Strip Pan Wrinkle

by David Fletcher

  For that was what was happening here. The early rising mini-mongooses were conducting their early-morning survey for potential dangers – principally the presence of circling raptors in the sky above. And when one conducts such a survey, one inevitably chooses the highest point available from which to conduct it, even if this is a cotton-covered human shoulder or a barely hair-covered human head. And even a human bum will do, if the human in question has been instructed to now lie down on its front – to enable more of the meerkats to enjoy an elevated position for their survey. Yes, both Brian and Sandra were now laid out on a bit of the Makgadikgadi Pans and their backs, bums and legs were populated with a gang of upright meerkats, scanning their surroundings for the slightest hint of danger, whilst at the same time recognising no danger whatsoever in their more than willing hosts. And then they were off…

  No raptors had been spotted, the direction of travel from the burrow had been decided, the meerkat responsible for crèche duties today had been chosen – and left with the youngsters down in the burrow – and all the other meerkats were off in search of food, and with no further interest in their “humans-for-platforms”. It was remarkable, and no less so for the fact that these creatures were in no way tame but just habituated to peaceful, non-threatening “things” that seemed to arrive at their front door each morning, and were distinctly higher than the surrounding land. And who would not be thrilled, even if it was a bit circus and not very authentic as a wildlife experience? Especially if those fortunate enough to encounter this meerkat liaison were meerkat nuts who only once before had seen them in the wild, and had never expected ever to feel them in the wild – on any part of their bodies. This was going to be a difficult act to follow, and needed an immediate intermission in the shape of a posh middle-of-the-pan breakfast served from the back of Super’s safari Land Cruiser – accompanied by a first viewing of the scores of photos Super had taken of his charges and their meerkat companions. From these it became clearer than ever; it was going to be an almost impossibly difficult act to follow…

  Nevertheless, Super tried his best. When the remains of breakfast had been packed away, he took his party of two further into the wilderness to discover more birds (of the lark and cisticola varieties) and quite a few four-legged types. So, onto the list went slender mongooses, ground squirrels, black-backed jackals and a few wildebeest and zebra. But this wasn’t the Serengeti, and in Brian’s mind it was astonishing that there was anything here at all. For soon even the grass had disappeared, and the Land Cruiser was crunching its way over a bare crust of salt that must have offered about as much nourishment to wildlife as the pernicious X Factor back home offers to genuine talent.

  Yes, they were now riding across a genuine pan, and maybe this and not the miscellaneous wildlife spotting was Super’s way of following that meerkat act. Because who could not be seized and then transfixed by such an experience? By finding oneself on a solid sea-of-salt with around one none of the normal markers of a natural or manmade world? No grass, no shrubs, no trees, no fences, no anything, but just a glistening sheet of crystals running off into the distance and smothering one’s sense of perspective and depth and even one’s sense of oneself with its vastness and its blankness – with its unremitting refusal to be anything other than a bare stretch of zilch. Hell, even the blue sky above was a little more “textured” – and certainly more familiar.

  Although probably not so for Super. He was as well acquainted with this unending saline crust as he was with his mother, and he also knew how to navigate it and to find for his charges not only more animals and birds but also the evidence of where they’d been. So, here, at the side of the sea of salt, was a hole surrounded by white poo, springbok and wildebeest horns, aardvark and jackal bones and zebra hooves. It was, of course, a hyena den – with, fortuitously, no hyena currently in residence. And over there was a hole below a stand of taller-than-normal grass, where the water table was closer to the surface. And this had been recognised by the jackals, ratels, porcupine and hyena, who all now used the hole as an underground drinking pool – albeit not all at the same time.

  Well, this was all very fascinating, but it was now approaching midday and Brian was becoming convinced that there was every likelihood that the temperature recorded at Jack’s two days previously might soon be recorded again. And, as that temperature had been 49˚C, he was keen to retire from the rather exposed environment of the pan and to return to the comfort of the camp. Super was there before him, and soon Brian and Sandra were back in their tent and preparing themselves for lunch with the aid of a shower. This meal was with their companions of the previous evening and was simply exceedingly good. The conversation accompanying it wasn’t too bad either, and included an explanation by Super of the ability of the San hunters eventually to outrun a male kudu (because of the enervating effect of its heavy horns) – and a proposal by Brian that anyone admitting to the use of Twitter should be disbarred from holding public office or any job involving even a smidgeon of responsibility. If these people, he contended, wanted to live a kindergarten existence, telling all their kindergarten classmates what they’d had for breakfast or who they’d seen on telly, then they should be kept in their kindergarten world and well away from anything that involves grown-up thinking and grown-up behaviour.

  Brian wasn’t convinced that his proposal had received universal approval around the table, but nobody actually spoke out against him. Probably because nobody now had the strength. It was just so bloody hot. In fact, it was so roasting that directly after lunch, Brian, contrary to the advice he had received from his mother not to swim on a full stomach – an act that risked death or something equally inconvenient – swam.

  Eighty yards from the dining tent at Jack’s is its “pool tent”. This is, if anything, bigger than the dining tent, and has to be to accommodate a generously-sized swimming pool and another assembly of antique chests and elegant loungers, set around the pool and offering to its users the ultimate in comfort on a hot afternoon. For here they can lie, in between dips and with a drink in their hand, and take in the view of the surrounding void – through the tent’s open sides. And, should they be that way inclined, they can also imagine that the afternoon shift from the harem will soon be arriving with trays of Turkish delights and whatever other delights their masters require. Yes, it was the extravagance and the opulence of the tent – and the heat – and having it all to himself… For Sandra had now retired to their own tent, leaving Brian as the sole occupant of this preposterous bath-house – and with a growing acceptance that the afternoon shift was not about to turn up. And accordingly, he had a last dip, finished his drink, dried himself and then rejoined his wife. (And it was now so hot that soon after greeting her he was drying himself again, albeit this time the liquid wasn’t pool water but the couple of pints of perspiration he’d generated in returning from the pool.)

  Immobility and nudity became the order of the day. Even if it wasn’t 49˚C, it wasn’t far off and, in Brian’s opinion, the only way to cope with that sort of nonsense was to lie naked on a bed – with your wife and a wet towel to hand – and to engage in the only waking activity that didn’t involve movement (or somebody else moving), which was thinking. And what he thought about was that meerkat encounter, and what this encounter told him about meerkats, about other animals and about the animal called “man”.

  Now, his thinking was initially no more than luxuriating, revelling in the delight of a close contact with an animal he so loved. But then he began to consider how these animals organised themselves and how each member of the extended family participated in the tasks they undertook, whether these tasks concerned surveying, hunting or even baby-minding. Then he considered what the apparent equality in this participation meant in terms of the meerkats’ intellect. And he soon decided that it meant that they were all equipped with more or less the same amount of grey stuff, that there were no genius meerkats – and no real dummies. That their evolution had brought them to a state where th
ere was real meerkat egalitarianism. No meerkat was greater or lesser than any other meerkat.

  Furthermore, this uniformity of ability, concluded Brian, was not confined to just meerkats, but it was what one observed in all other animals. Differences in their performance and behaviour were apparent, but these differences were generally a function of their gender or their size – and not of their cleverness or their dimness. One must therefore arrive at the ultimate conclusion that, in the natural world, intellect is handed out in equal measures to all creatures and that this equality in their brainpower serves them very well. Just as the disparity in intellect in our own species causes us all sorts of problems.

  For we are different – from meerkats and from all other creatures. There are those of us, for example, who can manage the counter-intuitive conceptualisation of quantum mechanics, or who can, through mathematics, predict the laws of the universe before they’ve been found in the lab – or who can create great works of art and great expositions on the human soul. Whereas… at the other end of the spectrum, there is that rather more numerous band of individuals who… well, who are interested in the branding of their footwear, fascinated by the goings-on of somebody like Cheryl Cole (who is presumably related to Old King… ), delighted by “reality shows” (which are entirely deficient in anything real at all) and hooked on computer games, where the biggest challenge is to remember that “going to the lavatory” is not something you can do in the virtual world and that you really do need to break off from your moronic pastime and go there rather than just carrying on and making a mess in your pants…

  And anyway, with such a gulf between human intellects, things were just bound to go wrong. So some clever-dick invented a wheel and it’s been downhill for the world ever since – not least because clever-dicks are in something of a minority and all the numpties they’ve dragged along with them – into our modern world – have no idea of how to treat this world. Instead they seem intent on trashing it or, at best, they’re entirely indifferent to its fate. As long as they can get their hands on that new Nike trainer, discover where Cheryl is spending her next holiday and get up to level twenty on Grand Theft Assassin’s Call of Duty – Lynch the Dead Man before you Nuke him, they couldn’t give a fig. And many of them couldn’t even give you an answer – to any question you posed them. And certainly not to the one that asks why meerkats and other animals are so “balanced” in their intelligence, whereas they, the poor sods, have barely one tenth of the brain power that was handed out to Einstein. Although, there again, Brian suspected that even the good professor wouldn’t know the answer to that one, no more than Brian did himself. At which point in his mental deliberations, his very own intellect was overtaken by unconsciousness, no doubt brought on by the ambient temperature. It was only when the sun had adopted a distinctly downward trajectory – and coincidentally when he had received a nudge in the ribs from Sandra followed immediately by the suggestion that he prepare himself for a drive – that he roused himself from his slumbers.

  Yes, it was now late afternoon, and after more delicacies forced upon them in the dining tent, it was time for Sandra and Brian to join Super again for another excursion in his Land Cruiser – and a rendezvous with some weather…

  Brian should have guessed it. Near furnace-heat temperatures have to presage something, and that something is generally a storm. And so it was this day. For as the evening approached, so too did a change in the colour of the sky, and then a wind blew up. So that, early into the drive, Brian was recalling his and Sandra’s experience at Susuwe, and the ineffectiveness of an open safari vehicle against the drenching power of rain. However, it wasn’t raining yet, and Super was still able to deploy his considerable guiding skills to find for his clients, first a cape hare, then a hatch of seventeen-year cicadas and some impala – and then a pair of secretary birds. These chaps are extraordinary on any measure one cares to choose, not least because they are unique as long-legged, almost ludicrous-looking hunters of snakes and other reptiles. Furthermore, according to Super, they are also extremely affectionate, because not only do they pair for life, but the pair-bond is reinforced every day by the two of them swapping their last meal of the day with their partner. And just imagine that happening with humans, especially if she’s on a diet and he’s into pizzas…

  Meanwhile, the wind had not abated. On the contrary, it was now blowing fiercely and, unfortunately, in the same direction as the Land Cruiser’s travel. This meant that unless Super pushed his vehicle to quite unseemly speeds, the dust cloud it was creating in its wake would overtake it. And not overtake it as in pass by its side and disappear into the distance, but overtake it as in envelope it in a shroud of thick, choking grit. So now it was like a scene from Speed, where if Super slowed below 50 kph, he and his passengers would all be doomed. Only, unlike in that rather engrossing film, Super was not driving on tarmac but on a series of rutted and bumpy tracks, or not to say very rutted and very bumpy tracks, which meant that the possibility of a sudden traumatic injury or the onset of undetected internal bleeding now joined the risk of imminent asphyxiation.

  But this was Super at the wheel. And Super had clearly been here before. He could outrun anything the pan could throw at him, and he could stay on the track, and he probably even knew the tolerance of individual internal organs to the forces of external shaking. Accordingly, he soon delivered his precious cargo, both unharmed and undead, to the site of a wonder of nature.

  It was a tree. But not any old tree. No, this was a monster of a tree, visible from miles around (and easily visible from Jack’s, even though Jack’s was nowhere near it). Of course, it was a baobab, and such a huge baobab that it had its own name – taken from a Nineteenth Century explorer who used it as a navigation beacon. And this “Chapman’s Baobab” is such a large natural feature in a country with very few natural features of any sort, that it even appeared on some of the early maps of the whole continent of Africa. It really is prodigious – with a 25-metre-circumference trunk, a canopy of a size to match, and an age that can only be measured in thousands of years.

  Brian was suitably impressed. So was Sandra. She told him so – just as the first “shards” of rain arrived. Then she appeared to be more interested in donning her waterproof cape than she was in the tree, and Brian became similarly distracted. As feared, it was Susuwe all over again, and not only did the horizontal torrent bring their inspection of Chapman’s Baobab to a premature end, but it also, apparently, put paid to an evening meal under the stars. Super told his charges that out there on the pan there was currently a contingent of Jack’s best, busy preparing a meal that, for the delight of their guests, would be served on a table in the middle of nowhere – but that, as all these heroes would inevitably be soaked to the skin within the next few minutes, dinner would no doubt be relocated to that dreary tent back in camp. Brian accepted this grave disappointment with fortitude, but felt genuinely sorry that so much effort had been expended for no result. And these guys weren’t even building a National Health computer system…

  The rain was persistent – and penetrating. Aided by the wind, it even managed to penetrate the defences of the capes. So there was relief all round when Super, by embarking on another bout of boy-racer driving, had outrun the storm. It was now dry, the capes could be dispensed with and, as the sun was about to set (in a clearing sky), glasses could be distributed in their place. Yes, it was sundowner time again. And for this all-important part of the day, Super had found a rare grove of straggly trees, which housed, amongst other things, fiery-necked and rufous-cheeked nightjars. Their songs, together with the sound of jackals in the distance, made this a very special time. With the colours of the setting sun, a fascinating account of Super’s life and his travels – and more gin in the sundowners than was sensible – it would prove to be a very memorable time as well.

  But there was still dinner to attend to back at camp. This was taken with the normal suspects and, despite the grandeur of the surroundings, in whatever one
was wearing (and in whatever state of kemptness one was in) when one returned from ones “activities”. And as Jonathan and Debbie’s activity had involved quad bikes that came without canvas roofs or readily deployable capes, their kemptness level was below even that of Brian’s. However, nobody seemed to care and the meal proceeded as it had the previous evening – with superb fare and agreeable banter – despite a reference to a “celebrity omnivore”. For it appeared that this particular celeb had spent a holiday here and had befriended Super. Although, from what Brian gathered, he had not been allowed to indulge his omnivorous habits by tasting meerkat. He may, however, have chased elephants…

  It was during coffee: the unmistakeable sound of nearby lumbering giants. And clearly so nearby that an external inspection was called for – to be conducted by all the diners. And there they were: half a dozen furtive pachyderms loitering outwith the tent – with intent – and their intent was the depredation of Jack’s stock of palm trees. They had done it before. They had sneaked in under the cover of darkness (as much as any elephant can sneak) and they had pushed over palm trees in order to consume their fronds. All very natural really, but when one is operating a camp in the middle of a desolate place and one’s only external shelter is a finite number of palm trees, one is understandably proprietary in one’s attitude to these trees, and one doesn’t want them felled by passing giants – who can and who do find sufficient, nourishing food elsewhere. So they had to be chased off – or shooed off. For Brian soon discovered that encouraging elephants to go elsewhere is much the same as encouraging rabbits or woodpigeons to go elsewhere. One just makes a bit of a racket in their direction and they leave. Albeit elephants take a little longer to take flight, show more resentment and hurt when they finally do, and then leave one feeling like a real celebrity: completely callous and indifferent to their fate.