between the sunlight and the thunder Copyright (c) 1996 by Mike Resnick. All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted without the express permission of the author. Like all my safari diaries, this one appeared originally in the Hugo-winning fanzine Lan's Lantern. by Mike Resnick August 28, 1990: Between the bright sunlight of East Africa's safari countries, and the ominous thunder coming out of the Republic of South Africa, there exist four nations: Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, and Botswana. We had originally hoped to visit all four on this extended safari, but Mozambique is in the throes of a brutal civil war, so we confined ourselves to the other three countries, where I would be researching Purgatory and Ophir, a pair of novels I'll be writing in the next couple of years, and hopefully coming up with some more ideas. This was a unique safari for us, in that we did not arrange to go with a single guide, as we always do in Kenya, nor did we care to join a package tour. Instead, we made a list of all the locations we wanted to see in all three countries, then hunted up a travel agency (we found it, finally, in York, England) that was able to arrange our itinerary. The first step, as always, was the 8-hour flight to London, during which time I did my best not to feel bitter over losing the Hugo after leading for the first five ballots. I didn't quite pull it off. August 29, 1990: We landed at Gatwick at seven in the morning, took a bus to Heathrow after clearing customs, and waited around the airport for almost 12 hours for our 10-hour flight to Zimbabwe to take off. I love Africa; it's the process of getting there that I hate. August 30, 1990: We landed in Harare (formerly Salisbury), the capital of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), and dragged our exhausted (formerly energetic) bodies to Meikles Hotel, a large, luxury hotel in the city center right across from Cecil Square. While Carol took a nap, I went out walking, and found that there is an enormous difference between Harare and its Kenyan counterpart, Nairobi. One gets the feeling that if the tourist industry vanished, 98% of the people you see in Nairobi would find themselves out of work; whereas if it vanished from Harare, no one would know the difference. Which is a roundabout way of saying that Harare is a working city, with very little to interest the casual tourist. In fact, we soon came to realize that Zimbabwe is a working country. President Robert Mugabe continually gives lip service to communism, but it's a capitalist country from top to bottom...and unlike most African countries, it works. The roads are all paved, the electricity works around the clock, the water is safe to drink, there are schools every couple of miles throughout the countryside, poachers have made almost no inroads in most of the game parks, and unemployment doesn't seem to be much of a problem. In fact, I would say that Zimbabwe is as well-developed, and runs as smoothly, as most Eastern European nations. I realize that doesn't sound like much, but when you compare it to Kenya or Tanzania or Zambia, it's a quantum leap forward. I signed copies of Ivory and Paradise in a local bookstore, then returned to Meikles and changed for dinner. We ate at the Bagatelle, a 5-star dining room in the hotel, where, in a delightful twist, the proprietors were black and the piano player was white. August 31: When I checked out in the morning, I presented Meikles with a paid voucher -- which they refused to accept. Evidently they had been paid in Zimbabwean dollars, and because the country is so starved for hard currency, they have a law stating that all foreign travelers must pay in their own currency. So I very begrudgingly paid for my room for a second time, and made a mental note to bill the travel agency. We had decided to begin our safari in Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland)...but, because we would be flying around the country in 5-seaters with severe weight limitations, we first flew to the Victoria Falls Hotel, where we left some of our luggage. The hotel itself is an old colonial structure that reminded me of some of the better British hotels in the Brighton area. We had seen a sign in the Victoria Falls airport telling us that we must report at least an hour early for international flights or run the risk of having our seats sold. Our flight to Botswana was due to leave at 2:30 in the afternoon, and the bus from the hotel didn't leave until 1:30. A number of people who were taking the flight panicked, and began offering up to $100 to anyone who would drive them to the airport and get them there by 1:30. Since the flight is scheduled three times a week, we figured that the hotel hadn't received any complaints about it, and waited for the bus. It got us there at about 2:00, and the Botswana plane didn't show up for another two hours (par for the course, the flight attendant later admitted.) The flight to Maun, Botswana took perhaps an hour, and shortly thereafter we were ensconced in Riley's Hotel, which has a long and colorful history from colonial times, but has become a rather dull hostelry in the middle of a rather dull town. September 1: When I stopped by the desk to hand in my voucher, they announced that they had no record of a previous payment, and I would have to pay for the room. At this point I hit the roof, FAXed the travel agency in York, and raised bloody hell. They assured me that we would have no further problems with our vouchers, and they were right (which is not to say that we had no further problems in other areas.) We went to the airport -- Maun consists of nothing but the airport, three gift shops, a few houses, a few huts, and Riley's -- and took our chartered 5-seater to Jedibe Island Camp, in the heart of the Okavango Delta, where, after more than 4 days, we finally stopped traveling and started vacationing. Jedibe is a small island, with ten tents, two ablution blocks (a euphemism for bathrooms, which consist of a toilet and a shower, surrounded by a rather shakey reed fence and no roof), a bar, and a dining tent. It's run by Tony and Pam, a second- generation Kenyan and Zambian, respectively, who migrated down to Okavango when their own countries got too civilized, and there was only one other guest there when we arrived. If there is a better way to decompress after a long trip than riding in a mokoro, I don't know what it is. The mokoro is a dugout canoe, and while you sit up front and watch the Okavango go by, a strong young man stands at the back and poles you along. We went out in mokoros in mid-morning, and stayed out until dinnertime. Carol, the bird expert in the family, tells me it was the best single day of bird-watching she's ever experienced. The Okavango Delta is some 1,600 square miles of swamp, with about 200,000 miles of very narrow, winding channels. By the time we were twenty minutes out from camp, I figured that, left to my own devices, I might, with luck, be able to find my way back in something less than eight months...yet our polers always seemed to know exactly where they were, and you got the feeling you could set them down anywhere in the Okavango and they'd be able to find their way home with no problem. I remarked about that to Pam, who agreed that they were death and taxes in the Okavango, but added that three of them went to Johannesburg for Christmas and got hopelessly lost in half an hour. September 2: We went out on a powerboat in order to see more of the swamp (mokoros are many things, but fast isn't one of them), packed a box lunch which we ate on a totally uninhabited island, and returned to camp in time to meet Franco and Masimo, a pair of Italians who work for Mondedori, my Italian publisher, and were making a documentary film about the Okavango. Masimo, a perfectionist, had wanted an overhead shot of the Delta, and refused to photograph it through the window of the plane...so they opened the door and he and his camera hung out, upside down, while Franco held onto his feet. The result: exceptional footage and an exceptional inner-ear infection. They also wanted footage of a fish eagle swooping down and snaring a fish out of the water. Tony had trained a local fish eagle to do just that when baited, and we went along while the fish eagle went through his paces about a dozen times and we all got some fabulous footage. That night I went to the ablution block at about midnight. While I was there, a hippo came out of the swamp and began rubbing his sides against the reed wall. Hippos have killed more tourists in Africa during the past quarter century than any other animal, and the reason is simple: they panic when they are cut off from water...and the very best time to photograph a hippo is when he goes inland to eat, as otherwise all you're likely to see are his eyes, ears, and nostrils. (They stay in the water to protect their sensitive skins from the sun all day, but at night they leave the water and consume up to 300 pounds of vegetation.) Stand between a hippo and water and his first inclination is to run through -- not around -- you to get back to the safety of his pond or river. Now, Jedibe is a very small island, perhaps 300 yards in diameter. So I reasoned it out and concluded that if I left the ablution block, all the hippo had to do was turn around and he could make a beeline to the water. Then I got to thinking, and decided that if he was an exceptionally stupid hippo, then no matter where I stood, he would conclude that I was between him and the water (and in a way, he'd be right). So I stayed another half hour until he want away, and promptly bumped into a bushbuck on the way back to the tent. Bushbucks are much more intelligent than hippos; he took one look and me and ran like hell. September 3: Our bush pilot, Lee, picked us up in mid-mornin...
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