by Paul Theroux
Mala Mala was not a wilderness but a reserve and the happier for that, because the animals were not shot at, and they had become so habituated to the prowling vehicles and the crowing passengers that – keeping at a humane distance – it was possible to see them in their unselfconscious, non-threatened natural state. The animals were generally complacent and well fed and unstressed. And the reserve was so well run that a tourist such as Margaret Thatcher or Nelson Mandela - both of whom had stayed at Mala Mala – could drop in, see some big animals, and leave, without inconvenience or discomfort.
A herd of 200 buffalos was not unusual at Mala Mala; twenty elephants placidly chewing trees, deforesting a hillside, was not out of the ordinary. Hyenas – ‘The quickest of all predators to recognize weakness,’ Chris said; a pair of white rhinos – ‘Did you know the rhino is related to the horse?’ Chris asked. A tuskless elephant – ‘Probably more aggressive for not having tusks,’ Chris said. The birds were spectacular: the greater blue-eared glossy starling, the blacksmith plover with its characteristic tink-tink, the yellow-billed hornbill.
And one night, on the walkie-talkie in the bush, Chris heard that a leopard had just pounced upon an impala and bitten and broken his neck. We drove quickly to the spot in time to see the leopard dragging its kill – the dead impala was the same weight as the leopard, about 100 pounds – to a high branch thirty feet up a saffron tree, and wedging it firmly into the cleft of a branch. This way the leopard could devour his kill in peace without attracting opportunistic animals. In spite of the bright flashlight the leopard went on tearing the impala’s flesh, tearing at the haunch, crunching and splintering the bones in its spine and pelvis, and by my watch gobbled the impala’s entire hind leg in ten minutes.
And at the same time, the guests at Mala Mala at their evening meal were sitting in a circle under the stars, gnawing on impala steaks that had just been barbecued. The eaters’ canines flashed in the firelight, their fingers gleamed with meat fat, and after they swallowed they sighed with satisfaction, rejoicing in their safari.
I was late for dinner because of my leopard viewing, but I found a seat near Mike Rattray and asked him how he had gone about ending the hunting on this property.
‘It was hard! The hunters were very cross! Wanted to come here and go on flogging lions,’ he said. He smiled, perhaps remembering the opposition, for he was a man who liked a challenge. ‘This was a popular hunting area. Princess Alice! Flogged a lion here, yes!’
But he had foreseen the decline of the game and the simpler economic fact that hunting was for the few – the unspeakable in pursuit of the stuffable – and game viewing was for the many. There was more sense and more money in becoming eco-friendly. While other reserves were still hosting parties of hunters, Mala Mala eliminated hunting, practiced game management, hired university-trained rangers, and began to see a profit. And the animals thrived.
‘You see, the trouble with hunters is that they take the best animals – the prize specimens,’ Rattray said. ‘They jigger the gene pool, they disturb the balance of nature. They screamed at me, but I screamed back. “You want to hunt? By all means, hunt! But you have to take the ones with weak eyes, weak ears. Kill the weak ones – take what the carnivores take.” ’
‘What sort of reaction did you get?’
Even over dinner, Rattray had his stick handy for illustrating a point. He seized it and swung it. ‘They didn’t like it! But I said, “Don’t take the clever ones.” You have to be clever to live in the bush. At the end of the drought you have the best animals. They wanted trophies, they wanted the clever ones. I said no.’
It was an inspired decision. When the dominant males are killed and their heads mounted, the male cubs stay in the pride and mate with their mothers and sisters, and ‘jigger the gene pool.’ A pride without an aggressive leader becomes easy fodder for predators. In the past decade, Africa’s lion population has dropped from about 50,000 to about 15,000. Botswana instituted a one-year ban on lion hunting in 2001 to determine the health, and numbers, of its lion population. At the same time, the Arizona-based Safari Club International – composed of millionaire big-game hunters and Republican fund raisers – intensively lobbied the Bush White House to put pressure on Botswana to reverse the ban. Botswana resisted, but at last relented. Anyone with $25,000 can play at being Hemingway’s Francis Macomber and kill a lion in Botswana.
In my succeeding days at Mala Mala, driving all day in the hot bush, I saw three giraffes drinking at a pool, their long legs widely splayed, their bodies canted and kowtowing, so they could drink. A baboon with his finger in his mouth lurked behind them among some boulders in a krans – a cave. I saw hippos in a murky pool, wallowing and diving, peering at me, just their eyes and nostrils showing.
The T. S. Eliot poem ‘The Hippopotamus’ contains a dozen observations about hippos, all of them mistaken, from ‘The broad-backed hippopotamus/Rests on his belly in the mud’ – something they never do – to the characterization of their gait. I saw zebras with reddish highlights in their brushlike manes, and a mother rhino with an eight-day-old calf, fifty baboons in a big troop, and many birds - barbets, shrikes, coucals, hornbills, cormorants, kingfishers, eagles and vultures (‘The eagle’s grip is much stronger than the vulture’s,’ Chris said). I saw twelve lions, big and small, creeping through the bush just after dark, stalking a skittish herd of impala cowering in a copse.
All this was superb game viewing – healthy unafraid animals holding their own in a bush setting – but just as splendid and imposing was the striding pot-bellied figure of Michael Rattray, who was inimitable. Stories circulated about him, always admiring ones, and odd tales of life in the bush, often involving difficult guests.
There was the impossible German couple, for example, characters in a story with a tragic ending. The Herr and Frau arrived, were served a good lunch, and went on a game drive with a reliable ranger. But they complained about the food, found fault with the ranger, and were disappointed in the animals. The Herr was milder than his Frau, who loudly objected throughout the afternoon drive, hectoring the ranger. The woman was a harridan and made you think of a scolding gray-headed bush shrike, crying, ‘Schlecht! Schlecht! Schlecht!’
At dinner, Mike Rattray appeared at their table, smacking his stick against his palm. No, he didn’t hit them though he wanted to. The woman began to articulate an objection, but before she was in full cry, Rattray said, ‘You are not enjoying yourselves. You are complaining. There is no charge.’
The couple, mollified by this apparent climb-down by the management, had returned to manipulating their forks and knives, when they saw that Rattray had not moved.
‘You are leaving tomorrow on the first plane,’ Rattray said, and quickly turned, and as he left he could hear the woman ranting.
Before leaving, the woman insisted that Rattray write a letter describing the circumstances of their departure and demanding that he state that they were leaving against their will.
‘Absolutely not,’ Rattray said. He oversaw the loading of their bags on to the vehicle, and turned his back on them for the last time.
Threats of a lawsuit arrived from Germany very soon afterward; many letters from German attorneys hinting at damages and an expensive legal process which would bring Mala Mala to its knees. This pettifoggery went on for a month or so. Then, just as quickly as the letters had started, they ended. Some months passed. The case had gone so quiet a discreet inquiry was advanced. Why the silence? The word came back: The German woman had killed herself.
The male guests at such game lodges could behave with a strange machismo, wearing shorts and knee socks. But for the visiting women the experience was either uncomfortable and insupportably buggy, or else such a fantasy of khaki and muscly stud muffins and animal desire they became smitten.
In a place where stalking was a way of life for the animals, the women guests developed a stalking mentality, too, and would not be dissuaded from their hunt. I heard a number of stories of this kind o
f infatuation. While the husband idled complacently in the lodge, swigging beer and staring at the elephants thrashing in the reeds in the river, the rangers were receiving the nudges and winks or smutty suggestions of the besotted wives. And so these rangers on a game drive for predators with an amorous client were in the curious position of stalking stalkers while they themselves were being stalked.
‘Afterwards, they write letters,’ a ranger told me. ‘They call from America or Europe. They say they want to leave their husband and move to Africa. “I dream of Africa.” It takes a long time for some of them to give up. But it’s unprofessional to have that kind of relationship with a guest.’
The stalker in one famous example at Mala Mala was a woman on her honeymoon. I had the presence of mind to murmur, ‘Shocking,’ but I was riveted by the story of the cuckold-in-khaki and new bride, two-days married, who fell for the ranger. Nothing came of it though no one held out much hope for the marriage. I regretted that the story was so short on sordid details.
There were three honeymoon couples at Mala Mala when I was there. They sat together in the bar. They dined together. They vied for attention in swapping stories of wedding-day foul-ups. They much resembled the bush creatures which mated for life and pawed each other, and traded feline nuzzlings, growling amiably in the shade of thorn trees throughout the hot afternoons.
Michael and Norma Rattray were not demonstrative but they were affectionate. They were never apart. They had seven grown children between them and numerous grandchildren. Michael’s task was management and infrastructure, Norma’s brief was the lodges’ décor. They conversed in animal imagery, and were delighted when one of the Mala Mala leopards appeared on the cover of the National Geographic. The leopard was not a wayward predator who had crept darkly from the bush to wreak havoc, but a familiar creature with a pet name, like a favorite over-indulged pussy cat, one of the family, and as Norma said in a doting and rather admiring way, ‘rather a show-off.’
‘Going?’ Michael said to me the morning of my departure.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Back to the States?’
‘Eventually.’
‘God,’ he said. He was concentrating hard, recalling city life. ‘Had some guests from New York. Friends, really. Most of our guests become friends. Chap says to us, “Look us up if you’re ever in New York.” So we did. Went to the chap’s house in this tall building. Couldn’t believe it! He’s way up here.’ Rattray waved his stick, demonstrating the height of the sky scraper. ‘The walls were glass, windows went from floor to ceiling. Norma could hardly look down! Couldn’t wait to leave!’
‘Like living in a tree,’ Norma said.
‘Worse! Chap’s stuck there like a gannet in a krans!’
His vivid image of animal horror made me laugh. I was sorry to leave – I knew I would miss him. And living in luxury in the bush was such a lovely way of passing the time – gaping at large unintimidated animals, bird-watching, reading, in a cozy hut with a desk where I could sit adding pages to my erotic story. This was a small part of the travel experience, the boutique game viewing, with superb South African vintages. I could understand why tourists gushed: it was pleasurable, it was simple and harmonious and safe, no strife, no starvation, it wasn’t upsetting; not many Africans, it was hardly Africa.
21 Faith, Hope and Charity on the Limpopo Line
Back in the dorp of Nelspruit, among the orange groves and jack-fruit trees and the fields of floppy-leafed tobacco, I looked at my map and saw that I was only seventy miles from the Mozambican border – about the same distance as Barnstable from Boston – and so I caught a cross-border bus to Maputo. I knew in advance that I would be doubling back across the border, which meant four immigration bottlenecks, two each way, and long lines. But anything was better than flying. I kept thinking of Nadine Gordimer introducing me: ‘He came from Cairo! On a bus!’
The bus was filled with Africans, many of whom were Mozambicans who had crossed the border to shop in Nelspruit for items that were unobtainable in Maputo. Two Indian men in skullcaps hogged the four seats on the front row of the top level. The men pulled off their shoes and sat cross-legged and the pong of their cheesy feet filled the upper deck. Because it had been advertised as a ‘luxury coach’ a movie was shown on the overhead TV set.
The movie, Jack, starring Robin Williams, had seemed a facetious thinly plotted and sentimental trifle when I first saw it in 1997. But travel-weary and with a big birthday behind me, the message of ‘live all you can’ from the prematurely aged Jack speaking at his high school graduation, made me absurdly emotional. A scene involving fart gas and explosive crepitation had the Indians clutching their sides in hilarity and laid one of them straight in the aisle, giggling. For a dose of reality I glanced out the window at the mud huts of the Swazi people in the direction of Piggs Peak, ruled over by the Ndlovukazi, their queen mum, the Great She Elephant of Swaziland.
Across the long hills, through the stone mountains, when we came to the first shanties I knew we were at the in-between land near the border. Riffraff mostly, no one looked at home here, people newly arrived or waiting to leave. The bus stopped. We lined up and walked through the formalities. The South African officials were efficient, the Mozambican protocols lacking in substance – for example, there was hardly enough ink on the immigration officer’s stamp to make an impression on my passport. About an hour and a half of this and then we were on our way, going down a good Mozambican road that the South Africans had built as a gift. We had passed Komatipoort, where there was a railway station, but there had been no trains running that day.
‘There were floods here last year,’ the African next to me said. ‘All this was under water.’
That had been in the world news, as African disasters always were – earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, massacres, famines, columns of refugees. And these are the lucky ones! Images of inundated fields, people clinging to treetops, and helicopter rescues had appeared on TV for a week, before becoming old news. The trouble with such disasters was their unchanging imagery – viewers got bored with them for their having no silver lining and no variation. For a catastrophe to have legs it needed to be an unfolding story, like a script with plot points, and preferably a happy ending. The ending of the Mozambican floods was the news of cholera and poisoned water, of thousands of people who had been made homeless, and hundreds who had drowned like rats.
‘And the worst was when the floods moved the landmines,’ the man said. ‘Picked them up and floated them all over the place. There was a grid saying where they had been put but after the floods the landmines were all in different places and couldn’t be located.’
Ray, the landmine expert I had met in the Sudan, had told me this was largely a rural myth in Africa. It was rare for whole minefields to move like ghost landscapes. And anyway dogs could sniff them out. I suggested this to the man in the seat next to me.
‘I saw a woman chasing a pig,’ he said, to contradict me. ‘It was near my house outside Maputo. Suddenly there was a huge explosion. The woman’s head was up a tree. Her arms and legs were all over the place. I mean, she stepped on a landmine in her own garden that had not been there before.’
Maputo appeared as a succession of outlying shanty towns and soon we were traveling from one district to another, with not much improvement in the look of things. Maputo was a true version of an African city, miles of slums and local markets, leading to the main streets and shops in the center of the city – a few tall buildings and rows of street lamps surrounded by miles of blight and danger: uncontained urbanization.
When the bus stopped and I got out I was besieged by beggars and taxi drivers and chewing gum hawkers and shoeshine boys and opportunists shrieking ‘Meesta!’ I surrendered to a taxi driver and asked him to take me to the Polana, a decayed wedding cake on the seafront, which had somehow survived from colonial days.
‘Any advice?’ I asked Candido, the driver.
‘Don’t walk at night,’ he said.
He explained the recent exchange rate of their devalued currency, the metical. This ride was 60,000, and a meal might be 175,000, and a bus ticket to South Africa probably half a million. A hundred dollars was about two and a half million meticais. The rate had changed for the worse since my trip to Beira.
‘And be careful of naughty boys,’ were Candido’s parting words. ‘They will steal from you.’
South Africans went to Mozambique the way Americans went to Mexico, for ‘color,’ a whiff of the gutter and the slum, cheap eats – fresh tiger prawns especially – ‘the real Africa,’ authenticity, and ugly knickknacks; also for snorkeling and swimming and whoring.
The fleshpots and the pleasures were in southern Mozambique and the coast just north of Maputo. Beira and the province of Zambezia, where I had been before Zimbabwe, were almost inaccessible by road from the capital. The north of Mozambique was like another country, sharing a border with Tanzania and possessing an East African culture, with remote villages inland, ancient fishing communities on the coast, and some of the best artisans and carvers in Africa, the Makonde people. No one went there.
In contrast, the deeper south of Mozambique was southern African in every respect – industrialized, detribalized, overpopulated, and crime-ridden, sharing a border with Swaziland and the South African province of Kwazulu-Natal, half a day’s bus ride to the prosperous seafront city of Durban.
Maputo was much praised as a desirable destination, but it was a dreary beat-up city of desperate people who had cowered there while war raged in the provinces for twenty-five years, destroying bridges, roads and railways. Banks and donors and charities claimed to have had successes in Mozambique. I suspected they invented these successes to justify their existence; I saw no positive results of charitable efforts. But whenever I articulated my skepticism about the economy, the unemployment, or even the potholes or the petty thievery, people in Maputo said, as Africans elsewhere did, ‘It was much worse before.’ In many places, I knew, it was much better before.
