Authors: Anthony Bidulka
Mashatu is nicknamed the Land of the Giants because it is home to seven of Africa’s giants: the African elephant, the lion, the giraffe, the baobab tree, the eland (an antelope), the ostrich, and the kori bustard (some kind of bird). It’s a privately owned wildlife sanctuary of thirty-thousand hectares situated at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, and rich with ancient archeologi-cal sites. This is not the Africa of steamy, moist jungles, with chattering monkeys swinging overhead from leafy vines that many of us grew up seeing on TV, but rather the Africa of spectacular, wide open scenery, of blistering, dry heat and scrubby desert-like topography upon which these remarkable giants are free to roam.
The camp itself was a series of low-ceilinged buildings hugging the bushy banks of the sluggish Limpopo. It blended so seamlessly into its surroundings that when our Jeep topped a small hill (after turning left at a marking post invisible to all but the trained eye), the camp seemed to appear out of nowhere. Although it had seemed to me that Garry had been following a haphazard, roundabout route to get us to Mashatu, he must have known exactly where he was going because, as promised, it took us just under forty-five minutes to get to the camp from the airfield.
The Jeep pulled up to the front of the main building (which looked a lot like the thatched airport terminal), where awaiting us was a collection of people, some white, some black, some in uniforms, some in safari gear, everyone wearing a hat.
“Good afternoon, and welcome to Mashatu,” said a tall stick of a man with a hooked nose, balding head and a surprisingly pale complexion, given where he worked. “I’m Richard Cassoum, the camp manager.”
As Jaegar and I stepped off the Jeep, our knees a little jerky from the trip, a short, middle-aged woman in a nondescript uniform handed each of us a chilled champagne glass filled with cool water. Oh mama, that tasted good!
“Good trip?” Richard asked with a piercing stare and a wan smile.
“Yes,” I answered.
Jaegar grunted a bit.
Although I was up for more water, we apparently didn’t have time to dither.
“Garry will show you around the camp and then to your rooms,” Richard told us. “Afternoon tea is served on the terrace at half-past three. Your first game drive commences precisely at four o’clock.”
I looked at my watch. It was already three. They weren’t kidding around here.
Garry took us on a quick tour of the place-at one end of the camp were the kitchen and staff areas, outdoor dining area, the bar, guest lounge, and lunch and breakfast terrace; at the other end were the fourteen guest cottages, with two separate suites per building. All of it was surrounded by a high fence to keep the animals out. Jaegar and I were shown to our rooms and told to unpack, get cleaned up, and make our way to the terrace for afternoon tea. Skipping tea in favour of a shower didn’t seem to be an option.
“May I have the key?” I asked Garry as he was about to leave after showing me the amenities of my impressively large room.
He gave me a strange look and said in his blunt accent, “We can get you a key. You want a key?”
I didn’t want to ruffle the order of things or seem like a complete safari camp virgin, but c’mon.
“Oh…well…are there keys?”
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“No one to take things around here,” he said with a twinkle in his chocolate-covered-cherry eyes.
“Someone steal something, there are only so many suspects. Just us. So no one steals.”
Was this the
ubuntu
thing again? I didn’t quite buy his theory. I knew Mashatu was remote, but between staff and guests in fourteen cottages, it might not be as easy to catch a thief as he thought. Maybe I’m just jaded.
“You want a key?” he asked again.
Prepared to be a good sport, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “No, that’s okay. If I want one later, I’ll call the front desk.”
He chuckled. “No phone.”
Whazzat? Where the hell was I? “No phone?” My eyes made a quick survey of the room, and indeed, there was no phone. I was guessing high-speed Internet access was out of the question too.
“No phone,” he confirmed. “You get some rest and come down for tea soon, okay? We leave at four o’clock sharp, okay?”
“Okay.”
When Garry left, I took another tour through the well-lit, airy rooms of my new African quarters. There were two three-quarter beds-made up with crisp, fresh, white linens and impala fur pillows-pushed together to make one large bed. On the wall behind the combined bed were two huge, exquisitely framed, black-and-white prints: one of a rather pensive looking lioness, the other of a powerful elephant that seemed to be debating a charge at the photographer. There was a large full bathroom and, for some inexplicable reason, right next to it, a second, smaller half bath. Running across the full width of the front end of the space was a lounging area with cushioned rattan lounge chairs and a daybed littered with more impala fur pillows, overlooking what appeared to be a jungle of bush through a wide expanse of tinted windows. I slid open one of the sliding glass doors, prepared for the exotic and cacophonous sounds of Africa, but instead found only a heavy quiet layered with an oppressive heat that flowed through the protective screen like warm syrup.
In addition to the photos over the bed, the room’s other walls were covered with more art, mostly replicas of African tribal relics, and on the tile floor were rugs made out of the omnipresent impala fur.
(They sure don’t think much of live impala around here, I thought to myself.) Overall, the place had a warm, outdoorsy feel to it. I liked it a lot, and could easily picture myself spending hot summer afternoons in the comfort of the air-conditioned room, lazing upon the daybed, jotting down my thoughts of the day, sipping a cool citrus drink, watching wild animals pass by my window. But there was no time for that now.
It was tea time!
An amber sun lolled low on the endless African horizon when Garry maneuvered our open air Jeep up Disappointment Hill (named by a filmmaker when he came upon the rare sight of a pair of mating leopards silhouetted against the rising moon-unfortunately, he was out of film). He pulled to a halt at its summit and we fell out of the vehicle, our bones rattling from two hours of rough driving. Our tracker, Tumelo, hopped from his perch in the rear like a sprightly gazelle. He pulled down the tailgate and, with a magician’s flourish, withdrew a freshly pressed white tablecloth from some hidden spot next to the tool box. He spread the pristine cloth over the tailgate and proceeded to lay out a buffet of scrumptious finger foods and the makings of a fully stocked wet bar. I grinned to myself, thinking: this is safari, Russell Quant style.
My companions were an American couple from the Boston area, Gladdy and Stuart, and four Australian twenty-somethings. When we’d loaded ourselves onto the Jeep, I’d allowed them the upper tier 86 of 170
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seats, which gave me the opportunity to sit up front with Garry. I was hoping to befriend him and pump him for information. However, I’d found it difficult to do any pumping during the safari itself, what with the noise of the shaking vehicle. And when we’d finally pull to a stop, Tumelo or Garry having spotted a lion or leopard or cheetah or kudu or jackal or guinea fowl, I knew it was time to be silent and focus on the fauna. Now that we were on half-time break, however, my chance had come.
While the Australians were busy filling their stainless steel cups with wine and the Americans were taking photos of the sunset, I waited for Garry to return from a whiz in the bushes then sidled up next to him. “This is quite something,” I commented, meaning both the sunset and the spectacular spread. “Does this happen every night?”
“The sundowner,” he replied through chomps of biltong (salt-cured meat akin to beef jerky). “The custom of having cocktails and a bite to eat during the sunset hour.” He shot me a sideways look and, with a rakish smile, added: “The only good thing the British gave to Africa.”
I chuckled and looked at my watch: six-fifteen p.m. I spent the next few minutes asking safari-appropriate questions about the animals we’d seen and Garry’s experiences as a guide, all the while sipping the best gin and tonic this side of a gay Summer is Here! party. I finally hit home with: “I think a friend of mine from Canada works here. His name is Matthew Moxley. Do you know him?”
“Oh well,” Garry began, covering the darkening sky with searching eyes, “many people come to Mashatu. Can’t remember them all.”
From what I’d seen so far, there couldn’t have been more than a couple dozen or so staff in the main camp. Add a handful more for the tent camp and that didn’t make a ton of people to remember. Was Garry trying to stonewall me?
“Really?” I said. “So you don’t know if there is someone named Matt or Matthew working here?”
“Matt?” he said as if he’d only now heard the name for the first time.
“Matt Moxley,” I repeated for good measure.
“Oh no, no one here by that name, okay.”
“Oh, that’s funny, I’m sure he said he worked at Mashatu. Does he work in the tent camp do you think?”
Garry was acting uneasy now, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and keeping his dark eyes anywhere but on mine. “Mmmmm no, I don’t think so, no Matt at tent camp.” He raised his cup in the air as if to move my attention from himself to where Stuart was studying the scenery in the valley below us through a set of binoculars. “You see something, Stuart?” he called out.
Nice diversion, Garry.
“I think I see elephants,” Stuart responded in a loud whisper, as if the sound of his voice would frighten off the mammoth creatures.
Garry-delighted to be away from me-joined Stuart and the others at the rim of the hilltop and glared into the dusky outcropping. “Yes, yes,” he said after a moment, pointing at a mass of grey in the distance.
“There they are. Well-spotted, Stuart, well-spotted. Can everyone see them?”
Garry had, quite skillfully I might add, put an end to my interrogation. For now.
Upon returning to camp under a sky of black silk, we were given fifteen minutes to clean up and make our 87 of 170
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way to the cocktail lounge (fittingly called The Gin Trap), for more drinks before the eight-thirty dinner bell. Dusty and dirty, hot and sweaty, and wretchedly road weary after four hours of continuous bumping and humping of the safari vehicle, the seven of us made for a quiet parade down the rock-lined, gravel pathway that led to the guest quarters. Nestled in the tall reeds along the way, petite, flickering ground lanterns were the only lights available to guide us. We stumbled and tripped as we trudged along, peering through the thick darkness like moles, but eventually we found our way. The cloying air smelled of dying heat and sunburnt grass.
My cabin was at the furthest end of camp, leaving me to walk the final several metres alone (and grateful for the solitude). Still a bit wary of my unfamiliar surroundings, I kept a sharp eye out for any movement in the wild flora, horror-movie-spooky in the darkness, and took some comfort in the knowledge that the fence surrounding the property was sound protection against most wildlife.
Except for monkeys.
And crocodiles.
And snakes.
I hurried my pace until I reached my door, letting myself in with a sigh of relief, blissfully unaware that I had more to worry about inside my room than out.
I didn’t have to turn on the lights to know something was not right. I stood still with my back against the door and let my eyes do the walking. Someone had been in my room. Maybe still was?
My ears burned as I tried to listen for telltale sounds of an intruder. There could easily be someone in the closet area or one of the bathrooms, both of which were out of my line of sight, but my ears told me nothing. I noticed the curtains had been pulled across the windows and my bed had been turned down.
Was that it? Was that all? Was it just the maid service that was setting my detective-alarm-bell to jangling? I didn’t think so, yet I couldn’t readily identify what it was that was bothering me.
Then I knew.
I lifted my nose in the air and stepped further into the room. Cheap cologne, so cheap I did not know its name, but I did know where I’d smelled it before. It was in another enclosed space, not so long ago: aboard Botswana Air.
Jaegar had been in my room. I sniffed again. Probably not long ago. Well, Jaegar or the pilot, and I was pretty certain the pilot had turned tail and returned to civilization as soon as he’d dropped us off.
Fortunately, I’d had no time to unpack so it didn’t take me long to go through my things. Everything was there, perhaps not quite as I left it, but nothing was missing. Jaegar had done a good job of not disturbing anything. But what had he been looking for? And had he found it?
It was a few minutes after eight-thirty by the time I managed a quick sponge bath (thank goodness I’d had the sense to buzz my hair very short before this trip, so it wasn’t much of a bother), slipped on a clean pair of cotton rugbys and a striped shirt and made my way to The Gin Trap. Dinner had obviously not yet begun because the cocktail lounge was still full of mingling guests and camp staff. I descended the half-dozen or so steps that led down into the cozy space with its long bar, handful of small tables, and a cushioned perch overlooking the local (animal) watering hole, situated in a deep ravine below the bar. The lighting was low with an aura of candlelight which, along with sun-kissed cheeks and free-flowing drinks, gave everyone a handsome glow. The non-stop chatter was an international mix of several languages punctuated by occasional roars and twitters of laughter and tinkles of glasses being raised in toast to the drinkers’ good fortune at having spotted an elusive cheetah or family of skittish giraffe. I bellied up to the 88 of 170
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bar and ordered a tall gin and tonic.
“Sylvia Dinswoody, Scotland,” a woman to my right, settled on a cushioned stool, announced with precise diction as I waited for my drink.
“Russell Quant, Canada,” I answered back with a raffish smile.