by Adeline Loh
‘And that’s the South Pole, the pivot point. All stars orbit around it in the Southern Hemisphere,’ Rebecca ended her spiel of the cosmos gloriously. ‘Isn’t that right, Matt?’
‘Yeah, the constellation of the Crux. These are the same stars on the flags of Australia and New Zealand,’ Matt administered more mindless trivia. I nodded in confused awe while staring at an asymmetrical chain of vivid stars, and gathered that these people must be high on antimalarial meds.
By 9.30 p.m., we were beat and retreated to our tents early like dweebs with no social lives. Chan and I wrestled with our sleeping bags, trying to get comfortable in the tent.
‘Isn’t this cool, Chan?’ I said merrily, zipping myself up in my snug sleeping bag. ‘Our first time sleeping rough in the middle of a remote African island right under the stars!’
‘I hate camping,’ she replied crabbily.
*
The following morning, my fingers were stiff as hell. It hurt when I bent them and when I tried extending them, my index, middle and ring fingers on both hands snapped in their respective sockets as if they were dislocated before. It was as cold as a morgue so I attributed the stiffness to the climate, shook my hands loose and thought nothing more of it. I’d later find out that this was, in fact, the onset of trigger finger and arthritis. Well, knit me a shawl and call me grandma – I think the hard paddling really did them in. Or perhaps it was divine punishment for flipping off drivers who stole my parking space.
Slipping out of my sleeping bag, I nearly died. With chattering teeth, shivering hands and an alarmingly large surface area of chicken bumps on my skin, I rolled up my sleeping bag and force-fed the tiny stuff sack with it. This was a strenuous strength-building exercise not to be taken lightly. By the time I was done, my body was tingling more warmly than after ten frog jumps. Chan, however, was still nursing a puddle of drool.
Within seconds of my emergence from the tent, the fresh nippy air made icicles of my bronchial tubes. To my relief, TK had boiled water so that we could defrost ourselves. He had also thoughtfully laid out the tea bags and biscuits to tide us over for three hours till we reached our breakfast island. In a half-awake daze, I poured the hot water into my orange cordial thinking there was a tea bag inside and had to act like that was what I’d intended to do.
‘Wow, that’s great. You like hot orange too!’ Rebecca observed happily, sipping her own steaming cup of bright cordial.
After yesterday’s disaster with Chan at the helm, I took over as captain even though I was keeling over from menstruation cramps. Unfortunately, my desire to show her a thing or two was foiled by the defiantly choppy water caused by sudden heavy headwinds. On top of dragging the full weight of the canoe loaded with the mountain of crap, we had to fight the pugnacious current to avoid being carried away like dead leaves.
Huffing and puffing to keep up with the other canoes, I and Chan secured a permanent position at the back. TK kept banging the sides of his canoe with the paddle, giving me the impression that there were dozens of villainous hippos waiting to bite us in half. I tried my best but it became increasingly difficult to stay close to the gang, what with the disobedient canoe always deviating to the sides. In the thick of fatigue and frustration from trying to straighten the canoe for the nth time, I grew irritated with Chan and barked at her to paddle properly. She in turn barked back that she was paddling really hard. As we quibbled like six-year-olds, I noticed TK crossing to a deeper channel up ahead.
‘Everyone go right!’ he shouted. ‘Hurry up!’
Just great. I moved my aching arms as fast as I could but we were trailing far behind. The widening gap between TK and us made me more and more anxious.
‘Hurry up! Paddle FASTER!’ TK yelled at the two of us.
My breathing became shallow as I summoned all the strength from my torso and struck the water with a tenacity that startled even myself. Then suddenly, a loud snort made my eardrums vibrate. I spotted a hippo’s muzzle surface about six feet to my left and realized, to my horror, that we were actually moving closer to it.
‘Go right! Right! RIIIGHT!’ Now they were all yelling.
I lifted my paddle from the right side of the canoe, switched hands and smashed the paddle down the other side. With what remaining energy I possessed in my panic-stricken body, I went into a paddling frenzy, my vigorous thrusts splashing water over the hull and onto me. As my clothes began to soak through and my shoulders burnt with lactic acid, I saw Chan paddling like a baby in a plastic pool.
‘Chan, you’re not paddling! Do you want to die?! Put your back into it!’ I screamed at her.
‘I’M PADDLING!’ she shrieked.
Eventually – I don’t know how since we were flailing away like damsels in distress – we picked up speed in the correct direction and miraculously cleared the pod of hippos bent on destruction. By the time we rejoined the rest, I was convulsing like a mad woman. It was hard to tell if their stares of disbelief stemmed from our utter lack of coordination or the fact that we shouldn’t be alive. Either way, I knew that everyone else was glad they weren’t us.
‘Good job, girls,’ TK finally said with a sigh of relief. ‘I thought I had to come and rescue you.’
I blushed in embarrassment, plonked my paddle down and dangled my sore hands over the canoe.
‘Careful of your fingers now,’ he cautioned.
At that point, I didn’t care if I lost them to the crocs, because then I would not have to paddle any more.
Having stopped at another ridiculously beautiful sandy island to calm our frazzled nerves with lunch and a well-earned afternoon siesta, we packed up and adjourned to the water once more. Because that’s what we did. Bloated hippos analogous to buoyant barrels continued to greet us, or more likely, told us to back off. Once, elephants tried to drink at the riverbank but after sensing our presence, they were determined not to show themselves from behind the trees. After years of indiscriminate hunting around the region of Lower Zambezi National Park, elephants remained difficult to approach, becoming fearful at the slightest putrid whiff of humans.
Anyway, we still had plenty of side entertainment from dainty, long-necked herons that liked to perch on one spindly leg like Indian yogis. We watched as one bird vigorously scratched and waterproofed itself with natural body oil while another skulked around deviously looking to spear fish with its bill. On the many grassy banks exposed from the receding river, crocodiles slumped lazily, no doubt hatching evil plots. A stone’s throw away, a monitor lizard – lifelong nemesis of the crocodile – dragged its stomach over a partly submerged tree and lashed its forked tongue out to taste the air for mouth-watering crocodile eggs and insects.
At 5.30 in the evening we landed at our overnight island. With military precision, we wordlessly carted our camping equipment from the canoes to the shore like programmed robots. TK unfolded the table to prepare dinner while we erected our respective dome tents. After a metal pole almost stabbed me in the neck, Chan and I finally managed to get the hang of pitching our little piece of home without assistance. Seeing as we did so without losing an eye, it was a tremendous achievement by our standards.
As I stood admiring our upstanding temporary shelter, Chan kept glancing over the other tents to check if ours resembled theirs. Before I could give a pat on my own back, Chan yelped. ‘Adeline, look at their tents!’
‘Eh, what now?’
‘They covered their tents with the tarpaulin to keep the cold out! No wonder we almost froze to death last night.’
‘Oh, so that’s what it’s for? Duh!’ We collectively smacked our foreheads, draped a spare tarp over our tent and felt unabashedly pleased with ourselves after.
After nearly two days of not washing, TK set up a makeshift shower cubicle for us: an opaque tarpaulin propped up by two paddles stuck in the sand with a metal bucket of sheer unadulterated Zambezi water. Matt was the first to take the bucket shower, and managed to finish in the nick of time before the whole tarp came tumbling down. Af
raid that the tarp would collapse again while we were in the buff, the rest of us female prudes decided to live with our grime-conditioned hair and tried to ignore the pong of stale perspiration emanating from our armpits. The makeshift shower became our loo cubicle instead.
‘Oh no, I need to take a dump,’ said Chan. ‘I dread doing it out here but I can’t hold it any longer ...’ Her voice trailed off as she scampered to the unstable tarp. Minutes later, a couple of elephants came to visit behind her. The following cartoony drama ensued, with us shouting at her from afar:
TK: Come back now, Chan!
Rebecca: There’s an elephant behind you!
Chan: But the toilet paper’s not done burning!
TK: Silly girl, forget it! Just come back!
Chan (turning back to look at a passing adolescent elephant): Is it my height?
It’s just a small one, right?
Rebecca: Um, yeah ... significant weight difference!
Thankfully, even after losing the plot completely, Chan returned in one piece (or this would be a very short book). We then recounted the day’s hippo obstacle course over an exquisite supper of bush cuisine on our canvas stools. TK surprised us time and again with his culinary skills – magically whipping up delicious beef stroganoff, pasta and mixed vegetables in the blink of an eye. If I didn’t know better, I’d have suspected he stole the food replicator from the Starship Enterprise.
Having expended so much energy surviving the treacherous Zambezi, I wolfed down my food while watching a shaft of sunlight heave its final breath behind a haze of thick bushfire smoke that was rising from the deep green jungle hills across the river. From here, the smouldering flames appeared like a colossal glowing snake slithering its way across the forest.
‘It’s likely that the fire was started by poachers. Just to distract the park rangers,’ TK enlightened us. ‘The rangers will be so busy putting out fires that they won’t have time to nab the poachers.’
‘I know it’s not a good thing to say ... but it is kinda beautiful. It’s lit up like a small city,’ Margot remarked, taking the inappropriate words right out of my mouth.
TK rummaged underneath the table and took out a bottle. ‘Red wine, anyone?’
‘Goodness gracious, TK! First the divine food and now this ... you’re spoiling us!’ Rebecca exclaimed – only to decline.
‘We still have to canoe early in the morning so no wine for me, thank you,’ said Margot, wiping her oily mouth with a handkerchief.
Yeah, whatever. She didn’t want to drink anything just so she would not have to pee. Matt wasn’t enthused either, snubbing the bottle. I was shocked. Caucasians who did not drink? Was my luck so rotten that I had to be stuck with the only three teetotallers in the Southern Hemisphere? Reticent about appearing like a raging alcoholic, I did not make a peep. And allowed a perfectly fine bottle of red to go unopened. Oh, the disrespect.
As we started to clear our plates, TK encouraged us to throw our food scraps into the river for the fish instead of dumping it in a plastic bag like we’d been doing. ‘Throw your fork and knife in too, Rebecca!’ TK suggested naughtily as Rebecca scraped her leftovers into the water.
‘We don’t want the crocodiles to become civilized now!’ she hollered back.
I nearly snorted my half-chewed pasta up my nose in laughter. With our bellies and souls healed, we contentedly crashed into our tents for the night. But we continued giggling until a roar came from the dim distance.
‘Did you guys hear that?’ TK shouted from his tent.
‘Yeah, what was that?’ Margot yelled.
‘A leopard!’ he replied.
Dead silence. Nobody spoke a word after that, and I was sure nobody dared to set foot out of the tent that night.
Except me.
I knew I should have listened to that loud American woman Margot. But it was too late now. The more I chanted in my mind – I don’t need to pee. I don’t need to pee. I don’t need to pee!’ – the more I wanted to. That and I also needed to change my sanitary pad before it overflowed and made red Rorschach patterns on my sleeping bag. If only we hadn’t heard that scary leopard earlier; I imagined it was just prowling around the campsite waiting to pounce on the first person with poor bladder control. My distress was augmented by TK sending us off to bed with a tale about the carnage inflicted by the islands monstrous buffaloes. I was freaked out; no way I was going out there by myself.
‘Psst ... Chan!’
She did not budge. I nudged her. ‘Hey, you awake?’ I whispered.
‘Mm,’ she uttered.
‘I need to pee.’
She growled angrily like a bear disturbed from hibernation. ‘I told you not to drink two cups of orange cordial just now!’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know. Can we go now?’ I pleaded.
‘You never listen to me!’ she scolded, and grumbled in irritation. ‘Fine, wait a minute.’ She rose groggily and pulled her sleeping bag liner out while I took my torch. Trying not to wake the others, I unzipped the tent gently and got out. My every footstep sank in the quagmire-like sand as I trudged towards the canoe to grab the bush toilet kit of paddle, matches and toilet paper. There were no shrubs on this particular island so we had to walk a reasonable distance from camp.
‘Okay, here,’ I said in a muted voice, settling on a pretty patch of twinkling sand. Chan then unfolded the sheet liner to block my bum from the line of sight of the tents. You know, just in case the slumbering folks mistook the noise for an animal and peered out to find, to their dismay, me in a rather undignified position.
12. SIDE EFFECTS OF HAVING A GOOD TIME
At 5.45 a.m., I felt what I thought was the Great Rift Valley splitting open again. ‘Adeline! Adeline!’ TK called softly while jostling our tent wildly. ‘Wanna see elephants? They are just outside!’
I stirred and grunted in reply. A spine-cramping chill sneaked through the small window of our tent as TK lifted up the tarpaulin cover to expose the wondrous sight. Plucking the dried yellow crust from my half-opened eyes, I gazed lazily at the nebulous figures through the mesh netting. It took a couple of extended seconds before my brain thawed enough for me to appreciate what I was looking at: elephants stripping the bark of a tree a mere tumble away! Although I’d seen them many times from a vehicle before, sleeping near the animals gave me heart palpitations like nothing else.
‘Chan, come and check out the herd of elephants that terrorized you last night!’ I whispered elatedly, prodding her ribs. But she was dead to the world. Hurriedly grabbing my down jacket and head-sock, I stumbled out of the tent over her comatose body. Rebecca, Matt and Margot were already out in various states of dress armed with cameras, slack-jawed in the presence of the ten tusked behemoths and their three precocious Mini Me’s.
‘They passed your tent on their way to the river just now,’ TK divulged, pointing to the extra large pizza-sized footprints in the sand a hairline away from my tent. I was flabbergasted, imagining how Chan and I would have been flattened like pancakes had a clumsy tusker tripped over a root entanglement and landed sideways on us.
After the most spectacular wake-up call we’d ever gotten, morning pep biscuits and hot drinks were gobbled and guzzled respectively to the nascent warmth of the flame-coloured gleam along the tree line. It was a fitting start to another fun-filled, thank-God-I-bought-insurance day of canoeing. Chan and I received the usual one-two-three push-off and we all continued the steadfast routine: Paddle, paddle. Bang canoe. Hear hippos snort and grunt. Flee for lives.
Wisps of bushfire smoke curled up from the hills and blended into the morning mist. The infinite sky was a cloudless deep blue and the water was friendlier, not the psychopathic torrent that wanted to catapult us yesterday. So much so TK even consented to us lining up our canoes abreast of each other for a relaxing tandem float. Chan and I were sandwiched between the two canoes and all we had to do was hang on to their hulls with our hands. Sure, we still encountered the occasional hippo drama where I paddled like a loony
only to wind up closer to the danger zone but I was starting to relish the near-death thrills. Off and on, we clunked Rebecca’s canoe in front because I didn’t want to slow down after expending so much energy paddling to gain momentum. Chan clucked her tongue at me every time we banged canoes. Sometimes she’d shout really loudly, ‘Stop, ST-O-O-OP!’ Without question, we were the ones causing the most commotion and scaring all the wildlife away.
TK then realized that he had completely forgotten to bring the salt. However, we were quite happy about it because we got to go ashore to a luxurious riverside lodge to make lunch. With our canoes moored on the verdant bank, we proceeded to unfold our foam seats on the lush grass, snack on crunchy green Zimbabwean apples and perform a range of activities that could best be described as vegetating, though I preferred to call it conserving our strength.
Lying on her tummy, Rebecca devoured the last chapter of her book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, a tender memoir about author Alexandra Fuller’s extraordinary childhood in Africa. Once she got to the end, however, a look of disappointment swept over her face. ‘The ending’s so ... blah,’ she said. She then gave the book to Margot, who looked like she was suffering from brain strain as a result of too many exasperating crossword puzzles.
During lunch, the conversation at the table delved into the seamy underworld of antimalarial drugs.
‘Gosh, I nearly forgot to take my meds again today,’ said Rebecca, popping the lid off her pillbox.
‘Tell me about it. Sometimes I don’t know if I’ve taken it in the morning and pop another one later in the day, just in case!’ Margot replied. ‘Anyway, I’m on chloroquine. You?’
‘Quinine. I was on Larium for the longest time and became so schizophrenic that the orphans I was working with were frightened by me,’ said Rebecca with a wince. ‘Adeline, what about you?’
