A Rock and a Hard Place

by George Zelt PhD

  There are different degrees of darkness. The forest that night was in the rat-black category, which means particularly dark. It’s the kind of darkness that exposes all men’s behavior. If a man is afraid, he will show it.

  The evening silence was broken by sounds that rose and fell, creating an irregular forest symphony. Unseen phantoms rustled leaves and broke branches, growling, moaning, breathing, and betraying themselves under the blanket of night. It could be a mouse scurrying to find his hole, an elephant trumpeting the sunset, a monkey shaking a branch, a jackal whining, a lion roaring, a hyena crying. Even a tiny beetle struggling to pass through dry leaves made an astonishing noise. In the background is the constant chorus of crickets and thousands of insects, each with their diverse songs of life. And when the moon is full and sleep confuses them, birds add their own contributions. It was an African night in a swamp, a beautiful and frightening time, depending on who you are and what fate will provide you.

  Nocturnal fireflies dancing in the warm air began to disappear. Dawn came, pushing away the darkness. It was announced by the high, clear duets of a few impetuous birds, apparently hysterically happy to have survived the night. The thought of having a breakfast of leftover steak, eggs, coffee, and Patrick’s potatoes lured us out of our sleeping bags. After eating, we lay on our backs. Fingerlike gray clouds shook hands as they met this quiet morning. They would soon say goodbye as the warm sun drove them apart. We lazily crawled back into our bags and fell asleep.

  I was only partially awake when I heard Patrick quietly say, “Don’t move.”

  “Oh shit.” I opened my eyes and tried to see under the rim of my hat, which was partially over my face. “Oh please, no snake.”

  “What? What?” Marcus whispered; he was facing the other way and couldn’t see.

  “Giraffes to the right,” Patrick whispered.

  I heaved a deep breath. “What a relief.” I turned slowly to look and then gasped. “Will you look at that!”

  Only fifty feet from us two very tall giraffes had moved into the clearing, twisting their patchwork necks and eating favored leaves off the upper branches of acacia trees, which offered two seeds in each green-jacket pod.

  “I think adults giraffes normally don’t travel together. Maybe they’re a pair, and the female’s in heat?” Patrick said quietly. “Males taste the female’s urine to see if they are fertile. He could be waiting for an opportunity.”

  “Unbelievable the things you know,” Marcus replied.

  The upper and lower portion of the giraffes’ frames did not seem to be synchronized, which resulted in an ungainly walk. I noticed then that both right legs moved forward then both left. They had to shift their bodies like a human with wooden legs, while their swaying necks and heads provided balance. Still, they presented dignity as they scrutinized each tree.

  “The thorns of the acacia don’t seem to bother them,” Marcus said. “They are just shoveling those leaves in . . and they are also coming closer.”

  “Their tongue is special—all muscle and long, maybe a foot and a half, and flexible,” Patrick said. “It curls around and pulls off what the beast wants. Look, one is licking its ear. That’s a hell of a tongue and it’s purplish-black! I wonder if they stick it into a female giraffe’s ear?”

  “That’s an odd thing to wonder.”

  “It has to do with sex, Marcus. Actually, the elongated ears do look like a vagina,” Patrick continued, squinting in the sun and not paying attention to Marcus.

  Marcus looked at Patrick in disgust. “Do the Irish really think like this?”

  “Amazing how strong their legs are,” I said to change the subject.

  “The giraffes don’t have claws or upper front teeth,” Patrick said. “They use their legs, thick with muscle, for protection. They kick like a man in a street fight, only backward.”

  We later learned an adult giraffe has few enemies and can break a lion’s spine or shatter its skull with a good kick. I suppose being struck by a giraffe’s leg was like getting swung at and hit by a very long, heavy pole. Maybe that had something to do with their walking style.

  At that moment one of the giraffes began peeing. The urine had a long way to go to reach the ground. We watched it flow as if from a garden hose and then spatter, when the two-story animal stepped toward us.

  “Oh hell . . . it’s going to douse us!” Marcus gasped. “The other one’s following.”

  No one commented further; we were scrambling, still half in our sleeping bags, toward the Land Rover.

  Chapter 17

  From Dugout Canoes to Military Convoy

  To enter the swamp, we needed three dugout canoes, or makoros, carved from large wetland trees. The Hambukushu—one of the five ethnic groups in the delta—were our “motors.” Standing in the rear of each dugout—loosely dressed, barefooted, thin and wiry with protruding knots of muscles and drooping hats—the Hambukushu men poled us forward. Our entry point was lost a minute later behind a shifting fog of greenery.

  Looking at my map, I traced the broad blue line of the Okavango River, which feeds the swamp, back over five hundred twisting miles to the faraway mountains of Angola. For some six months after the annual rainy season, the river flows incessantly south over the dry Kalahari. What, I wondered, could be more determined than a young mountain river? When it finally reaches the flat delta, it fans out into channels. But from there it has nowhere else to go. In the end, the Kalahari sands simply absorb it as if it never was.

  There is some geological mystery to this, however, as not all of it sinks into the hungry sands. The new water, buoyed by deeper prehistoric fossil water, floats outward, doubling the size of the swamp. It engulfs the salt pans, surging as far as it can before finally giving up and sinking or evaporating.

  In addition, the channels change every year as the land imperceptibly tilts from deep tectonic movements underground and the waterways become choked by the growth of new papyrus trees. One day there are defined water roads into the swamps, and the next day the marauding flood obstructs all, creating a maze.

  We poled on into a stream channel, staying together. The shore was somewhere between the green water sedge—tufted marsh plants—and reed beds and the enamel-green land-grass beds. It all blended like a seamless puzzle.

  Painted spiders configured cobwebs that dangled with grace from tall reeds, their center points quivering with the faint breeze. The morning sun captured their misty walls silvered over with diamond dew, readying them for transformation into deadly invisible traps to capture a multitude of flying insects that inhabited the swamp community. There were hundreds of webs in every thicket, some old, some new, and some in the process of completion or repair. Invariably, the odd white stork or a similar bird would emerge from the reeds, striding along on its thin twig-like legs, fishing. Sometimes the birds would jar a spider’s sticky web and eat its creator in one fast movement.

  My dugout leaked a bit and had been patched with flattened tin cans. One said “Coca-Cola.” I sat on the bottom, feeling the water rise; it was crystal clear. Several yards down, deep-green vegetation wound its mesmerizing way upward. All were willing slaves to the currents that transported nutrients and life.

  Thousands of wattled starlings passed overhead in a huge flock, gulping insects as they flew, a dark thunderstorm blocking out the sun. Suddenly, hawks from above them dived down, tearing through the now-trembling cloud-like falling arrows. The starlings bolted, blown apart by terror. A moment later, the blue sky reappeared.

  From time to time vultures sat, each head hanging on a looped neck, in the dead trees that dotted some areas of the swamp. A macabre sight: the undertakers dressed in black and white sitting in skeletal, barkless trees. Their bodies remained immobile while their heads turned, watching us pole past them. I could feel their disappointment.

  “You can’t eat them. They stink horribly,” Patrick said.

  Marcus and I looked at each other, not saying anything.

  “Look! We’r
e going over a hippo channel.” Shading my eyes to see better, I stared downward. The bottom grasses were trampled where the huge beasts walked, apparently preferring to use their channels repeatedly rather than forge new paths. It was their road system through huge beds of uninterrupted reed vegetation. Staring downward, Patrick said, “Hippos kill more people than any wild animal in Africa.” Unconsciously, he moved a bit in his makoro, causing it to rock. The pole man immediately changed his balance in the boat and held his pole against the swamp bottom to steady it.

  “When we were in that little tree you said buffalo were the most dangerous . .”

  “It depends on the situation.”

  Sometime later, our channel opened up into an expanse of water. Around the perimeter floated masses of green Trapa natans plants with their tiny air bladders. They dulled the harsh reflection of the sun off the water. As we poled away from the plants, the reflection intensified, hurting our eyes and obscuring our vision, even with the shade provided by our broad-brimmed hats.

  Shielding my eyes with my hand, I peered at a white sandbank ahead, its water-polished quartz grains sparkling like thousands of tiny mirrors. “Good Lord,” I said, staring.

  “Nile crocodiles,” Patrick said.

  The bank was covered with crocodiles lying in the sun. Some swam leisurely, making small circles in the water with their stubby webbed feet. Due to their good night vision, they normally hunt in darkness.

  “Maybe crocodiles are the most dangerous,” Marcus suggested.

  “As I said, depends on where you are,” Patrick replied.

  “And look, those are hippos floating over there!” I pointed near some papyrus islands. “And here we are on a sinking log. Shit, I hope we’re not going to paddle any closer.”

  My pole man turned around to look at the native in his canoe. We stopped. While the guides could not understand what we were saying, they apparently detected our distress and agreed with us.

  We were close enough to see tickbirds pecking on the backs of partially submerged hippos and sitting on the open mouths of the crocs that tolerated them as they picked away at the rot between the reptiles’ teeth. As they selected their morsels, they sang their tickbird song.

  “A fine example of symbiosis,” Marcus said. “I wonder how many birds were killed before nature got that plan to work.”

  All I could see of the hippos were their ears, eyes, and nostrils, placed high on the skull to allow the bulk of the animal to be submerged, like a submarine with its periscope up. In places, in groups of ten or more, they were obviously standing on the bottom. Their skin does not have sweat glands, so to prevent dehydration they stay in the water submerged or partially submerged in daylight. Some grunted. Others rose and sank. Still others slept—they had the ability to do that underwater and rise automatically to breathe, only to sink again.

  “They are adults, the little ones stay away as the older ones will chomp them up,” Patrick said.

  “Kind of crude,” Marcus added.

  “Do you know hippos pee backward in the water, leaving a scent until it dissipates?” Patrick continued. “They also spin their curly tails, throwing their shit in different directions as it comes out. It sinks to the bottom like a marker.”

  Just then a fish eagle screamed overhead. Instantly, all eyes were on it. Even the pole men watched with wonder. With a wingspan of some seven feet, a white headdress and tail, and powerful black wings that sliced the sky, it commanded attention. This one had apparently been watching the water for movement. It swooped down with its large talons opened like hands with curled fingers and razor-sharp fingernails spread wide. The selected fish was huge and so heavy the bird could not raise it more than a few feet off the water. Rather than let it go, the bird dropped into the water and tightened its grip. The fish flapped madly. Water sprayed in all directions.

  The strange battle raged on—the huge sky bird yelping distinctively and paddling to shore with its powerful wings while clutching the struggling fish that had only moments left to live.

  Floating silently for several minutes after the skirmish finished, the makoros maneuvered around long, thin islands that were curved like the meandering river they were once part of. When we reached the shore, we carefully exited our rocking tree trunks and gave our pole men a pula or two (worth about a dollar then). Following the track several miles back into the swamp, we found a small clearing that surrounded a thick growth of tall leadwood and shorter sausage trees. Cork brush dotted the areas between them with other bushy foliage we couldn’t name. There seemed endless varieties of flora growing within the sprawling floodwater delta. I wondered if anyone could recognize them all.

  Hunger pains took priority over such thoughts; it was time to eat. Frying the last of our meat and baking potatoes, we talked as young men do, knowing that life is before them and around them. The setting sun presented itself as a raging red fire; it enthralled us to the point of silence. The next day or so was spent at one of many islands, watching animals come and go and clouds drift across the sky.

  * * *

  It was time then to consider our next destination: Rhodesia. We had last discussed that as we planned this trip while eating chicken in my kitchen some three weeks ago. Now that we were near its doorstep, should we enter a country in the middle of a savage civil war?

  On one side in the struggle were the black guerrilla fighters of Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), the majority of whom were local Ndebele people. The opposing force was Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), mostly composed of local Shona people. As two separate armies, the ZAPU and ZANU fought the white-controlled Rhodesian government of Ian Smith. All three groups wanted to govern the country and pursued the war with increasing ferocity. The Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation reported that ZAPU and ZANU were shooting each other, setting off mines, laying ambushes, cutting off heads and arms with machetes, and burning families to death.

  The war was at its peak. In less than a year from now, Robert Mugabe would come to power and the country would be renamed Zimbabwe. Some regarded him as the worst dictator in the world. Over the next thirty years, he would demonstrate that no one can kill a black man faster than another black man. Most of the surviving whites were driven from the country. The resulting poverty and deprivation were conveniently blamed on the Western world. The larger the enemy, the more the pity and glory one could claim.

  “Well, shall we continue?” Patrick asked. We knew that entering Rhodesia in our old Land Rover would be dangerous.

  “We may never get another chance,” I answered, palms up. “I’ve heard it’s a beautiful country. Who knows what will happen to it?”

  “Okay, let’s go,” Patrick said, shrugging and, I suspected, thinking about the white hunter’s gold nugget from the Rhodesian stream I told him about. He put the Rover in gear and off we went.

  That is a magnificent thing about youth; it can decide quickly—before the logic and fear of consequences that come with age can intervene.

  The road from Maun, Botswana, to Rhodesia went north-northeast into the Chobe National Park (CNP), or east to Nata and then north or south. The CNP road required a four-wheel-drive vehicle even in the dry season. Our Land Rover was too old for that rough terrain, so we chose the tarred Nata road and then the drive north.

  At the end of the Nata road leading north we drove first to the town of Kasane and then through the settlement of Kazungula, which our map showed to be on the Rhodesian border. Most of the way to Kasane no one spoke. We were all thinking—worrying, no doubt—about our decision to enter Rhodesia. Patrick did advise us that he thought Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor wedded a second time there in 1975. “Outside of the district commissioner who married them, there were no other guests.”

  Marcus and I looked at each other. “Hard to believe they drove in the way we did,” Marcus added.

  Patrick clarified. “I think they used a private plane.”

  “Look!” I pointed in
awe as we drove. “The Zambezi River . . . another of the rivers I dreamed about as a boy. Hell, it’s big! And to think it began as a trickle far to the north, close to the borders of Zambia, Angola, and the Congo!”

  A ferryboat took us and our Land Rover to the Rhodesian side of the river. From there we drove forty miles or so, where we recrossed the Zambezi on the Victoria Falls Bridge and entered the small town of Victoria Falls itself. A female tourist had been killed by shots coming from across the border a month or so before. The residents carried on with their lives as best they could. Perhaps it was like the natives living with crocodiles. Maybe you just have to get used to such things.

  Having errands to run, the three of us went our separate ways for the remainder of the day. I set out for the falls, walking over the flat plateau that surrounded it, hearing its muted rumble from far away and following a disused path through trees, weeds, and bushes.

  The rumble steadily became a roar until suddenly it burst into view. I gasped—Victoria Falls! More than 350 feet of falling water spewing mist like steam from boiling water. It was twice the height of Niagara Falls, the biggest curtain of falling water in the world. More than a thousand tons of water per second, on average, hurtling forward. Some said a meteorite had created it. Well, it deserved some kind of extraterrestrial association, I decided. The locals named it “the smoke that thunders.”

  I marveled as water raced to the edge of the falls only to suddenly plunge over it. Seconds later it smashed into the distant bottom, exploding upward as if in a wild rage. Falling again it regrouped and charged forward with groping white claws, slashing and twisting around obstacles. Surging with huge force it smashed and crashed its way out of sight. Then, it was the Zambezi River once again—a massive, calm, moving part of the earth, free and wild, a gift of life from which history and folklore flowed, a measure of God’s finger as his hand carved the wilds of Africa. On it would flow for hundreds of miles, ending in the Indian Ocean, where its mystery and excitement die with a whisper, just as all life dies and just as it all begins.