Africa: part 3 of 4
Victoria Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, pours its magic thundering elixir of life near the four-corner border of Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, and Zambia.
When based near the falls at the Elephant Hills Hotel in Zimbabwe, I spent two mornings playing a round of golf. Unimpressed was my gallery: warthogs, baboons, impala, vervet monkeys, three curious waterbucks, and my caddy George.
George is a happy, weatherbeaten chap who walks an hour and fifteen minutes to and from Elephant Hills’ caddy compound each day hoping for a loop. Some days he gets one, some he doesn’t. Caddies earn $12 a round with a $2 tip recommended. It is a good day for George when he has the chance to work, regardless how bad the golfer.
My rental clubs were old and quite different from the modern technology I am more used to playing, which made George’s job of following the flight of my ball somewhat challenging. At the end of each round I paid him $20. After finishing round two I also gave him my cap, gloves, sunglasses, and golf balls — all of which he could sell for extra money. George was quite grateful; but not as grateful as me. Our time together was a wonderful bargain.
The following morning I crossed the border into Botswana for a day tour to Chobe National Park, a famed reserve blanketed by herds of elephants, dotted with a flotilla of hippopotamus, and liberally sprinkled with the most remarkable ensemble of bird life I have witnessed. For a good photographer, Chobe is a peek across the VIP side of heaven’s walls.
It was there I witnessed a very rare sight in nature: a female leopard in her prime calling her young cub out of hiding. Against all odds I got the shot with my Nikon L-120, is a basic digital zoom camera that sometime defies the odds and compensates for a photographer longer on ambition than skill.
My bush guide told me it was the second time he’d seen a leopard call her baby in 15 years of guiding.
This photo, of course, captures the essence of life in the African bush.
The Chobe River is a narrow divider between Botswana and Namibia. Because it’s easy to cross, poachers wiped out the park’s rhino population, save for a final few that were darted and transported to safer preserves hundreds of kilometers inland. Botswana has a “shoot to kill” legal system, which creates gun battles between good guys and bad. Despite the dire consequences, bullets fly and dead men fall.
With life comes death, which is a very real part of every African sunrise. This Cape buffalo was lucky — it died of natural causes. Buffalo are plentiful in Chobe and can protect themselves against the park’s relatively small number of lions. Lions have it easy at Chobe, as the number of impala and larger antelope is large. If food was difficult this buffalo would have been taken down when weak, its carcass stripped clean.
After Chobe I returned to my hotel to pack for the final leg of my trip. I fed my hotel balcony monkey my final piece of fruit — an orange — which I had to peel because her right paw was paralyzed by electrocution after having grabbed a live wire. Injuries like this were a common sight — a black-faced vervet monkey without its tail, or a limb rendered useless from an ill-advised grip on a power line. Males and females vervets are easy to differentiate since males have unique coloration: bright blue scrotums and a flaming red baby-maker. Apparently the males like to show their equipment during mating season. While I would love to comment further, feel free to insert your own punch line here.
The following morning I took the hotel shuttle to the Zimbabwe border, cleared customs, dragged two big large, stuffed suitcases across into Zambia, and negotiated a $20 cab ride to Livingstone Airport. I also paid a guy half my size wearing a Chicago White Sox jersey one dollar to drag the heaviest of my bags to the taxi. He was determined to work so I let him.
At Livingstone I met my driver for a two-hour weaving navigation of a potholed road that delivered me 85 miles up the Zambezi River to Mwandi, Zambia. Here I would spend the final five days of my trip at a small fishing lodge, trying to catch some of the region’s famed tiger fish.
For 15 years I had wanted to fish for tigers, which are considered by many with passports to be one of the world’s greatest fresh water game fish. Although there are bigger tiger fish in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the DRC), that name is a bit of a misnomer since the DRC is far from democratic and much too dangerous for an American to go fishing. The Zambezi is the best place for a practical man to safely catch and release good tigers.
The lodge where I stayed — Shackleton’s — helped start a small school next door on church grounds. Somewhere around 140 children, from little ones up though seventh grade, attend Sooka Community School. Its two small buildings are made of stick and block and mud, with tin sheet roofing instead of thatch. The classroom has a sandy floor, a small blackboard, and three teachers doing their best to help children of the deceased and impoverished learn enough to chase a chance at a sustenance opportunity later in life.
Mwandi is an area devastated by HIV. One in three have it and many of Sooka’s students are AIDS orphans. The teachers divide what is collected each month based on a requested fee of $1.20 per student. Parents and guardians pay it if they can. Many cannot. Do the math and you’ll get the picture.
It was here that more than half the stuff I lugged from Denver, Colorado to southern Africa would find its home. Getting the supplies there was my job. It would be theirs to serve the basic needs of the teachers and children.
In the photo, the school classroom is behind me. The principal’s office and store room share the building to the left. Out of view a hundred yards away are small thatched huts where the teachers live. Still on the wish list for the teachers are tin roofs to help during rainy season, which generally lasts from four to six months.
I brought to Sooka some teaching essentials — white and colored chalk, a couple hundred ink pens I’d collected from around the world, graphite pencils, and plain white paper — plus the just-as-essentials like soccer balls (plus an air pump and needle to reinflate them), Frisbees that glow in the dark, and a Wiffle bat with Wiffle balls. I abandoned trying to explain the nuances of baseball after my fishing guide and friend Evans Muyeye rocketed a line drive that parted the hair of an unsuspecting but instantly wide-eyed little kid.
To me the toys were as essential as the chalk. What fun is it to be a kid if you have no chance to be one?
The most prized gift was Jolly Ranchers hard candy. These kids never get sweets, so I was Hero of the Year when I tore open a jumbo bag that had enough for everyone with lots left over. I have been a lot of places and spoken to a lot of audiences; but at that moment I drew great comfort knowing that if and when I bomb again — no matter where that calamity might occur — they will still love me in Mwandi.
Life will be very hard for these children. I know that, and their wonderful, dedicated teachers know that. But the kids do not because they know no different. As long as people care enough to stop by and support, encourage, and hopefully inspire these children to cherish learning and believe in themselves, maybe some will defy the odds and emerge to lead a life well-lived.
When I walked back to the fishing lodge, I started thinking that these happy young children reminded me of the vervet monkey back at the hotel. Despite life’s challenges, all she needed was a little bit of help. That’s what Mwandi’s children need too — a little bit of help.
Not long after I wrote and posted the first article in this four-part series, one of my British friends sent me a short note.
“Africa,” she wrote, “crawls into your heart.” Truer words have never been shared, so I very gladly share them again.
The kids at Sooka Community School found their joy that day in Jolly Ranchers. What they didn’t know was that I found my Jolly Ranchers in them.
For each of Sooka’s children I dream a long and happy life of love and good health, with far more laughter than tears.
In an imperfect world, I hope and pray it finds them.