CHIRUNDU TALES (Part 4)
Livestock were to play a very important part in the research being carried out on the station and it was necessary for us to keep diseases under control. Our major challenge was trypanosomiasis (Sleeping Sickness or Nagana) and the Veterinary Department were conducting trials on a new drug at their research facility at a place called Lusulu in the Eastern part of Binga District. It was decided that I should visit Lusulu for a week and familiarize myself with the procedures they were using there.
The trip to Lusulu was an adventure in itself as it was very remote to say the least. My trip took me via Gatooma (now Kadoma) where I grew up, so I spent the night there with my parents. My cook Peter spent the night in a holding cell courtesy of the police who were just across the road from my parents flat. I turned off the main road at Umsweswe which was the end of paved roads and headed for Gokwe via Empress Mine and ascended the Mafungabusi Plateau . At Gokwe I had lunch with a very hospitable Police Officer and his wife and was given rather vague directions on how to get to Lusulu. I then drove West to the Charama Plateau and descended down a very narrow and dangerous track to the Manyoni river. The descent was a little unnerving as I did not know what I would do if someone came up the other way, there certainly was not enough room for two vehicles to pass. I stopped at the bottom and had a brew up to settle my nerves.
At Manyoni there was a Tsetse ranger base and I had been warned to call in there or risk being treated to a fusillade of bullets fired into the road in front of my vehicle forcing me to stop. By all accounts the resident ranger was best described as a social alcoholic. Apparently he kept a good stock of whisky but did not touch a drop whilst he was alone. He was therefore always happy to welcome visitors at which time he would open two bottles, throw away the tops, and get down to some serious drinking. I was lucky that on this particular day he was away on patrol for two reasons. Firstly I didn’t drink whisky and secondly I still had a long way to go. I knew I wouldn’t reach Lusulu that night but wanted to get as close to it as possible before setting up camp.
The next point of interest was the Sengwa Gorge which, at the crossing point ,was just a slit in a granite outcrop. The bridge was a freshly built corduroy frame made from local timber. I thought of settling down for the night as it was getting late in the day but I decided to press on and luckily came across a tsetse ranger bush camp as the sun was setting. I introduced myself to the ranger (name forgotten) and asked for directions to Lusulu. I was told it was only a few miles further on. I was keen to reach Lusulu but the ranger told me that there were numerous tracks in the area and it would be easy to get lost in the dark. He kindly offered me his guest hut and after a dinner of kudu steak and a couple of his cool beers I crashed out exhausted. I finally got there early the next morning.
Lusulu was a hive of activity when I arrived and I barely had time to introduce myself to Jimmy Slement, who ran the station, before a RRAF DC3 landed on their airstrip. On board were a variety of people from various government departments but as far as I was concerned the main man was an outspoken Welshman called Bill Boyt who was in charge of the veterinary aspect of tsetse and trypanosomiasis control and had lost a lower leg in a work related accident. He was aware of my visit but the first thing he asked me was how long I planned to be there. I told him it was one week but he immediately said it was not enough. I should be there for at least two weeks he said, and further added that if I ran short of groceries, Jimmy would help me out. Poor Jimmy just nodded in the background. Needless to say, I had come well supplied so food was not a problem. Mr Boyt also asked if I had brought a rifle with me as he wanted Jimmy to collect blood samples from a variety of animals and felt that I should assist. The samples were to be collected by aircraft three days later so I hardly had time to settle in before we were off hunting in what became Chizarira Wildlife Area.
There were several villages in the Busi T.T.L , adjacent to Lusulu so there were plenty of eager Batonka mouths waiting for our kills. On my first trip out, just around dark, I stopped in a village to drop off a warthog and could hardly believe the reaction. Because of the ever present threat of lions, the villagers would light a huge fire in the middle of the settlement and assemble round it before going to sleep. Their sleeping accommodations were a series of elevated, inverted, cone shaped wickerwork huts, the entry hole to which was sealed off with a large granite slab! Anyway as soon as they saw the gift I had brought them they dragged the animal to the fire and just threw it on to the glowing coals to remove the hair and then proceeded to carve it up, skin and all, and throw the pieces of meat straight into the fire. As soon as the meat showed signs of sizzling, it was removed and eaten. This eating frenzy amazed me as there was a lot of game in the area and assumed that the locals would hunt for meat but I guess that as they were basically fishermen who were relocated from the Zambezi when the Kariba lake started to fill, hunting was not in their blood.
The fortnight at Lusulu was a real education for me and with Jimmy as a tutor I could not have had a more thorough grounding. Jimmy was a super character, extremely knowledgeable and a pleasure to know. He lived there with his wife and two daughters. Sadly his wife was not well as she was suffering from the after effects of an emergency operation carried out at Karyangwe Mission, about 40 miles away. Regrettably she passed away a few months after my visit and Jimmy was transferred to a veterinary station somewhere in Matabeleland where sadly, he also passed away a couple of years later.
By comparison, the isolation of Lusulu made the Chirundu station look almost suburban!
My return trip to Chirundu was uneventful which was just as well as I dreaded the thought of meeting another vehicle as I was ascending the Charama escarpment. Actually it surprised me that I did not see a single vehicle between Gokwe and Lusulu on either trip.
Back at the Chirundu station it was business as usual and development work on the station began to provide facilities for the serious research to begin. In late 1964 I was joined on the station by Fred Wilson who was the Senior Experimental Officer. Fred had spent many years on tsetse and veterinary research in East Africa and was a larger than life character with an enormous capacity for alcohol but an equally enormous capacity for hard work. Fred spent about a year with us before retiring to a large seafront property he owned in the Seychelles. He was replaced by another somewhat different sort of character.
John Paget had worked in Eritrea on locust control for many years after service in the Merchant Navy in WW2. He had been torpedoed 3 times but managed to escape with injuries to one of his hands losing two fingers. John was waiting for a pension to be paid on his 65th birthday which was a few years hence. He was virtually a teetotaler, and lived a very frugal life. Actually he was saving as much money as he could to supplement his pension as he wanted to return to Eritrea and live in a house he had bought there. The one thing about John that I will never forget was his ability to shave daily for a whole month using a single Minora razor blade. To achieve this he patted his face with hot water for half an hour before actually shaving!
Apart from work colleagues, there were other larger than life characters in the area, mainly on the nearby sugar plantation. One in particular was a chap called Graham Lester. He had worked on the sugar estate but left to start a banana farm at a place called Nyamomba which was on the South bank at the lower end of the Kariba Gorge. The farm had originally been developed to provide fresh fruit and vegetables to workers employed on the construction of the Kariba dam. Graham tried several ways of moving bananas and settled for transporting them by raft across the river and selling them to wholesalers who came from Lusaka down a rough track through the hills to the river bank. This track was the most suitable access route to the farm as the southern access road was only passable in the dry season.
Graham was in close contact with the Chirundu estate and did some freelance work for the parent company, Tate & Lyle. He would visit the estate most weekends for a swim, some tennis , a few games of snooker and above all, a few cold beers. Also on Sunday nights they had a movie at the club which he usually stayed to see. This meant that his trip home would start at about 10.00pm in a very beaten up old Land Rover. This trip would take him a few miles North on the Lusaka road before turning left towards Kariba. He would travel about 30 miles on the main dirt road before turning down the track to the river. He would then climb into a very small dinghy and row across the river in total darkness completely unperturbed by the presence of hippos and crocodiles. Because of periodic flooding when they opened the Kariba flood gates, where he landed on the South bank was anybody’s guess. He would tie up the boat and make his was up the hill to his house through reeds and thickets that were frequented by snakes, elephants, buffalo and hippos that came out to feed at night, not to mention leopards that were always around feeding on the very high baboon population. To say he was very brave is an understatement but his modesty prevailed and he thought nothing about what he was actually doing.
Our resident entomologist decided to return to university life and moved back to South Africa. He was replaced by a man of Eastern European extraction whose only objective was to do as much big game hunting as possible and judging by the collection of rifles he brought with him, he was out to do serious damage to the local wildlife population. He spent several months building his own house which was a prefab and could have been built in a couple of weeks. He was constantly tripping backwards and forwards to Salisbury but did virtually nothing about the work for which he had been employed. He was soon moved on without, I am pleased to say, firing a single shot.
His replacement was a chap called Basil Williamson who was well known in Tsetse research circles. Basil was a super character who later joined the Game Department and is described in the Davison book “Wankie” as “ebullient” This is a very apt description of Basil who was a very hard worker but always up for a laugh. He married his wife ‘Pebbles’ shortly before he joined us and she too was a lot of fun. Pebbles was pregnant at the time so she lived a quiet life during the pregnancy but as soon as their son Craig was born, out came the cigarettes and off came the beer caps.
We had a lot of fun with the Williamsons including a trip to Chewore, a wilderness area, where we hoped to see some rhino and, with luck, the elusive Nyala which were known to exist in the area. We modified Basil’s LWB Land Rover to provide seats for the ladies in the back as well as a bracket to hold the carry-cot for the newly born Craig who proved to be an amazing traveler totally at home despite Basil’s tendency to drive fast and ignore bumps. We failed to find either of the species we were seeking which was a big disappointment to us but it was an interesting trip nonetheless and the fishing was really good near the entrance to Mpata Gorge.
Bill Boyt became a regular visitor to the station along with his assistant Peter McKenzie. On one trip during the rainy season I collected them from the Chirundu airstrip and on the way to the station we were passing a waterhole where there was a lone wild duck. I was ordered to stop and Bill produced WW2 Luger pistol from his briefcase. He handed it to Peter and told him to have a shot. Peter obliged but it came as no surprise that he missed the bird which equally surprisingly did not flinch. Bill snatched the pistol from Peter, took aim and fired. He succeeded in knocking the duck over and sent Peter to retrieve it. When he picked it up, Peter shouted to us that Bill had shot it through the head! It was obviously a complete fluke but Bill’s response was to say that he had gone for a head shot as he didn’t want to spoil the meat! He gave me a knowing wink but stuck to his story as far as Peter was concerned.
I was having a few problems with a drug we were using to prevent trypanosomiasis in our cattle and Bill and Peter made several trips to look into the problem. I had to weigh the drug on a laboratory balance scale and mix it with distilled water to make an injectable solution. Peter said he thought the scale may be faulty and suggested I use an electrical scale which would be more accurate. Bill’s response was to ask Peter where I would plug the scale in, an elephants’ backside? Helen was serving tea at the time and had a real problem suppressing her laughter!
We had frequent visits from our Salisbury colleagues who initially would stay with me. They were mainly Americans who liked their home comforts. One thing that was always in demand was ice and on one visit I was unable to provide any. It was the end of September and I had shot a kudu the day before the hunting season closed. I had removed the ice trays from my paraffin fridge and filled the space with the prime pieces of kudu. All that was available to my visitors was a limited supply of cool water. They were not impressed and curtailed their visit by a couple of days. A few days after they left I received a brand new paraffin deep freeze by RMS transport - the ice problem was solved!
At this time terrorist incursions were on the increase which had a very notable impact on life on the border but it was an exciting period which will be the main topic in the next article.
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