by Adeline Loh
Unfortunately, Fate was a cruel mistress. Instead of saving my film for a close-up, I was so trigger-happy that I’d unwittingly wasted my last shot when the lions were still a distance away. Just as they came beside me, the automatic rewind started whirring. What was usually a negligible hum was now resonating across the plains, radically piercing the teeth-gritting tension of every single person in our Land Cruiser. Afraid that the lions – which were already testy and agitated they were going to bed hungry – would pounce on me for irritating them with my puny camera, I tried to muffle the din under my clothes without significant success. Mercifully, the lions paid no heed.
Embarrassed, yet exhilarated, it wasn’t until much later that I realized how close those lions were to me. If I’d dared to stretch out my arm, they were near enough to turn their heads and chomp it off like a banana. But that was not the end of our big cat adventure, though. A bit later, we stumbled upon two male lions lying on their paws. With glazed eyes and sleepy faces, they were akin to a couple of deadbeats who drank too much beer in front of the TV while waiting for the females to bring back food. For all its well-publicized reputation as a symbol of courage and nobility, the king of the jungle was, as it turned out, a lazy bum.
As we’d witnessed earlier, it’s usually the lion pride’s females that caught dinner. So wouldn’t you think that they should be the first to dig in their hard-earned grub then? Truth is, the only time the somnolent male gets off his rump is to snatch the kill and eat his favourite parts first, before ditching the scraps (if any) for the wife and kids. Most of the time however, the pint-sized cubs aren’t strong enough to fight for morsels with the grown-ups and are tossed aside like rag dolls – if they’re lucky. If they’re not, the young get squashed during the mad tussle for meat. This is why in a litter of lion cubs, fewer than half make it to adulthood in desperate times.
And then it happened – every safari-goer’s absolute worst nightmare. My urinary bladder had stretched way past its limit, as it so often does, at the most inconvenient moment. One tiny poke below my navel and all hell would have broken loose in my pants. I cannot tell you how much my pelvic region hurt with the urinating pang stabbing at my insides. Still, I could not bring myself to ask Major to let me out of the vehicle. The possibility of a stray predator deciding that it was in the mood for some tasty tourist kept my torment long and silent. I just knew that under cover of darkness, my risk of dying would increase tenfold. No one would be able to save me in time because a sudden shriek of shock is all they’d hear before I was devoured.
So I bit back the pain and tried to think of anything but the sweet release. Hey, isn’t that the most adorable bushbaby? Oh my, a large-spotted genet, how precious. Look, a beautiful white-tailed mongoose hiding in the thickets! Man, are the African civets frisky tonight or what? Haha ... that’s the third scared-out-of-its-wits four-toed elephant shrew we’ve seen dashing in front of the headlamps.
Yeah, I tried my darndest to appreciate the large array of wonderful species we’d encountered. But the only thing I relished that night was the feeling of cold hard porcelain against my butt.
6. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE TURD KIND
Since the US$20 daily entrance and conservation fee we forked out yesterday evening was valid for 24 hours, we were up at daybreak to join five other guests for a combo safari (two hours of driving and two hours of walking). Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, we rumbled off to discover that the entire population of the woods had woken up at a way more ungodly hour than we had. At one juncture, our vehicle was strategically sandwiched in the centre of a typical African scene set against a brilliant green floating weed-covered pond. A massive breeding herd of elephants were drinking, Crawshay’s zebras were crossing in front of them and a pair of Thornicroft’s giraffes were awkwardly splaying their legs to lap up the water. Sightings at the park were at their best during the dry season; all we had to do was locate the few remaining water sources and we were bound to chance upon an animal soiree.
After having their fill, the giraffe mother and suckling developed an attitude. They seemed to have decided that they were too good for elephant and zebra riff-raffs and ambled off to find themselves a quiet little tree corner to dine in peace. Hitching a ride on the larger giraffe’s neck were four oxpeckers – small birds with eyes like demons – gleefully feasting on succulent ticks and lice. Oxpeckers are frequently found plucking parasites off hippos, rhinos and buffaloes as well, and will often thank their generous hosts for the free meals by warning them of danger. But for some reason, elephants detest oxpeckers. And as we intruded upon a clan of pachyderms in front of us, they showed us the proper method of dislodging blood-sucking vermin – by sucking up copious amounts of sand from the ground with their proboscises and blowing it out on their backs.
Unfortunately, our gatecrashing of the dust-shower party did not go unnoticed, and it was clear that the most formidable female of the herd wasn’t amused. She stopped spewing sand granules and gave us an angry, black-eyed stare that sent shivers down my spine.
‘Sit down, you’re agitating them!’ Major hissed at the standing idiots in the back row. But it was too late. The cranky cow was already annoyed and she was about to show it by destroying us. Flaring her enormous ears in classic threat pose, she lifted her head and rushed at us, kicking up a huge dust cloud. Just two steps short of doing us in with her scary long tusks, she halted. I went pale with fright and nearly lost bowel control. Then Major snickered quite unsuitably. ‘That’s just a mock charge,’ he explained. ‘She’s telling us who’s boss. Let’s leave them alone now.’
We didn’t argue.
If that was any indication of things to come, I thought to myself, the next move to abandon our four-wheeled steed and take our chances on our own two feet did not bode well. But I had to do it. After all, South Luangwa is the birthplace of the famous ‘walking safari’, a cool yet potentially fatal concept introduced by conservation champion Norman Carr. That means Zambia is perhaps Africa’s finest walking destination with exceptionally high standards in guiding and safety. This did not seem to reassure Chan, though, and I had to physically drag her down from the Land Cruiser.
The thing about safaris is when you’re in a vehicle, large mammals are neither bothered by your presence nor all the gawking and clicking, and will happily go about their business as they normally do. Once you’re on common ground with them, however, wildlife instantly view you as a threat – no matter how puny you are. They become skittish, agitated and even a bit hungry. In fact, there is nothing better than a walking safari to solve a massive ego problem. In the bush, a human being is the absolute weakest link – no amount of high IQ test scores or Body Jam gym classes is going to prevent you from getting mauled once you’re on the animals’ turf.
That’s why us delicate bipeds required additional protection. No matter how experienced, capable or intuitive our guide was, it was not going to be enough if an animal turned crazy on us without warning. Therefore upon entering the park at Mfuwe Gate, we’d picked up an armed scout from the park rangers’ office as a precautionary measure. With a rifle slung over his shoulder, the scout would accompany us on our walk, for fear that we might do something stupid like pinch a baby hippo’s cheeks and then have its parent attack us – in which case I think the scout would rather shoot us.
Before we embarked on the foot expedition, Major dished out a safety briefing to avoid unforeseen wildlife encounters. He didn’t elaborate what constituted ‘unforeseen’ but I guessed the vague term involved getting maimed, mangled and eaten. Stay in single file behind him, speak softly, don’t make sudden movements and obey his instructions at all times. Oh, and no panicking.
Our senses, deadened by the galling smells and noise of the four-wheel drive, instantly became heightened once we got off our behinds. The learning quotient upped considerably, too. All the natural features of the environment that were missed from the vehicle such as spoors and plants became immediately obvious, and even encounters
with excrement did not fail to excite. We transformed into the poop patrol, dutifully comparing the size, shape, spread, texture and freshness of each piece of dried turd we came across. The hyena’s peculiar bowel movement was ash white, the impala excreted dung pellets in contemporary art-like clusters, and the elephant dropped unmistakable sepak takraw rattan ball-sized fragments of undigested bark.
We crunched through knee-high grass, becoming increasingly attuned to the natural signals of the bush: the distant sight of a juvenile bateleur eagle soaring menacingly overhead, the feel of a buffalo skull (all that’s left from a hearty meal long digested), the fragrance of wild jasmine, and the sound of obscene heavy breathing. Wait a minute ...
‘Major! What’s that sound?’ I asked straightaway, quite alarmed.
‘Oh, the hippos are mating!’ he laughed, pointing at a party of frisky hippos in the river.
Whoa, wild animal sex!
‘Hippos are the only southern African land mammals that mate underwater,’ he added. ‘The female is hard to spot because she’s submerged under the big male.’
I had expected live animal pornography to be a gripping spectacle but there wasn’t much rumpy pumpy going on. The inactive male merely lay motionless atop her like a dead fish. Every now and then, she’d come up for air and continue making the breathy sex sounds. That’s as exciting as it got. I hoped she’s had better.
7. JEEPERS PEEPERS
Unfurling a ridiculously astounding multi-level bag of toiletries that almost touched the floor, Chan chose her arsenal of cleansers with a ponderous inspection of the see-through compartments. ‘I’ll start off with the coconut oil shampoo, cleanse with the goat’s milk shower cream, exfoliate with the olive scrub and finish off with the mango facial foam,’ she cheerfully muttered.
‘Yum ... what’s for dessert?’ I asked teasingly.
She was pleased with my interest. ‘Let’s see, I think the blueberry moisturizing body lotion and papaya body mist spray will be the specials this evening.’ She threw her Hello Kitty towel over one shoulder and marched out with her nose in the air.
After her shower, however, she did not come back with the usual afterglow and smell of fresh fruit. She was panting, from having lunged up the stairs, and looked like the ghostly poster girl for the insanely distraught, complete with bubbly suds behind her ears.
‘Somebody peeped at me!’ she shouted, not unlike a woman possessed.
I exploded in laughter – Chan’s always funny when she’s paranoid.
She frowned and whipped me with her towel. ‘Stop laughing, Adeline, I’m dead serious! Somebody was really peeping at me while I was naked!’
‘All right, calm down, Chan,’ I said patiently. ‘Did you see anything?’
‘No, I just heard the grass rustling out the bathroom window, like someone was standing there. It was way too dark outside for me to see anything.’
‘It’s probably just baboons,’ I sighed. ‘Or the watchmen doing their rounds.’
‘Aha! Watchmen! Guess what they are watching?’ She looked at me with bulging eyes. ‘Us!’ she cried. ‘Before you take off your clothes, you better use these to cover the windows.’ She threw me an extra towel and an oversized T-shirt. ‘And remember to switch off the sidelight near the sink so the sex maniac can’t see you clearly. This place gives me the creeps,’ she added with a shudder.
It was then my turn to go down and take my chances with the bathroom voyeur. Stepping into the shower cubicle, I inspected the two rectangular wall openings, which indeed framed my torso nicely for the benefit of spectators – were there any. I soon understood why Chan had freaked out. Although the bottom half of the window was criss-crossed with green rattan, there were so many golf ball-sized holes that it seemed more of a designer’s whim than a serious effort to shield prudish Asians from prying eyes. But I told myself not to get paranoid, take a quick shower and get the hell out of there. Not long after soaping up, I heard the suspicious rustling sounds that Chan had described. Of course, I could not see a thing outside either as it was nighttime. So I convinced myself that if anyone was staring at me for longer than five minutes, I ought to take it as a compliment.
No sooner had I stepped out of the bathroom, Kewie emerged from the shadows of the trees, causing me to drop my towel in shock. ‘Good evening, miss,’ he said politely. ‘Sorry, did I scare you?’
‘Oh, it’s all right, Kewie. Muli bwanji?’
‘Ndili bwino. And yourself?’
‘Fantastic.’
I wasn’t, of course. However, any suspicion of him peeping at me was quickly forgotten the minute we sat down on a bench in front of the chalet to chat. The small talk grew to his life story and I found him to be a sweet, unassuming and shy fellow – all traits of a pathological pervert for sure. Anyhow, being the great listener I was, I found out about the interesting jobs he used to hold: a bricklayer (too laborious), an anti-poaching scout (too dangerous) and a civil servant (too boring). He was more than happy to leave all those low-paying jobs behind now. As a watchman for Flatdogs, he was getting paid one US dollar a night – wages considered lucrative by Zambian standards.
In a mildly husky tone, he went on to relay the tragic tale of how his father, Anthony the hunter, was killed for doing a favour for some villagers. They had asked Anthony to shoot down a wild elephant that was eating and destroying their crops. He reluctantly agreed and waited for the marauding elephant the following night. When the hungry animal appeared, Anthony fired a few shots at it. Unfortunately, the bleeding elephant became more enraged than wounded and charged Anthony full speed before he could reload his gun. He was trampled to death instantly.
This morbid story of Kewie’s dad reminded me of how common death from animals was in Africa. While neurotic city folk install alarm systems to safeguard their homes from deranged burglars, murderers and rapists, country folk are perpetually stressed day and night protecting their families and farms from being obliterated by hell-bent elephants, bushpigs, vervet monkeys, baboons and birds.
‘Animals rule the land,’ Kewie said with a faraway look in his eyes after a long silence. ‘Human beings just have to get used to it.’
*
Whilst Chan typed her worried parents an email to inform them that we’d arrived safely and that no big black men had outraged our modesty in the computer room, I was at the reception combing through the sublimely thick folder of activities. Something quickly caught my eye: the full-day game drive. According to the tempting itinerary, we would get to deviate from the well-trodden road loops of the half-day drives and venture to a less explored section of the park. That sounded like a blast, the only niggling requirement being a minimum body count of four. Luckily, fellow traveller Amy, a biochemistry genius from England, entered my peripheral vision just in time for me to coerce her into joining us. She in turn dragged along her genius mathematician boyfriend Paul.
Thus it was that we set off early the next morning with Major and his trusty spotter into the shimmering realm of warm woodlands to see what beguiling wildlife we could frighten out of the parched yellow grass. Drying my teary eyes from the sixth unhindered yawn, I was jolted to alertness when the spotter suddenly gave two slaps to the side of his door and wiggled his finger in the general direction of a far open plain.
‘Leopard!’ Major said and slammed the brakes.
I squinted against the glare of the rising sun at a moving speck the size of my pinkie nail and quickly pulled up my binoculars. True enough, the beautiful beast that had been eluding us was ambling intently towards the cover of a row of low-lying shrubs, its bony shoulders jutting in and out of its graceful figure and the end of its curled tail lightly skimming the sandy ground. We snapped pictures furiously for one minute, before the leopard disappeared behind the thickets forever, never to be seen again.
‘Is there a snake around here?’ Chan suddenly whispered from out of nowhere.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I retorted, swatting her. Then I heard it �
� a faint, weird hissing sound.
Chan tapped Major’s shoulder. ‘Major, can you hear that?’ she asked anxiously.
He looked over his shoulder at us, then down at the floorboard. ‘You’re stepping on the spare tyre,’ he observed wisely.
Chan gasped. In her leopard-spotting excitement, she had unwittingly stamped on the tyre to get a better view and it was losing air fast.
‘We have to change the tyre now before it goes totally flat,’ Major added dully.
Turning boiled-lobster red at what she had done, Chan offered a sheepish apology whilst I attempted to figure out why on earth we were replacing a perfectly good tyre with a hissing one.
With a gassy wheel and renewed vigour, we went on to disturb the peace of a herd of quietly grazing Crawshay’s zebras, special subspecies of the common Burchell’s zebras. Unique to South Luangwa, Crawshay’s zebras look sleeker and more uppity than their smudgy super-stripy cousins, thanks to the characteristically clean and spaced out shadow-free stripes which run all the way down below the knees. Nonetheless all zebras share the same eating habit: they unselectively chow down on any kind of grass they can lay their muzzles on. In doing so, they inadvertently crop and trim the yucky long coarse grasses and give the picky antelopes access to juicier vegetation. But all that goodwill gobbling takes a toll on the kind zebras inefficient digestive system, causing them to fart more than your obese uncle who’s ingested too much broccoli and beer.
