MADONNA

Lake Kariba is 222 kilometres long, and in places up to 40 kilometres wide. We were billeted at Dave and Mandy’s place. They have a makeshift lodge with a green swimming pool. The green swimming pool is trying to be a movie star in a Beverley Hills garden, and looks out of place here in the African bush. The pool is kidney-shaped, and to give the effect of naturalness is surrounded by a pile of red granite. It is meant to evoke feelings of refreshment and tranquility, as though you had been five months following in the footsteps of Livingstone, hot bitten, bothered and in need of a bath, then all of a sudden you stumble out of the undergrowth, and there it is, the object of your heart’s desire, a green swimming pool straight out of a Beverley Hills garden. The pool is filled with water from the lake so that visitors can genuinely say, "I swam in Lake Kariba". From a hosepipe wedged in between the red granite rocks, a fountain of water spurts into the green pool and churns up the algae. You couldn’t see the bottom of the pool and you couldn’t see the kids if they swam in it. We never let the kids swim in the green pool. "Crocodiles," we’d say, "there are crocodiles in that pool."
Crocs are rarely seen out in the middle of the lake; it’s too far for them to swim there and too far to swim back. For the ultimate in crocodile protection though, some of the larger cruise boats carry a large steel mesh cage, and if you want to swim in the lake to cool down, sober up, or escape the mosquitoes, the cage is dropped over the side, for you to swim in it. The cages are designed to take a maximum of four.
On a rocky outcrop above the bay, overlooking the lake, Dave had built a semi-circular wooden deck; we would go there in the late afternoon with a bag of popcorn to listen to the haunting cries of the resident pair of fish eagles and sip sundowners. The view from the deck is a spectacular wide-screen panorama with surround-sound, with a cane bar and three broken bar stools. When you reach the deck, it has a sign at the entrance, which says ‘Welcome to Cinema Paradiso.’ Mandy really liked that movie and saw it five times on a visit to Johannesburg. The deck has two rows of seats marked F1/13 and
G1/13. The two rows of seats are from the old Victory Cinema in Bulawayo. Some of the chairs have bullet holes in them and cigarette burns on the armrests, but on the whole, are still quite comfortable. We were two families of four, so the cinema was never crowded, and you could sit pretty much where you wanted to. I always sat in F1, preferring the aisle seat, and being a little further back from the screen.



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It was about 6pm; the sun was beginning to panel beat the water with burnt shades of copper, highlighting the half-submerged trees at the water’s edge, giving their branches the appearance of rusty bent nails hammered into a Salvador Dali canvas, by an up-and-coming art nouveau film director. The movie was about to begin, and we settled into our seats, popcorn, Cokes and a six-pack of ice-cold Zambezi’s at the ready. The fish eagles performed on cue, calling to each other from across the bay, their unmistakable cry augmented by a flock of white-faced ducks flying in a ‘V’ formation through frame. Greenshanks and white-crowned plovers waded in the shallows at the edge of the cove, while a pair of tropical boubou shrikes struck up an early evening chorus in a nearby baobab tree.
Not far away, there is a small lake town called Binga. Binga has two hotels, a crocodile farm and a Lord Mayor. It is also home to hundreds of houseboats in various states of disrepair. Binga is the capital of houseboat repair, a breakers’ yard for derelict boats, and a haven for smugglers bringing contraband to and from Zambia, whisky, chocolate and soap being the most popular items of fare. During the peak holiday season, a paddle-steamer by the name of White Spirit is packed with tourists, and at 4pm, leaves Binga on a sunset booze-cruise to Mlibizi.
White Spirit weighed anchor just right of center screen; you could hear the tortured sounds of Abba signing ‘Dancing Queen’ and the sound of the chains in the pulleys as the swimming cage lowered into the water at the back of the boat. They had been booze cruising for two hours, and the now half-crazed, half-naked tourists were in full swing. We could seem them quite clearly through binoculars, as they danced and lurched about the deck. Some of them were seasick, and hung over the boat rails throwing up salted peanuts and pink gins into the water, while others hung lifelessly in the rigging, like dead corpses waiting for a burial at sea. As the cage hit the water, nine tourists stripped off their remaining clothes and followed it. They were trying to dance and sing along with Abba, as they fell like lemmings, one by one, into the bubbling water. In between the shrieks of laughter and ‘She’s a Dancing Queen, oh yeah,’ a pod of enemy ‘U-boats’ slipped silently into the water from the shore, and headed purposefully towards the floating gin palace.
This was like a sequel to ‘Jaws’, with those first opening bars of the film resurfacing through the haze of movie memory, bringing back that all-too-familiar feeling of abject shark terror. The horror movie unfolding before us though, was fast turning into a PG 21 rating, and we had to blindfold the kids and crack open another round of ice-cold Zambezi’s before we could continue to watch. Submerged in water, a crocodile is a difficult animal to see, often



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mistaken for a floating log or a weed-covered piece of driftwood. At dusk, it is almost impossible to see. We shouted words of warning and waved, but the boat was too far out for our cries to be heard. When a croc attacks, it moves with lightning speed; it is like a Polaris nuclear attack missile, and can launch itself from the water, gaining the distance of its own body length in less time than you can say "it". If you try and say "dead meat", that’s exactly what you’ll be.
Woken from her afternoon nap by all the screaming and shouting, Mandy arrived at the deck, out of breath and wielding a loaded flare gun. A red flare is for ‘man lost at sea’. A green flare, appropriately, is an early warning crocodile attack signal. As the green flare burst in the orange sky, the boat’s siren blared like a panic-stricken sheep, sending a flock of red-billed francolins skyward in an explosion of feathers and bird confusion. The confusion on board the White Spirit, however, was far worse. Half the people on deck were frantically putting on life jackets, thinking the siren meant abandon ship, and had to be restrained by the four-man boat crew from leaping into the jaws of the waiting crocodiles. Meantime, the crocodiles gathered in frenzy around the steel mesh cage, thrashing about and biting each other in an attempt to be first to savour the abundance of succulent flesh that writhed within. As the electric winch pulled the cage from the water, the crocs, with snapping jaws, leapt after it; they looked like dusky dolphins chasing Frisbees a the Durban Aquarium.
It’s a remarkable sight, nine naked people crammed in a steel cage built for four; it’s even more remarkable when the nine naked people in a steel cage built for four are hanging from the back of a boat that is heading for Binga.

Long before the dam was built, the valley belonged to the Batonga tribe, who gave the lake its name. Kariba refers to a large rock, which protrudes out of the raging waters in a narrow gorge close to the dam wall. Batonga legend has it that the rock, now submerged in 100 feet of water, was the home of the great river god Nyaminyami.
Nyaminyami was, and still is, very precious about his rock. If a goat or a cow, or a young boy, or even a courting couple, ventured on to the rock or anywhere close to it, Nyaminyami would rise from the depths of the river, and with one giant intake of breath, suck the trespassers into the depths of the river. When things go wrong with the dam, the Batonga people shake their heads knowingly and say, "Nyaminyami is still angry."



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We had taken the flat-bottomed boat to Crocodile Cove, mooring it between the bleached branches of two submerged trees. Our kids had fished the live bait earlier, a fine catch of small lake bream that swam happily in the Coleman cool box, oblivious of their future growth prospects and the continuation of their species. We also had a dozen or so fresh kapenta, a small sardine-like fish. Kapenta were introduced to the lake in 1967 from Lake Tanganyika, shoals of them, airlifted in specially-designed kapenta tanks, and then distributed throughout the lake. Kapenta is a rich source of protein and good fishing bait. Although their numbers are being depleted from over-fishing, they still support a large number of licensed rigs operating the lake. The rigs look like shrimp boats, which in turn look like giant shrimps, with spindly arms and two arc lamps in the rigging, that look like eyes.
They fish at night when nobody is looking.
A big fat croc, about 3,5 metres long and 2 metres wide, basked in the sun at the far side of the cove. It looked like Pavarotti after a hard day’s eating at Papa Luigi’s Big Time Taverna. As we moored the boat, its yellow snide eyes opened as if to check out another plate of fettuccine with roast garlic, basil and herbs, and then it slid ominously into the water.
We fished that cove through the dead branches for an hour, with no result. You could have dumped a ton of damaged kapenta wearing ‘best eaten before sunset sell-by dates, and had the same result.
I decided to change my rig, and slipped on a pretty silver spoon with brass and ruby beads strung out along the shank of the treble hook. During the third retrieve, the spoon snagged. When the hook snags, it’s either caught in the weed or between bunches of rocks on the bottom. Given the fact that the spoon was light and wouldn’t trawl that deep, it could only have been snagged in a submerged tree. I tightened the line and flipped the bail bar on to hold, then put the rod into the rod holder attached to the inside of the boat, fired up a cigarette, cracked open an ice-cold Zambezi, and settled into a chair. I would wait until we moved location, and use the boat from a different angle, to prise the snagged spoon free.
The tiger rig didn’t belong to me; it belonged to Nigel, a close friend and tiger-fishing expert. Nigel was born in Zimbabwe and raised on a tobacco farm, where for most of his early childhood, he would practice the art of rolling cigarettes. He would use the brown paper from the maizemeal bags, and even though the hand-made cigarettes looked more like Winston Churchill cigars, they were very popular with the Batonga people, who could make one cigarette last a week. Nigel sold them in packs of ten, and by the time he had turned eight, had made enough money to buy his first tiger rod.



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Nigel is also a very talented cartoonist and has his own website. You can look up his work at burningduck.co.za, or better still you can meet him in person for a hands-on demonstration. You can find him on most Friday afternoons at the Wheatsheaf. If you buy him a Carling Black Label and say "Draw me a picture of Robert Mugabe fly-fishing for tiger at the Deka Rapids,"he will do just that on the back of a cigarette box, while simultaneously using his other hand to roll a cigarette. In the time it takes to roll the cigarette, the caricature of Robert Mugabe fly-fishing for tiger at the Deka Rapids will be complete, and you’ll have to buy him another beer and wait for him to finish smoking all of the cigarettes in the box, before he’ll give it to you.
Nigel is very passionate about tiger-fishing and motorbikes. When he heard we were planning a trip to Kariba, his left eye lit up with a sparkle and his right eye swiveled back to search his brain for any signs of opportunity. I should have known then that he was scheming something, when he insisted that I borrow his tiger rig and tackle box.
When Nigel left the Wheatsheaf, he didn’t point the yellow BMW touring bike toward home. Instead he headed straight for Bikers Bridge at Hartebeespoort Dam.
Nigel needed to be near water, to pray.
Giant barbels live under the bridge. You can hear them writhing and sloshing about, and on a moonlit night, you can even see their revolting snake-like whiskers as they feel around the water for dead bodies for garbage. The giant barbel is a relatively small catfish when compared to its cousins in Lake Kariba. The catfish in Lake Kariba are called Vunda, and can grow up to 200lbs. If you hook into a Vunda, it can tow your boat for miles, and if you swim too close to one, it can swallow you whole. The divers who inspect the Kariba dam wall for hairline cracks are some of the highest-paid divers in the world. They also have the highest rate of depression and mental disorders, and usually end up strapped to a bed in mental institutions shouting
"Vunda! Vunda!"
Hartebeespoort Dam is a long way from Kariba, but for Nigel it was the next best thing. He would begin the prayer by doing short 10-metre jackboot style
sprints backwards and forwards on the gravel bank, while kicking up stones and howling at the moon in Tonga. Then he would stop and throw old sparkplugs at the catfish under the bridge. The Batonga tribe would have used spears of course, but Nigel didn’t have a spear, he had to improvise with a bag of old sparkplugs that he kept in a black vanity case strapped to his bike. Every time Nigel hit a catfish, it would make a soft plop sound, and then he would drop to his knees, raise his arms in the air and fall forward chanting
"Nyaminyami, Nyaminyami."



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When he prayed in this way, he always wore his bike helmet with built-in stereo and cellphone reception. This provided him with excellent protection when he banged his head on the gravel.
Nigel counted five soft plops "That should be enough," he thought. "Enough to please Nyaminyami." But would it be enough to guarantee a new tiger rig?
It’s a sickening sound, the sound of ripping metal. And it’s an equally sick sight to see $500 disappearing in a trail of bubbles. When it struck, it struck with such force that it sheered the steel bolts in the rod holder, sending them ricocheting around the deck like stray bullets looking for a home. It all happened so quickly in real time, but in the mind’s eye, it happened in slow motion. It was like watching a replay of a high board diver making a perfect 10, and for a moment it seemed so close, close enough to reach out and touch and then it was out of reach and travelling at a hundred miles an hour to the depths below. As I watched the tiger rod gain speed, the impulse to dive in after it receded, to be replaced with a great sense of loss, not so much for Nigel’s tiger rig or the $500 to replace it, but more for the fish or whatever it was that had taken a shine to my pretty silver spoon. As I turned to look at the rest of the crew, who were still in shock and looking like a display of frozen wax models from Madame Tussaud’s, Macbeth the boat captain looked at me and knowingly shook his head.
"Don’t tell me," I said, "Nyaminyami is still very angry."
The spread of malaria is one of the biggest health threats to sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of dollars go into research laboratories throughout the world, in an attempt to slow it down. Recent research is focussed on disarming the mosquito host with a bug that kills the bug inside the bug that the bug is carrying, and thereby eradicating the disease forever. That’s a long way off though, and in the meantime you have to take the necessary precautions when entering a high-risk zone. Zimbabwe is a high-risk zone.
Before you enter Zimbabwe, you have to enter your GP’s waiting room with your whole family and wait for an hour before he can see you, so that he can prescribe the correct prophylactic drug for your condition. If you are taking chronic medicine like anti-depressants, he will prescribe Fansidar, which you have to remember to take twice a day. If you are reasonably healthy and not on chronic medicines, he may prescribe a nuclear bomb called Mefloquine. This you have to remember to take once a week for six weeks. If you are under seven or extremely underweight, he may prescribe Chloroquine in syrup form, to be taken once a day, and if you are between seven and



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eighteen he may prescribe Chloroquine in tablet form, to be taken twice a day.
For a family of four, this can become quite confusing. When you are two families of four on holiday, it can become very confusing.
"Oh, I’m feeling nauseous." As soon as someone mentioned this, or alluded to the topic of dysentery or irregular bowel movements, a conversation about prophylaxis would ensue. "Oh, you too," Hazel would say to Jenny. "What are you on? I was feeling quite nauseous earlier and I’m sure it’s the Danaquine. I have to take it twice a day, I think. I’m not really sure actually.
I left the bottle at home with the instructions on the label. Bought one of these pill boxes with a little compartment for each day so we know if we miss a day, except I‘m not sure how many to take." "Mom. How many times a day do I have to take mine?" Ceinwen interrupted, as did Jonathan, who asked the same question. "One and a quarter once a day, I think," came the reply. "No, I’m sure its once a day. It’s definitely once a day and Jonathan’s is one and a half twice a day, that’s three--quarters in the morning and three quarters in the evening." Graham who asked Jenny how many times a day Lindsey and Ashleigh had to take theirs followed this. "Twice a day. I’m sure it’s twice a day," she replied, "but yours is once a day."
My dosage was less confusing, a bomb, swallowed once a week with Coke, to disguise the bitter taste. However, I could not remember on which day I had started the course. Thursday, Friday or Sunday?
By the time the eight of us had exchanged the information on our medication and dosage, I had counted five different prophylactics and seven different ways to take them.
Tropical and sub-tropical mosquitoes have exotic life-threatening names, such as Aedes, Anopheles and Culex. Only the female of the species bite and suck blood, which they need to produce eggs. If Anopheles and Culex are out cruising looking for a quick bite or takeaway, and they spot an exposed earlobe, it’s dinner for them and yellow fever for you, or a healthy dose of meningitis. Aedus is the one to watch though, she carries a potent punch of malaria and a Bob Dylan song sheet, ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’, which is what you will be doing if you don’t recognize the symptoms in time.
So prevention is better than cure, and at dusk every day we would douse the rooms with flying insect spray, hang insect strips from the ceiling, plug in the electric vaporiser and light up the mosquito coils. This would be followed by a mosquito roll-call, and out would come the roll-on Tabard, the Tabard cream and the Tabard spray, followed by a spritz of Peaceful Sleep for good measure. Once every one was sufficiently smothered and smelling like a



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Bayer laboratory experiment, we would get dressed. Long socks, long trousers, long-sleeved shirts, earmuffs and a floppy hat with mosquito net hanging from the brim; and although we looked like a lost tribe of Iranian bee-keepers, we at least felt safe.
Safe, that is until Graham decided to stir the coals on the barbeque.
We lay anchored in a small bay. Reeds grew in the shallows and it looked a good spot for early evening tiger. On the other side, a wooden jetty romantically juxtaposed itself with an abandoned kapenta factory. The semi-rusted corrugated sheeting picked up the orange hues of the setting sun, and made the scene quite theatrical. It reminded me of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid trout-fishing near an old mine at Sweetwater Creek, and then diving into the creek when the Mexican border patrol dynamited the mine-shaft.
We had decided to have a sundowner barbeque on the lake, and persuaded Macbeth to load the 50-gallon petrol half drum on to the front end of the boat.
"A holiday isn’t a holiday without a barbie on the boat," we said. " And here’s $20 for your trouble." Captain Macbeth thought it was a great idea. Captain Macbeth and his crew grinned from ear to ear.
It was a beautiful evening, the burnt-red fire glow of the setting sun, the orange sparks off the barbie spiraling upward, offset against the dark of the reeds, and then a skein of spur winged geese flying south through a chocolate box sky. This was barbie heaven. The kids fished, we fished, and then gave up and drank wine, while the boerewors sizzled temptingly on the hot coals.
When it comes time to cook the steak (a beef fillet, split down the length and stuffed with garlic, coriander seeds, black pepper and pickled Madagascan green peppercorns, smothered in Dijon mustard and then stapled back together with camel thorns), the fire needed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
As Graham bent down to blow wine fumes into the coals, a squadron of Anopheles attacked the boat; at about the same time, his floppy hat with dangling mosquito net caught fire. Without hesitation, Jenny whipped out a can of insect repellant and counter-attacked the blood-sucking parasites with a prolonged spray from the aerosol can, which became a flame-thrower when it ignited from Graham’s burning hat. The flame-thrower was certainly more
effective than the spray, and within no time at all, the menacing mosquitoes had fled, and the boat was on fire.
It took three bottles of Zambezi and a bucket of water from the lake to douse the flames, and then we spent the next half hour thanking the river god Nyaminyami that no one was seriously hurt.



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We spent another three days fishing the lake, and apart from five venomous strikes, we were unsuccessful in our attempts to land a tiger.
Graham didn’t fish much though, and spent most of his time sitting next to the green pool, nursing his head and reading books on Livingstone and Stanley, and the St John’s First Aid Guide to Minor Burns and Abrasions. He had lost his hat, his eyebrows and most of his hair in the fire, and looked like a half-embalmed mummy, a living corpse that had escaped from a tomb to wander deliriously around the green pool, muttering strange incantations at a detailed map of the area, which every now and again he would stub with his bandaged finder, as if to curse the spot where his head got burnt.
Graham loped around like a bear with a sore head, grumpy, irritable and anxious to move on. Although we had made no prior bookings, our next port of call was to be the ‘The Smoke that Thunders;’ Victoria Falls.
On the whole, Zimbabwe is one of those African countries that carry a legacy of civil war, poverty, poor economy, a lack of basic commodities, a shortage of petrol and a disintegrating infrastructure. Apart from poaching, smuggling and the seizure of white-owned farms, this has led to a proliferation of community cottage industries.
Whichever road you travel on, beware of the warthog salesmen. They tend to rove in small bands of about six, and are usually accompanied by a charcoal burner. A warthog salesman can hear you approaching from 10 kilometers away, simply by putting an ear to the ground. This gives him time to wake his accomplices, who then, through a series of relay signals, alert the nearby villages of your imminent arrival. As soon as visual contact of your final approach has been established from a scout in a nearby tree, the warthog salesman will run into the middle of the road waving a wooden warthog in the air. By the time you slam on anchors and the smoke from your burning tyres has cleared, the warthog salesman and his accomplices will be at your windows, waving the entire contents of Noah’s Ark at you. Crocs, hippos, elephants, zebras, honey badgers, rhinos, buffaloes, chameleons, giraffes and so on.
The sale of hand-carved giraffe has become a phenomenon that has spread throughout Southern Africa. Herds of wooden giraffe can be found almost anywhere, and are now part of the natural landscape. They come in varying degrees of size, from half a meter to 3 meters in height, and are carved
out of kiaat. At the last audited count, there were 753 000 wooden giraffe waiting to be sold. The larger herds can be found at high-density tourist destinations such as Cape Point, where herds of up to 500 have been known


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to concentrate at the entrance to the reserve. Other nature reserves throughout the country report similar statistics. Younger herds of about half a meter to a meter can also be found congregating en masse at all international departure points, including airports and international yacht basins. The wooden giraffe has proved to be so popular with yachtsmen that only licensed giraffe sellers are allowed to operate in the basins. A registered giraffe seller can make a lot of money in this lucrative market. Even his sought-after license can fetch up to $25 000 if sold on the black market, The largest herd of giraffe to be sold at one time though, came from a curio shop at Johannesburg International Airport, when 250 young Zambian giraffe were sold to a Bolivian tour group departing for Scotland. We even have a resident herd of about 50 not more than 100 meters from the Wheatsheaf. They stand under the trees that line the Nicol Highway.
Over the last three years, it is estimated that over 3,5 million giraffes have been sold. That’s over a million a year.
That’s a lot of trees.
As we came to a screeching halt in front of the warthog salesman waving a wooden warthog in the air, the villagers appeared silently from behind the marula trees that lined the road. They had come to watch the trade. This was like a piece out of ‘How the West was Won’, when the pioneers traded copious amounts of Kentucky whisky with the indigenous tribes of North America, in exchange for buffalo skins and gold. As we pulled our cars over to the verge, a young sexy giraffe of about 2 metres caught my eye. She was slim and sophisticated and stood out from the crowd, she was like a madonna icon in a room full of twisted gargoyles. She didn’t come cheap though; one button-down shirt, three pairs of jeans, a Nike T-shirt that said ‘Catch the Wave. Just do It.’ and a pair of old sandals with a broken strap is what she cost.
By the time we left, we had successfully bartered for three clay pots, two woven baskets, two small zebras, six small soapstone hippos and a wooden crocodile. The wooden crocodile is hollow and has a lid inserted into its back.
It looks like a crocodile teapot, and when people say, "Is that a crocodile teapot?" I have to say "Yes, it is trying hard to be a crocodile teapot, but we only use it for ornamental purposes; and we have never used it to make tea on account of the fact that it doesn’t have a spout."
"Oh, I see," they say, "From Africa, is it?"
"Yes," I say. "Only in Africa can you find a wooden crocodile that is trying to be a teapot. Only in Africa."


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Hwange National Park is a vast tract of land covering 14 600 square kilometres. It is home to about 30 000 elephant. With a network of 482 kilometres of game-viewing roads, it is not uncommon to come across a herd of 100 elephant. It you come across a herd of 100 elephant on the move, it’s no good praying to Nyaminyami, he won’t hear you. Besides, he lives in the river. No, you have to pray to your own god. And if you don’t have one, become a Buddhist immediately and pray you’ll come back as a rodent.
There are two things elephant are afraid of; one is a mouse and the other is the sound of crashing cymbals.
We entered Hwange National Park at Main and were to exit at Sinamatella; a day’s drive at the most, which would bring us to Victoria Falls before sunset. Madonna, the wooden giraffe, stood on the back seat between the kids, with her neck sticking out of the sunroof. Madonna had the best game view of all, second to Mickey.
Mickey the Mouse sat mounted at the front end of the bonnet. We had a lot of faith in Mickey and always took him with us on game drives, as a deterrent and necessary precaution against charging elephant.
The roads in Hwange are generally in a state of disrepair, and are festooned with potholes and craters and dongas and fallen trees. It’s wise therefore to take a 4x4. The viewing platforms situated near watering holes are, however, magnificent. You can spend a whole day just sitting there like a fixed frame camcorder, watching the events of the watering hole unfold before you.
There is a watering hole near the gate at Main, and we spend a good hour there. There had been a kill, an impala by the look of it, its hind legs sticking out of the water near the edge of the hole. A large croc, out to lunch, thrashed it about like a wild dog with a bone, tossing it in the air, catching it in its snapping jaws and then ripping off a leg as thought it were a take-away from Al’s Gourmet Chicken. A second croc waited patiently on the bank, presuming to dine on the leftovers when the first croc developed indigestion or the need to have a mid-morning nap. Curious onlookers came and went: a couple of wildebeest, giraffe, zebra and a small herd of inquisitive tsessebe, shy and skittish, as though out on a wilderness survival course. The watering hole is at the foot of a long sloping grassy plain that sweeps up and over a hill.
Four elephant came strolling down that hill; they were elephant soldiers sent on ahead to check out the hole for signs of danger. This was too much for the croc, who had no ambition to be trampled into a crocodile pâté, and decided to leave. As the croc slid into the water and out of sight, the four elephant


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took up positions at various points around the hole and waited. Before too long the ground began to shake, the viewing platform began to vibrate, and then the deafening sound of thunder filled the air. It was like the charge of the Light Brigade through the Khyber Pass, but instead of horse infantry this was a platoon of charging elephant. This was the elephants’ day out, a treat for the whole family. They rumbled down the hill, bellowing and laughing and trumpeting, like a bunch of kids who have never seen the sea before. An old bull with tusks the size of a forklift truck trumpeted wildly from the rear, as the herd spilled on and fell crashing and splashing into the water. Soon the watering hole looked like a venue for the elephant mud-wrestling championships of the world.
They didn’t stay long; maybe half an hour, and then they collected themselves together, counted the children, and slowly moved off into the bush, the old bull following closely behind.
You get them from time to time. They are known as the black sheep of the family; in this case a young rogue bull, testosterone levels out of control no doubt, and subsequently ostracised from the herd. When you come across them, they are usually irritable, bad-tempered, and looking to take out their frustration on anything that moves.
When we came across him standing in the middle of the track, ears flapping like Icarus in a desperate attempt to fly, there was no way to go forward and no way to go back. A Mexican standoff with an angry elephant on the broken road to Sinamatella is not an event you want to attend. Even Mickey was proving to have no effect whatsoever. It was time to play the music. Forty minutes of Buddhists chanting to the accompaniment of crashing cymbals slotted into the CD shuttle and were turned up to full volume with maximum treble.
The abrasive cacophony of sound had the desired effect, and the elephant took off like a greyhound, tail between its legs.
Black rhinos don’t like that music much either, the proof of which was brought to bear, when as we moved on, a black rhino charged the back of Graham’s vehicle, punching a hole in the back door and puncturing the spare tyre.
With one spare tyre between two vehicles, the ‘The Smoke that Thunders’ seemed a long way off.
In the 1800’s, the Kololo tribe described the Falls as ‘Mosi-oa-Tunya’ or ‘The Smoke that Thunders.’ When Livingstone discovered them in 1855, he promptly re-named them after the Queen of England. Now, everyone remembers Queen Victoria, and no one remembers the Kololo tribe.

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Victoria Falls is a thriving little town teeming with tourists. Backpackers, campers, overlanders in Kombis and old Bedfords, weekend coach tours and fly-in safaris, churchgoers, university students, film stars and rock stars and football players, honeymooners, divorcees and fishermen, bankers, businessmen and golfers, and each of them, almost without exception, carry a wooden giraffe tucked under the arm or over the shoulder, or have them sticking out of the sunroofs of their vehicles.
We arrived at Victoria Falls in the early evening and I was instantly rewarded when we stopped at a set of traffic lights. A group of golfers crossed the road, pulling their golf carts; in each golf bag a wooden giraffe. The giraffes looked happy to be out for an evening stroll, and I was happy that Madonna was happy, that Madonna would not be alone.
During the rainy season, when the great Zambezi becomes a swollen torrent of water desperately seeking a way back to the sea, it really begins to smoke and thunder, leaping wild and out of control over the sheer black basalt rift at 546 million cubic metres per minute, and sending up plumes of spray that can be seen for miles around.
Appropriately, we managed to get a one night booking at the Spray View Hotel, which didn’t have a view at all, and the only spray to be found came from the garden sprinklers, or the shower when it worked. Still, we were grateful to find accommodation, cramped though it was: two single beds, two mosquito coils, a 1951 General Electric fan and a mattress on the floor for the kids.
The Spray View Hotel has an Olympic-sized swimming pool (under repair) and an up-market bar where interesting people wait for other interesting people to arrive. There is a tangible sense of excitement that prevails throughout Victoria Falls, as everyone takes on the role of would-be explorer about to discover the Falls for the first time. A lot of people wear pith helmets and Gucci safari gear, and when they stride into the up-market bar at the Spray View, they stop before they get to the bar and look around, as though searching the vast grassy plains for signs of predators. Once everyone at the bar has had sufficient time to check out their gear, they continue striding up to the person they are meeting and say "Ah! Goldsmith, I presume?" and then Goldsmith chuckles politely at the sheer inventiveness of it all. This happened five times during the half hour I spent at the bar. The worst of which was "Oh! Betty I presume? And don’t you look divine in that outfit, doll." Betty was a guy. When Graham walked in, I had to say "Ah! Tutenkhamen, I presume?"


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Graham didn’t laugh but the barman did and offered him a flaming Sambucca. "It’ll soothe the pain," he said.
"The first impression was unmistakeable; Immense power, the raw energy unleashed when the entire Zambezi leaps wildly into a black two kilometre-wide abyss. The scale is massive, the spectacle spellbinding and perpetually changing. The Falls hiss and roar as if possessed, they rumble and crash like thunder. Vast clouds spew and billow out from the seething cauldron of the dark impenetrable depths. The moving water creates a magnetism that sucks you closer, so that you recoil in horror to quench a subliminal sacrificial urge."
Jumbo Williams: Zambezi, River of Africa.
That’s just the way it is. A total assault on the senses that sets the heart pounding and the adrenalin pumping through your arteries, as if to mimic the sheer energy of the spectacle before you.
We gazed in awe at the awe-inspiring sight; all eight of us wearing bright yellow oilskins and lashed together with nylon rope for fear of losing the kids in the perpetual mist. We looked like a mutinous crew from an I&J deep sea-fishing trawler, as we looked out suspiciously over Knife Edge Bridge to the Boiling Pot, where the river turns and heads down the Batoka Gorge. Angels live in there, and if you are lucky enough, you might see one surfing the rainbows on a board made of glass. "… Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight." Livingstone said that in 1857. I think Livingstone was right. Didn’t see an angel though, and Graham’s bandages were getting soaked, so we headed back through the rainforest along the black lip of the cataract, in search of a hot cup of tea and a round of cucumber sandwiches.
The Victoria Falls Hotel is Edwardian elegance at its best, and was built in 1904, when the Cape to Cairo railroad reached the falls. It has 140 refurbished suites, a dining room, which is named after Doctor Livingstone, a refectory room named after Sir Stanley, and the Bulawayo Room, where one can retire after dinner to chew on a cigar, sip Remy Martin and mingle with the other distinguished guests. You could tell at a glance that we didn’t belong, by the way we nibbled at our cucumber sandwiches to make them last. You had to be a relative of Queen Victoria or a Texas oil baron to afford a round of cucumber sandwiches at the Vic Falls Hotel. Although we felt out of place, we


- 15 -

took comfort in the fact that we were actually here, sitting on Stanley’s Terrace sipping tea from bone china cups and nibbling cucumber sandwiches, while our clothes, draped over the wickerwork chairs, dried out in the sun. Stanley’s Terrace overlooks Queen Victoria Bridge, where bungee jumpers queue to play body-tag with the angels in the gorge below. You can hear them screaming when the leap off the bridge, and then the scream fades away as they plummet down through the abyss toward the raging Zambezi 100 feet below. I think that if Livingstone were alive today, he would have seized the chance to jump the bridge and touch the angels.
The he would write to the Queen and say, "I have been touched by and angel." And she would reply, "By what name does this angel that has touched you be known?"
Knowing full well that the Queen would approve, he would reply, "Why, the angel’s name is Victoria. Victoria."
We took the road to Binga, opting for a 2-day houseboat excursion up the lower Zambezi instead of a visit to Chobe. On the way we passed a 16-wheeler flatbed truck. It had flashing orange hazard lights and a
red-and-white chevron sign fixed to the back that said ‘ABNORMAL LOAD IN TRANSIT’. Beneath the sign, the all-too-familiar South African number plate left little doubt of its destination. Three baobab trees stood upright on the flatbed of the truck, their branches like fingers pointing accusingly at God. They were tied with steel chains so they had no way of escape, and looked uncomfortable in their bondage; and I wonder to what lengths the Zimbabweans would go to next in order to make an extra dollar?
We stayed the night at a rustic holiday resort nestling on the edge of the lake at Mlibizi. The rustic resort had a rustic bar with an assortment of stuffed fish, mostly trophy tigers, hanging on the wall. Next to the stuffed fish, in a glass frame, were photographs of the fishermen who had caught the fish. Most of the fishermen had red cherry faces and silly grins, as though bashful of the camera, and each held his dead fish in a different way. Some would be kneeling in the posture of proposal, the dead fish laying flat across their arms like an offer of sacrifice, some would be holding up their dead fish with fingers thrust through the gills. The kissing pictures were the best, though; you have to really look passionate when you go for a kissing picture, and you could tell
which of the guys had been practicing, by the way they pursed their lips and crinkled up their eyes when they kissed the fish. Dead fish-kissing is a definite art, and if performed correctly, adds another dimension to the appreciation and love of fish and fishing.


- 16 -

The two-tier, fully-equipped houseboat could berth up to sixteen people quite comfortably, and we were only eight with a crew of two: Captain Tunya (Thunder) and a cook named Habit, pronounced ‘Habeet’. We had arrived at Binga at 6am; a little worse for wear after an evening at the rustic bar and a late night barbeque next to the lake. The resort was fairly quiet for that time of the year, one or two holidaymakers like ourselves in transit, and the rest of the occupants made up of sales representatives who spend their lives wandering the Zimbabwean countryside, visiting out-of-the-way trading stores and holiday resorts. They sell anything from soap to cigarettes, and supplement their income by fencing contraband goods, or brokering oil deals for Nigerian petroleum manufacturers. They all know each other and know everything there is to know in their areas of operation. They could even tell you which wood carvers were moving out a fresh herd of wooden giraffe, and for which cartel they were destined. On the face of it, they look and act like ordinary sales reps, but in fact they are the masterminds and controllers of the Zimbabwean bush economy. The organisation is called SATA (The Secret African Trade Association) and has a vast underground network of informers who track the movement of illicit trade in and out of their area. If a deal for a case of Marlborough is going down at Livingstone Town in Zambia, SATA would be the first to know, and the first to be knocking at the dealer’s door for their commission. They meet once a week to exchange information, usually at the chosen venue of the Captain Morgan rep, so that they can drink rum all night for free.
This is what they did at the rustic bar, and the reason why we felt worse for wear when we arrived at Binga at 6am.
We reversed the vehicles down the slipway to the jetty, where Captain Thunder and Habit waited to load our luggage and families into the portage boat. We had booked the houseboat, sight unseen, by telephone from the Spray View Hotel; it was a recommendation from Punjab the porter, whose uncle owned the boat, so our expectations were running quite high that she would be as luxurious as Punjab made out. As we parked the vehicles beneath the trees at the top of the slipway, a bush parking attendant, wearing official khaki apparel, appeared from seemingly nowhere, waving a parking attendant’s receipt book.
"How long will you be parking your vehicle, sir?" he asked.
"Two days," I said.
"And the trailer?" he asked, while scribbling in the receipt book.
"Yes, the trailer too," I said.


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"Excellent," he said, as though he had just finished a difficult crossword puzzle, "That’ll be $50, twenty for the trailer and thirty for the vehicle. Thank you."
"You mean we have to pay to park in the bush?" I asked.
"Tax, sir. Parking tax. All vehicles with foreign number plates have to pay parking tax. It is the law of the land." He smiled, triumphantly exposing a gold filling and handed over the receipt.
While we eagerly awaited the return of the portage boat, the parking attendant’s cousin crept up from behind. He too wore the khaki apparel of someone official.
"Good morning, sirs," he said, tipping his cap and whipping out a receipt book. "Fine day for fishing. And how many of you will be fishing?" he asked. There could be no denying it; we had all six rods standing next to Madonna, who stood next to the fishing tackle boxes on the jetty.
"Only the two of us," I said. "The kids won’t be fishing. The kids don’t like fishing. They’ll be lounging about the houseboat for two days, playing cards and listening to …"
"Two days," he interrupted "two days fishing, you say?"
"Yes, two days," I said. "But why?"
"Fishing tax, sir," he said. "And that’ll be $80, twenty dollar a day per rod, and I won’t charge you for the others."
We slipped him $10 for the kind consideration and went on our way, taking with us small comfort in the knowledge that we would be safe from parking police and fishing rod inspectors, and that we had contributed yet again to the Zimbabwean economy.
The houseboats are moored next to each other, they bob about like disused bread bins. Some of them look sad, as though they’ve been bobbing around alone for years and some of them look like old stray dogs that you find at the SPCA, the ones with the pleading eyes that say "please take me with you." They have strange names like Jeremiah Paddle Duck, Bettie’s Revenge, and Third Time Lucky. The name Spirit is used a lot. Zambezi Spirit, The Spirit of Kariba, White Spirit, Black Spirit, Sea Spirit, The Spirit of Zim and so on. The Spirit boats, for some reason, looked a lot more up-market, and probably belonged to syndicates or smugglers who needed a generic name to hide behind. The Zambezi Spirit looked quite new and majestic; a white tower of glass and chrome, fitting enough for the Royals should they ever descend to a tour of the Lake. Sadly, the Zambezi Spirit was not for us though. I knew that as we passed her by, and Habit steered the portage boat to a rusting blue bucket named Horse. Not White Horse or Wild Horse or the Spirit of Horse, just Horse. A boat named Horse.


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It was good to be back on Nyaminyami’s turf; feel the water beneath the feet, the crisp air blowing through the rails, the split of the bow wave, and the whiff of fuel from the 100-horsepower outboard motors that churned the water, leaving a trail of pearly bubbles in our wake.
No sense of freedom can compare to just being out there, out on the big pond, heading south by east to the mouth of the great Zambezi. We were refugees of the tarmac, press-ganged into the bliss of a two-day lifetime upon the water, and with enough provisions to last at least three days. Two bottles of gin, one bottle of rum, three limes and a bag of sweet lemons, two kilograms of vacuum-packed meat and a vegetable store, one cook and a captain named Thunder of a boat named Horse on a big pond called Kariba run by a river god called Nyaminyami. What more could one wish for?
We passed islands without life, just canopies of bristle and brush, thorntree and rock, ancient but now ephemeral, each an epitaph, a memory of a distant time, when they were the kings and queens of the valley below. Now their feet are wrapped in mud, and the necklace of water they are forced to wear is choking them.
As the dam began to fill, Nyaminyami gorged himself on the luckless, hapless animals that drowned in their attempt to find higher ground. It was a time of great feasting such as never before. The valley had become a lake of a thousand islands, each island a stadium, crammed to capacity with confused animal spectators fighting and killing each other for a place in the stands.
Then someone remembered the great deluge, the greatest flood of all time, when God said to Noah," Better build a boat, it looks like rain."
Operation Noah, better late than never, saved 7 000 animals, including rhino that were darted and loaded onto rafts made of petrol drums. Some weren’t so lucky; tragically, there were recorded scenes of starving monkeys, unable to swim ashore, who had stripped the trees of every single leaf in an attempt to survive.
Sadly, most of the rescued animals were transported to the Zimbabwean side of the dam and most of the stranded people to the Zambian side. Later, this would provide more animals to poach for the war-torn Zimbabweans and more people to feed for the cash-strapped Zambians. Was this a shrewd, calculated move on behalf of the colonialists who dominated Southern Rhodesia at the time?
I wonder.


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Once they wore crowns, now they wear hats of bristle and brush, with hatpins made out of leadwood in the shape of a cross, and a sign on the cross that says "There’s nowhere to go from here."
Still though, it has to be said that the lifeless islands didn’t look out of place and by chance perhaps, only added to the surrealistic quality of the ever-changing lake-scape.
Strapped to the prow of the boat, the majestic Madonna didn’t look out of place either, head held high, proud and serene, spearing the bow wave as though she were the figurehead of some ancient galleon on a voyage of discovery. She pointed us forward to the slow, slick, oily mouth of the Zambezi, where it slows down and spreads out into the digestive system of the dam, swelling the belly of the lake and tickling the tigers with the promise of fresh fish food.
Captain Thunder steered Horse into a small cove at the confluence of the river Gwai and the Zambezi. Apparently, this was a hot spot during the civil war, evidence of which stared back at us in the form of graffiti. Hauntingly, the names of young soldiers sent for months on end into the bush to seek out terrorist cells were carved or painted into the nooks and crannies of the sandstone cliffs that rose up on either side of the river. We felt unsettled, as we settled down to lunch and a round of gin and tonics, the silence ominous, almost oppressive; a bit like eating lunch in a tomb, or having a picnic at Flanders Field amid the disturbing remembrances of conscripts lost at war. We ate without words, reflecting on the passage of time that had left so many dead in the futility of a bush war that could never be won.
Some of the graffiti just gave a name like ‘Joshua 1973’ or ‘Simon passed this way on his way to the war’ or ‘it’s my Vietnam and I’ll cry if I want to’. Someone had billeted there a long time; you could tell by the 15 X’s and the word DEAD, carved into the rock above the Lord’s Prayer, painted in red. There was also a heart with an arrow through it and the initials J and A, and a ‘ban the bomb’ sign with words of comfort from John Lennon, ‘GIVE PEACE A CHANCE’.
As we steered the tender boats up-river, the lifeless silence of the ravine clawed at the senses, adding weight to the eerie stillness that hung like a warning sign in the humid afternoon air. The only sounds came from the muffled, monotonous phut, phut of the outboard motors and the Lennon song in my head that played over and over again …
‘All we are saying is … give peace a chance.’


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Not an animal in sight, not even a butterfly or even a dragonfly, and then a snort, and a snort, and a bow wave that lapped the boat, and then a cry of "Hippo!" and "There she blows!" and the hung silence, now broken, shattered, put aside, then replaced with the whirrs and the clicks of camera shutters and the excited cries of children.
We counted five hippos with calf, the calves cute, almost cuddly; but a hippo with calf is extremely protective and very unpredictable.
We kept our distance, keeping careful count of the pack should one decide to make a move under water and attack the boats. We were the trespassers after all, the intruders, the enemy, and the threat; a platoon of illegal aliens armed with celluloid guns.
We stayed a while, stealing the images of our captive audience on film, and then moved on. We were to go as far as the rapids, and then return to Horse for sundowners and another attempted assault on the tigers.
At about 4km from Horse, we entered a bend in the river where vines hung like curtains and the river stilled, forming pools of emerald green. The hanging vines looked like a jungle gym for monkeys, or a great location for a Tarzan movie. You could just imagine Tarzan, knife between his teeth and his arm around Jane, swinging on those vines and then jumping into the green water and then resurfacing and laughing at the man with the bicycle on top of the ridge.
There could be no mistake: we had been followed.
The sun reflecting off the lenses of his binoculars gave away his position. He was crouched in the bushes on top of the ridge, his black bicycle clearly visible standing near to him against a tree. For all we knew, it could have been the telescopic sight of a rifle, or even worse the lens of a video cam, recording evidence of our unlawful use of cameras without having paid ‘photo opportunity tax’.
Either way, it was time to make the tender boats walk on water, fly through air, break the off-landspeed record and head for the safety of a boat called Horse.
Captain Thunder lay on his bunk, his right arm dangling on the floor, and the other across his chest. Spittle dribbled from the corner of his mouth, and were it not for the snoring, one would be forgiven for thinking he was dead, murdered in our absence by pirates or over-enthusiastic tax collectors.


- 21 -

He snored so loudly and with such ferocity, it rattled the planking and shook the bolts that held the bent sink in the galley. It was only much later that we discovered the reason for his temporary departure from the world of the living:
three-quarters of a bottle of spiced rum had either mysteriously evaporated or found its way down the good captain’s gullet.
That night we braved the mosquitoes, in order to escape the captain’s snore and the noxious fumes that wafted through the lower cabin quarters, and slept out in the open top deck; the rest of the booze safely packed away into the Coleman cool box that nestled between our sleeping bags.
Sunrise: glorious pink blushes chasing away the early morning stars and washing the purple of night into shades of pale blue, and the early morning call of the fish eagle in search of breakfast, and the aroma of bacon a-frying in the galley below, had little effect on Captain Thunder, who looked like a grey washing-up rag, his eyes so shot they looked like the sliced tomatoes bubbling next to the bacon in the frying pans. He was badly in need of a shower and a packet of painkillers. For him, today would be a long day and yesterday best forgotten. Graham was about to offer him another shot of spiced rum but thought better of it; we still had one more day and a long wide river to sail.
Captain Thunder slowly eased Horse out of the Gwai river mouth and into the Great Zambezi. "Full steam ahead, Captain," shouted the kids, "and easy as she goes!"
The uneasiness of the Gwai River behind us now, once again we became sailors on a voyage of discovery; trepid explorers in search of adventure and gain, forbidden fruit and chests full of gold and jewels awaited us at every bend in the river.
In the stillness of the morning, sporadic plumes of blue smoke, like the lazy breath of sleeping dragons, could be seen curling up through the dense bush that covered the surrounding hills.
"Charcoal burners," said Habit, as he served us a tray of tea and biscuits on the upper deck.
Habit wore a red fez with black a tassel and a full-length white tunic, and always carried a teacloth draped across one arm, as though practicing for a lead role as a waiter. He took the part quite seriously, and when he finished serving, would place his hands together as in prayer, take two steps backward and make a little bow; and then he would smile, and the smile would turn into a buck-toothed grin revealing a mile-wide gap between his front teeth.


- 22 -


He was smiling now, delighted to share his infinite understanding of local tradition and custom.
"Charcoal burners always followed the carvers, they are the hyenas feeding off the scrap. Nothing is wasted. When a tree comes down, they are there waiting for the carvers to choose the best piece. The charcoal burner then bands the tree with a hot iron. It is his own sign to say that the scrap from the fallen tree belongs to him after the carver is done."
I glanced at Madonna strapped to the bow, and wondered what hands had caressed the fallen tree, and whose vision and skill had brought her to life, and by whose decree the chosen tree should live on as a giraffe. I wanted to give her a hug and a pat on the back and whisper words of wisdom from Sir Paul McCartney … "Let it be, let it be."
Every now and again, the dense bush of the bank would give way to a clearing where small communities had laid claim to the land and put up villages of mud and reed. These pastoral hamlets were becoming more frequent now, as the Zambezi thickened its girth, pushing the two countries further and further apart.
As we cleared a bend on the Zambian side, something wasn’t quite right with the village that came into view. You could tell by the smoke billowing out of one of the mud huts and the way the chickens and goats ran about in a panic going nowhere. As we drew closer, it became quite evident that the village was under siege. A man wielding an AK-47 stood on the bank while others loaded giraffe onto a raft. Habit turned pale, and then began to scream at Captain Thunder. "Bandits! It’s a raid! SATA agents everywhere!"
Captain Thunder, despite his hangover, reacted immediately, opening up the throttle and swinging Horse hard to starboard, as though on a collision course with the raft, and then over-corrected with a hard turn to port. This sent us sprawling across the deck in search of cover and something to hold onto. As we sped away, a nervous glimpse of the raft through the binoculars revealed a herd of at least twenty carved giraffe and a black bicycle made for two.


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Epilogue
On our return home, a message from Nigel on the answering machine.
"Hi, it’s Nige. Hope you don’t mind, but in great anticipation of your empty-handed return (chortle, chortle), I have taken the liberty of ordering a new tiger rig from Sanjay’s. Could you please drop off a cheque for $520 at the Wheatsheaf on Friday? Hope you had a great time sees you Fri…day."
Madonna, after suffering the loss of an ear on her return trip in the trailer, is none the worse for the ordeal and has pride of place next to the wine rack at the bottom of the stairs. Sometimes on Sundays, we take her out to visit the other giraffe standing under the trees on the Nicol Highway. On these special outings, she wears her ‘MTV’ baseball cap and a smile for the other giraffe, that says "Look at me, I am free."
After e-mailing the Department of Trade and Industries and Trees for Africa.org, I have as yet received no response to my request for statistical information regarding:
A) The effect wood carvers are having on indigenous forestation.
B) The yearly import/export trade figures for wooden giraffe.
C) Units sold per year.
They remain silent, as silent as the forest after a tree has fallen.
A vunda, a crocodile or a tiger? To this day, one can only speculate as to what had taken the tiger rig. When asked for his opinion, Nigel smiles and gets that naughty schoolboy twinkle in his eye and then slowly shakes his head in wonder and disbelief. "God works in mysterious ways," he says. "Very mysterious ways; and only God can tell because God only knows."
And then I have no choice. I have to agree.