Travels with Myself and Another (31 page)

It was hot. The locals splashed in bilharzia water at the edge of Lake Victoria, cheerfully absorbing the malign worms. As Joshua was a cleanliness addict, like me, I gave him a medical scare and retired to my room. A boring day wasn’t the worst fate; I had a bed with pillows and a tranquillizing thriller. The map suggested sixty miles to the western Park entrance; after that, the map had no ideas to offer. I wanted to drive peacefully into the promised land, not haunted by daylight-distance dread.

The Serengeti, that lyrical name, was my highest hope of the journey. The Queen Elizabeth Park had been disappointing, too small and too tourist haven. But the Serengeti was several hundred square miles larger than Connecticut, larger than Northern Ireland, with only six small round huts in all this space as a concession to man. It had to be the golden dream plain, ringed by blue mountains, where a multitude of beautiful wild animals roamed free.

Joshua never vexed me by showing up late. “This is Tanganyika, Joshua. How about driving here?” That was a friendly tease and accepted in the same spirit; grinning, Joshua babbled about his Kenya licence. We clanked off in the cool dawn, both amiable, and less than two hours later, without hesitation, I took the wrong road. Due to this error, the next eight hours nearly finished all three of us, the Landrover and Joshua and me. For a while, the road was merely frightful but that was not new. I kept looking for a Park gate or a Park sign and was puzzled by scrawny maize patches and a few crumbling mud huts off the road. Surely we had gone far enough to reach some sort of decent surface, befitting a famous game park. After three hours on this narrow rutted and holed track, I knew I had made a mistake but to turn back meant another night in merry Musoma.

The colour of the road was changing and I didn’t like what I saw though I had never seen it before. Dust had become black spongy mud. This sinister stuff is called black cotton and combines the qualities of quicksand and chewing gum. Experience has taught everyone that the only way to handle it is to go around or go away. Having no experience, I went on though very disturbed. I could feel the Landrover wheels churning and slowing. At this point, Joshua began to slap himself and say
“Ai, Ai!”

Wildly anxious about the road, I said, “What’s the matter with you, stop it, shut up!”

Joshua was now beating at himself as if putting out a fire, and moaning.

“Joshua,
stop it!”

“
Dudus!
” Joshua shouted. The wheels were sinking, the man was an idiot, what did insects matter when we were about to founder in mysterious black muck? Then the first one bit me. I wore long trousers and had rolled down my sleeves in the morning chill, but Joshua was half naked. The first one bit my neck, like a bee sting, and I swatted at it but was still concentrated on this alarming mud. Then they came in like dive-bombers, biting my neck and hands and face and even zooming up my pants to sting my legs. Joshua was now screaming with pain and with cause. Lean long black and brown flies swarmed around us. I was terrified by this attack and helpless and stopped the car, the worst possible response since we were now sitting targets. Maddened bees can sting people to death, I remembered dimly; bees were slowpokes compared to the speed of these flies.

I shouted “Christ!” at the top of my lungs while Joshua screamed on a steady high note and both of us beat wildly at the buzzing air. These were tsetse flies, a hellish curse of Africa; because of them vast areas of the continent remain empty. Neither man nor cattle can live where they live. As an added attraction, they are also the carriers of sleeping sickness. Joshua was crying salt tears, still screaming, and I felt that I was sweating blood but there was nothing to do except go on and going on, if possible at all, required the four-wheel drive.

“Help me, Joshua!”
I bellowed, tugging at the small second gear. He was past hearing. I hit him on the arm and pointed to the gear. “Pull it, pull it, for God’s sake, we have to get out of here!
Both hands!”

He stared at me with vacant insane eyes; I grabbed his hands and fastened them on the gear knob, under my hands, and pulled as hard as I could. The intention got through to him, we pulled together, the gear shifted into position, I stepped on the gas and the Landrover moved sluggishly but it moved. So did the tsetse flies, easily keeping pace. Joshua had lost the strength to scream, he keened in a low wail, while I took the Lord’s name in vain shrilly, knowing that I would lose my mind if these things didn’t stop biting.

As suddenly as it had started it stopped; we were clear of the black mud and the murder flies. I drove on a few miles, to make sure of safety, and stopped. We were both soaked in sweat, Joshua’s eyes were red and glaring, probably mine were too but I couldn’t see them. We sat, collapsed and stunned in the Landrover. I recovered enough to give us water from the thermos and lit a cigarette with unsteady hands.

“If we see these
dudus
again,” Joshua said in a small voice. “I will die.”

“Look, there aren’t any marks on us.” We should have been quilted in red lumps, like bee stings; the bites didn’t even itch.

“Memsaab, what is this bad bad place you take me to?”

“I don’t know.”

Joshua glanced at me with a strange expression, part hopeless, part hate. He had stupidly given credit where credit was neither due nor wanted: the Memsaab, that cardboard tower of strength, knew what she was doing and where she was going. So far, Joshua had been a lot better off than I was; he had me to lean on. A dose of delayed but realistic doubt might be a good thing. Joshua had made a man of me and I resented the role. He could be his own man now and see how he liked it.

The road was no better but seemed lovely because it was honest dirt colour. We jolted and rattled and swayed and came to an enchanted place. In a semicircle of golden plain with blue hills behind, a frieze of giraffes was outlined against the sky. Around them, zebras and badly constructed bearded beasts grazed; antelopes, of different sizes and with differing delightful horns, nibbled and frolicked; a herd of buffalo stood with raised heads, looking enormously powerful but not dangerous so far off. I couldn’t count them, there were several hundred animals at home with each other, the very picture of Eden.

Joshua begged, “Don’t stop, Memsaab.” I ignored him, and watched through binoculars, trying to fill my memory with them all, one perfect sight to save from the journey. While Joshua nagged, I studied the
Field Guide;
since I didn’t know where we were or if we would ever reach Seronera, I might as well enjoy and educate myself. The gnu, the lesser kudu, impala and more Thomson’s gazelles, if I’d got it right, and mongooses or mongeese whichever it was, small dark creatures scurrying among the various hooves. The giraffes began to walk towards the hills, their necks waving like fantastic asparagus; the antelopes leapt and ran, their movements beautiful beyond description; cumbrously the buffalo headed our way. Joshua pulled at my sleeve; it was time to go. I wasn’t about to tell Joshua that buffaloes scared me too.

We drove from grass plain into small forest and past outcroppings of volcanic rock. Terror in his voice, Joshua said, “Lions.” Exactly like Ali, I said, “Where?” Nearer Joshua but in general too near, a lion and three lionesses were draped on and beneath a rock pile. Close enough to look into their mad fixed yellow eyes. Joshua shivered as with fever. Equally frightened, I heard myself say, “They’re quite tame, Joshua. They’re used to people, tourists always drive around here.” I wished they did and were. But this was years before the great travel boom hit East Africa, years before zebra-striped minibuses toured the land bearing loads of women in halter tops and men in flowered shirts who really thought the lions were tame, posed for their cameras. Lion was the Serengeti speciality, lion abounded, I hoped fervently that we never found ourselves so near them again.

Before it would have tensed my nerves; now I took this short river crossing calmly. All I had to do was keep the Landrover on a ledge of rock. The drop was a mere four feet, just sufficient to do us in. Joshua said to himself, “Bad place. Everything bad.” Then, sharing his anxiety, he said, “Four o’clock and one quarter, Memsaab.” As if I didn’t know, as if I didn’t have a knot the size of a pumpkin in my stomach.

“We’ll be there soon,” spoken firmly. And if not, we would put up the side curtains, at sunset, and cower inside while lions circled round and both of us turned to jelly from fear.

Joshua saw the rondavels first; the knot which was almost choking me dissolved. A caretaker African unlocked the door of a pleasant little house and took Joshua away with him. Wherever Joshua went, I knew he would stay in it, closing windows and door and praying for the night to end. I showered, and lay limp on the bed until revived enough to get out the whisky and cook a delicious meal, cornbeef and vegetables and soup all heated together in one agreeable mess. The caretaker African, flashlight in hand, knocked at the door.

“Fire ready, Memsaab.”

What fire? It was part of the local hospitality, a bonfire beyond the rondavels where the happy visitors could sit on tree trunks beneath the stars and swap news about the animals they’d seen that day. There were no other visitors. Sitting alone, I listened to hyenas laugh though I cannot think why that sound is called laughing and saw, or imagined I saw which amounted to the same thing, dark shapes moving outside the fire-light. I told myself that this was a rare and wonderful experience, no barriers separated me from Africa. Rare, yes; wonderful, no.

The Park Warden lived a few miles away but I didn’t know that; African Rangers lived another few miles away. As far as I knew, the caretaker African and Joshua were safe together somewhere, while I had those terrifying shadows and the loud hyenas to keep me company. I longed with all my heart for a white hunter, any white hunter except the chap with a red bandana, an Africa expert who would hold my hand and say there there, this is fun, this is great, this is Africa, this isn’t simply hair-raising hell.

Joshua actually smiled when we reached the Lake Manyara Hotel. It had been a long but harmless day, some ten hours on the road crossing the great Serengeti plain and winding up through green hills upon which zebra grazed like sheep to Ngorongoro, where I looked at the vertical descent into the crater and decided it was more than the Landrover and I could manage. After that the road snaked in the usual style down to the western wall of the Rift Valley. The Lake Manyara Hotel was civilization, a restful shelter to us both. Built on top of the Rift wall, it was a charming stylish resort hotel, set in a garden, with plenty of normal people wearing summer clothes and drinking around the swimming pool. Real cars parked in front of the hotel. I think Joshua felt he was almost back in blessed Nairobi.

Joshua stopped smiling promptly at seven-thirty in the morning when we entered Lake Manyara Park. This is a small beautiful and mystifying park. On paper, it appeared straightforward; the park is a long narrow strip, 120 square miles, between the cliffside of the Rift and Lake Manyara. Thirty miles of well-maintained motor track, said the
Field Guide,
suitable for saloon cars, with numerous circuit tracks for viewing the abundant game and myriad birds. A cinch, I thought, until I got lost.

The
Field Guide
also noted that lions climbed trees here to escape the torment of tsetse flies. If lions felt that way about tsetse flies, Joshua and I had been justified in going off our rockers. I hesitated to risk another onslaught, but the
Field Guide
was too appetizing—giant fig and mahogany trees, acacia woodland—and game parks were the goal of the journey and I had skipped Ngorongoro. Tsetse flies attacked us in burning hot midday; we ought to be safe during the fresh early morning hours.

A large troop of baboons crossed the track. They do not appeal, with their raw red bottoms and mean faces and convincing teeth. Jabbering at us, and all too capable of leaping on to our laps, they were dislikeable except for babies clinging underneath their mums’ tums. Joshua saw immediately a sleepy lion stretched along a branch almost overhead. He shrank into his seat and into silence. I turned on a circuit road and passed buffalo wallowing happily in a mud bath and farther on, in an open field by the lake shore, giraffes eating the tops of acacia thorn trees while new varieties of the antelope family meandered around. A single rhino, the first to come our way, stood in the middle of the field looking ugly and bad-tempered. It was marvellous, it was what I had come to see, I was delighted with this mini-park which bestowed its gifts so easily.

Then it was not so easy. A thick branch, thick as a tree trunk, had fallen on to the track. We could not drive over it or around it through the dense bush. “Get out and move it, Joshua.”

He said “No,” quietly and finally.

I was bent over pulling the heavy branch when Joshua shouted “Memsaab! Memsaab!” and waved his arm like a frenzied semaphore. The rhino was galloping slowly towards us. With the strength of panic I moved the branch far enough to let us through, leapt into the Landrover and roared off, the rhino galloping purposefully behind. This seemed uncalled-for hostility and I was ready to depart. All tracks looked the same. I went round and round, hoping to meet one of the saloon cars for which this park was suitable, but again we were alone. In eerie silence, five elephants emerged from the trees; I stood on the brakes ten yards short of them. In eerie silence they moved across the track into more trees.

Joshua said, “I
hate
this place. I
hate
animals. Memsaab, you take me home now.
Now,
Memsaab.”

“Buck up,
Joshua! Do you think I’m doing this for a joke? I can’t find the way out!”

The Landrover began to make parlous sounds, from below, as if a vital part was breaking off. I didn’t know what I could do but had to do something such as look under the car. Joshua was no more likely to set foot outside the Landrover than put his head in a hippo’s mouth. I steeled myself to wriggle beneath the car. A long dead branch had caught in the works, where it banged against the oil pan. I pulled it off and jumped back in the Landrover, dust-covered, panting.