The Eye of the Elephant

by Mark James Owens

  Not many tsetse flies bothered us on our drive down the scarp. But by now we have dropped nearly two thousand feet, and the temperature has risen at least ten degrees to about 87°F. Tsetses swarm inside the Cruiser, biting every exposed patch of skin, even through our shirts, shorts, and socks. Delia soon counts twenty-one bites on her legs. Too hot to roll up the windows, we beat at the flies with our hats, crush them against the windshield, and finally light cigarettes Delia brought for bartering with soldiers at roadblocks along the main road from Lusaka. We puff like fiends until the blue nicotine smog forces the flies to retreat.

  The truck and trailer jolting and clattering, we drive on toward the confluence of the Mwaleshi River and the Lubonga, its smaller tributary. Two hours after leaving the scarp, we stop to study Delia's notes again, but cannot determine which way to go.

  Walls of Combretum obovatum, a thorny scrub that stands twelve feet high, stretch across our path. Twisting and turning along the dusty valley floor, we try to navigate through the maze of thick brambles. Time and time again we fight our way through a brier patch only to find a deep, ragged stream cut blocking our way. Standing on the steep banks, looking down at the uprooted trees lying in these dry washes, I remember the flash-flood warnings Norman Carr gave us in Lusaka: "Don't get caught in the valley after the rains come in November. If you do, you might not get out—until it dries up in May or June."

  Large and small hoof prints cover the ground, but we see few animals. All the vegetation except the crowns of the trees is parched dun-brown by the sun and heat. Leave it to us to discover another desert!

  Nearly three hours after leaving the scarp, the soothing blues and greens of two rivers, one on either side of us, wink enticingly through the tangle of dry scrub. A bit later we push through a stand of tall grass and on our right is the Mwaleshi, its white, sandy bottom showing through sparkling water; on our left is the Lubonga, its tributary, little more than a dry-season trickle. We have arrived at the precise confluence of the two rivers.

  A small herd of puku—freckles of red and brown in the brilliant green grasses—stand on the riverbank forty yards downstream; and fish eagles sit high in the treetops along the wide, shallow river. After the desolation of the obovatum scrubland, we drink in this scene, as we will the water; and the squints and frowns we wore from the glare only moments before dissolve from our faces. We run to the Mwaleshi, scoop it up in our hands, and douse our faces and necks. But it is not enough. Leaving the heat behind, we jump off the bank, fully clothed, into the water. Crocs be damned.

  The sun is setting by the time we cross the river. High on a bank above the confluence, we unroll our mattress on the top of the truck, set out our table and two chairs, and light a campfire. It has been rough going, but we've made it halfway to our objective: the Luangwa River. To celebrate I splash some "pirate" rum, made in Zambia, into the orange squash in our plastic mugs, and we toast our first night in the valley. Below us herds of puku and zebras drink from the river, its water the color of molten steel in the glow after sunset. A neighborly kingfisher hovers at eye level, then tucks its wings and arrows into the pool at our feet. Later, after a dinner of canned chicken stew and a bottle of Drankenstein wine, we climb into our sleeping bags on top of the Cruiser.

  Each night for weeks Delia and I have been playing a game, and tonight is no different. Burrowing down in my bag, I sigh, "Boo, tonight I'm going to show you a shooting star, or at least a satellite. This is it—get ready—I know we're going to see at least one." We gaze up at the heavens, looking for a sudden streak of blue or a faint yellow spot of light moving faster than the more distant stars. Within a few minutes we are asleep, somehow saddened that we have seen neither. In the Kalahari, where the arid skies are much clearer, it would have been different.

  During the next two days we search up and down the Mwaleshi for a temporary campsite and landing strip. We find only one place where the loops in the river course are far enough apart to allow room for takeoffs—especially those lengthened by the heat and the resistance of rough ground and grass. The place we choose would make Cessna's insurance company shudder. It is a comparatively level surface, but cut short by the river at one end and a tree-covered hill at the other. Worse yet, a big sausage tree, thirty feet high, stands in front of the hill near the end of the strip.

  I pace the runway several times, but cannot stretch it to more than 338 yards. According to the pilot's operating handbook for the Cessna 180K, a takeoff on a grassy surface in this temperature should require 330 yards; then add another 215 yards before the plane can clear a 50-foot obstacle—a tree, for instance. If we're hot and heavy, we may have to fly around that tree after takeoff. If not, well, we've got 8 yards of runway to play with and another 200 or so to clear the tree.

  Using axes, shovels, and picks, we spend a blistering hot afternoon chopping out tough, spindly shrubs and leveling off termite hummocks to make our airstrip. To finish it, we mark both ends of Airstrip One with piles of buffalo dung. Before dawn the next morning we unhitch the trailer, stash it in tall grass near the airstrip, and head for Mpika to get our plane. Without the trailer to get us stuck in every sandy crossing, the drive back up the scarp to the village takes only eight hours. Just thirty minutes after takeoff I land on our new runway. Because the drive back will take Delia much longer than my flight, she will have to camp along the track and meet me here tomorrow.

  I drag some thornbushes close around Zulu Sierra's belly, then spread my bedroll on the ground under the plane. A few years ago Norman Carr's best friend was pulled out of his tent and eaten by a hungry lioness in the Luangwa Valley. So I am a little wary of sleeping in the open. In the Kalahari we often slept not only on the open savanna, but with lions. In this unfamiliar habitat, however, my primate ancestors, speaking to me down long lines of evolution, are warning me to be careful.

  In the late afternoon I sit on the riverbank, watching a pied kingfisher dive for dinner. Deception Valley seems of another world, another time. It hurts to remember how much we left behind there, in the Kalahari: Sunrise, Happy, Stormy, Sage, and the other lions; and Dusty, Pepper, Patches, and Pippin, our brown hyenas. What can ever replace them, or fill the need they have created in us?

  Night shadows begin stalking the riverbanks. A Goliath heron drifts by, its wings whispering in the still dark air. Through the quiet current a large V-shaped ripple cruises slowly upstream toward me. I retreat to my plane—my tin of technology—and sit by my campfire, out from its wing. A lion calls from upriver, another answers from down. Then it seems too quiet, so I lie under the plane, my three-foot-high thornbush boma pulled around like a comforter. Soon I am asleep. And I dream of another land, with larger lions, with deeper roars; of standing with my arm across the shoulder of a big male named Muffin. Together with Delia I look to the distant horizon, far across the dunes.

  ***

  "Munch—munch—munch." Roused from sleep, I slowly raise my head and look out from under the plane. Four hundred fifty buffalo are mowing and fertilizing the gravel bar along the Mwaleshi River where I landed last evening. They are headed straight for me, some of them only fifty yards away. I crawl forward and stand up, leaning back against the propeller and peering over my thornbush boma. None of the buffs notice me. Their broad muzzles pressed to the ground, tails flicking while ox peckers flit about their backs, the mean machines mow on. Now and then one snorts or grunts loudly, shaking its bulldozer boss and wide-sweeping horns to shoo the flies, slinging saliva onto the grass.

  The airplane means nothing to these buffalo since they have never seen one before, and because I am frozen against the propeller they haven't yet distinguished my human form. Buffalo have a hard time seeing anything that isn't moving, even at close range, and I am downwind from them so they haven't smelled me.

  Grumbling and mooing, they continue to graze toward me. By now the closest cows are only twenty yards away, and I can smell their dank, musky scent. People who surprise buffalo at close range may get gored, s
tomped, tossed, and even chewed. Last year two game scouts from Mano were killed by them. At ten yards the nearest buffalo are too close, but they still haven't noticed me—and they are still coming. The only thing to do is to stay still and hope they move on.

  But tsetse and dung flies are crawling over my face, and the urge to brush them away is unbearable. Cautiously I begin raising my right hand toward my chin. The lead cow, not more than eight yards away, lifts her head, stops chewing, and looks directly at me, a large sward of grass jutting from the corner of her mouth. The wrinkles over her eyes deepen, her muscles stiffen, and air explodes from her black nostrils. Some large bulls at the edges of the herd immediately lift their heads and key on her. I stop my hand midway up my chest.

  Fifty buffalo are now staring at me. Dung flies are crawling over my cheeks and forehead, sucking moisture from my nostrils and the corners of my eyes and mouth. Tsetse flies are biting my neck and arms. I don't move.

  The cow in front of me relaxes and lowers her head to the grass, but the older, more experienced bulls behind her stalk forward, sighting down their black cannon-sized muzzles at me. Close to the cow they stop, still glaring at me. My hand crawls to my chin, covers my nose and mouth, and freezes there. The bulls snort loudly, shaking their heads and stamping their feet.

  I allow my fingers to wander over my nose and cheek, chasing away the maddening flies. The bulls snort and stomp again. The cow raises her head. She shakes her horns and my stomach tightens.

  Then she spins away and clomps off, stopping fifty feet away to look back at me. But the bulls still move toward me, snorting and stamping the ground with their heavy hooves. I wipe my face with my hand and then twiddle my fingers at them. They stop again, raise their heads, then lower them, never taking their eyes off me. The cow begins to graze. Two of the males swing their heads to look at her, then they also graze.

  I too relax. Moving slowly, I poke up the fire and minutes later pour a pan of boiling water over some coffee grounds. Then I sit down under the nose of the airplane, savoring my hot, thick "camp coffee" as I watch the herd graze past me. Some are so close I swear I can see the plane's reflection in their eyes, see puffs of dust around their nostrils, hear the coarse grass tearing as their teeth crop it off.

  The sun rises slowly behind the herd, cradled between the banks of the river, setting fire to the fringe of hair around their ears and the whiskers on their muzzles. My coffee tastes especially good this morning, in North Luangwa.

  Late afternoon. I am still wound up from the morning's encounter. Delia arrives from Mpika in a cloud of dust, and as I tell her about my communion with the buffs, she rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue in her cheek. Fortunately there is plenty of "B.S." to prove my story.

  Up at the first hint of dawn, we load the trailer with the gear we won't need on our reconnaissance to the Luangwa, and stash it in an obovatum thicket. We enclose the plane in a thornbrush boma again—to keep hyenas and lions from chewing its tires and tail—and by seven o'clock we are on our way southeast along the river. We have traveled less than a mile when a mean range of scrambled hills blocks our way. They are covered with brambles and chopped up by dry stream channels; there is no way around them. The Mwaleshi is too wide and full of quicksand for us to ford it. We will have to drive over these "Hills of the Chankly Bore," as we call them.

  Near the river a narrow gully leads up a steep slope and through the leading edge of the hills. Here we ax down hummocks and chop out briers. But when I try to climb the grade with our rig, I lose traction halfway up. So I back down and try again—and again. Finally, we winch up the truck first, then turn it around to winch up the trailer.

  Only minutes after we've descended the Hills of the Chankly Bore, a wide, sandy river lies across our path. No matter which way we turn, a gauntlet of steep slopes and stream and river cuts blocks our way. By placing short planks in front of the wheels to keep them from sinking, we finally make it across. Fifteen minutes later we are down to our axles in mud on the edge of a lagoon. Almost as soon as we have winched out, we drive a brittle mopane stump through one of the Cruiser's tires while trying to push through a solid wall of obovatum briers. We change the tire and hack our way through the thicket with machetes, but then the truck's right front wheel falls into a deep hole hidden in tall grass. At one point it takes four hours to go a thousand yards through a woodland of dead snags.

  Through all of this the Mwaleshi flows serenely by our side, twinkling in the sunlight. It is as though the river is teasing us during our ordeal. We see an occasional puku or waterbuck, but where are the mighty herds of buffalo, like the one that surrounded the plane, and the zebras, eland, and impalas we saw from the air? Eventually ten eland trot by, watching us as if they were spectators at a one-truck demolition derby. But their magnificence is lost on us: we are down to our axles in sand again, and shoveling furiously in the 110°F heat. Each obstacle we cross we will have to recross on the way back. There will be no quick way out.

  Every evening we park our truck under a tree with a limb at the right height for our mosquito net, climb to the Cruiser's rooftop carrier, take down our chairs and folding table, stand the high-lift jack and spare tire out of the way, and lay our sleeping bags on mats on top of the truck. I have already lost a pair of boots to hyenas, so we keep most of our gear inside the truck or on top of it while we sleep—surrounded by our boots, extra clothes, toothbrush kits, towels, jacks, and spades. Stacked on the front seat are binoculars, books, and camera gear to keep them from getting soaked by the dew. Each morning everything has to be put away before we can move on. We have been living like gypsies for four months, exploring wildlife areas in Zimbabwe and Zambia, and we are anxious to settle somewhere.

  On the fourth morning we drive through a dense woodland. As we emerge on the far side, a forest of stark, dead mopane trees and utterly bare ground stretches before us. In this "Torrible Zone," as Delia calls it, the trunks and branches of these skeletons—peeling, split, and rotting—all seem to have been killed at the same time, frozen in the act of life by some cataclysm. The gnarled roots clutch at soil baked by the sun to a dusty pancake. As far as we can see, not a single blade or leaf of green promises life.

  "Mark, look over there!" I stop the truck and we walk to a thin grove of trees near the edge of the dead woodland. Five elephant skulls, bone white and half the size of bathtubs, are scattered about the area with pelvises, leg bones, ribs, shoulder blades, and other remains. Horrified, we notice skeletons lying everywhere: one here, five over there, six there.

  "The bastards!" I kick the dust.

  Hurrying from one skull to the next, we examine each one. All have small holes, where small holes should not be in elephant skulls. All have had their faces chopped off, their tusks hacked away.

  Now we understand why we have not seen a single living elephant, or a sign of one, in the eight days since we entered the park. We are standing in the midst of a killing field, where gangs of poachers have slaughtered every great gray beast they saw. It is an elephant's Auschwitz. Looking around at the carnage, I can't help but wonder if the death of these elephants might somehow be related to death of the forest. The magnitude of the poaching problem in North Luangwa hits us like a fist in the stomach. Although we have not yet run into poachers, it must be only a matter of time until we do. There will be no ignoring them, running from them, pretending they do not exist If we stay here to work, we will have to do something about them.

  Sobered, we continue to follow the Mwaleshi River toward its confluence with the Luangwa. For hours the bush is so thick we cannot see the river, and we stay on course only by using a com pass. We are driving through tall grass and obovatum thickets when suddenly the front of the truck falls out from under us with a crack. The Cruiser jams to a stop like a shying horse and pitches us against the windshield. We rebound into our seats and rub our heads, coughing in the haze of dust rising from the truck's floor.

  After checking to see that Delia is not seriously hurt, I
open my door, which is now at ground level, and get out to check the damage. The right front end is sitting bumper deep in a washout that was hidden in the grass. The spring has broken, letting the chassis down on the axle. If the axle had snapped, we would be stranded. We don't have enough spare blades to fix the spring properly; I'll have to jerry-rig something.

  With the high-lift jack we raise the truck and block it up on pieces of dead wood. Using a small battery-powered drill, I make center-bolt holes in three tire levers, then wire them in place where the broken spring blades were.

  Two hours later, the truck is ready to roll again. "I can't believe we still haven't reached the Luangwa," Delia sighs, slumping down in the grass, her arms covered with the claw marks of the obovatum, matted hair hanging low over her forehead. "Let's discuss this a bit. It's taken us four days so far. We have no radio, nobody knows where we are, we don't know where we are. If the truck breaks down and you can't fix it, it's going to be a long walk back to Mpika. We're digging ourselves in deeper and deeper."

  I sit down beside her, pull a grass stem, and begin chewing on it. At last I say, "That's what we've been doing for years."

  "Right; fine. I just thought we ought to stop and consider for a minute." A silent minute later—"Let's go," she says.

  After another hour we finally break through a hedge of obovatum scrub into an avenue of trees growing on a high bank above the sandy Mwaleshi. Standing on the top of the bank, we are greeted by a sweeping view of the river valley. The sun is setting over the escarpment, its rays in a fiery dance, skipping over ripples and sandbars in the water. The floodplains near and far are spotted with wild animals: six hundred buffalo grazing across a grassy plain; fifty zebras ambling toward the river to drink; a herd of waterbuck lying on a sandbar downstream; impalas browsing at the edge of the mopane woodland. Nearby a herd of Cookson's wildebeest—found only in Luangwa—gallop about in a sun dance. "WHOOOO—HUH—HUH—HUH! MPOOOSH!" The sound, like a humpback whale playing a bassoon, echoes from our left. "Hippos!" I grab Delia's hand and we run downriver toward the calls. Not more than a hundred yards away, we round a last bunker of bushes and there is the Luangwa, with the Mwaleshi flowing into it. Where the two rivers join is a large pool crowded with a hundred hippos, their piggy eyes on us, their nostrils blowing plumes of water in the setting sun as they twiddle their ears.