinsed their shorts in the shallows while keeping my rifle at close quarters.

"Here, put on your shorts and let us rinse out the Landie, or we will get another infestation of the pest when we carry on." They happily complied with that suggestion, and the bucket was filled and splashed over the vehicle a number of times till we decided that no more stinging barbs were present.

You can be sure that those two hunters would make sure that they proceed very carefully when they suspect the presence of Buffalo beans in their future hunting excursions.

The following day I went into town with the four tusks to my Greek contact to see if I could convert them into solid cash, and found him out. While waiting outside his premises an acquaintance, a certain Swanepoel, whom I knew as a hunter in the business of taking rich clients on hunting trips also parked outside the shop waiting for Raftopolous to arrive, and we started talking. It transpired that he had taken out an American, a medical doctor, and they had bagged an Elephant with two very small tusks, and he was hoping to buy something better for his client who was most disappointed at his bag. He could see the point of one of my tusks peeping out from the canvass cover, and asked me if I would be prepared to sell them to his client if they were a decent size.

"I have two pairs here, the one pair weighs ninety two pounds, and ninety four pounds each, but for them I want a lot of money as they are a perfectly matched pair." I casually flipped the canvas cover aside so that he could see the tusks. I could see his eyes bugging and he almost drooled all over the back of my vehicle.

"Follow me to the Ridgeway hotel, and I will let my client view them, and maybe we can give you a bit of a better price than the Greek would offer." He tried to sound a casual as possible.

I followed him to the parking lot of the hotel, and he virtually sprinted in to the foyer. I decided that I would accept at least double the price that they offered, and soon the two came hurrying out. I had turned the Landie around as if I was ready to pull out of the hotel grounds, and Swanepoel came running towards me as if I was ready to depart with his wife. I switched off the engine and waited for them to catch up to me.

As the client reached the back of the Land Rover Swanepoel flipped the canvas to one side exposing the pair of Elephant tusks, and while his client was examining them he came round to me and with a flip of his hand as if dismissing a fly, he said. "We are prepared to offer you one thousand American dollars in cash, which is double what you would get from the Greek."

"You must be joking." I retorted, and walked back to the rear and flipped the canvas back over the tusks. "For these magnificent specimens I want twelve thousand American Dollars. Your client is not the only one who will buy them. In fact I know of an English count who also did not bag a good pair, and he will beat any offer your client can make; but thanks for the offer anyway." I extracted my keys from my pocket and rattled them while sauntering around to the driver's side. Swanepoel opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of the water, and the American ran around to my window.

"Wait, wait." He took hold of my elbow. "We can work out a trade." He sounded very anxious.

"What sort of trade do you have in mind?" I looked as if I was looking through him.

"Well we have the tusks from the elephant that I shot, and I will give you ten thousand Dollars for your pair." He stared fixedly at Swanepoel.

"If the tusks you have are as bad as I think they are, then the Game Department will confiscate them as being undersize, and I will lose out anyway. No thank you very much." I again started the motor.

"I can only give ten thousand dollars cash." He said. "That is all I have here in travelers cheques. But I have a new rifle, a Weatherby Magnum in the .458 caliber which I will be prepared to add to the deal with one hundred rounds of ammunition. It is in a tooled leather case, and I will include an ammunition belt also in tooled leather."

"Right, bring out the goods, and the cheques, and if the rifle is as good as you say then we may do a deal." They ran back into the hotel and soon they emerged carrying the goods.

I could not believe my eyes. The tooled leather gun case was exquisite with carved scenes of Horses and Cowboys in relief, and lined in green baize. The belt was tooled harness back leather with leather loops to hold the cartridges. When I examined the rifle, my heart skipped a beat. It had a deep blue heavy barrel, and a glossy walnut stock, and looked as if it had just left the dealer's store.

"You will have to give me a bill of sale for this rifle." I told the doctor, "Let's go fetch your pair of tusks and offload this pair, and then the deal is done." I stowed the rifle lovingly on the front seat of the Landie, and set off after Swanepoel and his client to Swanepoel's office and storeroom where I deposited the tusks, and collected my bill of sale. From there I sped to the Police station where I saw an a friend of mine, Pat Murray, who added the rifle to my arms license without even asking one question. Even if I live to be one hundred years of age I will never again do such a sweet deal as I did that day.

My bush schooling was being shaped and polished, and I learnt not to give away my hard earned lucre. Although the poaching was starting to really pay off, I could not live with my conscience, and decided that although I was addicted to the chase, and loved the bush, indiscriminate hunting of elephants was not for me, and I should do something to rectify the matter, but what? I had to wrack my brains for an equitable solution. But that is another story.

Days Of Schooling 1.

2008-08-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

The mournful cu cucu…cu… cu ..cucucucu… cucucucucucucu… call of the emerald spotted dove drifted on the slight breeze blowing over a stiflingly hot valley. It was late August, and the sun beat down on the bonnet of my old Land Rover like someone beating a rhythm with a four pound hammer on an anvil. The needle on the heat gauge had passed the "normal" mark, and was creeping into the red of the hot section on the dial. I had cleaned out the radiator and filled it with fresh rain water to make sure that no mineral deposits were present. I also knew that one did not boil a Landie's engine because the aluminum cylinder head would warp and then the engine would be good for nothing. I decided to move the vehicle into the shade of a large sausage tree so that it could cool off a bit, and it would give me an hour or so to have a sandwich and some cold tea out of my Thermos flask.

Moving onto the passenger seat, I lay back and put my feet up onto the windscreen rail, opened my sandwich tin and poured a cup of ice cold lemon tea. Munching the bread I listened to the call of the emerald spotted dove. It sounded far away and extremely mournful, as if he was mourning a death in the family. I remembered the story old Kapatula had told about the call of this dove.

"When you hear his call, you must know that he is calling to his lost love, and asking her to leave the male that stole her away and come back. You only hear the call of the male, because his female is ashamed of her conduct and is reluctant to leave the loving she has received from the new lover." He looked up to the sky and continued, "He sounds so far away, but in truth he is very near and can send his cry far into the woodlands for his lost love to be able to hear him. Yes, the denizens of the forest can project their calls over many miles to communicate with others of their own tribe.

Take the Hyena as an example; you hear his cry of "hauwee" rising and falling in pitch, and if you listen intently an answer will come from very far off. How does he achieve such distance in his call? Well he puts his nose close to the ground, and lets out the howl using the ground as a sounding board, and the sound is projected far away where the other hyenas can get the message that meat has been found, and they reply in similar fashion telling the caller they are on their way. He then continues to call, and the other members of the tribe are guided accurately to where the original caller waits next to the kill calling and guiding them in."

"It is the same with the elephants," old Kapatula said, "they let out a low rumble and the sound is transferred by the ground, vibrating for miles, and picked up by the feet of others very far off. If you stand still, and you do not have shoes on, you can feel the sound waves. But you must concentrate, otherwise you will not feel anything, and because the herd is so far away you will not even know that they are there."

I was on my way to Chief Chiawa's village to pick up Edward who had taken some leave of absence and gone home to his village. I had been fired from my job as the head mechanic in old Galaun's workshop, and when he let me go he had chased me off without pay, and I was flat broke. Something had to be done.

Galaun was a real dour fellow, with a confrontational attitude. He was an astute businessman, and had a number of businesses dotted around the countryside. I worked in his workshop repairing and servicing his fleet of crawler tractors which he used in the Kariba valley to clear land for the fishing industry which would be established once the dam wall was built, and the waters started to push back into the valley.

The method of clearing the immense trees was to have a massive iron ball linked to a thick chain, and to the draw pins of two D7 Caterpillar crawlers which would head parallel to each other through the bush pulverizing everything in their path. As the ball rolled and gathered momentum the trees were simply swept aside and uprooted in wide swaths. Two other crawlers operated behind pushing the fallen trees into windrows piling the logs upon each other in a great pile of broken branches and trunks about ten feet high .The long windrow was then left till the dry season, and when dry enough was ignited and left to burn out. To my mind it was a wasteful method of land clearing, because there were many trees with useful timber which went to waste with the burning. But time was of the essence, and they could not be salvaged. The bush clearing operation took place mainly in the rainy season for then the ground was soft and the shallow rooted trees came out easily.

The snag was that any breakdown had to be repaired in the field, and in the Zambezi valley when it rains, it rains incessantly, sometimes for days without stopping. That was when old man Galaun would send me in to pull a broken track roller or idler, more often than not in the early hours of the morning; so that his machine could not stop working and he lose the hourly rate when the machine was standing. I would have to pull the track lying on my back under a machine jacked up with a bottle jack that could move away and allow the fourteen tons to come down on me while I worked in the mud and the slush, hammering out the pins and bushes using a hammer and steel punch.

This particular Monday morning I failed to turn up for work as I had been out in the rurals buying some cattle, and I had a blowout of the rear wheel on my way there, and on my way back the front wheel picked up a sickle thorn and went flat. Without another spare I had to pull the inner tube and repair the hole by applying a patch. Well, I had no tyre levers, and had to get the tyre off the rim by using two large screw drivers. This took most of the afternoon, and I was obliged to sleep over to get the wheel fixed and put on the next morning. The sun was near its zenith by the time I got going towards home, and it was late afternoon by the time I pulled into the city. It was too late to go to work, and the next morning old Galaun, in a rage, fired me and there I was flat broke. So some thing had to be done, and soon.

I remembered the pair of elephant tusks that I had sold to Raftopaulos, and thought that it was an easy way to pick up some cash for a bit of a nest egg while trying for a new job which I was certain would not take me long to find. I decided to head back into the Zambezi valley, find Edward and see what elephants I could poach. Raftopaulos did not ask too many questions, and my lack of the necessary permits was no obstacle.

There I was then, listening to the mournful call of the emerald spotted dove, and contemplating the task ahead of me. I had now turned elephant poacher, and I thought it was an easy way to make some money. How wrong I was! I had never shot an elephant, but I grew up on the books of the great hunters, Karamojo Bell, Bvekenya Barnard, William Finaughty, and all their contemporaries. But although I had come across many elephant in the bush, I had never had one in my sights. I had spent hours listening to the stories of the hunters in my circle of friends, and many theories about elephant hunting had been absorbed, but I was yet to put them to the test. I trembled at the thought.

Arriving at Chiawa's village late the afternoon I set up camp beneath a big old Marula tree, and strolled over to see the Chief and get his permission to shoot two elephant. He was pleased to see me, and granted me two bull elephants, but insisted that I shoot a cow for him.

At the first crack of dawn Edward arrived with his gear, and we set course for old Wasu's cave. I had a full bag of maize meal for him, twenty pounds of coarse salt, and a bottle of cape brandy. On my last visit I had rigged a rope pulley with a small platform and a swinging gantry from his cave to the bottom of the precipice so that provisions could be brought up to him without his having to walk down a number of times. The rope was long enough that he could operate the lift from the top. We loaded the provisions, and Edward went to the top, carrying the brandy, soon the platform started to move, and within a minute it was rising steadily to the cave. I then started the climb up. This time I was a lot fitter, and got there just as they were swinging the platform over onto the ground at the cave entrance.

Old Wasu stood in his army greatcoat helping Edward offload the bag of maize meal and the salt, and together they carried them into the cave. I could only marvel at the strength of the old man He carried his end like a young man. When he emerged from the dark cave he came over to the fire and sat on a stool. "What is it you seek to hunt here in our valley this time?" He queried.

"This time we are after two Elephants, and I would also like to take home an antelope for fresh meat." I replied. "Also the Chief wants a cow elephant for the village."

Wasu stood up and entered the cave, and when he emerged he was carrying his bag of bones. Sitting back on his stool he opened the bag and scattered the contents on the ground. Taking up his stick he started to turn the slabs of bone and to move other pieces around while muttering to himself. Suddenly he sat upright and looked at me.

"You will come across many antelope, but do not shoot at any because the elephant is capable of hearing and interpreting a gunshot many miles away and they will take off out of the area as fast as their legs will carry them." He bent down and moved two knuckle bones to one side and looked up at me. "You will find two bull elephants near Chiawa's village. One is an old bull almost ready to lie down for the last time; the other is a young bull in the prime of life. The young one is the Askari who looks after the old one, picking and feeding him the young and tender leaves, and the sweet tips of maize in the fields of the villagers, also plucking the sweet potato runners and feeding them to the old bull. He is very cheeky, and will not hesitate to charge if he perceives danger to his elder .So take great care, you will have to shoot them both, but they will carry good ivory, and the Askari will not leave the old bull when he goes down and then you can get a shot at him too. Take your time with the first shot and you will have them both. When they are down, call Chiawa's villagers to cut up the carcasses for meat, and bring me the whole trunk of the Askari. The antelope you will get before you head back home."

We rose and started down the track to the Land Rover and back to the village where we put up camp next to the marula tree. Next morning a deputation of villagers came into camp and told us that the elephants had raided their gardens during the night and had moved off towards some reed beds in a small tributary of the Zambezi River, and they were afraid that once the two were satisfied from grazing in the reed beds they would cross the River and be off. I took up my 8x60 Mauser, made sure that the magazine was loaded with full jacketed rounds, and put another twenty rounds in the pockets of my bush jacket. With one man guiding us, we set off for the reed beds he was talking about. They were about half an hours walk from Chiawa's village, and we approached them down wind.

Suddenly we saw the old bull climbing out of the reeds and walk over to a large Msasa tree about one hundred paces from us. I gasped when I saw the size of his tusks. As he walked he held his head up high and the tips of his tusks were almost brushing the ground. Where they emerged from his mouth they were thicker than my thigh. A regal prize indeed! He walked up to the tree and wearily rested his head against the trunk as if trying to rest the vast weight against the tree for a few moments. I crawled forward till I came to a clump of Mopani scrub about fifteen paces from the old bull. My heart was pounding so loudly that I was sure the beast could hear me, and my hands trembled uncontrollably. I raised the rifle and set the barrel in a fork of the scrub in front of me, sighting the foresight onto the fold of skin at his ear hole. I can remember my mentor old Oom Tom Ferreira telling me that the foresight had to be sighted finely in the vee of the rear sight. Taking a deep breath I let it out slowly and aligned the sights with that fold of skin, slowly squeezing the trigger. The shot sounded extra loud as it went off, and I nearly jumped from fright. The old bull sat back on his haunches and slowly toppled over onto his side away from me. It seemed as if everything happened in slow motion, but I saw a cloud of dust rise as he rolled onto his side

I reloaded the rifle, and stood up straight intently gazing at the fallen bull, and I could see him give two slight kicks and then he lay still. I was just about to walk closer when I heard a piercing scream from the reed beds, and saw the Askari come rushing towards the old bull. As he passed us at about fifteen paces, I sighted behind his shoulder and gave him a lung shot. He arched his back and came to a stop about four paces from the fallen bull facing away from us. I immediately gave him another shot on the root of the tail, and he sat down abruptly, with that he had swiveled broadside on to us, and I let go another shot between his eye and ear, and he collapsed onto his side.

We approached the two carcasses cautiously, and I gripped the younger elephant by the tail and sliced it off close to the base of the spine, then walking over to the old bull did the same. That was an age old tradition, and signified ownership while at the same time made sure that the animal was dead. Next we inspected the tusks, and they were magnificent. The old bull's tusks would be close to one hundred pounds each and the younger one's would push the scale to about sixty pounds each. Not bad for a weekend's work. The next big job would be to cut out the tusks without nicking them with the axe, as such nicks would immediately devalue them considerably.

While we were still sitting next to the old bull's carcass, the first group of villagers started to arrive. How they knew that the carcasses were there or if we had been successful in our hunt I cannot imagine, as we had not sent a message to them, and yet there they were complete with containers and tools for stripping off all the meat. Without further ado they started to cut out the tusks while one opened the stomach and started to pull out the entrails. Within minutes the rest of the village started to arrive firstly in ones and twos, but soon in droves and the butchering began in earnest. Not long and the noise was deafening with men and women squabbling over what they termed the best cuts of meat. Some even crept into the stomach cavity and emerged with large chunks of liver and heart. One man in his haste to get a wide slice off the ribs stuck his sharpened spear into the meat and penetrated the ribcage and plunged the point of his spear into the shoulder of one inside busy cutting out the lungs. He came out at speed and went for the spearman with intent. I had to fire a shot into the air to bring them to order, and then I designated two senior tribesmen to maintain the peace.

The tusks were carried to our camp, and I took the Land Rover back to the elephant carcasses to collect the trunk and delivered it to Wasu. The trunk was so heavy that it took three of us to stow it onto his lift platform and to pull it up the precipice.

Back at camp the butt ends of the tusks were opened and the nerves were extracted, these were a whitish grey conical mass tapering from the round butt end to the fine wiry string at the point. The Tribesmen believed that when they were removed then the cavities should be stuffed with grass to prevent demon spirits entering and taking up residence.

We were off before the sun rose, as I wanted to get the tusks to the buyer, but true to old Wasu's prediction, before we started to climb the escarpment we saw a magnificent Kudu bull which seemed spellbound staring at us with his nose in the air. He fell to a well placed shot to the neck, and after bleeding him; we loaded him onto the back of the Land Rover, and headed for home.

Those were my first two elephants, and the hunt had progressed without any mishap, but the future would show me that my schooling with wild elephants had just begun.

Wasu The Wizard

2008-07-14T07:16:00.000-07:00

The cave sat high in the cliff face on the rim of the Zambezi escarpment where the Chongwe River joins the mighty Zambezi. There was a narrow steep footpath leading from the bottom of the escarpment to the mouth of the cave, and it was not visible from the foot of the hills. Walking up that footpath was torturous; some places one could only climb higher with the aid of saplings and bushes as hand holds.

I was far from fit when I attempted the climb up the pathway, and had to sit halfway up to catch my breath and have a swallow of water from my water flask before continuing up to the top. When I arrived at the opening I was surprised to see that the ground in front of it was swept clean and there were the remains of a fire in the circle of stones which was smoldering and still warm from the night's vigil. The cave itself seemed dark and ominous. I approached it very carefully and stood at the entrance peering in.

"Hodi," I gave the greeting, and sat on my haunches waiting at the entrance. Within a short while an old man came shuffling out leaning on a staff. He was dressed in an old world war two army greatcoat and had boots on his feet. His hair was white as snow, and he had a lined face with a scar from his right ear to the point of his chin. His eyes were deep set and black as coal. His skin was amazingly light compared with the peoples that lived in the valley.

I could see that he was taken aback to see a white boy sitting at his cave's entrance, but he quickly recovered composure and greeted me with a "good morning" in good English. Walking over to the fire he stirred up the coals, placed a few logs on the embers, and blew the red coals till small flames started to catch onto the twigs. As soon as they were burning brightly he stood up and motioned to two rough stools next to the fire.

Sitting down on the one stool I reached into my knapsack and pulled out a thermos flask of coffee and two tin mugs. Opening the flask I poured two mugs of steaming black coffee, and offered him one, then took out a jar of sugar which I opened and sticking a teaspoon into it I passed it on to him. He spooned six spoons of sugar into his mug, and after stirring it vigorously he handed the sugar back to me and sat down on his stool. With both hands around the mug he blew on the surface and took a sip smacking his lips in appreciation. I spooned two sugars into my mug and took a swallow of coffee. I dipped into the rucksack again and pulled out a bag of hard rusks which I opened and offered to him. He reached in and drew out a long rusk which he dunked into the coffee and bit off a piece chewing with relish and smacking his lips before demolishing the rest and reaching into the bag for more.

We sat drinking coffee and dunking rusks, and when the bag was empty he sat back on his stool and fixed me with a level gaze. "What brings you to this wild place?" He asked, "I have never seen a white man up here, let alone one as young as you."

"I am hunting in this area, and old Kaputula of Chief Chiawa's village told me of you and suggested that I paid you a visit. He said that you have more knowledge of the beasts that inhabit the Valley than anyone, and that you are a hunter and you know how to shoot a rifle."

"It is a very long time since I fired a rifle, and my eyes are not so good anymore, so that I doubt if I could make a good hunting companion any longer." He stared out over the valley below at the Zambezi flowing in the distance. "But I know where the big game is to be found, and if you come up here I will be pleased to tell you in which direction you should hunt for the best success."

"That will be good," I said "I Will go back to my camp and bring it closer and set it up next to the Zambezi River and then you can accompany Edward and myself in the Land Rover, and you need do no walking or hard work, and I will give you a share of the meat." I folded the empty rusk packet and put it back in my rucksack. He stood up, took the two mugs and walked over to a large earthenware pot standing next to the entrance, and dipping the mugs in one by one he rinsed them and brought them over to me and handed them over. I stuffed them into the pack, and as I started to rise I saw something sidling out of the cave's entrance. It was an enormous hyena. It came out and stalked over to the old man with a nervous cackle. He stretched out his hand and scratched the animal behind the ears. "This is my dog, I have had her since she was a pup, and she sleeps with me in the cave and keeps out the leopards that are always trying to put me out of the cave. You will see that she is quite tame and will greet you once she gets used to you."

I looked at the slavering jaws of the animal a bit apprehensively and just nodded my head, and then I noticed that it had three strings of beads plaited into its mane. It flopped onto its side at his feet and started to absorb the sunshine which was starting to get quite hot foreshadowing a scorching day ahead. Getting up I slung my satchel over my shoulder and after greeting him I left down the path to where I had left the Land Rover.

Back at camp I started packing up and then left for the Zambezi River where we found a stand of tall water berry trees under which we prepared a most comfortable campsite quite close to the water. We cleared a path to the water and cut away the coarse grass so that I could fish from the bank. Now that I had the Land Rover with a two wheeled trailer I could carry enough camping equipment to make life in the wilds so much more agreeable, and the mobility was fantastic. I could cover twenty times more countryside in a day than on foot. Thus I noticed just how full of wildlife the Valley really was. The thick Jesse bush was full of Buffalo and bushbuck, with wild bush pig and warthogs; Lion and Leopard left plenty sign, the open Mopani glades had Impala and Kudu, and small herds of Eland and Roan antelope could be seen along the river and in the open spaces with Waterbuck sprinkled all along the rivers and gulleys. The river itself teemed with Hippos and crocodiles, Monitor lizards were often seen along the banks looking for crocodile nests to rob. Elephants were numerous in sometimes small family herds, and groups of bachelor bulls. And black Rhino were often encountered. They would rush off huffing and blowing like a steam engine.

I set up camp with a heavy canvas safari tent in one corner, a reed enclosure with a canvass ground sheet and a tin bath as the ablution block, and set up the folding camp chairs in front of the fireplace which was a shallow pit ringed with round boulders with one or two flat stones to put utensils on. There was an iron grid to grill meat on, and three squarish stones to take the three legged pot. There was a fold up table on which we cut biltong, and on which I ate my meals. We would pile the dirty dishes into an apple crate and they were washed at the river. The Land Rover was parked on one side of my tent with the trailer on the other side. I had a fold up camp bed in the tent, with a tin trunk in which my spare clothes, toiletries and spare ammunition were stored. It also doubled as a bedside table with a kerosene lamp for reading at night. On the other side of the fire Edward had set up the canopy of the Land Rover almost covered with thorn bushes as his bedroom safe from marauding predators, with his own fire nearby. That night I went to sleep thinking of the strange old man living in the cave with his tame hyena and with no human for company, like a true hermit.

The fire was burning brightly, and the noises of the night were filtering through the canvas of my tent, and I fell asleep with the excitement of my new discovery filling me with anticipation of the new day to come.

As the light of dawn touched the east I was out of my tent and putting my coffee pot over the embers to boil, I started breakfast of two fried eggs, two slices of toast and a scoop of the mystery meal out of the hunter's pot near the fire. This pot is kept on the boil continuously with all sorts of meat added as and when something is shot. It could be neck of impala, with some kudu kidneys and even spurwing goose cooked till the meat fell off the bones, adding water when it starts to boil dry. During the day when we leave for the veld, the pot is moved away from the heat and stowed where it could keep warm near the fire, and when we returned it is immediately put back to the hot side of the fire to slowly start boiling again, and the catch of the day is then added to increase the volume

. When the sun rose above the top of the mountains, and flooded the valley in the first rays turning everything red and gold, we made up a parcel of dried biltong, half a bag of maize meal, some salt, a packet of sugar and a hand full of coffee. Then we both climbed into the Land Rover and set off for the cave.

The climb was even tougher this time round because the muscles in my legs were stiff and ached as if I had done a hundred mile marathon. It is said that when muscles are stiff from exercise, then they need more to loosen them up, but in my case this did not work, they just went from bad to worse, and I felt every step of the way…Painfully.

As we reached the top we saw that the old man was already sitting at the entrance dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and shirt with a kaross of jackal skins over his shoulders like a cloak. We deposited the foodstuffs at the entrance and greeted him with the traditional hand clapping.

"Come into my cave," he said "and we will see what you can expect to see today." Getting up from his stool he took the lead into the cave.

The interior was dim, with a fire burning in the middle. There was no sign of the hyena, but the interior was foreboding and smelt of wood smoke and dank animal pelts. Three carved stools were arranged in a corner with an antelope hide on the floor. The old man went to the fire and placed some wood on it and when it flared up I could see that the cave was large and extended far to the rear. He walked over to where his bedding was neatly rolled up, and took a bag from the ledge next to his bed. He then donned a headdress which was made out of the tails of the genet cat, and dropping his greatcoat he walked over to the fire and sat cross legged on the antelope hide. Motioning us to sit on the stools, he untied the skin bag, shook it and cast the contents onto the hide scattering them at random. I could see that the contents were knuckle bones of some small animals, four flat bone pieces that looked like dominoes, a tip of duiker horn, and some cowry shells. There were two brass buttons and a small ingot of copper. Some round pebbles completed the contents.

The old man took a small bottle of snuff from his waistband, and after inhaling a pinch into each nostril and sneezing mightily over the scattered bones he picked up a stick and started to move them around while mumbling and crooning softly.

"I see that you will have a successful hunt while you are here, if you want some good meat, take a walk up the dry gulch running away from the river, and there will be a big Eland bull standing. I have already put muti (medicine) over him so that his senses are dull and he will not see you. Be careful, tomorrow you will find a small herd of buffalo, but they are dangerous, and leave the bulls alone shoot a nice fat cow if you need to. You can cut me some meat with bone and leave it in the fork of the tree which stands at the end of my footpath, also Edward will find a bee hive in a baobab tree with much honey of which I am also very fond, but do not forget to leave a large comb with grubs for the honey guide bird that will lead you to it. Go now that Eland will not wait there too long, and you may miss it."

We scurried out of the cave, and back to the Land Rover, started the motor and turned the nose towards the dry gulley about half a mile away. As soon as we got to the edge we stopped the motor and slowly walked up the sandy bed. After about three hundred paces, I saw something which looked like a log ahead. As we were watching it I suddenly saw two horns emerging, and the creature stood up. It was an enormous Eland bull. Taking careful aim I sent a shot into its thick neck and the creature fell as if pole axed. We ran forward, and when we reached him he had already stopped kicking. I slit the throat to let the blood run out, and we turned it onto its back to start skinning it. I left Edward to continue skinning, and walked back to bring the Land Rover closer to the carcass. Climbing out of the gulley where we had entered it I walked toward the vehicle, and spotted four buffalo grazing about fifty yards away. The temptation was great to shoot the fat cow gazing towards me, but I relented as an Eland bull consists of at least a ton of meat, and we were only two to dress it.

Driving along the gulley I found a break in the bank down which I could drive the Land Rover, and take it right up to the Eland. Edward had already scored the hide above the fetlocks, and had cut down the inside of the legs to the middle of the underbelly, and was busy cutting a line from the jaw to the tip of its tail, joining the cuts from the legs to this lengthwise cut.

Starting with a leg each we flayed the hide from the meat by cutting through the filmy membranes attaching the skin, and bit by bit it came loose. When all the legs were skinned out we started on the same side and skinned the side loose up to the backbone. Then the other side was done the same way. The skin around the mighty neck was skinned around, and it was cut off at the base of the skull. After that Edward cut through the spine with the aid of his axe, and lopped off the head. I slit the neck down the throat to expose the gullet. Next Edward stared to cut the brisket bone, while I opened the stomach cavity by starting at the breastbone and putting the tip of my knife in carefully so as not to puncture the stomach sack and getting its contents onto the meat. As soon as the stomach and intestines were removed, we started to dismember the carcass, and loaded the various pieces onto the back of the Land Rover. Although the Land Rover had a long wheel base, we had to do two trips to haul all the meat back to camp.

Back at camp while we were stripping the meat from the bones Edward said to me: "Old Wasu is really a wizard, how could he have known the Eland bull would be standing in the gulley if he were not a wizard?"

It could have been a favorite resting place of the bull and Wasu knew about it, but the small group of buffalo he could not have known about. I think it would be good for us to take note of what he tells us in the future. Let us reward him with a whole fore quarter of meat, plus some meaty bones for his dog. If we cut the biltong now, then we can hang it to dry tonight, and we can leave early on the third day, and we can take the other forequarter home with the briskets for fresh meat."

"Sure," I retorted, "let us do that, I would like to get the meat home as soon as possible. We still have half a bag of maize meal, and some sugar, as well as some coffee which we can also leave plus a pint of cape brandy which I am sure the old guy will enjoy. We can leave it all at his tree."

We cut the muscles from the bone, and then cut them into two inch thick strips which we layered onto the flesh side of the skin, salting each layer with coarse salt, and adding a generous amount pepper with a sprinkling of brown sugar and some grape vinegar.

When the strips were all cut up and the skin was full, we closed it all by bringing the four legs together and tying them with wire. Then we lifted it into the back of the Land Rover and left it there in the shade to cure and draw out the moisture. I washed, and then took up my fishing pole and went to the river bank to catch some fish for supper. That late afternoon we hung the biltong strips over wires which we had stretched between some trees, and then took Wasu's cache to his tree and I hung the forequarter from a branch with a stout piece of rope so that the predators could not get at it.

Three days later we were gone, and as we passed the tree at the foot of the path we noticed that all the provisions as well as the meat were gone too. Only the rope was still hanging in the tree. We left it there because we knew that we would see him again in the very near future.

River Of Monsters

2008-07-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

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....

Ghosts Of The Valley

2008-06-06T05:43:00.000-07:00

Standing at the edge of the Zambezi Escarpment, the valley seems to stretch forever. Far away at the opposite side the southern ridge of the escarpment; hills can be seen blue in the distance. The dirt track wound down the side of a steep mountain which the local inhabitants called "Mfundisi," meaning the one which tests and teaches. This winding descent had been the death of many trucks and cars in the century which the road had existed. During the years of European settlement the track had been cut wider by the Chartered Exploration Company, who prospected the hills and the valley for minerals. It was mostly gold they were interested in, but if there was gold, the Zambezi valley and its escarpment did not release the secrets to these explorers. With the yearly rains, the track would wash away and deep ruts would form down the side of the mountain so that anyone wanting to get down into the valley had to first repair the track and this often meant cutting into the mountain side to build a new pass down which a four wheel drive vehicle could negotiate without tumbling down the precipice. The work had to be done by hand, and often meant a week or more with pick and shovel at this descent alone.

By the time I started to go into the valley, the Chartered Exploration Company had lost interest in the descent, and was using other roads into the Zambezi valley. This track was used mainly by fishermen taking their bundles of dried fish to the market.

My next run into Chief Chiawa's area was with the use of two donkeys that I had borrowed from a next door neighbor who lent them with the proviso that a substantial amount of meat was to be paid in lieu of their use. Together with my hunting companion, Edward, and the neighbor's son we stood at the top of the descent and gazed into the valley. All our goods were tied onto the two donkeys, and we walked free and easily along the track. Now we had to descend into the valley, and we stood contemplating the view. The rainy season had not done too much damage to the road down the mountain side, and we started down with my two companions leading the donkeys and myself bringing up the rear. Edward carried the Mauser rifle, and I the small .22 saloon. Down we went. The track was so steep that we had to brake all the way down, and by the time I hit the valley floor my calf muscles felt as if they were going to tear away from the bone.

After a short rest, we took off for our campsite next to a water pan, only to find when we arrived that a herd of elephant had been there and had turned the normally clear water into a sea of mud. It was well into the dry season, and we knew of no other water close by, all the streams running towards the Zambezi River were only dry gulches, and we would either have to stay there and wait for the spring in the pan to clear itself, or trek on to the river itself, a distance of about forty miles. I had loaded a two gallon jerry can with fresh water from our borehole as drinking water, so we decided to stay and let the mud settle, and forget about washing till it had cleared. We moved to our old campsite and set about enlarging the thorn boma to accommodate the two donkeys in order to secure them from the many predators in the area. The neighbor's son was delegated to watch them during the day so that they could graze and not fall prey to the many lions in the valley.

Our first task was to collect enough firewood to last us through the long weekend of our stay in the valley. We brought in a number of large hardwood logs which we could not have done if we did not have the donkeys to haul them into camp.

Thus settled, Edward and I started to hunt towards the Zambezi River. The donkeys were left in the charge of the neighbor's son, and we took to the bush. At about mid morning we came across a small herd of kudu. There was a beautiful bull with long spiraling horns, a dark grey coat with white stripes down the sides of his ribs. He must have sensed our presence, as he looked straight at us. I could see the vee stripe in the most brilliant white across his muzzle, and the delicate fringe of long hair down his throat. The wind was blowing from them to us, and it was not possible for them to get our scent, but the bull snorted, and the herd galloped off with their white powder puff tails bidding us a fond farewell.

Ahead was a dry gulch, and we walked towards it to cross. As we neared it we heard something snuffling in the bed of the gulch, and creeping slowly forward we saw a small family of warthogs on their knees with their snouts churning up the bed searching for succulent grass roots I stood up, and the old boar saw me; up went his tail and off the family ran down the gulch as if the devils were behind them. We crossed the gulch, and entered a plain with broken mopani trees sparsely dotted over the veldt. The elephants had been busy, and dried logs lay in a jumble all over the place. Where the trees had been broken off, new shoots had grown, and these were already about ten feet tall. We walked into the mopani bushes, and of course we could not see more than ten paces ahead of us.

The morning was turning very warm, and both of us felt like a rest. Near us was a very large termite mound with an untouched Mopani tree growing out of its centre, and which provided appealing shade. We decided to climb to the top, and take a ten minute break in the shade and at the same time look over the mopani scrub to see how far it extended. After settling down and taking a swallow of cool water I stood up and surveyed the tops of the scrub bushes. Suddenly, not more than ten paces from where we sat, I saw the mopani saplings shake violently. Then as I gazed in that direction the tip of an elephant's trunk emerged above the green leaves. While I stared at it, another, and then another one emerged, and soon we were surrounded by trunk tips sensing the air. We had walked right into a herd of sleeping elephant, and even though we were talking to each other, they had not sensed our presence as the air was very still in the glade. But now that we were on top of the termite mound the air had probably shifted, and our scent became evident to them, and they were testing the wind to see where that hated stink was coming from. Suddenly one let out a shrill trumpet, and the whole family group crashed past us in a panic. One passed our perch on the mound so closely that I could see its eye lashes. Had we been on the floor and not on the mound, we would have been in big trouble. We sat tight for at least an hour before we ventured down the mound, and then took off in the direction opposite to which they had gone, and then circled back towards the river.

After a slog of about two hours we emerged from the erratic bush into an open vlei at the centre of which was a dried up water hole. At the edge of the hole we could see a carcass lying, and we walked over to investigate. I was an old bull elephant, and he had been dead for at least three weeks there was still some skin over the bones, but the flesh had gone, eaten by predators and finished off by vultures. The hide left over was streaked with their droppings, and the whole thing smelt of death. The elephant was lying on its side, and I could see a magnificent tusk protruding into the air. I walked closer, and there was another one half covered by sand.

Tugging on the free tusk, it came loose, and after a few tugs out it came. It was a beauty; better than seventy pounds in weight. We pulled out the other one which was even heavier and perfectly formed. It took both our efforts to carry the tusks into the bush and stash them under a tall tree, and then we set off for the camp to fetch the donkeys.

On our return we cut some string bark off a brakestegia tree, and wound it into a rope to hang the tusks over the back of the largest donkey, and then we headed back to camp. As we entered the mopani forest we came across a large herd of Impala antelope, and using the .22 I dropped two nice rams. These we slung onto the other donkey, and within an hour we arrived at the camp. We stowed the two tusks under some fresh leaves in case we should have unwelcome visitors, and then skinned the two impala. That night we made a pot of stiff maize porridge, and grilled the hearts and livers of the Impalas. Sitting and eating, the talk turned to the discovery of the dead elephant. He had obviously not been shot by poachers, and his demise could only be laid before a rival bull. Then the talk centered on the legend of an elephant graveyard.

I had often heard of such a place while sitting in the company of hunters, but although they all believed that a place existed where the elephants went when they felt death to be upon them, no one had ever come across such a place, and their belief in it was reinforced as not many carcasses were ever found in the bush. But here we had found one, and speculation ran high.

Very few bones are ever found lying around, and if the elephants fell as they died, and as they were such large beasts, it seemed that more carcasses should be lying around. Edward had grown up in the close proximity to these animals, and he too had never found their bones in the bush this carcass was a first for him too. The subject fascinated me, and I resolved to find out more about the matter. Early the next morning we packed up camp, and headed back up the mountain and soon we were out of the valley and while in the foothills a small herd of sable antelope ran across our path, and a young bull fell to a shot behind the shoulder. We had enough meat, and we set off for home at a steady pace.

Back in Lusaka I found a Greek who bought the tusks from me one hundred pounds each, and I had enough money to buy a second hand Land Rover. Now I could go into the valley and cover a lot more ground than we could on foot, and more meat could be brought out and we could turn a tidy profit. While in the city, I scoured the library for information on the elephants' burial ground, but although a lot was said about it, no one had ever found such a place, and the consensus was that there was a fortune just waiting to be found.

I did find a short poem by Cullen Gouldsbury which has stayed with me all these years, and which I would like to share with you:

Pile upon pile of bleaching bone, and a foul miasmic breath.

With now and again a mighty moan, to break the hush of death.

Sluggish streams and silver beams of a silent moon on high.

God forefend, I should meet my end in the place where the elephants die.

Cullen Gouldsbury.

Master of the herd

2008-01-05T02:51:00.000-08:00

The Zambezi valley was sweltering hot. In the thick Jesse bush it was difficult to breathe. The air seemed thick, and each breath seared the lungs as if a blast furnace was blowing directly into your face. Every plant seemed to have a thorn attached, and the sickle thorns grew so prolifically that you could not move a pace without being snagged and held tight. Then you had to slowly disengage the thorns one by one, or the effort would only result in the snag binding tighter and the thorns would penetrate your clothing and start to embed themselves in your flesh.

What made matters worse was the presence of swarms of Mopani flies forming a cloud around your head, crawling into your ears and up your nose, sucking at the corners of your eyes seeking all the available moisture. As soon as you wiped them from the eyes, the ones that were killed let out a fluid which stung the eyes and made them water some more, attracting more flies, and the whole agonizing process started all over again. You dare not slap them because then the Buffalo herd you were tracking would be instantly alerted and would take off through the bush as if the thorns did not exist. So all you could do was to wipe them away gently and just grin and bear their annoying presence.

Edward, my black hunting companion, and I were on a narrow elephant footpath winding our way through the Jesse bush on the trail of a small herd of Cape Buffalo numbering about sixteen grown individuals and a few calves. I was then about fifteen years old, and although I had shot a big Kudu bull with the new, to me, rifle that I had acquired from our family friend, but I had never before hunted the dangerous Cape buffalo.

Edward was a bush wise black man, but even he too had never encountered these formidable animals, and could only relate what the older men in his tribe had to say about these beasts while they sat and talked around the camp fires.

Here we were, in probably the most dangerous terrain you could think to enter, actually on the spoor of a small herd of one of the most lethal animals on the entire planet. We had come across the herd in an open glade where they had been grazing on the sour grass. The sun was about at eight o’clock, and it was already burning on one’s back as if the khaki shirt did not exist. Excitedly we watched the small herd, squatting on our haunches. They were about two hundred paces from us, and we knew that they were too far for me to attempt a shot. All the hunters who claimed to be authorities on these animals told that one should stalk up to at least twenty paces before firing, and then the hunter must be very careful to select the right place on the beast’s body to aim at. I can remember the consensus being that the neck shot just below the curve of the great horn was best, and if the animal was broad side on and a neck shot was dicey, then a heart shot on the shoulder was next best. A brain shot aimed on the point of the nose was an instant killer in a frontal position, or if you were not too sure of striking the nose squarely, then a shot into the depression at the base of the neck was sure to penetrate the heart. Quite easily done if you know how, or so I thought.

Even at this distance they looked frighteningly large and fierce. A great big bull stood a little apart from the herd, caked in dried mud, and lifting his massive set of horns, he sniffed the air in our direction; nose outstretched and lip curling back. The sight of him made me feel weak at the knees, and a feeling arose in the pit of my stomach making me feel as if I had to attend to an urgent call of nature.

It would have been so easy to just call the hunt off, and go back home, but Edward had faith in my ability to use the white man’s gun to bring down the most dangerous game in Africa, and it did not matter that I had never before confronted these animals let alone knew how to hunt them! And how exactly had I gotten myself into this predicament? What was it that brought me to this inhospitable valley so full of dangers and frighteningly hostile creatures?

Our farm was situated about twenty miles as the crow flies from the escarpment at the edge of the mighty Zambezi river, and where the valley starts was about thirty miles from the river itself. I had seen the river, having crossed it from Southern Rhodesia into Northern Rhodesia over the Chirundu Bridge. At the bridge it was a beautiful green black fast flowing river, and we used to make a stop there just to take in the magnificence of the scene. Sometimes there would be native women, mainly of the Tonga tribe, fishing for Bream (Tilapia) along the banks, and we would buy fish from them which we would cook for breakfast when we arrived back at the farm about one hundred miles away, east past the capital city of Lusaka.

Edward was a piece time worker who stayed with a family member in my father’s employ, and sometimes helped to harvest crops as the need arose, and as there was ample leisure time he would accompany me on hunting excursions on the farm itself. He was a short powerfully built man with the torso of a wrestler, and short bandy legs. His back rippled with muscles as a result of strenuous work with the hoe and axe. We had struck up a friendship, as his passion coincided with mine, which was roaming the bush and hunting in it.

Together we had accounted for a number of large bush pig, some duikers, and numerous guinea fowl which we hunted using our dogs. He could walk all day and never seemed to tire, at first I was hard pressed to keep up with him, and he would not slow down or concede that I needed a rest, but as my level of fitness increased, it was not long before I was setting the pace, and he had to move to keep pace with me. Of course, I always made sure that he was carrying the heavier load, but he never seemed to catch on, and neither did I inform him of the fact. Edward was also one of the minor sons of the chief, living at the confluence of the Zambezi and Kafue rivers, named Chiawa.

After I had acquired the 8x60 Mauser rifle, and had dropped a young Kudu bull of about three years old with it, he told me that he knew of a territory where the game was plentiful and where we could hunt whatever we chose without the government’s consent because it all belonged to his father the chief. If I wanted to accompany him to these happy hunting grounds, I should supply him with some gifts that he could take back to his father, and if I would write out a letter of permission to hunt, then he would get the old man to put his official seal to it, and we would have the best hunting area in Africa at our sole disposal. Dictated more by the folly of youth, an over supply of enthusiasm and the possession of a superb rifle with plenty ammunition, I consented, feeling that I had hit the supreme jackpot. We arranged that when the next school holidays came around, I would return with the gifts, and he would go back home for a visit and return with the written permission.

On a trip into town I drew thirty Pounds (a king’s ransom) out of my Post Office savings account, and purchased a bottle of Limousin (cheap) brandy, a new briar pipe, some pipe tobacco, a new folding knife, a small hand axe and two Waverly rugs. This lot cost me the Princely sum of eighteen pounds three shillings and nine pence. The rugs were the most expensive items, but I resolved that too soon I would extract their full value from the bush to which the old chief would grant me carte blanche.

Edward set off with his uncle’s bicycle, the bundle of gifts strapped to the carrier in an old cardboard box, and as he disappeared over the hill down the track to the Zambezi, I was convinced that I was casting my bread on the waters, and would see returns of at least one thousand fold. I went back to school, and could hardly wait for the next holidays to come round. It felt like an age before they did, and one day, there was my stepfather’s truck to collect me for the long awaited break.

The first thing I asked him was, “Has Edward arrived back?” “Yes,” he answered, “he has been pestering me for days about when I will be picking you up. What mischief are you two planning to get up to this time?”
My mumbled reply was very non informative and softly spoken hoping that the old man would let it pass without further explanation. He did, and with relief I sat quietly the whole way to the farm, and while he was off loading the supplies purchased in town I took off to the house where I greeted my mother, and deposited my suitcase in my room.

As soon as it was safe, I hared off to the worker’s compound where I encountered Edward sitting in the shade of the big Pundu tree carving some axe handles which he sold to make extra cash. As he saw me, he entered his hut and emerged with the note in his hand. There was the chief’s mark, a wavy cross, but underneath was a waxed official seal. We had permission, and now nothing could stop us from harvesting as much game as we wanted. My thoughts went back to books I had read about the exploits of men like Karamojo Bell, Frederic Courtney Selous and other famous African hunters. I was due to join their ranks, and many pleasurable days awaited me in this wide and wonderful land.

We started to assemble our gear. I had purchased two ex army rucksacks, second hand, a new sleeping bag, a pair of vellies, the traditional velskoen of the Boer Trekkers, kerosene lighter, and two cooking pots, one for maize meal pap, and one for the meat relish we would eat with it. Then we had an enamel mug each, and a small aluminum kettle to boil water in for coffee. A small tarpaulin, filched from my stepfathers store, and for use as a ground sheet for me to sleep on rounded off the equipment list. All the soft goods were wrapped in the tarp, and some provisions such as coffee, a few tins of corned beef, a hand full of rice, three small tins of peaches and two tins of condensed milk were stowed into the rucksacks. In mine I had the ammunition, sixty rounds in all, the folding knife, some fish hooks and a roll of fishing line( in case we made it to the river ),some spare socks, a spare shirt and shorts, and the pull through and cleaning kit for the rifle. I also had some mutton cloth to use as a dish towel.

Loaded with our gear and twenty pounds maize meal each plus five pounds coarse salt, we set off for the valley. I had convinced my mother that we were to hunt in the Manica tribal trust lands adjacent to our farm, and that we would be back within a week’s time.

We set off early in the morning at a brisk pace for the valley, and the first night slept in the escarpment right on the edge of the descent into the great Zambezi valley. Making camp we soon had a fire crackling merrily and some food on the boil. I spread my blankets, and after eating went straight to sleep, the chirrup of a nightjar in my ears. Far away a hyena let out a mournful howl, and was answered by another equally as far away. Soon I was fast asleep, and before I knew it I awoke with Edward stirring up the fire for coffee. As soon as it was light enough we were down the mountain side.

The mountain was called Mfundis, because it taught every motor vehicle that you needed four wheel drive to get down or up, and the cooling system must be good or the vehicle would not get more than halfway. Believe me; the cooling systems in those days were always prone to malfunction .But we were on foot, and we literally scrambled down the steep side. I was so keen to get at the masses of wild life that I never even gave a thought to carrying back up everything that we shot!

By mid afternoon we were well inside the territory, and after crossing a small stream still flowing as a result of a good rainy season, we found some tall trees on its bank, and set up camp. Both collected a pile of fire wood, mostly mopani wood which makes wonderful coals to cook on, and can burn all night. That night we sat around the fire and discussed strategy for the following day.

So it was that the next morning we came across the small herd of Buff grazing in the open glade. There was no way that we could approach them without being detected, and while we were sitting there, the old bull shook his gargantuan head and moved leisurely off into the thicker scrub. The rest of the herd followed.

This was our cue, we stalked behind them, but they did not stop, and soon they took an elephant footpath which wound deeper into the thick Jesse bush. I had heard that as soon as the sun starts to warm up, these animals will head into thick cover to lie down, and it would have been prudent to leave them alone. The adrenalin was pumping too much, and we could hear the soft bleating of the calves, and were sure that we would come upon them at any minute. The bush became thicker as we progressed, and soon we were so deep in that we could not see more that a few paces ahead.

The sickle thorn was so tangled that had we tried to get off the elephant path it would have been like walking into a spiny wall. After some time, I don’t remember how long, Edward stopped sank to his haunches and pointed ahead.

There at about fifteen paces stood a large black shape. We could see that it was the general shape of a buffalo, standing broadside on, but we could not make out his front from his backside; a shot to the shoulder would be fine, but if what I was aiming at was the rear end, then it would be a disaster. After about a minute scrutinizing the beast, he moved his ears slightly, and the light filtering through the leaves glinted on his horn, Ah! He was facing to our left, and I could see a clear shoulder shot.

Now the 8x60 is not considered the ideal big game rifle, but it was all I had, and I had full confidence that it would do the job. I took careful aim, and slowly squeezed the trigger while taking dead rest against the stem of a sapling. The shot rang out, and I could faintly detect the puff of dust as the bullet stuck home, perfect shot! The buff should have collapsed right there, but at that moment all I could hear was the crashing and breaking of branches as the herd took fright and scattered, and oh cripes, here was a behemoth careering straight for us! Edward reacted in a split second and took off down the path we had come up, and instinctively I reloaded while watching the black body the size of a freight train,(or so it seemed) come crashing through the bush as if he were on an open highway.

Try as I may, I could not get a bead on his head as the foresight wavered too much, and the buff came galloping over the obstacles in his path, his head moving up and down so that there was no way I could let off another shot. He had obviously not seen us, and ran in our direction after the fright from the mortal shot.

I was afraid that he had seen Edward run and as I had slipped behind the thin sapling, I was out of his direct path. He came thundering past so close that I could have reached out with the rifle barrel and touched him. I was convinced that Edward was a dead duck. I hurriedly stepped out into the elephant path behind the running buff. Raising the rifle to my shoulder, I sighted on his behind, “maybe I could break a hind leg,” flashed through my mind, but before I could squeeze the trigger the bull vanished from my line of sight, and ploughed into the ground in a cloud of dust. Out of the dust I heard a mournful bellow. The bull was dead.

The full jacketed bullet had penetrated his heart, but he still had enough life to get past the spot where we had been firing from, and had he been watching us, and came at a full charge, I shudder to think what would have happened. It took me quite a few minutes to coax Edward out from the Jesse bush which he had gone through like the wind. He eventually came out without one single scratch on him.

Or next problem was to get the ton of meat back to camp, work it into biltong strips dry them and get them over Mfundis to where we could pick them up with the old man’s small tractor and trailer. We worked for the rest of the day to carry the meat piecemeal to the camp, and two days to cut up and salt and then hang the strips to dry. Four times we climbed the mountain path to get the meat and the gear up to where we could collect it, and even then it was not done. I had to leave Edward to complete it while I had to go for the tractor.
Another plan had to be made to get all the hunted carcasses over that torturous obstacle of a mountain, but that is a story for another time.

Oupa Grysbaard Speaks Up.

2008-01-02T01:53:00.000-08:00

I am an old grysbaard (greybeard), closer to seventy than to sixty, and subsisting on a government pension, which in the New South Africa is probably one of the worst paid in the developed world. I suppose that this new South Africa can be said to be a third world country now that the Apartheid system has disappeared and the first world status with it.

Really, I should not blame the new rulers, because when I cast my mind back to the old days, I can remember that the minister in charge of pensions, when taken to task for the sad amount of money which his government paid to the senior citizens, sniffed in indignation and said that an old person could subsist quite well on a tin of pilchards and a loaf of bread each day. All too easy to say, seeing that he earned more than twenty times the salary of most well paid workers, never mind pensioners.

Not enjoying the benefits of a highly paid job, and having a family to support, I now find myself in the tin of fish and loaf of bread league, as everything is so much more expensive and the minister in charge of the pensions still has the same outlook as his former colleague. No doubt he enjoys far more benefits than his predecessor.

I really do not want to bemoan my lot to you, but I would like to share with you a few observations that I have taken note of, and chalked up as memories during my much too short life. Some of them have developed into issues which have become hotly contended and fought over by the different factions which make up this so called Rainbow Nation. To do justice to my views, it is necessary to relate where I come from, and what makes me think that I can even open my mouth on the subject without you concluding that I am really just an old fool. As everyone well knows, there is no fool like an old fool! Here, therefore is my story:

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I was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but grew up in Johannesburg, till the age of eight, and then for the greater part of my life in Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia. My stepfather was a commercial farmer, growing maize and potatoes for the local market, an activity which he was very successful at.

Farming was just not my scene, but we were living in a wild area, and not very far from our farm was deepest Africa, the bundu, the spaces of Africa filled with exotic people and animals. I loved the dambos (vleis), and the vast stands of elephant grass waving in the wind. The rains came suddenly, and the storms were violent, water cascading in solid sheets. Get caught in one, and it was amazing how big the rain drops actually were. When they hit you, they stung on your skin. You would be drenched sopping wet. Lightning bolts split the sky and ran all over the horizon in endless forks, coursing between earth and sky. Frightening and awe inspiring the storm would pass as quickly as it started. Glittering drops would cling to the elephant grass, pools would form where dust had been just hours before. Rivers became torrents, and broke their banks overflowing and coming down in a flood, covering the low level bridges. After the raging flood had subsided we would walk around in the ankle deep water and pick up fish that had been left stranded. My companions were the children of the farm workers, little black children, who could not speak my language, so that I had to learn to speak theirs. The result was that I became very proficient at communicating in the various languages of the farm workers.

I soon discovered that one cannot fully understand the minds of people different from oneself, until you could speak fluently in their own tongue. Once accomplished, many facets into their culture and personalities opened up and you could then think as they did. There were many traits which we as white people could not understand, which became quite understandable when your days were spent with these children,; when you spoke the way they do, and the time was taken up with them in the veldt, fishing for small tilapia in the streams and rivers, and when the weather turned hot, and I mean hot, then we would strip down and finding a shallow spot, swim bare arsed naked together cavorting and splashing, and generally having fun as kids all over the world are apt to do.

Having come from the city, I knew nothing of the bush. These kids were my mentors. They taught me to hunt birds using a catapult; how to select the best trees from which to cut the forked stick, and that the red inner tube from motor cars made the best elastic, and that the blue black iron stones flew straighter, and could bring down a wood pigeon or even a grouse. The green fruit eating pigeons were the fattest and they taught me to pluck them and grill them over an open fire, skewered on a stick stuck into the ground and turned occasionally till they were roasted to a brown and fragrant turn. We would eat the birds' bones and all. The quelea finches were also great eating. They flew in great flocks wheeling together, passing overhead at great speed. To get them, we each carried three or four stout sticks that we would launch into the wheeling flock, spinning the stick end over end. This confused the birds, and we were sure to bring down at least five or six birds with each throw. Each one of us carried a Knapsack on a long thong over the shoulder. The best knapsacks were made from the skin of a duiker, the small antelope living in the forests. A morning's bird hunt half filled the knapsack, and when it was mid day we would find a shady spot, clear away the grass, build a fire, using hard wood so that good coals would result. A piece of chicken wire would be stretched over the glowing coals and the plucked birds placed on and barbequed. The innards were left in, and when the carcass was ready to eat, they were pulled out in one motion with the anus. The bird was then popped into the mouth, and deliciously crunched. Accompanied by a dish full of stiff maize porridge would round off a gourmet lunch par excellence. Sometimes I managed to swipe half a loaf of home baked bread, stow it into my knapsack, and together with a generous layer of farm butter, it would make a scrumptious alternative to the maize pap. My Mother baked beautiful crusty farm bread, and if I caught her in a good mood, she would bake me a small round, and I would take it hot into the bush. Our mid day meal would then be a feast.

A special pocket inside my Knapsack contained an "Okapi"(made in Germany) knife which I kept honed to a sharp edge, so sharp in fact that I could shave the hairs on my arm or leg. This Knife was used to cut "cattie" forks, whip handles, throwing and fighting sticks. Each of us also carried a small native axe, forged from a motor car leaf spring into a wedge shape and inserted into the thick part of the club handle by heating the thin edge of the blade to a red heat in a charcoal fire and burning it into the wood. After the blade was burnt deep enough, a little Maize meal was poured into the burnt slit, and the hot blade was forced in. A few hard blows wedged it in fast, and it would then not fly out if the handle accidentally struck the wood being chopped.

We fancied ourselves to be mighty hunters, and when we encountered wildlife, we would stalk them patiently to see how close we could get before they took off. We used all the techniques such as watching the direction of the wind, stalking towards cover, and leopard crawling in the long grass.

One day this leopard crawl backfired on me. I was busy stalking a group of reedbuck, watching them intently as I fancied a leopard would, when I crawled right into a column of black soldier ants which we knew as Matabele ants. Let me tell you, the encounter was painful! These ants carry a sting in their rear ends, and fearsome nippers at the mouth. They bite into your skin with the nippers and then sting you repeatedly. You normally encounter them in the bush while they are raiding termite nests, and marching in a long column sometimes about five abreast. When disturbed and angry they emit a fearful buzz and spread out running in all directions to locate the disturbance and deal with it enmass. Believe me, when you hear the Matabele column buzzing, you hop out of the immediate vicinity lifting your feet as high as you can until you are sure the danger is past. Suffice it to say, that stalk was a painful one. Intent on the group of reedbuck I did not pay too much attention to the ground over which I was crawling until I intersected the marching column of Matabele ants. The first I knew about their presence was when I heard their angry buzz right under my very nose. They immediately latched onto the tenderest parts and started to sting. I took off for safer pastures as if I was rocket powered, while loudly lamenting my fate.

We were usually a group of about six boys, and as my father was their fathers' employer, the Bwana, I was automatically the leader of the group. Now and again an older boy might assert his claim on the headship, staring at me, and countermanding any instruction which I may give. What he did not know, was that I had grown up in the tough part of Jeppe, a suburb of Johannesburg, and I had learned to fight as soon as I could stand on my legs. From the age of six I had attended boxing classes, in which I excelled. We squared up to each other, he with his arms outstretched and fists balled. I took the orthodox stance, and pressed the attack with a series of left jabs flush on the nose, and followed up with a cracking straight right to the eye. Two more hooks to the ribs, and a right again above the heart usually finished the fight and asserted my authority. It is uncanny that the vanquished challenger normally became my closest follower, and would take it upon himself to keep discipline in the rest of the band. One husky lad took an astounding array of punches, and caught me back with a few sharp ones of his own. He was taller than me, and I had to duck under his windmill swings and get close to his body from where I sent in a number of cracking uppercuts combined with a few short left hooks to the right side of his broad face One hook caught him squarely on the chin, and he dropped as if pole axed. He came up with death showing on his face and rushed me with head down attempting to butt me in the stomach. He was heavy, and I knew that if he got me down I would have him on top and he would batter me mercilessly. I turned him with another left hook, straightened him with a short uppercut, and kneed him in the gonads. As he staggered back, I lobbed a handful of red sand into his eyes, and when I saw that he could not see well, I pounded rights and lefts into his head and body. I punched so fast that he was not sure that all the others had not ganged up against him and joined in. Suddenly his bravado departed, and he turned and ran for home. After that incident he avoided us altogether, and when I moved threateningly towards him he would get up and leave for the compound where the workers lived. My father heard of the fight, and warned me not to antagonize him in the workers' compound. This fight taught me a few salient factors that stood me in good stead in later dealings with black youth as well as later with adults.

I went to school at a farm school named Silver Rest. At the age of ten, I started in standard four which was a year ahead of my age group. My aunt, my mother's younger sister had taught me to read and write at an early age, and instilled in me the love of literature. When our schoolmistress, Miss Louwe discovered that I was streets ahead of the prescribed readers for standard three, she moved me up a class. At Silver Rest I made friends with the sons of all the farmers in our area. From them I learnt the rudiments of farm life, which was still patterned on the ways of the Vortrekker Dutch farmers of an earlier era. All the fathers were hunters of note, and we sat and debated the properties of all the big game rifles, even though none of our number had even fired one. During the winter months, the farmers had the practice of spending time in the bush, usually to the east of Lusaka in and beyond the hills of Rufunsa, where they hunted big game. Mostly the meat was dried or made into biltong, the pickled and cured strips of dried meat, similar to the American West's jerky. On occasion I would spend a trip or two with the friends I had made together with their parents in the bush, camping and hunting. One such father was named Tom Ferreira; he was a dead shot, and an expert in the bush. Best of all he believed that the children should learn to use a rifle and he owned a .22 caliber, which he called a saloon, and he would give us each a turn at pot shots. Sometimes it would be a guinea fowl, or a francolin. Often a fat bush dove or green pigeon. His two sons, Tom and Dirk, were both already expert shots, and I, the rooineck Englishman had to work doubly hard to be able to compete.

Later we moved to a farm closer to the Ferreira's farm, and I used to walk from our house to their house, and spend the day with them, Hunting birds and hares in the veldt .We would accompany the black kids into the bush searching for wild fruits which grew prolifically in the immediate vicinity of our farms. There were Mabulas, or as the vernacular called them Pundus. They were a large oval fruit about the size of a plum, which when ripe it turned a bright yellow with sweet flesh on a large pip. We would pop it into our mouths and eat off the thin layer of flesh, while retaining the pip which housed a most palatable nut. The masuku was another lovely fruit. A hard orange outer skin with brown speckles, housed four large pips covered in a sweet musky flesh that was divine to eat. The msoli, pear shaped and light yellow was as sweet as syrup and much desired, although they were few and far between. Another fruit, the tumburwa, we called the wild apricot was also delicious, but we were lucky if the monkeys had left us any. These little rascals knew exactly where to find all the fruits, and seldom left us any. Sour plums, red and succulent were plentiful, but they were really sour! Num-nums grew in the riverine forests, purple and milky with a strange sweet taste on the tongue.

One favorite pastime was that after the maize fields were harvested, we would leave early in the morning usually accompanying a group of black boys and girls in search of the many rat burrows in the fields. These girls were accomplished diggers using the traditional native hoe. There were a number of different types of veldt rats. The most common was called Mbeva. They were a medium sized grey field mouse, and their burrows were quite shallow, running a few inches below the surface, but they were long and mostly branched out into a number of tributary tunnels. These we would carefully plug up and dig out the main tunnel; as the hoe progressed, the rats moved ahead of it till they ran out of tunnel. We stood around each with a stout stick, and as soon as the end was reached the rats would explode out and run in all directions. We would then lay into them with our sticks, cracking as many rats as we could. If one should escape, we would all pile onto it with cries of: "GIVE IT A SPORTING CHANCE!" Soon someone would strike the target, and we then returned to dig out the tributaries. There were never more than a rat or two in these, and so the search continued for a new tunnel complex. Other rat species were the Chituta, a blackish rat with a short tail that also lived in a fairly shallow tunnel. As the digging progressed, a section of tunnel may be exposed without being totally destroyed, and then the black girls would examine the ground, picking out loose hairs and they could identify the type of rat occupying the tunnel. I can remember an occasion when the girl doing the digging put her finger into the hole, and feeling said; "I feel him, it's soft." The next blow with the hoe, and a massive puff adder snake erupted from the ground. We all fled in different directions. Needless to say, that put paid to our rat hunt for that day. The Kantuva was a small mousy rat that dug deep down into the sandy soil, and I can not remember ever seeing more than one in its burrow. The Musansa was large and also lived in a shallow burrow. Once they broke out of the tunnel, they ran so fast that we could not catch them.

The two Ferreira brothers were the worst kind of practical jokers, and I was their most frequent target. Once I got to their house shortly after a short thunderstorm. The water was cascading down the decline of the dirt road which had been eroded with a broad rivulet running down the hill. The two brothers were walking in the stream of brown rainwater. "Come feel the cold water," said Tom and he hopped smartly out of the flowing coffee colored water. Thoroughly taken in I stepped into the fast flowing liquid, and landed in a hole which they had dug for just this occasion right up to my waist. Off they ran killing themselves with laughter pursued by some rapid shots from my catapult. On another occasion I arrived on their farmyard, and found the two busy picking and eating mangoes in their massive orchard.

"Here!" Tom called out to me. "See, we have kept you a delicious kidney mango, all you have to do is climb the tree and pick it."

Taken in by their generosity I climbed into the first fork of the tree and looked up at the beautiful yellow ripe mango. Two things made me wary. One was their eagerness for me to have a really nice mango, the other was the fact that they were both standing at least twenty paces away, egging me on to reach up and pluck the fruit. Carefully I inspected the fruit; it was suspended on a long stem with a bunch of long dark green leaves covering it from the top. There hidden among the leaf cluster was a massive wasp nest of the long bodied red variety, and should I pluck on the mango, the whole nest would be on me delivering the most painful stings. With friends like these, who would need enemies?

Later I was posted to high school in Lusaka, and attended the Lusaka Boys' school which was built next to the railway line. The school was a group of rambling colonial style whitewashed buildings with tin roofs. To accommodate the influx of students, a few cement asbestos classrooms had been added, with a science laboratory built of the same material. We also had a boxing ring built with bricks and the floor filled with gravel. Anyone being knocked down also skinned his knees and elbows in the process. We avoided fights in the ring which, were also supervised by a member of the staff, and preferred to take our quarrels behind the toilet block away from the prying eyes of the staff room.

My boarding hostel was called the Herbert Stanley hostel, and there I entered a new dimension, experiencing the typical British public school system. Discipline was the order of the day, and as we were the newcomers and the juniors, we were made to be skivvies, fetching and carrying for the older boys. I had an independent nature, and refused to be a slave to any other kid. That attitude soon attracted the attention of the bully squad in the hostel, and they were merciless; prominently a kid that I would refer to as Brian. He made my life hell. It was not long though before we got our own back. The rain season had arrived, and after one particularly wet week, the sun came through the clouds, and all the boys were told to go out and play. In the grounds of the hostel was a massive termite mound, and these termites had brought piles of sticky clay to the surface. On the farm we used to use this type of clay to make models of oxen which we would burn in an open wood fire, and play with. All the farm kids knew how to knead the clay to make it plastic and workable.

Well, the older kids, egged on by the squad of bullies, decided that we would play "Kleilat" which was a war game where the number of participants were split into two teams, and each one would cut a long supple cane like branch and trim it, and a piece of clay would be kneaded and molded onto the front of the stick. The stick would be wielded and the piece of clay would shoot of the end in the direction in which it was aimed with considerable force. Should you be struck on the body by such a lump of clay, a bruise would result, which would start off as blue, then turn purple and eventually yellow.

The teams were selected, and true to their sadistic nature the bully gang chose their cronies to be pitted against the newcomers. Our team consisted of all the farm boys, and what the bullies were totally ignorant of was that we had grown up with kleilat, and that we had even used the technique to hunt birds and rodents, and that our aim was polished and pinpoint accurate. At the bottom of the school grounds was a large mulberry tree which grew the perfect long sticks, supple yet not sloppy. We each cut three or four sticks, trimmed them and stuck them in our belts. The bully squad took possession of the termite mound, and allowed us to only fetch enough clay that we were capable of carrying off. This we did, and took up position behind a hedge of hibiscus. At their signal, the clay missiles came over thick and fast, but to our good fortune, most of them landed in the hibiscus hedge and did very little damage.

I soon spied Brian's method, he would load up a few sticks which he would plant into the soft clay in front, and as soon as they were ready he would fire them off in quick succession without really taking aim. As the last missile was thrown he would then duck back into cover and load up again for the next salvo. His method was adopted by the rest of his gang, and at his signal a rain of missiles came falling into the hedge, with only one or two finding any telling mark. The boy standing to my left was a lad named Christie, who was also from a neighboring farm and a dead shot with the kleilat. "Let us wait for Brian to show himself for his next shot, and as he takes aim, we let him have it with two well directed shots." I said to Christie.

As this bully came out of his cover, we each loosed off two shots at him. My first shot was slightly ahead of Christie's, and slightly faster, and it caught Brian squarely in the left eye. He came upright with a howl of pain, and Christie's clay caught him in the other eye. His squad turned and ran, and we pursued them with missiles coming thick and fast. Each of the troops caught a few painful clay missiles on the back before we broke off the engagement. Brian was carted off to the sick bay, and had to have the clay washed out of his eyes. After that episode they left us strictly alone, and the next year they were gone, having completed their public exams.

In my thirteenth year, a family friend came to visit from the Copperbelt which lay about three hundred miles from our farm, and brought with him an 8x60S Mauser rifle. He wanted to shoot a kudu on the farm, but spent the whole long weekend drinking, and when he left he forgot to take the rifle with him. I happened to come home the next Friday, and soon discovered the rifle. Of course I nagged my mother to be able to take the rifle with me to the bush, but she insisted that it belonged to our family friend who had forgotten it there, and had not given permission for us to use. Knowing that he arrived home from his shift on the mine at about four in the afternoon, I again nagged for her to phone him; his reply would put the whole matter to rest, so she placed a call to him. When he came on the line, she asked him about the rifle, and after a silence he asked her what rifle is she talking about? When his memory was refreshed, he asked her what I wanted to do with it, and after hearing that I could use it on my hunting trips, he said: "I bought that rifle and all the ammunition for thirty pounds, and my intention was to hunt a kudu which I never got around to. I definitely have no use for the thing, and your son can have it with my compliments, and I hope he gets much satisfaction from it." The rifle was immediately dispatched to my room, and I counted the rounds of ammunition. He had left me one thousand rounds, mostly the round point solid type. A gift beyond my wildest dreams!