David Beresford Another Country
Some years ago I spent a night in London’s Savoy hotel, a hostelry of considerable style. On the bedside table there was a brass box on which three large buttons were marked “maid”, “valet” and “butler”. The bathroom was a marvel. The shower was like a tropical storm. One did not “run a bath”; it was more a case of summoning the waters which mysteriously welled up from the depths. The toilet was … well, a toilet. But the view! Standing in front of it I looked up and froze at the sight of St Paul’s cathedral so perfectly framed that it was almost profane, considering the position and purpose of the perspective.
But my favourite memory of that night’s stay was sitting in a dressing gown at a candle-lit table set in an alcove of the bedroom, pausing between mouthfuls of lobster thermidor to gaze awestruck out the window. From where I sat I could count five bridges spanning the Thames glittering below. I had little doubt that it was the most beautiful bend on the most beautiful river on the planet. Until last week.
I’m not sure where along the Zambezi the realisation dawned that this was in fact my heaven on Earth. Perhaps it was on the bend where our first camp was situated, when a monkey strolled nonchalantly in and seemed about to experiment with my deodorant, until my giggle of anticipation alerted him to the smooth-skinned beastie lurking in the bath and sent him streaking for the acacia trees outside.
Maybe it was on the launch further down the river when cameras were abandoned in helpless acknowledgement of the inadequacy of the finest optics to encompass the sight of more than 100 elephants swimming with playful snorts, quarrelling with snorted shrieks, duelling to the whispered hiss of ivory and making love with the silence of shared concentration in the long shadows of the setting sun.
Or maybe it was not on the river after all, but in another section of the Matetsi reserve, sitting under that giant Mopani tree, absent-mindedly watching the game making their way between the forest and the watering hole, half-listening to the conversation of chance acquaintances gathered around a teak table for supper.
My fellow travellers on that occasion included a young composer, a German doing a doctorate on airline alliances, a doctor studying to be a neurologist who was equally qualified for the pages of Vogue and an Oxford biologist taking a break from the wild dogs which are his life’s passion. The biologist had a particularly merry tale to tell, of how he had once found himself irritably chasing a lion through the bush, brandishing an axe, and the telling of it sent my mind drifting. The incongruity of the picture conjured up by the story man chases lion reminded me of the sight earlier in the day of the flaring pride of an old bull elephant crumbling into nervous retreat at the implacable advance of a Land Rover.
The reserve we were on the 55?000ha Matetsi Game Lodges, a few dozen miles up from the Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwean side of the Zambezi is being run as a trial. Situated on territory designated as safari land, but run by the Conservation Corporation Africa, it is an attempt to demonstrate to the Zimbabwean authorities the pecuniary and other advantages of “high yield, low impact” ecotourism against the earnings and costs of neighbouring hunt concessions.
The Matetsi trial is having some difficulties at the moment, with a dearth of bookings; last week less than a third of its lodges were full. The explanation appears self-evident: a combination of Robert Mugabe’s disregard for the rule of law, which many foreigners regard as fundamental to personal safety, and the inability of tourists to distinguish between countries in Africa, much less between dispossessed farmland and state-owned, foreign currency-earning nature reserves. The concept of an ecosystem really does need to be holistic, it seems, taking into account even unhinged heads of state.
Under the giant Mopani tree the biologist was telling of the efforts of a Japanese scientist to recreate the woolly mammoth from DNA samples.
“He’ll probably succeed in the end,” he chuckled. “Poor old bull elephant,” I chuckled to myself in turn, imagining the consternation if the lord of the jungle was to be confronted by a hairy, ancestral behemoth disputing his place at the water-hole.
Later, in my lodge a designer’s delight conjured out of wood, canvas, cotton, brass and artfully angled glass I lay on the bed under the cool caress of the quietly spinning roof fan, the cicadas sounding the heat of the African night, and my mind drifted to Genesis.
I’ve always enjoyed the myths and legends secured by religious traditions, hearing in them the verities contained in what we know today as magical realism.
There is such magic to be had in the blending of the story of Adam and Eve with paleontological evidence that mankind came out of Africa.
Whether sitting on the banks of the Zambezi, or under a Mopani tree it is easy to imagine early man, inspired by the sweet fruit to be found on the tree of knowledge, collectively setting out on the journey of discovery brandishing their weapons of chipped rock in answer to the fathomless terrors conjured up by night-time howls and squeals at the waterhole.
Now, metaphorically and collectively, we have returned from the journey, no longer afraid, but with an understanding which not only enables us to control the beasts of the wild, but which seemingly has brought us to the brink of the recreation and even the creation of species.
But why have we returned? Do we seek to rediscover the innocence of childhood? Or is it the time and place to build another Eden?