It was lost on me. All I saw were two plates of snacks waiting on tables made from palm trunks.
Before I could nab a morsel, Andrew made a dash for an oyster wrapped in bacon, gulping it down as if he were a bass, taking live bait.
Not to be out done, I gobbled a couple, too, and then sighed with relief. “Devil-on-horseback. No better than mine. Thank goodness.” I slapped my lips, relishing the tangy aftertaste of smoked oysters fried in bacon.
We cleaned the plate.
I dropped it back onto the table just as Bonnie and Chuck appeared, dressed for dinner. It turned out they were the only other guests in camp this New Year’s Eve.
Andrew grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, we polished off the grub. Put it down to intense hunger brought on by excessive travel.”
“Never mind the eats,” Bonnie tittered, sitting next to me. “I’m more interested in you two crazies. Now that you’ve been warned about the owner’s wicked wife, are you still considering taking the job?”
“It seems the feeling is mutual,” I said with a wolfish grin. “The owner’s wicked wife doesn’t like Barbara much, either.”
“I’m not surprised, given the way Barbara and Rodney bad-mouth her to the guests.” Bonnie leaned in for what promised to be an extended camp manager bashing session. “They really are poor managers. Resigned. Lost the passion. Disinterested, if you know what I—”
Chuck nudged her in the ribs, looking pointedly over his shoulder.
The subjects of our gossip had arrived.
Bonnie blushed scarlet.
I stammered, “Barbara, the…the river on the other side of the bay…what’s it called?”
“What’s it called!” Barbara threw her hands up and sighed. “Brace yourself. You’ll be asked that question a thousand times.” Still standing, as if she meant to bolt at any second, she added, “It’s the Boro, the major waterway dissecting this portion of the delta. It’s quite substantial upstream, but here, it narrows into that channel.” She pointed vaguely across the bay. “The main feature here is the reed floodplain, but the water level is low at the moment, so the mekoro are rather limited in where they can go, as you will see tomorrow, when you go on your outing with Karomona.”
Rodney shook his head tiredly and then called Andrew over to a fridge in the corner of the lounge.
“The bar,” I heard him say. “Drinks are included in the bill you won’t be paying.” He and Barbara turned to leave. “We’ll be back for dinner at seven-thirty. Sharp.”
Forget a banker. The top half of Rodney was an accountant, through and through.
I joined Andrew at the bar. He opened the chest fridge and said unnecessarily, “Beers, cold drinks, white wine.” He brushed the row of cans with his fingertips and grinned. “Gwynn, what freezing, close-to-ice, just-the-way-I-like-it beverage can I get you?”
“They aren’t cold, are they?” I asked, eyeing the drinks as if they would bite me.
“Nope. What do you want?”
“Coke. Why aren’t they cold?”
“You really are labouring the point, you know.”
“Meaning?”
“They’re not cold because the fridge obviously needs fixing.”
* * *
Seven-thirty sharp found us in the dining room—a charming reed structure built around a giant Knobthorn acacia tree. The windowless front wall was low, giving us an uninterrupted view across the floodplain and the river. At the back of the room was a small atrium, filled with lush palms, animal skulls, and time-sculpted chunks of leadwood. (Just as an aside: leadwood is a tall, long-lived tree with wood as heavy as…well, lead. Slow-burning, it makes great campfires.)
As enchanting as the dining room was, the focal point had to be the gleaming, wine-red, baronial dining table. It could easily seat seventeen guests and two managers with elbowroom to spare.
Always the gentleman, Andrew pulled out my chair, and then huffed, “Crikey. What are these made from? Leadwood?”
An eye roll from Barbara. She turned to Rodney. “You’re the one keeping tally. How many times have we’ve been asked that question?”
“Three thousand, seven-hundred and twenty-seven.”
I believed him. He was anal enough to have counted. It did, however, warn me that running a camp was not all scintillating conversation.
Never one to miss an opportunity to stir trouble, Andrew looked innocently at Barbara. “So what answer did you give to the three thousand, seven-hundred and twenty-six previous enquirers?”
Chuck snorted a laugh. “I was one of them, but I won’t steal Barbara’s thunder.”
Barbara had the grace to smile. “Sit, and I will reveal all.”
Chairs clattering, Andrew and I sat opposite Chuck and Bonnie while our hosts took a double throne at the head of the table.
“We didn’t know the answer to that question, either,” Barbara said. “Not until a retired Canadian wood expert booked in a few months ago. He identified the table and chairs as a mixture of Rhodesian teak and Australian jarrah.” Her smile broadened. “Now, Andrew, you who are young, know as much as I, who am old.”
Regardless of the hygiene in her kitchen, or the temperature of her drinks, I decided I liked Barbara. She was certainly more personable than Sandy.
Rodney appeared at my shoulder with a bottle of red wine in one hand and bottle of white in the other. I nodded to the red. While he poured, I asked a question that had played all day on my mind. “I believe you have a cat here?”
“Ah, Big Tom,” Rodney crooned, filling my glass with an excellent South African pinotage. “He’ll be around to filch tidbits before long.”
As if choreographed, a grey and white tabby jumped up onto the bench next to Barbara. A small tank, he was about four times the size of Woodie. Large yellow eyes surveyed the table. Still, he seemed friendly enough, given that his purrs competed in loudness and intensity with the calls of the painted reed frogs over in the bay. I opened my mouth to say I intended bringing a cat but was stopped by waiters bearing bowls of soup.
The moment of culinary truth had come. Despite having three camp chefs at my disposal, would my skills be equal to the cuisine served at this luxury lodge, where guests paid hundreds of U.S. dollars a night to sup? (Thousands, by today’s standards)
I took a deep breath and stared down at my bowl. And then stared some more. The soup looked…nondescript. Although steaming, no piquant aroma wafted up to aid in its identity. I would have to rely on taste.
Mushroom. As insipid as it appeared. If this was Barbara’s idea of a celebratory meal, then she and I saw parties very differently. Still, my heart did a little drum roll. My cooking was definitely in the game if this was the soup of the day. After spicing it up with more salt and pepper than was good for me, I ate it because I was ravenous. Still famished, I eagerly awaited the mains.
“Coq au vin,” Barbara announced as the waiters slid plates decked with healthy servings of chicken and veg in front of Chuck and Bonnie. I noticed some raised eyebrows and wondered what was wrong.
Then, my plate arrived—now my little old heart pounded out a joyful rat-a-tat-tat, and I only just managed to resist doing a victory dance. Before me floundered an intoxicated piece of chicken in a flood of red wine sauce. Worse, it smelled as if the wine had been sloshed over the plate moments before leaving the kitchen.
Tom, waiting anxiously for his treat, puckered his nose against the acrid stench, hopped off his chair, and slunk out into the night. I made him a silent promise: the food would improve, but treats would only be forthcoming if he promised to play nicely with Woodie, the new kitty on his beat.
Reluctantly, I picked up my knife and fork and, delaying this culinary nightmare for as long as possible, glanced at Andrew. He was doing an excellent landscaping job on his plate, moving drowned vegetables and chicken around the slowly congealing blood-red gravy. I leaned over and whispered, “Still hungry?”
I saw him swallow his laughter. I guess a guy has to eat something.
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The waiters hauled almost full plates of food back to the kitchen. I sat back in my chair, holding out no hope for dessert—the best meal of the day, in my opinion.
But I was wrong, as I so often am.
The crème caramel placed in front of me was the finest I had ever tasted. I even went back for seconds. As I relaxed in my jarrah wood chair, allowing the creamy sweetness to melt in my mouth, I knew I could do this. I could run Tau Camp’s kitchen. Glowing with quiet confidence, I smiled at Andrew. He looked more relaxed than I’d seen him in years.
Once the last strains of Auld Lang Syne, sung to bid farewell to the old and to welcome in the New Year, had drifted into the night, Andrew and I excused ourselves from the table. Like a velvet mantle, the night air wrapped around me as we made our way by torchlight down the sandy path to our cottage.
“This is our year,” I said to Andrew.
His grip on my arm tightened, and I heard the smile in his voice. “You say that every year.”
“This time, I mean it.”
That night, I slept peacefully under my mosquito net, and instead of worrying about cats and food—more especially whether my cat would become someone else’s meal—I dreamt of Karomona and his deformed fingers, and the excursion he was taking us on in the morning.
Chapter 6
My dawn wake-up call came from somewhere outside our cottage. In my grogginess, I heard someone shout my name. Jarred awake, I wondered where I was. It all rushed back. I was in paradise. Sighing with delight, I nestled into my pillow and listened to the chorus of bird song, blissfully aware that I’d never heard any of these singers in my Johannesburg garden. In fact, I didn’t recognise several of the calls. That reminded me we were going out into the delta today with Karomona.
Excitement flooded though me, washing away my reverie. I nudged Gwynn, sprawled out next to me. “Wake up. Adventure time.”
She groaned, so I prodded again. Somewhere in her sleep-addled brain, she must have recalled what was happening because she bolted upright, grinning.
Minutes later, we were dressed and in the dining room with Bonnie and Chuck, eating an excellent fruity rusk and drinking coffee. A rusk is a South African biscuity-thing designed for dunking. Chunky and oblong, they’re usually as unpalatable as dried toast. But these had the texture of light fruitcake. Delicious. Fortifying, too, as Barbara said we would not return to camp much before nine-thirty. That’s a long time to wait for food after a three hour walk.
In the morning chill, Karomona and another guide waited by their mekoro.
Finished snacking, Gwynn and I walked down to the water’s edge to join them. Back straight as a board, Karomona still somehow managed to bow, then gestured to his mokoro.
Mekoro, plural, or mokoro, singular, are long, narrow canoes dug out of tall trees that the local people—the Bayei—use for transport on the delta. With a low freeboard, they usually have water slopping about in the bowels. Today, small mattresses shoved into moulded plastic, legless chairs guaranteed our comfort.
Gwynn stepped on board and claimed the front seat.
A sudden rush of déjà vu had me grinning. The front seat of a mokoro was not always a good idea. Overnight, spiders spun webs across the channels and the person in front had the sticky job of breaking them and dislodging the owners.
Gwynn, I must tell you, was not great with insects. She could out stare a snake without raising a sweat, but the tiniest bug really got her going.
Expecting panicked shrieks, I let her sit in front. Then I asked innocently, “You happy there?”
“Oh yes. Very,” came the reply. “We should do this every day. Me in front in the morning and you in front in the afternoon.”
“It’s a deal.” I knew she’d kill me later.
Karomona took up his position at the back, pole held upright, poised for action. Barbara pushed us off, and we headed out of the bay into the main channel. But instead of relaxing into the rocking rhythm as Karomona propelled us upstream, I waited for Gwynn’s reaction to the spiders.
So mesmerised by the motion, the rising sun shining on the waters, and the scrape of dew-covered reeds (often razor-sharp, I must add) against our arms and faces, she didn’t seem to notice the arachnoids. But it was when a frog hopped onto her knee that I knew my joke had fizzled. She cooed in delight, picked it up, and popped it back on the reeds.
It’s amazing what the Okavango could do to a city girl.
“Painted reed frog,” Karomona said.
I turned to look at him, surprised he’d even spotted the quiet visitation.
Another flood of memories hit me. When I was twelve, my parents gave me one of the most treasured gifts of my life. They brought me to the Okavango and introduced me to the painted reed frogs. Every evening, probably since time began, the frogs have gathered in their hundreds to create a symphony of tinkling notes, rather like a massed orchestra of tiny wooden xylophones. When I first heard them, I recorded the sound and narrated what I saw. My childish voice echoed the deep impact the scene had on my soul: “The sky is very dark, and bright stars appear, and the horizon is much lighter. I can just see the outline of the trees. And the outline of the grass. And shining waters.”
“Look.” Karomona’s voice cut my musings. “Picnic duck.” He pointed to a pair of birds floating a few yards away. One was drab grey and brown, the other, bright green and yellow. They were perfectly camouflaged against the lilies.
“Picnic duck?” Gwynn reached for the bird book she’d toted along. “Never heard of it. Nothing in the index, either.”
Karomona stopped the boat.
Gwynn and I studied the water bird pages, finally identifying the very beautiful ducks as pygmy geese.
I held the book up to show him the picture. “That one?” I asked.
He nodded his agreement, studied the page, and then mouthed, “Pygmy goose.”
According to Barbara, Karomona was the best tracker in the delta. His bird knowledge sure needed some attention. Maybe instead of a fifty buck tip, that German guy should have gifted him a bird book. Even better, I’d leave our Newman’s with him when we left.
The mokoro ride ended when Karomona ran us aground on the sandy bank of an island at the edge of a small lagoon. “Now we walk.” Karomona set off at a brisk pace into the bush.
I exchanged a childlike grin with Gwynn. Lion, elephant, hyena, buffalo, leopard, wild dog; the list of game we could run into seemed endless and thrilling. I couldn’t wait to get started.
Karomona, it turned out, had a quaint fixation with sun-dried excrement. It soon became apparent that a major part of the walk was to be devoted to the study of animal droppings. But, after a couple of hours, the poop he showed us, while initially fascinating, began to lose its savour.
Every few yards, he’d stop to admire impala, zebra, wildebeest, and buffalo dung. His face glowed at clumps of small black pellets or, even better, the larger, rounded chunks with tapered ends. Given his waving arms and eagerly prodding fingers, his personal favourite was undoubtedly buffalo chips—splats of runny green mush.
I was beginning to despair of ever meeting the perpetrators when Karomona stopped, holding up his hands to silence us. “Wildebeest.” He pointed at an open plain beyond a deep thicket.
I scanned the horizon, finally spotting a small herd of wildebeest grazing in the distance. “You see it?” I asked Gwynn.
She shook her head, so I pointed her in the right direction. She chuckled, and then hopped up and down. I guessed she’d seen them, too.
“We go closer,” Karomona said. He turned ninety degrees. We followed, struggling for about five hundred yards through dense shrub. He stopped us about a hundred yards from the herd.
Not my favourite animals. Wildebeests’ sloping backs, low haunches, and scraggly whiskers always reminded me of old men with bad posture, desperately in need of a shave.
Then I saw something interesting.
Nudging Gwynn in the ribs, I whispered, making sure Karomona did
n’t hear, “The one on the far left is dropping some stuff for Karomona. No doubt he’ll show it to us tomorrow, if we come back here.”
“Isn’t it great seeing them on foot, instead of from the inside a vehicle? It’s so exciting,” Gwynn replied, missing the joke.
I sighed, becoming serious, because she was right. Game viewing on foot was an indescribable, almost primordial experience—even if it was just wildebeest we were looking at.
When the wildebeest wandered off across the plain, Karomona continued walking. I think he’d seen our disapproval of his picnic duck identification because he stayed away from mentioning birds, although birds of every hue and description scuttled and chirped enticingly in the trees around us. It was therefore with some surprise that I heard him announce, “Saddle-billed stork.”
Doubt besieged me. Those large black and white storks with distinctive red and yellow bands across their bills are quite uncommon. I craned to see where he was pointing—a marshy patch of grass ahead of us. No bird, large or small, jumped into view. When the naked eye failed, I turned to my binoculars.
There, as Karomona promised, stood two saddle-billed storks in knee-deep water surrounded by tall reeds. His eyesight and ability to spot game went up a thousand percent in my estimation.
“Yes, Karomona. Those are saddle-billed stork. Are they common here?” Gwynn asked. Seems this time she’d been looking in the right place.
“They are plenty, and when the sun is low, you can see them fly.” He grinned, showing his discoloured teeth, clearly delighted to have redeemed himself.
At this point, we had been walking for almost two and a half hours. The sun that had started the day off mild and pleasant was beginning to punish me. Hungry and thirsty, I was about to suggest to Karomona that we turn back when I realised we’d swung around and were now heading in the direction of the mokoro.
At the same moment, Gwynn mopped her brow, saying, “Droon, I think we should ask Karomona if we can head back. It’s got to be close to breakfast time.”
“I think we’ve already turned,” I replied, somewhat smugly. Direction finding wasn’t easy here, but I watched the sun’s position. Gwynn always trounced me when it came to finding places in the city. She was always telling me to stop and ask for directions—like I ever would—so it was good to finally prove my manliness.
Torn Trousers: A True Story of Courage and Adventure: How a Couple Sacrificed Everything to Escape to Paradise Page 4
