The Eye of the Elephant

by Mark James Owens

  "Better get back to our manual labor," Mark jokes.

  "Sorry, I'm an officer," I say as we both begin shoveling again. We've been working on the strip for over a week, and while half of it is clear of small trees, it still looks more like a spot where elephants have romped in the woods than an airstrip.

  Two flat tires on the Cruiser force us to return to camp early in the afternoon. When we arrive, Tapa, the game guard enlisted to protect our camp, is nowhere to be found. Mark and I find him hidden in the tall grass, drying meat on a rack. Every day, while we have been clearing the airstrip, Tapa has been fishing, trapping, and drying meat. Stunned, we ask what he is doing, and he replies calmly that he is going to sell the meat in the village. "That is against the law, you know," I say. He shrugs his shoulders and continues to poke at the charred body of an otter, sizzling over the glowing coals. Although we do not report Tapa, we send him back to his camp without the food, and never again do we employ a game scout to watch our camp. It is beginning to seem that instead of the guards protecting the park, we need to protect the park from the guards.

  While the men are busy mending the tires, I haul water and bake bread. Several times during the last few days it has rained high in the scarp mountains, and our little river is flowing gently with a few inches of water. We do not know when the real floods will come, so I have been pestering Mark for days to move our valuables again—this time to the airstrip, which is on still higher ground. Most of our gear is stored in the hut, but I'm worried that with the first rain it will be reduced to the mud from whence it came.

  Bending over a basin washing clothes, I hear a distant roar and stand up to listen.

  Simbeye and Mwamba shout, "The river, watch the river. It comes!"

  Instead of running away from the riverbank, which would seem the sensible thing to do, we all run toward it and look upstream. A wall of water, three or four feet high, rounds the bend to the north. It rushes toward us, mad and muddy, looking like one river flowing on top of another. We watch in disbelief as the Lubonga, which was only five yards across, widens to more than a hundred yards, spreading over the rock bar on the opposite side.

  Our bank had been a good twelve feet above the river; now the rushing water is only four feet below us, and rising. Huge trees and branches bob in the waves.

  I scream over the roar, "Mark, it's going to come over the bank! We've got to move everything!"

  "Let's wait and see," he shouts back. I wonder if we will stand here until our feet are wet before we do something.

  "Here comes another river," Simbeye calls, pointing behind us, and we run to the northwest corner of the island. Savage brown water pours from what had been a dry gorge. It fills the oxbow to the north of camp with an instant roaring river thirty yards wide. Swollen rapids, topped with foam and debris, cover our track. We are cut off, stranded on the island. There is no longer any chance of moving to the strip. We run back to the main river, which has already risen another foot. Why haven't we listened to all the warnings about floods?

  "Shouldn't we at least put everything on top of the truck?" I plead with Mark.

  "I don't think it's going to come any higher."

  "How on earth do you know?"

  "Don't worry. It's going to be okay."

  The seven of us stand on the riverbank, heads down, watching the unleashed fury of our little river. A large chunk of the bank falls into the hungry current. Mark motions for us to move back from the edge. The water is two feet below the top of the bank, but its rise seems to have slowed. Ten minutes later it is unchanged.

  "See, it's going to be okay," Mark says.

  "Right, fine, we're not going to be washed downstream," I agree. "But now we're stuck here; we won't be able to drive out for weeks."

  "Oh no, Madam, it won't be like that," Sunday smiles. "This water, she will be gone tomorrow."

  "The flood will only last one day?"

  "This water," he explains, "she is coming from the mountains to the Luangwa River. When she is there, she will not come back. More water will come on a day from here, but this water, she will be gone tomorrow."

  "See," Mark smiles, "no problem. This water, she will be gone tomorrow."

  The flood begins to recede after a few hours, but it is only the first of many floods to come. With each rain, whether here or in the mountains, the rivers will become higher, the ground soggier, the track more slippery. The old Land Cruiser will no longer be able to drive us out of the valley. We must finish the airstrip and collect the Unimog truck, or we will not be able to operate in North Luangwa this season.

  For now we are stuck in camp; we can't even drive to the airstrip until the flood recedes farther. Mark and I pull our folding safari chairs close to the riverbank and watch the Lubonga with new respect. She is still raging, and now that we know her moods, we will never take her for granted.

  At sunset a small group of puku females gather on the opposite bank and stare at the river; one of their favorite sleeping spots is three feet underwater. After a while they settle down in a tight knot in the grass.

  Darkness brings dazzling stars and the first lightning bug of the season. In a few days thousands of fireflies will sprinkle the night with their phosphorescence, like sequins fluttering and floating through the balmy air. But tonight this one is all alone, and seems lost and lonely as he flashes unanswered valentines above the grass. Usually lightning bugs fly no higher than the treetops. But this one soars higher and higher toward the starry sky as if, for lack of a mate, he has fallen in love with a star.

  In a final dash to finish the runway before the rainy season, we start working on it at four-thirty every morning. As with most of our races with the African elements, we are losing. Nearly all the small trees have been cleared from the airstrip, but hundreds of stumps remain to be pulled, and three termite mounds as hard as concrete and as large as the truck must be leveled.

  Now that much of the undergrowth has been removed, some of the animals can't resist the lush green herbs and grass that have been exposed. A male puku with one horn has already claimed part of the airstrip as his territory, and has become so habituated to our presence that he grazes nearby as we hack and chop. A family of warthogs and a small herd of zebras often forage at the opposite end of the strip.

  One hot afternoon, as we are lost in a haze of heat and work, Simbeye calls softly, "Nsofu, there." Far on the other side of Khaya Stream, in a little valley, we see ten elephants moving through the tall grass. They are the first living ones we have seen since our return to North Luangwa. We watch them in awe and whisper softly when we speak, even though they could not possibly hear us at this distance. Adult males, three of them without tusks, feed on the prickly branches of the winter-thorn trees. Reaching with his trunk, one of them pulls down a branch of a fifteen-foot acacia. He strips the bark—twigs, thorns, leaves, and all—and stuffs it into his mouth.

  We see these elephants on several more occasions, always in the distance, and although it seems a bit of an exaggeration, we start calling them the Camp Group.

  November 14 arrives, ripe with legendary promises, but still there is no rain. Sunday was right, the river has become a gentle stream again, and only the driftwood high on its banks tells of the flood. But every afternoon giant cloud formations rumble across the sky. Simbeye keeps telling us that we must go now, that once the rains come we will not be able to drive up the slippery mountain track in the old Cruiser. "Only one more day," Mark keeps saying, as we pull more stumps and fill more holes.

  Finally, the airstrip resembles a runway, although it is certainly not yet ready for approval by the Division of Civil Aviation. There are still several large hummocks, where termite mounds used to be, and scores of stump holes. But it is close enough to being finished that we can complete the job quickly in the Unimog when we return from Durban.

  With no idea how long we will be away, we pack up all the gear and hide another cache of leftover fuel and avgas near the airstrip. With all the Bembas boun
cing in the trailer, we drive up the scarp. We leave them at Shiwa N'gandu, with the promise that we will hire them again as soon as we return—in a few weeks, we hope.

  We are near Mpika when fat raindrops pound the top of the truck, and curtains of white rain drift through the air. We look back. The valley, filled with cumulonimbus clouds, looks like an enormous bowl of popcorn. We have made it out just in time.

  7. A Valley of Life

  DELIA

  The most present of all the watchers where we camped were the animals that stood beyond the firelight, being dark, but there, and making no sound. They were the most remembered eyes that night.

  — WILLIAM STAFFORD, "When We Looked Back"

  CARRYING THE HOT-WATER KETTLE, a towel, and a flashlight, Mark follows the footpath through the dark camp toward the bath boma. Surrounded by tall grass, the boma is a three-sided structure of sticks and reeds standing at the edge of Marula-Puku camp. Inside is a wash table also made of sticks, a jerry can of cold water, and a basin in which we mix hot and cold water for our baths every evening.

  A rustling noise sounds from the grass. Mark pauses briefly, but walks on. Earlier a male waterbuck had been grazing near the sausage tree just beyond the boma; he is probably still in the tall grass. Mark mixes his bathwater, then switches off the flashlight to save the batteries. Standing naked under the bright stars, he begins to wash his hair, closing his eyes against the soapsuds. He freezes as he hears the rustling again from six feet behind him, just outside the boma. He quickly splashes water onto his face to rinse away the soap, then switches on his flashlight, hoping to get a closer look at the waterbuck. A wall of tall grass is all that he sees, but he can still hear the swishing sounds. He steps to the grass, parts it, and shines the light into the thick cover at his feet.

  A lioness, crouched flat against the ground, glares back at him, her tail lashing. She is only four feet away, looking straight into his eyes.

  "Aaarrgghh!" Involuntarily, Mark utters a primal growl and jumps back. At the same instant the lioness springs to her feet, hissing and spitting at him, her canines gleaming white in the light. Mark leaps into the boma. The lioness whirls around and charges away through the grass to join five other lions ten yards behind her. Together the pride trots to the firebreak a little farther on, where they all sit on their haunches, staring at Mark. Suds dripping down his neck, Mark stares back, wondering if they will become frequent visitors to our camp like the lions we knew in the Kalahari.

  ***

  It is early February 1988, much later than we'd planned, before we return to Luangwa—Mark in the new Unimog hauling a thirteen-ton shipping container, I driving the old Cruiser. The rains have transformed the Northern Province into a lush tangle of weeds, grass, and shrubs. The little villages are smothered in vines, dripping with today's rain and yesterday's moist blossoms. To stay dry the women have to cook inside their grass huts, the smoke smoldering through the thatched roofs. When we reach the village of Shiwa N'gandu, Simbeye, Kasokola, and Mwamba rush out of their mud and thatch huts to greet us. All smiles as usual, they are ready to return to Marulu-Puku. When I ask about Sunday Justice, they explain that he has gone to Lusaka to look for work. The thought of this gentle, soft-spoken, imaginative fellow walking the tough streets of Lusaka saddens me. But, happy to have the other men with us, we start once again down the scarp.

  Island Zulu, Gaston Phiri, Tapa, and the other game guards leave their beer circle and shake our hands warmly in welcome. The children surround us calling "smi-lee, smi-lee," which at first I mistake as some form of Bemba greeting. Then I realize that I have always asked them to smile for the camera, so they think that "smile" means "hello." When I greet them in Chibemba, they collapse in giggles and run into their huts.

  The Mwaleshi, now in full flood, does not give us such a warm welcome. The swollen river tears through the forest, splashing spray and whitecaps against boulders and logs. If we cannot get across the river, our hopes of working in North Luangwa during the rains will stop right here.

  Using the bucket loader on the Mog, for three days we quarry stones from a rocky outcropping and dump them into the river to make a ford. On the morning of the fourth day Mark ties a rope around his waist and swims across, pulling the end of the winch cable with him. Once on the other side, he hooks the cable around the base of a large tree and recrosses the river. As he slowly eases the nine-foot-tall Mog into the river, its hood disappears under the roiling current. The cab rocks wildly as the truck climbs over the boulders on the river bottom. Water seeps in around Mark's feet, but the truck churns through the current and pulls itself up the muddy bank on the east side of the Mwaleshi.

  After several more trips to ferry the rest of the gear across, we fill the back of the Cruiser with large stones for ballast and winch it over. Water pours out of every door and crack of the old machine, which must long for desert days gone by. The current would sweep away the shipping container, so we leave it in Mano.

  On our way down the scarp the trucks get stuck so often in the greasy mud that we don't make it to Marula-Puku tonight, as we had hoped. We camp near "Elephant's Playground," a swale of long grass where we have often seen elephant tracks, dung, and broken trees, but never the elephants themselves. The next morning the grass is so tall—ten feet in places—that it is difficult to follow the track. Simbeye, Mwamba, and Kasokola climb into the Mog's bucket, and Mark raises them high over the truck so they can guide us.

  The runway we had worked so hard to clear is covered by grass eight feet tall and hundreds of small mopane shrubs. "It's not as bad as it looks," Mark tries to cheer me. As we continue down the track, I dread what we will find at camp. From the tall north bank, all that can be seen of the Bemba hut is the soggy, lopsided thatch roof that appears to be floating on top of a grass lake. The oxbow around the island is a swamp with tall reeds bobbing in knee-deep water. But the main river, the Lubonga, is well within its banks, and only a shallow stream separates us from camp.

  The adobe walls are cracked and crumbling, the roof windblown and certainly not waterproof, but the hut is still standing. As I walk silently inside, Simbeye says, "This is not a very fine house, Madam, but we will make it strong for you." I smile gratefully at him and look around. One big truck, one small truck, and five muddy people—a motley crew for the size of the project we have in mind. I look up at Mark. "Well, we'd better get started."

  There is plenty of willing mud to repair the walls and plenty of ready grass to mend the roof. Within two days we have a primitive camp and a week later the grass has been cleared from the airstrip. The runway still has to be leveled, which will take another three months of backbreaking work, but after that we can fly the airplane to the valley.

  Around the campfire each night, Mark and I talk endlessly about how North Luangwa can be saved from poachers. We will have to start by working with the game guards to enforce the laws against poaching, but that will be only the first step. The people who live around the park must be convinced that wildlife is more valuable to them alive than dead. Eventually, we hope that conservation-minded tour operators will run quality, old-fashioned walking safaris that will put money in the pockets of the local people. The government has agreed that 50 percent of the revenue from tourism in North Luangwa—once it starts—can be returned to the villagers.

  Of course, we would rather North Luangwa be free and wild, but that is no longer a choice. It lost its freedom when the poachers fired the first shot. The challenge is to save it without breaking it of its wildness.

  It will be some time before revenue from tourism will begin to flow to the villages near the park. In the meantime, we can help the people find other ways of making a living so they can give up poaching. We think of cottage industries, such as carpentry shops, beekeeping, maize mills, and sunflower presses. We can help them grow more of their own food, especially sources of protein such as poultry, fish, beans, and peanuts. Hungry people do not make good conservationists.

  Most important,
perhaps, we will start teaching the young people that wildlife is the most valuable resource in their district. Most of the children have never seen live elephants, much less thought of them as anything other than a source of meat or ivory. Neither has the rest of the world. This is as good a place as any to start.

  Then, of course, we have to learn more about North Luangwa, especially its wildlife and ecology. We will fly regular aerial surveys, taking a census of each wildlife species and noting its distribution in order to determine whether the population is stable or declining. We will also explore the park from the ground, but that will be difficult at the height of the rainy season. Even the Mog bogs down in mud between camp and the airstrip.

  So, hiking in misty mountains and across soggy savannas, and wafting in the plane over the backs of buffalo, elephants, zebras, and wildebeest, we begin discovering this land of rivers and this valley of life.

  "We're not going to make it tonight. Let's camp here." Standing in the drizzle, Mark, Kasokola, Mwamba, and I look up at the sheer forested cliff towering between us and our destination. Days before in the airplane, we had followed the Lubonga River from its source on the plateau above the Muchinga Escarpment. Beginning as a narrow trickle, it wound its way through the lush vegetation and rounded peaks of the tumbledown mountains. Now and then it cascaded over boulders, creating waterfalls hidden beneath tropical trees, ferns, and vines. At one spot, near the base of the mountains, the river surged through a small, pasture-like floodplain, the shape of a teardrop, tucked away in the folds of the steep-sided hills. We called it Hidden Valley. At this point along the river's course, a single mountain ridge blocked it from the plains beyond. But decades before, the Lubonga had found a weakness in the strata of the ridge and had crashed through, creating a narrow chasm, covered in ferns, vines, and sprays of bamboo.