by MP Miles
“It’s easy to get to Shiwa. If you get off the Tanzam at Mpika and head up the road to Tunduma on the Tanzanian border, but just after Chitembo turn on to the dirt road that leads west to the escarpment. They’ll send a carriage, don’t you think?”
“Sorry, my dear, but wouldn’t Ralph do rather better to stay on the Tanzam until Kasongo and go north up the M1 and then east on the dirt road over the escarpment to Shiwa?”
Ralph suddenly realised he had no compass. And the names meant nothing to him. Of the two options, he preferred the one through Kasongo. It sounded so African.
“What’s the Tanzam?” he asked. The confusing geography had finally got the better of him and consulting his old School Atlas of the World provided little help.
“You aren’t the first man to feel lost in Zambia,” Graham explained as he expertly dodged potholes. “The strange shape of the country came about after Cecil Rhodes tried to encircle the Boer republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State and make them more…” he hesitated, “amenable to British influence. Rhodes just seized anything left of central southern Africa from land that hadn’t been claimed by Belgian, German and Portuguese settlers, you see. Its borders, Ralph, are a legacy to colonialism and don’t correspond to any single tribal area or to any kingdom that existed before we Europeans arrived.”
He glanced at Ralph in the mirror.
“Under these conditions it was predictably difficult after independence for Zambia’s new leaders to generate any sense of national identity. Something like seventy languages are spoken by different tribal groups within Zambia’s borders.”
He looked at his wife, who nodded obediently as he spoke.
“Fortune smiled on the country and gave Zambia a leader up to the task. Kenneth Kaunda, a charismatic farmer and teacher, was passionate in his desire to see Zambia develop into a just and equitable society. He alone seemed able to unite the dissimilar but relatively small population and take advantage of its natural resources. Copper was the key, Ralph. His big problem was that landlocked Zambia, reliant on this single export commodity, was dependent on trade routes to the sea through, what were at that time, the colonial administrations of Southern Rhodesia, Mozambique and South Africa.”
He slapped his thigh.
“The Tanzam became the solution. Not a river as you probably thought, Ralph, but a railway. A Chinese railway across uninhabited wilderness, rugged mountains, deep valleys and diseased swamps from the Copperbelt in Zambia to the Indian Ocean at Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast nearly two thousand kilometres away.”
Graham stoked the Range Rover’s boiler and accelerated past a grey-footed baboon watching them approach over its dog-like muzzle as if at a racecourse.
“Of course, good old Cecil Rhodes, as well as defining the borders of Zambia and designing the strip roads that we are driving on, had the idea of a railway to carry copper ore to Tanganyika way back in the late nineteenth century. A 1949 map showing his route turned out to be almost identical to the one finally taken by the Chinese surveyors who built the Tanzam.”
Mrs Graham murmured something in praise – at the foresight of Mr Rhodes or the eloquence of her husband, Ralph wasn’t sure.
“The World Bank looked at the project and concluded it would be uneconomic to build, but when Tanganyika and Zambia became independent their Presidents Nyerere and Kaunda, who were both socialist and supported liberation movements, decided that a rail link would protect their countries’ political and economic independence. Copper ore could be exported without restriction. Remote agricultural regions along the railway could be opened up to the markets of the big capital cities.”
“How clever,” Mrs Graham cried. Her husband held her hand while she leant over and tenderly brushed her lips against his neck. Ralph felt an intruder, as though he might be eavesdropping on something marital.
“Nyerere invited Chinese surveyors to produce a plan but Kaunda, nervous of communist involvement that would annoy the UK, actively sought Western backers. Thanks to The World Bank report, none were interested. Rhodesia then declared a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom after Britain demanded power sharing with the African population, and Rhodesia threatened to sever Zambia’s trade links to the sea. Kaunda finally changed his mind. The railway would be Chinese built and financed.”
Graham took a breath; he’d been talking quickly, rising to a crescendo.
“Over an eleven-year period, China sent fifty thousand technical and construction workers, and invested five hundred million dollars, on the longest railway in Africa and the largest single foreign aid project ever undertaken.”
Mrs Graham licked her lips, staring at him with admiration and pride.
“The US then funded the Tanzam Highway in competition to the railway. They feared a loss of influence in the region, you see, Ralph, but the American road was nothing like as ambitious or dramatic a project. For the railway the Chinese had to place over three hundred thousand tons of steel rail across some of Africa’s wildest and most rugged landscapes, and had to build three hundred bridges, twenty-two tunnels and thousands of culverts. Along the way, ninety-three stations were built, all in the architectural style of Mao Zedong’s revolutionary red China. And they died for their comrades in Africa: I think sixty-four Chinese and 160 Africans in construction accidents. But wait for this, Ralph – they finished the bloody thing two years ahead of schedule!”
Graham summed it up, his wife waiting intently for the climax.
“More than anything, Ralph, the Tanzam is an enduring symbol of Chinese solidarity for the developing world and Chinese support for African independence. And, just as importantly, China would always have a copper supply.”
Mr Graham slumped in his seat, exhausted. Mrs Graham smiled shyly at Ralph and lit a cigarette, blowing a long cloud through the window.
They had covered just over 260 kilometres from Victoria Falls and had been driving for five hours – fifty kilometres per hour on poor roads through the miombo, then past small dusty settlements with large markets on either side of the road, then miombo again. Beyond the little town of Choma there were clear views through the trees towards the Nkanga River. Ralph could see sable, eland, puku, and occasionally hartebeest, wildebeest and kudu – timeless views of Africa.
“I think I’ll get out here and look around for a bit,” Ralph said.
Mrs Graham seemed nervous.
“Are you sure? It’s still 210 kilometres to Lusaka.”
“Good idea,” said Graham. “Scout out the lay of the land.”
Mr Graham, an old pioneer at heart, loved being deep in pioneer country.
“The Tanzam starts in a town called Kapiri Mposhi,” he said. “It’s two hundred kilometres north of Lusaka, through Kabwe. Please get in touch if you need a ride. I have vehicles from work going to the Copperbelt every day.”
He gave Ralph a business card: RG Fire Systems Limited.
At a dot on the map called Pemba the Range Rover hissed to a stop.
“Will you be all right?” asked Mrs Graham.
“Of course he will. The Baldwins are just up the road. Ralph will probably stay with them.”
He looked ahead out of the window down the track, as if on the footplate checking a signal.
“Lovely people the Baldwins. Poultry farmers. They have family on the Isle of Wight. I believe Sir Nigel is to be Lord Lieutenant.”
“Oh, silly me. Of course he’ll know the Baldwins,” said Mrs Graham.
Ralph watched them go, the rumble of the Range Rover replaced by that of thunder.
*
The town of Pemba stretched for barely a hundred metres on either side of the Lusaka road. Ralph bought bananas and little bags of peanuts for dinner from as many different stands as he could: a conscious effort to spread his meagre wealth around to many hands. He filled his water bottles at a tap on
the wall of what looked like a barber’s shop, or an abattoir, or both. An incongruous roadside stand, the last on the outskirts of the town, displayed an odd table of items. Ralph immediately felt sorry for the smiling local entrepreneur. He couldn’t imagine the last time anyone had stopped, on the spur of the moment, to buy a mixed set of plastic measuring jugs or a soft fluffy yellow toy duck. He bargained hard for a box of Christmas crackers. The vendor seemed pleased but they had been cheaper than the amount Ralph had just paid for his dinner. The boy was either a lousy Christmas cracker salesman or Ralph had been ripped off on the peanuts. He imagined the latter. Ralph left the town with rain on the road someway in front. It kept pace with him, steaming and retreating before him as he walked towards Lusaka. It was early afternoon, time to clear the town and find somewhere for the night.
Ralph wasn’t worried about having nowhere to stay. He had walked 760 kilometres through Zimbabwe from Beitbridge on the South African border to Victoria Falls and had spent every night somewhere off the road. It had taken him over three weeks of walking six or seven hours a day, usually from early dawn until before midday. Nervous of built-up areas he had spent a night in the secure compound of Bulawayo’s camping site when he’d been unable to get through the town’s suburbs in one day, but the rest of the time he had slept alone in the bush. He’d learnt a few things along the way.
His rucksack, once a vivid electric blue but now dirty and scruffy, was deliberately unlikely to appeal to many thieves. Inside he had no tent, just a lightweight sleeping bag and a length of foam mattress cut to save space so that when he lay down it covered from his shoulders to his hips. His rucksack became a pillow at night. He had a head torch, two army-issue kidney-shaped black plastic water bottles, an aluminium mess tin with a fold-over handle, and a small collapsible entrenching tool. From a chemist in Pretoria he’d bought a bottle of two per cent iodine solution and an eye dropper. It made up his entire first aid kit. Four drops in a litre to make sterilised water, and rub some neat on cuts, scratches and bites to prevent infection.
If passing through a village in the late afternoon he would ask for the headman and enquire where he could camp. People were generally fascinated by him. Later in the evening he could be guaranteed to have company drift towards his campfire. More often, he would find himself nowhere near habitation so he would look out for a big tree and camp under it. It reduced the amount of dew that would be on him in the morning. He would pitch away from anything that looked like a well-worn path, as it always proved to be a game trail. He found that riverbeds, often inviting and comfortably flat, could turn into a raging torrent with no notice. When clearing stones from the campsite he checked carefully underneath for large, African-sized creepy-crawlies.
He built a fire sparingly, as the locals did, most often with small bags of charcoal bought from street vendors by the side of the road. If picking up dead wood he’d kick it over first to check for scorpions or snakes. He’d learnt that the best fires were when he dug a narrow shallow trench, never more than half a metre long, and lined the sides with flat stones. The stones kept the heat when the fire went out and it was easy to pull out the stones in the morning and kick the soil over the ashes, filling in the trench and leaving no trace that he’d been there. The fire would never keep wild animals away. That seemed to work in the movies but not in the bush. Hyena, and one night south of Bulawayo near the Matobo National Park a troop of baboons and then a leopard, seemed completely unfazed by it. It didn’t seem to matter how bright he let it burn.
Bigger animals were a danger as he wasn’t in a tent, mainly because of the risk of being stepped on. One night in the Hwange National Park, in between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls, a matriarch elephant and three cows, remarkably agile for their size, stepped over him. It was important, but difficult, not to wake up and startle them.
He never carried foodstuffs that weren’t sealed and never cooked or opened tins at his camp in the evening. He would make a hot meal from the embers of his fire in the early morning for breakfast and rigorously clean all sweet-smelling food residues from his mess tin by rubbing them with sand. He would always pee before he got into his sleeping bag so that he didn’t have to get up in the night.
In the morning he’d carefully check his rucksack for unwanted hitch-hikers. Even a small spider could give a nasty bite. His boots always spent the night with him at the bottom of his sleeping bag so nothing could crawl inside. In general, snakes, spiders and scorpions needed to be antagonised before they bit. It wasn’t uncommon to find a snake on top of his sleeping bag in the morning, attracted by his body warmth during the night. He’d gently roll away from it. Walking through a town by a dry meandering riverbed called Esigodini he’d watched an African treated for a snake bite. Nobody cut open the wound and sucked out the poison. Instead, women boiled bandages and wrapped them while scolding hot over the site. The idea wasn’t to draw out the toxin but to coagulate it. The poison was a protein, like egg white. If heated enough it would form into a solid and then couldn’t be transported in the bloodstream. They had effectively stopped it spreading.
He was concerned about malaria. At a concentration strong enough to control African mosquitoes the pesticide DEET could dissolve some plastics. Ralph covered up with loose clothing in the evening and slept with a piece of netting over his face. It seemed an altogether healthier option.
He never worried about his personal safety if he could get as far out of town as he could possibly get before dark. Human animals troubled him more than wild animals, and he needed to get at least two hours’ walk out of a built-up area to feel safe. Even then he would check that no one was watching and then quickly walk some distance out of sight of the road. At times he would camouflage his camp with a screen of scrubby bushes. On occasion, when he had asked at a bigger village for somewhere to camp, and for no rational reason other than a feeling deep in his gut, he would head off in the direction indicated by the headman but skirt around when out of sight and go completely the opposite way. He was never scared. It was just a game, like being back at school or in the Army Cadet Force, a giant ‘Escape and Evasion’ exercise through Africa.
It was a game and he was still a boy, with a boy’s inexpressible longing to become a man. He felt that wouldn’t happen quickly enough at home with an attentive loving family around him. He needed to be uncomfortable, to challenge himself physically, to be tested. If he could do that in Africa he would return triumphant, mature, respected as well as loved.
When he dreamed of home he imagined schoolfriends listening to his adventures in awe with open mouths, of a girlfriend impressed and tender, a mother fussing at his glorious homecoming and a father quietly proud. To achieve that dream it was nothing to him to feel hunger, to be numbed by fatigue with bleeding blistered feet. These were the trials that would change him and bring him to manhood.
He reassured himself by recalling that, other than the poachers in Zimbabwe who had frightened him with their callous harshness, his journey had been trouble-free – not effortless but easy. It was easy unless it rained, then it was miserable without a tent.
*
Ralph had walked nearly ten kilometres out of town when he caught up with the rain. It didn’t start slowly as gentle drops, building as he walked, getting progressively heavier. Instead, one moment he had been dry and the next soaking wet, the water running in streams from his bush hat, turning into small rivers as it ran down his chest.
Ahead, about two hundred metres off the road, stood a huge baobab tree. He had been walking towards it for some time but now he ran, red mud splashing up his legs like at a point-to-point in March, the going soft. Underneath the tree there would be some shelter. Night was coming quickly and nobody moved on the road. Ralph resigned himself. Tonight had to be spent standing, wet and chilled, in the dark, getting what shelter he could from the branches of the baobab. He found some peanuts loose in his pocket and ate them individually, picking wet pieces of paper
bag from each.
Ralph looked at his lodgings. The baobab, the most easily recognised tree in the savannahs of Africa, had become the defining icon of the African bushlands. Ralph had heard it called the ‘upside-down’ tree, its branches resembling roots as though it had been pulled out and replanted the wrong way up. Big baobabs could have a diameter of ten metres and grow thirty metres tall, some of them thousands of years old.
Someone touched his arm and startled him, a girl in her late teens, who Ralph hadn’t seen approaching. She stood tightly wrapped in a chitenje, a brightly coloured cotton cloth about two metres long. Local women used them as towels, or sarongs, or picnic mats, or simply swathed them over their normal clothes to keep them clean. They were practical and cheap and made a bright splash of African colour on the tall, very beautiful and completely dry girl.
She took his hand.
“Please. Come.”
She led Ralph around to the other side of the tree. A fertiliser sack covered the trunk at ground level, faded but with part of the formula of its contents still visible: ‘30% P2O5’ and ‘Made in China’. She stopped and looked at Ralph, pulled the sack to one side and stepped inside the tree.
*
It was a huge hollow trunk, seven or eight metres across and towering fifteen metres into the dark above Ralph’s head. The earth inside had packed dry and hard like concrete. A small fireplace built precisely in the middle of the circular space had been lined at the bottom and sides with grey stones. A thin column of tangy smoke drifted into the blackness and brown husks glowed red in the fireplace with no flame. Outside the night stayed hot and wet, but inside it felt cool and dry.
“You are welcome to join us,” the girl said.
Ralph looked around. As he became accustomed to the dim light he could make out little groups of people, all looking at him curiously. Old women with few teeth smiled at him. A man drinking from a bucket wiped a foamy scum, like a high-water mark, from his top lip before passing it to an older man next to him. Six children played a game with some sticks, while three more played with a yellow bird, holding it in cupped hands and talking to it in soft voices. There were twenty people within the tree and room for another dozen.
