The Eye of the Elephant

by Mark James Owens

  "We'll have to try Tanzania," Mark said to me. Our permits to look for a research site there had not yet been approved, so we would have to enter the country as tourists. If we found a suitable place for our research, we would request permission to stay.

  I glanced up again at the map on the wall, my eyes traveling along the route that would take us through Zambia to Tanzania. More than four hundred miles up the road from Lusaka was another national park. "What about North Luangwa?" I asked.

  "I'm sad to say that we have about written off the North Park," he replied. "It is just too remote and inaccessible to protect. No one goes to North Luangwa, so we have no idea what's happening there. I've never seen it myself, but I've heard it is a beautiful place."

  "Anything wrong with our stopping there to take a look, on our way to Tanzania?"

  "No," he said, "just give us a report on what you find." Gilson went on to warn us that this was not a "national park" in the American sense. There were no tourist facilities, no roads, and no one living in the park—not even game scouts. It was a 2400-square-mile tract of raw wilderness. Seasonal flooding of its many rivers made it impassible in the rainy season. The sectional map that Gilson spread over his desk gave no hint of even a track leading into the valley. Remote, rugged, and inaccessible—North Luangwa sounded like our kind of place.

  After thanking Gilson, we visited Norman Carr, an old poacher-cum-game-ranger-cum-tour-operator, who in his eighty-odd years has come to know the valley better than any other African. Carr leads walking safaris in South Luangwa National Park, and his tough hide and infinite knowledge of trees, birds, and mammals are testimony to his expertise.

  "Forget it. North Luangwa is impossible. You'll have a bloody time getting around in the dry season because of all the deep ravines and sand," he said. "And you can't drive around in the wet season because of all the mud. Those flash floods—they'll wash your truck away, even your camp."

  Maybe. But we were determined to see for ourselves. Besides, if North Luangwa was not the wilderness we longed for, where else could we go?

  PART TWO

  A Season for Change

  Prologue

  MARK

  THE SUN SINKS SLOWLY behind the mountains of the scarp as One Tusk, the elephant matriarch, steps cautiously from the forest along the Mwaleshi River in Zambia. Holding her trunk aloft, she searches the wind for danger. She is thirsty, as are the four young females in her family, one with an infant that gently presses his head into his mother's flank. Weeks earlier the rains tapered off, and by now most of the water holes away from the rivers are liquid mud. The elephants have come a long way since yesterday without drinking. They hurry forward, eager to cool themselves in the river after the heat of the day. But the matriarch holds them back, perhaps remembering an earlier time when poachers had chosen such a place for their ambush. She waits, her mouth dry with fear and drought, as the little calf nuzzles her mother's withered breast.

  At that same moment, in Mwamfushi Village, far upstream of the elephants, another mother holds a crying infant to her flaccid breast. The stingy rains have turned the millet and maize to yellow, shriveled weeds. There will be starvation in the village this year unless the men go hunting in the park—unless Musakanya, her young husband, goes poaching.

  For the past two weeks the family has lived on little more than n'shima, a paste of boiled maize meal dipped in a gravy made with beans. They crave meat, and Musakanya knows where to get it. He shoulders his rifle and walks down a dusty footpath that sixty miles later will end in the North Luangwa National Park. At the edge of his village, under the tree where they always meet on these expeditions, he joins Bwalya Muchisa and Chanda Seven, two friends who will poach for more than meat; they are going for ivory.

  5. Into the Rift

  MARK

  Wilderness is not dependent upon a vast, unsettled tract of land. Rather, it is a quality of awareness, an openness to the light, to the seasons, and to nature's perpetual renewal.

  —JOHN ELDER

  SEVERAL DAYS AFTER our meeting with Gilson Kaweche at the National Parks headquarters, Delia drives and I fly the four hundred miles from Lusaka to Mpika. We sleep a cold, windy July night on the airstrip. At sunrise the next morning we take off down the runway into a strong wind. Zulu Sierra rises like a kite over a forested hill and within five minutes the last thatched hut has slipped from view below us. Soon after, the forest floor begins to show its first ripples and rills—the effects of titanic stresses along the Rift Valley. Two massive tectonic plates, one on each side of this gigantic trench, are drifting apart, tearing Africa in two. Taller mountains loom ahead, like sentinels guarding the valley. We climb over them, and fly along great ridges of rock, then over deep canyons, partly hidden by tropical trees and luxuriant sprays of bamboo, that seem to plunge away to the very center of the earth. Rushing rivers and waterfalls cascade over walls of sheer granite.

  Suddenly a huge jawbone of rock runs northeast-southwest across our track as far as we can see—the Muchinga Escarpment, the western wall of the great Rift. Massive blunted mountains are rooted in this jaw like mammoth crooked molars, and whitewater streams burst between them, coursing untamed down the apron of the scarp and into the valley. According to our charts, these rivers—the Lufishi, Mwaleshi, Lufwashi, Mulandashi, and Munyamadzi—stream off the scarp to join the larger, wilder Luangwa River. Flowing along the eastern border of the park, the Luangwa wanders to and fro over the valley floor, spreading the rich alluvium its tributaries have eroded from the plateau to the west beyond the Muchinga. It flows from Tanzania into Zambia, on to the Zambezi, and thence to the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Malawi.

  As we fly between two rounded cusps of the escarpment, the earth below us disappears, just drops away, leaving nothing but white haze under the plane. I pull back the throttle and we descend more than three thousand feet through the murk to the valley floor. Leaning forward, I watch for any peaks that might reach up to gut the belly of our plane, while Delia tries to spot a topographical feature that will tell us where we are.

  Minutes later, the serpentine shape of a sandy river gradually emerges from the haze, as though we are regaining consciousness. Flying low, we follow the Lufwashi's tortuous route as it cuts its way out of the mountains along a ridge peppered with herds of sable antelope; then past saber-horned roan antelope and zebras cantering over the rocky, rolling foothills of the scarp's apron; and on around an enormous monolith above which hawks and eagles soar. From there the Lufwashi remembers its way along more gentle slopes to its confluence with the Mwaleshi River.

  Families of elephants standing in gallery forests lift their trunks, sniffing the air as we pass overhead; and thousands of buffalo pour from the woodlands into the shallow river to cool themselves and to drink. Rust-colored puku antelope, the size of white-tailed deer, are sprinkled across every sandbar, along with impalas, eland, hartebeests, warthogs, and every bird known to Africa, it seems.

  When we reach the broad Luangwa, we see herds of hippos crowded bank to bank, blowing plumes of spray, their jaws agape at the airplane. Fat crocodiles, wider than a kitchen table, slither off the sandbars into the water. And not a sign of human beings.

  Along the Mwaleshi again we find the poachers' track and follow its scribblings across the scarp's apron into the foothills and mountains. Delia notes the times, compass bearings, and topographical features that we will use to navigate back into the valley on the ground.

  After we land back at the Mpika airstrip, Delia grins at me and holds up both thumbs. Never before have we seen so much wildlife in one place. Now we have to find out if it will be possible to live and work in this remote, rugged wilderness. We taxi to the side of the airstrip and tie down Foxtrot Zulu Sierra. For a few Zambian kwachas Arms, a toothless old tribesman and the government's keeper of the airfield, agrees to keep watch over our plane while we drive into the valley.

  Following Delia's notes, we drive up the Great North Road until we find the rutted c
lay track that we hope will lead us into the park. It follows the northern base of the Kalenga Mashitu, a twenty-mile ridge of rock, through a cool, deep forest of spreading Brachystegia and Julbernardia trees. With their splayed limbs and luxuriant crowns, these trees dominate the classic miombo woodland found at higher elevations throughout central Africa. Occasionally we see neat thatched huts nestled in the hills below Mashitu's rocky spine. Bending over each hut is an enormous green and yellow banana palm, providing shade, shelter from the torrential seasonal rains, and fruit for the family below it. From a settlement of about a dozen round huts, a gnarled old woman hobbles to the track holding up a bunch of bananas. As I am paying her for them, about thirty women and children gather behind her and begin to sing, their voices like wind chimes on the cool, moist air. After listening to three or four songs, we applaud the choir and drive on—while they are applauding us.

  Soon after, the track forks and we stop to study Delia's notes. As we stand outside the truck, a small band of men approaches, the narrow blades of their hand axes hooked over their shoulders. The men curtsy with their hands clasped, eyes downcast in the traditional sign of respect, as we ask which track to take to Mukungule Village. Before answering, the spokesman grows an inch or two, then declares: "This track, she is good!" He hurries over to pat the ground of the left fork with both hands. "If you take it, you shall touch Mukungule." He smiles hugely, exposing his brown and broken teeth. Still hunched over, he rushes to stand on the other fork. "Aaahh, but this one, she has expired." His expression falls as he stomps on the expired track, as if to be sure "she" is dead.

  "Natotela sana—thank you very much." We offer the only Bemba words we have learned, then drive away, leaving the men clapping and curtsying in farewell.

  We take the living track and, four hours after leaving Mpika, it begins to wind through fields of maize and millet. We creep across a bridge of limbs and branches that snap, crack, and groan under the two-ton Cruiser, which sways drunkenly and threatens to break through to the water below.

  Minutes later we "touch" Mukungule, its huts of ragged thatch and mud-wattled walls standing among maize patches overgrown with tall weeds and grass. The track leads us right past the fire circle of a family's boma, and even though we leave tire tracks through their "living room," they step back, laughing, waving, and cheering. "Mapalanye! Mapalanye!" The hellos of the women and the children's squeals of laughter mingle with the flutter and squawks of retreating chickens to create a raucous, but somehow musical, welcome. Several women, wrapped in brightly colored chitengis, pause from "stamping their mealies," their long poles poised above the hollow tree stumps they use as stamping blocks, or mortars, for crushing the maize kernels. An older woman sits on a stump in front of her hut, her foot working the treadle of an old Singer sewing machine as she stitches a brightly patterned cloth.

  A throng of young people crowd around our truck as we stop. One lad softly and shyly strums his guitar, homemade from a gallon oil can, with a rough-hewn wooden neck and crude wooden tuning pegs. Nails driven into the neck and bent over under the wire strings form the frets. With a little encouragement from us and his friends, he begins a twangy tune. We listen intently for a while until it begins to seem that this song has no end; we slip away.

  As we pass Munkungule's last hut, the grass in the track is suddenly taller than the truck. I stop, and Delia climbs up to ride on top so that she can guide me. An hour and a half later, but little more than six miles farther, the track forks again. Ahead of us on the left the four mud-wattle and thatch houses of the Mano Game Guard Camp pop up like mushrooms growing out of thé tall grass and maize patches.

  Set on a barren acre above the Mwaleshi River, this camp is home to four game scouts and their families. Four hundred yards from the main camp, at the base of a small kopje, are two other houses and a storeroom for the "Camp-in-Charge," his deputy, and their families. In Zambia game guards, or scouts, are civil servants who are given military-style training in firearm tactics, wildlife law, and a smattering of ecology, then charged with patrolling the country's national parks and other wildlife management areas to guard against poachers. Gilson Kaweche had told us that there are four other scout camps, spaced about twelve miles apart along the western boundary of the park; but together they have only seven scouts. Mano, with its six scouts at the center of the chain of camps, is the only one with enough men even to mount patrols. In fact, the Lufishi camp has been closed down, its single scout suspended for collaborating with commercial poachers. In all, thirteen scouts are charged with protecting the North Park—an area larger than Delaware.

  We take the left fork and I stop the truck near a circle of twelve to fifteen men sitting on the bare red earth of the main camp. They look up at us with somber faces, their eyes red and watery. In their midst a large clay pot is brimming over with the frothy local beer; several reed straws stand in the mash. One of the men is wearing a pair of green uniform trousers, suggesting that he is a game guard; the others are dressed in tattered shirts and pants, probably obtained from local missionaries. After greeting them I ask for the Camp-in-Charge, and a stocky Zambian with prominent ears and black hair graying at his temples slowly stands up and walks unsteadily toward us.

  "I am Island Zulu, Camp-in-Charge," he announces grandly, his head cocked to one side, as I hand him our letter of introduction from the director of National Parks. A man with a red bandana wrapped around his head saunters up.

  "I am Nelson Mumba, Camp-in-Charge at Mwansa Ma bemba," he says through a crooked smile, one front tooth missing. "We have no food or ammunition for patrolling, and no transport. We are supposed to be given mealie-meal every month, but it never comes," he complains. "Our families are hungry. Even now our wives are working in the fields so that we can eat." With his bandana, he looks like a pirate as he points to a group of women hoeing in a nearby maize patch.

  "That's terrible!" Delia commiserates. "Have you told the warden?"

  "Ha! The warden," Zulu shoots back. "He cares nothing about us. He has not been here in more than two years."

  At this point I'm not sure what the scouts expect us to do about their problems. I explain that we are looking for a site for a major project, and if North Luangwa turns out to be the right place, we will help them all we can. Mumba mutters something, spits into the dust, and they all walk back to their beer circle. As we pull away in our truck, they are sitting down at the beer pot, reaching for the straws.

  After fording the clear, rushing waters of the Mwaleshi River, we camp near a small waterfall hidden in the deep miombo woodlands. From here the Mwaleshi tumbles over the three-thousand-foot scarp mountains, and we will have to do the same. The thick forests prohibit us from following the river, so we will have to find it again when we reach the valley floor.

  To test whether or not we can work in North Luangwa, we will try to drive down the scarp, then along the Mwaleshi to the Luangwa River and back. From our reconnaissance flight, the floodplains along these two rivers appear to be among the most important habitats in the park. If we cannot get to them, there is probably little reason to settle in North Luangwa. This trek will not be easy, for most of the way there is no track.

  No one who cares about us knows where we are going, or for how long. Our Land Cruiser is nearly worn-out; we don't have a radio, a firearm, or fresh antivenom—none of which are available in Zambia even if we could afford them. In an emergency, it will be a minimum twenty-hour drive to the nearest hospital in Lusaka —which is often critically short of everything, including AIDS-free blood. Despite all of this, we decide that having come this far we may as well go ahead.

  Early the next morning we snatch our mosquito net from the tree limb above our bed on top of the truck, stuff down some raw oatmeal, and start driving. The trail is gentle at first, wending its way through the lush miombo (Brachystegia) forest with tropical birds flitting overhead.

  But as we round a rocky outcropping, the track abruptly disappears; we will have to drive over the
side of the mountain without one. A steep slope, studded with jagged rocks and deep ruts, drops off through the woodlands in front of us. Immediately the truck charges forward, going too fast. I slap it into low gear, but the heavy trailer lurches forward, ramming the Land Cruiser in the rear. Its back wheels heave off the ground, sliding sideways into a jackknife. The drums filled with aviation fuel slide forward, slamming against the trailer's front gate. Spinning the steering wheel, I gun the engine to keep the truck ahead of the trailer. The Toyota sways heavily, rumbling faster and faster over the boulders as I pump the brakes on and off. Still wet from the river crossing, they are not slowing us.

  "Get ready to jump!" I shout to Delia. She grabs for her door handle as we rattle and bounce down the steep grade.

  I stand hard on the pedal until the brakes begin to hold. Fighting for grip, the tires clutch at the sharp rocks embedded in the slope. Thumb-sized chunks of tread tear loose with a popping sound.

  We bottom out of the quarter-mile grade bouncing and barely under control. We are going much too fast. But every time I jab at the brake pedal, the rig tries to jackknife. Finally, as I desperately feed in just enough brake to slow us down, but not too quickly, the truck's rear wheels settle back onto the slope and stay there. Shaking her head, Delia relaxes her grip on the dash and I release my choke hold on the steering wheel. The Luangwa has taught me my first lesson: get into low and go slow-slow when descending the Muchinga Escarpment.

  Over the next hour and a half we descend three more steep pitches and many smaller ones, until it feels as though the truck is standing on its nose. Finally we drive out of the shadows of the miombo woodlands onto a rocky ridge with a panoramic view of the valley: miles of golden grassland cover the rolling knolls of the scarp's apron and the valley floor in front of us; the mountains of the Muchinga Escarpment curve away to our right, disappearing in the distance. Chinchendu Hill, a giant two-by-four-mile monolith eight hundred feet high, juts from the valley floor about five miles away. In the language of the Bisa tribe, "Chinchendu" refers to a big man who stands firm, broad, and tall. To our left, about six miles away, a conical hill resembling a rhinoceros horn is shrouded in blue haze from the heat and smoke of wildfires sweeping the valley. Locally known as Mvumvwe Hill, it and Chinchendu will be our two main landmarks as we explore this part of the valley.