Gender: Male
Status: Married
Age: 31
Sign: Cancer
City: Arusha
State: Northern Territory
Country: TZ
Signup Date:
10/24/05
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Monday, April 09, 2007
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That special place where the bald headed men lurk
Category: Fashion, Style, Shopping
Home in Suburbia
After spending two years in Tanzania it was nice to call it quits for a while and I flew up to Budapest to spend some time with Mia. I popped the question of marriage to her on the 14th of Feb, and asked her if she would consider settling in Africa with me.
So here we are now! I still freelance in the bush, but I pretty much have taken the year off to concentrate on my painting and photography, while Mia sets up her practice. It has been pretty interesting watching her adapt to a totally different environment. You see home is pretty advanced and yet still a bit backward in comparison to Budapest. The people here are all rather curious as well I suppose. What I find a bit amusing is watching her discover the enormous variety of insects and spiders we have in Africa. My first week was spent removing the flat spiders from behind the paintings on the wall. Then of course we are still in the rainy season, so at night there is a fair amount of activity - what with all the moths and preying mantis's. Im proud of her - I just take these things for granted, but she is doing well, I just hope that she doesnt find any baboon spiders (look like large tarantulas) in the house, because they are big intimidating hairy fellows!
Mia lounging in the afternoon sunlight by the pool
I guess there is a fare amount of wildlife in the garden too. I have a few tortoises that totter about. There is a genet cat (look like miniature leopards) that lives in my roof, and at night, we have many bushbabys sometimes called night apes that bounce all over the show. Just recently a vervet monkey has taken up refuge in a large avocado tree by the swimming pool. Combine that with all the tenrics, lizards, frogs, geckos, chameleons and snakes, and you find that we have a rather nice menagerie! All of this in suburbia! Great!
Within days of arriving home I managed to wangle an afternoon on the shooting range. Long distance shooting is a particularly personal experience. When you stretch out on the ground with your rifle and shoot target plates, you switch off into another world. You shut out the outside world and concentrate on whats happening within your body. You time your shots between heart beats and with the rythm of your breathing. Off in the distance your target plate sits obscured by heat and dust haze, hot air currents and winds affect your bullets trajectory. Then altitude, bullet weight and how many grains of powder you have in your case also plays a role whether you can pull off V-bull shot. Its very satifying to know that you can knock three holes in a matchbox at 100 meters.
Is that a gun in your truck or are you just happy to see me?
A bit of skeet shooting then on to my heavy calibre elephant rifle an snap shooting for 20 minutes with moving targets simulating buffalo and elephant charges. The whole thing with this kind of shooting is, if you do it enough repeatedly, it soon becomes instinct - and you act before you think. This same method is used when training military outfits. In many situations, you dont get time to think of how you are going to react - as soon as you stop and think, you are most likely dead!
Elephant Tragedy
A few weeks a go one of the chaps I was shooting with had a horrible accident with an elephant on safari. I am not entirely too sure what excatly happened, but from what I have been told, he was charged by an elephant which knocked him clean out cold, and then proceded kill two of his clients. Its always easy to criticize and say what should have been done and what should not have been done... The truth of the matter is, everytime we embark on a walking safari, we are putting ourselves in physical harm. Wild animals are not predictable and many "experts" are killed by a so called predictable animal behaving erractically. In this instance it was a bull elephant. I have been hearing a lot of negative publicity about this whole thing. All I have to say is many animals, particularly elephants have their own personality. Some are shy, some are relatively docile some are chilled and some are unfortunately irrascible. There were many factors that contributed to what happened that fateful morning, and I am not about to point any fingers of blame, because I guess know one will really know what really transpired. When something aweful like this happens, all of us involved in this profession thank our lucky stars that it wasnt us in that incident... because, it could quite easily have been! The tragedy in this particularly case was that a family of three came out on a holiday safari and only one went back home alive. At the end of the day, when we step out off the road into the bush, we are stepping into the living room of wild animals, and we should be fully aware of the risks involved. I still maintain that it is safer to walk through the bush then it is to wonder through the streets of a large city... But thats just me!
South of Bulawayo is an amazing recreational area called Matopos. It have been a sanctuary for the khoisan bushman for many eons and their legacy in the area has been recorded in splendid detail by the many rock paintings, some of which date back up to 9000 years ago. Matopos has the highest concentration of black and white rhino in the world, and strangely enough also the highest concentrations of leopards too. It has been a stompin ground for me since I was able to walk. Of all the parks in Africa, I can say that Matopos truly is one of those places I am truly familiar with.
Some interesting and very old rock paintings. Some scenes depict hunts, other scenes are just mysterious and spiritual like the pic below... look out for the large shape that resembles a manta ray!
Mia and myself took some time out and went exploring for a week. Its kind of hard to photograph a place like Matopos because the rugged landscape is so huge it just doesnt fit into your camera view finder no matter how wide your camera lense is. When you wonder around the place (which is hundreds of square miles of rock and boulder, you kind of get the feeling you are skipping through some dinosaur country. Everything is so massive. Inbetween the whale backs you get some pretty good concentrations of wildlife, and whats great about hiking in this area is you never are too sure whats around the next corner, so you continuously bump into things... I guess it sounds a bit dangerous, but in fairness, the animals that live in this area are particularly chilled, because they also are bumping into each other around the corner. I guess its one of the reasons why there are not many highly strung animal species there! They all probably died out of stress related diseases years ago! I think she was a bit surprised at how close I managed to get her to giraffe and zebra, luck I guess. Generally animals can be total bastards when you really want to see them, they sneak off, and leave you wondering where they are!
Walking along a whale back
Matopos is made up of solid massive granite "whale backs" that stretch well over 5km in some instances and many hundreds of meters high, and with the many thousands of years of erosion you get these rather gravity defying balancing boulders that look like they are about to topple at any moment - fortunately for Matopos and its inhabitants, earthquakes are non existant!
Amongst the boulders we get these colourful flat lizards. These chaps are quite interesting. The brightly colourful males fight for territory amongst the scorching rocks, and defend their harems of striped ladies from intruding males. You can sit down and watch battles between the males and watch the loss and gain of women lizards at hourly intervals - and you thought our lives were stressful?! Huh! What I find really smart with these chaps, is that the young males have the same colouration of the females until they mature... This way they have the protection of the resident male until they mature, and then they ship out and contest for their patch of sun baked rock when they get their "colours".
I will be doing a lot of rhino tracking safaris here this year. Nice one day trips out of town to track rhino and hike around some of the interesting cave painting sites - just to keep my "eye" in the bush! Oh yes, and if you are wondering, there are hippo there as well, so it will be nice to hang with Lubowskis family too!
Hanging with the horses
Out flycamping... Perfect weather with perfect company
9:57 PM
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New updates - erm... Bulawayo - what is it... where is it, and whats it about?
Time flies! We have been home now for a couple of months, trying to settle into a normal routine.
Home for me is Bulawayo. Bulawayo is a curious city slapped down on some flat cattle country north of the Limpopo river. This city has a lot of history to it. It was a stepping stone to the interior of deep darkest Africa in days gone by. The name Bulawayo is derived from the Ndebele word "bhu-lala", which means to bludgeon. Curiously enough after a bloody Matabele uprising in the 1800's the word stuck and became the cities name.
In the early days, there was quite bit of bloodshed. Driving into the city along the main highway, through the spiny acres of Dichrostachys scrub, you pass an extremely large plateau on the right. This innocuous looking hill is called "Ntabazinduna" or hill of the cheifs or kings... It was here that the first major bloodletting occured.
Long time ago, in the days when scantily clad Africans ran around the sub saharan part of the continent, a rather large obnoxious chap called Mzilikazi (a proud Matabele) decided the time was ripe to part company from his ruler Chaka (who has been considered a bit of an antichrist by most anthropological scholars) of the Zulus. Chaka was a military genius, he had conceived many advanced and cutting edge stratagies to overpower rival kingdoms. One of his most famous military stratagies to break through the defences of these rival kingdoms was to choose their weakspots - the gift shop. All they had to do was overpower the two old ladies who work there and the rest of the kingdom would fall!
One glorious Tuesday morning, while Chaka and his impis were out plundering raping and looting he decided to grap his clan and fair whack of Chakas cattle and escape up north and start a commune in mystical land north of the great river. And so, he did...
A journey like this would take years to complete, and considering how vast the Zulu empire was at the time knew that he had a fair while to make good his escape before Chaka returned after his raids in far away lands to the West.
I could sit and recount the journey but that would take some marathon reading - besides by car its a heck of journey, imagine it by foot and you would get some indication of the distances involved and the stories that came out of that adventure. At any rate the Matabele people managed to cross the mighty Limpopo river (the Limpopo is a vast river that flows into the Indian Ocean. At its widest point it is about 1.5 miles. It is not particularly serene. It is packed full of crocodiles and hippos, and if that wasnt enough, you get the odd shoal of bullsharks that would regularly swim upstream from the ocean and cause havoc!), and then decided to split the party into two groups.
This decision to split the tribe was a necessity, because no one was entirely too sure exactly where this magical land was. You see it was all military intelligence (two words that contradict each other!), hearsay, and gossip. And there werent any gas stations at that time where you could ask for directions! The women and elders were particularly adament that to head North was the way to go, while Mzilikazi and the young Matabele warrior men were 110% certain that the should turn left at the next Baobab. Mzilikazi had this so called "existential map" you see, it had "you are here" written all over it!
And so one of the first tragic events happened for the Matabele people. Misfortune and twins never come singly! Mizilikazi and his band of impis soon wandered into the inhospitable Kalahari system and languished for sand chaffing years on end trying to work their way out, while the women, had found the promised land and settled into a peaceful exhistence with fat cows and lots of honey.
After doing a massive U-turn, Mizilkazi relented, parked what was left of his group at an oasis and sent some runners to ask anyone they encountered directions. Low and behold one of the runners "ran" into a San Bushman, who recounted a tale about how some new folk moved in "next door" a few years back, and what a quirky little set up they had with their new King. Armed with this news and a crudely drawn map with directions the runner headed back with the erm, good news.
Mzilikazi flipped his crusty wig with the bad news that someone had already taken his place as king of the Matablele, and in his fury sent the runner to pass a message to this king that he was safe and sound and that he would be arriving shortly - so they should stock the pantry and gear up for a massive celebration of his second coming. As the preparations ensued, the furious Mzilikazi had moved in and surrounded the hillock where his tribe had settled.
Under the cover of darkness, he charged his impis up the hill with an order that no-one was to survive. That night, he slaughtered half of his own people.
The good news was that he felt much better after that and did forgive some of the lucky few who managed to survive. There was more good news, one of his wives had also survived and she had one of his sons with him.
And so, apart from that bit of domestic abuse, life settled down to that sleepy pace that it does out here in Africa and everyone lived happily ever after on that bloodied hill Ntabazinduna...
Well not happily ever after... See, Mzilikazi passed on and his title was passed down to his son Lobengula. Round about this time someone had written the book "King Solomons Mines", and after the success of this book, he was forever being bothered by British prospectors and hunters asking for claims to search for the fabled mines and hunt in his kingdom.
Lonbengula or "Ben" as he was called by his friends had a weakness for shiny things, and unfortunately sold his Kingdom to the British for a pittance, and realizing his error - (lets just say, when he got home to show his wives what he had traded, was severly battered!), decided to move out into the country side and take up hostility towards the British invaders, who at this point created a lovely little town with opera house and all in his backyard!
After two or three bloody engagements (and during one of them the town was Christened Bulawayo), a truce was signed with the British, and poor old Ben was nagged to death by his wives for his foolishness. During this time, a tribe up North was getting a bit irritated by all the activities happening and started preparing for war against the early settlers.
Todays date is the 7th of April 2007, if you dig in the newspaper archives for the month of April in 1896, you can read a first hand account of the Mashona uprising by Major Green in the second ever edition the local newspaper.
The bad luck just didnt end there unfortunately! It still pretty much continues to this day. I guess the folk that live out here have to be pretty tough and resourceful to get by. This crazy place has a lot of wierd and wonderful people. It was alll brought home to me when I was sitting sipping coffee with Mia one morning. She was commenting on how tough and rugged everyone is and the strange coloquilisms in the language. For example, I had to explain a few things:
"Just now" means anytime from 5 minutes in the future to next week
"Now now" means anytime from 5 minutes to a few hours time...
"Over there" can mean something in excess of 20 miles to 200 miles
"Stop off for one or two drinks" means get a designated driver because you going to drink til sun up!
The night life is just as wierd. Two choice night spots are "the tin cup", which is something similar to the type of outback bar you would see on a Crocodile Dundee movie, and just down the road is a night club owned and run by a gang of pretty tough looking lesbians which has the quirky title of "Flirt"!
Flirt is a great place to watch some pretty good bar room brawls. Generally it is a dull place with dull people and dull music set in pretty dull surroundings, but sometimes when tempers flare stand back for some action, which 90% of the time spills out into the parking lot. Its great sport! Apart from that, its generally dull!
9:27 PM
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Sunday, January 28, 2007
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Technology and the African Bush
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers
Well, I figure let me give everyone a brief glimpse as to how I keep in contact with every one.
It is certainly amazing what one can acheive today with modern technology. I am sitting typing this out in one of the most remote areas in Africa. The nearest phone or cell signal is a good days drive (just over a hundred miles away). So how do I manage to post stuff and keep in contact?
Ok here is how it works:
First off, the office that I use is just a simple tent. Inside you will see the laptops, inverters radio equipment and modem with router. Oustide we have two sets of solar panels that provide the power to run the lights laptops and radios and modem. Paired up with all of this is a satellite dish I beam my messages through, and hey presto - I can have a realtime conversation with someone in the USA.
When I first started bungling through the jungle - all we used to use were HF radios, then a few years later came radio modems for short simple emails and now sateliite technology. In the space of 10 short years communication has come leaps and bounds. My satellite phone is a little bigger then a modern cellphone, and it automatically switches over to the local netwrk when it is in range. The first sat phone I ever saw was this monstrous brick - something out of a B-grade eighties flick!
The office!
The Dish and Panels
Home on the river!
MPANDA - the sleepy backwater village!
Here are a few shots of a sleepy backwater community called Mpanda! Its a happening place - there are even 7 camels there!
The local drug store - here they will diagnose you with Typhoid and Malaria almost all the time - if you have a hang over and you go there for some asprin - you will come out with a full medication for the treatment of malaria!
Bicycles arre the main mode of transport in rural areas so - every village will haveat least one bike shop. This one here is the biggest in Mpanda.
Saturday and rearing to go - where ever you look, there are people sitting around, not doing a hell of lot. I asked this chap what he was up to... His reply was "just watching"
Shoes anyone?
Lovers catching up on some gossip
One of the many barber shops in town!
The local night life - If this is paradise then I hate to imagine what hell is like! Having said that - I did venture in once, to see how festive it can be! Mmm, it is definitely a health risk! The mosquitos, home brewed alcohol, the alcoholics, prostitutes the pungent smell of urine and vommit, make this a charming night out for the local lads! I spent a total of 10 minutes in there and just had to leave!
You can pretty much get whatever you want out here - basic commodities - this is outside a general dealer.
Children wasting time. Another dreary day out in Africa - they are very happy, what little they have keeps them happy. These kids are not enslaved to technology and material possesions, they create and invent and imagine. They are truly free!
Elders shooting the breeze!
7:45 AM
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007
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Tuesday, January 09, 2007
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Beating around the bush
Mmm, I get asked this question all the time,
"Dolfi, what is your favourite animal?"
Well, I love them all, big and small... I love elephants because they are so damn clever. Their social interaction is quite something. Too approach these beasts on foot is truly the best African bush experience you can have. Last month I was out visiting a friend and came across some young elephant bulls. I took the opportunity to get out and do some approaches and get some pics.
You can get away with quite a bit with the young chaps, as they are not too sure of themselves. Mmm, they are kind of like cocky teenagers in a sense that they are all bravado, loud and brash. Just dont run!
Just off in the distance I get spotted by an alert elephant... Actually it was a swirl in the wind that gave me away. Once alerted to your presence - ele's can be very difficult to approach. When they are moving, its almost impossible to catch them - every step they take we have to take about six just to keep up!
Keen sense of smell - here it can smell me, but its not too sure who or what I am! It walked away but you could see him thinking... Eventually curiousity got the better of him and he came back again, in the form of a mock charge to try get a reaction!
The ears of the African elephant are giant radiators. The entire blood volume of that animal flows through those ears in a little over 20 minutes... Ok that sounds quite impressive - the blood volume of a 3 ton elephant is more then 1500 litres (conservative estimate), mmm imagine that, 1.5 tons of blood!
The oldest chap in the group - he was very chilled out. Older male elephants are quite relaxed by nature - until they come into musth... thats when they can be a bit tricky! "Musth" is an old Indian word which means love drunk... The testosterone levels shoot through the roof and they become very unpredictable and sometimes extremely aggressive. Two bulls in musth fighting over a female in season often results in the death of an opponent. The small tussles that young teenage bulls have, play a very important part later on. These play fights establish a hierarchy, so later, if by chance they meet again in adulthood when they are in musth, they remember who was the more dominant or weaker opponent, saving bloodshed and agony. Elephants never forget!
The "little tussle" I was talking about earlier! Just a test of strength and character!
Here Im crouching 10 yards away and this chap has run in with ears out trying to make himself "look big"! Seriously, he probably weighs in around 3 tons, how much bigger does he want to get?
Cost of a five star walking safari = $1500 a day
Cost of your personal walking guide = $200 a day
The look on the petrified client = priceless!
Actually, I was in no danger with this charge. I stood up and clapped my hands after I took the shot and he turned around and headed off in the other direction.
2:07 PM
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Sunday, January 07, 2007
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The final chapter of my life in Tanzania
Current mood: mixed at this moment
Last words of Billy the Kid when he walked into a dark room and saw a shadowy figure sitting there.
"Who is it?"
The answer was a bullet through the heart.
When you ask Death for his credentials you are
dead...
A tall slender black Fipa shoots a hole in the sky with a large, rusty muzzle loader. Blackness pours out and darkens the earth. In the last rays of a painted sun, a pot bellied child with curly hair, holds up a barbed wire fence so the others can slip through.
He, the Fipa, clad in tyred sandals, dirty brown cloth and ochre beads, has for want of a better description been described as, the man of many faces and names... The Traveller, the Scribe, most hunted and fugitive of men, since the knowledge unfolding in his being spells ruin. He will soon be in a position to play the deadliest trick of them all... The Fipa Pulled Down The Sky. His hand will not hesitate...
Twilight slips down towards the lake like a flimsy see-through undergarment. The dark mountains of Congo poke out like aggressive pointy breasts of an African adolescent girl. All is still 'cept a shoal of phosphorescent dagga flitting out of the smooth glass skin of water. Fifty and two shining half inch darts of lights skip across the black oily surface. Silvery scaled pixies, prancing evasively from a dark menacing mouth underneath. Behind the dance stirs a soft mesmorizing wake of smooth soft twirling current, appocalyptic chaos for the electric minnows. A torpedo shaped, dark, shadowy object silently slips in behind them - time is not on their side.
So we all run at some point... Us humans.
"Don't run!" they cry aloud in unison,
"Face up to your fears and demons!" they shout "be strong be a man!" Quick to point out and direct the debacle, when they themselves are not in jeopardy. Experts, directors, surgeons, soldiers and lawyers. Homosexual judges and paedophilic priests of some ancient fanatical cult... It is all the same, always will be - nothings changed since and before Christ was hung out to dry. The irony of the cross. Pinned down to a hunk of wood - the lepidopterist expertly inserts a pin into the thorax - gently folds down a wing and gently places a strip of polythene across it. The angel is grounded...
Last act. The end. This is where we all came in. The final apocalypse is when every man sees what he sees, feels what he feels, hears what he hears. The creatures of all your dreams and nightmares are right here, right now, solid as they ever were or ever will be.
I watch the hypnotic beauty of nature - the carnage of the cycle of life. The violence and blood lust. Crushed trachea, slow soft gurgling breaths... one... two... two... two... three........................
Red mist, black lips, crimson stained teeth ripping sinew and skin... Screams and roars, claws lash out; snarling faces and bulging omniferous sulphur eyes glow angrily in the silver cool moonlight. The gentle chirrup of mole crickets provide an easy ambience at the savana diner. The fluted call of a lone jackal will herald the arrival of crashers and hangers on, bring on more violence and blood lust - I have not seen enough tonight. Violence is a necessity out here.
I dont see animals standing their ground, they know there will come a time when it will be survival of the fittest. To stand is to surely die. I see it all the time. To run for your life, to really bolt. To be pulled down, and to lay there... Stoic, and calm to the last breath - white panic stricken eyes staring wildly outwards - the silent protest - the knowledge that "the time has come" - the realization that "this is the end..."
Between the ominous dark horizon of the Congo mountains across on the far side of the lake, and the sprinkle of granite called Kipili, a canoe sailor drifts out to work. High on cannabis he paddles quietly. The fishy stench of nets and wet wood provide the backdrop to the pungent inhalations of moist, spicy ganja rolled in old Arabic newspaper. He fishes tonight, so he can eat tomorrow. He fishes tomorrow, so he can eat the following day... Silence grows loud out here. Louder then you can possibly imagine, it screams at you, swears at you, insults you with its, its emptiness...
Far away in a distant land, a high pitched urgent scream battles above the noise of smelly trash cans and mechanization,
"You Fucker! You Lying Fucker!"... A noisy crash as porcelain makes violent contact with an old faded Tretchickoff print . Across the alley flickering blue sparkles... Grinding heavy metal clashes and toxic fumes.
Electric vitality of careening subways faster faster faster stations flash by in a blur. Modernity whips screaming crowds as millions of blank faces look up at the torn sky. Off the track off the track. Planet is pulling loose from its moorings careening into space spilling cities mountains and seas into the void. Spinning faster and faster as days and nights flash by like subway stations. Iron penis chimneys ejaculate blue sparks in a reek of ozone. Tunnels threaten to crunch down teeth of concrete and steel, threaten to flatten cars like beer cans.
There is some hideous new force loose in the world like a creeping sickness, spreading, blighting. Remoter parts of the world seem better, because we think they are less touched by it. Control, bureaucracy, regimentation, these are merely symptoms of a deeper sickness that no political or economic program can touch. What is the sickness itself? It is in fact the listening post of the world, the slowing pulse of a decayed civilization, that only war can quicken. Here East meets West in a final debacle of misunderstanding, each seeking the Answer, the Secret, from the other and not finding it, because neither has the Answer to give.
Do I really want to run? What if I stood my ground? What would happen if a buck stood still and faced his nemisis... Disobeyed that command that has been ingrained in his DNA over thousands of years? What then? Could I step into the machinery of civilization and be that that spanner that fucks up the cogs? I remember once - seems a long time ago, thinking about this. I was Dar es Salaam. It was late afternoon, and I was walking the back alleys of India Street, thinking about my situation. Walking in Dar was like falling, plunging down dark shafts of streets, catching at corners, doorways. I passed a blind man sitting in soft golden sunlight in a doorway. The man was old, with a fringe of tattered beard. He sat there with one hand out, his shirt open, showing the smooth, patient flesh, the slight, immobile folds in the stomach. He sat there all day, every day. A cry of despair wrenched my body: "I have to get out of here. I have to make a break."
I didnt make that break, I stayed on for another year. Those softly lit, surreal days in Dar es Salaam changed me. A part of me wants to go back there, another part tells me that if I do, I will not come back again. I leave for home soon. I leave for that modernity and so called civilization. I worry that I will return an unrecognizable, and different man. The same outer shell, but a different meal on the inside. I want to run - and I see the buck go down in a cloud of dust. I want to stand - and I see the buck rigid and statuesque, with disturbingly cold and emotionless black eyes - it seems unnatural...
Skyscrapers scrape shards of blue and white paint from the sky. The rivers swirl with color. Nitrous okras and reds eat through the bridges, falling into the rivers. Splashing colours across warehouses and piers and roads and buildings. Amocart floods in organic molds, stirring passions of metal and glass. Steel girders writhing in mineral lust, burst from their concrete covers. Walls of glass melt and burn with madness of a million crazed eyes. Bridges buck cars and trucks into the rivers. The sidewalks run ahead faster and faster and faster . . . energy ground down into sidewalks and streets by billions of feet and tyres. Erupts from manholes and tunnels, breaks out with volcanic force. Let it come down. Caught in in the city, meet the animals of the village.
I stand on my granite rock, looking out at the stoned fisherman. Calm and gentle and simple... The moon rises behind me casting a cold light onto the glass surface of the lake; my shadow slowly uncoils and stretches out across the oily water like a thin giant. In front of me the soft red glow of Lucifer setting silouettes the perky breasts of the Congolese mountainside across the lake.
Above the escarpment, the acrid smoke clears and the tall dark man shoulders his warm muzzle loader. Softly giggling pot bellied children with curly hair slip through the barbed wire fence and totter off into the long grass...
THE FIPA PULLED THE SKY
6:16 PM
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Thursday, December 21, 2006
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A recap of events...
End of another year.
Im sitting down trying to comprehend all that has happened over the last two years. It has been a spinning tornado of emotions.
So to recap the events, I will start right at the begining...
Early 2005, I was itching to leave the studio and head out into the bush. Not just any stretch of wilderness, but one particular area in Africa. What was to happen next was, maybe fate,or maybe something else altogether?
In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that's just ridiculous. It's as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it's for a reason. Among primitive people they say if someone was bitten by a snake he was murdered. I beginning to believe that now.
I popped a comment to a friend of mine about shifting my guiding expertise into a new area - somewhere where my bush lore would be challenged to the maximum. Within two hours of mentioning this - I received a phone call and within two days was on a plane heading up across the vast continent over to Dar es Salaam.
When I strolled into the safari head quarters of my new employers - I was struck by how backwards everything was out here. It was like stepping out of a time machine in 1970! It was quite disconcerting, but figured what the hell. Later that afternoon, I hopped onto a small Cessna 206 equipped for long haul flights and noisily droned across Tanzania in two long four hour hops.
My pilot was a greek fellow by the name of Tim. Tim, looked and acted like a hooded vulture. He was the type of character you would find at a major car crash scene. I had a vision of him standing over and revelling in the aftermath of head on collision between a meat truck and bus load full of transvestite prostitutes on their way to the beach. I suddenly became uncomfortable around him and still have the fear to this day.
As we approached the vast plains of Katavi National Park, the ground became obscured by billowing clouds of black smoke and flame. I had arrived in time for burn season... "Welcome to hell" I thought - what I didnt realize was that it was going to become hell for a few months. As far as the eye could see, flames, smoke and haze. Touching down was a relief, and the short jolt to camp down what could loosely be described as a road was quite refreshing after being cramped in a small cockpit for eight hours.
The camp was in state, fit for the most laid back pig. I had two weeks to get it up and running, and the five staff members, all Wahehe's, were not the most gifted of fellows I have had the pleasure of working with. Within a week, I was known as "Bin Dolfi" - "the terror of Katavi"! I chuckled at first as I was tested and pushed and tested somemore. Eventually I laid down the riot act and had three guys sacked and two on their last written warnings.
Over the last few months, I had been accused of poisoning chaps, inciting curses, and sabotaging in my own vehicles. The plus side was that the camp ratings were up, and there were no less then five return bookings for next season (at least I managed to prove myself - there was no denying that I had upped the camp standards by over 100%). It worried me that in over ten years of safari busness, I had never had crisis management like this before. The joy of this magnificent place was soiled by the childish behaviour of the Wahehe's and my incompetent boss and his estranged family of hill billy's.
The Wahehe's have always been a strange bunch of fellows. I was warned that they are a nervous bunch, and that they have the highest suicide rate in Tanzania of any tribe. I did some research and think I have found out why they are a bit abnormal. During the German occupancy of this country, there was a Wahehe uprising against the footbal demi-gods! A Wahehe shamen gave his warriors some magic "dawa" to protect them from the wazungu bullets and sent them off to battle. Low and behold... there was a bloody massacre of thousands of estranged Wahehe's, and I am pretty certain after this incident, that they were irrivocably changed forever!
I eventually walked out on the company and into a major lawsuit. See the boss had my passport and airline tickets and credit cards in his safe at the headquarters and refused to give them back. The British Consulate got involved, my cousin (a high profile lawyer in Spain) flew out to represent me, Tanzanian labour and Immigrations jumped into the mele as well, and at the end of it all, I had my tickets, passports and credit cards. To this day Peter Fox - who has as much charisma as a speed bump, owes my company just over $10 000. He is quite the "big prick", and I got him back a year later. I stepped into a village committee meeting and had some property that he dubiously bought blocked by a court injunction. The whole debacle cost him, last time I checked over $50 000 and rising, in lawyers fees and bribes... I remember mentioning a wheel of life to him once, and his seems to be stuck in this little pot hole of illegal land aquisitions! Nice one Dolfi!
It was during this time that I had lost a good friend of mine. Lorne White was an experienced Canadian flight instructor and bush pilot. I was sitting on Lupita island listening to the HF radio crackling in the background. There was a faint call for people on the ground in our area. Alpha Papa Echo had gone down somewhere in the escarpment. My heart sank. I walked out the office and down to my rock on the lake shore. I hoped and wished that he managed to crash land, but deep down I had this terrible feeling that it was very bad.
It took three days to get to the wreckage, and judging by the twisted strips of metal and debris field, the only relief I felt was that his and the passengers deaths were swift. A year later there is still no real conclusive evidence as to what happened. The Accident Report totally contradicts the GPS data. What a few friends and myself postulate is that he had a bird strike and went down, this matches up with the GPS data. At that time of year the escarpment that he was flying over is a corridor for migrating Steppe Eagles and Steppe Buzzards. All it takes is one strike through the cockpit windscreen, or a flight control surface and its tickets.
Lorne was a good friend. I hesistantly call him an Angel... He arrived at a time when chaos was in control, and just walked in brushed it off and smoothed things out for everyone he ever met... and then he just disappeared. There is a space in my heart for Lorne White, I will never ever forget this man.
I spent a few nights in Kigoma - the most happening place in Tanzania... There I met the by-products of genocide and hatred. It was a life altering moment for me... I have pulled this piece out from my blog again, because it is important, at least for me anyway:
Onwards to Kigoma and Genocide
wise old bush pilot told me once...
"You can stay and complain... Or you can move on! If you want to stay, then shut the fuck up and stop complaining!"
How true he was! Those, my friends are words to live by.
So, after a long hot flight north of Katavi with Ben, I finally reached Kigoma, on the Lake. I was really hoping to connect to Dar straight away, but fate had thrown me a "do not pass go. do not collect 50 points", so I was now stuck, for three days, until the next flight out.
I checked into the exotic sounding "Aqua Lodge" (exotic if you are an entomologist, keen on exotic bugs), and took stock of my current position. The chef of the lodge had gone missing a few days ago, and no one had any idea of where he had got to, or if he was coming back, or even still if he was alive! No one knew for sure! I decided it would best to put my hunter gatherer skills to good use and head off somewhere to find a bite to eat.
Walking down one of the main drags into the town, I started picking up little hints that this place, this town is a kind of Salvation Army camp on a grand scale. Every second house was a either a refugee centre, UN relief centre or International Red Cross station. Their must have been around 6-7 on that street alone.
What struck me first off about the town, was not that it hadn't changed in 80 years, or that there were quite possibly more Japanese imported cars there than in Japan itself... What struck me was the number of hardware stores around. Every second shop was a hardware dealer... It seemed like that was the thing to do out here...
"So Johny what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"Missy, I want to own a hardware shop, and call it the House of Pain!"
As I walked down streets that had every available inch of free space crammed with "China crap", I couldn't figure out why, is this town with, so many DIY enthusiasts so run down?
I found a cafe eventually, feeling very self conscious about being the only mazungu "whitey"in town today, and pulled in for a bite. The owner of this cafe was big into his falconry, I could tell by the huge flocks of house flies everywhere. I was reminded of "Shit, the Dog" and had a chuckle. I was handed a huge enamel mug, with milky tea and a bowl of sugar. Stupidly I added a spoon, forgetting that the tea was probably already sweetened... Which it was! I could stand the tea spoon upright in the centre of the mug! This tea had been spiced with something. I couldn't place the taste, but it was along the lines of Cinnamon. As far as food went, it was all Indian style samosas which were hot enough to burn the heat shield off the shuttle, and other deep fried stuff. I know deep fried food is not healthy, but I figured if you took into account where I was eating, and what I was eating, logic would tell you that the two negatives would cancel each other out! It was great food!
I started chatting to a guy sitting across the table from me. Turns out he works in Bujumbura Burundi for Amstel Lager. He was originally from Rwanda, and was a Tutsi. I sat there thinking what a coincidence, I had just finished reading a book on the genocide in Rwanda, so I casually asked him a few questions, to see what he had to say about the whole deal, and how it would correlate to the views expressed in the book.
This guy, Francois, was around 6 foot 4, and looked uncannily like the actor Will Smith! He asked me if I wanted to meet some people who like him witnessed first hand what had happened, and I agreed not knowing what to expect. We caught a taxi across town, through to the outskirts to a little shamva. There I was greeted by a woman in her late 20's, missing her hands and feet, and with huge machete scars all over her. She was there with her mother who was also massively scarred. Her face had been split open and roughly stitched back together again. They spoke in French, Francois translating, most of it for me... I sat there thinking why am I here doing this. Asking these people to bring up the past... Painful memories. Even Francois had stories about his escape across the border, he lost his entire family and everything they had owned. We sat and chatted for 2 hours. They were calm, showed absolutely no signs of distress or emotion. I turned off half way through, and just wished to be back at my hotel room. I had a sick feeling in my gut and the horrible painful lump in the throat... You know the one? Just below the Adams apple... pressure build up and all! These poor girls could never forget their ordeals, they wear the reminders of that troubled time, they see it every time they look in the mirror. It was sad.
As we were driving back to town, I apologised to Francios for bringing it all up. He turned around and said, that "people need to know these things, so it doesn't happen again!". He said it matter of factly. His voice was monotone as he uttered that sentence, he was a million miles away!
I sat on the beach that afternoon thinking about what I had seen and heard. Trying to figure out how someone like a doctor or a priest... How someone who is educated, could pick up an axe or machete and go out and become a mass murderer... How does that happen? Something like a million people were exterminated in the space of a few months, and the world stood by and let it happen.
You know people ask me about Zimbabwe, and I tell them my experiences. I tell them about growing up in the middle of a guerrilla war (or struggle for Independence depending on the personal views of the person asking me the questions), the genocide that happened in Matabeleland. I tell them, what I felt and what I saw, what I read and I tell them some of the stories Ive heard from people who were personally involved in all of this. The truth is after my experience with Francoise and the two women... I didn't know. I knew nothing at all. All of a sudden I was humbled by this fact. I knew nothing about what happened in Zimbabwe. I was totally oblivious to what was happening around me at the time, because I was not directly affected. I asked my dad about it all - what was happening at that time; all he did was shrug his shoulders and mumble "at that time, it was crazy - people did what they had to do in order to survive." That was it, he said nothing more, and at the same time the way he replied, made me realise that I was treading on sacred ground. I kept quiet and never asked him anything concerning the war again.
My very first memory as a child... the one that I can remember to this day, was watching my father coming home from war. He was wearing his combat fatigues and fully kitted out in battle gear. I was too young to comprehend what this was all about, the assault rifle, the grenades dangling from his webbing... But I looked up at this man in awe. He was a stranger, in black boots. It was impressive. I can still remember the feeling of being in awe of this impressive individual.
My aunts had moved in with us after they had been ambushed on their way to their farm one day. They were screaming hysterically. Confusion... I remember being bundled up by the African nanny and carried off outside into her quarters. It was cold June winters afternoon. The sky was a warm golden colour, but there was an icy nip in the air. I remember watching the dust particles drift lazily in the shafts of light thrown down on to the carpeted floor from the overhead windows. There was a lot of crying and commotion going on in the next room. The nanny was teaching me Ndebele, trying to distract me - I was more interested in the particles of dust floating in the beams of light. Her name was Fabiola...
She was raped and killed after being forced to cut off her husbands ears and eat them, seven years later by the governments 5th Brigade during the "Ghukurruhundi" genocide. When our family attended her funeral, it was only then that I understood what had transpired all those years ago. My father took my hand and walked me down to the military section of the cemetery. He knelt down at the headstone of grave. I read slowly STOKI....KIA. Seven years ago, my father got called back from military opps in Mozambique. That fateful winters afternoon, he had come home to break the news that his only brother had been killed in action.
I felt very isolated from it all, like I didn't care - should I have? It didn't really affect me like it affected Francois and the two Tutsi women.
I sat on the beach in front of the lodge with a warm beer trying to make sense of it all... I can't I was too young to understand. And that... Bothers me.
So although I sign off on a really sad note - I brought this all up again more as a reminder to myself, of where I have been, and where I am going. Life is too short to fuck around. If you want something or wish for something, get out there are do it. The only person holding you back is yourself. Whenever I feel Im not achieving anything, I swing back to this blog post.
Onwards march.
I ended signing up to another emerging safari company shortly after Kigoma. I wanted to finish a full season in Katavi before it became overrun with operators and tourists. This entailed me spending ten months or so on Lupita Island on Lake Tanganyika helping out with a building project, before running over to Katavi to set up my camp there.
The island itself is a paradise and there were many great moments and many great questioners as well. It was on the island that I met the love of my life. It was also on the island that I vowed to change some personal aspects of my life. From pygmy labourers to Masai boatmen, it was a collage of colourful humour and heaps of alcohol induced baboonary. Getting out into Katavi was a relief!
So I tap away contently at my desk while the rain pours outside. I was going to pull excerpts from my blogs to place in here, but there are way too many. I just suggest you read through them - you may learn something, or you may learn nothing. All I want is for you to get a view into my crazy two years out here. Next year I will post 6 chapters that I have been saving about my final days in Tanzania.
Afia!
9:52 AM
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Thursday, November 30, 2006
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