Chapter 4
Kafue
The splash of a hippo returning to the river nudged Gideon awake. It added texture to the vibrancy of the bird calls already saturating the tepid dawn air. It would be another hot day. Savoring the comfort of is bed in the cocoon of his tent, he listened to nature’s harmony.
His ruminations faded as the dawn light crept into the corners of his mind, pushing aside the threads of anxiety, echoes of uneasy dreams.
“To hell with that old nganga prick,” he muttered to himself.
Sitting up he reached for his shirt before slipping his feet into a pair of sandals. Then unzipping the tent flap he stepped into the tentative dawn light filtering through the thick riverside vegetation.
An African goshawk flicked its wings above his tent, revealing the fine russet barring of its breast as it glided past overhead, silently, surreptitiously.
Crouching before the ashes of the fire , he blew on its embers beneath the old metal kettle, making it hiss quietly as the fire flickered back to life. A halo on the horizon hinted where the sun would soon creep up across the river.
He would train a scout team later in the morning. A six-man team was back from a patrol. It would be ready for further instruction before it headed out again. Today would be a theory day.
Gideon briefly let his thoughts meander over the note that was still in his pocket. Did it tie in with yesterday’s events? Did it portend greater poaching pressure? If so, what to do about it? A greater policing presence? What was the preferred patrol size. Would it be OK to have smaller teams, four men, insteada of six? What if the poaches started working in larger groups? An erratic thought entered his mind. Why did competitive groups often consist of eleven members: soccer, cricket, football, all eleven players. Was it the efficient limit to effective cooperation?
Anyway, scout teams that size were wishful thinking here. The Rhinos had long since disappeared, elephants were heading that way. What if the Asian demand increased? The incentive to poach would rise. As it was, other products were being sought by the Asian markets: pangolin scales, lion gallbladders. The rise of the Chinese middle class and its buying power was at the heart of the matter.
He swirled the coffee in his cup before taking a sip. Today it would be crime scene preservation and evidence collection: how each snare, dead animal, or poaching camp should be considered as part of a crime that needed to be recorded appropriately.
Who should be the crime scene manager? How to set up a perimeter if a large poaching camp was to be searched and its evidence documented. How to minimize disturbance by establishing an access path to the perimeter. What to look for. How to place any critical findings in plastic bags, label and note in a log. Nothing complex, only the fundamentals.
If there was time in the afternoon, he would give tips on photography. Law enforcement should get some use from the ubiquitous cell phone cameras to document evidence. It would be a way of giving a boost to the good guys instead of the bad, using their phones to avoid the authorities.
Gideon thought about the members of this particular team. It behooved him to learn the talents of each one. Who was capable of writing a comprehensive report? Who was the best tracker, the best evidence gatherer? Much of the training was basic, but crime scene documentation would go a long way to getting convictions to stick.
The yelping cries of a fish eagle signaled that the day was underway. It was time to go. He swallowed the last sip of coffee. Another hippo’s splash was heralded by a chorus of communal, harrumphing grunts.
Dousing the fire, he readied to go.
He would ride his bicycle. It wouldn’t take long. Line of sight it was only twelve kilometers to the anti-poaching ranger scout‘s base camp near the pontoon, two or three clicks more if you rode along the game viewing tracks which parallel the river. About an hour. A tad more if he came across something interesting, or he had to wait for a herd of elephants to pass without getting upwind of them.
His ride had been a weekly ritual since the beginning of September when a chick in a Crowned Eagles nest hatched. He liked to keep tabs on the chick. By now it should be big enough to peer at him as he climbed higher up the slope behind the nest and looked down on it.
Setting out from his campsite, he rode past the thatch roofed chalets of the lodge. The only sign of activity was the clunk of pots being stacked in the kitchen.
Crossing the breadth of the open dambo on the other side of the lodge, Gideon followed the tree line back down towards the river’s edge. Here, before reaching the river the dambo’s grassland spread out wide to parallel the river in a wide floodplain. it was where the Riverwood spread out later in the summer when it overflowed its banks.
Being alone in the vastness of the bush was exhilarating. Apart from a handful of lodge staff scattered downriver and some game scouts there was no human interference to get between him and nature..
He was about to cut north away from the river over the small ridge with the Eagles nest, when something caught his eye. It was in a small gully draining the dambo.
Dismounting, he left his bicycle at the edge of the dirt track, and pushed his way through waist high grass to get a better view. A big animal lay cooling itself inn a pan of water. The lower third of its body was submerged, and its head bowed forward as if drinking.
Facing away, it held still. Too still!
He carefully edged to the side and around to get a better frontal position.
By now he could see that it was a zebra. What was a zebra doing here?. He rarely saw them in this part of the park, it wasn’t zebra territory.
He crept closer. The animal didn’t move. Very strange behavior. Nearer. It should surely sense his presence.
The scene was rivetingly unexpected. He straightened and walked around to the fore.
A young stallion lay in calm repose, still exuding its sleek powerful robustness. Its wide-open eyes looking sightlessly in terror at death and the glass blue of the sky reflected in the water.
Exhausted, it must have felt its head dip, and raised it, dip, and raise, until too tired to hold it up, able only to widen its eyes, its nostril sank below the surface for the last time.
Had it broken a leg and settled in the water to escape a hyena? Was it disease? Or had it gotten stuck in the mud? Gideon wasn’t going to wade in and investigate. Maybe a croc was waiting to move in.
Returning to his bicycle he was too riveted on the image of the zebra to check the eagle chick. He cut to the main road and headed for the scout base camp.
The camp consisted of a small scruffily thatched chitenge, standing next to three squat, featureless buildings. Their dilapidated state reflected the national budget allocated to the parks. Maintenance was not a priority.
When he arrived, a few of the scouts were still eating breakfast. Some on their haunches, others sitting on rough wooden chairs around a metal pot containing n’chima, their staple cornmeal food. Gideon joined them, reaching out to scoop a lump of dough with his fingers, rolling it into a ball in the palm of his hand, then dipping it in a bowl of relish set to the side.
Looking beyond the scouts, Gideon could see a low dyke cutting diagonally across the horizon. Its march was chopped short by a cliff where the Kafue River had rubbed its ancient way through the rock and where the Lunga River on the other side flowed into the Kafue.
Upstream from this confluence, lay a huge lush bushland, interspersed with wide open grass dambos. These spread northwest to the distant game-rich Busanga Plains. It was this region that held the concern at the message in his pocket.
“All this weird crap happening!” he thought, the frozen panic in the zebra’s eyes seemed to compound it.
Finishing their meal the scouts arranged themselves under the roof of the chitenge and Gideon began the rote of his instruction.
As it proceeded, his lecturing had its usual air of informality, but he found it more difficult than usual to adhere to his lesson outline. The note, the nganga, Kings, Precious, the zebra. Like a tongue to a chipped tooth, his mind kept flipping back over all the strange goings on. Connected? Circumstantial? Was witchcraft behind it all? Why? If it were so, Precious was correct that, as a mzungu, he was most suited to step into the witchcraft she claimed was afoot. The locals would be unwilling to push their noses into dealings which scared them.
By early afternoon, after some hours of light hearted, but laboriously given instruction to the men who sat in a semi-circle before him, Gideon decided to call it a day. His head and heart wasn’t into it.
He would join them on the next patrol and do some practice he told the men.
Leaving the scouts with one of them stirring a late lunch in the three-legged pot, he rode back towards the pontoon crossing, still mulling things over.
In the background he heard the single cylinder “chug” of the pontoon’s diesel engine plying its way across the river. Then came the unmistakable sound of a Landcruiser starting its engine. He listened as it headed his way, turning down the track leading to the scout base.
It was Lodge Manager Bright.
As the vehicle came to a stop, Bright smiled at him warmly. “I hear you had some drama yesterday,” Bright didn’t even bother to extend a greeting.
“So you heard about it.”
“Yes, from the gate guards and from the pontoon crew. Such things travel fast on the Bush telegraph.”
Bright beckoned. “Come on. Climb in. I’ll give you a lift back to the lodge.
Gideon loaded his bicycle onto the back of the cruiser and clambered into the cab where he gave a short account of events.
“There have been strange goings-on around here for some time.” Bright said. “Some of the staff are becoming nervous.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Gideon retorted in surprise. “Is Kings one of those scaring people?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Because he acted weirdly yesterday.” Gideon scratched his chin, “He was hostile, as if he wanted to prevent anyone from doing anything.”
Bright shrugged as his lips tightened into a faint grimace.
“Kings,” he said, “is a difficult person. He is moody. He has a chip on his shoulder.”
Bright reached down to scratch an ankle. “Has anyone told you some of the history of this place?” He raised his eyebrows to emphasize his point.
“A bit. Gideon replied. “I know that during the ‘Sixties and ‘Seventies this area was a logistic and transit base for an insurgent movement fighting down south. This had been a ‘no go’ area.”
“Correct.” Bright shifted in his seat. It is the rest of the story which may explain some of Kings’ attitude. During that Bush war, the animals of the park were the meat pantry for the insurgents. The local poachers who shot and supplied the meat, didn’t forget their practices. After the war they simply switched to different markets. Kings was one of those suppliers.”
Bright rubbed his broad chin. Kings is a man with an attitude. He doesn’t like being reprimanded. He tends to think of this whole area as his own, to do with as he pleases. The only reason he is no longer a poacher is that he is not the brightest flame in the fire. He got caught too many times. So he has stopped for a while. “
“Interesting,” Gideon commented. “Now that I think about it, I have never seen him smile or heard him laugh.”
Bright nodded an agreement. “He is like a pet jackal: it doesn’t take too many howls in the moonlight to get him thinking about raiding the chicken coop.” Bright pulled a sour face. “I sometimes have trouble getting him to follow orders.”
Gideon clicked his tongue. “I’m glad youhave todeal with him and not me.
“By the way,” Bright remembered something, “This morning, I stopped at the park headquarters. Ernest Banda said to tell you he would be available for a meeting tomorrow, if you can make it.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” Gideon said. Then he had an impulse.
Talking about strange things with Kings and Precious, “I have something weird to show you.” He said to Bright, as he indicated to turn off the road and head down to the spot where the zebra had been.
When they got there, there was nothing.
“Damn!” Gideon exclaimed, “The crocs must have pulled it into the deeper water.”
“What was it?” Bright asked.
“It was a zebra, just lying there staring into the water. It must have died only minutes before I got there. Its eyes were still wide open and bright as if it were staring at itself. It was so strange it freaked me a bit.”
Gideon looked around “Now it’s just gone.:
The two men didn’t speak for the rest of the ride back to the lodge.
Precious’s words kept echoing in Gideon’s mind.
“Something will be shown to you that will make you take all this seriously.”
