The Lost World of the Kalahari

by Laurens Van Der Post

  I spent the evening and night with the Resident and his wife who were old friends of mine, in the ample Residency, comfortable and serene behind a tight green hedge and surrounded by an impeccable lawn and budding trees. I went over every detail of my plans with the Resident and made many an adjustment on his experienced advice. Between tea and dinner he took me to call on my old safari cook Simon, who was now totally blind as a result of an accident on my previous expedition. But he was well cared for and I thought I had never seen so fulfilled an expression on Simon’s wrinkled old face as he sat in the setting sun outside his neat hut with his children around him and a wife beside him.

  ‘May you go slowly, master,’ he entreated me in farewell, for in my part of Africa to go slowly is to go wisely and peacefully.

  ‘Indeed, I will go slowly, Simon,’ I said. ‘And I’ll come back to see you on my return and bring you and your children your Christmas presents.’

  From there my friend took me to meet Simon’s successors, a cook and a camp assistant he had engaged for me. The cook, like Simon, was a Northern Rhodesian from Barotseland. His European name was Jeremiah, his surname Muwenda. He was a tall, straight man who held himself with obvious self-respect and a certain reserve in his manner. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and when he talked he sounded, perhaps, just a trifle pedantic. I asked him only three questions.

  ‘Can you bake bread in antheaps?’

  ‘Yes, Moren,’ he answered and smiled. ‘Yes, master. But I prefer baking it in pots.’

  ‘Can you cook in thunderstorms?’

  ‘Yes! I can cook in thunderstorms.’ At that he laughed and his whole face and eyes joined in the laughter.

  ‘Would you like to come on this journey? I’ll look after you well but it will be long and not easy.’

  ‘I am here to come,’ he answered simply.

  His companion was taller, broader, looser limbed, and a different type. He was a man of the Bamangkwetsi, John Raouthagall, of few homely words, great inner composure, and a pair of large black eyes that looked steadily into mine without concealment or evasion. He was a close friend of Jeremiah’s and when I asked him if he was certain he wanted to come said gravely he was there precisely in order to come.

  I slept badly that night. I kept on waking up and seeing again the face of the condemned Bushman. As a result I got up when it was still dark on that Sunday morning and climbed the hill at the back of the Residency. I got to the top as the dawn broke and to the west the Kalahari showed up like a coil of a winedark sea. Barely fifty feet from me five rhee-buck got up from their warm beds behind a ledge of rock and shook the dew from their slender yellow flanks. Some bush pigeons came streaking by on whistling wings like messengers of fate, provoking the feeling of great urgency which had been with me so much ever since I decided on the journey. I went fast down the hill jumping from stone to stone and feeling all the better for it.

  Charles, Ben, Jeremiah, and John were already packing the last of their new gear into the Land-Rovers as I arrived. With his gun beside him, Ben drove off first; Charles and John followed; Jeremiah and I came last. We passed the ‘cliffs where the elephants once fell over’ and travelled all day on the red road of history that runs north from Mafeking in a straight line right into the interior with the foothills of the Transvaal on one side and the wide-open threshold of the Kalahari on the other. Towards noon we achieved the first five hundred miles on our speedometers and were able to travel a little faster. At noon the next day we were in Francistown, the little village on the railway where a rough road cuts into the Kalahari. I stopped there to call on ‘Masai’ Murrell, the chief representative in the area of the recruiting organization for the mines. I discussed fully my plans and possible emergencies with him and was greatly heartened by the ready promise of help he and his staff gave me. We lunched with two of my oldest friends, Molly and Cyril Challis, and drove into Bulawayo after dark on the Monday evening. Neither Spode nor my friend was in the hotel. I left a note for them to say I had arrived very late and gone to bed. Before sleeping I was given a local newspaper by the receptionist who ‘thought I would be interested to see’ an account of the expedition ‘Eugene Spode, the distinguished continental film producer’ had outlined in interviews with local journalists.

  At breakfast I saw no sign of Spode and my friend, but after a while I was handed a curt note saying they were both waiting for me in the lounge. I finished my breakfast and went up the stairs to meet them. They were both sitting side by side on a couch at the far end of the vast room. I waved to them but they hardly acknowledged the greeting and remained seated. For the first time I began to feel something must be very wrong.

  As I came up to them I was handed a typed document.

  ‘I think’, my friend said coolly, ‘you had better read this first before we say anything.’

  I could hardly believe my ears and eyes. I read through two pages in single-spaced type of reproaches too varied for repetition. The main point was that Spode had been deeply shocked to hear at our last meeting that I had ideas for the story for the film. If that was so why had they not been conveyed to him months ago? He could then have started converting them into their proper film idiom, an exacting task, of which I clearly was lamentably ignorant, and so on and on. The document from there continued for another closely-typed page to demand, among other things, a guarantee in writing that Spode should be in sole command of the story, filming, sound, music, editing, and production. The whole thing ended with the afterthought that ‘You, Laurens, with your knowledge of the country no doubt could be of great assistance to me’, and a threat that if the guarantee was not forthcoming, Spode would withdraw from the expedition there and then.

  I looked up from reading this unexpected epistle not into the large friendly grey eyes I had last seen but into a face clouded with resentment and injury. Even the square shoulders of Spode’s squat figure seemed suddenly set at a fighting angle.

  My heart shrank with dismay not because of the situation, but because I realized that perhaps I was seeing the whole Spode for the first time in my life. The scales fell from my eyes and I was aware in a moment of sudden though complex illumination, that I was looking at a person whom denial of chance and opportunity had filled with conflict great enough to defeat both himself and others. I realized I had been content to see him through the eyes of a devoted friend rather than make the troublesome assessment of character out of my own not inconsiderable experience of the world and men that the occasion had demanded. But what to do now?

  I tried to reason with them.

  My friend quickly warned me: ‘I’m not in on this, Laurens. I’m the interpreter. I can only pass your messages on to Eugene.’

  For two precious hours or more I went patiently through each reproach, and all the others, too, that sprang up like giants from dragons’ teeth sown innocently in the wake of each explanation. Near the end of the talk a tall young man with close-cropped hair, soft voice, and a pleasant open face who I was told was Stonehouse, Spode’s assistant, came and joined us.

  Finally I told Spode that if he still persisted in such an attitude and insisted on such a guarantee he had better go back to Europe at once. That instantly changed the atmosphere. Spode declared himself happy with my explanations and ready to go on as before.

  ‘He’ll be all right once he is at work,’ my friend said to me, aside. ‘You both have such a love of Africa, and that will see you through.’

  The popular, pink marsh-mallow conception of ‘love’ which considers it a lush force that does for human beings the things they are too lazy or greedy to do for themselves instead of the call to battle that it is, always irritates me. I nearly gave an angry retort. Yet I bit it back. The immediate tussle with Spode was over, but the campaign, I knew, would go on. Sick in the pit of my stomach, I felt all the joy of the journey vanish. Obviously it was going to be a difficult task keeping Spode in a state of mind to do the work we had contracted to do. I would not for a single moment be able to take
him for granted. More, I was not at all certain I had done right to reason either with him, or myself. Now that it is all over I think that Spode’s renewed contact with Africa had made him realize that he had undertaken greater responsibilities than he could fulfil in physical conditions for which his metropolitan nature was unsuited. Ten days in a luxury hotel watching the summer beginning to flare up fast around the little Africa-beleaguered city, had driven the point deeper home. In making such a scene on such trivial pretexts I suspect his inmost nature was imploring me to send him back to Europe before it was too late. In not doing so I failed both him and the expedition. Yet the reasons I had for making the wrong decision were excellent. Spode had been trained and specially briefed by the B.B.C. for the task. He was the film unit accepted by them as a basic part of my contract. Sixteen miles of film material were designed, rolled, and made up for his special cameras and magazines. Beside, where and when was I to get a substitute? Motionless, the expedition cost fifty pounds a day to maintain. Also there was a limit to the time Ben and Vyan could stay with me. None the less, I believe now that I should have had the courage of my instincts, cancelled the old plan, and started again from scratch.

  Instead we went on with resumed amiability to film rock-paintings, caves, and graves around Bulawayo. But I soon got some more shocks. Simon Stonehouse, I discovered, could hardly be called a friend of Spode’s because he barely knew him. Before the proposal that he should join us they had met only twice. He knew nothing about making films and had been attracted to the expedition solely because he was studying anthropology and, accordingly, was interested in the Bushman. In fact, he had come with a case full of specially printed forms of a census he wanted to make of Bushmen! More, he was a relation of my friend’s. There was, of course, no harm in that. It would have acted as a recommendation with me. But it was odd that I had not been told. However, while we did our little background filming outside Bulawayo, he and Spode appeared to be on the best of terms so I accepted the situation with all the grace I could.

  Only once did I come near to an open quarrel with Spode and my friend. We were loading Spode’s gear and film material in the Land-Rovers. I was doing the stacking when suddenly a case of tinned cheeses was handed up to me.

  ‘What’s this?’ I called out, amazed, because I had ordered nothing so luxurious for the journey.

  There was no answer. Spode and Stonehouse looked uneasily around them.

  ‘Here! Chuck it out,’ I said handing it back to Ben.

  Then followed cases of pea-nut butter in jars, Marmite, glucose, vegetable protein extracts, sweets, and other solids. As I had already brought the basic foods we would need and, except for sugar, salt, and meal, most of these were in dehydrated forms in order to save weight and space, I rejected all these extra, unordered foods because we needed every ounce of carrying capacity we could spare for fuel and water.

  I had hardly got back to the hotel when Stonehouse came to my room.

  ‘I suppose’, he stammered, most distressed, ‘you don’t realize I’m a vegetarian?’

  ‘A what!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘I’m a vegetarian. I explained it all to them in London because I thought it might be a complication but they assured me it wouldn’t matter a bit!’

  ‘So I’ve chucked out all your patent foods?’ I said, touched by the boy’s evident conflict.

  ‘Of course, I thought you knew,’ he replied. ‘Will it make things much more difficult for you?’

  My impulse was at once to go to Spode and my friend and ask for an explanation but it seemed to me that the situation was already beyond help from post-mortems: ‘Look!’ I said. ‘If I’d known this before, I wouldn’t have let you come. Our main diet must be meat. We’ve no extra carrying space. One man has come all the way from East Africa to do nothing else but hunt game all day for us to live on. However, as you are here, Simon, we’ll do our best for you. But I can’t promise you much more than porridge and dried milk for days on end. So what about it?’

  ‘I won’t mind a bit,’ he said, obviously relieved. ‘And I promise you I’ll do all I can to make up for it.’

  That evening my friend flew on home to Johannesburg. Spode returned from the aerodrome darkly silent and went straight to his room, sending me a message through Simon that he did not feel like eating and would not be at dinner.

  Early the next day we left for the Falls. I asked Spode to travel with me because I was the only one who could talk French and because I was determined to do all I could to restore our relationship. I tried to interest him in the country, the types of bush, trees, birds, elephant spoor, the fragments of history and personal reminiscences evoked by the journey. But the work was hard and the response leaden. We arrived late that afternoon at the Falls Hotel. Spode went straight to his room from which in due course he issued a statement that he was not coming down for dinner.

  Meanwhile I had gone to look for Wyndham Vyan. This hotel in the bush on the edge of one of the great rivers of the world has been like a second home to me. I have known it since boyhood and seen it grow into one of the most remarkable establishments in Africa. Before many a long expedition I have spent the night there, and enjoyed celebrating the successful end of many another with a hot bath, dinner jacket, and civilized dinner. The manager, staff, servants, and waiters were well known to me. It took me some time to get over all the necessary greetings before I was free to find Vyan whom I had arranged to meet at this hotel. He was sitting where I knew he would be, under his favourite flamboyant tree, smoking his pipe and watching the mist from the vast falls spinning the light of the setting sun into a rainbow bridge over the deep fiery gorge of the Zambezi below him. The expression on his face was utterly resolved as if life had long ceased to present any problem to him. With his glasses and his sensitive English features he looked not like a hardy pioneer of Africa who had just travelled two thousand difficult miles by truck to meet me, but more like a scholar dedicated to reading the hour of the day like the script of some ancient document whose illumination had suddenly begun to fade.

  I cannot describe the relief of seeing him there after these long sullen hours with an unhappy Spode. Before we had uttered a word something of quiet and strength immediately came from him to me.

  After our first greeting he asked in his brief way: ‘Ben here? Shall I fetch him to join us?’

  ‘No! Not for a moment, Wyndham. Let’s hear your news first and have a bit of a talk.’ I answered quickly, so healing did I find it just to be with someone who was obviously glad to see me and to whom it was not necessary to justify myself.

  CHAPTER 6

  Northern Approaches

  WE spent two days at the Falls organizing ourselves on a fully operational basis, Spode meanwhile filming fastidiously what he found of interest in our great surroundings. We broke down our bulk supplies and re-allotted them according to the role each vehicle and its occupants would have to perform. As far as possible each Land-Rover was made self-contained in fuel, water, and spares even to such detail as a snake-bite outfit and serum beside the seat of the four drivers. Though it was not fully justified on a weight and space measure I thought it best to give Spode, for his sole use, one of the largest Land-Rovers which like my own had been intended originally to absorb our overlap. I took in what slack there was in my own and the other vehicles. While Vyan and Hatherall supervised the re-loading, I went to Livingstone to deal with small things forgotten in the initial order. At the end of two days I was confident nothing of importance had been forgotten, and in the evening, while Charles and the others went to fill up the vehicles with fuel and water, I drove out into the bush to have an hour or two to myself to reconsider everything for the last time.

  Some miles from the Falls I found a track to take me down to an open space by the flashing river. I had not been there long when a noise like a bubbling witches’ cauldron rose up around me. I looked out of the side of the Land-Rover. A herd of elephant, ebony black at that hour, was emerging from the bush
and filling the golden clearing behind me. It was compact with cows and calves in the centre, but the bulls with long gleaming tusks, and trunks nervously curling, were well out patrolling their marble perimeter. As I looked, one great bull stepped clear of the rest and, his trunk stretched out between long shining tusks, came swiftly and delicately towards me. Quickly I closed the plastic windows of the Land-Rover and watched his resilient approach in the driving mirror. He halted within a few feet of the Land-Rover and pushed his trunk out until it nearly touched the exhaust. Then it flicked back suddenly, and such an expression of distaste at the internal combustion smell appeared on his corrugated face that I nearly laughed aloud. For a moment he stood there working his ears like the fins of a fabulous fish and swishing his trunk with indecision, before he turned to lead the herd sideways past me deep into the bush.

  I relate the incident, however, not for the delight it caused me, but for the encouragement it gave me. It was proof that our timing had been right. It was evidence that the great withdrawal of beast and man from the desert, on which so much of our calculation was based, had started.

  On the way back I met a pilot who daily flies visitors up and down the river, coming back from his landing strip in the bush and I told him what I had seen.