Chapter Nine- It's Africa, Baby

My feet were in bad shape. I had spent most of the season wearing the cheap Bata brand tennis shoes, or “takkies” as the locals called them. In the bush they were quiet as house slippers on a deep pile carpet, but they offered no arch support, and not being able to find a pair wide enough for my feet I had been forced to cut a relief on each side of the shoe for my toes. Needless to say the big and little toe on each foot was raw and constantly scratched up from the exposure. As the plan was to meet Kirk at Fazaks with the client I had decided to treat myself to a pair of the excellent Courteney boots, made in country and available at a very reasonable price thanks to the thriving black market in US currency.

   I was at the company office at dawn, where I supervised the usual overloading of a two ton truck in preparation for the coming buffalo hunt. The client was on the way from South Africa with his interpreter, and as soon as they arrived I was to phone Kirk and then leave immediately for Bulawayo.

   At about 9am the client arrived, and after a very brief conversation with Dudley we loaded him into the cab of the truck with myself and his South African escort, and then headed for town. The client sat in the middle with a small cooler between his knees, and just after we reached the tar road he withdrew a couple beers from the cooler, handed one to each of us, popped the tab on his and settled in for the drive. Of course I didn’t want to offend the client, and while only 9am in Zimbabwe I was fairly certain it was at least 5PM in Germany so I popped the tab on my beer and the three of us enjoyed the discovery of our first common passion, brewed hops.

   The truck was grossly overweight, and I was having trouble maintaining a decent speed as we began the slow climb outside Gwanda towards Mbababala. The waiter Tomerara and a couple game scouts were riding in the back with the supplies, and I could hear a little concern in their voices as we groaned up the winding road into the mountains. I was down to second gear when we reached the summit, and the client, who was a couple beers ahead of me, indicated he needed to pull over to the side of the road for a relief stop. I was happy to stop for a few moments and let the engine cool down a little, and after 15 minutes or so we began our descent into Bulawayo, arriving at Fazaks around noon. Kirk pulled me off to the side and asked about the client as his boys loaded the client’s belongings onto his Land Cruiser. He was dismayed to learn the man spoke absolutely no English, only German, and even less happy that the interpretation through the South African was a very cumbersome affair involving three distinct languages, but I assured Kirk that the South African was very patient and seemed capable of making sure everyone understood everyone else. Kirk decided that he would leave Tomarera with me and depart immediately for Main Camp in order to get the client settled in and comfortable. I should arrive a few hours later with the food, drinks and ice for the hunt, and in the morning we would be back on the hunt for buffalo. With that we said goodbye.

   I went to a local money changer I knew and sold enough US dollars to buy myself some boots, then returned to Fazaks where I bought two pair made of buffalo hide. I purchased some socks and stepping lively I wore my new boots out of the store.

   The trip north began smoothly enough, but about 20 kilometers south of Shangoni I thought I could smell something burning. I ignored it for a few more kilometers until I saw flames leaping skyward in my rear view mirror. Pulling to the side of the road, Tommie and I jumped out of the truck and found the source of the flames appeared to be from the engine compartment beneath the cab. I lost sight of Tommie as I unlatched the cab and pitched it forward to expose the engine, which was engulfed in flames and thick black smoke. While wondering what on earth to do next Tommie shouted from the back of the truck and handed me a bottle of Coke from which he had removed the cap. We had no water with us so using numerous bottles of soda I managed to extinguish the flames. We discovered a heater hose had split, draining the radiator, causing the engine to overheat and setting ablaze all the rubber hoses across the top of the motor.

   We were in a bit of a fix, out in the middle of nowhere with no communications and no help in sight. As we considered our options a man happened by on a bicycle, and he stopped to see what the matter was. As luck would have it he had attached a tire pump to his bike with a strip of rubber from an old inner tube. Locally called “rigging”, rubber strips from old inner tubes are the duct tape of the bush, and are used to repair all manner of things from leaky pipes to fixing broken rifle stocks. We borrowed the rigging, wrapped the burnt hoses, loaded the man and his bike onto the back of the truck, and struck off slowly for Shangoni, where we hoped to make more permanent repairs. It was slow going, and I would pull off the road and stop each time the temperature gauge climbed into the red zone. Eventually we made it to a small store on the outskirts of town where we actually found a diesel mechanic working. He replaced the burnt hose and added water to the radiator, but in the process he noticed water dripping from the engine and diagnosed a blown head gasket. He had no means to repair the problem, and with no phone on the premises we were forced to begin the start-stop process once again, until we reached a small butchery and general store about 5 kilometers up the road. It took about an hour to get there, but the store actually had a working phone and I was able to report in to the Company office. There were a few calls back and forth until Mike Laurent located a second truck he could send to us, and once it arrived we would transfer the entire load and continue on to Main Camp.

   We had several hours to kill, and I decided we needed to eat. The butchery was a sort of rest stop for travelers in the region, and besides selling meat the owner had built a picnic area in the bush behind the store. It was a solidly made affair with a cement floor surrounded by a waist high stone wall and covered with a high thatch roof. With about 8 picnic tables under cover it made for a pleasant respite. Outside the stone wall stood a large stone bar b que, or brie, and there was an old man employed by the butchery who kept a large pot of sadza cooking. For $30 Zim a customer could cook the meat he had purchased at the butchery and get a plate of sadza as well. Tomerara pulled a package of meat from one of the coolers on the truck and after waiting our turn at the brie we cooked the meat and bought a plate of sadza which we shared under the thatch. Tommie had tried to find some silverware for me and with some trepidation reported he wasn’t able to locate any on the truck. I was a little surprised he had looked for it, as I had learned to enjoy eating sadza in the native manner, with my hands. We ate to the voices of numerous travelers who came and went, and despite our circumstances I enjoyed the meal as much as any I ate in Africa. Perhaps it was simply the location, or the low murmur of tribal languages around us, or maybe just the fact that we were around other people and not stuck out on the tar road with no help in sight. In any event, it was not an unpleasant afternoon as we waited for the truck to arrive so we could resume our journey.

   At about 6pm the truck rolled onto the lot, and it took us about an hour to transfer the supplies with three of us working and we left the driver with the broken down truck. The plan was for a second vehicle to tow the disabled two ton back to West Nicholson, but we learned later that the driver had tried to make it back on his own. He and the Company truck had gone missing for several days, eventually turning up in Bulawayo over a week later. We never heard what came of his misadventure, and in fact we still weren’t done with our own.

   We made it through Shangoni in our new truck, and things began to look up as we left the north end of town, however just after crossing the Shangoni River I heard a loud pop, and we began to list badly to the left rear. I pulled off the tar and an inspection revealed the outside tire of the left rear dual tires had blown. The inside tire was almost flat, either from under inflation or overloading of the truck. Either way it didn’t matter, we couldn’t drive on that tire, so we began the process of unpacking the tire jack and spare, but of course, It’s Africa Baby.

   The jack didn’t work, apparently because it was out of hydraulic fluid. One learns to adapt in the bush, so we made a small pile of stones and backed the truck onto the pile, which raised the blown tire off the ground. We got it removed, only to discover that the truck had different sized tires for the front and rear, and of course the only spare tire on board was for the front. We were out of business. Traffic was sporadic, but eventually we flagged down a truck headed back into Shangoni and the driver agreed to get Tomarera to a phone so he could contact the Company office. I was responsible for the truck and the camp supplies, and settled in for a night sleeping in the cab of the truck.

   About an hour had passed when a truck came from the direction of Shangoni and pulled in behind me. Tomarera approached my door and informed me he had brought back another white man. It turned out to be a friend of Dudley’s named Nigel, and he owned a farm in Shangoni called Battle Farm. We looked at the tire again, and Nigel suggested we leave Tommie with the truck all night while we took the bad tire into town and tried to get it repaired in the morning. I wasn’t about to let the truck out of my sight, and asked Nigel if he would just take the tire back and I would stay with the truck. He agreed, and left with Tommie and the tire, only to return a couple hours later with news that the tire was too far gone to be repaired. He had brought another jack and a hand pump with him, and after jacking up the rear end we were able to get more air into the remaining tire. I followed Nigel back to Battle Farm at a snail’s pace, eventually reaching his home well after midnight. Nigel got Tommie organized with a place to sleep, and then he took me into his kitchen, where he brewed some tea. Despite the exhausting day I didn’t feel especially sleepy, and we stayed up most of the night talking about the situation in Zimbabwe.

   Battle Farm had been in Nigel’s family for many generations, and they had always raised cattle. But things were different now, of course, and Nigel had about a thousand war vets on his property. Most of the game had been poached off, and in the past year he had lost 360 head of cattle to the vets as well. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease was going to finish off the Zimbabwe beef industry, in Nigel’s view. He explained the cost of feed and fertilizer and how inflation was eating into any profit he might produce, and the 6 month to two year quarantine of their beef would wipe out most of the cattle ranches in the country.

   It’s impossible to overstate the importance of cows to the people of Zimbabwe, both white and black. Cattle are the measure of wealth and success in both cultures and beef is the premier source of pride amongst cattlemen, who will never miss an opportunity to tell a listener that Europe and Japan buy most of their high grade beef from Zimbabwe. So it was no small matter that Nigel had made the decision to get out of the cattle business while he still had some operating capitol. When I asked him what he would raise he told me he was planting paprika. It seemed a brilliant move on his part, as he explained that there was a huge world wide market for the spice, and Zimbabwe offered near perfect growing conditions. That the crop was of absolutely zero value to the war vets had played no small role in the decision, and with a chuckle at that bit of insight I drained the last of my tea and headed to bed, grateful that I wasn’t sleeping in the front seat of the truck.

   In the morning we had a quick breakfast and then Nigel left for a farmers meeting in Bulawayo. I wished him well and thanked him for the help. I phoned the Company office and was told a truck was already en route with two spare tires as well as a dismounted tire to replace our blow out. I spent the day cooling my heels, and eventually the repair crew arrived, and true to form, they had one tire with them, which meant we would still not have a spare on the truck. And with the wisdom that only an office manager could fathom they had brought along another 200 kilos of ice to carry on the badly overloaded truck.

   We managed to get away from Battle Farm before 4PM, expecting about 6 hours to get to main camp. We knew there was a veterinary roadblock not to far north of Shangoni, and of course we had no vet permit for the camp meat we were carrying. Tomerara removed the meat from the coolers and after placing it in burlap bags hid it under the rest of the load. When we arrived at the roadblock I was grateful that he took charge of the negotiations. The inspectors were insisting on searching the entire truck since they could see a great deal of food on the back, but eventually Tommie convinced them we were carrying monthly rations for the camp workers. The inspectors knew if that were the case there would be no meat on the truck, as meat isn’t supplied for employees. Eventually we were waived through, and once far enough down the road to be out of sight we transferred the meat back into the coolers.

   We made the 60 kilometers to Gweru, where we stopped at the Chicken Inn for supper. I stayed with the truck while Tommie got the food, and while waiting at the curb I was approached by several beggars, including two small girls about 6 or 7. I had nothing to give to them, but after we had eaten our fill I looked for the girls, but they had disappeared. An old woman happened by, and I gave the left over food to her. She thanked me repeatedly and assured me many times that this was more than Mugabe had ever done for her. She wandered off, but before we could drive away she came back and told Tomerara that she was MDC, the opposition political party, and that she wanted whites back in power as she had lived better under them. We had a chuckle at that, although Tommie seemed a little uncomfortable with the subject.

   Darkness fell as we left Gweru and resumed the drive north. Bush fires burned in every direction, and for many kilometers the fires raged right up to the edge of the tar road. The smell of smoke was constant and at times our eyes burned. We had made it within about 50 kilometers of Gokwe town when I heard a loud pop, and we began to list to the left rear. Unable to pull off the road due to the fires, I stopped on the tar and checked the damage. We were down to one tire on the left side again, but the inside tire seemed to be fully aired up, and after considering our options we decided to push on. Due to the fires I had no place to stop anyway, so we drove along towards town at 30 kilometers per hour, thinking we might find a working pay phone and contact the Company office. There was a slim chance that a spare tire might be located at Main Camp, which was considerably closer than the Company office. We made it into Gokwe around midnight, and after trying several pay phones gave up on calling and decided to press on.

   The final 116 kilometers north from Gokwe are harrowing under the best of circumstances. The road twists and turns with steep drop offs on either side of the pavement, while pedestrian and donkey cart traffic force one to pay very careful attention at all times to avoid a tragedy. Our slow speed worked to our advantage in some respects but I expected the overworked tire to blow at any moment, sending us careening into oblivion, where we might never be found. If one were to drive that road today an experienced guide could easily point out numerous cars and small trucks, as well as a passenger bus still perched in trees after running off the edge of the tar road...