WITH A GUN IN GOOD COUNTRY

PART FOUR - WHITE HUNTER
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'Fair flowers that are not gathered in their prime
Rot and consume themselves in little time.'
Venus & Adonis
William Shakespeare

1 Return to Luangwa

In June, 1969, I came back to the Luangwa to hunt for Luangwa safaris, first flying up to Fort Jameson where Norman Carr, one of the partners, ran the business. The field operations were run by his partner, Peter Hankin, from a bush headquarters at Chanjusi in the Luangwa. I arrived at Chanjusi, feeling a little like the once successful actor attempting a comeback after a period of absence, for I had left for Canada fully two dry seasons ago. To return again and see the vistas of Cathedral mopane and the open plains of Nsefu covered with all manner of wildlife made for an emotional homecoming.

I have often wondered whether leaving cropping and opting for university was a wise decision. Macleod and I had always had it in mind to go from one hunting-based adventure to another: to India and Bangladesh to deal with maneating tiger, to Australia to crop feral domestic stock, to the Matto Grosso to...well...to simply go and see what we could find...if not jaguar there would always be wine, women and lots of song. We had plotted so many safaris together while seated next to Mazunga pools that my decision to leave, to opt out for university, must have been a severe letdown to him. It was certainly highly egocentric. Ambition, I was to learn, can provide the iron bars for a cage.

Chanjusi was built so that it could be reached via the hills from Lundazi for it was not possible to drive from Cropping or Mfuwe in the rains as the roads were impassable and the rivers flooded. So Chanjusi existed solely for this reason.

On one of those lovely crisp June mornings, Peter Hankin and I sat next to a small fire laid in the open a little way from the small office where he usually busied himself with paper work. In a long steel shed behind was housed the liquor and tinned goods. Further back lay the workshop with its drums of fuel and the partially dismembered bodies of Landrovers. All about us stretched the bush and somewhere in the distance some villages, for I could hear their drums announcing a beer drink. Closer still to the base camp, and hidden by the thickets of creeper growing on the edge of the camp, lay the temporary huts of the safari crews and base camp staff.

From out of the dark a white jacketed figure appeared, his feet bare, bringing him silently to the fireside. The man placed some mopane wood on the fire and departed. Peter sat silently opposite me, immersed in the sort of reverie brought on by a good glass of whisky. I knew little about Peter though I had occasionally met up with him at Mfuwe Lodge when he was between hunts. His family were ex-Indian army from the days of the Raj and had come to the Fort Jameson district as tobacco planters. When the tobacco scheme died, they stayed on, the father died, the mother working as the matron at the school. Peter drifted into an occasional elephant poaching career in the Valley, eventually starting up the safari company in partnership with the Warden of the time, Norman Carr. Peter's own life remained something of a mystery: it was common knowledge that he had married a Swiss woman who bore him a son and departed for England. There were black women, as was usual with a lot of the early settlers and hunters, and one of them bore him a son whom I met years later, a kindly and gentle mathematics professor. The success achieved by John Hankin, reared by an uneducated village woman, was entirely due to Peter who sent him to schools in Rhodesia.

A hyena called somewhere out in the dark and I could smell the early evening of Africa - they were the sort of sensations and sounds which become so much a part of living in the bush that when you leave it you feel forever unsettled. I awoke the next morning with what I can only describe as an 'end of term feeling' which those who went to boarding school will remember, a feeling of great joy and anticipation, of freedom brought about by the coming of the holidays, and freedom, for a while at least, from institutional life.

For the season, Peter gave me the south Munjamadzi corridor, an area bounded by the Munjamadzi river in the north, the Mupamadzi in the south and the Luangwa river and Muchinga escarpment in the east and west respectively. This would make up the sixth camp which Luangwa safaris were to open in the whole of the Luangwa. Towards the escarpment lay the Chifungwe plain, a tall grassland plain of rolling hills where in July, 1966, Johnny and I had counted 2,000 elephant from the air. It had not been hunted professionally before, and apart from a track leading from a pontoon at Chibinde to the escarpment and to the Great North road south of Mpika, there were no roads.

In the morning a voice woke me, "Hodi..hodi," the call was insistent, far off and a trifle apologetic.
"Ye..es, "I replied, realizing where I was and feeling the rush of excitement to know I was back.
"Hodi..hodi.. Bwana. Time for get up Bwana. Long ulendo by dis time." The figure of a small man in late middle age, weighing no more than 100 pounds, came into view. "I Jackson, Bwana. I cook for you. I show you lefelence." I sat up in bed and focused on the figure in front of me. While I studied him I could hear birds calling all about us: Cape turtle doves, emerald spotted doves, tambourines and the rain bird itself, the red-breasted cuckoo. The small rondhavel lay near the safari garden and through the window I could see a gardener walking slowly along with a watering can held in his hand. From the small stream nearby came the excited chatter of masked weavers and from the direction of the workshops the familiar childhood clang of a hammer on an anvil. Thanking Jackson for the cup tea, I lay back and savoured my first day back.

Breakfast, taken in the outside with Peter, consisted of two eggs lightly fried in butter, fried tomato, fried egg plant, bacon, two thin well done slices of impala liver, followed by toast, marmalade and coffee.
When we had finished Peter wiped his moustache on an impeccably starched white napkin and said, "I've organized your chaps, or shall I say, K has: five carriers, including Jackson, who is your cook - the old blighter, enough to carry in your personal katundu and theirs and all the food you are going to need. You can get paw paws and bananas and ground millet if you should eat it... my chap has made out an issue of a Sako .375 and ammunition, its all I have left, I'm afraid. And the game permit. For heavens sake don't forget that."

Peter gave me a list of the quantities of raw materials required for the camp building - the number, size and length of mopane poles and the designs for the chitenje, the dining room, the kitchen, toilets and shower room, and the bedrooms. Not a nail or a piece of twine was to be used. In addition, he had even worked out the gwazas - the daily quota of work for each man depending on the particular job in hand, whether it was cutting thatch or poles, or collecting loshi - the rope fibre made from raffia palm leaves. To send labourers off without a gwaza was to court disaster, something I had learned while preparing the land and planting tobacco by hand at Mkushi.
I was going to have to work fast for it was ten days before the clients arrived. I had no campsite, no camp and no roads, and I knew little of the area, though the local people would sort that particular failing out. Peter's final instruction was for me to expect him with the clients in exactly ten days time. There were two of them, both doctors from Milwaukee.

After breakfast I walked over to the steel shed. A few bedraggled chickens belonging to Nduna, the mechanic, scampered off from beneath my feet. But I was not the cause of their sudden squawks, for a yellow-billed kite appeared suddenly overhead. The gloom inside the shed was pierced by dust laden bars of light and I waited for my eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom. There were four rows neatly stacked with safari fare: matches, candles, instant coffee, tea, sugar, flour, rice, tinned vegetables, salt, pepper, assorted spices, curry powder, the inevitable Tabasco sauce, soap, tinned yeast and powdered milk. At the end of the shed were the crates of beer and liquor which kept a good safari oiled and made insensate, a bad one.

I signed for the Sako.375 only to be told by K that it had a history of jamming. This was not encouraging news but as there was no other rifle I would just have to make do. I then drew out enough rations for a week and went to inspect my motley crew of men drawn up by Jackson outside.

K, Peter's assistant, drove us down to the river. The track from base camp to the river wound its way through a few isolated stands of Borassus palm fringed with the small fan shaped Phoenix palms and then, after cutting through a belt of desecrated mopane, led down to the alluvial plain and the large trees of the riverine belt. The river was a greasy flaccid ribbon snaking its way towards the Zambezi far to the south. It was falling noticeably and within the next two weeks a small steel pontoon would be in place to ferry vehicles across to Luwawata camp on the opposite bank. But there was no hunter there yet, and apart from Brian Smith and Joe Joubert, who were further north, I appeared to be the only one in the field.

We crossed over in a small rowing boat, its crew commanded by Jackson. Except for one other man, who showed some signs of intelligence, they were as motley a crew as could be obtained. They were probably some of Chief Chanjusi's relatives whom he had foisted on Peter. The tyranny of the extended family had survival value at a time when Africans lived off the land, but there were early signs in the Zambia of 1966 that it was being put to new and corrupt use.

On the opposite bank, Jackson took off his hat - an odd assemblage made up of scraps of wool, and splashed water onto his face and head. One of the men, his short hair pulled into a series of knots, wet a handkerchief and tying the ends into knots, placed it over his head. A Tsetse fly bit me on the end of my finger, reminding me of the months which lay ahead in their company.

Hoisting their loads, and I my rifle, we made in a diagonal line for the Munyamadzi, leaving the grey and greasy Luangwa behind. It was midday so there was not much game about, except for a troop of baboon who stood some way off in the shade. One of them gave a rather half hearted bark. Behind them were a few impala rams. They too seemed dulled by the torpor of midday.

Following on immediately behind the pencil thin legs of Jackson, I thought of how glad I was to be out walking in the bush again: the sun shone; I was off to build my own camp, to receive my own clients; I had a liberal pot licence of 4 impala and 2 buffalo; and a supply of whisky which, if carefully rationed, would last until Peter arrived with the clients. One behind the other we made our way through the bush walking for the most part on elephant paths strewn with their dung, and slowly, by degrees, approached the river which had its source on the escarpment to the west, now a dim blue wall on the horizon. Somewhere on this river I was sure I would find a suitable campsite. My requirements were good dense shade, a good view for the clients and a sandbank where I could filter the water.
"Jackson!" I called.
"Sah!"
"Jackson, do you know a good campsite?" I asked, realizing as soon as I opened my mouth that it was a stupid question to ask, as stupid as to ask how far a place is. "How far is a good campsite? " I blurted out. Its the question a Paleface cannot help asking in Africa.
" Yes, Bwana, " replied Jackson. "Velly god place for sah, for peoples, Amelican peoples, Germany peoples, all peoples eat nice, sleep nice, kill plenty hanimals with sah: elefanti, kalambo, nyati...what and what. "
"Okay...okay." I replied, and was grateful when, his duty obviously done to his Bwana, he could now concentrate on his load and the njira ahead.

Reaching the Munyamadzi, we sat down beneath a Sausage tree and surveyed the river. Two large crocs slid off a sandbank a little upstream and a school of hippo took note of our presence by some communal, 'Har..har..har' calls. I was tired, being unaccustomed to walking. I found that I looked around a lot, both down at the ground and then at the sky and bush. I was out of sorts, like a man in an ill fitting suit. Added to this my sneakers were still new and they rubbed with great precision at an area on my small right toe. My shorts ground away at my thighs and I gave thanks that I had not been conned by anyone into wearing underpants from which man hath no greater freedom. My discomfort and rather Mr McGoo like stumblings about, made me empathize with my clients later on. Arriving newly minted, without time to absorb the new sights , smells and impressions, their struggles to adapt were far more painful than mine.

In the northern part of the corridor there were few villages, except for those lying on the edge of the escarpment where safaris rarely operated. In my section a series of small villages crowded down upon the track running up to Chief Nawalya's masumba - his traditional court and residence. I was en route for Nawalya's country. His people were Bisa who came originally from the plateau and owed allegiance to the Paramount Bisa chief, Kopa, whose masumba lay on the plateau west of Mpika. Here the language was Chibisa.

We crossed the river a little south of the grove of ebony trees known as Nyampala. Feeling the opaque water surging around my waste and watching it rise up around Jackson's armpits with 20 yards still to go was an uncomfortable feeling. I thought of its reputation for large crocs. Yet I also knew, as did the carriers, that there was not much chance of a croc taking someone in the dry season. One of the early Portuguese explorers of the 17 Century had even remarked on this. But in the rains it was a different matter. This was the time of flooding and the dispersal of fish. Whatever the cause, crocodile maneating cases in the rains were not uncommon.

We made camp at Nyampala, my bed being placed under a sausage tree - fortunately there were no sausages, for I well remembered when Joe Joubert was felled by one. Jackson began to set up my bed and mosquito net. A little further away the boys laid down their own blankets, each blanket placed next to the other, all except for Jackson's who placed his five yards away, as befitting his position as cook and capitao. His blanket and personal toilet articles remained tied in its bundle for he had tea and the evening meal to make.
"Jackson!" I called, feeling the need for some conversation.
"Sah!"
"This is a nice place, Jackson." Perhaps this place would do, I thought. Why go traipsing around the country when I had so little time.
"Ah, Sah." he said, shaking his head. "Better place dat side." He pointed rather haphazardly to the west.
"Where are the people?"
"People dat side, follow on river, " he said as he stirred the pan. "Other peoples dat side..other tlibe, not tlibe for Jackson. Chief live by dat side and big chief falaway." The onion, now well cooked, was energetically stirred. "Ah, dis peoples eating zebla and 'ippo meat. Tlibe for Jackson not eating dis meat for animals."

The four other men sat on their haunches around their own cooking fire: the young waiter of the haute coiffure, two camp men of robust build and cheerful demeanour, and the last a shifty one-eyed man whose position as assistant cook owed something to the presence of Jackson, who as cook, stood supreme in the camp pecking order with only the chief tracker, the chilongozi, enjoying the same status.

While I was thinking over Jackson's remarks he served me a concoction of fried bully beef and onions - with a dash of curry powder added, and mashed potatotoes. This was followed by tinned peaches sauteed in butter and then served a flambe, with the aid of nip from the bottle of black rum. One bottle per safari, Peter had said ; for cooking. With the meal finished I sat back with a whisky and watched as the sun dipped behind the horizon. One blink and it was gone. I then undressed in the light of the fire and slid naked between clean sheets. Nearby the men's fire blazed higher and through the fine gauze of the netting I could see them moving about, one of them stacking firewood.

I awoke in the middle of the night, the camp site lit by a single fitful flame spurting out of a mopane log. It was cold. Outside the net rose the vengeful whine of mosquitoes as they tried to find a way in. The men were wrapped in their blankets, their heads covered. A leopard sawed down near the lagoon. A little later he called again, this time closer to the camp.
"Morning sah. Tea leddy!" called Jackson. It was already daybreak, and cold. I could smell onions cooking.
"Morning, Jackson..How are things?"
" Good morning, sah, hoping you ?" he said, shaking his head and clicking his tongue against his gums. "Lions shouting too much by dat side. Hey..hey..hey.." Again he shook his head. Some horrible image must have gripped him for he suddenly did a good imitation of someone with a severe case of facial cramp.
"Good, Jackson, Very good," I said, enjoying the morning entertainment.
"Ai..ai..ai. Lion too much hunger. Eat peoples ."
"Nonsense , Jackson..plenty of animals for lion to eat."
But Jackson was not convinced and walked back to his fire.

We struck camp early that morning and walked up river. It would soon be hot so it was not wise to tarry for the middle of the day was too hot to be out walking in the sun. "How far to this place?" I asked Jackson, hoping that perhaps for the first time a mazungu could be properly enlightened.
"Not far, sah," came the inevitable answer.
"How many hours, Jackson?" I asked impatiently, still asking the impossible. I reflected that a mazungu is a strange animal -as any muntu can tell you.

We made along the top of the river bank: red-necked francolen scurried off into the grass; some baboon barked, though without much enthusiasm. As the sun rose the tsetse flew out from the shade and settled on the shoulders of the men. They are attracted to black, though I had the impression they bit white flesh more often. Jackson had a dozen on his back for a long period. I watched, curious, for tsetse are supposed not to like the heat, yet they stayed there for an hour.

We now entered a rougher stretch of country with broken ground and numerous elephant potholes - cylindrical pits. There were also patches of thicket which snatched at my clothes, and large swathes of seven foot grass where I took the rifle off my shoulder, for walking in long grass near villages can be dangerous for many are the buffalo who are peppered with shot and bits of reinforcing rod and lie sulking in the grass waiting for someone to punish. The rifle began to press heavily down on my shoulder. Clearly I was soft and unfit. I was also irritable.
"How far still, Jackson?"
"Not far by dis time, sah," came the reply flung over his shoulder.
"Jackson!" I called in desperation.
"Sah!". Jackson stopped and now regarded me warily. He was well into his Sixties and had once cooked for one of the Governors. He viewed me now as one might an insect. Something in my voice had made him draw up, narrow his eyes and await what was coming.
"Come on , Jackson. You've been saying this 'its not far' for bloody ages."

I was behaving badly and I knew it. I also knew he knew it which made me even more peevish.
"It is there, Sah", he said with great finality - as though he were one of his forebears pointing out Victoria Falls to David Livingstone, pointing far up river to a point on the bank where the vegetation appeared to coalesce into one large green mass.

Faced with something tangible at last, I murmured a conciliatory reply, "Okay, lets go."
Jackson turned, placed his large bundle on his head, and made off at the same pace up river. By this time I was convinced that every elephant in the world had passed before us in the rains, turning the whole corridor into a sieve of potholes subtly covered by a thin covering of grass into which I regularly tripped and fell or stubbed my toe. Whenever this happened, Jackson would utter little birdlike mutterings of condolence, "Ah solly for dat...ah solly sah....tsk ...tsk ..guh."

We came finally to the old course of the river beyond which stretched a dense thicket relieved by the occasional Sausage tree towering in its midst.
"Dis good place fo' hanimals, sah. Old place for wiver, running dis side and den is going dat side river again," announced, Jackson, his arm describing the course of the ox-bow lagoon. I looked rather sourly upon this scene. It was not what I was looking for. Unconcerned by our presence, a small herd of puku antelope grazed on the far side of the lagoon. Here before me was quite clearly a stretch of fairly inhospitable bush dotted with the occasional shade tree facing onto a new cut of the river which had not yet had time to produce the riverine woodland so necessary for a good camp. It was also a good place for tsetse fly. I looked at Jackson standing silently near his bundle and nonchalantly rolling a cigarette consisting of raw village tobacco and old newspaper. He licked the ends and placed it between his lips, then patting his pockets, he turned towards me, his face lit in a friendly smile, "Sah, you having match?"
"Now look here you wily old bugger," I growled in exasperation, throwing a box of matches at him. " What are you up to?"
"Up what for, sah?" he retorted, surprise and hurt forcing his lips and eyes tightly together. A wasted Shakespearean acting talent, I thought.
"Come on , Jackson. Why here ? Why here? There is no shade. Not good place for mazungu. We like big trees, NEAR the river.." I was bellowing now, for we had been staggering along for five hours to fulfil Jackson's secret agenda. Realization suddenly dawned on me. "Where is the village, Jackson?"
"Village, sah?" cried Jackson, his look of pain turning to one of mock incredulity.
"Village for Chief dat side."
"You have relations there?"

There came no reply. The young waiter guffawed and turned to one side, his hand covering his mouth. Jackson spluttered out a string of what sounded like precise descriptions of the other fellows ancestry. Kicking of my sandals, I lay back in the shade of a bush, head cradled in my hands and closed my eyes, "Tea please, Jackson."
When in doubt, when contemplating murder, when wounding a lion in Africa, call for tea.
I awoke the following morning, my mouth surrounded by a band of scum normally found at the waterline of a boarding house bath. It felt faintly hairy and tasted of that strange chemical amalgam produced in a chauffeur's glove. My feet were blistered, my legs lacerated, my shoulders red, my face sunburnt and I was suffering from a hangover. Seeing me awaken, Jackson approached bent over in a posture of hideous servility, his hands clapping silently together.
"Tea for sah ?"