Today’s audio update
MWALESHI CAMP, NORTH LUANGWA PARK, ZAMBIA—There is a pattern to the passionate tales of journeys into Africa, be they biography, journals, or fiction. From The Devil Drives (the story of Richard Burton) to The Strong Brown God (the story of Mungo Park’s explorations of the Niger) to Through the Dark Continent (Henry Morton Stanley’s account of crossing the breadth of Africa) to (Paul Bowles’ saga of an American couple heading south), the stories start with romance and hope and several characters, and along the way something of each is lost.
In Mandevu, the private game ranch on the lower Luangwa where we began nine days ago, we were 10 travelers, not including Chriss, our host. Now, after trundling north, deeper into Africa, in a series of long drives totaling some 25 hours, we are down to seven (the missing three left legitimately, though one was unplanned). Along the way, as on any journey, things have gone missing: We’ve broken gear; we’ve been covered with cuts, blisters, and rashes. But worst of all, we’re down to one mathematician, which has me concerned.
During the expedition, along the MMBA (miles and miles of bloody Africa), we stopped and played football with the salami-shaped fruit of the sausage tree; we inspected a local hospital that thrives without electricity or refrigeration; we noshed on cream of tartar, made from the fruit of the baobob tree, purchased on the side of the road; we passed 100 men and boys on bicycles with no gears (but thumb bells, which keep the wildlife away); we’ve signed a dozen “mabooks,” logs of entries, an imperialistic leftover; we’ve consumed gallons of gin and tonic and shandy (so much for non-consumptive tourism); we’ve slept under the Southern Cross, serenaded by hippos, hyenas, lions, and mosquitoes; and we have yet to meet an American, make that North American, anywhere on this tour.
So, I thought I would share a bit about the conditions under which we’ve worked throughout this journey, turning out the words, photos, and sounds for these dispatches.
Electricity and light have been the greatest challenges. When not on the road, we have used folding portable solar panels to charge a 12-volt dry-cell battery, but it hasn’t been enough to power our modified laptops for any reasonable length of time. So, as backup, we’ve tapped into one of the Toyota vehicle’s batteries, awkward when someone needs the car for a chore. Night falls like a guillotine at 6 here, just 12 degrees south of the equator, and so we need to work after dark, which is a mixed blessing as it is often over 100 degrees during the day. After dark, we’ve used flashlights, which attract clouds of bugs, and kerosene lanterns, which emit enough toxins to keep the insects at bay but also bring headaches and nausea after continued use. Pasquale Scaturro, Everest expedition veteran and field producer, spends about four hours each night downloading digital images taken throughout the day, reformatting, enhancing, and captioning the pictures for the Internet. I write the dispatch and record the digital audio. Then we zip the files and hook up the Telenor ISDN satellite system, which connects us to a geostationary Imarsat satellite over the Indian Ocean. The satellite beams our signal to the Telenor offices in Bethesda, Md., which then connects us to the Internet, through which we can FTP the files to Redmond, Wash., where the data is edited and published.
But we’ve really roughed it when it comes to where and what we’ve eaten. For instance, we stopped for lunch a couple of days ago at Tafika (“We have arrived!”) Camp in South Luangwa Park, run by Remote Africa Safaris, owned and operated by John and Carol Coppinger, bush hospitality legends. The Rabelaisian repast included sliced papaya with lemon, salmon cakes, tuna rolls, deviled eggs, corkscrew macaroni, bacon quiche, freshly baked bread, and chocolate mousse. We pushed back chairs feeling as heavy as the leadwood trees under which we sat. Then we moved to dinner at the “fly” camp (torn down at the start of the rainy season, it’s rebuilt from all-natural materials at the start of the dry) in Luambe National Park, the Luangwa Wilderness Lodge, where we snacked on samosas, fish cakes, and nachos before sitting down to a grande bouffe of T-bones, french fries, fresh salad, and a selection of South African wines. And the $5 hamburger at the Wildlife Camp was to die for. So, even though we’ve done some serious walking and fought fires for hours at a stretch, the greatest workout on this trip has been exercising our palettes, and we’ve become champions, competing with the hippos for bloat.
Today, about 20 miles from the entrance to the North Luangwa Park, after knocking through hours of pocked and cracked black cotton soil road, we stop for a leak, and Chriss notices the front leaf spring bracket is broken on one of the vehicles. So we’ve lost another of our party, our trusty Toyota Land Cruiser pickup, specially modified in Australia for outback conditions. In the 105-degree heat, amid blizzards of nasty mopane flies, we jury-rig a replacement out of a slab of mopane wood, strapped on with bailing wire and “Zambian welding” (strips of inner tube). Chriss doesn’t think the vehicle can make it to camp, as we have to cross the sand-bottomed Luangwa River, a punishing proposition that could bugger the steering arm. So he calls Dorian Tilbury, manager of Mwaleshi Camp, on the VHF and asks him to meet us at the entrance to North Luangwa Park (“Rats, I was hoping to do some ballroom dancing,” is his response). An hour later, we transfer gear and kits to Dorian’s safari vehicle, grind through the desolate park, across the river, and to the bush camp on the Mwaleshi River, where we sit down to a simple bush meal of fillet steak with sautéed potatoes, fresh salad, peas, carrots, and ratatouille with a chilled Nederburg Sauvignon Blanc and fruit pavlova for dessert. Pity us our privations here in the back bush of Zambia.
