Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous and following posts (for free) on this site or at https://genevaoverholser.com/

“We had read in our ‘Traveler’s Africa’ guide that, deep in the Okavango swamp of Botswana, it was possible to hire canoes for a sort of water safari during which you would encounter hippos and crocodiles. This expedition turned out to be completely different from what we had anticipated — and absolutely magical. With little information (as usual) we made our way by train from Bulawayo, Rhodesia, to Francistown, Botswana, then found a ride (with great difficulty) in a mail truck making the 310-mile trip from Francistown to Maun, over a desolate stretch of the Kalahari Desert.

“In Maun, with information still at a premium, we finally determined that it would be necessary to pay a private pilot to fly us deep into the swamp. (This remarkable place is formed mysteriously by the Okavango River, Africa’s seventh largest, which pours into a desert rather than into a body of water, thus forming a swamp in its last gasp.) There we would find the Txatxaba camp, run by a man whose father trapped crocodiles in the area decades ago. This cost us a pretty penny, but we weren’t about to turn back now. We took the flight, swooped low over the tiny island airstrip to clear away the grazing impala, landed, emerged to the tune of buzzing tsetse flies, and were picked up by men in makoras, or dugouts.

“They poled us through the tall grasses of the swamp to the camp. We had a good lunch with the manager and his wife, who outfitted us with our own makora and our guide Kitsola, told us to keep our eyes open all the time and said they’d see us in a week or so.

“What a week it was. Mike and I rode along in the canoe as Kit poled us through a wonderland of wildlife. We camped on islands with many different kinds of antelope in sight. Kit would play his thumb piano by firelight. By the third day, we were in deep enough to encounter the predators, so we camped on the tiniest islands in order to hear any creature who might approach us through the water.

“And hear the creatures we did, the mysterious whoop of the hyena starting low and ending high, which made me question the term ‘laughing hyena’ until the second night when it added a weird cackling of 5 to 8 notes starting high, jumping around the scale. And then we heard the most chilling sound: the throaty groan of lions. Kit kept the fire going and his rifle by his side.

“During the day we would take walking safaris on the islands. In this manner, we saw many interesting signs of animals, in addition to the animals themselves: trees stripped by elephants to incredible heights, their footprints left in the mud forming pools you could have sat in. We noticed that there was one pile of dung in particular that Kit would always give wide berth to, rather than step over, as he usually did. It turned out to be hyena scat. A hyena had come to his village and attacked his daughter, he told us, and it would repeat the act unless he respected its leavings.

“Two particularly striking things deserve mention. On one of our walks, we noticed Kit paying special attention to a tiny bird, who would hop from tree to tree until finally, following it, Kit located a bees’ nest. He smoked out the bees and axed out the comb, and we ate the most delicious honey I’ve ever had, taking the rest of it with us for our oatmeal the next morning. We had been led to the hive by the honey guide, a bird which has developed this relationship with men and other animals. The Bushmen say that if the honey isn’t shared with the guide, he’ll lead you next time into a lion’s den or the pit of the deadly black mamba.

(The next encounter was gruesome to witness and is even more horrifying now to recall. Poaching of elephants has fallen in recent years, but rhinoceros have been killed in fast-growing numbers of late.) 

“The second striking occurrence was an encounter with poachers. We came upon their camp midway through the trip. The tusks of elephants were soaking in the water, and meat and skins were drying everywhere: hyenas with their large ears turned inside out; impalas and elephants pieced on the ground like a pattern. The elephant ears alone were taller than I am. The feet and lower legs sat on the ground like high boots whose tops had fallen over. Some of the inner organs, blown full of air while soft, were hanging in translucent balls to dry, to serve as containers for the fats. One man was working on shaving some of the extra wood off his makora. The hunt had been so successful, the prizes so weighty, that the men needed more space.

“Our final destination was South Africa, where we embarked on a three-week whiplash of experiences, some sublime, many disturbing. We landed in Johannesburg, a mini-New York that felt astonishing to find on this continent. We visited Soweto — the part tourists are allowed into.

“We hitchhiked to Durban, then down the coast (with a jaunt north to Oudtshoorn for an ostrich ride) to Cape Town, surely one of the world’s loveliest cities. There, we consumed much good wine, cheese, fresh fruits, and seafood. Finally, we took the famed blue train back to Johannesburg, the finest train I’ve yet to ride. Luxury on wheels.

“I find it hard to put on paper the many conflicting feelings about our time in this lovely, complex, deeply troubling country — a topic we want to discuss with you all on our return. I want to share here a tiny instance of how South Africa’s mores affected us personally. One hot evening we happened to be dropped off, after a day of hitchhiking, next to an appealing-looking bar a ways out of the town where we’d be spending the night. A beer sounded like just the thing to refresh us for the final leg. We walked eagerly into the cool, welcoming dark. The response was lightning-quick: The bartender looked at Mike (he never looked at me) and said, ‘She is not allowed here. There’s a ladies’ bar in town.’ Obviously, this was but a grain of salt before the vast and deadly mountain of apartheid, which affects every moment and shapes the lives of every South African. But I won’t forget that slap of exclusion; that presumption that I deserved neither to be looked upon nor spoken to directly.

“With our 77-day vacation over, we boarded a jet in Johannesburg bound for Kinshasa. The airline agent asked why we were going to Zaire. ‘We live there,’ we said. ‘Ah, I’m sorry to hear it,’ she replied. ‘I used to live there myself.’”

Going back to work did come hard after this idyll. But we had much to look forward to. During Christmas break, we hoped to hike the Ruwenzori Mountains — the most beautiful trek of them all, as it turned out. And throughout the school year, we’d be laying plans to realize the big dream that had lured us here: to drive all the way up out of Africa to Europe, when our teaching stint in Kinshasa ended.