|
|
Marveling at Dr. Livingstone's Africa
“I will make this beautiful land better
known to men that it may become one of their haunts. It is impossible
to describe its luxuriance.”
[Dr. David Livingstone in December 1866
upon seeing the South Luangwa Valley for the first time.]
I realized I haven’t told you much about
the South Luangwa Valley where all my adventures are happening. For
all of you who hated geography I shake my head and suggest a good world
atlas – one of life’s treasures. The Luangwa Valley lies at the southern
end of the Great Rift Valley in the eastern part of butterfly-shaped Zambia,
formerly Northern Rhodesia thanks to Cecil Rhodes and the British South
Africa Company. The valley is bounded 40 miles west of the Luangwa
River by the Machinga Escarpment, a dramatic rock formation that drops down
1500 feet into the flat alluvial valley, and on the east by low rolling
hills. The Luangwa is a dramatically meandering tributary of the
mighty Zambezi River that rises 20 feet in the wet season then leaves oxbow
lagoons and eroded banks when the waters recede.
 Life is everywhere here. Hundreds of varieties of
trees and plants make the riverside a lush world even in this dry season.
The broad-leafed sausage tree has foot-long ten pound sausage-like seed pods
hanging from its branches. At night it stealth-blooms dramatic big
blood-red flowers to attract the bats that pollinate them. Giraffes
stretch their long necks for the new green sausage fruits, and hippos love
to munch the huge mature “sausages” when they plummet to the ground.
The thorny fine-leafed acacia trees have crunchy seed pods beloved by
elephants, giraffes and monkeys. Those resourceful giraffes use their
tough lips to eat around the 2 inch thorns.
 Insects win the” most-abundant” prize though. When I sit
under the trees to have lunch, I’m constantly bombarded with little bitty
jumping spiders looking for a snack. Some of them have beautiful black
and white bands on their legs and bodies. Big ants, little ants, granddaddy
long legs spiders, big flat black spiders that build dense flat webs,
crickets, beetles, flies, mosquitoes and gigantic creepy black millipedes
all wander about…. and that’s just inside my house! The infamous
tsetse flies of African sleeping sickness fame are thankfully not as common
here along the river. These delightful creatures don’t just suck your
blood; they create a big enough bite that they can just lap it up!
They do seem to love my Type O positive, and I have spent the last few weeks
desperately trying not to scratch the ugly, maddeningly-itchy red welts they
raise. Fortunately for me, I suppose, human sleeping sickness is rare
in the valley – or that’s what they tell me anyway.
 I do have some allies against the hordes of creepy
crawlies. The little frog in my bathroom is my mate now. I made
a little hiding place for him behind some bottles on the bathroom shelf,
which is four feet off the floor – quite a prodigious jumper! He hides
during the day and comes out at night to eat, though he does seem to have a
discriminating palate. I’ve caught an ant and a beetle or two for him, and
he just turns up his nose at my wriggling offerings. Little spotted
geckos softly patter their sticky little feet up and down the screens and
chirp at each other and wag their little tales. Bigger striped lizards with
pink Rudolph noses lurk just outside the door.
 Despite all the cobra stories, I’ve yet to see a snake.
Speaking of snakes, I did meet a crazy Afrikaner who works at Luambe
National Park just north of here who said he carries gunpowder and a knife
with him when he’s clearing brush. If he gets bitten, his plan is to
cut open the wound and pour in the gunpowder thus cauterizing the wound and
neutralizing the venom. He looked very disappointed when I suggested
to him the recommended way of dealing with snakebite since it’s much less
dramatic and doesn’t involve knives or gunpowder.
As fascinating as I find the little
creatures, most people come here to see the big game. I was treated to
a night as a guest at one of the posh lodges last week. On our game
drive we came upon a pride of six lionesses and three cubs resting in the
shade twenty feet from the road. We watched in fascination for half an
hour as the cubs made little growling noises, pounced on their Mom’s tail,
and batted her face with their paws. It’s hard to describe the awe of
sitting so close to such magnificent creatures in the wild – simply magic!
 I’ve not had lions at my house again, but the elephants
are always around. Last night as I watched the flame-orange sun slide
past the fluffy gray clouds, a herd of elephants slowly waded their way
across the river. A fitting close to another amazing day in Africa!
|
