Peeing in the Bush Read online

  I stopped scratching the table with my spoon. ‘Huh?’

  ‘What are you on?’

  ‘Er ... nothing,’ I peeped.

  ‘WHAT?!’ they yelled in unison.

  ‘You’re living on the edge, Adeline,’ Rebecca said, turning quite grim. ‘You can’t be so cavalier to think it won’t happen to you. Both my mum and sis had to be sent to hospital for malaria. I’ve seen it first-hand and I can say with a hundred per cent certainty that it’s something you don’t wanna have.’

  Margot piped up. ‘Yeah, my brother-in-law’s sister took weeks to get the bug out of her system. It was awful – simply awful.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure th—’

  ‘And my mum’s lungs?’ Rebecca cut me off. ‘Filled up with so much fluid that she could hardly breathe. I lost count of the number of lines sticking in her body!’

  Both of them shook their heads at me as if I’d two more days to live. Man, every Caucasian I had met was an antimalarial junkie.

  As far as Chan and I were concerned, we had compensated by marinating ourselves diligently with insect repellent and mummify­ing ourselves with long sleeves and trousers. I justified our aversion to chemical substances with salient information I had garnered from incalculable hours of Internet research. My beef was this: although widely trumpeted as preventative medicine, there’s no guarantee that one will not get malaria while on prophylactics. The true objective of antimalarial drugs is to reduce the risk of dying horribly or becom­ing very ill. They do this by killing the malaria parasites at a certain stage of their development. What happens after that depends on how impressive your immune system is – either your body fights off the surviving parasites or it doesn’t. Failure rates are high because the deadly Plasmodium protozoa carried by the female Anopheles mosquito is rapidly adapting like the Borg and resisting common drugs.

  Furthermore, consuming the meds requires strict, unwavering dis­cipline. If you miss just a dose or two, the efficacy is greatly decreased. To complicate matters, malaria parasites in different regions are resistant to different drugs so you have to find out about the area you are visiting before knowing the right one to take. Take the wrong one and you are better off bringing a box of Tic Tacs.

  More than anything else, I was freaked out about the cocktail of side effects reminiscent of party drugs. Here’s but a small sample, in alphabetical order: blurred vision, discoloured fingernails, dizziness, fatigue, fever, hair loss, hallucinations, mental changes, night sweats, numb tongue, ringing ears, seizures, shivering, skin rashes, slow heartbeat, sore spleen, vomiting and weird dreams. One backpacker on antimalarial drugs went to bed and reported finding himself curled up in the foetal position in the garage when he woke up. The icing on the cake is the doctor will tell you to start popping the pills one to two weeks before travelling to a malaria-endemic area, so that you will become a complete and psychotic wreck before you even have a chance to leave the house.

  Right after heaping up on lunch, TK came over with the most glorious of news. ‘Girls, I’ve asked permission for you to use the bathroom in one of the vacant rooms. It’s the chalet facing the river.’ Upon hearing this, Chan could hardly contain herself; the quickness with which she responded and brisk-walked to the chalet was astounding. I tailed her, of course.

  A simultaneous ‘wow’ escaped our mouths as we entered the elegantly rustic room, followed by a bigger ‘wow’ when we clapped eyes on the oh-so-sparkling bathroom with a hillside view. Like a couple of rebarbative kids who wanted to be the first to ride a new roller coaster, we squashed ourselves in the doorway together. I gave in, and waited for my turn at the edge of a heavenly four-poster bed, trying to refrain from treating it like a trampoline.

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ Chan uttered when she came out, before promptly disappearing. She came back holding our toiletries and, like a proud messenger who had bravely traversed continents on a camel to deliver a scrolled decree, she announced: ‘Commence brushing of teeth now!’

  I laughed, but stopped when I saw how seriously she was taking her dental hygiene. She vigorously brushed non-stop for 15 minutes and must have scraped off a layer of enamel from her teeth while she was at it. Meanwhile, I emptied my bowels of a four-day accumulated burden. After the much-appreciated respite, we felt like new women and took to the river once more.

  Chasing the dipping sun, we landed on yet another isolated island further down the Zambezi. This time Chan and I managed to erect our tent just a couple of minutes behind the rest, shaving a full 20 minutes off our previous record.

  Then Chan pointed to the other tents. ‘Oh no ...’ she said gloomily.

  I sighed. ‘Okay, what’s wrong with ours now?’

  ‘We forgot to zip the tarpaulin up last night. We could’ve been warmer still!’

  ‘There are zips?!’ I yelled in disbelief.

  We groaned.

  As it was our last night, TK led us on a short island hike along a prickly path that left countless burrs stuck to the hem of my pants, socks and sneakers and poked the hell out of me. So, I had to hop on one foot like a ninny every few minutes to pull out the thorny thingumajigs. The others appeared unperturbed and gave me strange looks. As we progressed deeper, pretty oxbow lakes reflected birds flying overhead in a V-shaped formation back to their nightly roost. The size queens among us dipped our feet in elephant footprints for comparison. When we reached a river channel that cut the mystifying island in two, we relaxed and drank in the restful surroundings.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Rebecca,’ TK said.

  ‘Do what?’ she asked in her usual deadpan manner.

  ‘Stand so close to the brink of the lake with your back turned.’

  ‘Oh! Sharp pointy teeth, I forgot!’ she said, and waddled unsteadily off the sandy bank with her tongue sticking out.

  On our stroll back, we bore witness again to ABWAS: Another Bloody Wonderful African Sunset. As the sun slid down the sky, it sliced through a virtual layer cake of saffron, vermillion, magenta and lavender. We were sucked into the vacuum of blissful environs and treaded back without speaking, immersed in our own little contem­plative worlds. Up above, more birds deployed abstract patterns in the air, as if they were sending us cryptic messages.

  Back at camp, we gaped at a bevy of island-hopping buffaloes strolling behind our campsite and hoped they wouldn’t stomp on our tents. I then sat myself down and spent a painful eternity extracting the annoying burrs from my socks and pants. Seeing how my hands were getting pricked and bloodied in the process, Chan tsked me and gave me a small piece of notebook paper to shield my fingers. She was always the sensible one.

  *

  My rigor mortis fingers said hello the next morning again, looking like they belonged to the Cryptkeeper. Thankfully the joints gradually normalized as I rolled up my bulky sleeping bag and jammed it down the throat of the stuff sack. Whilst doing so, I mawkishly thought about how proficient I was getting at paddling a one-oar canoe, erect­ing a tent and peeing in the bush. It was then that I realized ... hey, I could get used to this kind of life.

  ‘Thank the Goddess of Mercy it’s the last day!’ Chan hollered in relief, bringing me crashing back down to earth. ‘Did I mention how much I hate camping?’

  And with that, she managed to dissolve any sentimental feelings I was having. The morning camp ritual of dismantling our tents, having a cup of tea with biscuits and hauling all the equipment back to the canoe was carried out with barely a peep. We were back at it one last time, racking up kilometres down the unapologetic Zambezi, by the end of which we would have paddled a startling 75 kilometres in total. Blood pressure remained stable as the agreeable day went by without any hippos or crocodiles conspiring to kill us.

  By noon, we were lugging our canoes up onto a waiting trailer tied to a Pajero and heading back to Gwabi Lodge. We stopped for lunch in the middle of the bush, wherein I took the opportunity to jump behind some dense foliage, set my soiled sanitary pad on fire and bury it at the foot of a m
opane tree I felt an affinity with. For some reason, I was compelled to leave some traces of my DNA behind.

  After riding a hand-cranked pontoon bridge moved by a squeaking steel hawser across a river, we were back at where we started and hugged our goodbyes. Rebecca and Matt were planning to head southward to Siavonga town to bask on the enticing shores of Lake Kariba – one of the largest man-made lakes in the world – before flying back to London. As for Chan and me, rather than returning to Lusaka like we’d initially planned, we radioed our pre-booked transfer to drive us directly to our next destination in the southern province: Livingstone, home to the utterly surreal Victoria Falls. Margot decided to join us.

  Our pick-up’s ETA of 1 p.m. turned into 6 p.m. before our driver Martin finally showed up at the filling station where we were near decomposing. The restless hours spent lounging around next to the tyre air pumps at the ant-infested forecourt were made that much more interminable as Chan and I were subjected to Margot’s wrist-slashing life story as a teacher in Turkey. Had Martin not come, we were ready to hitchhike – it should have been pretty safe with Margot around since her non-stop yakking could repel even the most per­versely lecherous lorry driver.

  Martin ordered a round of petrol for his tank before speaking to us in a tired drawl. ‘I’ve been driving clients on long-distance routes the whole day. The last thing I need is a radio call telling me to take you people to Livingstone.’ Guilt-stricken, Chan and I tried to make it up to him by buying him a few packets of vanilla sandwich biscuits at the station’s hole-in-the-wall before hitting the road.

  After finding out that we had not eaten a proper dinner ourselves, Martin made a stop at a takeaway along the highway to grab greasy fried chicken and French fries (a close second to the national staple). Takeaway standards were high here as there were dozens of outlets offering the exact same trucker fare. Licking our salty fingers fervently, I and Chan concurred that those fries were the best we’d ever had in our fast-food restaurant lives.

  We resumed our journey on the surprisingly pothole-free road before running into a disinfection stop. Apparently Zambia was suffering from an outbreak of foot and mouth disease at the time. The disease was caused by something similar to the herpes virus and triggered fever blisters among the cloven-hoofed kind. Although we looked nothing like cattle, sheep or swine, Martin insisted that we must get ‘purified’ because we had handled fried chicken. Chan got to stay in the car, gloating and thanking Buddha for turning her vegetarian while the three of us went out to meet our fate.

  Expecting to be quarantined in a sterilization chamber with no openings save a tiny window through which medical officers in HAZMAT suits would observe me and scribble notes on clipboards, I started to worry. When we got nearer, I discovered to my relief that the scary medical officer was actually just a sleepy guy sitting on a stool with a paraffin lamp and a metal bucket next to him. The disinfection procedure consisted of nothing more complicated than lining up one by one so that sleepy guy could take a water pitcher and pour warm water over our hands. It was far from the severe burst of antiseptic water spray that I thought I would be hosed naked with.

  ‘Thanks for the free hand wash!’ I said to the guy with a grin before getting back in the car.

  ‘What, that’s it?’ Chan uttered, incredulous. ‘That’s the punishment for you unrepentant meat-scoffers? What’s the world coming to?’

  We arrived in Livingstone close to midnight. Our driver was knack­ered, we were zonked out and Margot finally ran out of things to rant about. We were turned away at Jollyboys Backpackers for checking in a day earlier than our reservation and were told to try The Laughing Dragon, a restaurant-cum-guesthouse, down the street. So we did and arrived at the gate of the modest single-storey building that had a large courtyard and decorative red lanterns hanging from the eaves.

  ‘Doesn’t the façade remind you of something?’ Chan asked, as she banged the large padlock against the steel gate to wake somebody up.

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, a Chinese brothel.’

  Although the tatty room made us think for a moment that we had checked into one of the cheap fuck motels in Kuala Lumpur, we had little to whinge about. At ten US dollars for a room that had two single timber beds and an en suite bathroom with hot shower, we couldn’t have done better if we’d held a knife to the receptionist’s throat. Chan was in full favour of this value-for-money Chinese-run shelter. ‘Let’s stay here for the week rather than at Jollyboys,’ she said, before cupping a hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn. ‘That place is twice the price. We should save our money.’

  Cancelling was going to be a fairly painless task, I thought. Kim, the manager, seemed like one of those fun and easygoing English blondes.

  I was wrong. As we tried to worm out of our email reservation the next morning, Kim’s face turned as black as a galaxy without stars and she told us through angry furrowed eyebrows and flaring nostrils that we still had to pay for the number of nights we had booked. Luckily we reached a compromise when I agreed to pay and stay for the first two nights instead of the whole week. Chan and I checked in straightaway and shifted our bags to Jollyboys’s groovy room which had cute and quirky wildlife-inspired fixtures. I became so enamoured with the colourful bathroom that Chan had to physically restrain me from nicking the adorable steel rhino toilet roll holder. This was truly a backpacker oasis; there was a suitably rowdy bar as well as an abundance of chill-out spaces facing a large, shady poolside garden dotted with fruit trees and white backpackers on lazy chairs.

  That evening, I befriended a Japanese lady in her late fifties. I swear her anaemic, fluorescent complexion made her look like one of those hopping livid vampires from an old Hong Kong horror movie. Anyway, she was pleased to have spotted a fellow Asian and put down her Japanese novel to approach me. Under her wide-brimmed cap which pressed down on her permed hair like a ballast, she told me she was travelling solo around Malawi, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. It was her annual three-month break from her pesky husband and kids. I gushed with admiration and told her that she should have a chat with my scaredy-cat relatives. Hopefully, I could be just like her in my golden years.

  *

  Known as the hedonistic tourist hub of Zambia, Livingstone is a fabulous place to visit. It was named in recognition of the impressive exploits of courageous Scottish missionary and explorer, Dr. David Livingstone. He was the first European to discover and document large parts of the country as well as almost a third of the African continent. By following the Zambezi River to its mouth in the Indian Ocean, he managed to observe and pen detailed accounts of everything from people to insects to landscapes. His astounding coast-to-coast venture covered 4,000 miles of virgin territory and lasted an incredible 16 years. He then went on to lead more brave expeditions and discovered now-famous lakes Nyassa (Malawi), Shirwa, Morero, N’gami, Bangweolo, the upper Zambezi and countless other rivers.

  All was well until, near the end of his life, Livingstone became obsessed with seeking the source of the expansive Nile River. It was to be his final and most well-known journey. When the source wasn’t at Lake Tanganyika as he had initially thought, he then became con­vinced that Lake Bangweulu in northern Zambia was the answer and made a difficult detour. His voyage was fraught with problems; he lost his navigation equipment, animals, porters and medicine but still he persevered. By the time he arrived at Lake Bangweulu, Livingstone was so exhausted from battling severe malaria and chronic dysentery that he could not walk. Not long after, at age 60, he succumbed to his illnesses on his knees (he was praying) at Chief Chitambos village on the shores of Bangweulu Swamps, his goal unrealized.

  Livingstone loved the land so much that he literally left his heart behind. Before he died, he had requested his loyal companions to bury his ticker in Zambia, which they did together with his internal organs at the foot of a nearby Mvula tree. As he was also responsible for abolish­ing the local slave trade, natives mourned him like a hero and honoured him with the longest funeral procession in h
istory: they carried his embalmed body for eight months on a treacherous journey to Zanzibar, a thousand miles away, to be shipped back to Britain.

  Today, Livingstone is recognized as one of the world’s great­est explorers, right up there in the esteemed company of Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus. In the 30 years that he spent exploring Africa, he had journeyed 29,000 miles from its southern tip to the equator, added an unprecedented one million square miles of findings to contemporary maps and was almost certainly the first man to navigate the entire length of mighty Lake Tanganyika.

  Captivated by this man’s life, Chan and I went to check out the sizeable collection of David Livingstone memorabilia at the excellent Livingstone Museum that afternoon. There was a display of his left arm’s bone after he got chomped on by a lion he had shot, his jacket and hat, and countless well-preserved letters that he wrote on his travels. Impressive as it was, he was nonetheless cursed with bad, squiggly handwriting like all good doctors, and I couldn’t for the life of me make out a single word he scrawled. So we gave up and went upstairs to see the glass exhibits of stuffed wildlife, where realistic-looking lions with blood-smeared mouths stood over fallen zebras under the watchful eyes of vultures. Inexplicably, those scenes of animal grossness made us feel better before we left the museum.

  Sauntering down Mosi-Oa-Tunya Road, it was apt to see the main tourist drag lined with quaint Edwardian colonial buildings since Livingstone is the only town in the country to retain an English name. Though it was once the capital of Zambia (then called Northern Rhodesia) for 28 years before the honour went to Lusaka in 1935, it couldn’t be more different in character. The street was a fun brew of small novelty shops, trendy guesthouses, hip diners and dashing alfresco bars. As charming as it all was, our museum visit had put us in the mood to emulate the derring-do of dear old David so we courageously ven­tured out of town to explore Maramba Market, a one-stop venue for everything you ever wanted to buy but didn’t know existed.