really?

14 February 2012

What’s life like in the bush in such a remote place, people ask me.

Well, it’s certainly different. Completely out of the loop, other than for the things I bring along and whatever contact I have via satellite.

There are no demarcated days, for instance. No grudging, traffic-snarled Mondays, hectic Fridays or quiet, lazy Sundays. And no Valentine’s card on my pillow today. They’re all the same. What does leave a marker in the patient pages of time are things like storms, full moon or other happenings. So it’s not Tuesday the 14^th today, it’s three days after the rain.

One’s senses also retune to their natural default setting. Other than for the occasional thunder clap or vocal outburst of elephant rage, there are no loud noises in the bush. The only sounds are those of the breeze and the insects and the constant, gentle conversation of birds. When a hyena calls or a hippo exhales, it sounds almost startlingly loud against such a soft background of jungle rustle.

There are no bright- or flashing lights here either. Just the soft, yellow flame of a paraffin lantern or, at most, the beam of my flashlight. Colour is also limited; everything’s in shades of green, brown or grey. Only when I open my food chest do I see bright, attention-grabbing colours. When I go to town again after a sojourn in such a muted environment, it’s as if everything is screaming too loud.

Talking about that; in the bush one finds oneself outside the crazy spin of consumerism. No shops here, no nice-to-haves, no in-your-face goods, no fashion. Just what you really need. And that, one comes to realize, is actually very little. In fact, when I walk into a shop again after weeks in the bush I’m awed by how much there is on the shelves that’s unnecessary.

Yes, it’s only when you step out of it for a while that you realise quite how blinded, bloated and unashamedly wasteful our society has become. So that’s what living in the bush is like, I guess: It’s real.

Freshly distilled from the clouds. Do we really need to buy bottled water? (And does it really make sense to pay for gutters and channels to dispose of free, fresh rainwater, and to then have to buy treated water from the municipality?)

Soapdish (100% recycled).

 

 

 

 

 

The roast's in the oven.

My cross-ventilated bathroom. (Materials from Bush Building Supplies, hot water from Mopane Energy Corp.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mooncharm

8 February 2012

It’s that time of the month. Full moon. The glowing crystal ball may not be as spectacular here in the encroaching bush as it is when seen soaring from an uncluttered horizon in the Karoo or the Kalahari, but it’s rising still marks the peak of my mojorhythm chart. The bush is different when the moon is full. It’s not so devilish and dark at night, so things move about more. There is depth and scale – landscape – not just dark brush an arm’s length away. The bush is more alive. So am I.

I sat watching the moon last night as it rose over my cooking fire. Yellow shards of it at first, cracked by the silhouette of a knoppiesdoring tree, then the pale blue balloon as it sailed aloft. Downriver, about two hundred yards away, a hyena whooped repeatedly. In the trees above me soft chuckles ping-ponged from limb to limb as little lesser bushbabies glided about. There was not a breeze, not another light in sight. Not, under such a heavenly cast, even a care in the world either, other than the lone hippo I could hear wandering about.

This morning I went for a long walk, taking three scouts to where I want them to clear an old track so that access to my camp can hopefully be a little less jarring. Maybe it was the full moon of last night, maybe just my imagination, but as we walked it felt to me as if the bush was even more enchanting than ever.

Rock of ages. Bedrock in the Shingwedzi river, worn smooth by floods.

The typical 'two-wheel' tracks of a hippo.

Wading through tall riparian grass.

 

The easiest way through the bush is along the elephant paths. These invariably follow the best route and have been cleared and flattened by the big, rubberlike soles of the giants over many years.

Outlying mudholes, where elephant and buffalo like to plaster themselves, are drying up and more animals are coming to the river again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life everywhere: A dew-laden cobweb in an impala track.

 

 

 

 

 

 

the axeman cometh

4 February 2012

A Saturday is a day like any other out here in the bush. No closed factories or lack of rush-hour traffic to distinguish it by. At noon I’m writing in my tent when three scouts who’d been out on patrol arrive and call me outside. With them is a ragged man in handcuffs.

They tell me they’d spotted three poachers, two of them armed, not far from the nearby border with SA’s Kruger National Park and hurriedly prepared an ambush. In the clash that ensued, with one shot fired, the two armed poachers managed to get away but the other one was captured.

‘I know this man,’ I say to them. ‘Have a look at his legs, there must be a gunshot wound there.’

Seven months ago I had just entered Mozambique and was still at the border post when a vehicle with frontier guards and rangers pulled up in a cloud of dust. In the back were two men they’d caught, part of a band of sixteen rhino poachers they’d tried to ambush near Kruger Park. The two had been wounded during the exchange of fire. When I went over to have a look I saw that one of them (eighteen years old) had a stomach wound and the other had taken a bullet through the lower leg. I took photographs, suspecting that it could well be the younger one’s last portrait (he did die two days later), but never imagining that I’d see the other one through my lens again.

There it is, when a dirty bandage is removed: A partly healed wound on the man’s dusty shin. Same customer, same story, the action even took place in almost the same spot. And once again he was lucky enough to have dodged the final bullet.

What makes a wounded man willingly risk his life again? Why is he even free to poach again? With the help of an interpreter I spend the next three hours trying to get some idea of what goes on in the life and mind of a rhino poacher.

It’s a frustrating interview. Apart from being a practised liar, he’s got no intention of incriminating himself, despite my assurances that I have nothing to do with law enforcement. He does however admit that they were after rhino with a rifle and an AK47. Who they were and how they went about it I don’t need to know, I’m more interested in the WHY.

His story is that of many of the bush folk around here. Never been to school, herded cattle as a kid, sometimes hungry, always poor. Went off to work on the mines in SA for many years, returning home eventually. Fled to SA again during the civil war, losing his ten cattle in the process. When it was over he came to settle on his little shamba near the Limpopo river and got on with living off the land. Maize, beans, sweet potatoes, groundnuts and cassava; he sells some of it at the market. He owns four cattle to plough his fields with and an iron handplough of his own. When he ploughs for others he gets M500 (ZAR150) a day. To build a hut for someone (the youngsters of today don’t know how to build, he says) he charges M2000. For a two-roomed hut the cost is one cow. Then there’s the fish he and his children catch and sell, the brooms he makes from mnala grass, the wooden vessels for stamping maize, and the bamboo baskets for screening the flour. He’s proud of the fact that he’s pretty successful at making a living. Anything between 5000M and 12000M a month, he says, which is not bad for these parts.

What does he stand to gain by poaching rhino? As an axeman/porter he’s in line to get the equivalent of one kg of rhino horn, at a going rate of 100 000M/kg (for the men doing the killing), if a mission yields the goods. If it doesn’t, he gets nothing.

I look at the dusty figure sitting against the tree before me. Lean and defiant, with a black shoe on one foot and a brown one on the other. It’s easy to understand the incentive, but I still don’t see his side of things. Especially not after learning that he’d once sold the cooked meat of a stolen dog.

(For that he got eight years in jail in Maputo. For poaching rhino seven months ago, apparently only a bullet through the leg. He says he was never charged.)

Poacher's gear. The axe is for chopping out horn, the roll of wire for snaring food.

 

snapshots on the way home

30 January 2012

Villa dos Pescatores is a fisherman’s village on the bay, just north of Maputo. In the old LM days I watched craftsmen build boats from raw timber here, in the bush, with nothing but basic hand tools. Things have changed, but not much. Follow the Costa do Sol to get here.

Great North Road. The En1 is the main road that runs all the way north. Every few km there’s a town or a village where traders try to make a living by selling all sorts of things – a lot of it locally grown or -made - to passing traffic.

Zeka Saia makes and sells his concrete sculptures in Manhica along the main road. Little Adriano thinks his dad is cool. I thought so too.

Not cool, and certainly not Green. Charcoal sold by the roadside and carted into the city by the truckloads - product of the notorious slash-and-burn practice that leaves natural habitat denuded and unbalanced.

THIS is Green! Brickmaking kilns; right next to where the clay is dug by hand, the wood for firing it grows, and the customers drive by. No electricity, no machines, no nothing. Just plain old effort and enterprise.

Mozambique’s famous cashew nuts sold by the roadside - in plastico these days.

Bilene, on one of the many coastal lakes near Macia. It’s another place I remember from my youth, but then it was called Sao Martino and the road there wasn’t tarred.

Bagdad Café? Yep, that’s it in the background.

Here’s a tip: Avoid travelling in rural areas in the late afternoon. That’s when the homu herds are driven home for the night - invariably along the road.

The Madonse river crossing on the road to my camp. At the peak of the recent floods (caused by cyclone Dando) the water level was above where my wheels are parked on the high bank – 6m deep!

Even elephant got stuck when things got wet. One of these tracks on the bank of the Madonse is more than a metre deep. (No; Franqui – all dressed up in the background - is not a waiter or the drummer in a jazz band; he’s a scout. I picked him up at church in Massingir.)

maputo

29 January 2012

It’s been a good seventeen years since I last visited Maputo.

On that occasion, shortly after the end of fifteen years of crippling civil war, the capital city was a reflection of the state of the rest of Mozambique: Tired, broken and dysfunctional. Rubbish lay in great heaps on street corners, cars rotted where they stood, shops with empty shelves skulked in rundown buildings, power- and water supply was intermittent, and people had taken to surviving rather than living.

This stood in stark contrast to the old Lourenco Marques I’d known as a youngster. Gone were the window displays of stores that were fashionable at the time, vibey sidewalk restaurants (something unknown in SA then), the popular movie theaters, posters advertising bullfights, manicured subtropical gardens and the grand colonial air of it all. Names of streets had been changed, as had the culture of order. LM had become Maputo; a rundown part of Africa rather than a petal of Portugal. All that was left of the old days were the language and the ornate, well-built architecture of the Portuguese.

Yes, Maputo was a sad place seventeen years ago. But what is it like now?

Well, to be fair, I didn’t spend much time there during my visit this past weekend. Simply because I don’t like cities. But what I did notice during my brief stay was that Maputo’s got its breath back. It bustles almost chaotically with footfolk, SUV’s, trucks, tuk-tuks and chapas minibus taxis. There’s life and laughter on its streets and fresh things are happening. Banks, hotels and insurance houses have taken the lead with modern buildings, a few retail chains have moved in and construction cranes are waving their lattice wands over projects. I don’t know if the old bullring still stands, but there’s now a huge new sports stadium where the All-Africa Games were held last year (keeping up with the Jones’s?), as well as a new airport terminal. Shouting loudest of all, inevitably, are the cellphone companies, especially Vodacom, who seem to have taken it upon themselves to paint Mozambique red.

All these however, appear like glaring highlights against a grey backdrop of poverty and squalor. Those modern buildings still face derelict ones, whilst the bright new signs cast their light on muddy pools and scattered litter. Not far away are the slums where the majority of the city’s inhabitants live. Even the Marginal, the scenic seafront drive leading to the Costa do Sol that should be the city’s foremost tourism treasure, is lined with potholes, litter and decay.

Vendors sell colourful clothing along the Costa do Sol promenade, as well as drinks and food to the crowds that flock there over weekends.

Two extremes. Do they leave the visitor lost in the ravine between them? They may appear to, but I’d rather like to think they’re symbolic of the chequered nature of a pragmatic, vibrant Africa. The place is real; Botox, warts and all. It once tried to be a little bit of Portugal, it once tried to be Communist, it once was down and out. Now crazy, contradictory Maputo is simply being its diverse, living self.

The night I spent in the Polana Hotel was in sharp contrast to my lifestyle in the bush. Unfazed by all that has gone and come, the Polana is still a classic landmark in Maputo. It was designed by Sir Herbert Baker and ranks with the grand old ladies of southern African hotels.

Swimmers training in the pool of the Clube Naval. Forty years ago, when my father was a member, I used to hang out here; sailing dinghies, eating prego rolls and drinking Fanta laranjada. This time I chose calamari and Laurentina.

rhino summit

27 January 2012

I wake up, shocked to find it’s already 04.25. I was supposed to leave at 03.00! Maputo is still a long drive away and the meeting starts at nine!

The morning light is rising as I pass Massingir and head for Chokwe on badly worn tar interspersed with gravel stretches where repairs had been made after the floods of 2000. Beyond Chokwe, still heading east to Macia on a tar road riddled with craters, there’s angry whipped-up cloud ahead and a spirited wind blowing from the side. It’s the outermost edge of the great spinning wheel of deadly cyclone Funso that’s heading down the Mozambique channel after lashing Quelimane further north.

At Macia I join the coastal road that is Mozambique’s main artery and I step on the pedal until I enter the capital two hours later. Here I get bogged down in traffic that leaves me twenty minutes late when I finally pull in under the porte cochére of the Polana Hotel. Fortunately for me the key delegates from SA are also late after one of the private planes bringing them developed a technical glitch. The gathered suits and TV crew wait patiently until the meeting finally starts at eleven. It’s an important one. 

Present are Dr Mabunda, CEO of SA’s National Parks, various generals and high ranking officials of the Mozambican government, and also the investors in a number of private game reserves that border the Kruger National Park on its Mozambican flank. On the table is a desperate bid to prevent these conservation areas from being isolated after the shock news that Kruger plans to erect an impenetrable border fence as a drastic measure to curb the poaching of its rhinos by criminals operating out of Mozambique.

There is tension in the air: Nobody knows what message Dr Mabunda is bringing today. Will a Berlin wall go up, thereby killing the viability of the conservation effort that has been made on the Mozambican side, or is SA still open to the idea of a connected buffer zone, such as the one on Kruger’s western boundary where Sabie Sands and other reserves have proved the success of private ecotourism ventures in providing security by bringing benefits to hungry local communities? Perhaps more importantly; will Kruger’s expanding animal populations get the chance to move into the vacant bush next door where their kin once roamed, or will they be locked in for immediate protection?

The investors state their case: Much has been done on their side already; electric fencing, anti-poaching squads, investments in community projects, etc, etc. All the plans have been put into action for a recognized long term solution to poaching, but things are dragging because of official bureaucracy. They need help; from Kruger in the form of operational backup in the war on poaching, and from the Mozambican government by allowing it, as well as by speeding up land issues and getting tight on legislation, prosecution and corruption. Their plan is a good one, they say, the two governments just need to roll up their sleeves and get involved.

Next it’s Dr Mabunda’s turn. The SA government has a gun to it’s head, he tells the meeting. People from all over the world are furious about the rhino slaughter. They’re demanding action. A new border fence – instead of the further removal of the old one – has been mooted as a solution and a decision must be taken soon. But first prize, he concedes, would rather be an efficient cross-border buffer zone that can expand the area available for Kruger’s animals and solve the human conflict in a way that is more beneficial in all aspects, as has been thoroughly proved. However, for this to be an option the Mozambican side will have to commit itself speedily to a memorandum of understanding that will lead to actively addressing the current problems, he says.

For the private conservationists who have been fighting both poachers and bureaucracy his message is a welcome one. The Mozambican government delegation on the other hand, find themselves caught in the harsh beam of the searchlight. A Berlin wall will be a symbol of their lack of capacity, their ambassador to SA admits. Something better must be done.

When I leave the meeting it is with the hope that today may prove to have been a turning point in the rhino war. An estimated 60% plus of the slaughter in Kruger (that totalled 244 last year) springs from Mozambique through the area under discussion. Will the Mozambican government, despite the challenges it still faces on many fronts after a disastrous civil war, now rise to its duty?

comings and goings

26 January 2012

My normally lonely camp in the bundu has been a busy place lately.

The group of wise men who came to visit spiced things up with their conversation and general good company, but on Sunday it was time for them to go their various ways again, one of them as far as Tanzania. Some were flying out by helicopter, the others would go with the plane.

Early in the morning I went to drop off the pilot to pre-flight his plane (when Stef stepped out in his crisp white shirt and epaulettes the herd of impala on the airstrip bolted!). At the same time I collected the guards who’d been left overnight to stop elephant from toying with the aircraft. Then I shuttled the passengers, their gear was loaded and the props started turning. The plane soon followed the helicopter that had already banked away towards Maputo and, as the sound of spinning blades and engines faded into the distance, birdsong ruled the bush again.

Back at camp I packed the necessary and then set out east with the Nissan. The shipwrecked Cruiser and its crew were still camped on the bank of the Limpopo and had to be rescued.

They were really glad to see us when Man Friday and I finally arrived there. A strong rope was hitched and we started the slow, laborious tow of nearly 70km. It wasn’t easy. What passes for a road out of the Limpopo valley is really just a strip of alternating ruts, mud, washaways and sand, and the load I was pulling was a heavy one. Only eight km’s into the tow the Nissan’s heat guage started creeping up to the red. When I stopped, the radiator was already gurgling steam and there was a smell of burning coming off the clutch.

I couldn’t risk losing my only means of transport in this vast million hectares, so I had no choice but to abandon the effort. After waiting for things to cool down, I towed the Cruiser to a nearby rangers’ post where we left the vehicle and two guards. W and the other guy on his crew found seats in my vehicle and we returned to camp without further mishap.

I was also expecting artist Keith Joubert and his friends for a visit on Monday but by Sunday night I’d still had no news of the condition of the road they would have to use. The Canadian researchers who left camp last Wednesday had been turned back by the floods and departed again on Friday. They’d been spotted from the air where they were parked before the flooded Shingwedzi crossing but I’d had no word of their fortunes since. Had they managed to get through? Would Keith make it in?

I was disappointed when a message arrived to say he’d decided against risking it, but I quite understood. His overseas guests might miss their flights if the journey here turned out to be too much of an adventure.

On a more positive note: W’s misfortune with the Cruiser turned out to be a blessing for me. Stranded here for three days until help would come from the south, he and his righthand man kept themselves busy around camp. The broken spring mounting on my trailer was repaired, staff matters were dealt with and an inquest was held into the theft of my solar panels. It was quite a relief to be able to try and catch up with writing without having to concern myself with other issues.

Stolen solar panels – the chastised culprits

Then, yesterday, A arrived from the south to come and salvage the Cruiser and its crew. He’s an old salt of the bush, with a well-equipped truck and good savvy. His wife M loves it out in the sticks as well and goes everywhere with him. The road was usable, they reported. Two wet river crossings and some mud and washaways, but otherwise OK. After a quick bite to eat they all departed the other way to try and haul the Cruiser in with the steel towing bar A had brought along for the purpose. When they returned in the late afternoon, it was with the crippled vehicle in tow. Six days after it had left Massingir, 125km away, my supplies finally arrived in camp.

This morning all the visitors departed, leaving the drowned Cruiser behind. It would have been too difficult to tow, given the conditions of the road, and will somehow have to be fixed here.

Later in the day I too head south. There’s an important meeting in Maputo tomorrow that I must attend, even though it’s a long drive. I drive as far as Massingir and then decide to overnight there and get off to an early start tomorrow.

going after colonel kurtz

21 January 2012

Back at camp the assembled wise men are already waiting with their hiking boots on. An area further down the river caught their interest when they flew over it, now they want to go and see what natural secrets it holds.

We follow the river, flying low with red cliffs towering alongside. It’s a wild, wild feeling to travel so free through a valley so ruggedly beautiful and untouched by man.

How to recognise an experienced bush pilot.

Every turn of the snaking waterway reveals an ancient new postcard. Crocodiles splash under as we pass over them, leggy storks take to the wing, hippo stare at us and antelope of all sorts flit into the leafy shadows. From the flanks dark rock chutes add their contribution to the main stream, sometimes sending their waters tumbling down in bright, lively cascades. And inevitably, like sentinels on the banks, all along there are the majestic, pale yellow fever trees.

Inside the helicopter the intercom is unusually quiet. Only the muted whine of the jet turbine filters through the headsets. What else is there to say when the spirit is conversing directly with the soul?

Our landing on a sandbank along a section of the river lined with high forest is straight out of Apocalypse Now. The chopper drops us off and we set out into the forest in single file .

It’s another fantastic realm we enter here. Giant nyala berries and other trees have their roots deep in the fertile soil of an ancient alluvial terrace. Their canopies cast shade over thigh high buffalo grass and shrubs. We wade reverently through the green underworld, ducking past orb spiders patiently guarding their food nets, and pause often to observe the rich life of it all.

 Surely no man has set foot in this wild, pristine place before, I decide, except maybe Adam or Colonel Kurtz. Then we pick up a primitive, vulture-feathered arrow lost by some indigenous hunter. OK – maybe a few cannibals have been here as well. The forest has a strange effect on the wise men too. Every now and then one of them picks a leaf or a little seed and then they all start speaking Latin suddenly. It really is a magical place..

By late afternoon, when the chopper has ferried us all back to camp, there’s a sleek plane parked on my airstrip. The ground has dried off sufficiently and the pilot had done a few practice runs before slipping in over the tops of the mopanes and setting his machine down. Pencele Baloi Airport (which I named after the old man who once lived next to what is now the runway, and who lies buried under the floor of his hut) is in business!

search, but no party

21 January 2012

It’s a pleasant, cool morning on the Shingwedzi when day breaks. Still no sign of the missing Landcruiser and crew with the supplies, however. What could have happened to them? Most likely they arrived at the Limpopo too late to catch the ferrymen, and then had to camp on the far bank for the night. If that’s the case, they should arrive here by 10 a.m. If they don’t, we’ll mount a search, we decide.

Ten o’ clock comes and goes. At 10.30 four of us lift off in the chopper to search for them, starting with the road to Mapai.  We fly low, following the two wheelruts that snake through the trees below us, all eyes alert for a vehicle or a messenger on foot. On all sides the virgin bush of the almost flat plains of Mozambique stretches away to a hazy horizon. This is big, empty country; it looks almost hostile from the air.

Sixty km later we haven’t spotted even a vehicle spoor on the red, rainswept sand of the track. Animals yes, but nothing human other than the meandering trail and the rusty remnants of an old car wreck.

As we drop down into the valley of Kipling’s great grey-green, greasy Limpopo we pass over huts and cornfield shambas where goats, cattle and chickens scatter and children run to catch a better glimpse of the machine. Our shadow chases us across a rough floodplain, then there are the sands that line the great artery, four boats drawn up on the west bank and.. there! The Landcruiser!

The dragonfly sends up a sandstorm as it settles on the beach. The four guys below are happy to see us, but they’re somewhat shaken.

They’d reached the river at 6pm the previous evening and signalled across the 150m wide stream for the ferry to come and fetch them. Three men duly poled the pontoon across and assured them the load was no problem. Off they went, until, in the middle of the stream, the craft began to rock. It listed one way, then the other, and then suddenly capsized and dumped the whole lot in the river!

As it went over everyone leapt into the water, except the driver who was caught in the cab. Fortunately the river was only over a meter deep and the vehicle came to rest on its side, entangled in the railings of the upended boat.

Adrenaline overruled any fear of crocodiles for a while and there was a mad scramble to recover floating pillows, cooler boxes and the like, and to dive for all that had spilt and gone down. The current took its share, but somehow the guys managed to wade ashore with most of what had been lost. To add to their woes they then had to fend off some locals who started looting the pile!

In darkness by now, they set about extricating the truck. It meant having to saw through the metal railings underwater, but they somehow rolled the vehicle on its wheels again and, thanks to it being a diesel equipped with a snorkel, even drove it out!

Close to three in the morning, with wet clothes on their bodies, they finally curled up in the sand around a fire to get some rest.

Daylight revealed the full extent of the damage. GPS, iPod, two-way radio, cellphones, documents, even a R20 000 satellite phone: all had gone under, some of it for hours. The Cruiser’s left side was dinged from front to back, the headlight was full of water, personal gear was soaked, keys were lost. All the new linen for my camp, the table cloths, pillows, lamps, shelves and even toilet seats lay wet and muddy in a heap next to two drums of helicopter fuel and cases of sodden food.

At five the weary crew rose to complete their mission. They started the vehicle, moved it closer and set about loading the whole lot again. Then, when they were finally ready to roll, the engine wouldn’t start again. And so it remained: Dead.

Quite ironically, the ferry (seen in the background) had to be towed ashore by the Landcruiser it had been carrying!

It’s a tired and dejected lot we find on the hot sands of the Limpopo, but we can do little more than try to bolster their morale. Despite our efforts with the contents of the toolbox, the diesel pump of the big V8 just won’t deliver.                                                            Everything is taken off the truck again so that we can get to the drums to refuel the chopper, then we load some essentials, reassure the shipwrecked crew that help will be coming tomorrow, and fly back to camp.

after cyclone Dando

20 January 2012

Cyclone Dando may have spent its rage, but out here we’re still dealing with its aftermath. The only road to the south is still no-go.

A NASA image of subtropical depression Dando approaching the Mozambican coast. Note the thing's evil eye.

Yesterday a racey Piper Aerostar twin made a low overpass when it came to check out the route and the state of things, but my strip was still too wet for it to land. The expected guests will be choppered in today, an e-mail informs me.

The truck with supplies that should have preceded them left by road at four this morning, taking the long way round. It’s first heading east to Chokwe, then north to Mapai, then west to where it can cross the Limpopo by ferry and subsequently on to camp. It’s expected to arrive at about 7pm after a fifteen hour journey, whilst a crow would have had to fly only a hundred km to get here.

Shortly before ten a.m. I hear the chatter of rotor blades. A yellow chopper drops in over the river and settles squarely onto the H in a clearing next to camp. It drops two pax and a pile of bags, then hurries off to Massingir again. An hour later it’s back again and six more guys disembark as the blades wind down.

OK: Here I am with two pilots and the virtual who’s who of wilderness experts in my camp, and not much to offer them until that supply truck arrives. On it is food, bedding and a whole lot else that’s needed to host these folks in some semblance of hospitality. But they’re a good bunch, so we manage to hustle up something to eat from my rations in the meantime, before they go exploring. The rest of the day is taken up by aerial and 4×4 sorties until we all gather by the campfire at nightfall. The truck should be here any minute.

Later, when the jokes start turning into yawns, there’s still no sign or word of the truck, even though the driver has a satphone. My esteemed guests have to settle for yellowed, moth-eaten linen and jazzed-up mieliepap. To their credit, they don’t complain. Rather we’re all concerned about the candy van and its crew of four that’s unaccounted for. Where are they?