by Dominic Chadbon, 12 March 2008

We all remember the best years of our lives - when an innocent world seemed to gape with potential; a time before children, mortgages, meetings and divorces.

Mine were spent careering round the national parks of Botswana and Zimbabwe as a safari guide: wrestling with ancient, steaming landrovers along tortuous roads; camping under gracious acacias; scouring the shimmering, buzzing bush for game.

It was my home, physically and spiritually, for five care-free years. Over a decade had passed in mild, Euro-centric Cape Town, before I visited the region again.

As I counted down the days, I couldn't stop thinking about what travel writer, Bill Bryson, had once remarked: there are two things you just can't do - beat the phone company and return home.

Homecoming

The first thing you notice when you are back in the bush after so long is, well, it just feels like the bush. Botswana in December is hot and muggy. The air is stiff with the smell of rain, dust and elephants.

No more white noise of traffic and digital cheeping: choirs of grasshopper-like cicadas fill the air with nail-down-the-blackboard screeching, a baboon barks and a hippo guffaws. And a big, moronic smile is plastered all over my face.

I'd flown up to Livingstone from South Africa. The manicured lawns of Johannesburg had petered out into dusty scrubland and I'd fallen inelegantly asleep. Waking with a snort I looked out through the scratched perspex and realised with a jolt that we were in another place: white candyfloss clouds, tossed as far as you could see as if by a petulant giant, were billowing up into grim grey anvils.

Below me lay empty miles of horizon-hugging savannah woodland. Slaloming through the thunderheads our plane touched down in the slanting sheets of rain. "Welcome to Zambia's rainy season,” intoned the captain solemnly.

Waves of red muddy water washed over our feet as we sprinted to the arrival hall and long fidgeting queues. I was home. It was indeed the rainy season: as we drove through Livingstone a wall of water swept along the main road forcing people to dash madly for cover, grinning and shrieking - after all, this is no grey Euro-drizzle: the life-giving rains are welcomed in Africa.

The blundering storms shuffling across the sky trigger a blanket of new green leaves. But it was the Chobe National Park that I had come to see, and as the 4X4 bumped its way through the scrubby woodland, wave after wave of memories nudged my senses: a forgotten birdcall, the meaty smell of the river and the towering sky.

The place looked untouched since my years there. We drove along the same snaking network of roads, catching familiar glimpses of the river. Impala seemed to nod in recognition as we passed and I swear a baboon winked. Empty patches of riverbank echoed with the memory of a big sighting 10 or 15 years ago.

Some things have changed though: instead of pushing a mop, many local women now sit proudly uniformed behind the wheel of game drive vehicles; out on the open vastness of the Chobe River our river guide surreptitiously sent messages on his cell phone while we were gawping at a crocodile.

But the fundamentals remain: languid elephants, yawning hippos and, up a bleached dead tree, a leopard sprawled on a branch, eyeing us with casual disdain.

Phoenix Rising?

Things had changed in Zimbabwe, however. And how. I left Victoria Falls in 1997 - it was a boom town then, wheeling, dealing, making money and having huge fun along the way. Now it lay fallow with weeds growing through pavement cracks and windows boarded up.

It was jaw-dropping stuff and made worse by the beggars and touts who swirled around you forcing your discourse into a continuous chant - sorry, no, sorry, no thank you, sorry, no. It's tough here, difficult to do business with an intermittent fuel supply, spiralling prices and "mickey mouse” money.

My guide pulled out an inch thick wad of notes - over six million dollars - and mournfully remarked that it wouldn't even buy a beer. And you'd better have a couple of alternatives when choosing an item on the restaurant's patchy menu, assuming the lights haven't gone off.

I kept asking myself how on earth this place survived. But the answer was evident - Victoria Falls has reinvented itself.

"Ja man, this season was hectic,” mused my local guide. "We had extra flights laid on and [I love this phrase] the town was full, full, full.” Full of whom?

Not the traditional British and American visitors - they're all safely over in the white-gloved Zambian hotels, well away from dangerous, chaotic Zimbabwe. But take a stroll around the golf course; African women golfers. Loaf around next to the pool; Spanish and Polish voices. Sit down at a dining room table; Korean groups and Indian families.

Vic Falls is still in business - it's just doing it with a different crowd. And anyway, what would you do? My guess is that you'd do the same as Victoria Falls does: keep your head down, make what you can and wait for it to all be over.

"What else can I do in this country but play golf?” implored a grinning Bulawayo businessman, palms up and shoulders shrugged, as he made his way to a sun-drenched course, behind which rose the fat steamy clouds of The Falls themselves, curling into an patient, waiting sky.

Article © Copyright 2008 Go2Africa.

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