NOVEMBER MEMORIES

WELL I remember Guy Fawkes day as a child. We would dress up a doll in a pram supposed to be an effigy of Guy Fawkes and go to neighbor’s houses asking for “A Penny for the Guy!” and singing “Remember, Remember, the 5^th of November, Gunpowder treason and plot, We see no reason should ever been forgot” Of course the pennies went on sweets generally black and white striped bull’s eyes!

Guy Fawkes’s father died and his mother remarried a Catholic. Guy was converted to Catholicism. He went off to Spain to fight against the Protestant low countries where he was known as Guido. Returning to Britain he subsequently met Thomas Winter who introduced him to Robert Catesby dedicated to restoring Catholic James 1^st to the throne. Catesby found an undercroft beneath the House of Lords and enlisted Guy Fawkes to take care of the gunpowder needed. An anonymous letter prompted the authorities to search Westminster Palace where Guy Fawkes was arrested for treason and sentenced to be hung drawn and quartered. He jumped off the platform beneath the scaffold, fell and broke his neck. Each year Guardsmen search the Houses of Parliament looking for explosives, a ceremonial remembrance.

Here in South Africa the memory of Guy Fawkes is fading into obscurity although families light fireworks on designated areas only. Animals are usually frightened by the bangs and run away so that the SPCA is busy rescuing frightened dogs and other pets. When I was a girl and lived in Fish Hoek everyone went down to the beach and lit their own fireworks. Of course this was dangerous and eventually stopped.

Guy Fawkes coincides as it does with Diwali. Diwali is the Hindu festival of light celebrated over five days during the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika. The ceremony celebrates victory over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance. Our Indian communities light fireworks on designated areas.

November is a time when the fall of the Berlin wall is commemorated and of course Britain holds Remembrance Sunday to honour the fallen in both World Wars and other conflicts. Remembrance Sunday on the 11^th day of the 11^th month is always the second Sunday in November when armistice of the Second World War was signed in Potsdam in Occupied Germany by United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States and Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Soviet Union.

In March 2000 I was due to attend ITB, the largest tourist exhibition in the world in Berlin, Germany. I had worked out that the cheapest way to get to this city that I had never been to was to drive to Windhoek in Namibia and fly from there to Frankfurt where I would catch a train to Berlin. I was heavily loaded with the travel books that Susan and I produced, Discovering Botswana and Inside Zambia. I duly arrived at the airport in Windhoek only to be informed that Air Namibia’s solitary Boeing had flown to Beira in Mozambique where the Zambezi had burst its banks on the flood plain leading to its estuary to rescue stranded people and deliver food and medical requirements. I sat at the airport for over twelve hours so only departed the next day.

Arriving at Frankfurt airport I was unprepared for this huge airport with its myriad elevators to the various outlets and train stations. I struggled with my boxes of books balanced precariously on a trolley, onto an escalator and down to a station where a train to Berlin was expected an hour later. The train arrived, with the gap between it and the station an obstacle to be surmounted to load the boxes aboard. I looked around desperately for help. Spotting a group of Japanese tourists I gestured with my hands, pointing to the boxes and then pointing to the train. “AH, AH, SO!” The Japs replied and loaded my boxes on board with bows and exclamations. I thanked them sincerely and could only hope that they got the message!

I arrived in Berlin at midnight! It was minus 15 with snow everywhere. Fortunately I had kept the long ski jacket that I bought many years before for a ski trip to Austria and was warm enough. A porter came to help and got me a taxi who very kindly found me a reasonable B & B.

Next day I managed to catch the necessary train to take me to ITB, a huge building and another taxi to deliver me to the door. I walked and walked and walked until I found the Botswana exhibit, my new boots beginning to bite! By the time that week was over my feet were in agony but I was determined to spend the last two days when the show was over to see something of Berlin and together with some other exhibitors caught a tourist bus to Potsdam where the armistice was signed in 1945. I could not face my boots again so put on a pair of sandals with socks. We alighted into deep snow and the tour guide looked at me and enquired “Are these your African Shoes?” I said “Yes” The guide shook his head in disbelief! However after the tour I felt that I had visited a very historic site.

The following year Susan came with me and did not really believe me when I told her just how cold it was. She wore her grandmother’s Burbury overcoat and shivered! We stayed in the old part of the city called Mitte formerly part of Communist Berlin behind the Berlin Wall and were walking along a side road when I glanced to the side to see coats hanging from rails in a small alcove. From the look of the women who were selling these coats and their accents I deduced that they were Russians down on their luck. I took the lead and bought Susan a hip length silver fox fur coat for 35 euros! She ummed and ahed. “This is real fur! I can’t wear this.!” “Look around you, all the Berlin people are wearing fur, besides people at the show will think you are wearing fake fur and this animal was killed a long time ago!”

She was as warm as toast after that and we enjoyed our stay. We had found accommodation in a private flat on top of an eighteen story building. Our beds were on the floor and there was one armchair and a small table. We bought slabs of chocolate filled with liqueur and chomped them in bed with our books in the evenings. Susan is a smoker and had to go downstairs to stand outside the entrance in the snow to have a cigarette! We managed to find our way on the trains and found a lovely warm pub in Mitte that served everything with heaps of potatoes!

We would walk to Potsdamer Platz where the first breach of the Berlin Wall was on 11th November 1989 and at the Brandenburg Gate a month later. From here it was no distance to the Brandenburg Gate and we ventured inside the famous Adlon Hotel on Unter den Linden. This hotel was one of the best in Europe in its heyday but was largely destroyed in World War 2. A small portion of it operated until 1997 when it was restored. We also enjoyed walking to Charlottenburg Palace that was built in the 17^th century and expanded in the 18^th with beautiful gardens.

The next time I went to Berlin I was alone but my friend Tiaan Theron, a tour guide in Botswana and his German wife Sabina were there to visit her parents. They invited me to a Turkish restaurant with their Berlin friends. I was chatting to another Botswana friend when Tiaan asked me to refrain from talking about my varied travels. He explained that their friends had never left Berlin. I could not believe it! However one of them told me to go to the Museum that was situated in a shopping centre. I did and there was the story of Berlin from the time it was a group of small huts on the river.

I was fascinated because it encompassed the growth of the city and the country and eventually the Nazi regime and the basis of Hitler’s creed if you like to call it that based on his book Mein Kampf that chronicled his belief in anti-semitism. I was gobsmacked because I realized that Robert Mugabe the President of Zimbabwe had based his regime on the same creed. Mugabe died recently after completely destroying his country by looting, becoming an absolute dictator and causing so many Zimbabweans to flee to Botswana and South Africa. Today in South Africa we have the EFF the third largest opposition party whose leader Julius Malema was a great fan of Mugabe and whose policies in my opinion mirror that of the Nazi’s of yesteryear.

Now to Remembrance Sunday. Susan and I had attended it in London on a couple of occasions but the one that sticks in my mind is the time we went just after the dreadful attack on the World Trade Centre in New York by terrorists on September 9^th 1963. I had been staying at my son Mick’s house in Hout Bay and arrived to find his maid ironing with one eye on the television. I saw these aircraft approaching a tall building and gasped.” Something dreadful is about to happen!”

Here we were in London in November staying with our friends Andrew and Leane who lived in London and were adamant that we should not attend as a terrorist attack was expected. Susan and I decided that terrorists or no terrorists we were going to attend. I had my trusty ski jacket on and as we came up the steps of the underground I was stopped as I walked under the metal detector frame. The policewoman searched me politely but thoroughly and eventually decided that I had some oil on my coat but harboured no firearm or bomb!

We stood behind a group of young men in Burbury coats who were drinking from hip flasks as they cheered the elderly service men and women, some of whom were in wheel chairs marching by, all having served their country in some conflict across the globe. The young men heard Susan and I chatting and turned round. “The Boers are here!”. We all laughed as they were referring to the Boer War in South Africa in 1888 to 1902 when Britain and South Africa were at war because the Boers had rebelled against the English. Local farmers were called Boers and the British at the time under Lord Kitchener destroyed their farms and put their women into concentration camps so cutting their line of supplies. The Boers were renowned marksmen and moved around the country on horseback. Some Afrikaners of today still hate the English!

Looking across the road we could see the snipers on the roofs watching for terrorists. The Queen arrived and walked entirely alone to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in memory of those service men and women. A minute of silence ensued and not a pin could be heard dropping or a child coughing. Her Majesty was completely exposed to the danger of terrorists except for the thorough security of the intelligence and Police Force. Having laid the wreath as the minute of silence ended the crowd rang with the anthem “God Save Our Queen!”

The Union of  South Africa came into being on 31^st May 1910 eight years after signing the Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the 2^nd Boer War on the unification of the Cape Colony, the Natal Colony, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony.  Subsequently the country was granted independence in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster.

I was born in 1939 and still remember going to the ‘bioscope’ in Plein Street in Cape Town. We had to stand to the playing of God save the King before the film. Entrance was sixpence and entitled you to a red or green cooldrink. I remember seeing Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in Naughty Marietta and Bobby Breen with his incredible soprano singing Somewhere over the Rainbow! Years later when we moved to Fish Hoek I had a friend called Maureen who had a lovely voice. We would walk the dunes around Peers Cave that often had a vlei at the base. One day Maureen stood on one dune and I on the other while she sang the same song, her voice carrying across the vlei between us. (A vlei is a stretch of shallow water.) Magic!

I still have a picture of Her Majesty the Queen on my fridge. One year we were in Mozambique at Jangamo Bay when the Royal Wedding of William and Kate was on. I was watching it on the television in a local bar. Mick came up dripping wet from the waves and shook his head at me. “You and your Royals!” I smiled back at him. “You don’t realize that they were part of my growing up!”

Well I remember the day H.M.S Vanguard arrived with their Majesties, King George and Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses. My father had promised to take me to see the destroyer that had served in the war enter Duncan Docks. The day was very hot and his favourite prize pig fainted so I had to listen to the radio while we poured buckets of water over the sow! However my mother’s cousin’s husband was a chauffer for the Government Garage and drove the Royal Family and General Smuts around the city. He told how Princess Margaret was a great mimic and would ‘take off’ the various dignitaries including General Smuts.

Princess Margaret

When the Royal Family were to move upcountry they travelled in the White Train, its coaches pure white pulled by a great steam engine. I was coming home from school, about 7 years old and had to catch a train at Observatory, change at Salt River and catch another to Kuilsriver. My train stopped at Bellville, was shunted out of the way, the passengers all detrained at the station where we waited for the White train to come through. The wait was long and I got very hungry. The friendly stationmaster bought me a mincemeat pie with sticky filling that looked like dead flies but I ate it happily. The White Train duly appeared and I had a good view of the Royal Family through the windows.

I arrived at Kuilsriver station very late with my mother frantic with worry. I had to walk home, some three miles and was further delayed by a flock of sheep being driven to the nearby abattoirs. A Mrs. Brindle lived near our small farm and drove up the gravel road each day like some racing driver. I was slogging along slowly behind the flock when she came through, sheep scattering in all directions with the shepherd jumping to the side in fright while I cowered in the ditch at the side emerging with my uniform filthy! My mother was not amused!

When I lived in Maun for a couple of years my grandsons then grown up would play pool with the Princes who loved Botswana and the Delta where the British Special Forces did exercises with the Botswana Defence Force each year. The Princes were like most youngsters and they enjoyed partying as most young people can in Maun with their bodyguards well in the background. The tale goes that William went home in the early hours with a mate and slept on the sofa. In the morning the father kicked him off the sofa, saying “Who the hell do you think you are, sleeping on my sofa!” quite unaware of who the errant young man was, only the future King of England!

On that I will end this blog and take it to TJ on this very hot Sunday where his son Greg will be prevailed upon to give young Jack, my dachshund a bath as the old back does not like bending down any more!

OF LOST THINGS AND THINGS . . .

These days I am always losing my car keys and wander around like a lost soul until the redoubtable Thomas appears and finds them, firmly placing them were I can see them. Thomas is one of the gardeners here but has a heavy load on his shoulders. His brother was killed and it is Thomas’s responsibility to care for that family as well as his own so he does odd jobs after hours.

As a young student nurse I lost my glasses. I was nursing at Groote Schuur, the famous hospital in Cape Town where Chris Barnard pioneered the first heart transplant. In my ward was a veteran of the second world war his body still riddled with shrapnel that had to be removed piece by piece. He was an ardent Catholic and told me he would ask Saint Anthony to find the glasses and that I should pray to the saint too. Sure enough when I went down to Clifton beach in my off time the next day a kindly beach attendant produced them like a rabbit out of his pocket! Saint Anthony had heard my prayers!

I am always losing my way especially in Pretoria! Susan and children and I were on our way back from pastures far when we got lost there but were cheered up by little Ryan spotting a whole wall of advertising for Tassies, a red student wine that is a favourite of mine and can be found in the remotest corners of Southern Africa! It still amazes me how that and Coca Cola are delivered into the most out of the way places over the most appalling roads!

My family still laugh about the time when I had them driving round and round on our way to Mozambique looking for a guest house that I always stayed in but had forgotten that was on the way to Botswana!

One thing I do have though is a penchant for finding lost souls especially at Christmas time. One year at Mozambique I met Graham and his lady Cheryl at the bar in Turtle Cove. They were camping, family in far off places, knowing nobody. I invited them to join us for Christmas lunch. On Christmas morning Graham was the first on the beach to see the local fishermen take to the sea in their tiny rowing boats. They fish for marlin and sailfish and swordfish. For marlin they have another boat following them in case of capsizing. None of them can swim. This morning the catch was swordfish and Graham bought a kilo and surprised the rest of us with fresh shichimi for starters! I must say it took a lot of 2M beer to do the thing but it was divine! Graham and Cheryl are still friends albeit that they stay in the UK now.

Another Christmas also in Mozambique we asked a young woman who was teaching yoga at Nic and Nelia’s lovely yoga centre at Turtle Cove. Agni travelled the world teaching yoga and the marvelous dances she did with a hulahoop. She made me a small dream catcher that still hangs on my patio. Lets hope it is catching and holding a couple of dreams I still have!

It is not surprising then that when I came across the tale of the Lost City of  the Kalahari while delving into the archives of the South African library in Cape Town that I was instantly captured by the story that begins in 1885 when G.A. Forini, a wealthy American, set up an expedition into the Kalahari as it was then called. Now its name is the Kgaligadi.

Farini took as his tracker an old man, Gert Louw, of Bushman extraction whose tales of ‘a hunter’s paradise’ lured Farini and amongst whose things Farini found diamonds.

Farini was not lured by the prospect of wealth; the spirit of adventure burned brightly within him. He also took his son ‘Lulu’ with him. Lulu was a portrait painter and photographer, a young man of courage. This was a time when photographers from all over the world were descending on the City of Gold, Johannesburg and Kimberly and the big hole.

After arriving in Cape Town they set off on the mail express bound for Kimberley. I think that must have been a Cape Cart.  On the fifth day of their journey they were near Rietfontein accompanied by the Little People who knew the area well.

Farini was interested in sand and stone and all living things. He was not the type of person to falsify reports of things that he had seen. Their next camp was Tunobis on a plateau around 3,460 feet above sea level and nearly 10 feet higher that when Galtona was there so that Farini deduced that Lake Ngami was getting gradually shallower.

Another three days and they were at the Ki Ki mountains and then pushed on to the K’gung forest where they camped under large trees. They shot a giraffe and the next morning lions were feeding on the kill when Lulu arrived in the wagon.

Lulu left the wagon and ran through the grass with his camera on his back to take a shot of the lions feeding. He calmly focused the camera and took the shot then Farini and Lulu and his companion opened fire on the lions.

The lions charged in the direction the bullets were coming from and Lulu dropped his gun, got back under the black cloth of his camera and focused on the charging lions! He took one picture and, when a big male charged the camera he charged the lion with his tripod. This proved too much for the lion and the animal retreated!

Their supplies were dwindling and Farini resolved to go to Upington to replenish them. Travelling south they camped near Ki Ki mountain beside a long line of stone that looked like the wall of China after an earthquake but which proved to be the ruins of quite an extensive structure, in some places buried beneath the sand, but in others in full view.

They traced the remains for nearly a mile. The general outline was in the form of an arc, inside of which lay at intervals of about forty feet apart, a series of heaps of masonry in the shape of an oval or an obtuse ellipse, about a foot and a half deep, with a flat bottom, but hollowed out at the sides for about one foot from the edge.

Farini got his men to excavate with shovels and the joints of the stones were perfect. He thought this must have been a city or a place of worship. The following day they continued with the excavations and came upon a pavement about twenty feet long intersected with another to make a Maltese cross in the centre of which must have stood an altar.

When he returned Farini wrote the book ‘Lost City of the Kalahari’ that contained a map of his journey but the many others that followed could find no trace of the lost city and he was discredited.

As late as 1959 a Dr. Haldeman regularly took his family on an expedition during the July school holidays having read Farini’s accounts, looking for the lost city. “We went to places nobody had been before, shooting game for the pot. My son Scott, 16 shot his first buck, Lynne 14, helped her mother with the camp cooking, May and Kaye 11 years had to do the washing up while Lee, 4 was the camp mascot.

On one trip they wanted to reach Khakami, and Mapare, the chief of all the Mkalaharis recognized his father’s picture in Farini’s book. He agreed to go with them. They eventually came to Bohelo Batu meaning ‘the people who died’. Those that had reached the pan to find it dry had died.

On their journey they passed Manung pan and later Lekubu a few miles from Khakami pan. This country fitted Farini’s description of the location of the Lost City but they did not find it.

At Khanzi they showed the picture of the Lost City and asked if anyone had seen it but the answer was no. That night there were two leopard in their camp and they heard that a leopard had come into a hut in Kang and killed two children and that a boy, sleeping by the fire had been killed by a lion.

They planned their next expedition with Martinus Drotsky who discovered the Drostky Caves along the Western delta of Botswana to be their companion. Charlie Swart had reported seeing a fabulous ruin of white stones in 1905. A half mile long wall with pillar posts at a single entrance, enclosed a half moon circle of buildings and graves. He rode out from a border beacon for about sixteen miles to see it but the beacons were now non-existent.

There were many stories about this and Martinus Drotsky had heard that there were seven Bushmen tribes with seven ancient villages in the form of a star with a big secret and sacred place in the middle of them, which could be the Lost City.

Martinus was 73 at the time and in his youth he could run down a steenbok (small agile antelope) within thirty miles and kill it by hand. He could crawl down a porcupine hole and kill it just as the bushmen did. He would crawl in naked with a four foot pointed stick, then make a mound of sand between him and the porcupine to prevent the porcupine making a pincushion out of him. He would then kill the porcupine with the stick and pull it out and have food for a week!

He is rumoured to have once ran 125 miles through the sand and brush in twenty five hours without taking food or water!

In the area of this search they were visited every night by friendly Bushmen who told them that all the Bushmen knew where the ruins were but were too afraid to tell them. One said “The stones were cemented together with better cement than we have today.” One man took them to his father, who had seen the ruins, but the old man also refused to tell. Their search took them on through the Aha mountains past Kai Kai to the Drotsky caves.

The Haldemans returned again and again as did others too, to no avail. Lawrence Green in To the River’s Edge quotes a letter he received in 1936 from Mr. Paver saying “When you see the country you realize that one can spend months searching the sand dunes without covering a fraction of the area in which the Lost City may be situated.”

Lawrence met Dr. Borcherds in Upington who told him that he had recently met farmers who had been poaching game in Botswana and found the Lost City and their description tallied exactly with Farini’s in his book.

Dr. Borcherds told them that a policeman patrolling on a camel had come across an ancient stone quarry in the desert. Deep in the sand the sergeant discovered the remains of what looked like a boat some fourteen foot in length. This did not surprise Dr. Borcherds as it was believed that the rivers once came south from Lake Ngami to join the Orange River.

No doubt the dunes will one day give up their secret to a modern day adventurer. My friend Tiaan Theron rang me one day very excited that Lake Ngami was flowing south and we set off for a picnic immediately. Hundreds of water birds were wading in the shallows as the water came pouring onto the pan. It is a long while ago and I don’t know if since the waters have once more retreated. I do know that the Savuti Channel that was dry for many years suddenly had water one year with no explanation, this is possibly due to the plate deep beneath the Botswana earth that shifts every now and then altering the landscape above.

The area in question runs along the border of Namibia northwards to the Western Delta and the  distances involved are vast so who knows, one day the red desert sands may shift again to reveal the mystery that has captured our imaginations for so long.

 

A TOWN CALLED ZUMBO

My daughter and I own a place in Tofo, Mozambique and during the recent bad weather the thatch blew off the roof. Now our roof could be likened that of an early wooden cathedral, it is so high and to replace the thatch is no easy matter. So my thoughts have been in Mozambique which led to remembering a trip I had to the confluence of the Zambezi and the Luangwa rivers. Here it is that Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique meet. This little corner of our continent has a fascinating history to.

I stayed at Bridge Camp situated just off the Great East Road in Zambia. This was a good few years ago so I don’t know if the camp is still there. I had read a bit about this area so drove down to the town of Luangwa that in fact was originally called Fiera.

There is mention of a settlement called Zumbo in the Fiera district in 1546 that was abandoned in 1600. This was a Jesuit station about two and a half miles up the Zambezi from Fiera on the south bank. On modern maps Zumbo and Tete are about 220 miles apart. The Portuguese arrived here in 1546 and traded in gold ivory and copper as did a small party of Portuguese from Goa, India in 1720 that established a settlement on the small island of Chitakatira in the Zambezi. Francisco Pererir was the leader and earned his sobriquet of “The Terror” but kept the small community together. Eventually they outgrew the island and moved to Zumbo on the left bank of the Luangwa River.

Two different settlements existed at Zumbo and Fiera. In 1726 Father Pedro do Santissima Tridade, a Dominican priest, was installed as the vicar of Zumbo. During the thirty years that he stayed there he acquired the status of a cultural hero among the local population. According to legend he came from Sofala, itself the stuff of legends one being that it was called the city of gold and the Arabs used it as a port from which they travelled to the interior to buy gold, ivory and slaves. Sofala lies South of Beira but has a large sandbank in the entrance so that Beira was built to the north using much of the stone of the old Sofala buildings for its streets.

Father Pedro became famous for his piety and his medicines were still remembered over a hundred years later when David Livingstone passed this way on his trans-Africa journey. Livingstone’s diary of 29^th March 1856 reads “Oil of Father Pedros. Received the recipe for curing wounds from Mr. Candido and he calls it Oleo of Frei Pedros.”

From 1730 the main route for ivory trade, slaves, gold, copper and malachite from the north between the Kafue basin in Zambia and the Lunda and Biso country in Mozambique must have been down the Luangwa River to Zumbo and Feira. Glass beads that have been found on the Iron Age sites are likely to have been imports at this time. In the following years Chiefs by the name of Mburuma succeeded one another and one of the chiefs enlisted the aid of Chief Mpuka during an attack. As a reward he granted land along the west bank to Chief Mpuka who had been married to a Portuguese woman, who was killed in the fighting. The people of Chief Mpuka live there to this day.

One can still see the remains of the slave pits where slaves were kept in readiness for transportation onwards. One of the local chiefs, Kanyembo, had ambitions of creating a super race for he would measure his young men against a tree of about 6 ft. If they failed to grow to this height he would sell them to the slavers.

I sat on the opposite bank, in Zimbabwe, on the crumbling walls of the slave pits, tears in my eyes and goose bumps on my arms for the suffering of those who lost their freedom here.

There is a memorial at Fiera that reads as follows:

 FIERA

These are records of a 16^th century Portuguese settlement here abandoned in 1600. In the early 18^th century Portuguese colonialists arrived at Chitakatira Island moving soon afterwards to Zumbo with a subsidiary trading centre (Fiera) here. From 1730 to 1760 both settlements prospered greatly.

In 1745 a church and a convent were built here by Father Pedro Da S Trindade, a Dominican and vicar of Zumbo for 30 years. In 1804 Chief Mburuma 1V of the Senga destroyed Zumbo.

The merchants moved to Fiera but Zumbo was soon reoccupied to be destroyed again. In 1818 both settlements were again rebuilt but from 1826 trade gradually declined until shortly after 1830 when both settlements were abandoned.

In 1856 David Livingstone visited and saw the broken bell of the Mission. In 1887 John Harrison Clark (Changa Changa) set up his headquarters here maintaining law and order in the district.

The Chartered Company built their first boma here in 1902 and the township became an important staging post on the cattle route from Tanganyika to Southern Rhodesia. Its importance declined with the building of the railway.

BWANA CHANGA CHANGA

John Harrison Clark

A strange tale indeed. Rumour has it that John Harrison Clark, called Bwana Chang Changa, hailed from the Eastern Province. He was in love with a local girl who was promised to another. The two rivals fought and John shot his rival. Thinking he was dead John fled and wandered north where he landed up at Fiera. He arrived when the local Chief had died with no suitable replacement available. The tribe made John their Chief and called him Changa Changa. He married several of the local ladies and had many offspring. He trained the Senga tribes young men into an army to ward off slave traders while he indeed traded in ivory. He ruled here for some years until visited one day by one of Cecil Rhodes’s young men, Neville Pickering I believe. He was offered land if he would leave the tribe so that Rhodes’s men could develop the area. There is another story about his dealings with the British South African Company but my version is what I dug up in the Archive library in Cape Town.

John headed south and landed up at a mine that was then called Broken Hill now known as Kabwe. Here he became storemaster and ever since the mine storemaster is called Bwana Changa Changa (Bwana meaning Boss). He made history in becoming the owner of the first motor car in Zambia.

I love coming across these forgotten corners of our continent and ferreting out the history. When in Cape Town I visit the South African library and burrow into the old tomes, discovering many tales that Google does not have. The staff there are so helpful and recognize me when I appear every  year or  so. Then I head for the delightful restaurant in the Gardens started so long ago by the Dutch East India company to victual its ships seeking the sea route to the east, with centuries old trees around  me and a glass of wine to hand.

OF AN APRON AND LAKE BANGWEULU

I can’t remember how it was that my great friend Diz and I departed from Lusaka in search of Shoebills, bats and Lake Bangweulu, however we did. Lake Bangweulu is situated in North East Zambia and that is divided by what they call a pedicle that belongs to the DRC.

With the unsettlement there we had to go south before turning north and travel back up the other side of the pedicle. Diz and I have quite a history. It almost prompts me to say Once Upon a Time!

I was living in Atlantis – no not the Atlantis – but a crazy idea by the then Nationalist Apartheid Government to create an industrial and residential site for the coloured population of the Cape well away from Cape Town. It never really worked and still does not. However it was there on our doorstep. We technically lived in Philadelphia (not the one in the States) the actual village of which was quite a way away.

I was on the edge of very real poverty and had some copies of July Fever my novel that was first published in Durban in 1980 to wonderful reviews by the newspaper critics at that time. Flat broke I had the idea of selling copies. I called on this woman that I had heard about that prepared thoroughbred yearlings for the racing stable of a leading owner.

I arrived to find Diz, a large woman, trying to teach a very confused yearling how to go around the lunch ring in a circle without cutting corners, trotting on command, stopping on command. The yearling was not co-operating and Diz who I later discovered was an ardent Christian was swearing like a navy when the yearling did not understand and would then apologize to the Lord above and swear never to swear again until the yearling became yet again confused!

Seeing me she gave up the task and we retired to her little black wooden cottage. I explained what I had to sell and Diz took the monumental decision to buy the book instead of a packet of cigarettes! The only cash she had at the time. Our meeting forged a friendship that took us on many an adventure during which I learnt something of Diz’s life.

Diz was living on the copperbelt in Zambia when the country gained its independence. Her two daughters were still young and she deemed it better for them to move to South Africa. Diz had always been a horse lover and while in Ndola took part in the local show jumping circuit, her eldest daughter Sue doing well in the sport. Arriving in South Africa and settling on a small holding in Philadelphia she progressed to schooling thoroughbred yearling horses for their entrance into the racing stables.

This trip was embarked upon when Diz had returned to Zambia and was living in Kitwe. I was in the country compiling my guide to the country called Inside Zambia and had driven up to visit her.  Diz was keen to go exploring and we took the Great North Road to the Chinese highway and across the large bridge spanning the Luapula River.

We stopped and bought chitenges; lengths of cotton cloth that the women use for skirts or to carry babies on their side like slings at the little shops surrounding the bridge. We could see people walking through the river apparently unafraid of crocodiles. The guard at the bridge told me that the crocs there did not attack here only further north.

The local people of the Luapula region refer to the grinding grooves to be found here as footprints of men who lived here when the rocks were still soft. The first reference was made by David Livingstone in 1874 who recorded that the people of the north shore of Lake Bangweulu identified them as footsteps of God but had no knowledge of their origin.

The best site of these grooves is in Kasamba stream at Kasoma Bangweulu village on the Lake 2 km south of Samfya. The site is a National Monument.

Onward ever onward in all some 260 kilometers and we left the highway turning onto a sandy track with cassava fields and mango trees. Finally we spotted a sign offering accommodation and although this lodge that I had heard about in Livingstone had not yet opened we were made welcome and settled into our little chalet.

So there we were on the shores of Lake Bangweulu! We sat beneath a thatched shelter and watched a lake steamer on its way to the islands when the nodding black heads of bathers in the shallow waters caught our eyes.

Like some distant dream a bevy of beautiful nymphs emerged from the azure lake and made their way to us, sporting only brief panties. They danced for us before dropping down to lie on their tummies giggling and chatting. A couple of them went off to get their craft ware and I bought the embroidered apron that you can see below.

We were reluctant to begin the return journey but wanted to visit the village where David Livingstone died some 10 kms from Kasanka National Park and 65 kms from the Great North Road.

We stopped at Kasanka first, famous for the hoards of large fruit bats that fly in each November and December. Nobody knows from whence they come. They arrive in their thousands at the start of the rainy season and their weight as they perch on the branches of the trees causes the branches to break! As the sun begins to set they take to the air and block out the sunset, such are their numbers! We were too early in the year but Susan and I and Shaun saw them a few years later.

The next day we set off to find the village where David Livingstone died. The turnoff was 10 kms north so we had to backtrack but found the track although at a fork we took the wrong turn and arrived at the Chief’s palace that was a brightly painted house. Backtrack again and we were on the right track. Some 25 kms further passing villagers about their day to day business of pounding maize in huge pestles in front of their gaily painted houses.

We arrived at Chipundu School where there was a signpost and we parked the vehicle. An old gentleman approached us to guide us to the monument that was no more than a dozen yards away.

This old man told us that his great great grandfather remembered Livingstone and in fact his heart is not buried beneath the monument but slightly apart where a mupundu tree used to stand and is marked by a simple cross.

The heart was buried here in 1873 by his loyal bearers Susi and Chuma who salted and dried his body and carried it over 1000 miles across incredible terrain through Tanzania to Bagamoyo from whence it was shipped to Zanzibar and then to England where it was buried in Westminster Abbey with full military honours on 18^th April 1874.

The tree, feared to be diseased was cut down and transported to the Royal Geographical Society in London. There is however a cross in the Anglican Cathedral in Zanzibar that is said to have been made from the tree. I visited Zanzibar and saw the cross but there is no certainty about that legend.

What a wonderful trip with history every mile of the way!

 

A Miserable weekend on the West Coast

Sitting at my laptop on this miserable weekend in Jozie I am reminded of one such weekend when living in Langebaan on the West Coast of South Africa a good few years ago.

My sister Veronica and I set out on a blustery miserable spring weekend to see the flowers of the West Coast. The West Coast is renowned for its floral splendour in the spring when the winter rain has been good. Oh we hummed and ha-heed but in the end the picnic basket was packed and we were off, taking the coastal road to Elandsbaai or Elands Bay. (The Eland is the largest antelope in Africa and Baai is the Afrikaans name for Bay.)

Grey clouds accompanied us along wet roads with every flower hiding its light under a bushel. However we were intrepid in our search for a pleasant spot to drink a glass or two and eat our picnic and parked near the harbour at Elandsbaai awed by the fury of the waves crashing against the rocks.

Imagine our delight when a seal caught a wave, and, landing safely, promptly fell into his afternoon slumber. Just then a Kombi pulled up next to us and we became acquainted with our neighbour who owned Muisbosskerm, the outdoor eating restaurant on the beach near Lamberts Bay. We pointed the seal out to him and in no time we were into a heated discussion on the pros and cons of shooting seals for their supposed decimation of fish stocks.

Veronica and I took the stance that they had their place in the eco-system and nobody could say without any doubt that they were responsible for the demise of the fish stocks as there were a lot of factors involved. Our neighbour disagreed and a lively discussion ensued washed down with another glass of wine and friendly farewells.

We then made our way to the Elandsbaai Hotel where we were expected and made ourselves comfortable on the table and chairs outside braving the weak sunshine. These South African country hotels are few and far between but such good value where you can always find co-travelers to swap a tale or two with.

Later a walk on the beach found us chatting to some surfers in wet suits in pursuit of the right hand break that Elandsbaai is famous for. The cold Benguela current that hugs the West Coast does not deter these keen surfers.

Wandering back to the hotel we were told that there was just 10 minutes before their famous seafood platter was put before us. It was a feast to be remembered with the crumbed crayfish the star! We stayed the night listening to the sound of the crashing waves beneath cozy duvets.

Next morning we wandered out to the Sonskyn Kafee (Sunshine café) waiting for the sun to come out and tempt the flowers to open. Here we found a magnificent military type jacket bedecked with medals swinging from one of the beams. Mevrou, the owner, told us that it was her husband’s uniform when he was in the Eastonian Air Force. She had a book exchange and we picked up some reading matter.

Rounding the corner we came upon an old gentleman and his Jack Russel dog. He leant on his spade and regaled us with his grievances against the government taking his taxes whilst he had to clear the pavement of weeds himself!

Onwards on the coast road the flowers began to peep out. A woolly sheep gave us a thoughtful stare as her hoofs stood deep in the magical purple carpet of blooms.

Through Lamberts Bay where we could see the Cape Gannets in their white plumage with yellow heads and black marked beaks taking off and landing from the island. We drove past Graafwater (meaning water from a spade) with the sky clearing affording a magnificent view of the dam at Clanwilliam as we crested the last hill into the bustling town where stalls were everywhere and the info desk busy pointing out the vest viewing sites on the map.

After tea and lemon meringue pie in the gardens that were now at their magnificent best in orange, crimson, magenta and white we meandered off along the dam’s western shore stopping every now and then to gasp again at the pallet of colours nature had in her paint box.

We stopped at Citrusdal with the scent of orange blossoms in the hot still air where we bought fresh dates especially for Jamie Oliver’s sticky toffee pudding and a new cultivar of orange/naartjie (mandarin) that we were persuaded to try as it peeled easily, finding it delicious enough to buy a bagful.

As we rounded the corner on the Piketberg/Veldrif road the rain swept down again but we had enjoyed a marvelous two days that had paid off our eternal optimism, the unexpected highlight being the friendliness of the West Coast locals and the characters that we had met.

 

My new Book, Bring Me a Dream, will soon be available on KINDLE and AMAZON …

THE BLUE EYED RANGER

THIS safari was only a part of a marathon one. Still without a 4×4 we had hired a brand new Volkswagen Kombi from the Avis Car Hire lady in Upington. Our plan was to go to the Namib Naukluft Park and Etosha National Park.  This chapter is about the second part of our journey as Jacques was reminiscing about this part of the trip whilst in Joburg for a business and a family lunch last Sunday.

From the Naukluft we drove to Swakopmund where we found accommodation in little A framed corrugated iron rooms used by fishermen. the Red Kombi was by this time a nightmare inside. I had been teaching the children some German phrases as Namibia was originally a German colony. So I prefaced the nouns by “und”. Young Shaun got out of the Kombi, put his hands on his hips while surveying the chaos within and pronounced “Und Mess!”

Our aim was the Etosha but we were ahead of schedule and wandered up the coast to Sesfontein keen to see the castle there. Once our tent was up Susan succumbed to a migraine and the children and I went off to see the castle where we met the German incumbent. He convinced us that we should go north to Eupopa Falls to see the Himba people. “A Volkswagen beetle went there not long ago!’

He also told us of a secluded spring nearby and so the children and I went back to Susan, pulled down the tent and embarked on a search for the spring. We found it and were the only ones there. How refreshing the clear water was; the kids were in like a flash. Then we told Susan of the German’s suggestion. Full of enthusiasm we departed two days later.

Throughout our journey other travelers, mainly large men with equally large vehicles had stared at the amazing sight of two women and four children aged between 10 and 3 all on our own in this wilderness. Jacque said he could still recollect those stares!

Around the fire one evening we were telling stories, making them up as we went along and the children came up with a story of me (single) meeting a handsome blue eyed game ranger and riding off into the sunset with him.

Now the Kombi was only a two by four and the road was rough. We battled on until we came across a dry riverbed. Unfortunately a little mistake in judgement landed the Kombi on a rock. The children and I left the vehicle and sat on the side while Susan contemplated what could be done!.

The drone of a lorry could be hear approaching. Help was near! The lorry braked abruptly and a handsome blue eyed game ranger alighted spitting with fury. “You ……stupid women! How the hell could you attempt this road!” I bristled. The German told us other people had done it and we believed him!”

He strode furiously to his vehicle, hauled out a towing rope whilst swearing fluently. “That so and so German! I will have his guts and you should have known better! Two women and four kids in this situation! I can’t believe it!”

He drove the lorry into the river and reversed it back to the Kombi. Attached the rope. Pulled our vehicle out of the river. He jumped out and shouted at Susan. “And now I am going to turn you around and tow you back through the river!

Susan was aghast. “But we only have to go over that hill to be in Eupopa!” Blue eyes was adamant. “This is my patch and you are going no further!” With that he got into the Kombi, turned it around, reattached the rope and pulled us through the river bed. His lorry roared back and over the hill.

Two tired women and four children gathered around the campfire, two gin and tonics and a couple of vodkas later we were laughing hysterically and a group of large men with their four by four were throwing very odd looks at us!