The Delta

by Tony Park

  Sam had left his treehouse and walked to the campground half an hour before their departure to see if Sonja needed help setting up. Predictably, her small camp site was already established and her gear stowed with military precision. He found her at the pool, where she told him she was enjoying her second swim for the day. She invited him in.

  ‘I can’t. I don’t want to ruin my hair or makeup.’

  She laughed out loud and he marvelled again at how that simple act could transform her and make him feel so good.

  He tried not to stare at her breasts when she climbed out and put her clothes on over her wet swimsuit. ‘I read that article about you,’ she said.

  He stayed silent and waited for her verdict.

  ‘It’s not easy seeing a friend die.’ She was stating the obvious, but the way she said it made him think it had happened to her, too. ‘Wouldn’t have picked you as a teenage car thief, though.’

  He’d told Sonja the truth, by the pool, as he looked out over the Okavango, that the car had belonged to David’s mum, who had let him use it unsupervised on plenty of occasions before the accident. Denise Rollins was a lush, who let her teenage son take her car so he could drive to the liquor store for her. David had insisted Sam drive that night and had urged him to go faster and faster. David had bought the pot, as well, although Sam had smoked some.

  ‘You didn’t tell all this to the judge?’ Sonja asked.

  ‘It didn’t lessen the fact that I was the driver and my best buddy was dead. I didn’t want to make it harder on his mom by dragging their names through the mud.’

  Rebecca, his former girlfriend, had told him he was a sap for not mounting a stronger defence, when he had told her the same story.

  ‘Good for you,’ Sonja had said. ‘Come. The boat guide’s waiting for us.’

  Out on the motorised pontoon Sonja had impressed Sam and the others – even Cheryl-Ann, he suspected – with her ability to spot birds and wildlife, sometimes even before their experienced African guide, Julius. While Sonja and Julius scanned the riverbanks for game, Sam stood in front of the camera.

  ‘Action,’ Cheryl-Ann said.

  Sam cleared his throat and looked into the lens. ‘The Okavango River rises in the highlands of Angola, to the north of where I am now, where it’s known by its local name, the Kabango. From there it passes through this part of Namibia, before entering Botswana. Here it flows as a wide river, fully deserving that title. If you imagine a skillet then where we are is on the handle – in fact it’s known as the panhandle here – but as it winds south through Botswana the river runs into ground that’s been lifted and rippled by millennia of seismic activity and it starts to split into numerous small rivers and creeks. The Okavango finally peters out in the Kalahari Desert into myriad seasonal channels that only flow after the annual rains.’

  ‘Elephants,’ Sonja whispered. ‘Turn, Julius, quickly, hey. They’re coming just now to drink.’

  ‘Cut, Sam. I don’t see any elephants, Sonja,’ Cheryl-Ann said.

  Julius was swinging the outboard. He pointed with his free hand.

  Sam saw the cloud of dust, which was tinged pink by the setting sun’s rays. Of the animals themselves there was still no sign.

  Another tourist boat saw them turn, and the spreading V of their wake on the shiny brass surface of the water as Julius accelerated. Julius called across the water and the guide on the other craft swung his tiller to follow them. The first of the elephants came into view.

  ‘That big one, in front, with its trunk up, is a female. She’s the matriarch, the head of the herd,’ Sonja said.

  Sam saw the elephant sniffing the wind, but if she detected the scent of humans it was not enough to slow her headlong charge for the river, or to stop the pressing crowd of wrinkly grey flesh behind her. Almost lost in the forest of trunk-like legs and choking dust was a tiny baby that threaded its way to the matriarch’s side. ‘How old is that little one.’

  Sonja shifted her binoculars slightly. ‘Less than a year old. You can tell because he can still fit under his mother’s belly. Also, look at the way his little trunk is flopping from side to side.’

  ‘I see it,’ Sam said. ‘It’s like he doesn’t know what to do with it.’

  ‘Exactly. They have to learn how to use their trunk, and what it’s for.’

  Julius headed for a sandbar island, about twenty metres from the far riverbank, where the elephants had arrived. Their front rank splashed knee-deep into the water.

  ‘Can’t you get closer?’ Cheryl-Ann asked.

  ‘He knows what he’s doing,’ Sonja muttered.

  Julius turned the craft towards the island, revved the motor, and the pontoons’ bows shushed up onto the sand. ‘We can get off the boat, now,’ Julius said.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Rickards, who needed no further invitation. ‘Come on, Gerry. Let’s move it. Light’s fading.’

  Sam followed the camera team off the front of the boat and stopped to offer his hand to Cheryl-Ann, who waved him away. She jumped and landed unsteadily in the sand, but regained her balance at the last second. Sonja stepped off and touched the sand with graceful confidence.

  ‘Will they cross the water?’ Sam asked.

  Sonja shook her head. ‘See the matriarch sniffing again? She knows we’re here. The water is a barrier. They could cross it if they wanted, but see how the rest are drinking now. They’re relaxed about us, and they’re bloody thirsty.’

  ‘The drought?’ Sam asked.

  Sonja nodded. ‘Look at the vegetation.’

  Sam could see trees shredded to matchsticks. The bush on either side of the gently sloping sandy beach that led down to the river had obviously been a favourite feeding spot for the herds that came to drink here. He lifted his own nose to the air and caught the damp, musty smell of the elephants wafting across the narrow channel.

  ‘Ready when you are, Sam, if you want to do a piece to camera,’ Rickards said.

  Cheryl-Ann had been staring at the elephants, as if locked in a trance. It was, Sam thought, a rare lapse in her relentless professionalism, but he liked the fact she had been moved to silence. ‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘Get in there and give me something that will make me cry.’

  Sam moved in front of the camera and dropped to a crouch so Rickards could keep filming the herd, which was now framed above his left shoulder. He cleared his throat, then drew a deep breath through his nostrils and exhaled. ‘This family is close enough for me to smell them. It’s a rich, earthy smell, as powerful as the urge that drove this mother and her offspring through the harsh, dry African bush to this temporary sanctuary.’

  Rickards gave a slight nod of his head and Sam took the cue, and looked back over his shoulder. The herd had parted and Sam could see one elephant, nearly as big as the matriarch, sinking to its knees in the sand. He wasn’t sure what was happening. He looked at Sonja, who whispered, ‘She’s dying. Thirst.’

  Sam nodded. ‘Who knows how far this herd travelled to reach the Okavango River. What is clear, though, from the scene unfolding behind me, is that for at least one of these mighty animals the journey was too far. That female,’ he turned again and saw the elephant was now lying on her side, ‘is dying.’

  He paused and let the pictures tell the story for a few seconds. The rest of the herd had paused in slaking their thirst and were now standing in a semicircle around their fallen relative. Trunks were sniffing her. A young one, not much older than the matriarch’s baby, raised its trunk and let loose a piercing, wailing scream. It lowered its head and started nudging its stricken mother, as if trying to rouse her.

  ‘People ascribe almost human emotions to elephants and it’s hard to know where fact stops and legend begins. We do know that elephants will spend time sniffing the bones and carcasses of other dead elephants, as if they are trying to identify the fallen one and, perhaps, grieve for it. You make up your own mind about what’s going on behind me.’

  He paused again and all of them watched the mournfully sl
ow procession as the herd members, one by one, stopped to sniff and lay their trunks gently across the body of the fallen one. The dying elephant’s baby was inconsolable, and ran in a circle, trumpeting and shaking its head, refusing to accept the inevitable. The sun was behind the camera crew, bathing Sam’s face in soft light. He knew the vision would be extraordinary. Cheryl-Ann was whispering instructions to Rickards, who twitched his head like he was trying to shake off a buzzing mosquito. Gerry watched the scene with his mouth open. Sam moved his eyes to Sonja and when the young elephant cried again she flinched.

  Those elephants that had not yet drunk did so, while four others kept vigil over the fallen one. Sam looked back again and could now see the angular protrusion of the cow’s hip bones. She raised her trunk, no more than a metre off the ground, and her youngster seized on the tiny movement and moved to his mother’s side. He entwined his trunk with his mother’s for a few seconds, but when he shifted position and lost his grip the adult’s trunk fell to the sand, and didn’t move again.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘You teared-up, dude,’ Rickards said from the back seat, looking up from the flip-out LED screen of his camera. ‘I pulled in tight on that last shot, just after the baby elephant wrapped its trunk about the dead mother. We have tears. I can see you blink.’

  ‘Don’t get too excited about it, OK?’ Sam said, shaking his head.

  ‘Excited? We are talking Emmy-fucking-award-winning stuff here, my man. Tell him I’m right, Cheryl-Ann.’

  Cheryl-Ann looked up from the printout she was reading. ‘As much as it pains me to agree with you, James, you may be right. That was some good stuff last night, Sam. And you, too, Jim.’

  Sonja frowned as she drove and gripped the wheel a little tighter. These Americans treated real life like it was television and vice versa. It didn’t matter that they had witnessed a tragedy take place, only how it would look when they beamed it to the homes of a billion people around the world. It didn’t matter whether Chapman had tears in his eyes or if he had forced them. They glossed over the problems of global warming and people fucking with the environment by building dams. They didn’t have the time or the knowledge or the inclination to mention those elephants were living in a reserve hemmed in by man on all sides, with a finite amount of food and not enough water away from the river. A rich white man’s tears were enough to make a story and win an award. That was the depth of their take-home, takeaway experience of Africa.

  Sonja told herself she’d been silly to fantasise about the spoilt American after she’d caught him in the shower. She rationalised that her physical attraction to Sam was probably just a reaction to Stirling’s dismissal, and told herself it was pointless nurturing some teenage infatuation with a man who lived in a different world to her. In Sonja’s world distractions meant danger.

  She didn’t want to dwell on her own reaction to the elephant’s death either. She, too, was sure she had seen Sam blinking back tears and that had set her off. She had turned and walked back to the boat, letting the salt water stream down her cheeks before she was sure she was far enough into the gloom for none of the others to see her wiping her face. She’d scooped a handful of Okavango water and washed away the marks while she waited for them to pack up the camera and trudge back through the sand. First the horse, now this. Was she losing her grip? She forced her mind back to the job. Her real job, not the pretence of nursemaiding these pampered children from a marshmallow-soft society.

  They were close now, and her fingers tingled. She loosened her hold on the steering wheel and wriggled them. She glimpsed a flash of fluorescent day-glow green through the curtain of heat haze ahead and geared down.

  Cheryl-Ann looked up from the printout, which Sonja had noticed was a joint press release from the Namibian and Angolan governments extolling the virtues of the Okavango Dam. This seemed to be the sum total of the producer’s research prior to their visit. ‘Why are we slowing, Sonja? We’ve got to be at the dam by ten.’

  ‘I know. Roadblock.’

  Sonja made out the uniforms and the weapons as they coasted up to the red and white boom gate. It was a vet control point, designed to stop the flow of meat and dairy products one way as a precaution against foot and mouth disease, fairly common in this part of the continent. What was uncommon, as at the border crossing, were the two soldiers with AK-47s, who stood in the shade of a corrugated-iron hut while the woman in a blue uniform asked them if they had any meat products in the vehicle.

  ‘No, nothing,’ Cheryl-Ann said across Sonja. ‘Look, we’re in kinda a hurry here, so I’d really appreciate it if we could make this snappy, OK?’

  Sonja smiled to herself. If someone ever bothered to write a textbook about how to circumvent African bureaucracy, then Cheryl-Ann’s little monologue would have been perfect for the ‘what not to do’ section.

  ‘Switch off the engine and open the back, please,’ the quarantine officer said to Sonja, who complied and got out of the Land Rover.

  Cheryl-Ann stuck her head out her window. ‘Hey, excuse me! I said we are in a hurry here, miss.’

  ‘Open the back, please,’ the woman repeated. Sonja unlocked and opened the rear door. ‘I want to see inside the cool-box. What is in all these black cases?’

  ‘Camera gear,’ Sonja said. She knew there was no point lying.

  The woman called out in her own language to the soldiers, who wandered over.

  Cheryl-Ann got out of the vehicle. ‘Look. I asked you nicely if we could speed this up and now you seem to be going out of your way to delay us. I’d like to speak to your superior, miss.’

  ‘I am the superior. Open the cooler box.’

  Sonja hefted a waterproof case sitting on top of the drinks box and set it on the ground. One of the soldiers bent and started fiddling with the clasps on the case.

  ‘Hey!’ Jim Rickards opened his door and ran to the back. ‘Get your fucking hands off that man or I’ll—’

  The soldier brought his AK up to his waist and yanked back on the cocking handle, chambering a round.

  ‘—or I’ll be quite perturbed, my man.’ Rickards held his palms up and took a step back. ‘It’s just camera gear. We’re a TV crew, man. Wildlife World? Heard of it?’

  The soldier stared at the cameraman.

  Sonja licked her lips. This was going from bad to disaster, very quickly. She had a Glock in her bag and if Cheryl-Ann and Jim provoked the soldiers and the quarantine lady into doing a full search of the vehicle, she would end up in jail before nightfall. Cheryl-Ann would back up the story about her being their security for the trip, but Sonja had nothing in the way of permits or licences for the weapon. ‘Cheryl-Ann,’ she said softly, ‘don’t you have a number for someone you can call at the dam? Some government contact?’

  ‘Right. I was just going to do that.’

  ‘All of the cases and bags, out of the car, now,’ said the other soldier.

  ‘I’m just going to make a call, OK?’ Cheryl-Ann said to the quarantine officer.

  ‘Just do it,’ Sonja hissed, praying they were in a mobile phone coverage area. Sonja opened the lid of the cold-box. ‘It’s hot, hey man?’ she said to the soldier still pointing a gun at Rickards. ‘How about a Coke or a frostie?’ The soldier off to one side shook his head. The gunman tightened his grip on his rifle.

  Cheryl-Ann had got through to someone. ‘Where are we?’ she asked Sonja.

  ‘About five kilometres south of Bagani-Divundu.’ Sonja used both names for the tiny village and trading post at the crossroads not far from the dam.

  Cheryl-Ann relayed the information then passed the phone to the ranking military man. ‘It’s a man from the dam project. He wants to talk to you.’

  Sonja waited nervously and exhaled with relief when the soldier handed the phone back to Cheryl-Ann and nodded. ‘You must wait here. That man will come from the dam and escort you from here.’

  Sonja didn’t need to be told twice. She got into the Land Rover and started the engine while Rickards was
still loading his case back into the vehicle. Sonja drove off the edge of the road and parked a safe hundred metres from the roadblock, under a leafless tree. There was precious little shade, but she didn’t want the soldiers to have second thoughts and carry out a snap search while they waited for their contact. While they waited, Sam opened the cold-box and handed out soft drinks. Rickards raised one in a mock toast to the soldiers over at the checkpoint. Sonja glared at the Australian. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

  ‘Holy shit,’ Cheryl-Ann said. ‘What was that all about? They treated us like we were goddamned criminals or something. I’m going to report those people to their supervisors.’

  ‘Welcome to the real Africa and your very first roadblock,’ Sonja said, not without sympathy. ‘It may not be the last. The secret to surviving roadblocks is the three P’s – be polite, patient but persistent. You don’t need to take any crap from police or soldiers or bureaucrats who might try and shake you down for a bribe. You’ve got to show them that you’ve got nothing better to do with your time but sit or stand there and talk it out, but as soon as you get angry or abusive you’re asking for trouble.’

  Cheryl-Ann put her hands on her hips. ‘Excuse me. I was not abusive, Sonja.’

  Sonja was saved by the sight of a white Toyota Land Cruiser bakkie with a flashing orange light on the roof of its cab screaming down the road towards them. It pulled up at the roadblock and the African passenger greeted the soldiers and the quarantine officer and spoke with them. All of them, at various times, looked at the Land Rover and nodded at the foreigners. A white man was driving the Toyota and he waved at them. Cheryl-Ann waved back.

  When the Land Cruiser turned Sonja saw the logo on the passenger’s door – Roberts Engineering Pty Ltd, Windhoek. The vehicle pulled up next to them and the driver got out. He was about six foot tall, and solidly built with a rugby forward’s shoulders and muscular thighs that seemed to bulge from his tight blue denim shorts. He wore a two-tone blue and khaki bush shirt, with the same emblem as the truck door embroidered above the heart, and veldskoen with no socks. With his red exposed skin, short blond hair and blue eyes he was as Namibian German as could be.