Strip Pan Wrinkle

by David Fletcher

  Most men are not like this lion. And those that are would soon be accused of a variety of crimes. Polygamy would probably arise first, but ignoring the law per se and any cultural conventions, there would also be accusations of exploitation, coercion, confinement and restraint, plain sexual abuse, irresponsibility and insensitivity, to say nothing of selfishness, self-regard and the sort of self-admiration that is normally only ever found in the ranks of body-builders. No, men these days have to walk a very different path, one which plays down their function as inseminators and instead emphasises their role as “partners” and as the equals of women. No posing, no flaunting of purely masculine traits, no lording it over the weaker sex (or references to the weaker sex) and definitely no multiple couplings as one’s principal occupation. And Brian, for one, thought that this was all very proper. Indeed, he found it really offensive that overt displays of testosterone-fuelled machismo were still all too common. But… at the same time he was concerned that maybe things had gone a little too far, and that we’d now ended up with the male in our modern society who was so lacking in a confidence in his maleness that he was often even unsure whether he should stand up when he peed or sit down on the seat. And this lion here would never have such a problem – and not just because he didn’t use a lavatory, but also because he was certain of his role and of his whole identity as a male, and of his relationship with all his wives. And why, with such clarity in his life, he didn’t look a little happier than he did, Brian was at a loss to understand…

  That said, Goodman never had a smile on his face, and he had a clarity of purpose that was quite exceptional. For here was a man who was dedicated to the natural world and even more dedicated to showing all its wonders to those in his charge. His almost methodical detection of the lions and the leopard (to a rigid timetable) was just one illustration of this “desire to reveal”. But there were others. Within a space of just a couple of minutes, at a little pond near the river, he found not just an obvious crocodile, but also a brown snake eagle, a hammerkop, and two almost impossible to see painted snipes as well as a couple of essentially invisible fan-tailed cisticolas. And there was no choice. If you were in his vehicle, you were obliged to see them. He wasn’t going to move off until you had.

  Nothing was other than an opportunity to inform and reveal, and in no better way was this illustrated than by his “reading the signs”. So, for example, the sight of ground-living helmeted guineafowl sitting in trees meant that there were sizable predators around – as did impala just standing and looking rather than feeding. And he was right. Even the increased incidence of flies was of significance, because this indicated that there were lots of big animals around (offering moisture around their eyes and their mouths and in their droppings!). And he was right again. He was spot on as well when he saw some impala running at speed. He immediately announced in his rather robotic voice that they were being chased, probably by a pack of wild dogs or by a dog on its own. And there it was, a big male dog snapping at the feet of the hindmost impala – and the cue for Goodman to put his foot on the accelerator and give chase as well. Hell, there might be a kill to see – in real time – and his passengers just had to see that…

  Well, he tried. As much as the dog did. But as the dog was unsuccessful, so too was Goodman, and all he could show his guests was a bunch of exhausted but still-alive impala, for which all his guests were clearly mightily relieved. Brian, in particular, would have had a problem with the sight of the Technicolor disembowelment of one animal by another, accompanied, no doubt, by a bone-crunching soundtrack that would have made him crave the music of even somebody like Beyoncé in its place. Only Goodman appeared disappointed.

  Nevertheless, he soon got over it. For there was still stuff to find and stuff to show, and he still had Iris beside him. As has already been noted, Iris, unlike the two know-all Brits seated behind her, was a first-timer in Africa and, for Goodman, was therefore a virgin canvas onto which he could paint his insights and knowledge. And she’d even sat next to him – in the un-elevated front seat – to be on hand for his brushes. Goodman really was doing his best, not least because Iris was unused to wielding either a pair of binoculars or a camera, and often found it difficult to locate what Goodman had already found.

  But his perseverance paid off. Primarily because Iris was a good canvas and a good learner. She began to see things with her binoculars, she began to spot things herself, and she even took on board Goodman’s instructions not to include any part of the Land Rover in her photos of animals ‘as this detracted from their natural presentation’. Brian thought that, given just a little more time, Iris would become a natural herself. That she would easily embrace every aspect of a safari drive, see more and more of everything as she was driven around – and she might even accept that, out in the middle of nowhere, it was no more than common sense to regard the far side of a termite mound as a suitable substitute for a regular bathroom…

  So… in five glorious hours, Brian had seen all sorts of marvellous creatures – and had learnt a little more about their behaviour and their form, but also a little more about how these twin features of other animals can stimulate a consideration of our own behaviour and form. And on top of this he had learnt a little more about their enigmatic guide and about the learning capacity of a brave adventurer who was just past her first flush of youth. But now it was time to learn what was for brunch.

  It was rather more than just blueberry muffins, and it was all-round delicious. So too was the bed back in the tent, where both Sandra and Brian “gathered their strength” (at the cost of only a few snores) in readiness for an extravagant mid-afternoon tea, which was immediately followed by a “trip down the river”.

  Iris went out with Goodman again. But Brian and Sandra, having visited this camp before when there was more gin here than water, desperately wanted a ride in a boat. Chaplain, who the previous day had picked them up from the airstrip, was on hand to provide it. So, very soon, they were in a small aluminium craft, creeping slowly down the flooded channel with Chaplain at the helm. And they were seeing things. Not many big things, but lots of feathered things – like woodland kingfishers, purple gallinules and little bitterns. And this suited them perfectly, as did the whole unhurried feel of the excursion, together with Chaplain’s consideration for all the wildlife around – from hippos to jacanas (and which was in sharp contrast to Peter’s behaviour at Leroo). Ultimately, what suited them equally well was an idyllic, slowly-on-the-move sundowner. It was nothing less than an insight into the inner circles of heaven: a placid waterway lit by a dramatic setting sun, birds flying in to roost, two very comfortable seats on the boat, liberal helpings of juniper juice, and even a generous selection of nibbles. Hell, Three Men in a Boat never got as good as this, and Brian heretically doubted that even the very centre of paradise could really be better. But he kept that last thought to himself. For all he knew, Chaplain was a real one, and he wanted to get back to dinner.

  This was held on the outside deck – as the only guests remaining in the camp were Brian, Sandra and Iris. This trio, together with Goodman and another guide called Harry, made up the dinner party, surrounded on all sides by beautiful oil lamps to provide illumination. Heaven had just got extended.

  The food was excellent but interesting. The starter was a lentil and cabbage-leaf roulade, which whilst exceptionally tasty was hardly a harbinger of a windless night. And then there was the main course – for the three vegetarian guests (of varying resolution) – which was a dish of springbok… Well, at least this seemed to please the two guides, and it also led to a discussion about the provenance of meat products in general and the manner in which animals were dispatched in the meat production process – which was when Brian put his foot in it.

  Basically, one does not criticise the practice of producing halal meat when one is sitting across the table from a fellow diner whose religion calls for meat which is (literally) kosher! Iris was Jewish. Fortunately, she was also intelligent and open-m
inded and could clearly recognise a wally when she saw one. So the issue was quickly brushed aside to be replaced by a discussion about her grown-up sons, one of whom was a “liberal” Jew and an astronaut(!) and the other of whom was a strict, observant Jew and a physicist(!). Brian was bemused. He had no problem with the astronaut revelation, but he could not reconcile in his mind how somebody who held presumably rigid and certainly proscriptive religious beliefs could also be a physicist, or indeed any sort of scientist. In his mind, a believer/scientist was no less than an oxymoron – or, if the believer in question were an Orthodox Jew, presumably an orthodoxymoron. (Although, thankfully for all concerned, he didn’t put this last thought into words. He had no wish to offend Iris for a second time.) And, in any event, she was keen to tell her British and Botswanan companions about her other son, the astronaut, Scott. And why not? There are so few mums in the world who can claim to have given birth to someone who has gone into space. There are fewer still who can claim to have worked as a PA to the director, Peter Bogdanovich, for much of their life, or who have met not just Brian’s Sandra but also the Sandra with “Bullock” as her surname. Yes, Iris was proving to be quite a fascinating woman – as well as a brave one – and the more Brian learnt about her the less he was surprised that she’d taken off on her own for Botswana. And he was glad she had. Because how often did he get the chance to talk to the parent of an astronaut who also knew the female lead in Speed? Answer: once. And this once was now – in the middle of nirvana.

  Well, eventually it was time to leave the dining table and for Brian and Sandra (not the Bullock one) to return to their tent. Here, sleep came easily to them both. However, almost inevitably for Brian, there was a need to arise in the night. The effects of lentils and cabbage could not be contained. And interestingly, his mid-night relief coincided with a similar nocturnal gas-evacuation by a nearby elephant – against which his own effort was no more than incidental. And what a fitting conclusion, he thought, to this visit to Savuti: a final confirmation that whether it was wild dogs, lions, leopards or ellies – or any other animal one cares to mention – humans fall short of their performance, their physique and their behaviour in any number of ways. And he also thought, as he climbed back into bed, that Goodman could only agree with this conclusion. Even if he might never agree to cracking his stern-looking face…

  22.

  Well, just to prove Brian wrong yet again, when he and Sandra joined Goodman and Iris for a late breakfast, Goodman was sitting there smiling from ear to ear. And this despite these wayward guests eschewing a short early-morning drive and wasting valuable game-viewing time by remaining in bed. In Goodman’s eyes, this was surely a sin. But he said nothing about it and continued to smile, even after Brian had slipped him his tip. Indeed, there was just a very nice feel about this breakfast, made nicer still by Sandra giving Iris some much-needed batteries for her camera – and Iris giving Sandra and Brian an “astronaut pin”. This wasn’t a device for fastening astronauts to their spacecraft but a commemorative brooch commemorating a trip into space and, in this instance, a Shuttle flight to the International Space Station, when Iris’ astronaut son had been charged with taking some Russians there. So it was a rather more generous gift than a couple of AA batteries (and they weren’t even rechargeable). But Iris insisted her gift be accepted, and there was no way it wouldn’t be. Because, as far as Brian was concerned, not only was this a really nice gesture on the part of Iris, but… well, what might be amongst the most unlikely articles that a visitor to a camp on the edge of the Okavango Delta could acquire when he was there? Answer: an astronaut pin, and not any old astronaut pin either, but a Shuttle astronaut pin – and from the hands of the mother of the astronaut himself. Put that in a book and nobody would believe it. But it was true. Just as it was true that Brian and Sandra’s time at Savuti was approaching its end.

  There just remained a final gaze at the Savuti River and a round of fond farewells from the camp’s staff, and then it was off to the airstrip. Goodman drove and Iris was there too. So even fonder farewells were conducted at the airstrip as the guide and his guests all went their different ways, which, for Brian and Sandra, involved their boarding one of those twelve-seater Caravans…

  It was fine. Not least because there were only two other passengers aboard it. These were a couple of middle-aged South Africans who answered to the names of Tim and Ingrid, and who were on their way to a lodge called “Vumbura Plains”. This was also Brian and Sandra’s destination. It was in the delta itself, and it was a forty minute ride from the airstrip at which the Caravan had finally landed – and it was splendid.

  It sits in an area of the delta that in the wet season is flooded to a depth of some feet. Accordingly, it is raised above the ground – which sounds relatively simple. But given that the main lodge building is an extravagant exercise in the stylish use of wood, and between its library at one end and its dining area at the other, there is a walk of over eighty metres, and that beyond the dining area, the walkway that leads to all the elevated chalets (and to a mirror-image sister lodge to the south) stretches for a further 1.5 kilometres, it can be appreciated what a huge undertaking this retreat in the bush represents. And that’s even before one is introduced to one’s chalet.

  It is one of just eight chalets set to one side of the seemingly endless walkway and it is thirty metres or more from its nearest neighbour. (Hence the endless nature of the walkway.) It is approached by its own walkway “spur”, and this leads to a large wooden door set in a large wooden wall. Through this door is the chalet’s deck, which whilst not quite as large as the foredeck of the Royal Yacht Britannia, isn’t far short of it. And Britannia’s deck hasn’t got a large covered lounging area, a sparkling plunge pool at its edge and a splendid view of a huge, reed-filled lagoon. But this is only the deck. And one inserts that “only” qualifier when one steps through a large sliding door into the chalet itself. For this is truly stupendous. Below a cathedral-sized roof, almost disappearing into darkness at its towering apex, there is a chamber in which one could stage Aida and still have a little room to spare. One would, of course, first have to move the oligarch-sized bed, clear the sunken lounge area of its bed-sized settees and make safe the squash-court-sized shower. But when one had done all this, one would have at one’s disposal a very serviceable venue for any number of grand operas.

  Now, this assessment of their new accommodation went through Brian’s mind as he led his wife into its interior. Inevitably, in the process of negotiating its way through the twists and turns of his grey stuff, it may have got itself a little distorted, not to say somewhat exaggerated. But the fact remained that Brian and his wife had at their disposal, for the next three nights, one of the most spacious and most well-appointed chalets in which they had ever stayed. And better still, this was an upgrade! Yes, they had booked to stay at Little Vumbura, another nearby Wilderness lodge where they had stayed three times before. But there’d been a cock-up or a mix-up and this had resulted in a leg-up – to this rather grander accommodation (and Little Vumbura was hardly “simple”). So Brian intended not only to cope with this promotion but also to relish it as much as he could. Although just tearing himself away from the chalet to participate in a drive might be a bit of a problem. And for Sandra as well.

  But they managed it. At 3.30, after staring at the lagoon for two hours – whilst listening to the calls of long-tailed starlings and, intermittently, to the sound of lager being poured – Brian and Sandra moved from their crib. Ten minutes later, after a hot hike along the walkway, they were in the lounge by the library, having afternoon tea and meeting, for the first time, Raymond and Gertrude.

  This couple were to be Brian and Sandra’s companions for their forthcoming drives. They were Swiss and half the age of the two Brits. They were also shorter and stouter than Brian and Sandra, and Raymond had a terrible handicap; he was a Swiss banker. Fortunately, he was clearly not of the shark variety but more of the back-room nerd persuasion. So Brian bare
ly bristled and, much to his own surprise, took to him very quickly, and similarly to his wife. And, as she worked for Swiss National Railways, Brian was more than reassured that she and her husband would never be late for a drive.

  Their guide was a chap called Ban. He was even stouter than Raymond, with a thick neck, a bald pate and a facility to find wildlife which matched that of Goodman. Soon after leaving the lodge, he had located a hyena and a sable (by no means together) and a clutch of tsessebe with their very young young. And soon after this he had tracked down four sleeping lions. They were all male and apparently siblings, yet to acquire for themselves a cluster of wives. Which is probably why they were sleeping. There was nothing else to do.

  There again, they could have savoured the scenery. Because in this patch of delta it was particularly fine. It was mostly mopane woodland and grass. But within this somewhat desiccated terrain there were stands of larger trees, where the ground was marginally higher and where they had thrived to form groves. These bigger examples of the local flora were predominantly jackalberry trees and sausage trees, which, despite their rather inelegant names, were some of the most elegant trees one could wish to see. And no, sausage trees are not a source of sausages; they just have enormous sausage-shaped fruits that are apparently awful with mashed potatoes.

  Anyway, after more sightings and more photos (Raymond had a giant lens device that made Brian’s Canon look like a pistol), it was time for a sundowner. Ban picked a perfect spot next to a small lagoon with a perfect view of the setting sun. But, in fact, it wasn’t quite perfect. There was a problem. Indeed, there were four problems: four nearby hyenas who were indifferent to the presence of the Land Rover, but who would probably have taken an intense interest in anybody who left the Land Rover to pour the gin and tonics or who (if the pourer had got that far) left the vehicle to drink them. The occupants of the Land Rover were stuck, but, as a great consolation for the absence of spirits, they had an excellent view of hyenas at rest. And what a sight they were.