The Eye of the Elephant

by Mark James Owens

  To this day the "paramount," or highest, chief of the Bemba bears the name Chiti-Mukulu. It is never the son of the chief who inherits the throne, but his nephew. When I ask why, Simbeye explains to me that a man can never, never be certain that the son of his wife is his own child. But he can be sure that his sister's son is his true blood relative. It is one of the clearest cases of kin selection—passing one's genes to the next generation through kin other than offspring—I have ever heard.

  Soon after we eat, I drive the truck some distance from the tree; I'm not going to miss the night sky because of the bonfire. Instead of making my bed on top of the Cruiser, I lay my safari mattress and sleeping bag on the grass. Tonight I want to sleep on the ground, between the earth and the moon. The truck will be close enough for a retreat if lions come.

  As I lie next to the earth, the moon covers me with its platinum blanket, not bringing warmth like the sun, but a caress of hope. The silky light transforms every leaf and blade of grass on the plain to shimmering silver. Puku and impalas standing next to the river fade into subtle impressions against the pale sky. I smile before I sleep. I too am in my place, for I am a moon person.

  Awake at 5:25 A.M., I watch first the hills and then the river awaken from darkness, stretching out in the orange-pink dawn. Just after six, Simbeye whispers, "Madam, wild dogs—at the river." I look downstream to see three wild dogs, their bold black, white, and brown coats standing out vividly in the sunrise. They gallop through the shallow river, splashing a spray of water against the sun.

  By six-thirty we have packed our beds, eaten breakfast, and walked to the airstrip, a mere hundred yards away. We slash grass, fill in holes, level ant mounds, chop down small bushes, and clear away logs and stones. By eight o'clock the heat is unbearable.' Every fifteen minutes I walk to the river, and wet my shirt and hat to keep cool. I have never liked Airstrip One; it is only half the length required by regulations. But I can't bear to cut down the enormous sausage tree at the southern end; Mark will have to avoid it, as he did last year.

  At noon we break for lunch. In the midday heat waves, the far riverbanks wiggle and dance. While Tapa and Simbeye rest and eat in camp under the fig tree, I take a can of fruit cocktail, some sweaty cheese, the binoculars, and a book to the river. The shallow water is hot, but as soon as I am wet the breeze brings goose bumps to my bare skin. As I sit in the river reading my book and eating lunch, a pair of Egyptian geese land nearby and paddle around next to a sandbar.

  More work through the afternoon: we clear the strip, mark the ends with new piles of bleached bones and buffalo dung, and cut thorn branches to make a hyena-proof boma for the plane. At dusk Simbeye and Tapa build another big fire, but again I camp far away, closer to the moon and the stars.

  In the morning we complete the thorn boma, rescue the trailer from the sand, pitch the tent, and fill it with our tin supply trunks. Mark and I will have to continue sleeping on the truck or ground, since we don't have another tent. Using branches from a fallen tree, we construct little tables for the pots and pans, and bury the film cooler.

  The same pair of geese keep me company at lunch—a good thing, because the heat makes my book boring. The work is finished, more or less. If it wasn't so hot I might do more. Instead I read until four o'clock, then explore the river to the south on foot. Simbeye and Tapa insist on escorting me, so we set off across the plain together. I stop abruptly.

  "Listen. Moneni ndeke!" I shout. They echo me, "Moneni ndeke. The plane is coming."

  We run all the way back to camp and I grab a roll of toilet paper to use as a wind sock. Mark circles overhead, waggling his wings in salute as I stand on top of the Cruiser, letting tissue play out into the slight breeze. Mark buzzes the strip once to check our work, then glides in for a perfect landing.

  Simbeye, Tapa, and I show Mark around the little camp with more enthusiasm than it deserves. While the Bembas go to collect more firewood, Mark and I walk to the river to bathe. Together we frolic in the water, laughing and talking endlessly about our separate trips into the valley—one by air, one by road. Tomorrow we will search for a permanent campsite; we are not sure we could drive to this one during the rains. The pair of geese forage about in their spot by the sandbar, and I imagine that they are pleased that I too have a mate.

  Wiping sweat from our brows, we stand on a high bank of the Lubonga, studying an old floodplain that runs for a thousand yards along the river. Fifteen huge marula and sausage trees shade the sandy ground. A dry oxbow, where the river once ran, surrounds the plain on three sides, and on the east bank the Lubonga trickles gently over the sand. But this is the dry season. If the oxbow and river flood when the rains come, the plain will become an island and could easily be cut off. Our twenty-year-old map definitely shows this stretch of plain as an island, with water on all sides.

  For ten days we have searched from the air and hiked through the heat to locate a suitable base camp. The site must be accessible year round and have drinking water, shade, and a nearby site for an all-weather airstrip. This floodplain has water and shade, but the only possible airstrip is three miles away. And the question is whether or not it will flood during the rainy season.

  "We're looking for a camp in a valley, which is at the bottom of one of the biggest valleys on earth," Mark points out, chewing on a grass stem. "It's a sump within a sump; when it rains, we're going to get wet. But we haven't found a better place. I'm willing to gamble; what about you?"

  A massive line of cumulus clouds poised along the eastern scarp reminds us that we are in a race with the weather.

  "We don't have much choice. What shall we name it?"

  The marula trees wave their massive limbs in the gentle breeze as if inviting us to shelter here. Nearby a herd of puku is grazing along the Lubonga.

  "How about Marula-Puku?"

  The days of celebrated sunrises, river lunches, and goose watching are over. Each day more and more squadrons of clouds assemble to the west and north, massing like a mighty army over the scarp mountains. We must build a primitive structure at Marula-Puku and complete the all-weather airstrip on the rocky ridge upstream. The Land Cruiser will never pull through the infamous Luangwa mud, so the Frankfurt Zoological Society has sent us a new Unimog—a nine-foot-tall, six-ton, all-terrain vehicle that is a cross between a tractor and a truck. With sixteen forward and reverse gears and a low center of gravity, it can climb steep slopes without turning over. We have to collect the "Mog" from Durban, South Africa, and drive it fifteen hundred miles back to camp. All this before the rains.

  Simbeye and I leave at dawn the next morning for the long trip up the scarp to Shiwa N'gandu to hire a work crew and to Mpika to buy supplies. At Mano the game guards beg me to transport their corn into Shiwa for grinding, to take one of the wives to the hospital, and to carry four scouts to Mpika to collect their pay. In the village of Mukungule one of the headmen needs a lift to Chinsali to attend a funeral. The chief's wife has to transport her bean crop to market—some say she is smuggling it to Zaire for a better price. The school headmaster needs paraffin for his stove.

  By the time we leave Mukungule the old truck has eleven people on board—I'm not sure how many children—and heaves under the weight of corn, beans, two live chickens, and everyone's katundu. My daypack has only a few crackers and sardines for my lunch, not enough to share with my passengers. Not wanting to eat in front of them, I stay hungry.

  At four-thirty we reach the Great North Road and stop at the few grass huts of the village of Kalalantekwe for the night. I promise to collect those going to Mpika, including the sick woman, the next day. Simbeye and I drive past the blue waters of Shiwa N'gandu Lake along a dirt track, lined with huge trees, searching for a place to camp. I ask Simbeye if he can hire five men from nearby villages to work for us, and arrange for some women and children to cut thatching grass for us to haul into the valley.

  Simbeye assures me he will do this and that one of the men he will hire is an excellent cook. I have not con
sidered hiring a cook at this stage. With so much work to do and so little food to eat, it seems rather extravagant, but I ask the name of the cook.

  "His name, Madam, is Sunday Justice."

  "Sunday Justice!"

  "Yes, Madam."

  "Well, bring him for sure, and four others."

  After several miles Simbeye shows me a place to camp near a rushing stream sheltered by massive palms. I drive him to his father's boma a mile away, where he will spend the night. The next morning at five-thirty sharp he returns, and as we drive back toward the main road he tells me that he has hired five men, who will be ready by noon, and that his sisters are cutting the thatching grass for us. Our first stop is to deliver the scouts' corn to the local miller, who lives down a crooked, sandy road. After much negotiating over prices, Simbeye and I unload the fifty-pound bags on the doorstep of the tiny, one-room mill house. We stop on the Great North Road to collect our passengers, then drive the forty miles to Mpika, where we leave everyone at their desired destinations, and still make it to the open-air market by eight o'clock.

  Women and girls, clad in multicolored chitenges (strips of cloth wrapped around the waist to make a skirt), squat behind small piles of onions, cabbages, tomatoes, rice, and dried fish spread on the ground in the center of the Mpika market. They are surrounded by cement-block stalls that offer bath soap, matches, washing powder, and a meager selection of canned foods, including the ever-present corned beef and baked beans. Spry young men—coiled to run from authorities at a shout—call out prices for black-market goods such as sugar, flour, and cooking oil. The market sways to the beat of the gumba music blaring from a small stall. It looks rather quaint and picturesque, as most third-world open-air markets do; but in this part of Africa, one man's postcard is often another man's misery. A toothless old woman tries to sell two onions, another a handful of potatoes and some dried caterpillars.

  We go separate ways to buy bags of cabbages, onions, beans, ground nuts, rice, and salt. Carrying a large bucket, I approach a young man selling sugar at one kwacha a cup. Several other women, holding various containers—the lid from an aerosol can, a roll of newspaper, a plastic cup—queue up behind me. As they look from my large bucket to the shrinking pile of sugar, concern grows on their faces. I step back to let them buy first, and they bow and clap their hands in the Bemba fashion of greeting and gratitude.

  At Mpika Suppliers, a general store lined with shelves of colorful cloth, basic hardware, and foodstuffs, we buy cement, whitewash, nails, and mealie-meal. There is no flour or bread at the bakery stand, and we can't find milk, honey, jam, meat, eggs, cheese, or chickens for sale anywhere in the village.

  I make a courtesy call on the district governor, Mr. Siangina, at his hilltop office overlooking Mpika Village. Charming and very enthusiastic about our project, he says he welcomes any program that will stimulate the economy and discourage poaching.

  Next I visit the game warden, Mosi Salama, with whom we have met on several occasions. He is built like a bowling pin with a Cheshire cat smile and eyelashes as long as a moth's antennae. Mosi greets me on the veranda of the lime-green concrete-block building that is the Mpika headquarters for the National Parks and Wildlife Services. He assures me again, smiling broadly all along, that he did issue the ammunition and food to the Mano scouts. When I inquire further, he gives me the surprising news that an officer from the Division of Civil Aviation, Mr. Banda, and the National Parks pilot, Captain Sabi, have driven all the way from Lusaka and are sitting in his office waiting to see me. As soon as I enter, without shaking my hand Mr. Banda says, "I'm afraid there is a very big problem with your program. You have been landing your airplane in North Luangwa National Park without permission from our department."

  Immediately I relax. "Oh, it's okay. See, I have the papers right here." I dig in my briefcase, pull out a thick file of permits, and shuffle through them. "Here is the permit from the Zambian Air Force giving us permission to operate our plane in North Luangwa. And this is the permit from the minister of tourism granting us permission for our project, which as you can see in this paragraph, explains that we will be flying an aircraft in the park. This is a photocopy of Mark's Zambian license and a three- month blanket clearance for operating in this area from your own department."

  Captain Sabi and Mr. Banda lean their heads together to read the documents. After a moment Mr. Banda shakes his head. "There is no permission here to land your airplane in North Luangwa National Park."

  "Operating surely includes taking off and landing." I smile and try to make a joke. "Did they think we were going to fly forever and not land?"

  "You cannot land an airplane in Zambia on an unregistered airstrip. You will have to operate from Mpika," Captain Sabi informs me.

  "Mpika airstrip is fifty miles from our study area. How can we operate from there? We plan to build a proper airstrip. In the meantime, as we informed the ministry, we have cleared some temporary strips." I try to make another joke. "Mark's been a bush pilot for years; I'm not sure he could land on a real strip." No one smiles.

  "You cannot land your plane anymore until you have constructed an airstrip that the DCA approves," Mr. Banda insists. "It must have concrete markers, a wind sock, all the requirements."

  I slump in my seat. We have spent more than a year obtaining permits. This new requirement will set us back months, for we will be unable to conduct aerial surveys or antipoaching patrols until we have completed the strip. I look at Mosi to appeal for help. He appears thoroughly disgusted, but whether at me or at these men I can't be sure. He gives me no support whatsoever.

  "All right. Thank you." I stand and walk out of the room, managing a slight smile when I imagine what Captain Sabi and Mr. Banda would think of Airstrip One, with its short runway and looming sausage tree.

  There is nothing quite like the sensation of returning to a bush camp. I don't know whether it is more exciting to be the one waiting in camp, listening for the distant drone of the engine, or to be the one coming home. In the silence of the wilderness, the one in camp can hear the truck approaching from so far away that there is a sort of meeting of the hearts before the other arrives. As I pass the mopane tree, the one with the marabou stork's nest, I know that Mark can hear the truck, and he knows that I know. The rest of the journey is like an extended hug, so by the time I roll into camp, we are both warm and smiling.

  Around the campfire we talk about my trip, until I cannot avoid the bad news any longer. When Mark hears that we cannot operate the plane in the park until we have a proper strip, he is upset; but we vow to work even harder to get the strip completed before the rains. Meanwhile, we just won't fly.

  The next morning Mark drives the Cruiser and trailer, loaded with building materials, from our little camp to the Marula-Puku site. He, Simbeye, and the other men begin building the mud-wattle hut that will be our shelter in the rains. Our new workers are young tribesmen in their early twenties, dressed in ragged Western clothes but without shoes. They have never held a job except for helping their fathers tend the tiny maize and groundnut patches on their subsistence farms. The only tools they know how to use are axes, hoes, and shovels. But while they have had no more than five years of schooling, they are eager to learn. Of the five new men Sunday Justice, Chanda Mwamba, and Mutale Kasokola in particular radiate good humor and an uncommon willingness to work hard, as does Simbeye. Today I had said, "Good morning, guys," and they had laughingly repeated the word "guys" over and over. The name stuck and they call each other "guys" to this day.

  Sunday Justice, bright-eyed, short, and chubby, stays with me to unpack the supplies. We store beans in a large can, tissue and soap in a large blue trunk, and sort through the other groceries. As we work, I explain to him that we hope to save the park by making it benefit the local people; we may even hire some of the poachers to work with us.

  "That is a very good idea, Madam. You should go to Mwamfushi Village, where there are many poachers."

  "Tell me, Sunday, can we
fly to that village?"

  "Oh no, Madam, that village is very much on the ground." I smile behind his back for a long moment.

  All morning I have noticed Sunday stealing glances at the plane, parked in its thorn boma.

  "You like the airplane, don't you, Sunday?"

  "Yes, Madam. I myself always wanted to talk to someone who has flown up in the sky with a plane."

  "Well, you can talk to me," I say, as I pour salt into a jar.

  "I myself always wanted to know, Madam, if you fly at night, do you go close to the stars?"

  I explain that on earth we are so far from the stars that being up a few thousand feet does not make any difference in how close they look. But I don't know if he understands, so I end by saying, "When you fly at night, you feel closer to the stars."

  When we have finished unpacking and organizing camp, I show him our few kitchen utensils and try to discover how much he actually knows about cooking. He can bake bread, but only in an oven, he tells me. It seems that I will have to teach this African how to cook in a traditional black pot. In our wooden bowl I mix the ingredients for cornbread—omitting eggs and butter, of course, because there aren't any—and show him how I bake it in the pot, putting hot coals on top and underneath.