by Adeline Loh
‘Can we please have some fruit?’ Chan requested softly after her veggie-dar detected a lack of antioxidants in our shopping trolley.
Daniel obliged, albeit quite reluctantly, by tossing in a dented can of mixed fruit in thick syrup.
‘Thanks for the excess sugar and preservatives,’ she mumbled in Cantonese and proceeded to sulk near the boxes of breakfast cereals.
‘In case you forgot, Daniel,’ I piped up, ‘Chan’s a herbivore.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I have it covered. Don’t worry, little lady,’ he replied smarmily and made a great show of chucking in one more head of lettuce as if we should be grateful. ‘Okay, everything here’s included in the price of the safari. If you need anything else, you can look around and get it yourself,’ he spoke with a certain finality before pushing the trolley towards the cashier. Chan and I looked at each other vacantly and walked down the broom aisle to collect our thoughts. Once out of earshot, Chan murmured to herself while tapping each finger to her thumb, obviously doing some intensive mental calculation.
‘The stingy lug!’ she exclaimed, clearly displeased. ‘We paid him cash in full and he couldn’t even purchase decent groceries! He picked the lousiest and cheapest foodstuff.’
‘It’s too late for regrets now. We’ve paid and now our lives are in the devil’s hands.’
After much coaxing on my part, Chan eventually stopped getting hung up about it and we helped Daniel unload the provisions in the back of Beat-Up Van. And thus began our quest for fuel.
‘There’s a big truck bringing diesel to one of the filling stations. My friend told me,’ Steven said cheerfully.
That friend was a useless two-bit liar. Two sweaty hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic, five dried-up filling stations and two hopeless mechanics later, the closest thing to fuel was a decomposing bird on the tarmac. We were running dangerously low on diesel and Beat-Up Van was on the verge of halting in the middle of the road at any given moment.
It did halt, of course, but the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. The engine spluttered and died a few feet away from an endless line of stationary trucks and pickups just as we were about to arrive at the next filling station. With just enough forward momentum left, we casually rolled behind the last vehicle in line.
From the horrendous queue, it was obvious that everyone was waiting for the fuel tanker to arrive with the emergency supply. I hung my head out the window – we were so far back that I could hardly see the filling station. There must have been more than 30 heavy vehicles in front of us.
Daniel was not content with being a bottom feeder. ‘Girls, Steven and I are going to speak to the station attendants,’ he said with throaty determination. ‘Just sit tight, we’ll make a plan.’
After sitting mighty tight for ten minutes in the suffocating van, I became restless and went out to have a little peek. By then, approximately 20 additional vehicles had joined the diesel daisy chain behind us. The drivers looked so bored in their trucks, I felt sleepy simply looking at them. Judging by the lack of protests or honking, it was probably just another average day in Lusaka.
It was only a few days ago, I discovered later, that the fuel crisis started, as a result of the Indeni Petroleum Refinery getting shut down due to technical problems. The Indeni is Zambia’s one and only crude oil processing plant; the country has no oil production facilities to speak of. So whenever Indeni shuts down, Zambia does, too. The only way its gas-guzzlers are kept running on the road is through a daily import of one million litres of diesel and 600,000 litres of petrol. At this time of need, however, the imports from neighbouring countries weren’t coming in fast enough.
It took an hour before I saw Daniel jogging back towards us. ‘Get inside,’ he panted to me. The instant I tumbled in, he opened the driver’s seat door, gripped the front frame of our van with his gigantic black hands and pushed us out of the queue. Before I knew it, we were discourteously overtaking the trucks in front of us.
‘Should we get out of the van?’ I asked him.
‘No, stay inside,’ he said in a macho manner. Which was probably a good idea since some infuriated trucker might beat me to a pulp for cutting in line. Using sheer brute force, Daniel continued thrusting the van forward with us in it. I’m a very (grunt), very (grunt), strong man,’ he added emphatically.
‘Mighty Kuan Yin, he’s like a grizzly!’ Chan gasped in astonishment.
The good news was the diesel tanker had come to rescue us; the bad news was each vehicle was only given 30 litres. That wasn’t going to be enough to get us even a third of the way to Kafue National Park.
We found Steven waiting for us when we got to the front of the pack. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll give us more diesel,’ he said with a mysterious grin as he got in.
‘Really? What did you say to them?’ I asked.
‘It’s not what I said. It’s how much I bribed them! That’s the only sure way to get things done around here.’
Even so, when it came to our turn at the pumps, the fuel gauge had barely moved a millimetre when it stopped. The digits on the pump dial indicated that we had already maxed out our quota of 30 litres. We waited.
‘Move! Move!’ yelled one of the sterner attendants while violently slapping the hood of our van. Steven ignored him and called another attendant over, presumably the guy whom he’d forged the secret deal with. When the accomplice came, he and Steven squabbled for a bit before the attendant relented and squirted another 30 litres into Beat-Up Van. Perhaps the attendant wanted to display some theatrics of integrity to make pocketing the sweetener a little easier on his conscience.
As we merrily drove off with our ill-gotten fuel, Daniel was a picture of resolute confidence. ‘We’ll be comfortable for at least a couple of hours, girls,’ he reassured us. ‘We’ll figure out how to find more diesel on the way. Don’t worry, our safari won’t be ruined. I’ll make a plan.’
I nodded. Chan sulked some more.
We then encountered our first of many police roadblocks on this trip. This fateful time, however, we were not waved away following a casual glance. The lady officer had managed to find fault with our seemingly innocuous van. So our beloved guide went out and did what he did best: persistently talk the ears off the woman. Loquaciously bombarding her with pleas and excuses with a touch of ingratiating flattery, Daniel tried his professional best to wriggle out of the hefty fine. After 20 minutes of listening to non-stop protesting, the officer was an inch away from tearing the braids off her scalp and looked like she was willing to pay Daniel to shut up instead.
‘Enough, enough! Take a hike!’ she squawked and scratched out the fine she was writing.
We were astounded – Daniel was truly the king of cons. Oh well ... yay for us. Getting back into the van, he simpered, ‘Thanks a lot, gorgeous – I won’t forget you! I know you’re single! I’m single too! One day I’ll return the favour, yeah?’
She scowled at him.
We stopped for a picnic lunch under a straw canopy that was directly across a small backwater settlement in a state of incipient disrepair. This was where I had the pleasure of using the most disgusting hole-in-the-ground loo. The glory hole was much larger compared to the ones I’d been accustomed to, so I let my curiosity get the better of me and made the mistake of looking down there. Needless to say, I nearly fed the hole my lunch as well.
After cleaning up our leftovers, Daniel insisted that he take over the wheel, thereby demoting a pouting Steven to passenger. We drove close to four hours on the Great West Road until we rolled up to the lively ghetto-like township of Mumbwa; its biggest claim to fame was being host to the country’s largest cotton ginnery, and plausibly, the most number of potholes per kilometre. But we weren’t here to take in the sights or potholes – Daniel was searching for more van juice to tide over our game drives in the bush. There wouldn’t be another filling station for miles around so this was our last hope for refuelling.
To nobody’s surprise, the filling station here was just
as dessicated as the ones in the city. Luckily, there was another way we could get our black gold: by buying it off the black market. According to Daniel, illegal diesel hoarders frequently forged direct backdoor deals with fuel distributors to provide them with ceaseless supplies. Now all we had to do was find them.
Having gone a few rounds around the town centre, we parked at a busy street corner with lots of small open-fronted shops. The establishments were all horribly icky and their roofs looked like they were about to cave in. Just behind us was a vendor grilling wonderful smelling gizzard satays and a long row of bored-looking listless men loitering by the roadside. This seemed like a conducive spot for dodgy transactions. Daniel thought so too, winding down his squeaky window and motioning for one of the scrawny loiterers to come over. How he instinctively knew these were diesel black marketeers, I’d never know. Perhaps it was the town’s major profession.
In the sauna-like van, I drifted off and fantasized about our exciting deal with the black market thugs. First, we’d get blindfolded and shunted to a secret warehouse location, where we would be asked to talk terms with a cigar-smoking head honcho stroking a medium-sized pet reptile. Surrounding us would be beefy wife-beater-wearing henchmen types sharpening knives on their goatees in an attempt to look mean and intimidating. There would be a briefcase filled with filthy lucre and shiny handcuffs of some sort involved, too. All goes well until the bargaining heats up. Daniel’s yappity-yap lands us in hot soup with the big bossman, who then gives the signal to exterminate us. The shit hits the fan so fast that, within seconds, some guy’s hand has gotten chopped off, another has taken a bullet in the head, and we are running with killer Rottweilers snapping at our backsides.
Of course, cold hard reality was nothing like that. After Daniel transmitted his order, all the loafer did was nod knowingly and promptly disappeared into the thick undergrowth by the side of the road. It was as simple as that.
‘Erm, can I borrow some kwacha from you girls to pay the guy?’ asked Daniel.
Chan was instantly apoplectic with rage. ‘Are you going to pay us back for this?’ she snapped fiercely.
‘Of course,’ he responded in a cloying tone.
Griping under her breath, Chan begrudgingly forked out 100,000 kwacha (about US$35).
The diesel guy staggered back after half an hour, grasping one large jerry can in each hand. He must’ve had a secret burrow in the woods where gallons of illegal diesel were stashed. As Daniel helped him place the jerry cans in the back of the van, strong noxious fumes wafted through the interior, threatening to poison us and our provisions. I pinched my nose and slid the window wide open for some life-saving fresh air.
‘This should last us two days in the bush,’ Daniel said self-satisfactorily and slammed the back door shut.
We had to hand it to Daniel – if anything, his affinity with lowlifes was paying off really well.
18. SLUMBER IN THE BUSH
With one less worry down, we pressed on past the usual miles and miles of anonymous wavy hills and dreary scrub bush – a view only made more appealing by the odd village of seven or so mud huts mushrooming in the middle of nowhere. Passing a row of charcoal bags buttressed by rocks, we screeched to a halt on the road shoulder and I bumped myself against the hard headrest. As a purple lump threatened to grow on my smarting forehead, I looked at the bags that were as tall as me, neatly arranged adjacent to an earthen kiln twirling with smoke – a perfect example of the traditional, environmentally hostile way to produce charcoal. It was clearly a major source of income for the natives as there were almost 40 bags on sale. ‘We need to buy a bag for cooking,’ said Daniel gruffly as he got out. With that, we welcomed another combustible addition to Beat-Up Van.
Barely a few metres down, we disturbed a treacherous coven of vultures lunching on a poor lifeless creature in the middle of the road. With necklaces of entrails hanging from their necks and blood-soaked feathers, they flapped off noisily when we pulled up next to the eviscerated carcass to identify what it used to be. Seven-foot long with a pale underside, the gross sinewy insides of its svelte upper body were strewn all over the tar road. Daniel peered down from his open window and appeared quite chuffed. ‘It’s a black mamba!’
I gasped, exceedingly glad that my one and only encounter with Africa’s most aggressive and feared snake was a dead one. If you think it doesn’t get any scarier than the king cobra, think again. The black mamba is the fastest-moving snake in the world. And to really make you crap in your pants, the snake enjoys chasing people down with three quarters of its body off the ground so that it can look its victims straight in the eye as it communicates a guarantee of speedy death. Once it catches up with you (and it most certainly will since it’s able to strike from six feet away) and sinks its lethal fangs into your skin, only two drops of its extremely toxic venom are required to shut down all your life support systems. The potent venom acts fast and if you’re not dead after 20 minutes, you’re likely to be paralysed or prostrated on the floor. All you can do after that is wait for help or fatal lung failure – whichever arrives first. Most people don’t last long enough to reach the hospital.
Contrary to its name, the black mamba is not even black – the body is olive, brown or grey. Its ominous name comes from its inky dark mouth, affectionately nicknamed the ‘shadow of death’, which becomes visible when it’s hot for some killing action. Old village folks have described the unkind serpent’s head as resembling the coffin that you would soon be in once you get bitten. Charming.
Eventually we arrived at the entrance gate of Kafue National Park. Hallelujah. An attractive female park official wearing a uniform one size too small emerged from the security booth beside the gate. Daniel greeted her in a cringingly oily manner as per usual.
‘Entry permit, sir,’ she said authoritatively.
‘You mean you don’t know who I am?’ he asked with an idiotic grin.
The official’s long sigh led me to believe that she dealt with wise guys of Daniels ilk on a regular basis. ‘No, I don’t,’ she replied, giving him a puh-lease look.
Ouch, that had to hurt. Undaunted, Daniel declared unashamedly, ‘I’m the manager of Chunga Safari Camp. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen me before?’
She shook her head.
‘Oh, you must be new then. I’m very well known around here, you know.’
I could have sworn I saw her gag. Clearly, he was oblivious to the fact that he had the looks and charm of a savannah rodent. Thankfully, before we too retched in our seats, Daniel dropped the nauseating self-flattery and handed over the vehicle papers. When she was sufficiently pleased that they were in order, she signed us in and let us pass, but not without shooting a quick glance at me that I translated to mean, ‘Commiserations to you’.
The long shadows were slowly vanishing in the gloaming by the time we crossed the Kafue Hook Bridge where we picked up four teenagers who needed a lift to their settlement inside the park. Only about 22 kilometres more to get to camp now. Not long after dropping our passengers off, we trundled down a particularly sandy trail when I suddenly noticed that the view I was admiring had stopped moving. Daniel stepped on the gas and turned the steering wheel vigorously, serving only to confirm that we were irrefutably stuck. And to really spice things up, it was getting dark and creepy outside.
‘Don’t you have a torch, Daniel?’ I asked after an interminable awkward silence inside the van.
‘Uh, nope,’ he replied nonchalantly.
I sighed audibly, grumbled ‘call yourself a guide,’ and rooted around my bag. Grabbing my torchlight, we got out to assess the damage – it was the front right tyre, and it was solidly embedded in a shallow pit of soft sand. There were no treads on the tyre, and all it did was revolve loose sand like a windmill whenever Steven floored the pedal. Chan and I tried to help Daniel push the van but we were as much help as a couple of scrawny mice moving a refrigerator. Recalling something I had learnt on TV, I collected some fallen branches to place unde
r the tyre for traction. We heaved a few more times to no avail. The van was bent on taking a break.
It was not unusual to go for hours, if not days, without passing another vehicle in Kafue. Waiting it out wasn’t an option. ‘Maybe we should walk back to the settlement and get some men to help us,’ Steven suggested rather intelligently. Indicating my approval with a swift kick to the drowned tyre, we abandoned the accursed automobile.
We walked for half an hour, and just as it seemed likely that one of us was going to be taken by a ferocious monstrosity with a bad case of the munchies, we came across a group of youths from the Zambia College of Agriculture out on an excursion. Catching sight of several students who were warming themselves around a campfire, Daniel launched into a melodramatic explanation of our predicament. Before I knew it, a busload of manly reinforcements had been unwittingly sweet-talked into assisting us and we rode back to our stranded van in their school bus.
Back at the scene of our lopsided vehicle, I watched attentively while illuminating the boys’ display of testicular fortitude with my torch. They pushed and jostled from the back, groaning loudly. Then they tried shoving from the front, panting laboriously. Finally, they spread out all around the van, lifting and rocking the van in rapid, forceful bursts back and forth repeatedly while Steven revved the engine. It was like a gay man’s wet dream. Anyway, it worked – the tyre finally got a good grip and dislodged itself from the sand.
Beat-Up Van was ready to rumble again. For now.
*
What began as a four-hour joyride ended up a tortuous daylong debacle in the game reserve. When we eventually pulled up to a deserted Chunga Safari Camp on the west bank of the Kafue River, we were completely beat and covered in orange-buff dust.
‘Aaah ... luxury,’ Chan heaved a sigh of great contentment as we staggered into a white rondavel (round-shaped thatched mud hut – the habitation of choice for the discerning rural inhabitant).
