Peeing in the Bush Read online

  The cheapest way to go on safari is to book an overland tour, which means travelling in a big jolly truck with a large group of people where everyone participates in cooking, cleaning and various other mundane chores throughout the trip. But I hated the idea of sticking to the same bunch of people day in day out. I took the next most affordable option, which was to book ourselves into a modest park lodge that organizes game-viewing activities and pay for each activity individually. That way, we only pay as much as we choose to do, making it easier to budget and more flexible than an all-in-one package deal.

  Ideally we would have two months to see everything worth see­ing in Zambia, but since we did not, I had to leave out a visit to Lake Tanganyika in the Great Rift Valley territory of moist northern Zambia. It was a low-down shame because apart from holding innumerable fish species found nowhere else, this fascinating 677-kilometre body of water is the world’s longest freshwater lake and second deepest after Russia’s Lake Baikal. We also didn’t have sufficient time to catch one of the planet’s greatest wildebeest migrations at Liuwa Plains over in the western province.

  Nevertheless we had more than enough to keep us pleasantly busy, and planned to arrive in Zambia early July, during the cool and dry winter season. Fewer insects at that time.

  *

  For somebody who’s never been out of the country longer than the time required for her shaved armpit hair to grow to its full length again, I was naturally anal about being well-prepared. I became a tire­less researcher. Three months before the trip, my hands were already sporting paper cuts from turning inestimable pages of guidebooks and suffering repetitive stress syndrome from clicking websites. One month prior to the trip, I was holding the flight tickets. Two weeks beforehand, I went shopping.

  First on the list were sunglasses. The only ones I owned were invariably the El Cheapo fakes I bought at street markets, which I was perfectly content to bring until those paranoid guidebooks freaked me out by placing undue emphasis on protecting oneself from the scorching African sun. Cheap tinted plastic equals zero anti-UV qualities; my irises were sure to be zapped irreparably. I had to get a decent pair.

  Little did I know that I would take decent a step too far. I headed down to the shops and bought myself a pair of blue-framed Half Wire Oakleys with hi-tech Black Iridium lens. The brochure boasted in big bold letters that I was now wearing ‘the best eye protection on earth ... inherently blocking all UVA, UVB, UVC and harmful blue light’. I felt invincible putting them on; plus I looked hot. It was the most obscenely extravagant purchase I had made, costing even more than my new High Sierra backpack.

  Next, I needed a sleeping bag. I was not a weather-resistant chick, especially when it came to temperatures sub-ten. I absolutely detest the cold, and would sooner die charred in a hot desert than watch my nose fall off due to frostbite. So I bought the thickest sleeping bag I could find – a minus-five degree synthetic material of pure fluffy joy. Sure it was bulky and burdensome, but in the chilly nights and early mornings during our camping safaris, when the temperature can dip to frightening single digits, I’d rather be an over-prepared geek than pass out stiff. To supplement this, I bought a woollen beanie, woollen socks and woollen gloves.

  I also bought a pair of waterproof boots for walking safaris – ankle-high to increase my protection against snakebites. Drinking water would be stored in an unbreakable polycarbonate vessel. And to deal with those dark, scary nights, a life-saving precision-machined aluminium torchlight called Vortex. This baby was shock-resistant and weatherproof with a diamond-knurled barrel that offers a secure grip in all adverse conditions. I’m such a geek, I know.

  Clothes-wise, I shoved in lots of neutral-coloured threads like khakis, browns and greens in order to blend in with the bush sur­roundings. Wouldn’t want to be alarming the elephants with my show-stopping sequinned tank tops now. I brought plenty of long sleeves so I wouldn’t have to apply dollops of sunscreen or insect repellent on my body. I was lazy that way. Heck, if I could keep my perspiration to a minimum, I wouldn’t even need to shower. Just kidding. I do wash if I can. Really. All the time.

  Of course, no safari is complete without a pair of binoculars. While a camera captures moments for future use, binoculars are all about being in the here and now. Viewing game wouldn’t be half as enjoyable if all you ever saw were microscopic dots on the horizon – which could just as well be an antelope, rhino or your Form Three teacher. So I bought a cut-price lightweight one.

  The rest was boringly practical. Twenty rolls of film – yes, I was old-fashioned. Fleece sweater and puffy goose down jacket. My digital wristwatch for early morning wake-up calls. And pepper spray in case a mugger, leopard or Jehovah’s Witness attacked me.

  Then there was my medical kit. Aside from the usual Panadol, diarrhoea arresters, waterproof bandages and tincture of iodine, my emergency arsenal included an all-purpose miracle cure: a medi­cated green goo personally concocted by my acupressure master for treating bruises, sprains, insect bites, muscular injuries, headaches and stomachaches. Last but definitely not least, I threw in a couple of Chinese herbal tea bags for nausea, fatigue, fever, flu and cough.

  After eight days of what I call extreme interval packing (put in simple terms, a technique that involves putting in stuff, being fickle, tossing out stuff and repeating the process several times a day), I was convinced that I had crammed the bare minimum into my 75-litre rucksack. It ended up being half my weight (20 kilos) and three quar­ters my size. If you had seen me from behind, you would think my bag had swallowed me.

  2. COLD AND BOTHERED

  After a layover in Singapore, Chan and I were ready to board our second connecting flight on Kenya Airways in Bangkok. Since it was our first time on the airline, Chan was worried sick thinking that we would be served rank monkey brain stew with fried invertebrates for lunch, that the only in-flight entertainment would come in the form of a fat snorer, and that we would be the only diminutive outcasts on an aeroplane full of Brobdingnagian Africans. She was wrong on all counts: the food was divine (it was delicious beef stew), we watched funny videos (Mr. Bean reruns) and at least one other Asian was on board (an obese, felonious-looking Chinese man).

  We landed at Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi for a four-hour layover, not counting a two-hour delay. Even so, we weren’t too miffed as we had kind of expected it. Besides, we were running on African time now – flight schedules were probably as accurate as a man’s mid­night aim at the potty. We spent our additional free time exploring the airport, which, if you took away the planes and hangars, was nothing more than a huge marketplace with departure gates punctuating a long stretch of sticker-riddled shops. The pseudo-African souvenirs, wide-brimmed safari hats and postcards of animals on heat would have been plenty intriguing had an identical range not been sold in every single shop. Anyhow, weaving in and out of each outlet was a great way to occupy ourselves and every so often we had to nimbly skip over passengers who were sprawled on the floor because there weren’t enough chairs.

  After dipping my feet in a pool of vomit by accident in front of the transfer counter, our boarding call came. It was fantastic timing as I got to wipe my shoes clean on the departure terminal carpet while we queued up with a large group of Angolan refugees. Angola, a deeply volatile place before it gained independence from the Portuguese, was engulfed in a 27-year civil war that saw some 500,000 Angolans flee their country. Thankfully, the war ended in 2002, so we weren’t sure what these refugees were escaping from. They actually reminded me more of a package tour group on holiday rather than people seeking asylum with their happy faces, matching blue T-shirts and blue plastic shopping bags.

  Our tickets torn by airline staff with insincere smiles, we were finally off to Lusaka – the capital city of Zambia! On the pilot’s cue, we took a gander out the window as we flew over Tanzania and spotted Mount Kilimanjaro’s outstanding snow-capped boobies protruding through an areola of cuddly white clouds. Captivated by its majestic splendour, the antic
ipation of our arrival grew until I was a feverish wreck of exhilaration and excitement. Then, just as quickly, months of research and preparation suddenly evaporated into the cabin’s dry, germ-filled air and my mind became bogged down with uncertainty. What if everyone back home was right and we hated it? What if people did dart us with syringes? What if some weird insect burrowed into our skins and wriggly worms hatched from our ears? I pictured friends and family with their annoying know-it-all faces chanting ‘I told you so’ and felt sick to my stomach. Desperately seeking reassur­ance, I cast a sidelong glance at a snoozing Chan, whose only evidence of any anxiety or anticipation was her saliva on my shoulder.

  Fortunately, as soon as the plane grazed the runway in Lusaka, my doubts vanished when I clapped eyes on a huge billboard spon­sored by Celtel, the local mobile phone operator. It depicted a jovial Zambian woman dancing with one arm in the air above the words ‘WELCOME. TO ZAMBIA.’ I was stoked.

  With a smug grin plastered on my face, we queued up inside the airport to get our on-the-spot visas. Unlike the innumerable white tourists who were pulling out their wallets to pay the visa fee, our cash was spared because Malaysia was a fellow Commonwealth country. How lucky we were, I thought.

  ‘Ma’am, visa fee please,’ a seriously shrill voice jolted me back to reality. Being vertically challenged, I had to stand on tiptoe in order to peer over the counter and came face-to-face with a vicious female immigration officer with gaudy make-up two inches thick.

  ‘Wha ... what?’ I stammered.

  ‘Visa fee. Please!’ she snarled impatiently.

  ‘B-but we’re Malaysians. Malaysia is exempt from visa fees.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ she asked sternly.

  ‘I checked at the Zambian embassy website,’ I replied as Chan twitched her eye nervously.

  The lady eyeballed us and conferred with her equally hard-hearted colleague. ‘No, you have to pay,’ she reiterated.

  ‘Do you mind double-checking your list of countries that are given free visas? I’m quite sure we don’t have to pay,’ I asserted.

  ‘Fine. Wait here.’ She sneered at us like we were troublemakers before getting up to search for the list of countries while another uni­formed lioness went to get a different list. The results were unexpected and even more puzzling, as Malaysia appeared on both fee-paying and non-fee-paying visa lists. They scratched their frizzy heads and debated the issue heatedly amongst themselves.

  After a long and tiring journey, this was so not the warm African welcome I was expecting. It dawned on me that we were probably the first independent Malaysian travellers to set foot in Zambia. After all, eight out of ten Malaysians couldn’t pinpoint where Zambia was; why should I be surprised if the statistics were equally grim the other way round?

  ‘Maybe she thinks Malaysia is a war-ravaged country and we’re planning to be illegal immigrants washing dishes in Chinatown,’ Chan whispered with a hand cupped to my ear. I gave us a quick once-over. We did look rather mangy, and starting to pong after spending more than 24 hours in planes and airports.

  As we waited for the immigration Nazis to sort things out, Chan busied herself browsing the baggage carousel, hoping our bags hadn’t been mistakenly dumped on a plane to Azerbaijan. Thankfully, they managed to make it as far as we did and were spat out on the moving belt not long after. We acknowledged it silently at first, but after a few rotations, Chan got antsy and was itching to get the bags.

  ‘Er, excuse me. Can we please collect our luggage first?’ Chan asked shyly over the counter.

  Clown make-up lady hesitated for a bit. ‘All right, but one of you will have to stay here,’ she replied coldly.

  Clearly she’d forgotten to remove the small tree up her arse before she went to work that morning. But Chan was too relieved to notice her hostility and scampered off quickly to lug our belongings back. For more than half an hour we gave travellers who were getting their passports stamped the evil eye. Then the cruel immigration witches decided to stop making our lives miserable. ‘All right, what you said is what you get,’ said one of our tormentors. Our passports were pounded with stamped visas and returned with glares of undisguised reservations. Lord knows what they had let loose in their country.

  Anxious that our pre-booked airport transfer guy would have deserted us due to our five-hour delay, we nearly tripped over ourselves running out of the airport. But there he was chewing gum at the exit, the embodiment of patience, and holding a placard with my correctly spelled name.

  ‘Hello, my name is Ben,’ he greeted us with a smile. ‘Let me help you with your bags.’

  ‘Hi Ben, thanks for waiting!’ we chorused in relief, following him to his taxi. Taking full advantage of Ben’s mild composure, I let rip my first-ever phrase of real-life Nyanja – the lingua franca spoken by 1.5 million Zambians. Having said that, it is far from being the only indigenous language as there are 73 tribal or ethnic groups in the country yapping in more than 70 different dialects. The other six major common vernaculars are Bemba, Tonga, Luvale, Lozi, Kaonda and Lunda – but I decided that sullying one would suffice.

  ‘Muli bwanji?’ I said – how are you – and prayed that the response would be something other than a slap in the face.

  Ben appeared baffled for a moment. I got worried, and was about to apologize for mangling their language, when he at last replied: ‘Ndili bwino?’ – I’m fine – and chuckled. ‘Have you been to Zambia before?’

  ‘No, sir. My first time in Africa actually.’

  ‘Ah, a few more days here and you will be very good at speaking Nyanja,’ he said, amused.

  Encouraged, I bravely practised more words I had learnt from the guidebooks with him; the most essential being Yadula! (It is too much!), Chonde, ndi paseni mowa (Please give me a beer), and Onani! Njoka! (Look! A snake!) Truth be told, it was completely unnecessary for me to mutilate the local language whenever I wanted to interact with anyone. English is, after all, the official language of Zambia; therefore, it is widely used in formal business communications as well as in the media. Still I firmly believed that my grasp of Nyanja, no matter how dismal, would somehow set me apart from the typical tourist and allow me to confuse the locals.

  Ben was to take us to Pioneer Camp, located on the far outskirts of the city centre. The charming bush lodge was going to be a fantastic introduction to the national parks we were planning to hit as it sits amongst 25 acres of miombo woodlands (dry open vegetation cover­ing 70 per cent of the country).

  Rumbling along a commodious road, I looked out at the sparse canvas of thirsty-looking brown grass and stunning blue skies through a veil of dust thrown about by impatient tyres and a temperamental breeze. It was almost like how I’d envisioned Africa, except without giraffes and zebras hurdling our car. There was also a distinct lack of aggravating neon lights, video billboards and ugly flyovers that marred most city landscapes. Modern life, for once, looked very simple and I liked it very much.

  Arriving at Pioneer Camp, we pulled up to a daunting sliding gate and high-tension fencing made of a forbidding set of steel wires strung onto thick poles all around the private farmland. An alarm-red sign that hung from the pants-tearing razor wire bel­lowed the welcome message: ‘CAUTION! ELECTRIC FENCE!’, complete with a bolt of lightning zapping a stick person. I reckoned the lodge was plagued by unwanted humans, animals and perhaps even Godzilla. Or maybe it was to keep people in.

  We got into the driveway and were let out in front of a large chitenge (open-sided thatched shelter) that housed a refreshingly rustic bar and restaurant. Mary, a spirited six-foot tall woman, immediately appeared and welcomed us like we were her long-lost relatives. She then invited us to wrap our keisters around the tall bar stools and sign the arrivals logbook. As we sipped our chilled welcome drinks, Mary reeled off about the basic facilities and mealtimes. I gave Chan a big fat grin, feeling euphoric that we had finally made it to deepest, darkest Africa. She beamed back at me, her eyelids drooping. ‘Okay, okay, let’s drag our
weary bodies to the chalet ASAP,’ I told her and swiped the room keys off the bar top.

  Seeing me struggle to hitch my humongous backpack up, Mary shook her head. ‘Come, let me carry it,’ she offered. ‘I’m stronger than you.’ I was more than relieved to hand it over. Mary was the arche­typal super-tough African woman who could beat up all the scrawny, wimpy Chinese guys back home with one hand tied behind her back. Hoisting my pack up like there were just a few hair curlers inside, she slipped into the shoulder straps and chuckled mischievously as we passed the other housekeeping staff. ‘Look at me! I am a backpacker!’ she joked to them before giving a riotous laugh.

  It was a five-minute stroll through trimmed grassy areas with gor­geous herb and flower gardens to our spacious country-style chalet fronted by a simple verandah that overlooked thickets and trees chirruping with canoodling birds. As soon as we entered the room, we immediately dropped the cool façades, tore open our bags and hurriedly piled on layers of warm clothing.

  ‘I’m freezing my tits off!’ I said overdramatically and quickly pulled a fleece sweater over my face. Even though the afternoon sun was beating down, the chilly air could render someone in a singlet unconscious.

  ‘Is this Africa or the Swiss Alps?!’ Chan said, showing me her purple fingernails.

  ‘Well, we are 1,300 metres above sea level.’ I explained, putting on my gloves.

  ‘Gee, thanks, walking fact book.’ She fell backwards on the bed and started wearing her thick socks.

  By the time we were done, we were puffed up like idiots on a winter skiing holiday. A whistling sound then made us look out the window. We stared agape at what we saw: the gardener walking around topless.