Cry of the Kalahari

by Mark James Owens

  In the late afternoon, heavy splashes began sounding from the river below. After living for weeks on mealie-meal, raw oatmeal, powdered milk, and an occasional tin of greasy sausages—so pale and limp we called them dead man’s fingers—we both craved a thick, juicy piece of meat. Fresh fish would be scrumptious! I found a tangle of old fishing line the previous owner had left in the Land Rover, made a hook with a pair of pliers, and fashioned a spinning lure from the shiny top of a powdered-milk tin.

  Delia had watched skeptically while I made my fishing rig, and now she began baking mealie bread in the three-legged iron pot. Heading down the riverbank, I snatched a corn cricket from the grass, put it on the hook, and threw it into the water. It was almost dusk, and the surface of the river was jumping with big fish. In a few seconds, shouting and laughing, I hauled in a beautiful bream, and then a big catfish.

  Delia rolled the fillets in mealie-meal and flour before frying them, and soon we were sitting by the fire stuffing ourselves with big chunks of steaming mealie bread and tender white pieces of fish. Afterward, we sat high above the quiet waters of the river, talking over our Makgadikgadi adventure. Africa was seasoning us.

  The next day we caught and ate more fish. Then we stocked up with river water, hauling jerricans up and down the steep bank. After filling the red drum, we set it on its side, and lashed it to the roof of the Land Rover. By noon we were on our way back into the Makgadikgadi to look for predators.

  Four days later, back on “Zebra Hill,” the thousands of antelope we had seen a week before were gone. We drove around for hours without finding a single one. And without prey, no lions, cheetahs, or other carnivores were likely to be around. It was depressing. We had seriously thought of settling in the Makgadikgadi to do our research, but considering the tremendous mobility—with no apparent focal point—of these great herds, and presumably of the predators, how would we locate and stay in contact with our study animals? We drove back to Maun for more supplies and more advice.

  Over the next several weeks we made reconnaissance trips to Nxai Pan, the Savuti Marsh, and other areas on the fringes of the Okavango River delta. The marsh, pans, and forests all had alluring varieties of antelope and predators, but by and large these places were still flooded. The water would limit our operations severely. Often, as we crossed the malopos—reed-choked, swampy waterways—from one palm island to the next, water ran in over the floor of the truck, shorting out the motor. We spent hours digging the Land Rover out of black muck.

  Discouraged, we turned back to Maun. With each unsuccessful reconnaissance and return for supplies, our operating funds were shrinking. Again it was the hunter Lionel Palmer who finally suggested, “Why don’t you try the Kalahari? I’ve seen a place called Deception Valley from the air . . . has lots of game. ’Course, I’ve never hunted there myself; it’s miles inside the game reserve.”

  On the one-to-a-million-scale map of Botswana, we could quickly see that the Central Kalahari Game Reserve was one of the largest wildlife protectorates in the world, more than 32,000 square miles of raw, untracked wilderness. And the wilderness didn’t stop at the reserve boundaries; it extended for 100 miles farther in nearly every direction, interrupted only by an occasional cattle post or small village. According to Lionel, there was not one road, not a single building, no water, and no people, except for a few bands of Bushmen, in an area larger than Ireland. It was so remote that most of it had never been explored and the Botswana government had not opened it for visitors. Consequently, no wildlife research had ever been done there. It was just what we had been looking for—if we could get there and solve the problems of surviving in such a remote and difficult environment.

  After puzzling over the featureless map for some time, we finally devised a route into the Kalahari and, having done so, decided that we would go there without telling the Department of Wildlife. They probably would have refused us permission to work in such an isolated area, and they would learn about us soon enough, anyway.

  The Grey Goose loaded with gasoline and other supplies, our red water drum lashed to the top, we set out for the Kalahari in search of Deception Valley. It was by then late April of 1974. Nine miles east of the village, we found a spoor running south to the Samadupe Drift on the Boteti River. There the water shallowed up, and a corduroy ford of logs was laid across the bottom. Tumbling over the logs and stones, the river fell away to easy swells and swirls between reed banks and a great avenue of giant fig trees. Cormorants dove, and trotters padded from one lily pad to another. Spurwing geese and egrets passed low above the water, their wings singing in the air.

  We stopped on the ford for a last swim, and I cut off Delia’s shoulder-length hair; it would take too much water to keep it clean in the desert. Her long locks fell to the water, eddied, and drifted away on the current. For a moment I could see the reflection of her laughing face in the water—the way she looked the first time I saw her. I paused and held my hand to her cheek and then began snipping again.

  After we had crossed the river and climbed a steep ridge of heavy sand, the track narrowed to two wheel marks bordered by thick acacia thornbush. For the rest of the day we slogged through heat, dust, and deep sand, on either side of us the dense scrub raking the sides of the Land Rover with a screeching that set our teeth on edge. In the late afternoon the spoor dead-ended. We found ourselves in a small dusty clearing where tumbleweeds blew past a crumbling mud hut and a tin watering trough for cattle. We sat wondering where we had gone wrong.

  A gnarled, knobby old man—all elbows, knees, and knuckles—with a gnarled, knobby walking stick, appeared from the bushes. His wife and four spindly boys, dressed in little more than leather sashes, led a line of bony cattle through the blowing dust toward the watering trough.

  I waved. “Hello!”

  “Hello!” one of the boys shouted back. They all laughed.

  “Ah, they can speak English,” I thought.

  “Could you help us? We’re lost.” I got out of the truck and began unfolding our map.

  “Hello,” said the boy again. They all crowded around. “Hello-hello-hello—”

  I put away the map and took another tack.

  “Ma-kal-a-ma-bedi?” I asked, holding my palms out and up, hoping they could understand the name of the fence line that would point us into the Kalahari. The skinniest and most garrulous boy scrambled onto the hood of the Land Rover and pointed back up the spoor; the three others joined him. We drove up the track, all of us laughing. The boys bounced on the hood, their twitching fingers showing us the way.

  A few minutes later they all began pounding on the truck simultaneously. I stopped. They jumped off and pointed east through the bush. At first we did not understand. Then, standing next to them, we could see a faint line leading away through the savanna, an old survey cut-line running east. It was our only option. We were determined not to go back to Maun without having found Deception Valley.

  We thanked the boys, gave them a paper bag of sugar, and set off. “Hello-hello-hello!” They shouted and waved as we disappeared into the bush.

  Early the next morning we came to the fence—weathered posts and five strands of wire running straight across our path as far north and south as we could see. We turned south, and hours later the barrier was still beside us, a great scar across the savanna. It was irritating to us then, but someday it would give us cause to hate the very sight of it.

  We slept along the fence that night. The next morning, with the truck churning on through the sand, our backs became sweaty against the seat, and we were covered with a layer of dust and grass seed. Suddenly, the fence ended: There was nothing left but sand, thornscrub, grass, and heat. Two wheel tracks continued on through the grass, becoming fainter . . . and fainter . . . until, like a distant memory, they disappeared. Now we were driving over mostly flat grass savanna and occasional low sand ridges covered with lush green bushes and stands of trees. Was this the Kalahari Desert? Where were the great shifting sand dunes?

 
; There was no way to be certain of our position. We consulted the map and calculated the number of miles we must have come south from Maun. Then we turned west. We would drive twenty more miles. If we hadn’t found Deception Valley by then, we would have to find our way back to Maun.

  Eighteen . . . nineteen . . . nineteen point six . . . and just as we were about to give up all hope, we crested the top of a large dune. Below us lay the gentle slopes and open plain of Deception Valley, an ancient fossilized river channel meandering through forested sand dunes. Herds of springbok, gemsbok, and hartebeest grazed peacefully on the old grass-covered riverbed, where water used to flow. The blue sky was stacked high with white puffs of cloud. Deception was incredibly serene and all we had hoped it would be. It was May 2, 1974, almost five months since we had left the United States, and we had found our place in Africa. Home, as it would turn out, for the next seven years.

  The gentle dune face led us into the valley. We crossed the dry riverbed, and the springbok hardly bothered to lift their heads from the grass as we passed. On the western edge, we found a solitary island of acacia trees that would provide shelter and give a panoramic view. It would be a good campsite.

  On the move for months, lugging our shelter with us wherever we went, we had begun to feel like a turtle with a steel shell. Already it felt good to be putting down roots.

  It didn’t take long to set up our first base camp: We tied our cloth sacks of mealie-meal and flour in an acacia tree to keep them safe from rodents, stacked our few tinned foods at the base of the tree, and arranged the pots and pans along a limb. Then we gathered firewood. With no shelter other than our tiny pack tent, we would sleep in the Grey Goose for the rest of the year.

  Delia made a fire and brewed some tea while I unloaded our old red drum and rolled it beneath the acacia tree. It held the only water for thousands of square miles.

  2

  Water

  Mark

  . . . if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours . . . If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

  —Henry David Thoreau

  Squeezed by pressure from above, hour by hour, molecules of water sweated through the flakes of rust. Outside they coalesced: A drop grew. Swollen and heavy, the droplet ran along the battered rim. Finally losing its grip, it splattered quietly into a furrow of thirsty sand and disappeared. Above, on the rim, another drop had already taken its place.

  Days passed. The drops continued their march from the rust, to the rim, to the sand. The drum’s wound opened still farther . . . the drops came more quickly, spat-spat-spatting into the dark stain hidden from the sun.

  A near total silence crept in on me when I opened my eyes and gazed at the Land Rover ceiling. A moment’s confusion; where was I? I turned to the window. A gnarled acacia tree loomed outside, its limbs held up in silhouette against the greying sky. Beyond the tree, in soft, easy lines, the wooded sand dunes descended to the riverbed. Morning, our first in Deception Valley, grew in the sky far beyond the dunes.

  Delia stirred. We listened to Africa waking around us: A dove cooed from the acacia, a jackal* wailed with a quavering voice, and from far away to the north the bellow of a lion rolled in, heavy and insistent. A lone kestrel hovered, its wings fluttering against a sky turning fiery orange.

  Grunts and snorts sounded from outside—very close. Quietly, slowly, Delia and I sat up and peered through the window. Just outside camp was a herd of at least 3000 springbok, small gazelles with horns a foot long turned inward over their heads. Their faces were boldly painted with white and black bars running from their eyes along their muzzles. They looked theatrical, like marionettes, as they grazed the dew-sodden grasses, some of them only fifteen yards from us. A few young females stared at us with deep, liquid eyes while quietly munching stems of grass. But most of the herd grazed, their stomachs rumbling and tails flicking, without looking our way. Easing ourselves up against the back of the front seat, we sat in our bed and watched two yearling bucks lock horns in a sparring match.

  Though they hardly appeared to be moving, within twenty minutes the antelope had drifted more than 100 yards away. I started to speak, to try to express what I was feeling, when Delia pointed to the east. A black-backed jackal, first cousin to the American coyote, but smaller and with a sly, foxy face and a saddle of black hair over his back, trotted into our tree island and began sniffing around last night’s campfire. Considered vermin and shot on sight in most of Africa, jackals usually run at the first sign of man. This one walked up to a tin coffee mug left near the coals, clamped the rim in his teeth, and inverted the cup over his nose. Looking right and left before ambling calmly out of camp, he surveyed our few belongings, and then shot us a glance, as if to say, “I’ll be back for more later.”

  It’s difficult to describe the excitement and joy we felt. We had found our Eden. Yet we were very anxious not to disturb the intricate patterns of life that were going on around us. Here was a place where creatures did not know of man’s crimes against nature. Perhaps, if we were sensitive enough to the freedom of these animals, we could slip unnoticed into this ancient river valley and carefully study its treasures without damaging it. We were determined to protect one of the last untouched comers of earth from ourselves.

  Hoofbeats, thousands of them—the air shuddered. The springbok herd was charging south along the riverbed. I grabbed the field glasses, and we kicked out of our sleeping bags and jumped from the Land Rover into the tall, wet grass. Eight wild dogs bounded down the valley after the antelope. When they were abreast of camp, two of the predators veered straight toward us.

  Delia quickly reopened the back door of the truck, but by then the dogs, their gold-and-black patchwork coats wet with dew, stood no more than five yards away. Their bold, dark eyes looked us up and down. We stayed still; several seconds passed while they leaned toward us, their noses twitching, their ragged tails raised. Then, with dark muzzles held high, they began to come closer, putting one paw care, fully in front of the other. Delia edged toward the door. I squeezed her hand—it was not a time to move. The dogs stood hardly more than an arm’s length away, staring as though they had never seen anything quite like us before.

  A growl rose deep from the chest of the one with a swatch of golden fur dangling from his neck; his body trembled and his black nostrils flared. Both of them spun around and, rearing up, placed their forepaws on each other’s shoulders, as if dancing a jig. Then they loped away, following the rest of the pack.

  We pulled on our clothes, started the truck, and followed. Working as a team, the pack split the herd into three smaller groups and began to run each group, alternately, around the riverbed. The lead dog spotted a yearling that apparently seemed vulnerable. After being chased nearly a mile, wild-eyed and breathing heavily, the springbok began to zigzag sharply. The dog seized his prey high on its hind leg and dragged down the ninety-pound buck. Eight minutes later it had been consumed, and the dogs trotted to the shade of a tree island, where they would rest for the day. It was not our last encounter with “Bandit” and his pack.

  Back in camp, we rolled up our sleeping bags, dug some powdered milk and raw oatmeal from the food box beneath, and washed it down with swigs from the canteen. After breakfast we set out to explore the dry riverbed as a study site.

  The springbok had quieted down after the hunt and were again grazing in a line stretched across our path. Moving slowly and stopping when any of the animals began to show alarm, I eased the truck gingerly through the herd. We would have driven around them, but they were everywhere, so we took great care not to drive more than about three miles per hour or to make any sudden movements or noises that might frighten them. They did not yet have a negative impression of man or his vehicles, and we took every precaution to avoid giving them one.

  Deception
Valley is the remains of an ancient river that last flowed through the Kalahari about 16,000 years ago, at a time when rainfall was much more generous than it is today. But the land and its weather have always been fickle, and as it had done at least three times before, the climate turned arid, leaving the body of the river mummified in sand. The ancient riverbed remains in remarkable detail, a narrow ribbon of grassland wandering through dunes. It is so well preserved that when we drove along it we could easily imagine water flowing where grasses now wave in the wind.

  Because it often receives somewhat more than ten inches of rainfall, the Central Kalahari is not a true desert. It has none of the naked, shifting sand dunes that typify the Sahara and other great deserts of the world. In some years the rains may exceed twenty—once even forty—inches, awakening a magic green paradise.

  On the other hand, as we would learn later, all moisture received is soon either lost by evaporation, absorbed by the sands, or transpired by the vegetation. More dramatically, sometimes it may hardly rain at all for several years. So there is seldom a surplus of moisture: no secret springs, no lakes of standing water, no streams. The Kalahari is unique in this respect, a land of great contrasts, a semidesert with no oasis. It has no seasons as we know them. Instead, there are three distinct phases: the rains, which may begin anytime from November to January and last through March, April, or May; a cold-dry spell from June through August; and the hot-dry season, from September through December, or until the rains come again. We had arrived in Deception Valley after the rains and before the cold-dry season.

  The sandy slopes, covered with grasses and thornbushes, rose from the old riverbanks to the dune crests, more than a mile away on both sides. The dune tops were capped with woodlands of Combretum, Terminalia, and Acacia, which, together with the mixed bush and grass communities, reached deep into the sand and prevented it from shifting.