From my place beneath a big tamarind near the Mbarangandu, on what I thought of as the "northern plain", I could see for several miles up both the rivers. Where the currents met, the waterbuck moved out across the sand, the bucks sparring half-heartedly as the does, paying no attention, moved on past. The other evening, on a social impulse, the solitary wildebeest that lives on this northern plain joined the waterbuck as they galloped toward the river. The heavy waterbuck drag their hooves as they run, and they kicked up the white sand in a fine display, while the
SAND RIVERS
wildebeest, bringing up the rear, merely rocked along with a spirited whisking of its long tail. Crossing the shallows, the waterbuck sent the spray flying, but the wildebeest, feeling water beneath its feet, ricocheted off with the weird kick and buck peculiar to this species, then high-tailed back to the dry ground on its own side of the river. There it resumed its solitary life, which risks the attention of the lions, since solitude in a social species is often sign of illness or decrepitude. But perhaps the lion were distracted by the wart hog and kongoni on the plain, which were followed about these days by their new young.
By early September, in the diminishing rivers of the dry season, all but three hippos that resided in a deep pool under the south bank had abandoned the shallow Mbarangandu for the Luwegu. At this season on the Luwegu, a clump of hippo heads broke the bknd surface of the river every half mile, with two herds very close to the river junction, and there was no time in the day when one did not hear them. The waterbuck also seemed to like the confluence of rivers, where the broad sand bars afforded them safety from the lions, and numbers of water birds came there, too, including a big flock of African skimmers. When not flying up and down with their long lower bills stuck ifi the water, eyes focused on the little fountains they create for the small fish and other creatures that they live on, the skimmers sometimes soared in pairs in wonderful courtship gyrations on the blue sky, or mobbed the kites and herons that dared to fly across their delta. They seemed to live peacefully enough with kingfishers, and also with the sandpipers and plovers. In recent days, the African shorebirds had been joined by Palearctic migrants from Eurasia: greenshanks and the little stint, and the marsh, green, and curlew sandpipers descended from night skies to rest on these warm margins.
Standing barefoot on white African sands, smelling the damp algal smells, the mineral rot of driftwood, I studied the tracks of hyena and lion, hippo and elephant, the foot-dragged prints of waterbuck, the ancient hand-prints and serpentine tail furrow made by crocodile, to name just those 1 could see from where I stood. The air was filled with engaging dung smells and the protest of hippos and "yowp" of monkeys from the trees across the river.
Although buffalo and elephant were here at Mkangira when we arrived and on the second day a rhino was seen by the Nicholson family on an outing after tea, these large beasts soon vanished from the region; unlike parks animals, they avoided the presence of man. But after the middle of September, as if anticipating our departure, a herd of several hundred buffalo came down to the south bank of the Mbarangandu, and the next day two rhinos appeared in the same place; elephants reappeared on the northern plain, and a loose herd of eight bulls, including one with a large single tusk, could be seen each day out near the repaired airstrip. Discovering the dead one by the river, these elephants stayed near it for a
PETER MATTHIESSEN
day or two in answer to some elephantine instinct, perhaps more akin to respect for death than man chooses to think, ahhough the dead kinsman was now no more than a hollow gray mound of hard-baked skin, a sagging armature of bone.
Almost every night restless lions could be heard on both sides of the river, and sometimes leopard, and invariably hyena; because of the smell of the buffalo and impala that were killed every few days to feed the camp, the hyenas were bold nightly visitors, skulking about the kitchen area and between the tents, leaving behind the strange long prints that like the rest of their appearance is more suggestive of the dog than of the aberrant cat that they really are. One night another hyena clan made its own kill on the far side of the Luwegu, filling the night with excited whoopings that turned to high eerie giggling and laughter. Out there in the dark where the hyenas were tearing the wide-eyed victim into pieces, those crazy noises would be ringing in its ears.
The brown flood sparkling under the moon was perhaps two hundred yards across, yet it was shallow enough for a man to wade the chest-high water were it not for the big crocodile that had showed itself now and again in recent days and took most of the languor out of bathing. Between bird calls, in every silence, came the soft wash of the two rivers, pouring away to the north and west to meet the great Kilombero that comes down out of the Nyasa Highlands on its way to the Rufiji and the sea.
120
.. V • I
r-O^
■ i7 ' -^ ■
^i^l
1^&^
'^^c^^
::m^
^■"^m
j^^y
/ •
Hi*.
Viy '«^
^
5:t*fflk
Ail'.
kV
y
A
^
fV-J
.••'i -.
/v '^-
yt^
V.<^
y
^*« .*
v; .14.:
fit ;'«.•••
■tJT'
*.. -^W^'lJ^
• »^*. V,-
'#r:^* '■^"''^ .jiu'^
•V >
IX
On an early African morning, Brian and I set off for the south, wading across the Mbarangandu not far above its confluence with the Luwegu. Climbing the ridges between rivers, we shall follow the game trails for about eight miles, then descend to the Luwegu and continue south for perhaps three days before turning east to explore a high plateau with its own extensive swamp or pan. From the plateau, we shall descend a tributary river that comes down off the west escarpment of the plateau and turns northeast, arriving eventually at the Mbarangandu. There is no good map of this region, and neither the plateau nor the river has a name; as for the pan, Brian Nicholson is the only white man who has ever seen it. Excepting lonides and Alan Rees, the warden of the western Selous, he is the only white who has ever walked through the vast southern reaches of the Reserve. "This is the heart of the Selous," Brian told me, "and you and I will be the first into most of the country that we're going to cross." If the water has subsided enough in the next fortnight to permit Land Rovers to come upriver, bringing supplies, we shall explore still further south, up the Mbarangandu; otherwise we shall head back downriver, returning to Mkangira in about ten days.
All but the Nicholson family, still asleep at camp, and David Paterson, who is sick with fever, have come to see us off, and Maria and Hugo wade across the river with us under the armed escort of Bakiri Mnungu. When Hugo tells our porters not to notice his camera, there is an outburst of laughter over the fact that Africans, too, are to be
PETER MATTHIESSEN
photographed, and one porter's sweet squeal is so infectious that in a moment all of us are hooting senselessly, to let off the nervous energy of the departure. Bakiri Mnungu makes the young Ngindo laugh harder and harder, watching the white man as he does so, and Renatus takes such delight in this convivial moment that he is literally falling about on the white sand. Even Nicholson is grinning. Then he says gruffly, "Maya tayari, basi twende!" "Let's go!" Looking worried now, Renatus calls goodbye to his friend Abdallah, the young porter with the infectious laugh, and Abdallah calls back, "Mungu aki penda, tuta onana!" "If God pleases, I shall see you again!"
At this place the river is edged by high elephant grass where big animals might be hidden, and as we pass into it and our friends disappear, the laughing young porters fall silent in an instant, as if entering the unknown. For the next hour, as the sun rises and the file of men climbs to the open woodland of t
he ridge, there is no sound but the tentative duets of barbets and boubous, and the soft whisper of our passage through dry grass.
In crossing the Mbarangandu, leaving behind the tracks and Land Rovers, the tin-roofed game post, the green tents of our camp at Mkangira, we have also left behind all roads, all sign of man, and in doing so, we seem to have entered a new Africa, or rather, "the Old Africa", as Brian calls it: behind the heat and the still trees resounds the ringing that I hear when I am watched by something that 1 cannot see. "You're getting the feel of it now," he mutters, peering about him, for he, too, has sensed the power and the waiting in the air. "Only people to come this way in years, I reckon; I don't think the bloody poachers have got this far." Years ago, he had laid out a track for patrolling this part of the Mbarangandu, but all that was left was the pathway made by the round wrinkled pads of elephants, in the silent years without sound or smell of man when the huge gray apparitions had followed the abandoned road. The shadow of the road is only visible to the eyes of Goa, and soon it vanishes in the sun and dust.
As tracker and gunbearer, Goa is in the lead, a rifle over his small shoulder with the butt extended toward Brian Nicholson. The gun is a heavy-bore .458 of Belgian make, an "elephant gun", very useful for stopping large charging animals. Goa holds his free hand far out in front of him, as if extending it to be kissed, fingers pointed down as if to dowse the ground before him for the slightest sign or sound or scent of danger; he moves so lightly that he seems to rise ever so slightly off the ground, at the same time craning his head as if to see over tall grasses that, much of the time, are well above his head.
There are six porters, young Ngindo who were recruited from Ngarambe village, just outside the eastern boundary at Kingupira, and behind the porters, making sure that none falls by the wayside, is the young Giriama camp assistant named Kazungu, who will serve as cook.
SAND RIVERS
Kazungu did not wish to accompany this foot safari because he thought he would have to carry a load upon his head, like these unsophisticated young Tanzanians; as late as yesterday, he was complaining of an excruciating pain in his right foot, screwing up his lively face for emphasis. But when informed that he would only have to carry his own gear, together with a panga for cutting firewood and brush, he was happy enough to come along; in fact, as I discovered later, he kept an enthusiastic journal of the safari which he and his friend, the Taita mechanic John Matano, translated from Swahili into English and were kind enough to let me use:
We began our safari at the junction of two rivers, the Luwegu and the Mbarangandu, and the date that 1 left was the 2nd September 1979. We were eight of us and two Euroji'eans, one as our guide, whose name was Bwana Niki, and the other a book writer from America whose name is Mister Peter. And I was the tenth one, as the cook. One of us was an askari of the bush [the game scout, Goa] so we had no doubt with wild animals. We walked for a number of kilometers until we came to the Luwegu ...
The porters take turns carrying the old-fashioned tent that Brian wished to bring along, despite my feeling that we did not need it. Since I am carrying nothing but binoculars and notebooks, I feel slightly ashamed, whereas Brian is not sheepish in the least. "If I had to carry one of those loads in this sort of heat," he admits cheerfully, "I wouldn't last out the first hour. I've never carried a thing on trek in forty years, and I never shall." What 1 was hearing wasn't laziness - Nicholson is anything but lazy - but a principle left over from the reign of lonides, who liked to say, "I never do anything that can be done for me by somebody else."^ Brian is proud that all his old safaris were elaborate - far more elaborate, as he says, than this one. "Always had my own tent, of course, with tent fly and camp table and chair, and my gunbearer and cook and a hell of a lot of porters. Sometimes I'd be out five months at a time, so I needed a lot of equipment, but also it was important to be comfortable. Took along whatever I wanted, as a matter of fact. I had one man who just carried books, another who carried a coin chest for buying food in the settlements; the rest carried my personal gear and the food for all the others. On short safaris through settled areas, I had fifteen porters; on long ones through the bush, I would have forty. But once the food started to go, I couldn't have all those people sitting around eating up what was left, so I'd send them back in lots of six; they couldn't be sent off in ones and twos, not in this country."
On the ridge between the rivers, the file moves rapidly, in ant-like silence, as if in flight from the accumulating heat. Since leaving the Mbarangandu, we have encountered no animals at all, only the pale rump
PETER MATTHIESSEN
of a kongoni, vanishing like a ghostly face into high grass. Other animals have come and gone - we see a rhino scrape, the elegant prints of greater kudu, old droppings of elephant and buffalo - but as the day groves, so does the sense of emptiness in the still woodland, which is not a closed canopy but open to the sun, and everywhere overgrown with high bronze grass. "All dead, dry stuff," Nicholson mutters. "No good to animals at all. In my time, the whole Reserve would be burned over every year, two at the most; I had over four hundred game scouts who spent most of their time out in the field, and burning was their main job." He murmurs to Goa in Swahili, then stalks on, and Goa steps off the elephant path and sets fire to the tinder grass, which ignites with a hollow rush of the dry air. The fire leaps up with a hungry crackling, and a dark pall of smoke rises in our wake as we move southward.
This thin, tall man walking ahead of me in his big floppy hat, old shirt and shorts, and worn red sneakers looks more like old Iodine must have looked than the conventional idea of the East African professional hunter, or the crisp old-style warden in regimental khaki: I like this "Mister Meat" for his lack of vanity. In his angular, stoop-shouldered gait, he keeps up a long easy pace, remaining close to the swift, effortless Goa, yet every little while he turns and casts a hard, bald eye back along the line, noticing quickly when the porters fail to keep close ranks in river thickets and karongas, or when one or more tends to fall too far behind. "Wanakujar' he calls. "Are they coming?" And with the barrel tips of the shotgun that he carries he moves a thorn branch off the thin trail, anticipating the bare feet of the young porters. His concern is professional - foot injuries will cripple our safari - but it isn't unfeeling, whatever he might have one believe.
Ahead, three young bull elephants are standing beneath a large and dark muyombo tree, which at this season, in anticipation of the rains, is covered with a red canopy of seed pods. Getting our scent, the elephants move away in no great haste as we come down into a grassy open glade. The blue acanth flowers of dry ground give way to blue commelina and lavender morning glory, and there are meadow springs and frogs and singing scrub robins. "At this season, most miombo is pretty dry from one end of Africa to the other, but here in the Selous it's so well-watered that these little paradises occur everywhere in the dry woods," Nicholson says, as the porters set down their loads beneath a tree. "That's why we didn't bother to bring water bottles." But Goa is out putting the torch to the dry grass all around, and over this paradise black smoke is rising; within minutes, the racquet-tailed rollers appear, filling the crackling heat with strident cries as they hawk the insects that whir up before the flames.
We head southwest across the river bends to the Luwegu. Unlike the Mbarangandu, the Luwegu still carries a swift flood of brown-gray water that in most places fills the river bed from one side to the other. This high
SAND RIVERS
water, unusual at this time of the year, must account in part for the scarcity of animals along the margins, since there is more water than they need in the pools and springs back in the woods. Where we come out on the banks of the Luwegu we see no elephant at all, only a large crocodile which lies out on a bar along the bank, its jaws transfixed in the strangled gape with which these animals confront their universe. In the mile between bends of the river two large herds of hippopotami are visible; it seems likely that there are too many, that one of these long, slow years there wil
l come a great dying-off of the huge water pigs, to bring their numbers back into balance with the wild pastures that they have pushed further and further from the banks. According to Brian, such dying-off occurs in the Selous about once every seven years, in separate places; he remembers it once in the Ruaha, and another time on the Kilombero. But today they steam and puff and honk in great contentment, though two get at each other every little while in a great blare and thrash, to banish the monotony of river life.
Everywhere as we walk upriver the animals are starting to appear; it seems to be true, as Brian claims, that here in the Selous the animals are not especially active early in the day, as th^ are elsewhere, and do not move about until mid-morning, though why this might be true is not clear. Among the smaller animals that cross our path are ground squirrels and the green monitor lizards, small relatives of the great Komodo "dragons" of the East Indies, and a black-tipped mongoose, scampering along the bank, that is red as fire; the banded and pygmy mongoose are common in the Selous but this is the first of this weasel-like species I have seen. Impala are numerous and remarkably tame, and a band of waterbuck under a tamarind beside the river lets man walk up within a few yards before prancing off in a pretty canter into the woods; further north these animals would take off at a dead run at the sight of vehicles, which ordinarily disturb them less than a man on foot. Wart hog and wildebeest are also rather tame, though not confiding. Under a big tree by the comer of the river, from where the Mahoko Mountains can be seen off to the west, stands a placid group of elephants; not until we move a little uphill to the east of them, to let the breeze carry down our scent, do they give way. Kazungu described the scene in his journal:
Sand Rivers Page 13