Whatever You Do, Don't Run

by Whatever You Do, Don't Run- True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide (epub)

  Richard had only one couple in his vehicle on the day he was attacked. They were excited about the lions, even though they had been on safari many times before. They set off in the Land Rover, following the tracks of a lioness that had conveniently (and not unusually) chosen to walk along one of the dirt roads. When you first set out, you know that no matter how skillful a tracker you are, no matter your ability to read the signs of the bush like alarm calls, it is still a lottery. If the lion decides it is hot, it may flop right beside a termite mound in full view, making it easy to find, or it may slink into deep, gnarled woodland where no vehicle can follow and it is unsafe to go in on foot.

  You never knew what might be hiding inside the low clumps of palms that grew by the riverbeds.

  Titus was studying to be a witchdoctor, specialising in poisons and potions that he would often test on anyone foolish enough to let him. Like me. After willingly imbibing many of his concoctions with some startling results I had to insist he give me nothing before a safari that would make me hallucinate or urgently need the bathroom.

  I used to think guides were only afraid of buffalo because they didn’t want the shame of being killed by a glorified cow. Then one chased me, then another, and another, and I decided that they really were quite frightening.

  The aim of a safari walk (at least the ones I led) was to avoid large animals and to concentrate on plants and tracks. At Mombo, this proved impossible, as on my first few walks wild dogs, lions, zebra and a particularly cranky buffalo convinced me that I should have taken up accounting.

  Warthogs often munched the lawns surrounding Mombo during the day and were very relaxed around humans. This gentleman, though, took offence when I photographed his girlfriend and he chased me up a tree. My coworkers found this very amusing. I did not.

  With hippos on either side of the car it should have been obvious that I had driven too far.

  While these two young female lions searched for their mother, she was canoodling behind my tent with one of the male lions who ruled the north of Mombo. This negligent behaviour would not have won her awards as mother of the year, but the real problem was that her indiscretion led to a territorial war between the two ruling lion factions of north and south Mombo. The chase that ensued was truly a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness.

  Though I fought it as hard as I could, the beauty and abundance of the birds in the Okavango Delta (like this Lilac breasted roller) won me over. After I found myself taking time to identify each species I saw and ticking off a list, I had to admit that I truly was “one of those people”—a bird nerd.

  TOP: Glancing around and hoping to spot a predator rarely bears fruit, as they are very good at hiding. It’s easier to rely on the sharper senses of other animals, such as these kudu. A group of animals staring in the same direction is a good sign that they have seen something concerning (in this case, a distant lion).

  BOTTOM: As experienced safari guides, Cliffy, Paul and I should have been able to find our way through the myriad twisting and plaited channels of the Okavango Delta. Instead, we spent four days in a wilderness that perhaps nobody had ever been to before, enjoying the best sort of adventure—an unplanned one.

  The estimable Rantaung Rantaung gave me the nickname Lehututu (or Ground Hornbill) as a reference to my unusual and somewhat comical tanning patterns. Although I shouldn’t have, I became quite fond of the name.

  Oryx were one of the few animals that could survive in the salt pans of the Madgkadigkadi, but other, more dangerous creatures—voracious mosquitoes and wandering donkeys among them—bothered me the night I was stranded there.

  Two photographers, the other guides and I had spent months getting this family of cheetahs relaxed enough that we could safely approach them. Still, Nick opted to take these photos from the safety of the Land Rover, all the while waiting for me to get eaten.

  “Spielberg” was desperate for a photo like this. Unfortunately, the giraffe and bum-flashing zebras weren’t as good at taking stage direction as he’d have liked.

  Swimming among a herd of elephants gave me an unusual perspective for photography, but must rate as one of the more foolish things I have ever done. Fortunately, this herd was led by Salvador, an elegant elephant who tolerated my intrusion.

  Although pythons kill by strangling, their curved teeth and the overwhelming stench of their faeces can be just as bad—a lesson I learned the hard way when I attempted to move one.

  The Okavango supports diverse habitats, such as wetlands, dry plains, acacia woodland, riverine forest and places of waving red grass like in this photo, an area we called the wheatfield. I loved driving here and hearing the swish of the tough grass blades against the vehicle’s side and watching the occasional buttonquail flush from the grass and whirr away on stubby wings.

  When an elephant charges, the position of its trunk should be noted. In a mock charge the trunk will be held loosely, not tucked safely away. This fellow is mock charging, but knowing that doesn’t make ten thousand pounds of upset pachyderm running at you any less terrifying.

  I love all wildlife, in particular elephants, but count cheetahs second. There is something very appealing about an animal that is by far the fastest in the world but cannot defend itself against anything more threatening than a tortoise. For a predator they are remarkably gentle and many of my happiest moments have been spent in their company.

  This lioness seemed to have enjoyed a long walk along the road, and Richard followed her tracks for close to a mile before they abruptly turned into the long grass, heading straight for an impenetrable stand of trees. He stepped out of the vehicle to take a better look at the tracks.

  They were fresh, not steaming as we often said, but fresh enough that if she had come back to the road somewhere farther down, he might still find her.

  He was tracking in a riverbed that has been dry for more than twenty years, leaving a snaking swathe of grassland through woodland that is otherwise featureless for hundreds of miles. Termite mounds and the occasional shrub dot the river of grass. Richard scanned these and took a few more steps in the lioness’s prints, which carried on straight to the thick forest ahead of him. He squatted down, looking closer at the tracks and realising he probably wasn’t going to find the lion. Because his head was down, it was only when he heard his guests scream that he knew something was wrong. She was coming.

  The lioness must have doubled back and had been resting on the other side of the termite mound closest to Richard. Later we would discover that she was alone because she had recently given birth to little cubs, and lionesses always split from the pride for a few weeks when this happens. She was a first-time mother, probably a little unsure of all her responsibilities, and Richard had unfortunately chosen to get out at the very place she had her cubs hidden. There are few things as dangerous in the world as a lioness that thinks her cubs are threatened.

  As soon as he heard the warning, Richard stood up and made himself as large as he possibly could, raising his arms and shouting. This is exactly the right thing to do, and it works nearly every time.

  This lioness didn’t follow the rules. A lion may stop within terrifying inches from you at the end of a mock charge, right at the point you are convinced you have had it. So the standard advice is to stay facing the animal so that it thinks you are going to fight. Somehow, at the last split-second, Richard saw that she wasn’t doing a mock charge and spun, so she hit him from behind. The lioness was young, so probably weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds, the size of a very large man, but she was running at twice the speed of an Olympic sprinter when she slammed into him, and the impact was strong enough to dislocate his right shoulder.

  He landed facedown, lying over his good arm, his wounded shoulder and arm out to the side. The lion bit into the shoulder, trying to figure out where she should go to choke him. Lions eat mainly quadrupeds, so a human’s structure confuses them. She then bit into the back of his head, taking out a piece the size of a Porterhouse steak at the very t
op of his neck. She raked his back, and one claw somehow sliced from his chin up into his mouth, cutting into his palate, while another took off his ear, leaving it hanging by a flap of a skin.

  Through all this, he knew he should fight, but his good arm was underneath him, and with the lion on his back he couldn’t free it. His dislocated arm was useless to hit the lion with, but he tried anyway. Later the couple in the vehicle would say that his arm’s flicking back and forth as he tried to punch distracted the lion every time she was about to bite him again.

  The woman in the vehicle screamed at her husband to get behind the wheel and drive at the lion, which probably saved Richard’s life. When the Land Rover approached, the lion got off Richard and backed away, crouching low as if to say, “Come out and try to get him.”

  But Richard managed to stand up of his own accord and staggered into the passenger side of the vehicle. He radioed for help, and another guide from the camp came and picked up Richard and his terrified guests.

  Once he was back in camp, bleeding and in deep shock, Rebecca did what a nurse would later describe as a miraculous job of applying first aid. A helicopter would have been the most direct way to get him out, but there were no sober helicopter pilots available that morning, so Richard had to take an extremely bumpy ride over the rutted track to the airstrip. From there a plane took him to Gaborone, Botswana’s capital city.

  Richard’s parents immediately flew out from London to be with their son and to transfuse blood they knew was uninfected after Rebecca had given all she safely could. There was no doubt that Richard was in for a long recovery.

  The hospitals in Botswana are better than many people might imagine. Richard would, however, need to go to Johannesburg for a good plastic surgeon. Because of the high road toll and stupendous number of firearms in that city, reconstructive surgeons are in high demand and have a wealth of experience. And these surgeons all want an animal attack in their portfolios (yes, they have portfolios, with before and after photos). In their industry, it’s glamorous. Buffalo and hippo damage are okay, but a lion attack is the trump card. Richard was faced with a buffet of medicos.

  Eventually Richard settled on a surgeon, who did immaculate work. By the time Richard and Rebecca were married a few years later, he was well healed. His ear had been reattached, and his hair had grown over the skin graft on the back of his head. A thin white line travelled up his chin but was barely noticeable. Only if his shirt was off would you register that something big and bad had done him harm.

  In fact when people have known Richard long enough now to feel they can ask him, they say, “Man, how’d you get that scar on your hand?”

  His answer is still the same. “Netball.”

  Khama: A Love Story

  Perhaps one of the oldest traditions on safari, maybe even in Africa, is to sit around the fire at night and tell stories. It usually starts with a tourist asking a question like, “What’s the most dangerous animal you’ve encountered?”

  The stories that follow are enjoyable to tell and hear, and leave people breathless. But my favourite story to tell around a campfire is about the man who made Botswana the country it is. The surprise is that the story is not a history lesson or about politics. It is a love story.

  Sir Seretse Khama was born in the town of Serowe, which looks more like a village than a town to anyone from the Western world. He was not a sir when he was born, of course, that only came later. And it is surprising that it happened at all, considering that for many years the British did everything they could to stop him from becoming a man of any importance.

  He was only four years old when his father died, an important event in the life of any man, but even more so for the young Seretse, as his father was kgosi, or king, of the Batawana people. This is the name of the main tribe in what is now Botswana. In those days it was a British protectorate and called Bechuanaland.

  It was sensibly decided that Seretse was too young to rule. His uncle, Tshekedi, took over as regent until he was old enough to be kgosi, and young Seretse was sent to South Africa to be educated. After school he was sent to England, where he started to study at Oxford. In 1947 he met a young Englishwoman named Ruth Williams at a dance arranged by the London Missionary Society (LMS). By accounts, there was nothing extraordinary about their meeting, nor anything to foretell what would become of them. All they seemed to have in common was a liking for jazz.

  Somewhere in his disparate life, though, Seretse had acquired a great wit, unshakeable integrity and an obvious intelligence. Perhaps it was these things that impressed Ruth, for within the year Seretse proposed and she accepted.

  This created a storm that neither the young but wise Seretse nor the London girl Ruth could have foreseen. When Seretse sent news to his uncle that he was not only marrying outside the tribe, but marrying a white English woman Tshekedi was apoplectic.

  Tshekedi in pictures looks quite normal, even pleasant, but at this stage he showed himself to be quite a ruthless schemer, of the variety usually found in fables like the “The Arabian Nights.” He demanded Seretse take back the proposal. Seretse refused and instead moved forward the date of the wedding in case his uncle somehow plotted against it—a wise move, as Tshekedi had already wired the society that had arranged the fateful dance and demanded they intervene. Appalled at the prospect of having created any sort of scandal, the LMS brought the pressure it could to bear on whomever it could influence, which was a group of people and institutions of great importance.

  But it was not just uncle Tshekedi and the LMS who didn’t want the marriage to go ahead. The British government had also decided the union would present a problem for them. World War II had cost them dearly in so many ways, one of which was financially. They were in desperate need of uranium and gold, and their main supplies came from South Africa. It was the start of the Apartheid era, and the British were told that if they allowed a black king to marry a white woman, they were asking for trouble in the form of trade sanctions (a threat that could be considered ironic considering how many nations were becoming uneasy about trading with them). A report was commissioned in England to show that Seretse was unfit to lead his people. But to the ire of the government, the presiding judge found the exact opposite and stated that he was as well suited as anyone to be kgosi.

  The report was stuffed away in a drawer somewhere, and it stayed there for thirty years.

  Meanwhile, the star-crossed lovers were yet to have their wedding. When Seretse and Ruth went to be married, the vicar bowed to pressure from the LMS and refused them a service. Indomitable, resolute and in love, they went to the bishop of London.

  He refused to marry them too.

  Public interest in their case rose, and criticisms of the government began. At the same time that the English government was hearing these condemnations, a secret agent was dispatched to whisper in Seretse’s ear that Ruth was actually a communist agent sent to distract him. He sensibly ignored this madness and continued trying to find a way to marry the woman he loved.

  Fortunately there was no reason for the registry office to refuse, as no laws existed forbidding the marriage of an African prince and an English woman. They were finally wed in 1948, and Seretse returned to Botswana with his wife. There was no joyous homecoming. Instead, his uncle immediately called him to a kgotla.

  The kgotla is a traditional meeting of the community, normally held in a circular reed-enclosed structure. It is a particularly democratic way for everyone to have his or her say, as nobody can be refused the opportunity to speak on an issue (and everybody, it seems, wants to speak—even if it is to say exactly what his or her neighbour said). Tshekedi claimed that Seretse had moved against his people by marrying a white woman. With a prepared emphatic speech, Tshekedi had Seretse stripped of all royal title.

  The kgotla had gone on for four days (they really do speak a lot at these things), but Seretse somehow convinced everyone that another should be held. At the second kgotla Seretse was persuasive, stating that he “c
ould not, and would not, give up his wife” but was nevertheless still loyal to his people. The community stayed on side with Tshekedi. Seretse called for a third kgotla, and something about Tshekedi’s desperation to get rid of Seretse made everyone realise that he only wanted the title of kgosi for himself.

  Tshekedi challenged the community, proclaiming that they must listen to him as he had been their ruler for so long. If they returned Seretse’s title, he told them, he would leave them forever. After thirty years he clearly expected to be revered, but Seretse was enormously popular and was reinstated as paramount chief of the Batawana tribe. Tshekedi left the country, and with him out of the picture Seretse returned to his studies.

  Soon Ruth was pregnant, and Seretse was elated. They had overcome the British government, defeated the aims of his uncle, completed his studies, and could now settle in Botswana. Shortly after moving back, Seretse was asked back to Britain as a representative of his people, and he graciously accepted even though he suspected some ulterior motives. Once in England he was told by government officials that he would not be allowed to return to Botswana. He was to consider himself in exile. Ruth was still in Botswana, a new land for her, pregnant and alone. Using all of his diplomacy and the support of those in England who were appalled at the way he and his wife were being treated (this group included people such as Winston Churchill, who had done a backflip after originally describing their union as “problematic”), he was able to come home for the birth of their child, a daughter named Jacqueline Tebogo Khama. Then the government bundled the whole family back to England and told them they were there to stay.