by Boyd Varty
Mom and Dad’s decision allowed me and Bron to get the last fading taste of the old Africa, before cellular towers and the Internet tried to jolt us off the earth. How could I ever thank them for that? And for bringing a new teacher into our lives who would change us so completely?
After two years, we went back to boarding school, but we would never get a better education than under the focused attention of Teach. I can’t recall ever not knowing Kate. We remain bonded to this day.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you know how pigeons come back to the same fence pole to poop?” Kate remarked recently. “I think I’m your pooping post.”
“Take that as a compliment,” I told her.
FOURTEEN
SHAKE, RATTLE, AND ROLL
GROWING UP IN THE BUSH means dealing with a lot of dangerous animals: lions, Cape buffaloes, rhinos, hippos. But the most fearsome ones? Parasites. From the grass we might contract tick bite fever, which can be debilitating but at least is easily curable. If we waded into the still pools of the river, we had to be on the lookout for bilharziasis, which could cause anything from swimmer’s itch to infestations in the liver, bladder, or intestines. When Bron and I were infants, putzi flies would lay their eggs in the coarse material of our nappies as they dried on the washing line. Mom had to press the diapers with an old-fashioned iron heated with coals to kill the larvae, which could otherwise later bore down into our skin, causing nasty wriggling lumps that needed to be treated with medication. But the biggest danger of all was always malaria. Female mosquitoes’ bites transmit the plasmodium, which travels through the bloodstream to the liver, where it can then wreak havoc on every organ. You can stave off malaria through prophylactic medication, as tourists visiting the country for a few weeks do, but you can’t take the medicine year-round; it starts to affect your liver. Numerous foundations have distributed mosquito nets all over Africa in an attempt to slow the disease, only to find them repurposed as fishing seines. Every year, a million people die from malaria, many of them children.
When I was fourteen, I was out in the bush with the rest of the family when a giant of a thunderstorm rolled in. We had to race back to the camp with torrents of water and lightning coming down all around us. The next morning, we thought my chills and achiness were probably nothing more than the aftereffects of being thoroughly soaked the night before. We were wrong. Malaria has an incubation period of about two weeks, after which one starts to feel a bit achy, with light flulike symptoms. Then comes the sudden crash. You’re hit with an immovable, ice-pick-behind-the-eyes headache. In the heat of the day, you find yourself shivering uncontrollably, then the next second sweating so profusely you soak the sheets. A few hours later that morning, the signs were unmistakable: I had malaria.
My parents have come close to losing people to malaria. Chris Irwin was the reserve manager of Londolozi when I was growing up. He was a former French Foreign Legionnaire and one of the hardest men I have ever met. Malaria felled him as if he were a small boy. He ended up in an intensive care unit in Johannesburg, on life support. Chris’s family was back in Canada, and he’d listed us as next of kin. An old doctor from the lowveld who had consulted on thousands of cases of malaria advised my dad and uncle that the best chance they had was to take Chris off life support and hope that his body kicked back in. My father made the tough decision to turn off the machines. We held prayer circles back at Londolozi in the hope that God would play ball on this one. Chris survived, but after seeing what the parasite could do, we became far more vigilant. In fact, after a few macho guides tried to muscle through their symptoms and almost died, my parents declared that ignoring malaria symptoms, however faint, was a fireable offense. So when they saw me go down, about two days after the symptoms began, they reacted quickly and managed to get me onto a charter flight to Johannesburg. In hindsight, this probably saved my life.
I was admitted to a hospital and put under the care of a bald, worn-out doctor who looked like he’d spent the last three years awake. He had a pet phrase he loved to use to deliver the most appalling news.
“So it’s confirmed; you have malaria. You were in a malarial area, so … it’s to be expected.”
“Turns out your kidneys are failing. You’ve got malaria … it’s to be expected.”
“Turns out the intensive care unit is full. The hospital is badly run … it’s to be expected.”
I was immediately put on a quinine drip. This resulted in slight deafness and intense nausea, which … “was to be expected.”
Everybody thought I would make a quick recovery. My mother kept saying “we caught it early,” which is the most important thing with malaria. The parasite rapidly multiplies and invades the organs if not detected and treated quickly enough.
But all was not well. By the end of that first evening, I was unnerved to discover that I could not urinate. My mother set off to find the doctor.
“There is something wrong with my son. You need to come now!” she told him.
“Your son has malaria, he’s in bad shape … it’s to be expected.”
“Listen, Doctor, you get to my son’s room right now or I will do something to you that you never expected!”
Later we found out that a lack of oxygen due to a fluid buildup in my lungs was causing the problem. I now had malaria and pneumonia. The doctor’s arrival at my ward room coincided with the arrival of Uncle John, dressed in full camouflage combat fatigues, with boots whose metal buckles clinked as he walked; he was also sporting his usual .44 Magnum on his hip and a temper to boot. He resembled Jean-Claude Van Damme dropped onto the set of a John Wayne western.
The doctor began his chorus: “The fluid buildup in his lungs … it’s to be ex—”
“Now, that’s enough,” said Uncle John, watching as I gasped for breath. “I request that you admit my nephew into intensive care. Immediately.” Uncle John had seen enough cases of malaria—and held the family record for infections, at least a dozen—to know that I was starting to slide. He patted the .44 in his holster and glared menacingly at the doctor to emphasize the nonvoluntary status of his “request.” Suddenly we were on the set of The Godfather.
The doctor’s eyes widened, and moments later I was rocketing toward intensive care on a gurney at hypersonic speed.
All I remember about the intensive care unit was the doctor sticking a huge needle into my back and sucking fluid out of my lungs, removing the large elephant that had been squeezing the air out of them. I was in the hospital for two weeks; at times the doctors were unsure if I would live. Mom and Dad were shattered. They sat outside the ICU with Uncle John, weeping. Through a haze of medication, I remember asking a young nurse if she would like to “jump into bed with me.” What can I say? She looked tired. Mom was doing well until my eyes rolled back in my head and I went into convulsions. She flagged down the nearest doctor.
“Sorry, not my case.”
“ ‘Not my case’? Well, it is now.”
The doctor looked at my mother’s face and realized that this was a simple statement of fact.
Ten days later, including five in the ICU, I was out of danger. The next time my uncle came to visit, he took in the flowers and the other visitors and the crisply attired nursing staff and declared, with a trace of disgust, “This place looks like a hotel!” The last time he’d had malaria, he’d ended up in a Zambian hospital. He’d been woken in the middle of the night by what he thought was the person next to him expiring but was in fact a dog panting heavily under his bed.
I emerged from the hospital a few weeks later emaciated and well reminded that Africa is not for ants.
FIFTEEN
A ROYAL WELCOME
I HONESTLY BELIEVE THAT YOU can learn more about the human condition as a safari guide than as a psychologist. In my late teens, I started working at Londolozi. I never get over the thrill of taking people out into the bush. It blows my mind that a few hours ago they were in a cramped apartment in New York or London and now we’re he
ading out for an adventure in my backyard. They go out wanting to see the high-profile animals, the lions and leopards and elephants, all of which are awesome, but I also love how, given a chance, they will become equally fascinated by all the small, intricate things: the golden Calder mobiles of the garden orb spider’s web or the croak of the starlings breaking the silence of a warm afternoon as they congregate to shout abuse at a large black mamba.
I love seeing the place through guests’ eyes; I get reinvigorated by the adventure as we head down the windy sand tracks to where a seasonally dry riverbed we call the Manyaleti, or “Place of Stars,” cuts through the property. It’s the perfect place to find elephants and buffaloes feeding on the thick foliage of the riverbank or simply be rocked by the grandeur of the towering ebony trees and the way the clarity of light highlights the textured bark of each leadwood tree so that it looks like the crinkled skin of the great elephants. I’ve also discovered that people have more phobias than you would ever imagine: buffaloes, worms, feathers, spiders, insects, loud noises, skulls, teeth, dung—any or all of which are very likely encountered on a game drive. There are few things as disconcerting as taking a person with a bird phobia on a game drive, with the air randomly punctuated by bloodcurdling screams as a hornbill casually floats past.
One guest’s obsession was fairies. Every few yards she would scream as if she’d just seen a lion killing a buffalo. “Stop, stop! Wow, those ones are really beautiful! Gorgeous, don’t you think?” I consider myself very open-minded and have no doubt that she was seeing fairies, but it was a struggle to manage the group dynamic on the Land Rover as the other guests became more and more annoyed.
Martin was a welcome challenge for me. He was a seventy-year-old man who’d arrived at Londolozi in full safari gear, complete with a khaki bush hat with a zebra-skin band. An avid photographer, he informed me that he’d been on many safaris and that this would be his last. I was determined to make it a grand send-off and farewell from Africa.
Late in the afternoon on the second day, we were out in a quiet section of the park when we came across some fairly fresh leopard tracks. Solly, my tracker, and I decided that we would leave Martin by himself in the Land Rover while we followed the tracks on foot, a not uncommon action for rangers. We were gone for about fifteen minutes and were successful in finding the leopard’s trail. I couldn’t wait to tell Martin. When we got back to the Land Rover, I noticed that there was quite a lot of sand on the hood, but I thought nothing of it; I was just so excited to be able to get a leopard sighting for Martin. I’d been driving for about ten minutes when Martin announced, “I’m very angry with you! Take me back to the camp!”
“Why, Martin, what’s wrong?”
“While you were gone, a bloody great elephant came along and threw sand at me! And every time it started to calm down, that bloody two-way radio would go off and get it all riled up again! I’m very angry at you—I was bloody scared!”
It’s indeed very scary being that close to an elephant, and I know what it’s like when they pick up sand and throw it at you; they don’t do that when they’re in a good mood. Small wonder Martin was frightened. I tried everything I could to win him back over the next couple of days, but he would have none of it. He’d decided to stick it out, but he refused to talk to us. Awkward silence prevailed in the Landi whenever we took him for a ride.
Eventually I tried a different tack, which was to get all the girls in the lodge to go up to him and tell him he was the world’s greatest for having so courageously stared down a big bull elephant. This worked, and in no time Martin began to feel like he was the main man, even to the point where he began to expound on the story to any person who walked past the bar. By the time he left Londolozi, he felt like the king of Africa. His encounter with the elephant became his greatest memory; as always, nature provided the glorious send-off, not our efforts.
In the luxury safari business, we walk a line between making sure our guests have all the comforts they need and ensuring that their experience doesn’t become cluttered with “stuff.” We’ll go miles out of our way to cater to sophisticated world travelers, but the more important goal at Londolozi is to provide a place where people can, from a comfortable surrounding, find a doorway into nature.
Occasionally, however, nature decides to visit not out in the wild but in the confines of the usually secure camp, and our best-laid plans come crashing down.
“A king is coming to Londolozi!” Bronwyn announced, her eyes wide with a kind of manic panic. “Their security people would like to come in and scout the area to assess the situation.” We’ve had our share of visiting celebrities, dignitaries, and politicians—I have fond memories of tobogganing down a staircase with a certain presidential daughter—but handling this royal entourage would require an unprecedented level of coordination. For this, Mom and Dad were throwing me and Bron into the deep end.
A general sense of overriding hysteria developed in the village. The runway where our puddle jumper landed needed to be extended for the royal jets. Every single room would be taken up by the royal party; one whole camp would be reserved for the machine gun–wielding security guards. As the weeks wore on, Bronwyn fielded near-daily phone calls and faxes from the royal family’s staff, who wanted to be sure the smallest details were attended to. Our small gift shop had to be hugely overstocked so that the royal retinue of twenty women accompanying the king could discover fresh merchandise should they choose to shop once, twice, or three times a day. Their royal chef—who would of course be traveling with them; our five-star chefs had been deemed inadequate to the task—required fresh herbs. Some we had; others had to be flown in. Silk sheets were shipped in to adorn the beds. Even a reserve of royal blood was flown in to be stored in our refrigerators, in the unlikely event of a mishap.
The king’s staff insisted that we set up His Majesty’s own personal exercise equipment in his suite. Many of the Shangaans were fascinated by the princesses’ vibrating wobble plate, an oddly shaped machine with a flat base and long handles that one stood on as it jiggled. Apparently it was meant to have the same effect as running a marathon, except you did nothing and went nowhere. The speculation was rampant around the camp. “It’s a flying device,” opined one of the gardeners. “I think it’s a mechanical dance teacher,” I heard someone comment as I walked past the kitchen office. (Later, when one of the princesses actually used it, members of our staff walked past the makeshift gym extremely slowly, trying to catch a glimpse of this peculiar machine in action. Shrek swept the same spot outside the gym for an hour, utterly fascinated.)
The king’s security detail requested a large satellite dish for the roof. The guards would use it for security communications and getting satellite TV. This brought on a new problem, as there were no TVs in any of the rooms. We had to truck in several TVs, work out where to put them in each room, and then run the required cables.
The demands seemed never-ending, but these are the sorts of problems a lodge that attracts high-profile guests feels lucky to have. The problem wasn’t the guests but, rather, the group organizer, who’d arrived several hours ahead of the rest of the entourage to see to the final details. He was in a swivet, the Armani suit and tie he’d selected for a bush sojourn already soaked through from both the heat of the day and the pressure he was feeling, which translated to escalating demands.
“The prince will need some Clarins face wash. Please make sure it’s in his room,” he said.
“Absolutely, but it’s going to take some time, as we will have to fly it in from Johannesburg,” I pointed out.
“He needs his face wash immediately,” the organizer reprimanded me, although the royals wouldn’t be here for at least another six hours. Sure, I’ll just go to the Clarins store by the warthog wallow, shall I?
Finally, after months of planning, the moment arrived. All that was left to be done was for me to run down the path to the Granite Suites and drop the final touch, a tray of cold facecloths, in the king’s rooms. Th
e suite features a spacious living room with suede couches and comfy chairs, a bedroom with a huge puffy white bed beneath a blizzard of pillows, a dressing area, and a grand bathroom with big glass panels framing the bathtub and shower that allow you complete privacy while you look out over the granite rocks to the river beyond. As I trotted down the path, I could hear via the two-way radio on my belt various reports from other staff members on where, when, and how the royal retinue would arrive. The ETA reports took on the urgency of a woman’s labor contractions. “Boyd, six minutes.” “Boyd, five minutes.” “Boyd, four minutes.”
I arrived at the king’s suite out of breath, tray of towelettes in hand, and was annoyed to discover that housekeeping had left the door slightly ajar. The radio crackled—“Boyd, three minutes”—as I zipped toward the bathroom. Standing atop the sink was a hairy little hobbit with long jowls, heavily padded feet, and close-set yellow-orange eyes. The baboon was chugging papaya hand lotion out of a glass amenities bottle. He glanced sideways at me but kept slurping away nonchalantly—and then at the same moment, both he and I realized that he was cornered. The radio informed me, “Boyd, the king has arrived in the car park.”
The epiphany that I was blocking his way out—I was still standing, shocked, in the doorway—sent the baboon into an absolute state. He pulled his snout from the papaya lotion, the fur around his jowls rimmed in white like one of those “Got Milk?” advertisements, dropped the bottle, which smashed to pieces on the cement floor, then leapt off the bathroom sink, landing right on the shards of broken glass and cutting his feet. With a shriek of pain, he catapulted himself at a large floating pane of decorative glass above the tub. He slammed into it, creating a gruesome piece of modern art as his injured feet smeared it with blood. Terrified, he began to crap himself liberally, bouncing around the room like a furball on speed, leaving a garnish of blood and feces wherever he went. At one point he launched himself onto the ceiling and hung there upside down, gripping a light fixture, his white-streaked face set in an expression of annoyance and embarrassment, that “Oh dear, I just shat on the carpet” look your dog gets. I knew the all-too-human-seeming bloody prints on the ceiling would be hard to explain, much less clean, but not as difficult as the mass of shit that was now covering the bathroom floor.