[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Between The Sunlight And The Thunder
Mike Resnick
Copyright (c) 1996 by Mike Resnick. All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted without the
express permission of the author.
Like all my safari diaries, this one appeared originally in the Hugo-winning fanzine Lan's Lantern.
Page 1
by Mike Resnick
August 28, 1990: Between the bright sunlight ofEast Africa's safari countries, and the ominous
thunder coming out of theRepublicofSouth Africa, there exist four nations:Zimbabwe,
Mozambique,Malawi, andBotswana. We had originally hoped to visit all four on this extended
safari, butMozambiqueis in the throes of a brutal civil war, so we confined ourselves to the other
three countries, where I would be researching Purgatory and Ophir, a pair of novels I'll be writing in
the next couple of years, and hopefully coming up with some more ideas. This was a unique safari for
us, in that we did not arrange to go with a single guide, as we always do inKenya, nor did we care to
join a package tour. Instead, we made a list of all the locations we wanted to see in all three
countries, then hunted up a travel agency (we found it, finally, inYork,England) that was able to
arrange our itinerary. The first step, as always, was the 8-hour flight toLondon, during which time I
did my best not to feel bitter over losing the Hugo after leading for the first five ballots. I didn't quite
pull it off.
August 29, 1990: We landed at Gatwick at seven in the morning, took a bus to Heathrow after
clearing customs, and waited around the airport for almost 12 hours for our 10-hour flight to
Zimbabweto take off. I loveAfrica; it's the process of getting there that I hate.
August 30, 1990: We landed inHarare(formerlySalisbury), the capital ofZimbabwe(formerly
Rhodesia), and dragged our exhausted (formerly energetic) bodies to Meikles Hotel, a large, luxury
hotel in the city center right across fromCecil Square. While Carol took a nap, I went out walking,
and found that there is an enormous difference betweenHarareand its Kenyan counterpart,Nairobi.
One gets the feeling that if the tourist industry vanished, 98% of the people you see inNairobiwould
find themselves out of work; whereas if it vanished fromHarare, no one would know the difference.
Page 2
Which is a roundabout way of saying thatHarareis a working city, with very little to interest the
casual tourist. In fact, we soon came to realize thatZimbabweis a working country. President Robert
Mugabe continually gives lip service to communism, but it's a capitalist country from top to
bottom...and unlike most African countries, it works. The roads are all paved, the electricity works
around the clock, the water is safe to drink, there are schools every couple of miles throughout the
countryside, poachers have made almost no inroads in most of the game parks, and unemployment
doesn't seem to be much of a problem. In fact, I would say thatZimbabweis as well-developed, and
runs as smoothly, as most Eastern European nations. I realize that doesn't sound like much, but when
you compare it toKenyaorTanzaniaorZambia, it's a quantum leap forward. I signed copies of
Ivory andParadisein a local bookstore, then returned to Meikles and changed for dinner. We ate at
the Bagatelle, a 5-star dining room in the hotel, where, in a delightful twist, the proprietors were black
and the piano player was white.
August 31: When I checked out in the morning, I presented Meikles with a paid voucher -- which
they refused to accept. Evidently they had been paid in Zimbabwean dollars, and because the
country is so starved for hard currency, they have a law stating that all foreign travelers must pay in
their own currency. So I very begrudgingly paid for my room for a second time, and made a mental
note to bill the travel agency. We had decided to begin our safari inBotswana(formerly
Bechuanaland)...but, because we would be flying around the country in 5-seaters with severe weight
limitations, we first flew to the Victoria Falls Hotel, where we left some of our luggage. The hotel
itself is an old colonial structure that reminded me of some of the better British hotels in theBrighton
area. We had seen a sign in theVictoria Fallsairport telling us that we must report at least an hour
early for international flights or run the risk of having our seats sold. Our flight toBotswanawas due
to leave at2:30in the afternoon, and the bus from the hotel didn't leave until1:30. A number of
people who were taking the flight panicked, and began offering up to $100 to anyone who would
Page 3
drive them to the airport and get them there by1:30. Since the flight is scheduled three times a week,
we figured that the hotel hadn't received any complaints about it, and waited for the bus. It got us
there at about2:00, and theBotswanaplane didn't show up for another two hours (par for the
course, the flight attendant later admitted.) The flight toMaun,Botswanatook perhaps an hour, and
shortly thereafter we were ensconced in Riley's Hotel, which has a long and colorful history from
colonial times, but has become a rather dull hostelry in the middle of a rather dull town.
September 1: When I stopped by the desk to hand in my voucher, they announced that they had no
record of a previous payment, and I would have to pay for the room. At this point I hit the roof,
FAXed the travel agency inYork, and raised bloody hell. They assured me that we would have no
further problems with our vouchers, and they were right (which is not to say that we had no further
problems in other areas.) We went to the airport -- Maun consists of nothing but the airport, three
gift shops, a few houses, a few huts, and Riley's -- and took our chartered 5-seater toJedibeIsland
Camp, in the heart of the Okavango Delta, where, after more than 4 days, we finally stopped
traveling and started vacationing. Jedibe is a small island, with ten tents, two ablution blocks (a
euphemism for bathrooms, which consist of a toilet and a shower, surrounded by a rather shakey
reed fence and no roof), a bar, and a dining tent. It's run by Tony and Pam, a second- generation
Kenyan and Zambian, respectively, who migrated down toOkavangowhen their own countries got
too civilized, and there was only one other guest there when we arrived. If there is a better way to
decompress after a long trip than riding in a mokoro, I don't know what it is. The mokoro is a dugout
canoe, and while you sit up front and watch theOkavangogo by, a strong young man stands at the
back and poles you along. We went out in mokoros in mid-morning, and stayed out until dinnertime.
Carol, the bird expert in the family, tells me it was the best single day of bird-watching she's ever
experienced. The Okavango Delta is some 1,600 square miles of swamp, with about 200,000 miles
of very narrow, winding channels. By the time we were twenty minutes out from camp, I figured that,
left to my own devices, I might, with luck, be able to find my way back in something less than eight
Page 4
months...yet our polers always seemed to know exactly where they were, and you got the feeling you
could set them down anywhere in theOkavangoand they'd be able to find their way home with no
problem. I remarked about that to Pam, who agreed that they were death and taxes in the
Okavango, but added that three of them went toJohannesburgfor Christmas and got hopelessly lost
in half an hour.
September 2: We went out on a powerboat in order to see more of the swamp (mokoros are many
things, but fast isn't one of them), packed a box lunch which we ate on a totally uninhabited island,
and returned to camp in time to meet Franco and Masimo, a pair of Italians who work for
Mondedori, my Italian publisher, and were making a documentary film about theOkavango.
Masimo, a perfectionist, had wanted an overhead shot of the Delta, and refused to photograph it
through the window of the plane...so they opened the door and he and his camera hung out, upside
down, while Franco held onto his feet. The result: exceptional footage and an exceptional inner-ear
infection. They also wanted footage of a fish eagle swooping down and snaring a fish out of the
water. Tony had trained a local fish eagle to do just that when baited, and we went along while the
fish eagle went through his paces about a dozen times and we all got some fabulous footage. That
night I went to the ablution block at aboutmidnight. While I was there, a hippo came out of the
swamp and began rubbing his sides against the reed wall. Hippos have killed more tourists inAfrica
during the past quarter century than any other animal, and the reason is simple: they panic when they
are cut off from water...and the very best time to photograph a hippo is when he goes inland to eat,
as otherwise all you're likely to see are his eyes, ears, and nostrils. (They stay in the water to protect
their sensitive skins from the sun all day, but at night they leave the water and consume up to 300
pounds of vegetation.) Stand between a hippo and water and his first inclination is to run through --
not around -- you to get back to the safety of his pond or river. Now, Jedibe is a very small island,
perhaps 300 yards in diameter. So I reasoned it out and concluded that if I left the ablution block, all
Page 5
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Wątki

Search