Hallowed Ground

by Paul Twivy

  ‘And that is my point. I think he may be a very distinguished explorer. Someone on the trail of something remarkable that he started to write up in his journals. I need a Government licence to examine the body and dig further around the site.’

  ‘Well, I’m only a couple of months into this job, so I am not entirely familiar with all the branches of the Namibian Government. My guess would be that the Department of Arts and Culture or Land Reform will be the places to apply.’

  Ralph walked back to his desk, sifted through some plastic folders and removed a document.

  ‘I have the organisational charts here…’

  ‘There’s a further complication,’ Ben intervened. ‘It relates to one of Freddie and Joe’s friends…’

  Joe was enjoying playing around with the trade data Freddie’s father had given him to analyse, converting it into charts it to make it more comprehensible. But he was not so engrossed as to miss his name being spoken in the next-door room.

  ‘Did you hear that? I think they’re talking about Selima,’ he said to Freddie.

  ‘If we move a bit closer to the door, we can hear everything,’ Freddie suggested.

  ‘There’s a Namibian girl that both of our boys have befriended,’ Ben continued. ‘Her name is Selima. Her mother is Ilana Van Zyl, a tourist guide who led their school outing to Sossusvlei. She’s on the war-path about environmental damage and preserving Namibian culture.’

  ‘Sounds admirable,’ Ralph commented.

  ‘I like your dad already,’ Joe whispered to Freddie. Freddie smiled and put his finger to his lips.

  ‘It is admirable, but she wants local anthropologists to be given the right to examine the find, not me.’

  ‘You think that I can stop them in some way. Is that it?’

  ‘It’s not so much a question of stopping them, as helping me get an urgent licence to work alongside them. I want to go back to the dig this weekend.’

  ‘Yes! Go for it,’ Joe whispered from behind the door, fist-pumping.

  ‘Please don’t take this question the wrong way, but on what grounds do you qualify?’ Ralph asked Ben.

  ‘I am a recognised expert on the Herero,’ Ben answered. ‘If I’m involved in the dig, I can also draw on the expertise of my academic peers back in America and the UK, in decoding what we find. I’m attached to the University of Columbia in New York.’

  ‘I see your predicament,’ Ralph replied, ‘but it’s possible that by interfering I might make them even more determined to keep foreigners out. It’s their country, their soil, their find.’

  ‘But it’s not their corpse,’ Ben pointed out. ‘It’s the remains, of a British, well Scottish to be precise, soldier. As the British High Commissioner, I imagine you have the rights to ask for the body to be returned to Scotland. There are almost certainly living descendants who would want the return of the body.’

  ‘And before it is returned, I, as High Commissioner, naturally want to ensure that none of his possessions…’ Ralph chimed in, cottoning on to Ben’s line of argument.

  ‘…are taken or despoiled,’ Ben finished Ralph’s sentence for him. ‘Precisely. You understand the situation perfectly, as I hoped you would.’

  ‘Your dad has got to win a medal for inventing diplomatic arguments,’ Freddie whispered, returning the earlier compliment paid to his own father by Joe.

  ‘I will see what I can do,’ Ralph said.

  Ben shot his hand across the table and shook Ralph’s, trading a look of mutual resolve.

  ‘One other thing. I’d like you and your family to come with me at the weekend…if you feel you can,’ Ben continued.

  ‘Come with you? Is this for me to provide you with diplomatic air cover? Because…’

  Freddie burst in through the part-open door, behind which they had been listening. This took Joe somewhat by surprise, who stumbled in after him, his prop having been removed. The fathers tried to look stern at their eavesdropping but were already both smiling inwardly at their sons’ shared conspiracy and their friendship.

  ‘Dad, please say yes. Joe and I really want to go. Mum and Clara can come too. Come on, you said we need to get out of Windhoek more. What better opportunity is there than this?’ Freddie was never less than comprehensive when trying to persuade.

  ‘Well, it certainly beats another weekend at the club being thrashed by your mother at tennis. We need to check she isn’t on duty at the hospital first. Where would we stay?’

  ‘Hannah and Selima’s parents both live in Swakopmund which is near to the site. I’m sure we can stay with them.’

  ‘A weekend by the seaside. What could be better?’ Joe chipped in.

  Things moved on apace as they had to. Ralph used his Deputy’s connections into the Ministry of Arts and Culture to obtain a licence for Ben to examine the site. What’s more, it was agreed that he would have a clear week in which to examine the site without local archaeologists, providing that a member of the National Anthropology Museum could be present to supervise.

  Anne Wilde was on weekend duty at the hospital but managed to swap duties with another consultant.

  When Freddie had messaged Hannah that they were coming, Hannah’s parents insisted the Wilde’s stay with them, egged on by Hannah of course. The same was agreed between the Kaplan’s and the Van Zyl family. The ‘Four Teenagers of the Apocalypse’ WhatsApp Group whirred with excited messages: reminders of what to bring; of what to say and what not to say in front of each other’s parents; and warnings about their various eccentricities.

  Since they numbered seven people between the two families, they agreed to travel in a convoy of two cars from Windhoek. They set off at sunrise on a Saturday to avoid travelling in the heat of the mid-day and travelled North from Windhoek on the B2 until they reached Karibib, where they had agreed to take a detour.

  In order to maximise their trip, Ilana had suggested that they see the southern part of the Skeleton Coast - the Dorob National Park and its famous seal colony - before heading south down the gravel, coastal road to Swakopmund.

  They drove through the Namib, the oldest desert on Earth, which, because of the miraculous inventiveness of Nature, still managed to sustain extraordinary plants and wildlife.

  They stopped at one point because Clara was ‘bursting for the toilet’ in her characteristically melodramatic way. A few minutes later, she ran back to the car screaming, which Anne immediately assumed was an animal encounter of the wrong kind.

  ‘No, no come and look,’ Clara pleaded, dragging her mother by the hand. The others followed, curious to see.

  ‘Look!’

  Where Clara had peed, the ground was alive with unfurling plants that were brightening into reds, oranges and vivid greens even as they watched.

  ‘I am pretty sure these are the famous fields of lichen,’ Ben said. ‘They survive by taking moisture from the fogs and the humid air. When you water them they change colour.’

  ‘It’s a flower garden in the desert. I’ve got magic pee!’ Clara danced a little triumph around the lichen.

  Joe and Freddie meanwhile had wandered off, chattering away about school, and stumbled across, what looked like a giant, mangled cabbage. It was bigger than them both, and seemed to have been flattened by a truck.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Freddie exclaimed.

  ‘Let me look it up,’ Joe suggested.

  ‘What? In your two-thousand-page botanist’s handbook that you just happened to slip into your rucksack before leaving home?’ Freddie responded.

  Joe dug him sharply in the ribs. He’d got used to Freddie’s English sarcasm by now.

  ‘No, I’ve got a plant app on my phone. Plant Snapp. It’s extraordinary. Watch.’

  Joe proceeded to photograph the giant, squashed cabbage with his phone, as Clara ran up and into Freddie’s arms, babbling away about her magic pee.


  ‘Whoagh!’ she said, finally noticing the giant cabbage. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That’s what we are about to find out, Pumpkin.’

  Joe read out the description from his app. By now all four parents had joined them, equally struck by this plant that dwarfed them all.

  ‘Welwitschia Mirabilis.’

  ‘“Mirabilis” is the Latin for marvellous or wonderful,’ Ralph interpreted, delighted that his GCSE Latin had finally proved of some value in his life.

  Joe continued, editing out the dull bits.

  ‘Named after the Austrian botanist who stumbled across it…. Blah, blah, blah. It’s featured on the Namibian coat of arms and nicknamed the ‘living fossil’. They can live for over sixteen hundred years. They can survive for years without water.’

  ‘Extraordinary. Given the way our planet’s going, that’s the kind of adaptability we are going to have to learn,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Time has a different meaning in these landscapes,’ Ben pondered out loud. ‘This plant started to sprout in Roman times.’

  ‘Everything seems so still here and yet it’s not. It’s alive,’ Clara said quietly.

  On the way to Uis, they passed a small cluster of mountains, including the Spitzkoppe which towered several hundred metres above the plains. It stood sentry over the Namib and was nicknamed the ‘Matterhorn of Africa’ because of its resemblance to the famous Swiss Alp.

  The landscape flattened as they got closer to the sea, passing the vast Messum Crater, twenty-two kilometres across, visible from space and the site of an ancient volcano.

  As they approached the Skeleton Coast, the famous early morning fog started to appear, descending with a silent menace. They stopped at a small roadside stall to have a rest and see if the fog would clear. It was selling marula juice and coffee and was on the banks of the Messum river: one of the several rivers that threaded its way from the highlands down to the icy sea. These rivers sometimes disappeared beneath the sand and then reappeared two hundred metres later.

  As they sat chatting, a most unexpected sound arose from behind a small clump of trees. It was the sound of a slightly-out-of-tune piano playing a beautiful Beethoven sonata. It sounded very formal and European after the simple joy of African chants in the Boma.

  ‘Is that a radio playing?’ Anne asked the man running the stall.

  He laughed revealing two rows of teeth more gap-toothed than even the landscape that surrounded him.

  ‘No, ma’am. That’s the real thing. Go and see. There’s a little path through the scrub.’

  They finished their drinks and made their way towards the cascade of notes. Ahead of them, through the trees, they could make out the figure of a man in a white T-shirt and khaki shorts, sitting bolt upright in that self-conscious manner of concert performers, at a piano. His sheet music was propped up in front of him. His ‘stage’ was a clearing in the scrub. Nearby stood a small and very simple church and they could only assume that the piano had been moved from there to sprinkle its blessings on the great outdoors.

  As they entered the clearing, they fell silent on seeing a giant figure six to eight feet from the piano. It was an elephant, standing stock still, entranced by the melody. It swayed its trunk backwards and forwards in a gentle rhythm, its eyes half-closed, as if in a trance.

  The pianist clearly didn’t feel any sense of danger. The elephant only needed to take a few steps forward to crush the piano into matchsticks. He would stand no chance were it to charge. Yet, here they were, elephant and man, bonded in music and in trust.

  The man, hearing them enter the clearing, turned towards them but carried on playing, lulling the elephant.

  He said two simple words to them in the softest voice imaginable.

  ‘It’s blind!’

  Then he turned back to his music and his loving, and loved, audience of one.

  The reason they had deviated from the straightest route to Swakopmund was shrouded in a fog which slowed them to a snail’s pace. Yet, they could smell it through the open car windows from several hundred metres away.

  ‘Oh my God! What is that horrendous smell?’ Freddie exclaimed.

  Clara pretended to be sick.

  ‘Clara, don’t do that’ Anne admonished. ‘It’s bad for your throat.’

  ‘It’s the seal colony. That’s what we’ve come to see,’ Ralph pointed out.

  ‘Right,’ Clara said. ‘Well now we’ve smelt them, can we leave please!’

  ‘I’m with Pumpkin on this one,’ Freddie chimed in. ‘Unless you’ve packed the gas masks!’

  ‘This will be a unique experience,’ Ralph said, trying to maintain his dignity amidst the mocking laughter and then finally succumbing with his own guffaw.

  ‘Yes, well being eaten by piranhas is also a unique experience,’ said Anne, ‘but not one I would necessarily recommend.’

  Ben signalled from the car in front that they should park.

  ‘Welcome to Cape Cross Seal Reserve,’ Ben said as they tumbled out.

  ‘Welcome is not the word that my family have in mind, may I tell you,’ Ralph retorted.

  Ben refused to let his enthusiasm for wildlife be curtailed. ‘Ah but…being highly organised as I am, I have the perfect accompaniment for this little outing.’

  As they stretched the car journey out of their limbs, Ben opened the boot door of his jeep, fished around and pulled out a small, zipped bag. Inside were ten or so nose-clips with cotton-wool clamps to go over each nostril.

  ‘Aromatherapists use these to take away your sense of smell. We sometimes use them when we’re opening plague graves,’ he explained, as he dished out the clips. ‘I think you might find they make our little expedition more…palatable.’

  They took a selfie in front of their cars, with their nose clips in place and posted it for the Swakopmund crowd to see. The photo was labelled ‘Seven nasally-challenged explorers feeling sealy! Who “nose” what we might discover at Cape Cross?’

  On the way to the seal colony, they stopped at the stone cross on the bleak and foggy headland, after which Cape Cross was named.

  Ralph read out the Latin inscription, adding in his own observations as he did so.

  ‘Right! So, it says “Since the creation of the world 6,684 years have passed.” I think we now know it was a tad longer than that don’t we?’

  ‘6,684 sounds like a Jewish year,’ Barbara offered up. ‘So, who says the Jews weren’t explorers?’

  Ralph continued the translation: ‘“And since the birth of Christ 1,484 years ago…’’’

  ‘Although scholars now believe, of course, that Jesus was born between 4 and 6 BC, so that date is also wrong,’ Ben observed.

  ‘So that means that 2018 A.D. is not 2018, it’s actually 2022, or even 2024,’ Joe chipped in.

  ‘So much for the exactness of maths, Joe.’ Freddie couldn’t resist.

  ‘Nothing to do with math being wrong. It’s humans not using math accurately,’ Joe responded, punching him good-naturedly.

  Clara pushed her way between the two of them.

  ‘So, if nothing is when we think it is, we’re all lost,’ she said, looking at the fog that had still failed to clear.

  Ralph exchanged knowing glances with Barbara who smiled. ‘The perils of having bright children, eh? Anyway, it basically says that in 1484 Diego Cao, a Portuguese navigator landed here.’

  Several hundred metres later, Joe tripped over something and fell cursing, his ankle cut and bleeding.

  ‘Goddam, what the hell was that?’

  Barbara rushed forward. ‘Joe, are you OK?’

  He nodded but his face was screwed up in pain. Barbara always carried a small, first aid kit with her and started searching for an antiseptic wipe.

  ‘Oh my God, this is it,’ Ben exclaimed. ‘Joe, you’re a genius. You found this slate.’r />
  ‘I tripped, Dad!’ Joe responded, nursing his wound ‘But of course that confirms my extraordinary detective skills!’

  ‘Ah, but as Ubuntu might say, is any trip ever truly accidental?’ Freddie said, managing to cheer Joe up.

  Ben was too engrossed to notice his son’s sarcasm. He knelt down and wiped the sand and dirt off a piece of ancient slate, half-buried in the ground. Anne knelt next to him, relieved that, for once, she was using her own detective skills on artefacts and not patients.

  Ben continued with his explanation. ‘A man called David Coulson describes this slate in his book called “Namib”.’

  Anne read it out. ‘It’s in English. It’s dated 1838. “I am proceeding to a river sixty miles north, and should anyone find this and follow me, God will help him.”’

  ‘Who wrote it, Mummy?’ Clara asked, tugging at her.

  ‘There is no name darling!’ Anne replied.

  ‘That’s what Coulson says,’ Ben continued. ‘No one knows who wrote the message or what became of them. I think it might be our friend, Captain Alexander.’

  A slight chill passed through them all.

  The sound of crying babies added to their disorientation.

  ‘Seal pups,’ said Ben.

  A hundred feet further on, they stopped in their tracks. In front of them lay a vast army of seals. The fog had cleared enough for them to see there were countless thousands, and this was after the cull that kept the colony ‘under control’: an annual bloodbath, against which Ilana and many others had fiercely protested.

  Some seals flopped, others swam; many lifted their head to the sky, honking as if at some invisible ‘Sky God’, asking for release. The colony looked like a religious festival, whose pilgrims ranged from the pious and ecstatic to the bored and listless.

  The smell was so pungent that it couldn’t entirely be stopped by their nose clips. The massive bulls honked and bit each other, fighting over territories. The pups cried like babies, some suckling from their mothers. Some cows dozed exhausted, enjoying a brief respite between demanding bulls and demanding pups.

  As they looked more carefully, they could see that some of the pups were dead, and lay unburied. Some had drowned and been washed up on the shore. Others had lost their mothers and died forlorn. Worst of all were those who had simply been crushed by careless bulls rolling over on them. There was so much teeming life here, it could be killed without even noticing. Anne tried to distract Clara from the dead pups, but she was far too observant and started to sob, a little bit more than was believable.