The dangers of elephant dung, and other stories from the bush…
Some could say that I’ve been ‘bushwhacked’. While the connotations of this unfortunate term during US election season may be one thing, the African meaning is something along the lines of someone who is completely taken by being in the ‘bush’ – out where the (large, and often dangerous) animals are, and the humans are the intruders. I was lucky enough to go on a 10 day budget camping safari to Botswana and Zambia a couple of weeks ago. You might wonder – budget camping… shouldn’t all camping be budget? Alas – not in Africa, where, like in many places in the third world, there is ample inexpensive labor available, and so, for a tidy sum, you can ‘camp’ in such a way that you have furniture in your tent, 5 course meals prepared for you, and served on china, and possibly someone to swat the mosquitoes away while you sleep. Certainly, you will have armed guards, (armed because of the animals…because, after all, you’re in the bush, not in Johannesburg!) I, however, chose a different approach. Budget camping meant that I traveled in an old minivan with no a/c or (as it is winter here) heat, listened to the bad music of Francois, my guide, cooked the food, tended the fire (which, as you will see, is of utmost importance) and slept on the ground. It was fabulous. Oh yeah – there were no armed guards either.
The fire – there is a reason that once the cave man discovered it, we evolved. It is because lions and other large, carnivorous animals may also like to sleep in caves… but they don’t like fire. Nor do elephants, which won’t eat you, but may step on you, skewer you with a tusk… same with the rhino and hippo. I was up close (sometimes too close) and personal with many of these. So – the fire keeps you safe, and you better make sure it is going all night long. There is a downside to sleeping near fire – well, there are a few, but one is that while it keeps away the large animals, snakes and scorpions are drawn to the heat. And, believe me, the snakes out there are not your average garden snake. Luckily, it is winter, and I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing a black mamba(the deadliest snake in the region), python, cobra or scorpion.
In 10 days, I visited 2 game parks, a rhino sanctuary, Victoria Falls, and spent 3 days in the Okavango Delta. Vic Falls was absolutely stunning – check out some of the pictures. It is 2 km wide, between Zambia and Zimbabwe (although the borders of Botswana and Namibia are very close by), and is spectacular because all of that water is dropped into a very narrow gorge. In at least 1 of Zambia’s 72 languages, it is called ‘Masi-o-tunye’ or ‘the smoke that thunders’. You can see the spray miles away, and although the area near by is a kind of scrub-savannah, immediately downstream of the falls is a rainforest…from the spray. If you haven’t heard from my aghast parents yet, I bungee jumped from the Victoria Falls bridge – an awesome, although highly frightening experience. Don’t worry, I have a video to prove it. I stayed on the Zambia side of the falls – in fact, we avoided Zimbabwe like the plague, to the extent that rather than driving across the very nice bridge, we took a ‘ferry’ from Botswana to Zambia…this lovely excuse for a boat takes 30 minutes to travel less than 1 km each way, and only takes 4 cars and 1 truck at a time. Yet, truckers will wait for days at the border to take the ferry, rather than deal with the hassles of Zimbabwe. In Zambia, I went on a walking safari, with a guide who sounded remarkably like the crocodile hunter. We followed tracks, identified animals by their droppings, and came upon the only 3 white rhino in Zambia. I was mere feet from these animals…amazingly large, prehistoric looking creatures. We also skirted a herd of buffalo, (didn’t want them to charge!) and had a snack on the banks of the Zambezi river, with some hippos in the distance. Incidentally, hippos are responsible for more deaths in Africa than any other animal – and they are vegetarian!
The highlight of my trip, and the part that resulted in the most entertaining stories, was the 3 days in the Okavango delta. This delta is one of the most dense natural concentrations of animals in Africa, and is stunning both in its beauty and its wilderness. It is a river delta, but it doesn’t empty into the sea. It comes out of Namib desert in Namibia, and disappears into the Kalahari desert in Botswana. Unlike our other nights, where we camped in proper campsites (with toilets, etc.), in the delta, we were truly in the wild. We traveled to our site by mokoros – local canoes – to a place where our local guides felt we would be safe. The water near us didn’t have any crocs in it, we were assured! They said the same about the hippos, but we soon learned that you can’t control the animals, although one of our guides tried to talk to them (to tell them to stay away from us). This was our protection – no weapons, only a thin log shell between me and the hippo – and a guide that thought he could talk to animals. Royale (that was his name) did the same when we came upon an angry young male elephant, as we were walking in the bush. He spoke Zulu (he had worked in the mines in South Africa), and so I asked him what the heck he was doing, and if it worked. It seems that he alone had the powers to talk to animals, and while animals may ‘speak’ a number of languages, he chose some Zambian language to talk to them. At night, we would sleep beside the fire, surrounded by more stars than I’ve ever seen, accompanied by the musical symphony (cacophony?) of hundreds of frogs, punctuated by the distant (thank god!) roar of the lion, and the (very close) crashing of the elephants through the bush. The scariest part of the night was when ‘nature called’ – going to the toilet pit in the dark, I’d get visions of a green mamba dropping from a tree, or worse, thought I might see a leopard. We were under strict instructions not to stray too far from the fire – especially due to the leopards, which are a nocturnal animal that live in trees. I managed to come out of the delta, and the trip, with only a few scratches and mosquito bites, although I did narrowly escape being burned, when my sleeping bag caught on fire (with me inside). Unfortunately, this was not because I stupidly slept too close to the fire…alas, it was due to some poorly placed elephant dung, which the local ladies had set alight during the evening to keep the mosquitoes away from us. It turned out that I put my sleeping bag right on top of it (in my defense, it was no longer smoking, and it was dark!), and it wasn’t quite done smoldering…
The lesson to be learned: the next time one is faced with a choice between being pounced on by a leopard, chomped by a hippo, gored by an angry rhino, or stepped on by an elephant – choose none of the above, and rather choose to jump out of your sleeping bag screaming expletives, due to some unfortunately placed elephant dung!
