Tanzania
I remember falling asleep as the sun rose after bieng up all night with the lions roaring just beneath our beds in the machan; and the time the whole country had turned green with the coming of the rains and the grass had started to grow high all around us and we nearly stepped on the two female lesser kudu as we walked out away from the road.
Ethiopia
He would often disappear on a track, only to resurface two or three days later saying nothing of where he had been. That road connected him to his youth, leading to the country he had fought against in the civil war during the early 1990’s. He was shot in the face and bared the scar of that time, a harsh reminder of his earlier life and the absurdity of politics. Later, I would watch him climb into dense riverine forest after a wounded buffalo, in bush so thick that it required crawling on all fours. At one point he came face to face with the wounded animal and they locked eyes, each unable to move and in that moment he and the animal were one being and I knew that he looked at them not as some other creature but as a part of himself and that he saw things that were not of this world. That’s not to say that they weren’t real, but they were hidden to those not open to the idea of their existence.
Cameroon
I think of river crossings on old barges or dugout canoes, salmonella poisoning, forest fires and massive storms. I hear the violent scream of a silverback gorilla deep in the forest - shaking the trees, beating his chest, then vanishing. I think of rain, dust and bees; the reenactment of a hunt and a bongo skull dancing in the half light of the fire. I see a French bible and pygmies with sharpened teeth, dead elephants, 7.62mm shell casings and the barefoot track of a lone poacher. I recall stories of Loa Loa - the eye worm parasite and how the old timers used to pour paraffin on their feet after crossing rivers. I think of massive columns of ants and chimpanzees in the early morning mist and see logging trucks overturned on forest roads. The snakes - Green Vipers, Gaboon Vipers and a Mamba in the canopy. I see it all and I think I finally understand what Joseph Conrad meant when he said, “It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”
The herons in the shallow flats out in front of the islands, with their long legs and thin necks, make me think of Marabous and how they are drawn to the grass fires in the dry season waiting out in front of the flames for any animals to break cover. The thin, low lying mesquite islands along the coast remind me of the palm islands and waterways of the delta and crossing the clear, knee-deep water as trees break and crash ahead of us from the elephants pushing them over and then retreating in the heat of the day to have lunch in the shade of a sausage tree on the water’s edge.
In August the leaves of the mopane trees would start to change to a brilliant yellow and orange and at sunset when you looked out across the scrub brush the sky would blend with the leaves and the whole world looked as if it were on fire.
It was here that my life began. The camp and the people who made it what it was are long gone, but I can still smell the sage on the late afternoon wind and feel the cool air during a long, lazy lunch in the shade of a sausage tree on the water’s edge. I remember dinners under the mess tent with the kerosene lamps casting shadows on the canvas and the pale dusty look of the land at midday so that when you saw the lions they blended into the grass and disappeared before your eyes. I will always long for that place and that time that can never happen again, but that story and that history is ours now and I go there often inside of myself.
A few days later as I climbed to the top of a mountain in the Serra do Roncador I watched a flock of Red Macaws take flight and then entered the Cave of Pezinhos where the impressions from both human and animal tracks line the walls, many of them with six fingers. I have tried to understand the meaning of this place ever since, but I doubt that I ever will.
The camp was built on a shallow rise above a dry river bed on the southern edge of the delta and looked out across the donga to the opposite bank where a lone palm tree stood silhouetted against the sky above a long line of mopane trees. It was this lone palm that gave the camp its Tswana name, Molkowane, and beyond the palm and the mopane forest was the delta with it’s clear waters and scattering of palm islands and where the river that was born in the highlands of Angola emptied into the otherwise waterless Kalahari in the dry season. In August the leaves of the mopane trees would start to change to a brilliant yellow and orange and at sunset when you looked out across the scrub brush the sky would blend with the leaves and the whole world looked as if it were on fire.