|
Date: July 17, 2004
A quick update since my last email: I zoomed down
the Poroto Mountains; out of Tanzania into Malawi; down the Rift
Valley; alongside Lake Malawi; up a torturous road onto the Nyika
Plateau where 30 kilometers consumed a day and hopes to see animals
reaped no fruit; down the mountain and into the valley again; along
the lake; and, instead of going the scenic route through Mozambique,
I decided to go inland with the wind, 1580 kilometers down Zambia’s
Great East road towards Africa’s second premier tourist trap
– Victoria Falls.
* * *
Something squirms against my side. “Oh no,
not another scorpion,” I think. I leap from my bed that stinks
of African body odor -- who needs an alarm clock -- but it is only
a small striped lizard. An old injury has broken off his tail and
crippled his legs, but he is still agile and dashes over the edge
of the bed and goes ass over teapot – plop! – onto the
floor. Seeing the paraplegic mosquito eater makes my heart pang:
survival in Africa is like cleaning your hands with a greasy rag.
Yesterday’s road had a corrugated surface that
rattled my brainpan and had potholes big enough to hide inside:
one, crippled the hinges on my rear panniers like the lizard’s
vertebrae, and the second, flung off the front set as if a sparrow
lost it’s wings mid-flight, and the sparrow tumbled down.
Packing my gear this morning, I discover the brazen is cracked,
perhaps due to some wiggle room from a missing washer. In the fashion
of Third World countries where you get anything, anytime, anywhere,
the brother of the hotel manager is a welder. Within minutes of
discovery, he is dripping a few drops of brass on the top and bottom
of the crack. It seems a simple procedure. The only problem I’ve
had getting my bicycle welded was in New Zealand where no one wanted
to take responsibility due to new government regulations. Finally,
I said, “Just give me the torch and tell me what to do.”
The things I’ve learned riding my bicycle around the world.
Today the road surface is perfect and it rolls through
the colorful miombo forest, the distant hills of Mozambique to the
south and a vast game reserve to the north. The hills in the heat
of the day look as if they are evaporating into a haze of autumn
colors. My ears are overjoyed to be free of the packs of children,
spoiled by years of foreign aid and tourists, chanting, “Gimmemoney,”
and chasing me through Malawi. My ears are free to delight in birdsong.
In the outskirts of a small village, a group of women
wearing sarongs of clashing colors and patterns that I’d be
reluctant to use as a picnic clothe, see me and break into song
and dance. They gyrate in circles, trilling their tongues and pressing
their hands to their heart and then holding their hands towards
me cupping love. This is what I enjoy most about the culture, just
when you think Africans are happy to watch maize grow, they suddenly
begin singing and dancing and drums appear out of nowhere and their
impromptu music spreads through the hills and into neighboring villages.
Their blessing follows me up and down the next hill. My hat aeroplanes
atop my hair, then flips off, a parachute connected to my Adam’s
apple. Bushes lay uprooted across the road as if a twister blew
through, but they are only warning flags. Up the next hill a kingpin
truck, braced with rocks, is stuck; it’s clutch burnt out.
My clutch is nearly burnt out. Up and down the next hill and I see
a hut, a banda with a conical thatch roof, minus the mud-brick wall.
A group of men appear to be playing checkers. I serve back, park
my bike against a pole. “Hello. How are you?” Pleasantries
are very important.
“Fine, sir. How are you?” A man with thin
lips and the shape of his bones pressing through his skin appears
to be the ambassador of the banda. He wears a shirt with a lion
print that is ironic in the same way that there are more ebony statues
of lions than real lions in Africa.
“I’m fine. Thank you. Are you playing
drafts?”
“No. We are playing a card game.”
“Poker?”
“No. It is named Casino.” It is
a simple game: if your card comes up in a pair even, you win, odds,
you lose. Their deck is worn into rags and, despite their fingers
being thick and calloused and nails worn to the root from using
their hands as shovels and hammers, they flip through the cards
as fast as a bottom-dealing magician.
A pile of thousand-Kwacha bills are in the pot. “Oh,
you are playing for big money.”
“Yes, big money. Do you want to play?”
I decline. This is, as they say, a game I can’t
win.
Their feet encroach the game, at times having card
dealt atop it. Their elephantine feet are dull purple, dusted in
gray and cracked like a mudflat in the dry season. One man is missing
a toe, gut the others have swollen to accommodate the space. Some
men wear flip-flops, apparently as a fashion statement because their
tough soles are accustomed to treading broken rock.
“What is that you are drinking? Maize
beer?” He looks confused. I gesture towards the greasy wine
bottle with a worn label. A man is pouring a shot into a sawed-off
soda bottle. I have seen trucks with tankards several thousand liters
in capacity roam between villages selling maize beer. Villagers
walk, hobble and cycle to the road and wait for the hose to fill
their plastic bucket with a brown, chunky liquid like sewage water,
a honey truck in reverse. “Made from maize?”
“No, no. Made from cane.”
“Sugar cane. Rum.”
“Yes, rum.” He rolls his head back
and smiles as if this were a joke.
“Are you finished with the harvest?”
I assume they are farmers with a pocketful of cash and three months
until the rains. Though the farmers could sow their seeds now and
reap a harvest year round, there is not enough water to irrigate
the crops and the termites will eat the seeds. He looks confused
again. “Are you farmers? Are you finished harvesting?”
“Yes, yes. We are farmers.”
“What crops do you grow?”
“We grow maize and groundnuts [peanuts]
and yams.”
“Are the people near here safe,”
surreptitiously I am questioning the safety of bush camping.
“Oh, so safe. People here are so, so
friendly. Near Lusaka people are very dangerous.” Almost everyone
in the world says this: it is the tribal mentality or fear of the
unknown.
“Are the animals dangerous?”
“There are no animals near the tarmac.”
“Where are the animals? There is only
forest here, a game reserve; there are hardly any people.”
“We like to eat the wild animals: antelope,
buffalo. Very nice.”
”Oh, so if the animals come here, you
eat them?”
“No. We go to the animals. They are over
there.” He gestures behind a small mountain. “About
five kay.”
“Is this ill -- I mean is it against
--” my voice falters as I realize I am broaching a taboo subject
“-- Can you --”
“It is not illegal.”
“No problem,” I say and he echoes,
no problem. “ What about elephants?”
I know this is illegal game. “Do you eat elephants?”
“Yes. We eat. Elephant is the best meat.
Especially this part.” He lifts his foot, toes clutching the
strap of a broken sandal, and pats his crusty and cracked sole.
“Very tasty. So, so tasty.” His expression is that of
a French gourmet. It is difficult for me to imagine people who gulp
ugali -- the staple food made out of maize like mashed potatoes
and has the tang of silver and aluminum foil – with the relish
of starved dogs would have culinary appreciation for anything or
even taste buds.
“You are not farmers?”
“No. Are business here is not farming,”
he smirks.
* * *
You have probably guessed their business by now,
but you will have to wait until my book for the conclusion otherwise
I won't have anything new to say.
|
