Another incredible tale of survival in Africa
Laura Heyman thought the night she lay down with the lion would be her last. But she was too spent, too utterly removed from reality or fear, to care.
So Laura went to sleep, cuddling her two-year-old son, Romano, in a hole under a blanket beneath a tree in the middle of the Kalahari Desert.
And the lioness, a young female as shown by the daylight spoor, eventually slept too, on the other side of the same tree, within metres of the 23-year-old mother and boy.
‘Don’t ask me what I would have done if it had attacked,’ said Laura. ‘Now, I think that by instinct I would have shielded Romano with my body. But then I wasn’t thinking at all.’
The encounter with the lioness – which came so close in the dark that Laura actually reached out and touched its claws, before realising what it was – is part of an incredible tale of survival by a couple who believed they were bush-wise, believed they could treat the mighty Kalahari as a day’s excursion.
Laura Heyman and her husband are contrite now. They realise how lucky they are to be alive.
Both abandoned hope during their 13-day ordeal – not only for themselves but for Romano and the unborn infant Laura had carried for eight months.
‘When Jonathan left us on the tenth day, to walk on and try to find help,’ said Laura, ‘I was sure I wouldn’t see him again. And I was sure we would die ourselves, Romano and I and the baby.’
Jonathan knew he was leaving his wife and son in lion country, in a game reserve renowned for its predators. ‘We had seen their tracks on previous days,’ he said. ‘Lion and leopard, wild dogs and jackals. I knew there was very little chance they would not be killed, but I had to do something.’
So he staggered on for another three days. And, miraculously, when he himself could go no further and finally collapsed, he did so within view of a remote cattle post.
Both Laura and Jonathan were born in Botswana, but now live in Windhoek, Namibia. They had been in Serowe on a fortnight’s holiday.
‘We drove there the long way, via South Africa,’ said Jonathan. ‘But an old man in Serowe told us there was a short cut back.
‘He said we could go back through Orapa, turn south past Lake Xau, and then go down to Ghanzi along a track through the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. He’s done it himself, the man said.’
Early on a Sunday, the Heymans set off in their four-wheel-drive bakkie. Jonathan was due back at his job as a motor-spares salesman the following day. They expected to get to Windhoek late that night.
The provisions they took with them were adequate for that expectation, but ludicrously meagre in the light of what was to follow: two tins of bully beef, two tins of baked beans, four tins of fish and three bottles of water.
They also had a cooked chicken which they ate before lunch.
About 100 kilometres past the diamond mining town of Orapa, below Lake Xau, they came across the track as it had been described.
However, once they were in the game reserve, it barely became visible at all. The grass on the middle-mannetjie (crown of the road) was bonnet-height. And by that time it was raining heavily.
By mid-afternoon, the truck had begun to overheat, because the high grass was blocking the flow of air. Then the track suddenly became a muddy ditch. As Jonathan battled to extricate the vehicle, the radiator boiled over and the engine cut out.
Jonathan tried in vain to restart it. Eventually the battery went flat.
For five days, the Heymans waited around their vehicle, hoping someone would come in search of them or they would be seen by some passing aircraft.
The rain turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Water collected in the middle of the canvas cover on the back of the truck. For three days they were able to refill their water bottles.
Then they ran out of both food and water. They had to resort to easing their thirst by sucking dew off the grass in the early mornings and evenings.
On the sixth day, and still no sign of humanity, Jonathan decided there was no alternative but to walk. They set off back along the track, Jonathan carrying Romano on his shoulders, Laura carrying a blanket. They had nothing with which to protect themselves.
They walked mainly in the mornings and evenings. In the heat of the day, they rested under whatever shade they could find. The sun was scorching.
Snakes they saw in abundance. And many buck and some giraffe. And the dreaded spoor of the big cats.
The animals excited Romano. At other times, the little boy was fretful and withdrawn.
At night, Jonathan would dig a hole in the sand under a tree with his bare hands. The three would cover themselves with the blanket and try to sleep.
Jonathan and Laura estimate they managed 15 kilometres a day – 15 fearful, exhausting kilometres. After three more days, Laura could go no further.
On the tenth day, the seventh without food, Jonathan took the decision to proceed alone. Without Romano to carry, he made faster time, but cumulative exhaustion soon took its toll.
When finally he came across the cattle post, he saw a puddle of rainwater. As he bent to drink, he collapsed.
At three o’clock that afternoon, tribesmen returning to the post saw him lying on the side of the track. They revived him with fresh water and got word to the owner of the post, Joseph Ingleton, who arrived later in his bakkie.
‘I told Mr Ingleton my wife and son were back in the game park,’ Jonathan said, ‘and he asked when last I had seen them. I said nearly four days before. He just shook his head.’
Laura and Romano were lying in the bush some metres from the track when she heard the bakkie’s engine. ‘I thought I was hallucinating,’ she said. ‘I just had no thought then that anyone would come.’
The next day, Joseph Ingleton drove the Heymans to the nearest settlement, Rakops, in the central district. From there they were flown by army helicopter to Serowe hospital. The diagnosis for all three was exhaustion, exposure, dehydration and near-starvation.
And the baby? ‘The doctors say it will be absolutely fine,’ said Laura, ‘and here sometime next month.’
From One Man’s Africa.
Mugged in charge of a trolley
Saturday morning, we arrived later than usual for the supermarket rumble, sloe-eyed from having seen off one of our progeny on the cut-price dawn flight.
It was almost afternoon before the beach buggy’s cow-catcher was able to insinuate itself through the cross-traffic of shoppers in the parking area, inflicting minor wounds on the more lethargic.
My wife and I had discussed a game plan on the way. I was to grab a trolley while she hied off to get our lunch in Cold Meats, that being the area of most likely delay. Attendants in Cold Meats, we’ve found, habitually have slower responses than the others. Perhaps it’s the proximity of the fridges.
The trolley I selected seemed sound enough after a perfunctory road test, so I made for the margarine. Then to milk and eggs with a stop betwixt for chicken breasts for an aged bitch. That’s all our Charlie will eat. My wife insists she – Charlie – is allergic to red meat. I maintain the dog is just a lead- swinger with a fowl fetish.
There were only two chicken breasts left so I grabbed them both and moved on to Softwave, toilet and otherwise. Having dumped these items, and a few more wrestled from Soaps and Cleansers, I left the trolley at a previously designated point (Hardware) and made for Frozen Foods.
We don’t normally have much truck with Frozen Foods but it’s a favourite browsing area of mine. I spend minutes admiring the pretty pictures in the vegetarian section, constantly surprised at the myriad and ingenious ways marketers can dress up the lowly soya bean to appear as something else. Thus engaged, I was suddenly aware of my wife, laden with cold meats, salads, cheeses and the Sunday roast.
“Hey!” she said. ‘What’s happened to our trolley?”
I glanced at my watch. It was twelve-fifty, demanding a sprint back to Hardware. The trolley was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh, well,” said my wife. “We’ll just have to start again.”
‘But what about Charlie’s breasts?” I shouted, as I took off down the store.
The question hung unfortunately loud on the air. I could sense strange glances in its wake.
Once more into the melee, with a light shoulder charge on a battalion of women in curlers. It is my conviction that these peak-day shoppers wear curlers like scrum-caps, to protect their ears in the tight-loose and render them more streamlined to boot.
No familiar trolley in Cereals and Coffee, so I decided to work backwards from the check-out counters. Nothing in the queues, Jams and Jellies, Bread and Pastries. But on the edge of a ruck that had formed around a loss leader in Vegetables, I found it: clearly identifiable by the chicken breasts and the margarine.
Since nobody seemed in attendance, and since the ruck was spreading my way, I made both the trolley and myself scarce in Condiments and Sauces. There I started offloading what plainly was not ours – a 10kg bag of potatoes, five packets of salt-and-vinegar chips, enough bully-beef to outlast a siege and a number of articles of a distinctly feminine nature.
I began to feel somewhat like a voyeur, not having considered before how personal supermarket carts can be – and that thought led me to a frantic attempt to disguise the trolley with more bulk chutney than our family could consume in a year.
The next task was to find my wife. En route, I encountered a large lady in a Fair Isle cardigan, loaded down with cut-price vegetables, just as she was announcing to one of the managers that someone had stolen her bloody trolley. It was in my mind to tell her it had been our bloody trolley in the first place, but she was rather heavier and tall with indignation.
When eventually I located my wife, she had another full trolley in tow. Bar the chicken breasts, the chutney and a few other items to which she hadn’t got around, she seemed to have duplicated everything on our list. We made a quick transfer to the new trolley, left the other one and headed for the tills.
I was busy unpacking the last items when my wife said, “Hello! Where are our cold meats and salads?”
They were, of course, where we had forgotten them, somewhere in the bowels of the other trolley. I was half-way in pursuit when it came around the corner, in a company of a large figure wearing a Fair Isle cardigan and the smug look of one who has seen justice done.
I didn’t have the heart to mug the lady a second time. Nor was there any point in going back to Cold Meats. The attendants would already be gone, defrosting somewhere in the sun.
We lunched – with long teeth, to use that marvellous Afrikaans expression – on a tin of bully beef and a packet of diet crackers, both of which I had neglected to ditch the first time.
If there is anything worse than a scratch meal, it is somebody else’s scratch meal.
From John Ryan’s Time Wounds All Heels column
Winter of a pukka sahib’s discontent
DAYS, I’ve noticed before, seldom bode well when one begins them by missing a plane.
Missing, in this instance, should not imply the physical departure of aforesaid aircraft for it is there, large as life on Chennai airport’s apron, pilot most likely still gulping down his motion-sick pills. But the assistant airline manager remains adamant. Check-in time is two hours before, not dam’ twenty minutes.
We tell him: Blame the dam’ New Delhi fog. It got us here late, if eight-thirty in the morning may ever be so construed. Why, anyway, does Indian Airways insist on flying out of New Delhi at sparrow? Certainly not to escape the fog, we say. Why doesn’t it fly the night before?
Loud altercation. Then, from our side, attempts at craven pleading. If we miss this connection, we point out, we’ll be stuck in Colombo for a week. Only one weekly flight to Johannesburg from there. Second prize, two weeks in Colombo. So forth.
We adjourn to a private office, for the deputy airline manager to hear our case. He listens, eyes hooded like a judge, then announces that the argument is academic. The Chennai-Colombo flight has left, winging southwards even as we speak.
Huge anger, only some of it theatrical. But it succeeds in invoking the Airline Manager himself. He arrives, kicking rumps in his wake, bearing profuse apologies and offers for us to stay overnight at company expense. Also propaganda about Chennai being the real jewel in India’s crown. Forget the Taj Mahal, the Pink City: Inspect our modern slums, view our waterworks.
The man is well-meaning but his presentation falls apart after we mention the problems with the Colombo link. When we suggest the airline’s obligation in the matter should extend to a swift charter flight, the manager disappears. Not to be encountered again.
Back to town and the tour operators. There is a slim chance of seats on the Air India flight to Harare, thence Johannesburg, though flights are wait-listed. My own situation is less severe since I intended to be in London anyway in three days. At minimal extra cost, approximating one leg, I can fly there from Mumbai, via Kuwait, tomorrow.
Night in Mumbai, mooching around the terminal. All the decent hotels are full, suggesting a convention of snake charmers, up-market beggars.
Mumbai airport seethes with low-flying aircraft, lower-flying luggage. See London and die, see Mumbai and duck. Killing time, dodging suitcases tossed hand to hand among sundry labourers, I remember one of my own.
It is in a locker at Johannesburg airport, lodged there on my way to India a week ago. The plan was that I should return to Johannesburg on the Saturday (tomorrow), meet up with my wife and accompany her to London the next day, swopping suitcases in transit. To wit, one with all manner of winter woollies – in the airport locker – for one now in hand, containing pukka sahib cotton goods and soiled underwear.
This original arrangement was rooted less in logistics that economics. First light, I broach the Mumbai airport kiosks. A Kashmir sweater would be ideal. One size smaller and it could double as a present for my wife. Not a Kashmir sweater in the place, nor sweater or jacket of any kind. Eventually, I am forced to settle for a Mumbai T-shirt with graphic views of the harbour.
The plane for London in late. Not surprisingly, for it has come from Auckland and Sydney. It is also dry. The dam’ Aussies have drunk all the beer. And no prospect of replenishing at Kuwait; you can lose a hand for tippling in that place.
Twelve hours of agony. And the movie is last week’s, Johannesburg-Colombo. More shock-horror. The skipper announces that it’s snowing in London.
Thank goodness for British reserve. Anyone wearing shirt-sleeves over a Mumbai T-shirt in brass-monkey weather at Kennedy or La Guardia would be a public spectacle, laughed to scorn. I pass through Heathrow, Customs and all, without one comment, although I read a few thoughts. They say: Man’s been at the duty-free liquor, out of his skull, probably lost his overcoat down the loo.
Even the skinheads and soccer thugs on the Underground display only mild, but happily mute, astonishment. At Russell Square, my stop, the shops are long closed. I make my hotel a sprint ahead of terminal exposure and withdraw to room service and the television.
Next morning, Sunday, I review the situation. A search through my luggage produces a pocket mackintosh I forgot I had packed against the Indian monsoons that never eventuated. Anything better than nothing. And maybe something will be open in Leicester Square or Piccadilly.
Then suddenly the awful prospect dawns of being apprehended around Soho in a plastic raincoat, Sunday morning or not. (“But, officer, I was only looking for something to warm me up!” “I’m sure you were, sir, kindly step this way.”)
Downstairs, the bellhop informs me he knows of a clothing place that will be open at Notting Hill Gate. Much safer. Dash there, find it and – for 20 pounds – a foam topcoat that immediately transforms me into the Michelin Man.
Halfway back to Russell Square, I remember I have left the plastic raincoat on the Notting Hill Gate shop counter. Oh, well. I trust it will go to some deserving voyeur.
Extract from John Ryan’s novel, Spy story (Amazon-Kindle)
TWENTY-NINE
Hugh Thompson was tall and as stooped as a secretary bird. He looked like a caricature of the court lawyer he once had been.
Thompson had an interesting background. At a high point in his life he was considered the best attorney in Queenstown, where he grew up.
Then one morning, during a trial in which he was defending a local celebrity on an allegation of attempting to shoot his wife’s lover, Thompson walked out of his house having carefully checked the case files in his briefcase.
What he neglected to check was his own attire. Stark naked, he was apprehended by an orderly as he was about to enter the magistrate’s court.
When the same thing recurred twice in the next week, he was charged with indecent exposure. Hugh Thompson pleaded temporary dementia, though that was not a normal defence, and was cautioned. Then, less than a month later, after he was found wandering down the main street without his trousers, the same magistrate committed him to Queenstown’s Komani mental hospital and ordered that he be struck off the role.
Thompson spent two years in the asylum, was given a certificate of discharge and decided to move to Umtata. There he was able to boast that he was the only person in town who could actually prove he was sane, having a document that said so.
Although not able to practise himself, he soon found a job with the firm of Martin and De Villiers. The partners were delighted to have someone of his experience and expertise, a fully qualified lawyer at the price of a clerk.
Traders and businessmen in the area began to make use of his services on the side. Thompson did their tax returns, prepared all varieties of legal documents and counselled them on matters of civil law.
Since Hugh Thompson was Tug Wood’s legal adviser, and erudite to boot, Wood had asked him to chair the public meeting about Margaret Buhl.
The meeting that Friday had to be held in the Scout Hall, adjacent to the Rec, because the town hall was occupied, being made ready for the next morning’s activities.
Before the meeting, there was activity on the Rec too, as volunteers of the fire brigade set the kindling in place for the bonfire that would incinerate the world’s Enemy Number One the following evening. Jack Maker had made the torso of boxwood, painted black, the head of papier mache. The moustache and forelock were unmistakable. Adolf was placed in position on the top of the pyre.
There were about thirty people in the Scout Hall – with few exceptions, relatives of the Transkei’s prisoners-of-war.
Hugh Thompson stood and told the audience, ‘Margaret Buhl needs little introduction. Many of you have done business with her over the years. Some of you may have known her for a long time. Some may even consider her a friend.
‘Already I’ve heard people say: “Margaret Buhl? She’s a nice woman. Harmless. And she’s a South African. Leave her alone.”
‘But that attitude misses the point,’ Thompson added, ‘which is that the nice, friendly Mrs Buhl’s husband is working for the Nazis. And, worse, that he’s working to keep young Transkeians, our young Transkeians, captive in one of those awful camps. While his wife lives free, here among us. So, ask yourselves. Is that right? Is that justice?
‘Now, there are institutions and institutions. I know, because I’ve been in one.’ Hugh Thompson waited for the laughter that came in a smatter and then grew. ‘The internment camp that Margaret Buhl should – and, we hope, will – be sent to is a far cry from Stalag VII. Or the Komani loony bin. Because we have humane leaders in this country. They know how to treat people decently.’
The audience applauded.
‘There’s another point I wish to make,’ Thompson went on. ‘We are all aware of the espionage activity happening around the Transkei. For obvious reasons, some rumours suggest that Mrs Buhl might be involved. Who can tell if that’s true or not? Nobody yet. But we are a just nation. Unlike Nazi Germany. We have a legal system which says that a person must be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. So the last thing I wish to do is to prejudge Margaret Buhl.
‘But let me just say this. Margaret Buhl may be entirely innocent in the situation. If she is, how long can she remain so? Willingly or not, her husband is working on the side of the enemy. How long can it be before she is dragged in too? If she hasn’t been already. And if she should try to resist the approaches of the Nazi spy masters, what do you think would happen to her? Do you think for a moment they’d say, “All right, Mrs Buhl. Go back to your garage business then”?
‘The prospects for her would be too awful to contemplate. And so we say: In Margaret Buhl’s own interests, she must be removed from this scene, this place which could become extremely perilous for her!’
‘That’s exactly it!’ said Tug Wood, springing to his feet. ‘Extremely perilous for her. She must be interned! In her own interests! And in everyone else’s -’
‘You can’t do that! You must not do that!’
The cry, deep but anguished, came from the back of the hall. The audience turned and gasped.
Three years before, Jeff Hall had been a star lineout jumper for the Pirates rugby team. Now he battled merely to stay upright, leaning with one hand on the shoulder of his wife. TB had sucked the flesh from his frame. His face was like a deflated balloon, his cheekbones cast a shadow around his mouth. But his voice, though it seemed to rise through levels of pain, was clear enough.
‘You people don’t understand,’ Jeff Hall said. ‘Fritz Buhl is on our side. Fritz is the best thing that could have happened to our boys. The camp commanders don’t know he’s from here. So he gets away with murder.’
There was a pause while Hall sought breath.
‘Fritz Buhl wangled it so he’s the senior guard in charge of our huts. And he’s made life a lot easier for us. Our blokes get extra rations. He brings in cigarettes, sweets. Fritz has found sports equipment for us where there wasn’t any before.’
Jeff Hall went into a spasm of coughing and was handed a handkerchief by Susan Hall. ‘But best of all, his German bosses think he’s a real taskmaster, so they leave him alone. He pretends to send chaps to the brig, to solitary. They think that’s the reason why our huts are so disciplined, because he’s tough. And it’s a two-way arrangement. When the four of us decided to go under the fence, we did it when Fritz was on three days’ leave. Because we couldn’t put him at any risk.’
Hall turned to face the audience. ‘I know some of you have relatives in Stalag VII. If those relatives were here, they would say exactly what I am saying. Leave Margaret Buhl alone! Leave Fritz Buhl alone!
‘Anyway, the only reason you here know that Fritz Buhl is in that camp is because he wanted it to be known. He wanted his wife to know that he was safe, alive. And so he got Bob Dudley to send those messages in a code that they worked out between the two of them.’
Hall fought to control another cough. ‘If Margaret Buhl is interned, if she is put into one of those camps, the Nazis would be bound to hear about it. They would make the connection with Fritz and he would be transferred somewhere else. Worse, they might come to realise what he’s been up to, how he’s helped our chaps. Knowing the Germans, I’d say they could even kill him.’
Jeff Hall addressed Hugh Thompson and Tug Wood. ‘You mean well,’ he said. ‘You think you’re trying to do the right thing. But you’ve got it wrong. Please believe me!’
He sat down abruptly. There was a silence lasting several seconds before the meeting began to break up. Then all those present lined up to shake Hall’s hand.
‘Sorry, Jeff,’ Tug Wood told him. ‘We didn’t realise. Well, we couldn’t have done, could we? But I’m sure we all feel a lot better now. About our chaps over there. And about Fritz Buhl, and Margaret.’
The lights went out in the Scout Hall and over the small gate that was the entrance to the Recreation Ground. But the action and drama were not over for the night.
Not an hour later, three figures emerged from the shadows, silently making their way to the centre of the ground, to the great pile of firewood.
And within seconds, Adolf Hitler in effigy was ablaze, lighting the sky with the radiance of day.
Setting a minnow to catch a game fish
There we are, quayed-up so to speak, among the Hout Bay gulls. Three hundred broad-shouldered, muscle-honed specimens from the top drawer of South African deep sea angling.
And me. A minnow among leviathans.
Standing about, wiping nerve symptoms from palms, I find a public relations hand-out in the clutch of one. I read it and am startled by the small print on the last page which describes this event as “a must for anyone who has ever matched his strength and wits against the great fighters of the sea”.
Had I seen this before leaving home yesterday, I would still be there, mowing the lawn, though at 6am on a Saturday such activity might have excited the neighbours, not least before we don’t have a lawn.
I cast around for an escape route but am hemmed in on all sides by a phalanx of oil-skinned Titans, rods and foul bait to the fore, eager for the fray.
The sponsors, mine hosts, purveyors of last night’s free Italian whisky (what do you mean, Justerini isn’t Italian?) are in evidence too. One slaps another and points in my direction. The two become mirthful. Press-ganging suddenly takes on a new dimension.
So. Nothing for it but a bold face. However pale. Dread minutes pass.
When the boats arrive, all 35 of them, it is small consolation to find that ours is among the largest. Most of the rest I wouldn’t sail in my bath.
We board. I am consoled further to find at least a pair of kindred souls among our complement. They are immediately recognisable by the position they take up at the gunwales, heads well over the side. And we have yet to leave harbour.
They introduce themselves by shaking hands from a position somewhere behind their backs. One is the owner of a pizza parlour in Johannesburg, the other a wine farmer from Paarl. Nino and Theuns.
I meet the crew. Titans all, preoccupied with discussing traces and breaking strains, wind directions and, paramount, the prospect of landing the winning marlin or the tagged yellowtail worth 62 000 rands.
Our vessel moves out, motors growling like a well-trained Rottweiler. The growl says, those fighters of the deep had better watch out. For some reason, I do not feel reassured.
Up on the pulpit deck is the skipper, guiding us through the Hout Bay heads. He is a large, genial man. He is also a cigar smoker, one of which he lights as we accelerate through the first breaker.
Twenty-five grams of Marzine (my sole breakfast intake) struggle gamely on my behalf and barely win. The smoke wafts down to Nino and Theuns, who begin making goose-type noises. They both come close to abandoning ship.
The crew has set up the rods in their slots. There are seven of them, too many by four for my fancy, bristling out around the stern.
Reports start coming in on a radio from boats further out. No one is catching. How long did Hemingway’s Old Man of the Sea go without a fish? Eighty-four days? There could be hope yet.
At once, one of the lines goes with the sound of a small siren. I stumble down the gangway to watch the action. And discover, with abject horror, that I am intended to be it.
Protests are useless. The crew is insistent. Guests first and Nino and Theuns are hardly fit for that category. I am bundled into a swivel chair, harnessed up, handed the screaming rod.
To begin with, I decide big game fishing is a cinch. The angler is merely a fulcrum between a fixed point, the harness, and a moving force, the fish. All he has to do is heave and reel, heave and reel, heave and reel.
But after twenty minutes, I have the distinct feeling that the only thing still attaching arms to torso is the fabric of my windbreaker. Then the line goes limp. Reaction from the crew is as if I had dropped a vital catch in a Test match. I am slightly exonerated when they pull in the line and find the tunny has straightened the lure.
So to the cabin for liquid therapy and a stocktaking of limbs. Duty has been done, permanently, surely.
No such luck. Not an hour later, we strike a school. Five lines howl. This time we land five good-sized long-fin. The deck is awash with blood. I slip in the stuff and end up atop Nino and Theuns, by now prostrate in the bilges. We might be a scene from a Clint Eastwood movie.
For the record, our boat caught the largest fish of the day, and contest: 80 kilograms. The second day was aborted after an hour because of a gale. During that time, the biggest catch was five kilograms – about a quarter of the size of my biggest the previous day, as I shall remind by grandchildren.
There is a second national big game competition at the end of the month and another during the next. They will be at least one contestant short on each occasion.
Time Wounds All Heels column.
And a specialist space-walker from out of darkest Africa
Lusaka, Wednesday: Edward Nkoloso, Zambia’s self-styled Minister of Space Aviation, has come down to earth at last. But he insists it is only a temporary confinement. Lack of funds for his multi-million pound space project – which aims at putting a Zambian on Mars before anyone else – has forced Mr Nkoloso into a more terrestrial life. He has now been appointed the President’s special overseer at a white-washed complex in Lusaka which houses exiled nationalist organisations.
In deference to his new status, Mr Nkoloso has swopped his monkey-skin space suit for a sober purple toga. But behind the desk in his sparsely-furnished office, the spaceman retains the symbol of his realm – a crested eagle on a dinner place atop a sawn-off broomstick.
Edward Nkoloso hit the headlines two years ago when he announced that he and his student astronauts at Zambia’s Academy of Science and Philosophy were building a six-foot rocket ship at a secret site in the Chongo Valley near Lusaka.
The missile, which he described as being “of Russian and American design with an African firing system”, was intended to put a dog, Cyclops, into space within a few years.
Mr Nkoloso regretted that, for security reasons, he was unable to show international observers the rocket ship.
However, under pressure, he agreed to show them his astronauts in preparation – rolling down steep hills in barrels (to experience weightlessness), springing out of tall trees. One astronaut, who possessed the unusual talent of being able to walk long distances on his hands, was being groomed for a moon shot. For, as Mr Nkoloso pointed out, anyone with any intelligence could see that the surface of the moon must be upside down.
Later, the space programme ran into two snags. First, the United States refused an application from Mr Nkoloso for 20 million dollars in aid. No reasons were given, but the chief astronaut believed that the refusal stemmed from American fears that Zambia would get to Mars first.
Then the Zambian government – pained because foreign correspondents in Lusaka for the anniversary of Zambia’s independence seemed to making more of the academy that of the celebrations – ordered Mr Nkoloso to curb his publicity campaign.
The academy was thrust into temporary liquidation. The twelve apprentice astronauts formed themselves into a rhythm group and their leader went out to work.
Mr Nkoloso’s new job entails looking after the interests of refugees who run the exiled organisations and, as he puts it, “seeing that they keep out of trouble”.
By that he means trouble with the Zambian government, for the gun-running activities of certain of the groups have recently caused the Lusaka authorities great concern.
From One Man’s Africa.
Duel in the African sun
Somewhere in Mozambique – With consummate poise, I execute a series of big cape passes, the odd natural or two thrown in for good measure. After five minutes of this, I am quite prepared to retire behind the makeshift bullring for a quiet bottle of lunch.
But the crowd will give me no respite. Five veronicas, the classic pass of the big cape, bring them to their feet. A languid relobera, a sweet chiqueline, and I begin to feel that I will never again be able to find peace of mind in the mundane world of journalism.
Then they let in the bull.
Being at all times honest to a fault, I will be the first to concede that the animal which comes pounding into the arena is not a fighting bull in the true sense.
Possibly, it is slightly smaller than the fighting variety. And, well, possibly a bit younger.
I am also willing to admit that its horns are not of a size one normally associates with fighting bulls. But further than that I am not prepared to budge. (My colleagues, with their usual cynicism, will claim this description perfectly fits a calf. But if there is any such talk, I shall sue.)
At one stage during my training, I had considered taking the first charge on my knees, as I had once seen the great Antonio Ordonez do in Seville. Now, however, I reject that plan as frivolous and exhibitionist.
My substitute ploy, though less spectacular, is far more effective. I merely turn sideways to the line of the bull’s attack and disappear.
For ordinary mortals, the trick would be impossible. But for a man of my lateral proportions (I would make the young Sinatra look like an overstuffed gourmet) it is easy.
Bewildered, the bull blunders on.
Twenty metres away, an aged toureiro is reclining against the bamboo stockade, chatting to a friend in the stand. The bull takes him unawares, horns ripping through his trousers, raising a bruise on his thigh.
Hopping about indelicately on one leg, the man lets fly two flurries in Portuguese which I interpret loosely as “Please, you must be more considerate” and “Why do you not use the cape?”
Back in the middle of the sandpit, I feel it is time to establish supremacy. Shoulders erect, I leap nimbly into the air and yell “Toiro!”
It is a terrible mistake. Hardly have I landed when the bull is upon me.
Round and round the ring we race. After five laps I am ahead. On the seventh, I almost lap my snorting adversary, but manage to check my pace.
By the ninth circuit, we are both dead beat. We face each other through the settling dust. The bull stands there, chest heaving and mouth agape. I stand there, chest heaving and mouth agape. It must be a horrible sight.
After a statutory two-minute pause, we are at it again.
The bull comes on. Hopefully, I extend my cape. It is a reflex action, like the threshing of a drowning man. Amazingly, it works. The bull tears at the red square, misses comprehensively, and ploughs a neat furrow in the dirt with its nose.
When it charges again, I have summoned up enough energy for a lame veronica, while shuffling off in the direction of where, in cricketing terms, square leg would be.
Now the bull, with evil aforethought, decides on a change of tactics. From a distance of two metres, it suddenly takes off. I choose the same instant to get my front foot trapped in the folds of the cape, and fall.
Fortunately, the bull has badly over-judged its leap. By the time it is able to turn, skidding like a puppy on a polished floor, I am thirty metres away and still moving.
The chase begins afresh. Midway through the eight round, it is obvious which way the result will go. The bull begins to move in for the kill.
What happens next is not in the script. At the height of its final lunge, the bull seems to lose co-ordination and crashes down in a superb belly-flop. From this position, legs splayed, it eyes me like a beached porpoise.
Now the aficionados are around me, slapping my back and mumbling praises. Someone thrusts a bandarillio, the long coloured dart, into my hand. It is the old toureiro, his thigh bound with an incredibly dirty handkerchief.
“Come, amigo,” he says softly. “Now you must place the dart in the toiro’s neck to signify the kill.”
But something in the man’s tone makes me decline. I have never been able to stand the sight of blood.
Particularly my own.
From One Man’s Africa.
At least reporters got a response
By the sort of contradiction that modern technology often inflicts upon us, the personal computer most “print” journalist use to transmit their copy is, essentially, impersonal.
They simply send a story through the international ether. Sometimes its receipt is acknowledged, sometimes not.
The post office cable, the old-fashioned telex message, was an umbilical cord. It even has its own idiom.
Cable-ese we called it. Because the cost of press telegrams was calculated by the word, and that cost obviously ballooned with distance, prefixes were used. Un- meant no or not; pro- for or to; et, and; ex-, from; and con-, with. Soonest meant as soon as possible.
It was a shorthand that sms experts might consider looking at today.
This genre of language produced one classic story of the Reuters man dispatched by his London office to Zanzibar after the 1964 revolution. A week passed with no word from him. The foreign editor sent a cable: “Why unnews?” he demanded.
Not much was happening on the spice island after a spate of killings and arrests, so the reporter sent a message back. “Unnews, good news,” it said.
The response from the foreign editor came the same afternoon. Short and sharp. “Unnews, unjob,” he cabled.
A threat like that would have sent most journalists to their typewriters to dash off the first “situationer” piece that came to mind. This correspondent, however, was made of sterner stuff. “That makes you forty-love,” he replied.
The need to keep down cabling costs led to some wonderful invention. Another Fleet Street friend spent three weeks in Addis Ababa during a similar lull in news. Eventually, he sent the foreign editor a two-word cable: “Nunc dimittis.” Which translated, as choirboys past and present know, means “Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace . . .”
Quick as a flash, the foreign editor replied with another biblical reference: “Matthew 24.6.”
My friend reached for the hotel Gideon’s, looked up the reference, then rang for bar service. Matthew 24.6 held no comfort for a restless soul.
It read: “But the time is not yet.”
Often, service messages could take on a certain ambiguity. More so if the receiving party chose to read them that way.
Eric Robins, a veteran Time correspondent, was declared a prohibited immigrant in the former Rhodesia after Ian Smith’s UDI. He and I were staying at the same hotel in Lusaka when he received the notification. Earlier, Eric had written a profile of Sir Roy Welensky for the magazine. Welensky was the first and last premier of the doomed Central African Federation, a former professional boxer and a florid personality.
At three o’clock in the morning Zambia time, hours before publication of his piece, Robins was dragged from his bed by a porter monitoring the hotel telex machine.
It was a message from his New York office. “How old Welensky?” it said.
Eric was infuriated. He knew Roy Welensky’s date of birth had to be in a hundred files in the Time library and that the person editing his article could easily have looked it up.
So he sent this message back: “Old Welensky fine,” it said. “How you?”
From One man’s Africa
John Ryan 