by James Best
After breakfast, one of the dancers from the previous evening, Tshabu, took us for a bush tour. He led the group over the ochre sands, pointing out plants and their various uses, as well as animal tracks and droppings, explaining how his people would trap and kill birds and animals. The dunes and scrub were his pantry, his pharmacy, his home.
Tshabu was slightly built, and the same height as Sam. His scalp was a maze of centimetre-length braids, and he had a gentle manner and a lilting accent. He wore a loincloth made of steenbok hide, leather sandals, and a faded striped polo shirt. A quiver made from African wildcat hide carried bows, spears and firesticks made from bush willow.
With each discussion of a plant, a rock, a track, he would first describe it in his own language. He was connected to his culture and his land. The traditional San lifestyle was truly nomadic; home was where the animals went.
One of the plants Tshabu showed us was the source of the poison with which they would tip their arrowheads. The Englishwoman asked how quickly the poison would work.
‘Quite quickly.’ Tshabu didn’t wear a watch.
Sam initially paid attention, registering his surrounds and what was being said by Tshabu and the others, but became antsy towards the end, asking when we were going to finish, and how long it was going to take.
We navigated our way back to the farm and truck through the disorientating endless scrub by following the noise of the generator.
As soon as we got back on the truck to leave, Sam resumed reading Harry Potter. But after a few hours he perked up and got me to do a ‘head dance’, where he’d get me to dance with only my head. There were different types: the sideways head dance, the round head dance, the tongue-poking-out head dance. Gabriel in Sossusvlei had introduced a cool new variation, the African head dance: a sharp tilt of the head followed by a slow return to vertical.
It was just as well that Sam only required my head to dance, because all sense of rhythm stops at my neck. I’m a tall white guy, after all. Throughout Africa—at restaurants, in bars, on buses and trucks—I’d been repeatedly ordered to ‘do the head dance’. If I was reluctant Sam would often force the issue by pushing my head around with his hands. Folks invariably seemed enchanted by our routine.
The road stretched on, seeming endless. It reminded me of scrubby roads from the Australian outback. Perhaps Queensland’s Bruce Highway, about halfway to Cairns? Then a herd of ostriches was surprised by our noisy truck and scattered off the road, all raised knees and bobbing heads. No, we were definitely in Africa.
When we stopped for lunch our sixty-nine-year-old Chinese companion, who was travelling by herself, started doing tai chi on the sandy shoulder of the road. Everyone but our guides and Sam joined in. It must have made for a very odd sight: seven Westerners being taught tai chi by an elderly Chinese woman by the side of the road in Botswana in the middle of nowhere.
The road narrowed and deteriorated. Tuhafeni manoeuvred the truck around potholes, donkeys, cattle and goats. Soon we were on the worst road Sam and I had been on in Africa; incessant corrugations gave the ‘African massage’.
At another stop, Sam sat in the dappled shade of a willow and drew in the white sand with his finger. I knew he was drawing coins and banknotes, which were currently rising with a bullet on his hit parade of obsessions. The villagers tried to figure out what he was drawing. They asked him his name and age and he drew the answers in the sand. Kids jumped, waved and yelled at us through the wire fence of their sandy school playground as we left.
We bounced and heaved, up and over dunes, through creeks and rivulets. In the late afternoon glow, after the better part of two days of hard travel, we reached our destination. Guma Lagoon Camp was a stylish retreat set on a large lagoon on the edge of the Okavango Delta, where the handle meets the pan. Here the water from Angola came down the wide Okavango River and spilled into the vast delta before drying out, fading out, as it stretched south to the Kalahari.
The campsite was set invitingly on lush grass under willows and waterberries. Sam thought it looked like a golf course—but that didn’t mean he wanted to camp there. Fortunately, a room was available. We also heard that there was a very sociable pet owl who liked to gently brush his wings on you as he swooped by. Sam loved the idea, and christened the owl he was yet to meet Hedwig, from Harry Potter, of course.
Guma Lagoon Camp had been set up fifteen years earlier by a couple from Johannesburg, Beverley and Guy. Sam was especially fond of one of their dogs, Diesel, because he had a special job to do: chasing away hippos. Sam was paranoid about hippos as he’d read that they kill more people in Africa than any other animal, if you exclude mosquitoes, microbes and man. Hippos were a real threat here and we were instructed to take care at night. I didn’t really understand what ‘taking care’ meant and asked Guy. ‘Just keep an eye out, and if you see one, head in the other direction. You should be fine. Just don’t shine your torch in their eyes, they really hate that.’ I certainly didn’t want to piss off a hippo.
Sitting on the retreat’s broad verandah, which had panoramic views of the large lagoon, the group relaxed and drank in the atmosphere. The reeds across the lagoon looked like giant clipped hedges, lit orange by the dying light. The silhouette of the nostrils and brow of a croc glided by fifty metres away. Sam returned from the toilet where to his surprise and joy Hedwig had visited him.
The wetlands filled with sound: millions of insects and thousands of birds competing for attention. Rhythms would sometimes merge into each other before parting again. Like a poorly synchronised orchestra, the notes would jar at times before harmonising again. The symphony continued, with no conductor, relentless.
Beverley and Guy ran a smooth operation. They had many local employees, and also had sponsored a local primary school by supplying simple machines and supplies, such as a photocopier, staplers and paper. I asked if the school had any special-needs kids and how they coped. It turned out that in this environment even relatively minor learning difficulties were exacerbated. ‘You see, before there was equipment and supplies, the teacher used to have to read exam questions aloud,’ Beverley explained. ‘Simply having a printed exam paper sitting on the desk can make the world of difference for a student with learning issues.’
With their sponsorship, the pass rate at the school had risen from thirty-two per cent to seventy-five per cent in one year. Now families from villages nearby wanted to send their children to the school, but there weren’t enough teachers.
Later at the bar, I overheard a Botswanan driver from the retreat joking with Tuhafeni. They ribbed each other about how inept the armed forces of their respective countries were, given neither country had been in a conflict for a long time. ‘If war came, your soldiers would not need to be worried about the Namibian soldiers, because they can’t shoot straight.’
The Botswanan driver laughed. ‘Well, I can guarantee you that the Botswanan soldiers would shoot first, because they would be so frightened!’
But as the topic switched to poaching the banter became more pointed. ‘What are you doing over there in Namibia? Why don’t you get tougher? Do you want to give them a tap on the back or something?’
Tuhafeni shook his head in disgust. ‘You know, it is getting much worse now. So far this year, there have been sixty rhinos shot in Etosha alone. And it is only May.’
‘Oh my God, that is terrible,’ the Botswanan replied. ‘You know, there were three poachers shot dead near here just yesterday.’
‘Dead?’
‘Yes. Shoot on sight, that is what you guys need to do.’
That night, through the chorus of the wetlands, I heard a stomping sound underneath our hut, which was on stilts over the water’s edge. The unmistakable hyper-echoic honk of a hippo came up through the boards. Yikes! I hoped hippos couldn’t climb stairs. Where the hell was Diesel?
Having survived the night, we emerged the next morning wearing enough fly spray to have serious neurological consequences. The plan was to boat out to the wetl
ands and then ride in dugout canoes through the reeds to an island in the delta. Well, that was the official plan. But it wasn’t Sam’s plan. ‘No, I don’t want to get on the boat.’
‘Sam, you have to get on. It’s already organised and everyone is going.’
He dug in. ‘No. There are hippos. I don’t want to die!’
I couldn’t reassure him. He took off and refused to return to the boat ramp. I pleaded with him for five minutes as the rest of the group boarded. He wouldn’t budge. I thought laterally. ‘How about I give you a reward if you go?’
‘What?’
‘I’ll give you an eight.’
‘Okay.’ Sam got into the boat straightaway.
Dodgy life jackets, an open-topped motorboat, slightly nervous passengers. The boat zoomed across the lagoon, and then down a watery passageway between seemingly impenetrable walls of papyrus. A spur-winged goose zoomed with us down the winding passage like a fighter jet escort. The passage narrowed as it snaked along. Like a giant organic maze, the wetlands were criss-crossed with these passageways. Occasionally islands jutted above the waterline, home to majestic towering hardwoods—jackalberry and waterberry trees, and marulas.
The passages narrowed even more. Our captain slowed the boat to a crawl. I was reminded of Hepburn and Bogart in The African Queen, chest-high in the muck, struggling through the reeds, their bodies covered in leeches. Well, at least we had an outboard motor. I wouldn’t have wanted to be walking in these waters, and it wouldn’t just have been leeches I’d have been worried about.
On a wetland island we met our guides. They would use long poles to push us—two passengers to a canoe—through the reeds to another island; ninety minutes’ hard work each way. The chief pole man was Royal, long and lanky with muscular arms. Sam and I were to be his charges; he had been told the teenager who didn’t look you in the eye needed to be watched.
The canoes were pushed off the mud and we glided away. Royal stood at the back, long pole in hand. He had been on these waters all his life, and it showed. It was peaceful on the water, gliding. ‘So calm that it disturbs,’ as Coleridge put it. There were day water lilies everywhere, and spotted pumpkins sitting on the long stems which descended through the crystal clear waters.
The four canoes were in single file, the first bow cutting through the reeds, grasses, lilies and papyrus like a scythe. A hippo honked, sounding close, and us tourists exchanged anxious looks. As we rounded the head of an island, an enormous bull elephant appeared one hundred metres away. He checked us out with a glare and splashed away.
We landed on our island destination with a crunch under the canoe. The white sand of the island was sprinkled with lime-green grasses, dotted higgledy-piggledy with candle thorn and aromatic kuntze shrubs, and punctuated by grand trees. There was a sausage tree with metre-long hanging fruit. A large and ancient baobab tree crowned the small peak of the island, its bark stripped up to ten metres by elephants. Ilala palms with sour tennis-ball-sized fruit soared above.
The air was pungent from the large elephant droppings combined with the acrid kuntze. We toured the small island, walking single file to reduce the risk of snakebite, before settling in the shade to drink from our water bottles and eat our packed lunch. Nobody spoke. It just seemed right to be silent.
Eventually, roused from our torpor by Royal, we reluctantly headed back. I was so glad I’d been able to get Sam on the boat. I wouldn’t have wanted him to miss this experience. It had been eight points well spent.
That night there was a loud ruckus on the water: a crotchety elephant and some hippos. I couldn’t sleep anyway. I was tossing and turning, thinking about the trip and Sam’s progress. My thoughts tumbled. The acute anxiety I’d felt earlier in the trip had passed, but now I was starting to worry that I wasn’t anxious enough, that I was getting lax. Shut up, James, I told myself. Just get on with it.
Eventually dawn broke over the clipped hedges. The lagoon was still, the reflection of the multicoloured clouds like a painter’s palette.
When he awoke, Sam was excited to officially receive his eight. ‘How can I easily get an eight on other days?’ The bugger had out-thought me.
CHAPTER 13
Marshmallows and googols
It was Africa Day, celebrated across the continent, as we left Guma Lagoon Camp, which seemed an appropriate time to reflect upon my impressions of Africa so far. While we were yet to reach the poor M countries, we had now seen a fair bit of the place.
Africa was an event. It was complex, surprising, unpredictable. It threw up issues and problems to be dealt with or overcome, and then either threw up solutions and alternatives, or just a shrug and a smile. ‘No problems, boss!’ I felt Benison and I had selected the location and route of the trip well. The unpredictability was perfect for our intended purpose. We’d started in the relatively familiar cosmopolitanism of Cape Town and now things were becoming progressively more challenging. I felt that if we’d been facing the current circumstances when we first set out, neither Sam nor I would have coped. Both of us had developed new skills and coping abilities. Sam was now pining to return not so much to Sydney but to Cape Town, Durban or even Windhoek. I reflected back on how dependent I’d been on Max and The Fixer’s help in the first week.
Mind you, experienced traveller as I might now consider myself, I’d still managed to leave my torch behind at Guma Lagoon Camp. I knew exactly where I’d left it, under the pillow. Oh well, another item to add to the list of lost things.
Our physical ailments remained. Sam’s facial rash had flared, worsened by the Kalahari’s parched atmosphere and the stress of hard travelling. My tennis elbow still troubled me. I would forget occasionally and heave a backpack with my left arm, only to quickly pay the penalty.
Another long day on the road, another border crossing. These guards showed more lassitude than attitude. We headed up to and along the Caprivi Strip, an elongated thin extension of Namibia that the German colonists annexed to give Germany access to the Zambezi and a route to their eastern colony Tanganyika, now Tanzania. We stopped overnight at a campsite; another river full of hippos and crocs, another indemnity form to be signed. Fortunately, I was again able to upgrade our accommodation, and Tuhafeni told me this would be possible for the remaining stops on the tour. It would be expensive, but it was a relief. I announced that we were hitherto to be known as the rich wankers of the group.
Sam polished off his poached chicken and potato dinner while I had another cup of rooibos tea, for which I’d developed quite a liking in the absence of good coffee. Sam was still trying new foods, but unfortunately called Alfeus bald to his face, and lost some points as a consequence. As I walked from the dinner fire back to our hut—in darkness, because I no longer had a torch—I whacked my right shin on a low post lining the path. I gingerly inspected the injury: a nasty laceration and a bruise to add to my list of injuries. A Simpson’s style ‘Ha ha!’ was Sam’s not-so-sympathetic response.
The next morning we visited a traditional village: a gaggle of thatched rondavels inside a two-metre-high fence made of thin sticks. There were displays of traditional animal traps. Women sieved, and pounded with mortar and pestle. An old man pumped bellows to fire a small smith used to shape iron spear tips. The women then danced to a drum beat before a witchdoctor emerged from a hut chanting—according to our interpreter—about how we would all have a safe journey home. I wondered how authentic it really was. It was clear there was a commercial drive behind it—I doubt most traditional African villages have their own gift shops.
However, once the young fellow who’d showed us around finished the short tour, he relaxed. Yes, it was contrived, put on for the tourists, he admitted, but he pointed to a village a hundred metres away where they all actually lived, and it looked very similar, although messier and with more dogs. They still used these tools and wore these clothes, though the traditional dress was now mixed with recycled clothing, handed down from rich Westerners. They did regularly sing these songs an
d dance these dances. They took pride in their culture.
Sam was taking next to no notice, and seemed more interested in his fingers, declaring the performance boring and saying he didn’t like the music because it wasn’t rock. He was certainly correct there. The witchdoctor freaked him out too—and me a bit, truth be told. The American aid worker in our group wryly observed that he was secretly hoping the witchdoctor would ‘cure’ Sam’s autism, which would have been a major scientific breakthrough but would have made the rest of the trip less interesting in the process.
We reached Katima Mulilo, the regional capital of Caprivi, and stocked up on supplies. On a large billboard near the shopping centre car park the mayor of the city declared that he used a condom, so every man should. The devastation of the HIV epidemic was revealed in the frankness of the message.
In the supermarket Sam wanted a Sprite. I didn’t want him to have one in the morning; our rule was that we had no fizzy drinks at least until lunchtime. I suggested a flavoured milk.
Sam persisted. ‘No, I want a Sprite.’
‘I said no. If you insist on having it, it will mean an automatic six.’
He lifted his chin high and pointed to the floor. ‘No. I want an eight and a Sprite.’
I tried to be firm but fair. ‘No, them’s the rules, Sam. It’s your decision.’
I left it up to him and refused to discuss it further. He ended up buying the Sprite, but was in two minds about whether it was worth getting an automatic six, and hesitated to actually drink it.
It was Sam’s own marshmallow experiment. In the landmark series of experiments conducted at Stanford University in the 1960s and 1970s, a child was offered the choice between an immediate reward, usually one marshmallow, or two rewards if they waited a short period, like fifteen minutes. The tester would leave the room and often video the child’s behaviour as they grappled with the dilemma of delayed gratification.
