Peeing in the Bush Read online

  ‘There they are!’ the conductor yelled at us from afar as he hung from the handles at the doorway of the bus. ‘Hurry up! The bus is leaving now!’

  My sleepy bleariness vanished immediately and we picked up the pace towards the rumbling bus. As soon as we stepped in, I noticed the rest of the passengers looking as if they had settled down decades ago. Whilst we were still gasping, the bus thundered off in a huff, causing us to tumble like buffoons into our seats. All this before 6.30 a.m. – the alleged boarding time – on a 7 o’clock bus. Obviously we did not get the memo stating that the ticket time and actual departure time bore no relation to one another.

  Back in the lazy confines of Ku-omboka Backpackers, we found out that Ken had given our double room away due to our splotchy record of showing up on time. To reward our tardiness, he chucked us inside an eight-bed dormitory with three nerdy businesswomen who were virtually cardboard cut-outs of each other. It took us the whole of din­nertime before we learnt to tell them apart because all three of them were dressed in near-identical grey power business suits, name tags and thick spectacles that could double as Petri dishes. It seemed all they ever did was slump over their laptops, tapping madly away. We later found out that the reason for their diligent madness was The Zambia Agricultural and Commercial Show, one of the biggest annual events in the country, held in conjunction with the Farmers’ Day holiday.

  ‘You should come to the agricultural show,’ one of the triplets said, to me. ‘There’s everything from handsome cattle displays to quality commercial goods to exciting boxing matches. It’s an international event; there will be exhibitors from all over the world including Holland and China,’ she droned.

  ‘Oh, we’d love to check it out but it clashes with our upcoming safari,’ I replied with a saddened look of missed opportunity, hoping she would buy it.

  *

  Compared to the tour extortionists who charged upwards of US$800, the price quoted by Joel was an absolute steal. A private five-day mobile safari (just the two of us!) ogling indigenous wildlife at the oldest and most epic national park in the country, Kafue National Park, with a professional guide for only US$620. The price included one night’s stay at Chunga Safari Camp situated on the wide shores of Kafue River and another three nights camping at various locations around the park. The manager of Chunga himself would be our personal safari guide, with all meals and camping equipment thrown in to boot.

  I’d wanted to end our trip in this neck of the woods because Kafue National Park is the country’s largest national park and one of the world’s most gargantuan, yet it is little known. At 22,400 square kilometres, it is two and a half times the size of South Luangwa National Park, large enough to fit the entire population of Singapore, if the island sunk, with space to spare for a dozen Takashimayas. Mushrooming in northwestern Zambia, an area that extends from the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Kafue’s dearth of visitors has the past 20 years of bad management and illegal poaching to thank. The hardest hit were the elephants, which numbered 5,000 in 1996 but declined rapidly to a disconcerting 2,000 in just four short years.

  Although elephant densities remain low, the park’s incredibly varied habitats boast the longest laundry list of antelope species of any other national park in the world: roan antelope, sable, Lichtenstein’s hartebeest, defassa waterbuck, reedbuck, blue wildebeest, eland, sitatunga, yellow-backed duiker, oribi and red lechwe prance about like nobody’s business here. If South Luangwa is elephant country, Kafue is antelope Utopia. Spotted hyenas, lions and even cheetahs feature prominently as well, as do large buffalo herds, particularly at this time.

  Even fewer people trek to wildlife-tastic Busanga Plains, an infinite grassland in north Kafue that bursts at the seams with endemic mam­mal and bird species rarely seen elsewhere in the natural world. Since it’s rendered impassable for half a year in the wet summer season, we were going to take advantage of our impeccable timing and make the effort to venture there. As a sweet bonus, the travel agent managed to fit in my special request to stop over at Lochinvar National Park, a birdwatcher’s naughty fantasy come true and the stomping ground for a mammoth breeding population of endemic Kafue lechwe.

  It all sounded like a dream. That is, the kind of dream that starts out peachy, before taking an unexpected turn and results in you wak­ing up drenched in sweat, screaming.

  16. ONE EYE ONLY

  On a sunny Monday morning, we made plans to hunt down the headquarters of that awesome travel agency, pleased that in doing so we’d have the chance to walk around Lusaka. All this time, we had been too busy clocking up national parks to explore the capital.

  ‘I’m itching to check out Cairo Road,’ I said, referring to the city’s liveliest main street. ‘It’s famously dodgy.’

  ‘Dodgy, I can take. I just hope it’s not dusty,’ Chan said, tucking her granny scarf neatly under a cap before spreading Vaseline evenly on her face.

  Of course, like most places we’d been, Chan didn’t get what she had hoped for. As soon as we stepped out of the gate, dust was flying every­where thanks to people shuffling up dirt on the pathways and grinding rubber wheels chafing the sandy road. My nose quickly got stuffed up and I could almost feel it generating some impressive boogers. In fact, my most therapeutic moments in Zambia had largely taken place in the seclusion of the bathroom, cleaning out dried snot, as you do, after a hot shower. Forget the box of chocolates – life is more like hardened nose mucus, you never know what you’re going to get.

  Lolling street vendors decorated the shadowy pavements selling mangoes, tomatoes, onions, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, groundnuts and other hopefully edible material. Passing a red cooler box of drinks, I bought a chocolate-flavoured Super Maheu, a traditional beverage that locals love. It was one of the must-try things in Zambia. Super Maheu proclaims itself to be an ‘energy food drink’ made of maize meal, milk, sugar water and artificial flavouring – a combination that disturbed Chan greatly. Licking my lips in anticipation, I peeled away the foil cover from the boxy plastic bottle and peeked inside. It resembled diluted vomit.

  ‘Eeeww!’ Chan peered into the box alongside me and grimaced in disgust. ‘Are you sure you want to risk your life?’

  I shrugged, shut my eyes and gamely took a gulp. ‘Mm-mmm, yummy!’ I said, delightfully surprised, and chewed the bits of maize with gusto. ‘It tastes just like one of those yogurt drinks. Try it, Chan!’

  Chan calculated her chances of survival for a minute, brought the box to her mouth cautiously and pinched her nose before taking a sip. ‘Ack!’ she retched and immediately grasped her throat. ‘Tastes like ... sperm porridge!’ Clutching her stomach, she shoved the drink back at me. ‘Ugh ... think I’m gonna have diarrhoea,’ she groaned.

  Oblivious to her histrionics, I took a few more hearty swigs. We continued rambling and wound up on a vehicle-choked highway. At every available stoplight, mobile peddlers were negotiating their way through the narrow spaces between cars while holding up news­papers, watches, bananas, cigarettes and socks (sometimes all at the same time).

  Manoeuvring past throngs of energetic locals up a poster-riddled pedestrian bridge, we eventually arrived in the thick of zany Cairo Road. I’d seen a black-and-white Cairo Road photo taken in 1968 and, amazingly, things didn’t look too different. Alongside the astoundingly wide boulevard ran a double carriageway where tooting cars and blue minibuses filled to capacity zoomed through with a dangerous sense of purpose. On street level, banks and small enterprises such as general stores, fast-food diners, chemists and shoe shops were interspersed with money-changing booths. Meanwhile, skyscrapers that attempted to scrape the clouds were few and far between, and even then appeared to be accidental feats of engineering. The only difference to 1968 was the strain put on the town’s inadequate infrastructure by the two mil­lion and growing population who have abandoned their rural lifestyle. Throw 1.2 million unemployed loiterers into the mix of colourful, laidback characters and you have a convivial city that only moved as fast as i
t needed to.

  So there we were minding everybody’s business when we caught the eye of some chap with too much free time on his hands. Well, like us, really. ‘Hey Bruce Lee!’ he shouted, and started chopping the air with his hands.

  We stopped in our tracks. ‘Which one of us is he calling?’ Chan asked, pretty amused.

  ‘I’m not sure. Let’s beat him up to clarify,’ I said, flicking my nose with my thumb, Bruce Lee style.

  ‘Now, now. Remember what sifu said – you shouldn’t pick a fight if you can help it.’

  ‘He also said that to show mercy to your opponents is to be cruel to yourself,’ I replied in earnest.

  Chan chortled. Seeing as the two of us were in a fairly benevolent mood, we agreed to give the guy one more day to live. Continuing our leisurely wander, we grazed shoulders with gossiping chitenje-wrappcd women and resourceful street vendors who parked themselves in front of dull store entrances to hawk dodgy precious stones, pirated books, mobile phone covers and less-than-genuine leather goods.

  Given the chance for closer inspection and casting the unfavour­able first impressions of other tourists aside, I liked Lusaka. We felt completely safe skirting around the low-rise buildings of the city, at least during the day, and the air was not weighed down by any sense of urgency. I found it amazing that Zambians actually took time out from where they had to be to greet and exchange stories with strangers or acquaintances without once glancing impatiently at their watches. Which made me think to myself, how sad had I become in apathetic Kuala Lumpur that even simple common courtesy surprised me?

  As I sneakily observed the locals in workaday action, one of the many things that struck me was the serene composure and regal grace with which they carried themselves. You can tell by their eyes that they demanded the kind of respect you would accord a rich movie star. It did not matter if the only outfit they had to their name was an old hand-me-down suit, it would be impeccably ironed and clean enough to wipe a baby’s bottom for sure.

  In casual conversations as well, the worldly quips and shrewdness of Zambians made an impact on me (partly because I have very little of both). I suppose the poverty made me forget how educated people really were. And everyone seemed much more mature than their actual age, like there was nothing they hadn’t seen or been through. Perhaps hardship does that to you, or strong UV rays. Even little children were unnaturally subdued and prematurely aged. Although there were plenty of babies hanging off mothers’ backs, I would sooner hear, ‘Hey, you know kung fu?’ (just because I was Chinese) than a child wailing. But that’s just part and parcel of Lusaka’s crazy charm.

  I rotated my map several times and squinted at the street signs before finding the travel agency in a congested lane littered with derelict shops. As I pulled the door to go in, my face collided with the chest of a bearish one-eyed man leaving the agency (his other eye was bandaged). He apologized for crushing my nose, and Chan and I proceeded to climb a floor up to meet Joel, the agent whom I’d been dealing with via email.

  ‘Oh dear, you girls have just missed Daniel, your safari guide!’ Joel said as we shook hands. Suddenly, the burly Cyclops I had bumped into earlier reappeared and asked if I was Adeline. It turned out he was Daniel. We all had a laughing bout of, ‘Oh, what a coincidence,’ and did the ritualistic pleasantries before sitting down on a musty couch to discuss our Kafue National Park itinerary. But not before Daniel told us his life story.

  ‘Actually, I used to be a guide in Zimbabwe,’ Daniel began the snore-fest. ‘But since the tourists are all scared of coming due to the unstable political climate, I’ve come to Zambia. Now I’m the manager of Chunga Safari Camp.’ Apparently he was a professional hunter as well, which he claimed made him much more qualified to take us around than a normal safari guide. ‘Being a licensed hunter is a step up from being a safari guide. You need to be extremely experienced in the ways of the wild to be a hunter.’

  I nodded and thought to myself, well, duh, that’s because you need to kill them before they kill you. As he crowed about his outstand­ing list of achievements and credentials for 20 minutes, I started to daydream whilst staring at his one eye. I was hoping he would offer to explain his handicap voluntarily. When he didn’t, and instead launched into a ludicrous discourse on leopard-shooting techniques, I had no choice but to ask.

  ‘Hey, what happened to your eye?’ I blurted indelicately.

  ‘Oh, I was wondering when you were going to bring that up,’ he said, almost pleased. ‘Well, as you now know, I am an expert on big cats and I used to take wealthy clients on hunting trips all the time. On one particular trip, we were tracking down a large male lion.’ He held an invisible rifle to his eye. ‘My client aimed, took one shot at the lion ... and BAM! The lion was wounded, but before he could reload the gun, it became really angry and lunged at him!’ Daniel sprang alarmingly from the couch with arms outstretched. ‘Right away I knew I had to rescue my client or die trying. So I jumped on the lion’s back and began grappling with it. Alas, it took a huge bite of my arm flesh and gouged my left eye. And that’s that.’

  ‘Oh my god! Did your eyeball fall out?’ Chan yelled, totally immersed in his story.

  He smiled. ‘No, my eyeball didn’t fall out. But I did need some stitches.’ He softly caressed his bandaged eye and showed us the ser­rated scar on his forearm. ‘Please don’t give me any sympathy, though – it’s my choice to save lives. And I still enjoy hunting lions.’

  He was such a braggart that I didn’t know whether to believe his incredulous tale of heroics and tragedy or not. For all we knew, he probably walked into a door or cut his eye shaving. In any case, I was now doubting his ability to keep us safe and gouge-free. I tried not to be a heartless bitch but we were shelling out an indecent amount of money for a decent safari. Would he be able to spot animals from afar? Did he get clawed because wildlife found him annoying? Why does his five o’clock shadow look like it was drawn on with a black crayon? As all these questions coursed through my restless mind, Chan – my reliably cautious partner – was neither fretting nor grumbling for the first time. She had not said a word throughout, calmly regarding him to the point of being creepy. So I figured that if she was up for it, I must be overly paranoid. After all, I had learnt quite a lot about animal behaviour up to this point so that should significantly reduce our chances of being killed. Plus all those midnight Animal Planet documentaries had to come in handy sometime. With fingers crossed, we forked over our cash to Daniel and hoped for the best.

  ‘Thanks, you won’t regret it!’ he said. ‘I’ll pick you girls up tomor­row morning.’

  *

  I had just finished ferrying the last of the breakfast eggs to my mouth when Daniel came plodding in the hostel’s dining room at half past nine.

  ‘Bad news, girls,’ he said breathlessly.

  Words we were not fond of hearing.

  ‘Major diesel shortage in the country. All the filling stations are out,’ he went on.

  We stared blankly at him.

  ‘I only found out this morning myself. But don’t worry, we’ll make a plan (meaning “sort it out” in Southern African slang).’

  On hearing this, Chan and I knew instantly that it meant another longer-than-planned peregrination, and so made our last-minute bathroom runs before setting off.

  17. DIESEL FUMING

  The ‘comfortable’ and ‘hardy’ four-wheel drive promised to us came in the form of a battered silver van that had seen better days, possibly as a kidnapping vehicle. Daniel wasted no time introducing us to our clean-shaven, bald driver, Steven. As I moved in for a handshake, I was momentarily blinded by the sunlight reflected off Steven’s starched white shirt. His glaring upper attire was complemented by a creaseless pair of long black trousers and aviator sunglasses that made him look better acquainted chauffeuring a CEO in a sleek limousine than driving a couple of mangy travellers around in the bush.

  Scratching my mop, I turned my attention back to our ungainly form of transpor
tation and scrutinized it from roof to wheel. For a supposedly rugged safari that would see us scrambling over tough terrain and indulging in impressively grand high-speed chases with big cats, the van ignominiously resembled a loaf of bread. It was little more than an embarrassing airport shuttle van, and I can just imag­ine people in brawny off-roaders laughing and thinking a couple of morons took a wrong turn to the airport and wound up in the middle of a national park. Even a yak would have been so much cooler.

  Fortunately for the guys, Chan and I were not in the mood to throw hissy fits so we just shrugged our shoulders and got inside Beat-Up Van without raising more than our eyebrows. Our first mission in the clunker: get groceries to sustain us for five days.

  ‘I shall drop everyone off at the supermarket entrance, okay? Then I’ll go look for parking,’ Steven said as we approached a mega-huge Shoprite, Africa’s largest food retailer.

  ‘No, no, just go ahead and park so we know where you’re waiting,’ replied Daniel.

  Steven turned to him blankly. ‘Huh??’

  ‘Geez, just go in and park, man!’ Daniel spat.

  I was beginning to find out that Steven was not the smartest tool in the shed but the poor soul should not have gotten snapped at. Chan and I were pretty much caught in the middle and gave funny looks to each other like we were siblings riding in the back of the family car. As the trip went on, the two men would continue to build this cosy rapport with each other, which was not unlike that of an old married couple.

  With the van parked good and proper, we marched into the super­market where Daniel whipped out a shopping list from his pocket. As we rolled down the aisles with it, he chucked into a rusty trolley some chicken drumsticks, cold cuts, salami, lettuce, eggs, bread, onions, condiments, rice, mealie meal, washing-up basins, plastic plates, disposable cups, and orange cordial. Evidently, the humble orange cordial was the official drink of safaris.