I Wasn’t Careful and Got A Putzi Infection…

It was really hard to say goodbye to everyone in Zambia, especially the boys from the orphanage. I wouldn’t have minded staying there to teach, but I needed to move on. I left Zambia and in my usual fashion, left everything I needed to do to the last minute. This included washing my clothes so that I would have something to wear on my long trip down to Cape Town. Due to my procrastination I didn’t iron my clothes. Africa has the delightful putzi fly that likes to lay its eggs on damp clothing. Ironing your clothes kills off the eggs so it is a good idea to iron everything. Since I didn’t iron some of my clothes I got a putzi infection… if the eggs aren’t killed they borough themselves underneath of the skin, where they hatch. Maggots growing underneath your skin aren’t as gross as Hollywood makes them out to be in horror films, but still something I could have done without. You get a nice large red spot with the black worm in the center. Killing them isn’t too hard, you just lance the maggot and put Vaseline on it to suffocate it. The maggot comes out a bit afterwards.

Well this was my going away present from Zambia. I was now on my way all the way across the Zambezi River to spend a few days in Victoria Falls before meeting up with my friends Judy and Richard. I spent three days out at the lion project, feeding and playing with the cubs and going on walks with the larger lions. I would go on walks with the local guides and they taught me how to track animals and how to survive in the bush. I’m not sure when I’ll ever going to use this information, but if animals ever escape the zoo, I might be able to find them. Even though the cubs parents aren’t raising them, they still have their natural instinct. I loved playing with the cubs, allowing them to stalk me. I would put my back to them and they would slowly crawl towards me as if they were hunting. It was amazing to watch this. The big boys are a lot of fun as well, but are a hell of a lot stronger than me. I got scratched a few times and one of the girls decided to bite me. I survived the ordeal though and really enjoyed being with the lions and having the guides give me bush knowledge.

I met Richard and Judy in Victoria Falls two days before we left for Botswana. Victoria Falls and Zimbabwe are an amazing place. The day I arrived there was no electricity, a normal occurrence here, and the next day there was no water. I’m not sure exactly what happened, it is goes something like the government didn’t give the city council any money so the city council didn’t pay the water works so the water works cut off water to the entire town. The water was out for three days and Judy and Richard arrived on day two to the lodge that they were staying at, paying about $300 US a night for a lovely accommodation without any water. I didn’t mind too much, I would just go for a swim in the pool and we got some boar hole water to drink. Unfortunately for Judy and Richard, they had spent the past two weeks in the bush and just wanted a good shower… “hopefully it will be turned back on tomorrow.”

I took Judy and Richard to the lion project in the morning to give them the opportunity to walk with the lions. They really enjoyed the experience and Richard even got the courage to play with the lions, dragging a branch which they would chase and tear to shreds. It was a good morning with the lions and then we left to head back to town and go and see the falls. It started to rain on our way back to town. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was definitely the beginning of the rainy season there. The rain passes over quickly and we walked down to the falls. The Zimbabwe side of the falls is much more impressive visually than the Zambian side. You walk along the opposite face from the falls, through a small rainforest made possible by the mist from the falls. The water had definitely risen since I was previously there and it made for spectacular views of the falls. I even got to see the devil’s armchair and the pool that I dove into to hang over the falls and a good view of the walk that Emma and I did across the top of the falls to Livingstone Island. We walked around, getting all of the views of the falls, and walked through the rainforest where we even saw a water buck (the tracks inside part of the hoof is longer than the outside). I had a wonderful time in Victoria Falls, but it was time to move on.

Judy and Richard picked me up early in the morning and we drove with Richard’s two brothers and their wives over to Botswana to go camp in Chobe National Park for three days. While entering the park and registering, I ran into someone I knew from Livingstone. She had just seen a leopard just a few kilometers from the gate. I was excited because I had never seen one before. We drove to where the leopard was spotted and spent half an hour trying to spot it. Game viewing is a gamble, sometimes you see the animals, sometimes you don’t, and if you are somewhere just a few minutes too early or late you will miss it. Well, we were a few minutes late and missed the leopard. The day wasn’t a complete loss, as we saw a large herd of elephant playing in the river, a lot of hippos grazing (a rare sight during the day), and many more animals. The great thing was that it was the beginning of the rainy season, about a month after the first rains, and all of the animals had just had their young.

It was New Years Eve and we headed to set up camp at about four in the afternoon. We arrived at the camp which was right on the Chobe River. I’ve stayed in game parks before, but never camping in a tent, and the camps usually had a fence to keep the large animals out. There was no such thing here, we were still in the wilderness. I was warned about the baboons and to keep the food locked away at night to keep the hyenas out. We set up camp and I pitched my tent, overlooking the Chobe River and the Caprivi Strip of Namibia on the opposite bank, with two fish eagles perched on the tree above me scanning the water for dinner. It was Judy’s turn to cook dinner and I helped her prepare a wonderful outdoor cooked paella. We had dinner and drank for a bit as we watched the sun set as the rain fell in the distance. This was Africa. I was asleep by ten that night, quite a different New Years Eve than I was used to, but I couldn’t ask for a better way to spend it.

The next day was rainy and the animals knew something that we didn’t because they were nowhere to be found. Maybe they were on holiday seeing as it was New Years Day but something was definitely up. Finally after hours of looking and seeing very little, we headed back towards camp. On the way back we found a water hole with about forty hippos, most out of the water. There were many young playing among the grazing elders. We were treated to quite a show. At least we saw something so the whole day wasn’t a loss. We were only a few kilometers from camp and decided to head back. Driving back I spotted something moving among the rocks ahead. It wasn’t a rock it was a lion. We slowly proceeded ahead trying not to scare it off. We followed it to just inside the bush where it decided to lay down and have a rest. It was about a two year old female and she just lay there in the grass looking for something. What ever she was looking for didn’t arrive by the time we took off.

To my distress camp was only about two kilometers from where we spotted the lion. Back at camp we had dinner and drinks by the fire. I found a scorpion crawling around by my feet. Little did I know that this night it wouldn’t be the lion or scorpion that I had to worry about, no it was the rains. It started to rain at about eight, a true down pour that didn’t stop all night. I kept going in and out of sleep that night, being woken by the rain pounding the tent and wind whipping the fly. All I could think was that I was going to be washed down the hillside that I was camped on into the Chobe River. Morning arrived and I survived the 80 mm of rain that fell during the night, somehow remaining somewhat dry.

We started our long trek down to Cape Town that would take four days of driving through Botswana and South Africa. The drive was long and quite uneventful. The only excitement was when a black mamba attacked one of the cars while driving in Botswana. It was amazing to see this three meter snake go after a land rover without any fear. No wonder why Africans were so scared of these snakes. One of the game reserves that we were camping at in South Africa had rhinos in the park. I asked the woman at the gate whether it was a black or a white rhinoceros. “No sir, rhinoceros aren’t black or white, they are gray.” I hope she wasn’t a game ranger. The trip to Cape Town took us through long stretches of straight road through the high veldt. It gave Judy and I time to catch up after four years.