Chapter Three- Kalsiga

 

Kalsiga, the river camp, was to become my favorite place in all Africa.  Located deep inside the concession, it was a place where one kept his rifle handy, offering constant contact with game and isolation from anything resembling modern man.

   The camp was located at roughly the far east end of the same escarpment on which Main Camp had been built. Getting to the camp involved driving over 26 kilometers of a most brutal road, and every single trip was an exercise in self abuse.

   The road traveled across the top of the escarpment for about 20 kilometers and then headed down the far side towards a small delta formed in the Ume River, The normal routine was to stop and pick up a Game Scout at the beginning of the Kalsiga road, as government regulations require one be with the hunting party at all times. The Game Scouts were employed by the Tribal Council, and lived in a small compound of block buildings just off the main tar road.

   After traveling for many kilometers through alternating thick bush and relatively open areas, during which deep sand would require 4 wheel drive to pass, the road basically ended and a trail of sorts wound down the rocky side of the escarpment. At the terminus of the road proper was a breathtaking view of the river valley below. First gear was the only way to travel this portion, and the going was slow and brutal on man and machine alike as the trail was navigated.

   Once down off the escarpment the road reappeared and became fairly smooth and level, winding through an area of sparse jess until within about two kilometers of the river. At that point the vegetation appeared as a wall of green with a jungle like appearance, thick and heavy.. Just before camp the road dropped steeply and there was always a significant drop in temperature as the level of the river was reached.

I first saw this place three years earlier, and it had been a mere fly camp at the time, with a couple of large surplus military style tents and the kitchen, but nothing more.  I took elephant from here, and once spent a long cold night in a pit dug into the riverbed, calling hyenas. As the moon finally rose high enough to illuminate the bait, my PH realized it was gone. We left the pit to investigate and discovered a lion had taken the zebra quarter from under our noses.

   Now Kalsiga was a permanent installation. Situated along the riverbank under a high canopy of Acacia Albida trees, 4 chalets had been built, all on stilts to protect them when the river flooded during the rainy season. Each chalet stood about two meters off the ground, and consisted of a reed wall about 1 meter high covered with a thatch roof. The floor had been made by laying sheet metal roofing material down and covering it with about 2 inches of cement. It made for a very solid, smooth floor that was easy to sweep. On the back side of the chalet was a shower area that had a separate entrance, allowing the waiter to fill the shower without disturbing the client’s privacy.

   A communal dining chalet had been built closer to the river bank, also raised on stilts, and it could comfortable seat a dozen or so. There had also been a bar and concrete fire pit closer to the river, but the floods from the previous rainy season had removed about 50 feet of the river bank and wiped out these structures.                                         

 

    Off to one side of the compound, separated by a reed wall, was the kitchen, which was built of concrete block and covered with a tin metal roof.

   Behind the kitchen was a small village of about 10 mud huts which housed the Game Scouts, anti poachers employed by the safari company. These scouts were armed with single barrel shotguns, and spent their days patrolling the concession, searching for poachers, snares, and occasionally helping us scout for game. They were supervised by an ancient, not-so-retired old poacher named Pension, who looked to be about 80 years in age, but had sharper eyes than I could ever hope to possess.

   The river bed in front of camp was about 300 meters across, consisted of deep sand, and at this time of year had narrow streams of water running downstream. There were occasional deep pools of water along the banks, with one such pool directly in front of camp. On the sand bar across the pool the scouts had dug a huge pit from which they drew their drinking water. Filtered by the fine river sand, it was clean and relatively safe to drink.

   Across the river from camp arose a low mountain range, steep, rocky and about 1000 feet high.

   Shaped roughly like a question mark, the open end was down river, and proscribed an area about 3 kilometers wide and two kilometers deep. The shaft of the mountains, less than a kilometer from the river, was directly across from camp.

   Between the river and the mountains the ground was fairly level and the cover varied from thick jess to large open meadows covered with 12 foot grass. There was a lot of water in there, and it attracted a lot of buffalo and elephant.

  On the camp side of the river was another world altogether. At the edge of the upriver end of the compound stood a wall of green, as though blocking entry into a jungle like riverine growth that extended several kilometers up stream.  Eons of water running over soil and rock had eroded a path about a kilometer back from the river’s edge, and it was filled with huge trees that blocked the sun in places, their trunks wrapped in thick vines that drooped to the ground from the tallest branches. Where vegetation could grow on the ground it was thick and impenetrable. This place was filled with all manner of birds, and monkeys, elephants, bushbuck, a troop of baboons and occasionally leopard and lion. It had a feel of Old Africa, Tarzan’s Africa, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck whenever I passed through..

   We were to spend a lot of time in this camp during the season, and I claimed the chalet at the edge of camp, closest to the river, where I would wake up in the morning to the sounds of all the life in this place. On occasion, while drinking morning tea at the river’s edge, a pair of Egyptian geese would fly down river at the same elevation as me, and if you were still and quiet you could hear the air against their wings as they passed.

   It was to this place that Kirk had shifted the hunt....