The advertisement in "Magnum" to hunt hippo in the Southern Luangwa Reserve was too good an opportunity to miss. It was almost as if my adventures with the Buffalo in Mozambique were about to be replayed. With much enthusiasm, and with the opportunity being conditional of three hunters being available at the same time, I replied to the offer to hunt the sixth of the Big Six.
Although hippos are perceived as placid animals who spend most of their time wallowing, the successful hunting of one is an entirely different matter. Hippos are usually shot in a pool in a river, only to disappear in an eruption of boiling water as the entire pod dives for cover. One must be careful to choose a section of the river where there is not too much current—a fatal shot could see the doomed individual sinking to the bottom and only surfacing some time later when the gasses of the stomach lift the carcass to the surface.
Eagerly anticipating the hunt, I boarded the light aircraft at Grand Central with two other hunters and the pilot and off we took for a week in the Zambian bush. The tiny airport where we landed was deserted apart from a few disinterested officials who scarcely raised their glances to stamp our papers, and a bakkie that I distinctly remember seeing parked close to the arrivals entrance. The bakkie was like mine—a Toyota. The bonnet was up, and a black man sat in the shade of its rusted canopy.
The other two hunters—whom I had spoken to briefly above the noise of the engine in the little plane—seemed like nice enough people. Everyone was on their best behaviour, passing inane comments about this and that, the heat, and the inefficiency of Africa. We were all looking for the vehicle that was to collect us and take us to our camp. One hour became two, and then three. Our driver obviously had car trouble, or so we thought, and would be arriving at any time.
A rough-looking woman who had delivered something to the building asked if we were okay.
"Sort of," I replied, "We’re waiting for Riaan to collect us and take us to his Hippo Camp."
I will never forget her reply.
"You’ll wait a long time. Riaan’s gone. He’s fallen foul of the authorities and gapped it back to South Africa."
We tried hard to digest the meaning of what she had just told us, but before we could, she followed up this comment with "But I’ll take you to his camp, and you can work it out for yourselves." This sounded like a reasonable option, and, as there appeared to be no other, we took it. Her Land Rover was as rough as her appearance, and noisy too—to the extent that conversation was impossible. We were off-loaded rather unceremoniously at Riaan’s deserted camp—deserted except for the cook and a camp-boy. Their English was as abbreviated as the cackle of the rooster whose head was ceremoniously chopped off soon after our arrival—our first meal in Zambia.
The first night was memorable—memorable in a most uncomfortable way. As if our bad luck was not enough, Zambia had sent its finest and most aggressive mosquitos to hound us out of the valley. Nobody had warned of the voracity of these blood-sucking vampires. At midnight, I peered despairingly out of the tent flap. Apart from the incessant bites from the mosquitos, the smoke from the campfire was driving me to insanity. Momentarily enveloped in the plume of acrid smoke, I could clearly discern the peacefully sleeping forms of the three camp staff. The penny dropped, and their bushveld anti-mosquito remedy of smoke to protect them from these vampires became clear. For the balance of that disturbed night, and for the rest of my week’s stay in camp, I dossed down to sleep together with these local people next to the campfire and the acrid smoke, encouraged by the green branches that had been heaped onto the coals, and which were replenished from time to time.
The days in camp were pleasant but tedious. The pilot was particularly uncommunicative and buried himself in a pile of books, only joining the company for lunch. He seemed to eat very little and communicate even less. One wannabe hunter could not accept the bad luck that had greeted us, it now being quite evident that Riaan’s hurried exit from camp was more or less permanent, and that we would not be making his acquaintance during our stay. The discussion centred around whether we should wait out our week (for which we had paid) or leave for home and render our bad luck complete. My other fellow hunter and I stuck to our guns and insisted that we see the week out—in spite of the nightly mosquito assault. The pilot shrugged and avoided the discussion.
The pools of hippo in the nearby river were breathtaking—hundreds and hundreds of fat bodies lying together with scarcely a movement between them. Now and then one hippo registered his displeasure with a neighbour, and a great yawning aggression would ensue. I would sit for long periods on the shady bank, building the parameters of the trophy shot that would have made my trip complete—the trophy shot that was now obviously not to be.
Prior to the trip and in the correspondence, we had been offered a chance at a croc— should the hippo go according to plan. Crocs were aplenty in Zambia, the sandbars littered with these gaping monsters, each one appearing larger than the one before and oblivious of the little birds darting in and out, cleaning their teeth with agitated and excited sounds. I had studied my little book on shot-placement with reference to these reptiles, picking out the upturned corner of the mouth at the extremity of the smile and making the wishful crack of the rifle with my pursed lips.
But crocodile would not be in the shopping trolley on our way home either. The perimeter of the camp was littered with the sun-bleached skulls of hippo, with strips of hide and parts of skulls poking out of the maggot-infested sand. Disgusting as these larvae are, their ability to clean a skull of the last remnants of meat and sinew saved many hours of painstaking work—hours that could be better-employed downing can after can of beer. Some of the hippo skulls were missing teeth, and some of these teeth were littered around the site. If the opportunity of a hunt had vanished, the acquisition of a few huge hippo incisors hadn’t, and so I carefully picked up the perfect few and secreted them away in my pack, not knowing how the others would react.
In hindsight, although I was mildly angry at Riaan’s no-show, I was grateful for the opportunity of a week in this perfect corner of the African garden.
The chairs dotted around the camp and around the campfire were interesting. They were of a unique design that I had not seen before—saplings tied together with a vine in a most unusual way, permitting comfortable slouching. After a few days, and as the disappointment of the failed trip became a reality, I enquired after the origins of the chairs. Four hours’ walk through the reserve—and accompanied by a guide and a bearer—I arrived at the village of the chair maker. I had already decided that the effort to get to the village dictated that the purchase of a chair was mandatory.
To someone who has not experienced the extremities of the Zambezi Valley, the heat and the incessant flies come as an unexaggerated displeasure with only the occasional distraction of game to ease the walk. Our road was a narrow path—little more than a disused game-track and, as our path converged with another, a chance meeting occurred that I will never forget. Along the other path came a small boy—about ten years old. His greeting was as polite as the indigenous people of that country, and, with a slight raise of his hand, the words "Good morning, Bwana," were uttered. He walked with a confident gait, and in that gait, I immediately perceived the confidence that was to emerge from our short interchange.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To school," he replied.
"And how far is school?" I questioned.
"Some distance along this track," he replied gesturing with the hand that was clutching the single exercise book.
"Why are you alone? Where are your friends?" I asked, looking around.
"My friends, Bwana," he said, "are playing football in our village, for to them education is not as important as it is to me."
I asked him his name, and his response is etched forever in my memory. "My name, sir, is Excellence Khumalo, and one day I will be the Speaker of the House in the Zambian Parliament."
There could be no immediate response—a ten-year-old rural black boy on a dusty track, with no shoes and only a single exercise book does not, in my opinion, express such confident ambitions.
It was soon after that that the single path once again became two, and, with the same politeness with which we met, so we parted—Excellence Khumalo on his route to fulfilling his ambitions, and me on my quest for a camp chair. My journey suddenly seemed so mundane when compared to the dreams of this barefoot child.
We continued on our quest, accompanied by the incessant Tsetse flies and the heat. We passed through several villages, and I felt my enthusiasm heightening, the chairs of the journey becoming increasingly visible as we walked. And then we arrived. The scene was as I had expected: a wrinkled, sun-scorched man bending over his rudimentary workbench, with several half-finished chairs around him.
Our introduction began with the customary greeting, and his equally-wizened wife offering us a sunbaked earthen bowl of the local brew—umqombothi. For a white visitor accustomed to drinking the better wines of the Cape, the taste of the milky white fluid, drunk out of politeness, was as unforgettable as the meeting with the ambitious child—except that this one left a sour taste in ones’ mouth, combined with an uncertainty as to the origins of the husks and the grit in the mixture.
The exchange over the transaction was not, as I would have imagined, in Bemba, but in English. The use of English—the preferred language of the Zambian population—conveys a sense of pride in the acceptance of the British education with which even the rural black people are blessed. The discussion, punctuated by gesticulations towards me—and with much grinning and tongue clicking—was obviously cause for some bewilderment as to the desire of this urbanite for such a purchase. When Guide, as I called him, eventually directed his comments to me, he announced with some trepidation, and almost questioningly, that the cost of the chair would be "Four Rands?" Even in 1986, the price of four Rands for such a priceless find was unexpected.
When I blurted out that I would not pay a Kwacha less than eleven Rand (where that number came from, I don’t know) the grin on the face of the chair maker would have been an appropriate photographic insert into a National Geographic coffee table book. And so, the exchange of the South African currency—which I was assured was not a problem—for the clean white wood of the sapling chair was concluded. After consuming more of the milky-white sour umqombothi, we set out on our way, with four hours of the Zambezi Valley ahead of us and the need to get to the safety of camp before dark.
As the expedition walked—Guide in front, me following, and the bearer of the chair at the rear—I could not help looking around at my new purchase. The more I looked at it, the less I liked it. My own sentiment puzzled me, but there it was—a dislike for the fruits of the days’ efforts. It was only after a rather long while that the reason for my dislike dawned on me: It was the whiteness of it, the newness of it. The other chairs in camp were worn—they were used, sat in, and smoke stained. My chair was too new.
I called a halt to the expedition and explained my dilemma to the guide. I’m sure that he had dealt with many umlungus in his time, but this time, I presumed, he would be dumbstruck.
Not so.
"Yes," he said, spitting the chewed grass, with a certain amount of precision, from the side of his mouth. "Yes," he repeated, "the chairs that have smoke from the fire and the grease from the meals and the hands—these are the chairs that can talk."
"That’s it!" I blurted out, grateful that he was so understanding, "I need a chair with grease, dirt, and the smell of many campfires."
We resumed our slow, purposeful walk, and I began to wonder if anything would come of my revelation. A village or two later, I saw it—almost at the same time that the guide motioned toward it.
Outside a hut, practically waiting for us, was the most perfect example of my Zambian chair. It was new, but not too new. The vines were stretched, but not too stretched—just enough to have been sat on for the correct number of meals. Best of all, there was no new white sapling-ness, just a sandy shininess to the arms where the seated person would have rubbed his hands after the satisfaction of the umqombothi, and the painstaking stripping of chicken bones.
Our presence outside the hut must have cast a shadow within, and almost immediately a bent woman appeared at the door. The sight of this little party—the umlungu, the guide and the porter—caused a startled, yet quizzical look to cross her face. Guide explained the nature of the dilemma, and, with much gesticulating towards the perfect piece next to the door, and with the exchange of a five Rand barter, the deal was done. The smiling old woman stood next to the replacement white chair and waved—probably in disbelief—in the direction of the departing trio, while Guide conversed at great length with Bearer.
The shadows of the hot, dusty day lengthened, and we reached camp just as the mosquitos launched into their nightly air raids. The locals in their Bemba, and us in our English, punctuated with expletives each time a mosquito struck home. The chair was the subject of huge conversation.
"The Chair"—as it was now referred—was of a folding design and able to fit, thankfully, behind the rear seats of the plane. As we taxied to the end of the runway anticipating our takeoff, my eyes caught sight of the Toyota bakkie which I had first seen upon our arrival a week earlier. The bonnet was still up, and I imagined that I saw the same patient black man sitting on the ground in the shade of the raised rusting canopy. The spares had yet to arrive.
The ever-sullen Customs and Immigration officials at Grand Central paid no attention to my prize as I carried it triumphantly on my head past the quizzical looks of the passengers who were arriving and departing. I felt no need for explanations—there was nobody who could possibly understand the value of this priceless treasure, nor was there anyone who would ever know the depth of impact that I felt, and have felt ever since, of the aspirations and horizons of Excellence Khumalo and whether he ever did become The Speaker of the House.