Chapter 11
When I pulled up in front of the tidy, well-shaded, and manicured brick building of the mission, I was greeted by a line of uniformed children practicing a song in three-part harmony. The melody and sincerity of the children were compelling, and the high and low notes striking. The lyrics went on about community and walking down to the river together in the hopes that God would meet them there. The teacher nodded in greeting to me as I passed the procession and knocked on the front door of the mission.
A man dressed in black robes opened the door. “Hello, madam, how can I assist you?”
“Hello. Sorry to disturb you, but I’m looking for a Father Sebuku.”
The man nodded. “That would be me.”
I held out my hand and shook his. “I’m Catherine Sohon. I believe Craig Phipps from WIA got ahold of you to tell you I might stop by?”
Father Sebuku seemed to stiffen a bit. “Oh yes, of course. Do come in.” He held a hand past him for me to enter the building.
“Craig said you are from the Congo?” I was led into a reception area with surprisingly new and comfortable-looking white leather couches that seemed out of place in an environment where everything was covered in the ubiquitous orange sands of the Kalahari dune system.
“That’s right.”
I looked around. “Nice place.” It must have taken a lot of energy to keep orange dust off the white leather and teak tile flooring in a room with floor-to-ceiling louvered windows.
Father Sebuku put his hand out and gestured toward a couch. “Please, have a seat.”
I melted into the supple leather—most probably Italian, or at least tanned by someone with European tanning skills. “How long have you been in the Caprivi?”
Father Sebuku sat down and sighed. “Oh, a little over a year now. Came down to manage the HIV program at the hospital. Shame how the problem just doesn’t seem to be getting any better here.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Howe, this issue of promiscuity is killing our people. Much more education is needed to build an understanding and get rid of superstitions.”
“I thought that the antiretrovirals had turned things around.”
“About five years ago, this was true. And the epidemic was minimized. But now, there are other issues. People are not taking the medications correctly. There are transport problems getting access to tests and treatment. The men are refusing to get tested. And the education just isn’t there for prevention. Sexually transmitted diseases are making the problem worse. We need an open dialogue in the communities and in the schools. That’s the only way I can see the possibility for real change.”
“I see.” I sat back. “Is the Red Cross involved in helping to deliver supplies for HIV?”
“Yes, yes, they have been a big help.” The priest nodded and looked me up and down. “Would you like some tea, Ms. Sohon?”
“Oh no, I don’t want to bother you.”
Father Sebuku stood up. “It’s no trouble at all, really. I’ll tell the kitchen staff.” He walked into the hallway and turned back. “Milk and sugar?”
I nodded. “Sure, thanks.”
When he was far enough down the hall, I stood up and walked around the room. There were various photos of opening ceremonies, children in traditional beaded skirts singing, a handshake with a minister here and there and even one with the president. Father Sebuku had been busy in the year that he’d been in town.
I looked up to the distinctive sound of a small aircraft taking off somewhere behind the mission. I had no reason to be suspicious, but I couldn’t help thinking that Father Sebuku had asked if I wanted tea as a way to excuse himself to go get rid of an airplane—which meant passengers and or cargo he didn’t want me to see.
The priest returned with a silver tea set and a plate of gingersnaps. “There we are.” He placed the tray on the small round coffee table between us and proceeded to pour a drop of milk in the bottom of my cup and then tea. He held up a sugar cube. “One or two?”
“Just one, thank you.” I watched him stir the cup with a teaspoon and focused on his fingers. “I was thinking about volunteering for the Red Cross.”
Father Sebuku stopped stirring, placed the teaspoon down carefully, and forced a smile. “Volunteering?”
“Yes, you see, I’m a pilot and I was hoping you could use an extra plane for all the supplies you need to move around.”
“Well, that’s a very generous offer, but you see, we don’t manage Red Cross activities here. We simply offer to do some of the deliveries as needed. We don’t have any control over who does the work outside this mission. The whole program is run out of Lusaka in Zambia. We are just lucky to be on the list of recipients.”
“Oh, I see.” I hadn’t expected volunteering to be so tricky. “Can I be put on a list when you need an extra pilot?”
“That won’t be necessary. At least not for now. You see, the Red Cross hasn’t been delivering supplies for some months now. We’ll only have one more delivery from Lusaka in a day or so, and the doctor will take care of that.”
“The doctor?” I asked, remembering that Nigel had mentioned a doctor, too. “What doctor is that?”
“Dr. Geldenhuis.”
“He works here, in Katima?”
“Yes, that’s right. He works at the hospital but has a private office, behind the deli, that he just opened. Best doctor in town if you are ever in need. But, best to see him at his office and not at Katima Hospital. I’m sure you’ve been told to stay away from that place. So unfortunate. A death trap, really.”
I didn’t want to seem too nosy, but couldn’t resist. “Is that whose plane just took off?”
Father Sebuku hesitated.
“The one I heard taking off behind the mission? Was that Dr. Geldenhuis?”
Father Sebuku seemed to be piecing things together in his mind, as if trying to censor himself.
“I’m a pilot, you see, so I can’t help noticing these things.” I could see I was making him increasingly uncomfortable, so I spoke quickly. “And it’s a nuisance sometimes because I always have to challenge myself to guess exactly what kind of airplane it is that I hear. Was it a Cessna 172—or a Piper Cub, maybe? Didn’t sound like enough horsepower for a 182.”
Father Sebuku squinted at me and then burst out in a nervous laughter. “Impressive.” He shook his head. “Most impressive. Yes, it was a Piper Cub. A minister from the Seventh-Day Adventist church was just visiting from Lusaka. I had to see him off.” He poured his tea and seemed to loosen up a bit. “They have been very generous with their donations to the HIV program. He came to tell me that we will be able to pick up new test kits next week. In time for the national testing day.”
“Has there been any Red Cross activity in Angola?” I sipped my tea.
“Not by our mission. I think that the Red Cross is still trying to work out a relationship there. It’s been very difficult to negotiate humanitarian efforts after decades of war. Last I heard they were going to start with transistor radios.” He held the plate of cookies for me. “You understand.”
I accepted a cookie and ate it thoughtfully, enjoying the spike of ginger in my mouth. “Of course.”
Father Sebuku looked at me carefully. “You seem troubled by something.”
I shook my head quickly. “It’s nothing. I just wanted to offer some help, that’s all.” I finished my tea and stood up. “Thank you so much for your time.”
“I will be sure to let you know if we can make use of your offer in the future. Perhaps when the doctor’s schedule has a conflict.”
“I would appreciate that. Thanks so much.” I shook his hand and left, uncertain of what to make of my visit, but Dr. Geldenhuis was next on my list. First thing the next morning.
Chapter 12
I woke to the popping of automatic weapons in the middle of the night. I shot up, struggled with my mosquito net, grabbed my revolver from under the bed, and sat there, trying to catch my breath and piece to
gether in what direction the noise of gunfire was moving.
Did I hear it start from the left or the right? My sleepy brain couldn’t remember. Were they softer first and then louder, or the other way around?
I looked out the screen window into the dark blue night. After not hearing another sound, I lay back down, still clutching my pistol. A few minutes went by.
I jumped at the sound of more gunfire. This time it was very close. Then there was yelling and running, coming closer and closer to my barracks. My hands were shaking so much, I could barely hold my pistol.
I swung my head from one window to the other until I heard what sounded like footsteps sneaking up to my window. There were words spoken in Portuguese.
“UNITA!” Jon Baggs had warned me that the former Angolan rebel forces still had a presence post-Savimbi and were actively making incursions into Namibia for bush meat and possibly ivory. But I didn’t expect they’d come so close to the station. I felt like a sitting duck, lying exposed on my bed.
I dived under the cot, gripping my pistol with both hands. I rolled over and faced the bedroom door, cursing. After conducting a twenty-year war and losing the subsequent election, Jonas Savimbi had taken to the bush, and even long after his death, some of his men lingered and were hungry. The rangers thought it was just a matter of time before they’d raid Susuwe for supplies.
After a long stretch of silence, I was getting so tired that I couldn’t hold my position any longer. I rolled onto my back, still gripping my pistol to my chest and wishing I could get rid of the image of a faceless head with the brains removed before dozing off.
The noise of gunfire woke me again. Disoriented, I shot up and banged my head on the metal frame of the cot. “Shit!” I had forgotten that I was still under the bed.
The barracks seemed to be surrounded by the popping of what were most likely AK-47s. I rolled over and faced the door again. And again an interminable wait lay ahead.
It was silent for so long, and I got so uncomfortable, that I finally reached my hand up and grabbed my pillow from the bed and put it under my head. That was infinitely better.
I tried not to think about scorpions as a scops owl trilled in the distance. A little while later a leopard called, meters from my window—the signature sawing of wood rasping back and forth, back and forth. I was glad to be inside. And with no more gunfire and no more yelling, I fell asleep, only to wake in the morning with a throbbing headache and a lump on my forehead.
I carefully extracted myself from under the bed. I couldn’t believe I’d been able to sleep on the linoleum floor like that, but it had felt safer than lying on my bed, which felt exposed. I wondered what had happened in the night. It was six thirty and I couldn’t find out until the ranger office opened at eight.
I got up, pressing the lump on my forehead, hoping it wasn’t too obvious. I walked to the kitchen and filled the kettle, lit the stove, and brushed my teeth. I stared at the lump on my forehead in the mirror, and pressed at my puffy eyes.
I took an icy shower, and, chilled to the core, I made a mug of tea and sat on my porch. I still had an hour to kill before the ranger’s office opened and decided to go for a drive to see if I could figure out what had taken place the previous night.
While driving along the floodplain road, I passed the rangers next door sitting on their porch with no shirts on. Thick slabs of meat hung from a clothesline in front of them. I slowed to a stop.
“Good morning.” I wasn’t sure how to start a conversation about what might have happened with the shooting when they all looked so casual. I turned the car off and got out.
Gidean stood up, threw on his shirt, and approached. “Oh, Catherine! I was just heading over to see you.”
Judging from the rangers’ demeanors while lounging about on their porch, what I had thought was a raid was probably something a lot less sinister.
He could tell what I was thinking. “Yes. Sorry for all the noise.”
I tried to keep a poker face.
“You see, we had this road-kill kudu and the lions, they were trying their level best to eat it.” Gidean sensed my embarrassment. “We kept chasing them off with shots but they kept coming.” He looked down, guiltily, knowing full well what noise they had made.
I tried to appear calm. It wasn’t their fault that I had interpreted their fun as a hostile takeover. “And the Portuguese?”
Gidean nodded. “Eli speaks it when he’s excited.”
“Of course.” Gidean had mentioned that some of the rangers had learned Portuguese in Cuba when they were in exile with SWAPO as African freedom fighters before Namibian independence.
I needed to be strong. I could do this. “Listen, I was hoping to stop by the office when it opens. Will you be there?”
“Eight o’clock sharp.”
“Great. I’ll see you then.” I got back in my car and started up. As I started to pull away, Gidean tapped on my roof and I stopped again.
“You might take the floodplain road north. There’s a leopard kill in a tree about five kilometers up on the left. She might still be there on the carcass.”
I smiled. “So, it’s a she? I think I heard her terrorizing the baboons yesterday.”
Gidean nodded. “The station is her home.” He hesitated, as if he just remembered something. “Catherine, please don’t go farther than the river turnoff. There are reports of incursions. We’re hoping the army will help us investigate. We don’t have the firepower at the station to handle this on our own.”
“Understood.”
—
It was just after eight o’clock in the morning when I arrived at the office after my abbreviated safari. I stepped into the dark office and saw Gidean and Natembo sitting at the desk entering numbers into a large ledger.
They both looked up as I entered.
I nodded a greeting. “Hello, Gidean. Hello, Natembo.”
Gidean stood up. “Catherine. Did you see her?”
I shook my head. “No leopard, but I did see the impala in the tree.”
Gidean nodded. “The very one.”
I took a seat across from them and Gidean sat back down.
The ubiquitous faded posters on all the government office walls projected a sense of lethargy. There was a general species identification poster, a barely legible outdated map of the region, a staff picture that was so faded and yellow it was hard to make out who was in it, and an old research study of elephant movements in the region. There were pins and flags from sightings in the early ’90s showing lots of elephant movement down south into Botswana along the Kwando, but no movement of elephants into Angola; only one made a brief foray into Zambia and back.
Old badly tanned predator skins hung on the wall, presumably for the benefit of the few tourists that happened to come to the office to register before going down to Nambwa Campsite, twenty kilometers south of the station. The signs that were hanging along the road were so illegible it amazed me that anyone bothered to stop in.
I watched Natembo entering numbers from a scrap of paper into a book. “Is this some kind of record?”
Gidean waved a hand casually. “This is how we keep track of elephant mortalities.”
I looked down at the numbers. “Oh, I see. How do they get reported to the head office?”
“Every month we total these numbers and radio down the totals along with the rain- gauge data.”
“Does the data get reported to the ivory trade commission?”
Gidean shrugged. “I really don’t know what happens to it.”
“In Kruger we filled out a form for every elephant mortality that gets reported. Have you heard of an ETIS form, the Elephant Trade Information System?”
Gidean and Natembo looked at me blankly.
“When we saw a carcass, we reported the date and time of the sighting, exact location of the carcass, estimated age, and cause of death if known.” I looked down at the entries. “All you are putting in here is a number, but no other information. Aren’t you su
pposed to include other information?”
Gidean nodded. “When that information is known, yes.”
I looked around the top of the desk and saw an empty elephant mortality data form collecting dust in the corner, the ETIS form that I had just asked about. “You’ve seen these, right?”
The rangers nodded.
“Why aren’t they being used?”
Gidean sighed. “You see, Catherine, it is much better for us to keep these books. The pages are bound together and we won’t lose the data.”
“I can see that, but why are you not including all the data that you can on each mortality?”
Natembo held up the form. “It is very difficult to know the information needed on this form for every elephant. Whatever is known is entered into this book.”
Gidean smiled. “We don’t actually have many mortalities within our protected areas. What is more important for poaching is the reporting outside protected areas. This is outside our jurisdiction, falling to the game guards. We need them to fill out these forms and submit them to us, but they are not doing so.”
“Maybe Nigel will let me give the game guards a briefing on this.”
Gidean nodded.
Natembo looked up. “The real problem is the ivory passing through the Caprivi. There are people in the villages involved. The people that know things are not talking.”
“I have another meeting with the induna scheduled for Thursday. Our last meeting was postponed since he had malaria. I can bring this up.”
Gidean nodded. “That would be good.”
“But right now, I’m going to meet with the local doctor.”
Both Natembo and Gidean looked at me with concern.
I shook my head. “I’m not sick. I just want to find out about the work he is doing with the Red Cross.”
Gidean looked relieved. “I am very glad to hear that you are not ill.”
I got up. “I appreciate that.”
“If you are able to build trust with the induna, he will be an important ally.”
“I hope so.”
“He is not happy with us. We had to arrest his son recently.”
Ivory Ghosts Page 8
