by Whatever You Do, Don't Run- True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide (epub)
The Americans were resilient and gave a cheery thumbs-up, already over their soaking. I believe that Bob secretly wanted us to get stuck, because it would seem kinda manly. The English couple had gone very quiet, as if by saying nothing they wouldn’t excite me and make me do anything else that was quite as dramatic as their submersion.
I drove along the edge of the lagoon, dredging my memory for some landscape detail where the shallow crossing had been. Following the lions had taken us far from any track, and it was only because I had spent up to ten hours every day for more than a year driving around the area that I had any idea where we were.
As I looked I tried to remember the rule for using ripples to find shallow water, but I couldn’t recall it. Then the song “Still Waters Run Deep” popped into my head. Excellent. The only problem was that the entire lagoon, floodplain and channel were rippled from the breeze. Eventually I grew exasperated by the constant and uniformly striated expanse of water, and convinced that my faithful Land Rover could do almost anything, I said, “This is the place,” and turned in to the water.
With trepidation I inched us forward, and to my pleasant surprise could feel by the way the car drove that we were on sand, not mud. This was good. Confident, I pushed on, and the waters rose over the running boards again. A hippo snorted in the lagoon to our right, and received a reply from another to our left. Must be another pool up there, I thought to myself. The water was now approaching the hood, my nerves were taut, and I handed the picnic basket with the coffee, tea and cookies back to Bob just before the passenger seat that it had been resting on was submerged. My legs were next to go under, the water having easily pervaded the many cracks in the door, and the chill started reaching sensitive parts as it sloshed onto my seat, then above my waist. I knew that if forward momentum was maintained, the diesel engine would be fine, so stalling wasn’t a problem. If the wheels slipped though, just once, we would be stuck.
“Are there alligators here in this water?” Bob asked.
“No,” I said, concentrating on our momentum, willing the bottom to stay firm. “Only crocodiles.”
I pushed a little harder on the accelerator to keep going, and we went a little faster. Our bow wave grew, as did my confidence, then we launched off the lip of a deeper channel that the hippos must have carved as they walked up and down from lagoon to lagoon.
We sank.
Water gushed in from all sides, over my door and the high sides of the vehicle. I grabbed at my handset as I watched the radio go under.
“Old Trails Hippo Pools! Old Trails Hippo Pools!” I shouted, giving our location in the hope someone might look for us, knowing I had maybe a fraction of a second before the radio died.
The engine cut out, dead along with any forward momentum. Waves radiated away, and hippos began snorting on both sides of us, as if they were laughing. Once again I looked over my shoulder. The American couple had shown remarkable agility for people of their size and scrambled back to the highest, rearmost seat, stuffing in with the English pair, who now looked terrified and quite cramped.
Never had I felt such fear. I had made mistakes before, but the results only endangered me. There was no way anyone would know where to start looking for us when we didn’t appear for brunch, and the Mombo area covered three hundred thousand acres.
The vehicle was giving soft lurches, settling into the sand beneath. Much more, and everyone would float off. As it was, only my head was above water.
I made a quick plan, but time was of the essence. “I’ve gotta go! The splash will have scared away any crocodiles! They’ll be back soon to investigate! Gotta go before they do! I’ll get back to camp and bring help!” I was not panicking, but was only a hair away from it, my words coming fast and breathlessly. I did not mention that of all animals, only the crocodile scares me, and it is a fear that runs deep and puts ice in my veins. “I’ll be as fast as I can,” I said. Then I added, probably unnecessarily, “Don’t move.”
I climbed onto the hood and slippery-dipped down into the water, splashing in and swimming as fast as I could. My sister had been a champion swimmer, but I had not. The stroke I use is high on energy and low on style and offers little propulsion even though I churn the water to foam. My arms whirred and my legs kicked furiously, but I seemed to be making little progress. I was sure that large, single-minded reptiles had to be closing in. I knew my theory about crocs being scared away by the splash of our vehicle was only fifty-fifty at best, and equal measures of fear and cold were making my bones ache. My winter clothes were slowing me and weighing me down. My kicks became more desultory, and my legs dangled. Then they touched something. The panic stirred me to whirr some more, until I realised that I hadn’t put my feet on a croc.
It was the bottom. I quickly stood upright, wondering how long it had been reachable and feeling a bit silly. But I was still in danger, as a croc could easily drag me back into the deep, so I waded with ferocity, pushing a wave in front of me until I burst onto the shore.
While swimming was never my sport, I had received my mother’s genes and was a runner. Now with the mantra of “Whatever you do, don’t run” in my head, I ran.
With a final wave to the people on their odd-looking island that jutted out of the water, I cut across a plain, wanting to be able to see anything that was coming at me. It was later in the morning now, so I didn’t expect lion or leopard to be particularly active, and daytime hunters like cheetah and wild dog are not really threatening. What did concern me was getting caught in the open by an elephant, buffalo or, worse, a hippo heading back to the water after a night out foraging. More concerned for my guests than for myself, though, I ran on, scattering the plains game as I went.
Zebras and wildebeest gave alarms and raced away from the mad-looking figure that sprinted into their midst. A pair of warthogs showed the surprising speed their short legs can generate and startled me, bursting away from a low shrub. I kept running, getting tired. Good genes or not, the life of a guide is mainly sitting behind a steering wheel, and it had been years since I had run anywhere near this far. I had been going more than ten minutes at a pace much faster than a jog. I had a stitch, but kept lifting my legs and plonking them back down.
The plains of the Okavango are disrupted by islands of trees, often forming a perfect circle. Ahead of me was a possible shortcut back to the camp, which would cut a fair chunk out of the distance I needed to go. But if I cut through this patch of forest, it would take me out of the relative safety of the plains and through thicker, more concealing vegetation. I took the chance. Panting and feeling sick I ran up the small hump into the island and straight into the back of the buffalo herd whose tracks we had seen earlier. Some of the herd immediately bellowed and snorted.
Bugger, I thought, and ran straight back out, looping around the herd, forced back onto the plain. I skirted the edge of the trees I had just left, as the plain in this area was thick with small clumps of palms. These are one of the favourite resting places of old male buffalo, Africa’s most foul-tempered animal. The odds of disturbing some cranky old buffalo that was in the process of being ejected from the herd was high, so I was now nervous of the herd to my left, unseen bulls to my right, and predators taking me from the front or back.
I ran in a way that would perplex an experienced jogger, swinging my head from side to side, looking to see if the herd was moving nearer to me or if a buffalo bull was emerging from the palms. Every now and then I would pivot entirely, checking behind to see if there was anything in pursuit. On one of these pivots, I saw some distant blonde heads pop up from the shade of a palm. They were the lions we had been following earlier. They must have doubled back to dry land, unsuccessful in their hunt. I watched them watch me as I ran, until one after another their heads went back down, clearly deciding I was not worth watching, or eating.
I put on a last spurt as I got closer to the camp, racing across the open area it looked out on.
In the ramshackle building we used as an office, Chloe
said, “Is that Peter running toward us?”
“It looks like it,” replied Ella. “I wonder where his guests are.”
I burst in, breathless, trying with limited success to draw in great gulps of air. “Where,” I gasped, “is Chris?”
“Where are your guests?” Ella asked, her English accent as always sounding to me like a scolding schoolteacher.
“Old Trails Hippo Pools,” I said, feeling chastened. “I . . . ,” deep breath, “need Chris.”
He was out back, and I ran there too, finding him in the workshop.
“I need two long chains, and two Land Rovers.”
“Where are your guests?”
“Old Trails Hippo Pools,” I repeated, “I need two chains and two Land Rovers.” And oxygen, I thought, but knew I was in no position to start making jokes. Chris was an old friend and had shown a remarkable tolerance in the past when I had inconvenienced him. But he was still my boss, and there was no way that he could be pleased once he had seen what I had done.
We got in a spare vehicle and raced with chains to my stranded guests. “Where at Old Trails Hippo Pools are they?” Chris asked over the wind that whipped us and chilled the water in my clothing.
“The Pools.”
“Ya, but East, West, where?”
“Just head to the Pools,” I said.
“Oh, I see,” Chris said when we arrived. “In the Pools.”
The four people huddled like shipwreck survivors on the only exposed parts of the vehicle looked absurd, but Chris wasn’t laughing. I was in trouble.
“What . . . the fuck . . . were you thinking?”
I answered that I didn’t think I had been thinking.
Chris bellowed across the water to the people to sit tight, we were going to make a plan. The English gent shouted back that he thought the car was slowly sinking, and we assured him we would make a plan quickly. They did appear a little lower in the water, but maybe I was only imagining it.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, not sure if I should offer one or if I was so far in the doghouse that I should just shut up. Chris was South African, and South Africans pride themselves on making plans. In fact when presented with any problem, they say, “Don’t worry. We’ll make a plan.”
What is never specified when they say this is whether you will like the plan, or whether after it has been implemented it will seem as sensible as when it was said. And since I was in no position to offer any sort of protest, I had to just watch as Chris tied one end of the chain to the front of the Land Rover we had arrived in and started wrapping me in the rest of its length.
“You go back out there,” he said. “The chain will act as armour against crocs. If I see you go under because you’ve been grabbed, I’ll just reverse and drag you out.” I could see numerous flaws in this plan but kept them to myself. “It should be more than long enough,” he added.
My clothes had dried on the run, but they were quickly soaked again as I plunged back into the lagoon. I had decided that while there was no way I could move faster than a crocodile, there was no point in namby-pamby creeping along either and moved as quickly as my ironclad limbs would allow. Progress was even slower than the time before, because my legs were exhausted and I weighed almost twice as much as I had before. The sand and mud underfoot were sucking and holding me in place, and I thrashed with the last energy I had to keep moving. Every now and then my own exertions would plunge me down, and I grew sure that Chris would think I had been grabbed and would yank me out only for me to have to go back in again.
Halfway there, the chain pulled tight. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I wailed to nobody in particular. The chain was long, but the bulk of it was wrapped around me, making it too short to reach the drowned car. I spun counterclockwise, releasing one of the coils around me and getting a pace closer to the submerged Land Rover. I turned again and again, shedding more of my armour, uncoiling the chain, and slowly making my way to the stranded vehicle. I was very conscious of the tasty-sounding splashes I must be making, just like an animal in distress.
Eventually I made it and dived under to blindly tie the chain to the bull bar. I scrambled back onto the hood and gave Chris the thumbs-up. Normally in a tow like this, I would sit at the wheel and steer, adding the stuck vehicle’s engine power to the tower’s, but our engine was dead. So I stayed perched like a hood ornament, too ashamed to speak much to the guests, beyond offering hope that we would get out quickly.
Chris started his engine and gave a few revs that echoed across the water. He started backing up, and we watched as the chain lifted along its length, then grew taut. At first there was no perceptible movement where I sat, just a slight vibration throughout the vehicle. I watched through the brown-tinged but transparent water as the bull bar started to peel away from the nose of the car.
“Whoa!” I shouted, jumping up and waving my arms, almost losing my footing. “Stop!” Chris was facing me, so he took his foot off the accelerator. There is nothing worse than having to shout that you have made a mistake, unless perhaps it is to shout that you have made another mistake. I yelled across the water to Chris that the bumper was coming off, and that I had to retie the chain. He didn’t reply. He just waited for me to make a plan. I dived under again, in abject terror now because I was sure the activity must have aroused the curiosity of the water’s denizens. Some hippos had, in fact, crept closer and periodically gave one of their trademark snorts as if to say, “Idiots!” Holding my breath and operating mainly by feel, I swam under the front of the car, finding the tow bar, tying onto it, and scrambling up onto the bonnet again. I gave Chris the thumbs-up, and still not speaking he revved his engine and reversed.
This time we came out with remarkable ease. There was a brief suck, then we surged forward through the water and onto dry land. It felt a little anticlimactic.
“You know,” Chris said once he had pulled us far enough onto the plain to inspect the damage. “You weren’t actually stuck. You drowned the car.”
It didn’t look that bad. The water had washed off almost all of the mud that had accumulated, and apart from the occasionally verdant patch of weed that was draped over the vehicle, it didn’t look totalled. The bull bar was yanked at an angle that looked all wrong, but that was just a weld job, so I held out some hope for the vehicle.
The hope was misplaced. The engine had sucked up too much water to be worth repairing. I had just cost the company a lot of money. And to top it off, when the guests left they were asked to fill out an evaluation sheet. The Americans wrote an overall positive review. In the section asking about their guide, they gave me a rating of “good,” and in their comments they simply wrote “Wild!” which could be read as good or bad. The English, however, no matter the attempts I had made for them to enjoy the rest of their stay (and the spectacular wildlife we saw before and after the drowning), still gave me a “poor” rating and wrote, “Too young. Needs driving lessons.” You could almost hear them sniff.
It was rumoured that the owner of the company read every single evaluation sheet. Up until then I knew that my reports had been positive. I was good at my job, I reassured myself. I knew a lot and delivered my knowledge with an obvious passion. What I wondered, though, was if this was outweighed in the eyes of my employers by the cost of a Land Rover.
Clearly it did, because I stayed on. Some months later the big boss did come to camp, and at one point he pulled me aside.
“You’ve been getting great reports. Well done.” He scratched at his beard. “Some even sent in a photo of their stay. It showed a car underwater.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I let him speak next.
“Who do you think you are, James Bond?”
The Chase
The lions mated noisily behind my tent for most of the night. There was none of the awkwardness about this that you would expect if it had been, say, two of my coworkers, but their bouts at intervals of every fifteen minutes or so did make it hard to sleep.
It was
, therefore, with sleep-deprived crankiness that I greeted my guests the next morning and explained that we should be able to find lions easily. I slammed down an unhealthy volume of coffee and prodded my punters into the car. I was guiding a family of four and their escort, a woman from our office in Maun who had been sent to make sure that everything went smoothly, as the mother of the family was an important travel agent.
The lions had moved farther than I had expected. The tracks of the male were on top of the female’s as she led him south, pausing every few hundred yards or so where there would be a patch of earth that showed (often quite pornographically) what they had paused for. I couldn’t figure out why she would walk so far when mating, as lions rarely hunt while in the throes of passion.
Then I saw two lions, but not the ones I was looking for. They were young females, nervous and shy. As they walked they gave soft, mournful calls. “Awuuh,” one would pant. “Awuuh,” the other would add, the sound barely carrying. It’s a call lions use when parted from their pride, and suddenly everything fell into place.
I knew this pride, I explained to my guests. We called them the Shy Girls. They were a beleaguered group of only three—a mother and her two girls—who were constantly being chased by larger prides from area to area but always in the south of Mombo. In the same region where the Shy Girls lived were two prides, each with at least three adult females and their young. The Shy Girls couldn’t compete against them, so they just bounced around the south without being able to claim a territory of their own.
The Shy Girls’ troubles were compounded by the difficulty of finding food. The two young girls were enthusiastic but unskillful helpers when their mother hunted. They often popped their heads above the grass to watch her stalk, sending her intended prey scattering. They reminded me of myself as a child, when I helped my mother shop by emptying whole displays into the cart.