No Stopping for Lions
Read No Stopping for Lions Online
Authors: Joanne Glynn
FOR LiONS
A YEAR-LONG AFRICAN JOURNEY
Joanne Glynn
First published in 2009 by Pier 9, an imprint of Murdoch Books Pty Limited
Murdoch Books Australia
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Text copyright © 2009 Joanne Glynn
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Design copyright © 2009 Murdoch Books
Cover image: Photolibrary.com
Map: Ian Faulkner
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.
eISBN: 9781742660622
In loving memory of the Troopy
There is a thick covering of fog over Cape Town as our plane circles. Up here in the sky the morning is crisp and cloudless but below us Table Mountain and Lions Head stick out through a solid white sea like beacons from God. The cabin crew crane their necks along with everyone else as we come down low and slow over acres of shanty dwellings linked crazily by plastic sheeting and electrical cabling. Someone in the row behind us tells everyone within earshot that it's called low-cost housing if there are cement walls and tall spotlights, otherwise it's known as an informal settlement. Either way, this vast recycled jungle has a look of battered permanency, and I can believe that it is not only home to millions of the city's poor and deprived, but that many of the families have lived here for generations.
Immediately after my husband Neil and I walk out the doors of the arrivals terminal they're closed and the airport is locked down due to a bomb threat. Rather than be unnerved by this we take our close call as a lucky sign and motor into the city in a rental car, unconcerned about the confusion on the roads caused by the descending fog. In no time we find ourselves on a fly-over by the city centre, with the harbour on our right and Table Mountain somewhere over there to the left. This is just a guess, given the weather conditions, and we have trouble identifying more immediate landmarks that eerily appear then fade back behind the fogbank. We abandon printed instructions and cruise on through intersections with hardly a turn right or left until there before us is a guarded gate and, wouldn't you know it, it's the right gate.
We have booked a small apartment at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, known to all as the V&A. This dockside redevelopment manages to successfully merge a shopping complex, hotels, cinemas, restaurants, a residential precinct and marina with Cape Town's working harbour of wharves and historic buildings. It's a city within a city and a little removed from the buzz and racial mix of the streets outside, but it's skipping to its own rope and has a reputation for being safe, with security guards and key cards keeping the riffraff out. As soon as the fog starts to lift we're out exploring, wandering the wharves where fishing boats with interesting sailors are returning for the day and big blubbery seals heave and flop onto wet wood jetties right at our feet. The air is clear and the water sparkles, and it feels as though this day and this city are glowing with approval for the boldness of our journey.
For we have embarked on a twelve-month road trip that will take us to all the places in Central and East Africa that we've ever wanted to visit, to familiar landscapes as well as new horizons. I plan to watch the sun set over a Namibian desert and follow wildebeest through the Serengeti; Neil wants to track African wild dogs in the Selous and canoe down the Zambezi. We'll drive as far north as Kenya and as far west as the Congo and we'll go with the breeze, following the seasons and taking as much time as we please. The only deadline we have to make is to meet my sister, Viv, who'll be joining us for a month in Botswana, and the only time limitation is our return air ticket, dated twelve months away.
There is, however, an anchor to this adventure: at its heart is a search for something from Neil's past that has danced and wafted through his memories since childhood. He was born and raised in Northern Rhodesia, later to become Zambia, and now he hopes to find a farm there that was the family home for the latter part of the 1940s. His parents, probably suffering from a false sense of ability, upped stakes from the Copperbelt in the country's central west and leased an existing cattle farm in the remote far north, close to the Tanzanian border. Itembwe was in the middle of nowhere, beautiful but isolated, miles from the nearest farm and three hours' drive from the closest town when the road was passable. A paradise and a pipedream.
Neil and his brother were youngsters, his sister not yet born. Also along for the ride were Neil's uncle, aunt and cousins â two girls much his own age who became more like sisters in this secluded playground. For the adults it must have been a hard, unworkable existence; for the children it was a world of adventure.
Neil's memories are full of special stories. There was the time he and his brother negotiated with a
medula
, an old man, to buy a highly venomous Gaboon viper, but their mother wouldn't cough up the threepenny price tag; there was the gun boy, who sat in a tower with a 303 popping off marauding baboons in the ripening maize fields; lions taking the cattle; Neil's father shooting the lions; the children being sat on the backs of shot lions and sables for photographs while vermin abandoned the dead bodies like passengers from the
Titanic
; payday, when the native workers and their families lined up to receive their wages and allocation of mielie-meal (maize flour) and chunks of bush meat if game had been shot. Then there was Janson, their brave but foolish bull terrier who walked on three legs after being bitten by a baboon. A storybook life that the rest of us could only read about.
Itembwe's main farmhouse was a whitewashed Anglo-Colonial affair dominating one end of a small valley. Proud and imposing, it looked down over maize fields and was surrounded by rocky slopes and
miombo
woodlands where the leaves turned red and gold in late winter. Sweeping stone stairs led up to the deep verandah, and this was fronted by a row of graceful white columns. It is this house, or its remains, which Neil now hopes to locate, armed only with a name and a handful of old black-and-white photographs. We're also armed with a small list of contacts, as before we left Sydney we corresponded with an acquaintance in Zambia who was able to suggest likely sources of information. In a land of limited telecommunication, personal visits will be the only means of gathering the necessary leads.
We decided to purchase a four-wheel drive in Sydney and have it kitted out there to our specifications before shipping it to Cape Town. We felt that we needed to be familiar with the vehicle that was not only going to be our transport but also our home and shelter. Neither of us had driven a four-wheel drive off-road before, so we took it on weekend courses and trial runs where the only disappointing performances were from ourselves. A lot of thought went into the choice of model and make. We knew that what was needed was a vehicle strong enough to withstand the rigours of bad and dusty roads; it had to be able to be fixed anywhere, by anyone; and we couldn't afford to have fancy computers or special tyres that couldn't be replaced. It had to have enough room in the back to take an extra water tank, a wardrobe compartment, drawers for cooking equipment and spare parts, assorted chairs, tables and a tent, and it had to be big enough to carry a sleeping capsule on top. The Toyota LandCruiser 70 series fitted the bill, and although we didn't order the troop carrier model, somehow we were referring to it as âthe Troopy' even before it left the factory.
Now, in Cape Town, we wait for it to be cleared by customs. It's just two days after our arrival, three days after it was unloaded, when the phone call comes through from the shipping agents. Neil races off but a small problem arises when the agents inform him that they only take cash for payment. Neil goes to an ATM in the centre of downtown Cape Town to withdraw thousands of rand; he's just inserted his credit card when a thin black hand snakes over his shoulder and snatches it. The card gets passed to an accomplice who quickly swipes it on a scanner hidden in the folds of his big heavy army coat then takes off at full speed. Neil races after him but is stopped by an onlooker who indicates that he thinks Neil must be crazy to try to catch a thief in this city of desperadoes. Because he is conveniently outside a bank Neil is able to cancel the card promptly, organise for a replacement and withdraw enough cash to release the Troopy. He's surprisingly calm when he returns to the apartment â he looks pleased with himself and relieved to have the Troopy once more in our possession â so I dismiss the incident as the first of many we're bound to encounter in the months ahead.
The Troopy looks shiny and new and raring to go. It sits in a parking bay beneath our bedroom window and we keep looking out to check that it's still proud and safe below. We notice that passers-by stop to look too and this is our first inkling that the Troopy is not the norm in these parts as we'd thought, but an object of desire.
Our last city days are spent on final shopping for gas cooktops, toasters and fold-up chairs. I convince Neil that camping equipment is so cheap here it'd be a shame not to benefit from the savings. I buy an electric jug and a hairdryer that will plug into a car's cigarette lighter but only read the small print once I've ripped off the packaging. The jug takes eighteen minutes to boil, and the hairdryer is given such a short cord that I'd have to have my head down by the gear stick to use it. After so many months of detailed planning back in Sydney, Neil is amused that I can still find something that we simply have to have.
We're keen to hit the road but our laptop has a dial-up problem that will have to be resolved first. Although we anticipate that we'll only be able to log on in Internet cafes in major cities, access to the web is a critical component of this trip. Not only will we need to visit itinerary and accommodation websites to plot our progress, but emails will be the only real contact we'll have with friends and family. The laptop itself will be invaluable as we will need to regularly download photos from our three cameras, and both of us intend keeping an electronic diary of our progress.
Neil spends endless hours going round and round with helplines in South Africa, then Australia, but nothing seems to work and he becomes more worried and frustrated. On the third day he's up throughout the night to Dell Asia Pacific trying to find what should be a straightforward solution. He's become obsessed with solving the problem and it dominates our days. He knows that it has to be resolved before we leave civilisation behind, but we don't want to delay our departure because of it. He's a dog with a bone.
Thank goodness for generous relatives. We've arranged to have dinner with Neil's cousin and his family, dedicated Capetonians. Tim's wife went out of her way to smooth the path for us before we arrived in town and their local knowledge of the ins and outs of officialdom here has been invaluable. Neil and I choose a restaurant nearby but, oh dear, what a bad choice. Neil makes us all laugh when he lifts up the pasta on his plate in one dry, undressed clump that looks like a bird's nest but tastes worse. He's starting to relax but a worried furrow appears on his brow when someone suggests that this substandard food could be the norm from now on.
Another cousin, here on business from Melbourne, pays us a visit. He listens to Neil's dial-up woes, wanders over to the laptop and solves the problem in a few minutes. After days of tackling a mountain, Neil was unable to see that it was only a molehill. He is mightily relieved and shouts us lunch. At the restaurant he relaxes into his chair and cracks a bad joke, and only then do I realise how much pressure he'd felt. While I'd looked at the stolen credit card and dial-up problem as annoyances, just the first anecdotes from a big adventure that was going to be full of challenges and surprises, Neil had been bearing the burden of having to overcome them.
Listening to our lazy conversation over coffee, I'm struck by how easily I've fallen into the African way of referring to Europeans as whites, and black Africans as blacks. I was bought up to think that this sort of verbal discrimination was derogatory, so it's been surprising to find that the terms are, in general, just words used to describe each other and don't intend slur or racial prejudice. In conversation with the cleaning lady back in our apartment, she'd asked whether our maid at home is black or white, and once she got over the shock of discovering that we don't have a maid, proceeded to inform us that, in her opinion, whites do not make good cleaners or good dancers.
We're on-line again. The first email through is one from the guys at the camping centre where we'd shopped, expressing interest in buying the Troopy from us when we finish the trip. We respond with the promise of first option. Then there's an email from a contact in Zambia in the travel business who has finally come good with some form of third-party insurance for the Troopy for seven of the countries we're to be visiting.
Trying to arrange insurance before we left had been a major hurdle. No one in Australia would insure the Troopy for travel outside the country, and because it was not going to be registered in an African country, nobody there would issue any form of comprehensive insurance either. Neil resorted to contacting brokers all over the world, from Lloyds of London to a shonky outfit in Switzerland who did come up with a policy â one that would cost $25 000. So we made the decision to travel without comprehensive insurance and to arrange third party as we went along. We knew that this was payable sometimes at border posts and sometimes included in the vehicle entry pass, so now with this Zambian insurance we believe that we have just about every country covered. At last, everything is in place to head out into the wild beyond and we're both jumpy with excitement.