So, after putting all my eggs in her basket, the Easter Bunny never arrived. The biologist has been far too busy to involve herself with my mongoose misadventures. She has been retained by the government of Botswana as the ecology expert in a huge court case involving the eviction of the San bushmen from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. I rarely ever see her and the cat survey keeps getting postponed. I’m losing patience and hope that it will ever happen and, the mongoose, while sickeningly cute, are not cutting it for me. Time to move on. This was a bruising defeat but perhaps I’ll have better luck with the Tooth Fairy.
I boarded a boat and crossed the Zambezi river, leaving Botswana behind me. It’s been six months since I arrived and, inexplicably, the emotions of that experience never surfaced. It was a bittersweet departure, full of great memories of my introduction to Africa as well as some disappointments at what I was unable to accomplish. But in the end, Botswana has had a huge impact on me and a place I will certainly return to one day.
It was immediately apparent from the moment I crossed the border that Zambia (called Northern Rhodesia during its colonial era) would be an entirely different experience. It is much poorer than Botswana and the poverty and desperation are tangible. The border control area was total chaos and I was the only long nose in sight. Someone shovelled me into a minibus, intended to carry 10 passengers, but somehow they managed to pack 19 people inside. I sat squeezed between a beast of a woman and an old man sitting on top of a sack of corn meal who hadn’t bathed since the Nixon Administration. There was a fresh caught fish dangling from the grill above the front bumper, drying out under a punishing sun. This must have been a drought year, the landscape was a parched sepia brown. Driving along the only paved road to Livingstone, I wondered how the animals were surviving without access to green vegetation. My first impression of Zambia was pure desolation. The landscape seemed empty of wildlife. Not even a bird. Poaching and subsistence hunting by locals has wiped out vast areas of game. As we approached a snake crossing the road, the driver swerved to run over it. I looked at him incredulously and asked him why. “Very danger, better to make dead.” I was about to go into my hippie shpeel about how important snakes are to an ecosystem but I knew it would be futile and let it go. Five miles from our destination, the van broke down. Everyone piled out, I grabbed a taxi, and made it to my guesthouse, “Jollyboys”. Figuring it was an appropriate place for a native San Franciscan, I checked in under the name Jack Offermen. The only room they had available was a shared dorm with 6 other Norwegians. So I pitched my tent instead on their grass and went out for my virgin walkabout in Zambia.
I passed a bar called the Funky Monkey and ducked inside. Two whities were seating at a table behind a half empty bottle of brandy. They motioned me over so I joined them. They were already juiced and insisted I catch up to them. We sat and talked and drank. They were South African Boers and they confessed the reason they asked me to join them was because they thought I was a fellow tribesman. They were long haul truck drivers just finishing a journey from Cape Town. They had been in the bar since 11am and were on their second bottle. They had an obnoxious charm about them, despite getting loud & rude to other patrons and our poor waitress, who was suffering thru their antics like a champ. They mentioned they really liked our president, Bill Clinton. After breaking the news to them, they asked if Schwarzenegger was the US president. I shook my head. Bill Gates? Another shake. Then they confided in me that they love Texas. “We want to go there for the big hats and country music.” Then they asked me about the Klu Klux Klan. I told them that the entire government of Texas are Klan members. They nodded approval. They went on to tell me, with a disturbing degree of pride, that in their town back in South Africa, blacks are not allowed and if they are seen after nightfall, they are routinely beaten up. One of them pulled up his shirt to reveal a long scar on his stomach and told me he was stabbed by some blacks during a home invasion robbery. They held his mother and sister at gunpoint while they robbed the house and then drove off in the family vehicle. He said it was common for his neighbourhood and that he has open contempt for all blacks. I appreciated his honesty. Better than most who are politically correct on the exterior but with an endoskeleton full of racism. “You’ll love Texas and will fit right in.”
Just then a hunter walked into the bar with his client. They all began speaking Afrikaans and I found it difficult to wipe the sneer off my face after 3 hours of Brandy. I knew I had to leave before I said something I would regret. I have only met a handful of hunters in person and I find myself extremely uncomfortable in their presence. The hunter and client had one shot and left. The three of us walked next door to a new bar and ordered beers. Two local men were standing next to us and suddenly I felt the Boers were very agitated. The South Africans began speaking louder than necessary and were discussing how corruption keeps African nations down. They later told me that those two locals are border police and often demand bribe money from these truckers to pass into Zambia. They had driven that route long enough to know these crooked cops so they were intentionally talking shit, knowing the cops were eavesdropping. There was a tense exchange and the cops sheepishly moved off. I left and began walking home. The streets had a dangerous feel, no lights and devoid of people. A car pulled up next to me and the driver leaned out the window and asked, “Mister, you want friendly ladies?” Two hookers were sitting in the back seat, smiling.
|
