Zambia Musings

Dear all,
In which Ilana loses some wine but gains some puku, does a helicopter flip over the Busanga and contemplates the concept of ‘real’.

My latest journey was bracketed by odd food-related occurrences. From the confiscation of my kiddush wine at ORT (Oliver Tambo International aka Jan Smuts aka Joburg International) under the new liquid explosives rules – I offered the man a taste of it but he was clearly unimpressed with that suggestion. (I never thought to offer to taste it myself and if I didn’t explode or start ticking ominously in a few minutes, could he let me take the rest?) But to no avail; I told him to enjoy it as I went through passport control. It ended in a similar fashion when the new ORT beagle – yes a dog – full of enthusiasm as only beagles can be, sniffed at everyone’s bags at the carousel for illegal fruit, vegetables or drugs – and of course he clearly LOVED the leftover tuna and cottage cheese in my bag and shoved his eager snout right in, to the amusement of all except me, since I now had to hand over the ‘contraband’… ah my friends, these are difficult times to be a kosher-carrier…

But between these two moments? Now that was quite simply a privilege – I spent a week in a country that calls itself ‘the real Africa’ – four days in the South Luangwa National Park and three more in Kafue National Park. Both these names have hovered on the edge of my imagination for years, with visions of midpoint of a continent, lush woodland, timid elephants and a people that meld characteristics of the south and north.

It’s the place that Livingstone wandered through, that a solid Jewish community inhabited when it was unromantically and colonially called Northern Rhodesia, and was a byword for dictatorship for decades before democracy hit. Last year I managed to spend less than 24 hours there and it only whetted my appetite for more. Now that I’ve spent 8 days there – well, it seems to have just whetted my appetite for more…

We – that’s Caroline my colleague, who has now been skilled up on the risks of carrying kosher food, and I – took off from ORT on Thursday morning sans wine but with a brand new bird book, landed in Lusaka Airport, where our two pilots Mark and Peter introduced us to our Sefofane plane which would be taking us everywhere, called Ndlovu – elephant! Flying in an elephant over Zambia one realises that the Zambians like to burn their countryside, apparently it’s a custom so that the young shoots will come through to feed cattle and wildlife, but the result is often a blackened landscape which is very hazy and washed out from the air that takes some getting used to.

We landed in the South Luangwa National Park just half an hour away from our new camp on the banks of the South Luangwa River called Kalamu. This camp is named after a nearby tributary Chankalamu, but should really be called ‘place of a million hippos’ because wherever you look there are the rounded ears and domed heads of the river horses, and always in the background are the sounds of splashing and snorting, and of course the deep Jabba the Hut-like grunts and squeals which continue day and night.

Aside from these amphibious constants, the river is silent, broad and smooth; barely a ripple disturbs it unless it is the Pied Kingfisher breaking the surface as it dives to spear a fish. We only have a camp here in the ‘dry season’ – in other words, the rains finish somewhere in April and the place dries up enough so that we can plant a camp here that doesn’t sink knee-deep into wet sand and sticky cotton soil. And here’s the thing: as the season progresses, the river and the land around it dries up until only lagoons or oxbow lakes are left to drink from – and lots of animals come to drink here. But of course we were too early for that – that’s about August-September so they say, so we just enjoyed whatever we could see at the time.

When they call Zambia ‘the real Africa’ I always thought that was a bit much, you know, I mean, isn’t it all real? And what does 'real' mean anyway? Not to get existential here or anything. But now I think I know: there is a sense of simplicity, of down-to-earthness, of being amongst the few who are here, whether inhabitant or visitor. The sensation of hiddenness, of mystery, of Africa warily presenting some of her rarities, is something that tingles every now and then between the shoulder-blades.

This primeval feeling is echoed by the camp – literally, with none of the boardwalks of some of our other places; you tend to have to crunch through river sand to your tent (admittedly which can be quite tiring on the ankles). There are only 4 tents and each one has a clear view across the still-full river to the tall profusion of riverine trees on the other side and the Muchinga Escarpment just above their canopy. The Muchinga forms the western border of the Park, and seems shy, sitting low down on the horizon and disappearing in the strong afternoon light as the sun slides towards it, reappearing only just in time to be set behind by that now-pink ball. The light at this time is a delicate hazy pink, thanks to the fires, reflected in a bridesmaid-satin-pink off the river, broken by the black silhouettes of the hippo-heads. The colours only deepen towards dusk when suddenly the river flashes deep, thrilling orange, echoed in the waking excitement of the formerly somnambulant hippo as they snort and grunt until it sounds like I’ve been stuck in the tympanic section of an orchestra who’ve all had a little too much to drink.
The feeling of being an intrepid explorer was probably enhanced by the fact that on the first night there were too many ‘guests’ so anyone who was staff was relegated to the back-of-house section for supper, which was a lot of fun, with managers Dave and Cathy who welcomed us warmly, Charles and Linda (and cute 3-year-old daughter Tatum) who were there to help the camp get going and finish the building, the Elephant pilots, and ourselves making for a lebedik (lively) supper. Then we were driven to an old camp half an hour away – no electricity or hot water, just very pink houses built around a large defunct pool and we took cold showers but it was all part of the fun, we slept well ignoring the skittering critters in the roof above and the next morning we had to tumble out at 5 and go back to Kalamu 'cos they needed the game drive vehicle to take the guests out… anyway, by Friday afternoon we’d settled into our tent and I could daven kabbalat Shabbat on the banks of the Luangwa River with that pink ball sinking behind the mountains – baruch Hashem another dream fulfilled!

Four days at Kalamu allowed it to become home for me (as opposed to my other homes, Pafuri, Chikwenya, Damaraland… etc), so forgive me if I wax a little more lyrical here. Kalamu lies on a narrow spit of land between the river and a large open area (filled with water in the rainy season but now dry); the herbs and grasses that grow there during this season are nibbled on by puku (pronounced POOOKu, with joyful exclamation mark at end), bushbuck, impala and yellow baboons. This is not a character reference, but a description of colour; they’re exactly the same as the chacma baboons except their fur has a yellow tinge. Why? No idea. But they look cute and golden and don’t get in the food - yet. So on one end of the camp you can sit on the pool deck and watch the baboons, impala, and puku work their way down this long open space, or turn your head for the proverbial hippo-filled view. And get to see Collared Palm-thrush and Little Bee-eaters playing in the nearby bush.

Puku abound in Zambia and other central African countries, but our Krugerised eyes are not used to them and for a while I kept thinking they were impala on steroids. They’re larger, more muscular, with thicker, red fur, so that I did a double-take whenever I saw them. But then there’s also their snooty look. Impala have a glazed, blank look on their faces when they turn and look at you with those dark liquid eyes, a sort of "Wha….?" before running off. Puku on the other hand have a slightly superior look about them so that when they raise their heads from grazing to look at you, it’s more of a "And who crashed our party?" look that makes me want to shuffle my feet and move off muttering sorry, sorry all embarrassed like. But that disdain is all a sham as, having tried to outstare you for a bit, most take off (presumably to move the party to a classier neighbourhood).

Back to the camp: Next to the pool, there’s the obligatory loo with a view – over the Loo-angwa River (sorry, sorry). Now the thing about this view is that it more often than not has a hippo’s eyeball in it, so that one’s ablutionary visit tends to be a little… self-conscious as one is eyed suspiciously by said eyeball or three more, the irritated twitching of the ear makes one hurry up and apologise for being rude…

But let me tell you about the most evocative point of the camp, written at dawn on Monday. The sun is just rising behind the river, which once again is smooth as silk, the hippo sighing as they gently rise and sink in the water. I’m on a deck built into a dying fig tree which has fallen over into the river, so that I am standing practically in the middle of the river, surrounded by twisted branches and hippo-shapes. There’s a Fish Eagle calling and it seemed just the right time and place to daven hallel, it being Rosh Chodesh and all. The river is in morning mode which is slightly different to its afternoon style: the lines are sharp and clear, the bright sunlight turns grey sandbanks into subdued gold, reminiscent of a freshly baked loaf of bread. The Muchinga Mountains in the background are brown-blue; thanks to the light their nooks and crannies are clear even at this distance. The water is a secretive blue, the hippo mounds dark pink verging on brown. Sound seems clearer too and a hippo grunt echoes from one bank to the other.

I can tell this from my vantage point of the middle of the river, from inside a fallen tree. When one first arrives at Kalamu and finishes oohing and aahing at the river, the hippo, the coffee, the birds, the coffee, one is confronted with jarring sight: an enormous fig tree, meant to be the focal point of the camp under which we were meant to dine, fell over in the floods that the Park had last year. It is a raw, primal sight at first, the once-proud trunk lies half submerged in the water, with its branches pointing skywards. The sprawling root system, meant to anchor the tree, could not hold against the churning waters.

Traitors of trunk and branch, they lie at 90 degrees on the mud, reaching 6 or 7 feet into the air, clayey soil still clinging to the twisted roots. The sight slammed into me like a punch in the gut, evidence of a violent death if you will. But the people who were building the camp decided that its death should not be an eyesore, so they built a wooden bridge through the roots and then ‘up’ into the branches where they put a neat little deck, a couple of chairs. So that I can sit here being surrounded by wood: deck and tree, the beginning of giving and its end, alpha and omega. The branches above the waterline still have green leaves clinging to them – as if the tree still holds on to life. But its purpose has changed: a baby croc has taken up residence on a once-vertical branch, now a great place for a reptilian sunbake. A kingfisher perches on a branch on the lookout for fish. And the river flows on, beneath and through the tree which in the great cycle of life has a new role to play, all the while decomposing so that its nutrients become mixed with the water and feed other beings. The place of its death is a site of contemplation of the beauty and fragility of life.

And you thought I’d skip the epiphanies this time.

So what did we do at Kalamu you ask? Well I spent Shabbat in camp, except for a walk with Dave along the riverbank downstream, yellow baboons objecting as we went. On Sunday we joined guests Rex and Simone from South Africa on a trip to some hot springs situated in the Game Management Area outside the Park – these are areas where hunting can take place and there are villages there, but it is still wild and we saw some great game on the way there and back: Thornicroft’s giraffe which exist only here – just like our giraffe but a more complex pattern, snow white socks almost to their knees and a snootier expression if that’s possible. We also saw puku, impala and some very skittish elephant – oh and a leucistic waterbuck foal! That’s ‘white’ to you, but it wasn’t albino cos it still had dark eyes, not pink ones, see? This one stood out as beautiful in its whiteness and otherness, and we could only hope that its lack of discreet colouring wouldn’t be a serious impediment to its survival.

To go from the sublime to the ridiculous, I feel it is time to mention the tsetse flies. What can I tell you, these are God’s creatures to be sure, but personally I find them somewhat difficult to appreciate. I was reminded of the mishna in Pirkei Avot: "Don't be scornful of any person, and don't be disdainful of anything; For there is no person who does not have his hour and there is no thing that does not have its place." And this teaches us that even a fly has a reason to exist. I’m not sure what they would have said if they’d met tsetse flies, large buzzing pernicious insects with a painful bite, mainly found in the miombo woodlands - the minute you stop the vehicle to look through your binos at some fantastic bird, they attack with verve. These do not carry sleeping sickness any more it seems (mind you, I for one wouldn’t complain if I got a little more sleep), but the bites can still drive you insane nonetheless. Actually, I do understand their presence – they still make cattle and domestic animals sick, so that areas where tsetse are found, the wildlife ironically are protected. So once again, the mishna is correct!

To continue, on the way we went through ‘villages’ which are small clusters of huts, usually with a bunch of children who come running out when they see us, yelling "Sweeeets! Sweeets!" Gosh I wonder who taught them that. The women were dressed in an assortment of brightly coloured clothing and some were digging holes in the riverbed to wash their clothes it seemed. Didn’t seem to be for water as each village had an old fashioned well complete with bucket and winch – I experienced a weird displacement feeling when I saw that, as I expected some European Grimm’s fairytale witch to approach us, cackling…

After 50km of bumpy riding through the most unbelievably beautiful mopane woodland – tall straight mopane trees with great spreading crowns utterly unlike those twisted bushes of much of the Kruger – we came to a lovely spot with a merrily bubbling brook, just right for a picnic, so we had some of that truly incredible Zambian coffee (no really I wasn’t addicted) and some of us had homemade rusks and one of us had a granola bar, and we watched a Nile monitor as it skittered away (maybe it doesn’t like rusks?), and encouraged by guide Keennan we felt the water; it was lovely and warm!

Just 500 metres later, we arrived at the source: a spot that was lonely and deserted – the dirt track just ended in an open space (which had at least one treacherous sharp piece of twisted mopane wood as we discovered when the ominous sound of Pssshhhhhh as our tyre was pierced gave an altogether more… intrepid feel to the place; we knew there was a spare but visions of walking through the mopane back to camp did wash over us). There was no sound other than the call of a bird or the swish-swish of the wind through the mopane. The view from the hill behind us stretched miles into the blue distance, the blue hazy Muchinga showing us the way home. The little unassuming river was only different when you noticed the steam curling up from it into the branches of the trees and looking closer (after feeling the scalding water and uttering a wild yelp!) the rocks were covered in salt and other crusted minerals, looking for all the world like alien shapes made big by a microscope.

After we puttered about poking things and sitting on rocks and finding fossilised rocks too – this place is great for amateur geologists – and discussing how unlike Yellowstone this is – no crowds or big sprays of water sky-high either, but again, like much of Zambia, hidden, different, unexplored – poor Keennan and ZAWA (Zambian Wildlife Authority) scout Moses changed the tyre and back we went, via some quicksand (a weird encrusted bog, which if you stand on it and are quite light it just wobbles, but the giraffe bone lying nearby proves that the giraffe was definitely on the heavy side) and via a lovely lake for lunch ooh eizeh alliteration framed by ana trees and fig trees hanging upside down in the water. Again, no one around but ourselves, that word ‘hidden’ on the edge of one’s mind. There’s a sense of immense freedom to do and be, to metaphorically stretch out your arms until you touch the edge of the world.

Monday saw us saying goodbye regretfully to Dave, Cathy and the team – oh forgot to tell you that the majority of their staff were recruited from the building site – meaning that they took guys who came to help build the camp (casual workers who turn up for jobs when the bush telegraph says there’s one going – that’s how all our camps have been built, men arrive out of the bush quite literally to get a job and earn 8 times more in 5 months than they can earn in a year!). So Mumbwe the chef, who is turning out truly stunning meals according to the non-kosher guests, was a builder just last month. Makes you think….

Where was I? Oh yes, so we alighted our brave little Elephant and flew off to Kafue National Park, where we landed at Lunga airstrip, and Robert our guide picked us up there and whizzed us down south to Lufupa Camp. Now Lufupa turns out to be a good 6-hour drive from Lunga or more, but because we landed at 3:00 this would make for a lot of it being at night, so Robert decided to speed up a bit… quite an experience going at 60 km an hour, cheeks rippling in the breeze, air whistling through the ears, tears streaming down the face and boy is it cold! Despite this, it was an incredible game drive: 12 sable, crowned cranes, Defassa waterbuck (another endemic: instead of the toilet seat ring on the bum, this one clearly sat on a closed lid without reading the "wet paint" sign), ending off with a relaxed leopard sauntering down the road at night. We followed her as she moved off into the bush onto a dark plain where a small herd of puku lay some 800 metres away in the long grass.

As she disappeared out of sight we could dimly see the puku, ears twitching. We switched off the light and we waited in silence for 10 minutes to see if she’d attack. All around us was darkness, the only light coming from the stars and a sliver of new moon (rosh chodesh remember), lending a silver-grey tint to the sky. The horizon cut an inky black line, below which not a thing could be distinguished. The only sounds were the crickets chirping their treble counterpoint to the bass grunts of the hippos in the unseen river. Somewhere in the darkness a leopard stalked puku. And I felt Africa seep a little deeper into my bones.

We finally arrived at Lufupa, but it was late so we only really appreciated where it is the following morning when we awoke to find a large, deep, swiftly-flowing river just outside our tent. Lufupa is on the confluence of the Kafue and Lufupa rivers, both large by African standards, they don’t look like they have problems with the proverbial African droughts. The camp is more basic than most of the Wilderness camps I’ve been to (I nearly cried when I realised there was no ground Zambian coffee, oh dear, I must be addicted…), but great finishes, using twisted pieces of wood to hang toilet rolls on for example and spectacular view of the river that encourages contemplation. It also encourages boating, enjoying more hippo than even the most fervent of hippophiles can handle, and definitely the right place for the birds, as we shrieked and got seriously excited at Bohm’s Bee-eaters, Malachite Kingfisher, Black-backed Night-herons and just missed an African Finfoot, aaaah – guide Robert was fantabulous at spotting all these and more. Run by Dutchman Buzz and his wife Natalie, we spent two nights here and thoroughly enjoyed, but Wednesday saw us driving back north to the most well-known area – for Wilderness at least – the Busanga Plains.

The Plains look like miles of innocently waving grass, but are in fact to a large extent swamp. Inundated with water in the rainy season it slowly dries up after the dry season begins in about May, but even in July there were many areas still under a few centimetres of water – which is crucial if you want to drive through; you rapidly find just how sticky and clingy that soil is, so the only way through is with a mokoro which is pushed manually through the channels with luggage and people as it’s just a little to shallow even for them! Two other methods are to remove shoes and socks and wade – or you can take a helicopter for a kilometre or so… Now that’s an interesting little hop – we got into the heli (scary getting in because my imagination was rife with visions of my head being taken off by the swirling blades), which rose up in the air like a lift (held on by Willy Wonka’s sky-hooks perhaps?), zooted about 2km and dropped like a stone back to earth – a very sexy lift! Incredibly hyped when we got out of that one I must say and, as much as I don’t mind wading in mud, this was a lot more fun!

Oh but I was describing the plains: The waving grassland reminded me of the sea – a smoothness that is deceptive as it hides a host of life heard but not seen: from Crowned Cranes whinging at each other to the shrill alarm whistle of the puku, Coucals hoot and Fish Eagles call. And throughout the waving grass up pop the tree islands: large humps of what were originally termite mounds now overgrown with palms, large fig and sausage trees. And the camp we stayed at - Busanga Bush Camp (or BBC as it is fondly known) – is on one of the smaller islands, covered with fig trees, under which lie four tents. This camp got mega-points and much yelps of excitement from me, especially after I took a shower under a sycomore fig tree. Yes, the tents – of canvas and gauze – have a roof as usual in the bedroom side of things, but then the roof ends before the walls do so that the toilet, basin and shower are all completely open to the sky or in this case the trees. This is stunning when you look up into green, twirling leaves and colourful flowers, but a slight ‘downfall’ pardon the pun is the fact that the fig trees are in fruit at present so that birds and monkeys are all in the trees fressing away like Jews at a shul brocha. At this point gravity takes on vital importance when one might be hit on the head by a rotten fruit, or bird or monkey wee while showering – kind of defeats the purpose you understand. But it does add that frisson of excitement to even a mundane wash as one never quite knows if a rotten fruit will join the shampooing process, or as the rustling of leaves above indicates the possible fall of something gooey….

An afternoon drive turned up a large herd of roan antelope – an incredibly rare species in Kruger but here there is a herd of 28 which is amazing to see as aside from their rare status, they are the second largest antelope in Africa. Then on a termite mound lay a lioness and her two cubs who tried to outstare us with those huge round eyes – we watched them watching us watching them until we were all confused and left. The sun, thanks to the haze that hangs over the plains (a mixture of rising water vapour off the still-wet plains and the Zambian national
pastime) set in spectacular splendour, a large, round, shimmering pink ball that moved obligingly and scenically through the branches of a tree before slipping away.

The only thing better than sipping Zambian coffee while watching the sun rise through the mist over the plains of green and gold, lechwe grazing and Crowned Cranes dancing in the bright early morning haze, is being told by Shani the manager that "we’re just off to see the lion on the next termite mound, wanna come?" and bouncing off to do just that. Then just watching as she sauntered along (the lion not Shani), lit by the early morning sun, in front of that herd of roan who clearly didn’t know whether to run or stand and behaved suitably stupidly, yet backlit beautifully for the photo shoot!

Leaving at this point would have been an anticlimax but we had a ‘heli flip’ back to Lunga airstrip and oh my word! The helicopter rises straight up, doing the sky-hook thing, then does an abrupt turn and suddenly we’re at right angles to the Earth, staring over my left shoulder at the tiny buffalo herd amongst the trees. Then we zoom along close enough to the ground to see a pair of Wattled Cranes and their youngster spread their wings in alarm before we’ve left them far behind, or peer right into the nest of a pair of Fish Eagles on the top of a knobthorn tree directly below, only to rise sharply to look over vast swathes of woodland that disappears over the curve of the Earth in all directions.

And after that ANYTHING would be an anticlimax but truth be told, tummy was glad to get down to Earth, especially when we were met by Raymond from Lunga who had set up coffee (Yes!) and biscuits in the bush on the side of the airstrip, a last satisfying indulgence before flying south once more to Livingstone, dipping our wings over the great Victoria Falls in fond farewell to the ‘real’ Africa.