CHIRUNDU TALES Part 3
The hive of activity that represented the first year of the project led to the employment of professional European staff as well as the recruitment of several educated Africans who were designated as field technicians. Their job was the collection of basic field data for initial analysis by the Senior Experimental Officer, resident entomologist and subsequently by the laboratory staff in Salisbury. We also employed a total of about 50 African workers.
Amongst my early recruits were several semi qualified people such as storemen, carpenters, a mechanic, watchmen and clerks etc. and a remarkable Zambian called Julius who initially was one of our night watchmen. Julius was a pot bellied, bald headed fellow who was probably in his mid 50’s at that time. His main weakness was alcohol but at the same time he was a first class bush man having, for years, been the hunter for his tribal chief, Chiawa, who lived about a mile downstream on the Zambian side of the river.
To say I was keen on hunting is an understatement. Having grown up chasing duikers and other small antelopes along with the odd reedbuck or impala and the very occasional kudu, finding myself in “Big Five” territory was a dream come true. Needless to say, I was only interested in two of the five species, buffalo and elephant and with Julius as tracker and back-up, my ambitions were fairly easily achieved.
Actually I did relatively little hunting as the station was adjacent to “D” Hunting Camp which was only a couple of miles away and “E” camp about five miles further on. Each hunting season the camps were occupied by parties of four hunters who were there for two weeks. Many of the parties were from South Africa who were mainly trophy hunters as they were not permitted to take meat back home. I therefore arranged, through the Game Department, to collect any otherwise wasted carcasses and give the meat to my workers. The system worked very well as all I had to do was send a vehicle to the camp each evening and pick up the kills. What we were given were a variety of animals including sable antelope, eland, kudu and buffalo to name a few, so meat was usually plentiful.
As a result I made friends with many of the South Africans and often visited the camps in the evenings. Naturally hunting was the main topic of conversation and my advice was sought in trying to solve any problems they might have had. As elephant were a major quarry, on occasions, I offered the services of Julius who usually solved their problems. When he came back home after one of these trips, he was usually hung over, loaded down with dried meat and no doubt had a fat tip in his pocket.
One hunting party consisted of only two hunters from South Africa. One was a stock broker and the other a surgeon. Their transport consisted of a 5 ton lorry, a Land Rover and, somewhat surprisingly, an Alpha Romeo sports car. In the course of their trip the surgeon left camp early one morning, drove the Alpha to Mount Hampden airport where he had parked his twin-engine aircraft and flew himself to Jo’burg. He performed an operation the same afternoon and spent the night there. The next morning he flew back to Salisbury, (accompanied by two attractive females) and was back in camp in time for a bit of late afternoon hunting!
Our project, being research into the infamous tsetse fly, inevitably involved the use of wild animals as a food source for the flies we were trying to breed. We inherited several young warthogs from another Council project but had to look at capturing other animal species closer to home. We negotiated with the Game Department to capture buffalo and impala in Mana Pools reserve at the end of the tourist season in 1965. This meant going in to the reserve in early October and getting out before the heavy rains came in late October or, if we had any luck, early in November. This was to be a combined operation between ourselves and a Game Department team and a tentative date was set for the second part of October.
Helen and I were married at the end of September in the newly constructed St Francis’ Church , Chirundu. It was the only marriage ever to take place in the church as it was demolished when the sugar plantation closed down the following year. The wedding was not a large affair in view of the location but was well attended by the Game Department, sugar estate staff, customs and immigration and friends from further afield who mainly spent the night at Makuti motel. Ranger Cliff Freeman was my best man. It was a morning wedding and the reception was held at the Chirundu Estate Club. We spent our honeymoon on Paradise Island and returned to Chirundu in mid October.
Preparations started for our game catching operation but unfortunately the game department were unable to participate as most of the rangers were confined to base. This was a blow to us but time was not on our side so we had to either scrap the plan or do it ourselves. We chose the latter and were mobilized by the first week in November. We set up camp in the main Mana camp site, which by then was closed to the public, and spent a few days constructing holding pens for the animals we hoped to capture. To assist me, I was loaned the services of a chap called John Davison who was the son of Ted Davison, the legendary first warden of Wankie National Park. At the time, John was working on another Research Council project prior to going to university and was a big help throughout the exercise.
Our Land Rover was stripped down to a bare shell and the capture operation got under way about the 8th of November. The buffalo were relatively easy to catch. All we had to do was charge full speed into a herd, head off a few animals and then select the one we wanted. I drove up beside the selected animal and John grabbed it by the tail! At that point our African helpers would jump off the vehicle and tie up the buffalo. As we were only catching weaner sized animals, this was not difficult. Helen sat in the middle with her miniature Penn Olympus camera, snapping pictures of the proceedings as we went along. There was never a hint of danger from the mothers of the captured animals.
Impala, on the other hand, were a different story. We carried out the operation at night using a powerful spotlight. We dazzled the impala and held them whilst our catchers crept up on them in the darkness. At first we attempted to capture mature animals but this turned out to be extremely dangerous as they proved to be deceptively powerful. Poor old Julius was the worst casualty as he took a kick in the mouth from an impala that completely upended him. He lost a couple of teeth and suffered a rather nasty cut to his upper lip. We took him back to camp and patched him up as best we could from our First Aid kit. I tried to send him back to Chirundu in our 3ton truck but he refused point blank! He said if the operation was going to continue, he was staying and so he did. He never once complained about his injuries
Our night ventures were always extremely interesting. On one occasion we spotted a lone hippo running from right to left in front of us. Between us and him was a lone buffalo bull that was trotting away on what was obviously a collision course. Sure enough they collided. The buffalo fell on his backside as if he had hit a wall but the hippo never missed a step! Regrettably we were not prepared and did not get any photographs.
One of our catchers called Laiton was approaching an impala one night and actually bumped into a cow elephant which we had not seen in the darkness. We heard a short trumpet from the darkness so I swung the spotlight around in time to see the elephant running away and poor old Laiton tiptoeing back to the truck looking totally bewildered. He was a relative of Julius and was no newcomer to the wilds but this was a definite first for him!
On another trip a startled impala ram panicked and charged the vehicle. He came straight over the bonnet at the spotlight which I was holding, hit the steering wheel and bounced off the spare wheel that was mounted behind my seat. Helen and I were only just able to duck in time and avoid serious injury. He charged us several more times and left the Land Rover with a few dents for us to sort out! Needless to say, when the impala eventually ran off, he did not seem to have suffered any injuries at all.
At the same time as we were carrying out our operation, Regional Game Warden Barry Ball and Ranger “Scratch” Tebbit were carrying out a selective cull of the often troublesome tuskless elephant. These elephant were inclined to be bad tempered and on a number of occasions tourists had been charged, luckily without sustaining any injuries. One afternoon we witnessed one of wardens’ hunts from a distance and were surprised to see Barry turn a charging tusker away merely by throwing his hat at it. When we saw him later and asked him about it he was pretty nonchalant as if it happened every day. He was, however, very upset because in the course of the day, he had lost his beloved pipe. As a constant pipe smoker, he was trying to continue his habit by rolling pipe tobacco in newspaper and was obviously not enjoying the result.
The next morning, we captured a young buffalo out of a herd of about 400 and as we were loading it, I happened to look back the way we had come and caught a glimpse of something shining in the sunlight. I walked back to see what it was and lo and behold it was Barry’s beloved Peterson pipe! Had it not had the trademark silver band that all Petersons have, I would never have seen it. Needless to say there was a very happy Barry when we visited his camp that evening.
Our daily and nightly forays into the reserve were not without risks. On one night we were crossing a gully and as we emerged the other side we came face to face with a cow elephant and a calf just a few meters in front of us. She was less than happy to see us and made her feelings very clear. I quickly let the Land Rover roll back to the bottom of the gully but there was no room to turn around once we got there. I tried going forward a couple of times but she was stubborn and stood her ground for what seemed like hours. All we could do was wait. She did move off eventually but the incident left us all a bit shaken.
For news of the outside world we relied on our little “Supersonic Transistor “ radio. It came as no surprise when on the morning of November the 11th we were all asked by the RBC announcer to have our African employees on hand to listen to an announcement at 11.00 hrs. It was obvious what was coming but we complied and had our workers sit on an anthill near our camp and listen. None of them seemed to be in the least bit interested in the broadcast and as soon as it was over they said “Ok boss, let’s go catch a buffalo.”
We were catching buffalo in the mornings and the impala at night so the afternoons were free and we were able to relax and do a bit of fishing as well as the odd drive to locate herds of buffalo for the next days’ exercise. My gang had other ideas and would, with my blessing, take the lorry and go to the latest cull site and load up with elephant meat which they smoked ready to take home. Opposite the camp site was an island that attracted a lot of elephant and we spent many pleasant hours observing them. They would cross the deep channel between the river bank and the island using their trunks as snorkels, an act which seemed to come quite naturally even to the youngsters. Actually after one of our night forays, as we were having a bed time brew-up we heard the sound of running water and in the moonlight we could see the shiny backs of about 20 elephant emerging from the water onto the island. A truly fascinating sight!
Being the end of the dry season, the park was full of game because the herds had moved to the river as the streams and waterholes, back nearer the escarpment, dried up. On our trips around the reserve we were never out of sight of game and seldom out of sight of elephant in fact on one early morning recce we counted over 150 elephant in about 5 miles. We were “dummy” charged on several occasions but never really felt at risk although we did feel very vulnerable in our stripped-down vehicle.
We estimated the main buffalo herds as numbering around 400-600 but there were numerous small herds around. One night we heard lions roaring as we left camp and detected an eerie atmosphere amongst the animals. The impala we came across were definitely edgy and would not stand in the spotlight. After several attempts to capture one, we gave up and set off for the camp. We intended trying another part of the park further away from where we guessed the lions were. En route we encountered one of the large buffalo herds and before we knew it we were in the middle of it. I switched off the spotlight and the Land Rover lights as they seemed to attract the buffalo but sitting there in the dark, in a vehicle that offered very little protection, surrounded by hundreds of agitated 1,000 lb animals was somewhat unnerving. It seemed like hours before the last stragglers passed us and we were able to continue. Once we were back near the camp I decided to call it a day and have a welcome cup of coffee and an early night. The next day it was back to normal.
For Helen, this was her first experience of camping and she coped very well. Her limited culinary talents were tested to the limit but she surprised me with her resourceful achievements. We were fortunate that there was a newly constructed ablution block in the campsite so we were able to use the shower and toilet facilities. We had set up our tent on the river bank which was about 50 meters away so one had to be on the watch for elephants on night visits. The camping ground encompassed a lot of Acacia Albida trees, the pods of which were much enjoyed by elephant, so night visits were the rule rather than the exception. One morning we found fresh droppings about 5 meters from our tent but our nocturnal visitor had been kind enough not to disturb our sleep!
Whilst we were there we had a visit from our resident entomologist who was officially the senior man at the station. He was a really nice guy but fresh out of university and not too well acquainted with life in the wilds. He and his wife arrived one morning as we were unloading our first catch of the day and he was naturally interested in seeing how we operated. There was a herd of buffalo nearby so I suggested he follow us in his Land Rover station wagon and to stay close behind us. We approached the herd slowly and then accelerated right into the middle of them. In no time at all we caught a young buffalo but when I looked back for the other vehicle, it was nowhere to be seen. The crew in the back of my vehicle told me that as soon as we started the chase it had turned around and gone the other way. I half expected to find them back at our camp but the next time we saw them was back at HQ!
After about 10 days we felt we had captured sufficient animals and began transferring them back to our headquarters. We tranquilized them in small groups and carried them back to base in our 3 ton Jeep truck. We then dismantled the holding pens, packed our gear and headed for home. Actually we were quietly relieved to leave the reserve as the risky situations we had been subjected to were beginning to fray our nerves. The constant exposure to elephants in particular, in our stripped down vehicle was un-nerving to say the least.
Anyway, the exercise was a success and to say the least, and was an experience we would never ever forget.
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