Rogue Lion Safaris. Simon Barnes

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СКАЧАТЬ drinking, reading, talking, writing area: a nicely thatched roof, more elaborate than the roofs of the huts, supported by stout wooden pillars, with a knee-high wall made from tied-together bundles of dried grass. Inside were a dining table and chairs. Beyond the sitenji, on the edge of the bank, a few ‘comfortable’ canvas chairs were grouped around a small pile of ashes: we had a fire here at night when there were clients in camp.

      ‘I mean, the potential of this place,’ Caroline said, looking at the elegant grove of ebony trees to the right of and behind the camp, which let through a dappled sunlight. There seemed to be in her eyes something of the same excitement that George and I felt when we saw a crowd of vultures perched high in a tree, and wondered what we might find beneath. ‘Fabulous. Just fabulous.’

      ‘What would you wish to do with the place?’ asked Joseph Ngwei politely.

      ‘This could be the hottest camp in the Valley,’ she said, ignoring, or perhaps unaware of, the hostility she was inspiring. ‘I mean, only six guest huts?’

      ‘Five,’ I said. ‘Ten beds.’

      ‘But you could double that easily, it’s perfect.’

      ‘I know it is.’

      ‘I thought Impala Lodge had the best location in the Valley, but this is better, the views along the river are better, and that wood is unbelievable. You could really do something with this place.’

      ‘Ebony glade,’ I said.

      ‘I can’t believe you don’t do more with it.’

      ‘We thought that improving on perfection was beyond us.’

      She turned to me, eyes alight with delight, and said: ‘Come on then. What about a guided tour?’

      ‘It won’t take long. There isn’t much to see here. Only the bush.’ I showed her the sitenji; this had a bar at one end, at Joyce’s insistence, but no one had ever stood behind it. We used it as a shelf for our natural history books and the spare pairs of binoculars, all intended for the use of clients, and very dusty they got there. Caroline went out to the half-circle of ‘comfortable’ chairs and stood at the fireplace. She remained there for a long while in silence. A great white egret was fishing in the middle of the stream, beside him a spoonbill working furiously in comensal proximity. After a while, she asked: ‘Will you show me the huts?’

      The huts were just huts, creaking baskets with light-permeable walls. Each contained two spindly, metal-framed single beds, two mosquito nets, and a small table bearing a Thermos jug of imperfectly chilled water. ‘Where’s the floor?’ Caroline asked.

      ‘What you are standing on is the floor of the planet earth,’ I said. ‘A light covering of sand from the Mchindeni river bank. What more could anyone want?’

      ‘Well, if you don’t know, I can’t tell you,’ Caroline said. ‘I can see why you keep hearing rumours about the National Parks Commission wanting to close you down. Who on earth can you get to come and stay here? Why don’t you put concrete down?’

      ‘It’s not allowed. We’re inside the park here: no permanent structures allowed.’

      ‘Impala Lodge is inside the park, and Leon got permission to lay down concrete.’

      ‘I’m aware of that. We don’t actually want concrete, though. We prefer Mchindeni river sand.’

      ‘What about lavatories?’

      ‘Oh, we’ve got them, don’t panic.’ I took her to the nearest of the two. ‘Long-drop. Sort of a deep pit, an oil drum at the top. But as you see, a real lavvy seat.’

      ‘You didn’t think of building them en suite, of course.’

      ‘Not a good idea. They get to whiff a bit by the end of the season, you see.’

      ‘Leon got permission to fit flush toilets at Impala Lodge.’

      ‘Yes, I know, and the water towers are a wonderful landmark for lost travellers.’ The sarcasm washed over her. She seemed to be rather overdoing the casual, professional interest in a competitor’s business. I felt like a house owner listening to a tactless potential buyer criticising the wallpaper and talking loudly about dismantling your favourite room.

      Caroline asked: ‘And showers?’

      ‘Ah yes. Pièce de résistance, the showers. Clients love them. Follow me.’ I led her to the edge of the river bank, where three oil drums stood. Beneath the central one, a small fire of mopane wood was kept perpetually alight; mopane, hard as diamond, forms small coals that glow for hours.

      ‘Don’t tell me,’ Caroline said. ‘You splash yourselves down out here in the open.’

      ‘Would we be so coarse and unsophisticated? Come.’ I led her down a short flight of steps, cut into the river bank. At their foot was a small ledge, its outer edge guarded by a bamboo rail. Behind the rail were the two shower cubicles, each the size of a telephone kiosk, roofed with thatch, three walls and a floor cut from living river bank. The fourth wall was air; each cubicle gave a matchless view across the mighty Mchindeni. And from each, you could see both egret and spoonbill, and hear the grunting and guffawing of a pod of hippo in a deep pool a few yards away. Caroline inspected the shower head and the two taps, which were fed by the oil drums above: hot and cold. A straggling party of a dozen foxy-red puku was coming down to drink on the far side of the river; a pied kingfisher flashed before us, halted in mid-air, hovering hard, before plunging twenty feet into the river, emerging triumphantly fishfull.

      Caroline placed both her hands on the bamboo rail, and looked out over the river. I said nothing; nor, for once, did she. A sudden piercing whistle, surprisingly close, cut the air, and she jumped. ‘Puku,’ I said softly. ‘Alarm call. Look, there he is, right below us.’

      ‘Antelope whistle? Is this a tease?’

      ‘Would I do such a thing? I know it’s an odd noise for an antelope, but it’s what they do.’

      Obligingly the puku did it again, and Caroline laughed suddenly. ‘You know, there are moments when I see the point of you lot. The shower is lovely. But doesn’t all this neo-primitivism upset the clients?’

      ‘Some are a bit taken aback at first,’ I said, answering seriously because this was intended as a serious question. ‘Especially if they’ve been told to expect something different. And that happens more often than we would wish.’

      ‘But that’s dreadful. Can’t you control the way you are marketed? It’s the first rule of business, surely.’

      ‘Well, that’s our Joyce for you. But the thing is, once we’ve got the clients – on the rare occasions we get any, that is – it begins to work to our advantage. We tell them this is a camp, a bush camp, the real thing, no half-cocked lodge. This is where the real bush people go. And we give them lots and lots of bush, lots and lots of animals. They mostly get the hang of things. The ones who are nervy at first generally end up the biggest fans. They feel they’ve achieved something, which they have, and they end up really pleased with themselves. That’s great fun for us, when it happens, and it happens a lot.’

      ‘Yes, I can see how that might be a good strategy,’ Caroline said thoughtfully. ‘If you could market it properly, it would certainly be effective. If you could СКАЧАТЬ