An Elephant Bull Called Elizabeth and Other Short Stories from Africa

Good Manners

In Africa's towns and cities the ever increasing pace of life is catching up with its inhabitants.  Increasingly it would seem that there is always something that needs doing or somewhere-else one needs to be.  When this happens texts are blunt and to the point while general communication has, at times, become abbreviated to a point just short of rude.  There is rarely time for the niceties.  All quite western in truth.

Not so in Africa's rural areas.  Life is still dictated by the rise and fall of the sun, by the coming and going of the seasons.  Day to day tasks fall into place and there is no rush.  Yes water needs to be collected from the well but nothing terrible will happen if the task is delayed for a while.  Preparing the fields for planting is a difficult task and best done on an early start, yet there is no way the job will be done in a day, no matter how furiously you work, here a measured and methodical approach is the best.

With the pace of life thus dictated the niceties of social interaction have never gone away, they are deeply ingrained.  Chief amongst these is the meet and greet.  In western society 'how are you?' normally suffices as a greeting and one can then assume the formalities are done and get down to business.  If you know someone very well you might think to ask after a member of the family, but only if you have the time.

In the more remote areas a discussion, if you like, normally takes place before you might get round to the business at hand.  In fact, at times, it would seem that the business at hand is secondary to the conversation.  A case in point.

I had the great fortune to take on a project, funded by Danish Aid and run in conjunction with Conservation Lower Zambezi, to train several local inhabitants as safari guides.  Tourism has the potential to change peoples lives in an area where the economy is almost solely based on agriculture whilst the climate is largely unsuited to such endeavour.  All that is needed for the local population to take an active part, and so benefit from an influx of westerners with their cash resources, is to be given the tools; in this case the knowledge and skills to pass the local safari guide exams that are a prerequisite if a camp is going to employ you to take their guests out on safari.  Guiding is one of the best paid jobs available in the area.

I can not remember what I was doing on the day in question; I was probably in too much of a rush; but  I was travelling from the direction of the main road and making my way back to Conservation Lower Zambezi, just on the edge of the Lower Zambezi National Park in Zambia.  The road here wends its way through thick riverine bush as it twists and turns following the languid bends of the Zambezi river and cutting across many of her minor tributaries. 

Up ahead I saw a green uniform rise from his perch at the side of the road.  It was a scout.  The scouts of the area are employed by the Zambian Wildlife Authority and serve to patrol the area and protect it from poaching.  A difficult and often dangerous task.  There was a local outpost not far away and so no surprises in bumping into this individual.  He looked as if he wanted to talk and so I politely slowed, drew up alongside and came to a halt.

We greeted each other.  As we had never met before enquiring about family was not feasible.  However he knew of me as the local population was very excited about the guide training program; as such there was much discussion of how the first intake were progressing as well as interest in exactly what training as a guide might involve.  He told me of this and I ensured him of the good progress being made and in return asked him how things were on the poaching front.  Had they collected any snares, seen any evidence of poachers moving about etc.

After a short chat it seemed the conversation had run its course and it was time for me to move on.  He did have something to add however.

"One of the scouts has just been attacked by a buffalo, maybe you can come and have a look?"

What can you say to that?  Obviously, given that fact that I had a vehicle, first aid kit and a degree of first aid training I was not going to say no.  Still, as African as I am, born and raised in Zimbabwe, I am also western; waiting until the end of the conversation to mention this tit bit still surprised me.  I told him to jump on and off we went.

Indeed the poor fellow had been attacked by a buffalo.  Earlier in the day the scouts had received word of a problem with wildlife in one of the villages.  The only way to investigate was to walk and so the fellow I had just met and his colleague had started off upstream, following the river bank and settling in for a long walk to the nearest village to see what had been going on.

Luck was against them this particular day.  Hippos leave deep cuts in the bank as they come and go from their feeding areas every night.  In some places these hippo trails are the only way down to the waters edge and are commonly used by wildlife needing to get down there to have a  drink.  This is exactly what the buffalo bull was doing when the pair of scouts suddenly appeared, against the skyline, at the top of his only exit.

As far as the buffalo was concerned he was cornered, either he launched into the river and got swept away or he went on the offensive as the best form of defence.  As is often the case with a buffalo bull in a tight spot he settled on the latter and came boiling up and out of the narrow chute.

As a pair there was always a fifty fifty chance that one or other of them was going to be caught and so it was that my patient was trampled whilst his partner made an escape.  By all accounts the buffalo crushed him against the ground, repeatedly ramming him with its huge boss.  The boss is a thick pad of horn overlaying bone which is designed to absorb the impact of a head on collision with another buffalo in fights over mating rights.  

The attack did not last long and the buffalo charged off as quickly as it had come.  As bad as it was it was still better than it could have been.  A very common injury in this kind of scenario is for the abdomen to be punctured as the buffalo tosses you high in the air on the tip of its severely hooked horn. 

Be that as it may it was scarce comfort to the man laid out before me.  He was in shock, shivering despite the heat, and was in a great deal of pain.  Apart from the multiple scraps and bad bruising there was obviously something wrong with his leg.  It appeared that his hip and or femur were either broken or, possibly, dislocated.  All the could be done was to make him as comfortable as possible and send him for a bumpy two hour ride, laid on a mattress, in the back of Conservation Lower Zambezi's open land-cruiser and driven by the ever dependable Jealous 'Chops' Nyandowo.  The pain must have been excruciating with every single bump of that dirt track despite Chops best efforts at the wheel.

Chops was given the task of taking the man in as my vehicle was set up as game viewer with seats rather than the open bed of Jealous's vehicle in which a mattress could be laid.

An extended stay in hospital and a long recovery at home saw the scout returned to good health though I believe he found employment outside of ZAWA, having had enough of the dangers of being out and about in remote wildlife areas.

In the end the prolonged greeting and niceties before we came to the matter at hand made no difference at all to the outcome.  I am all for keeping up this tradition and perhaps even trying to bring it back into my everyday life in London.  However, for me, there is one obvious exception; in emergencies I feel it really will always be best to just cut to the chase.