This African adventure is not a light read as it deals with
themes of love, loss and genocide. The Rwandan conflict has
been adapted by the author Jan Hawke as a focal point for
her characters. She sets her tale in an imagined country
called Zyanda where one tribe abruptly turns on their
peaceful neighbours, to the horror of tourists and aid
agency workers.
MILELE SAFARI - the African word means eternal - follows
Sophie Taylor from England as she revisits the Zambezi
River and Victoria Falls in today's calm setting. Memories
of her horror as she learnt that her aid-worker fiancé Tom
had been killed in 1994's abrupt brutality return to haunt
her. Sophie had been pregnant and the shock combined with
malaria caused her to miscarry. Today she still cannot
come to terms with the matter.
Other characters surviving violence include a local village
girl of ten who lets herself be raped each night in return
for food to share with her family. When she is finally left
for dead by her soldier abusers, she is fortunate to be
found and brought to an aid station where her wounds are
cleaned and she gives herself a new name, Teresa. The Dutch
couple who care for her are burnt out and her recovery
gives them some hope. This girl goes on to become a nun,
and to carry out aid work in her turn.
On safari in the modern day, Sophie deals briskly with
scorpions and learns about leopards from her group's guide
David. The friendly voices around her, some of them people
needing the benefit of her experience, help her to come out
of her shell and face the past. This is not an easy task as
there are too many bitter reminders, from witnesses to
letters, of her soul-wrenching loss.
Predatory animals come in all shapes and sizes, from lions
to egg-laying flies, while baboons are as dangerous as they
wish to be and tourists hoping to spot 'the big five' are
warned to stay in their vehicles. Game hunters also tour,
underestimating the danger from buffalo, while elephants,
rhinos and less exotic creatures are all poached. African
countries have now come to realise that tourism brings
money so animals are somewhat protected. Appalling roads,
extreme weather, reluctance to try new farming methods and
lack of dietary protein or clean water are just some of the
challenges Sophie observes, so that people from outside the
vast continent still throw up their hands and say "This is
Africa!"
I was impressed by the attention to detail, the graphic
realism and various viewpoints. One viewpoint I liked was
that of a mother leopard with cubs who had a kill to
protect and share with her young, and who just wished the
two-legged apes would go away and leave her in peace. I
also was glad to see that the story of MILELE SAFARI is
ultimately a hopeful one and Sophie begins to relive her
life and rediscover love. This is Jan Hawke's first novel
and I admire the way that she has addressed the challenge
of her difficult theme.
Milele Safari - An Eternal Journey ...twines around a single
day, in an unremarkable border village that snuffs out the
lives of four people and shatters many others, only to draw
the survivors back to a different time and, perhaps, a hope
of atonement and peace. Step out on the journey and discover
an Africa that could have been, is and might one day come to
be.
Excerpt
Smoke and Thunder
Sophie’s Diary: Thursday 26th April ~ near Livingstone, Zambia
Amazing! We walked across the actual lip of the Falls from the
Zambian side almost as far as Livingstone Island. This place is
different every time I come here. I remember seeing the Falls just
after the rains last time all those years back, when I’d never really
regarded water as an element that defined Africa, except in a
negative way. Tom was with me and it had such a profound effect on us
both (not just the emotional-sexual side although that made it so
memorable of course) that I could never again forget the power and
beauty of water and how much it sums up every part of Africa and its
people and their economies. Perhaps that was because my earliest
travels took me mainly to land-locked farming communities where water
was far more precious than gold during droughts and the children
listened to my stories of rain that fell gently and steadily for days
on end with longing in their eyes, and of snow with open-mouthed
disbelief. In those areas a lack of water was at least well
understood but a surfeit – flash floods and suchlike were almost more
dreaded than drought and much less predictable of course. Too much
water or nothing like enough – an eternal dilemma for African
farmers. I had never thought deeply on how much abundance of water
could be such a boon if it could be controlled even a little until I
visited Victoria Falls, but at the time all I could think of was how
truly beautiful and spectacular the Zambezi was.
How would I describe the Falls? I suppose it would depend on what
time of year you went to them. In dry seasons they are still
impressive and, to some people, more beautiful as the constricted
river flows in ethereal, lacy ribbons down the various gorges. People
from North America scoff that ‘Niagra beats the pants off this’,
conveniently forgetting that their connubial resort’s attraction is
firmly under control and almost completely tamed by dams and
hydraulic engineering. But if they try to say that just after the
rains you won’t be able to see or hear them for the heavy mists and
the rumbling, tumbling roar of the Zambezi as over half a million
cubic metres of water career hundreds of feet downwards, across a
span over a mile across and seemingly through a thousand channels and
chasms. Dr. Livingstone was right you inevitably conclude if you
experience the Falls at this time when the Zambezi is swollen to its
limit – Angels would indeed pause in their flight.
Mosi-oa-tunya.
The Smoke that Thunders…
… ‘My first time here?’ Sophie gave a small twisted smile as they all
sat about the ‘campfire’ in the lodge later that evening. ‘With my
parents when I was fourteen I suppose. But it was the dry season then
and I don’t really count that as my first time - the Zambezi is a
little pussycat then. No. My first sight of it in almost full spate
was about four years later and I was with…’ She gazed into the fire
for a few moments before speaking again. ‘Sorry. I was with a good
friend. The river was really high and fast and some of the extreme
sports firms wouldn’t run their rafts in certain parts of the rapids
because it was too dangerous – more than a ‘five’ anyway – too much
of an insurance risk.’ She grinned at the two cameramen. ‘We were
staying on the Zimbabwe side – before it started going badly over
there and their petrol prices were really cheap so the Zambians were
swarming across the bridge to trade for things they just couldn’t get
hold of at home. We had a couple of days break from work so we
decided to stay in town and do the whole tourist thing. We went to
the Vic Falls National Park, which is a really nice little reserve –
you can get right out over some of the chasms if you’re careful. But
when the river is full like it was today – and the time we were there
- you almost become a part of the Falls. The air is thick with misty
droplets, so fine and light that sometimes you’re breathing them in….
and the sound is stupendous. The ground shakes and you can feel the
impact of the cascades in your throat and the percussion rising up
through your legs. It’s visceral… primeval even. It was so beautiful
and wonderful that we both cried…’ Sophie fell silent again and
others began to talk about their own experience of the great
waterfall. The general consensus was that it was awesome in the true
sense of the word.
They had all gone to bed now except for her and the driver, Adam, who
had come back to talk to Reception about some forward booking that
had gone awry. Sophie had turned at the sound of his quiet low voice
and smilingly waved him over to join her when he was done. They began
to talk about small things, how Livingstone had changed since the
last time she had been there. Anything so she didn’t have to go back
to her room just yet. She didn’t want to be alone and certainly
didn’t want to go to sleep yet, or rather go to bed and lie there
restless in the dusky blue light of the full moon, rippling through
thin curtains, thinking about Tom. How blissful they had felt not two
miles away across the great gorge in one of the basic but very spick
and span lodges. That truly wonderful, magic night they had made
their future plans and been so, so happy and so much in love…
… She sat bolt upright in her bed, shaking violently, still half in
the nightmare, her face wet with soft tears. Sophie leant her hot
forehead against her knees and tried to breathe slowly and deeply as
the memory of the bad dream faded into her past again. After a few
minutes, feeling calmer, she got up and went onto the patio and sat
down on one of the smartly cushioned garden chairs, smiling at the
banality of the little area with the neatly trimmed shrubs – she
could be back in Surrey, or the Med perhaps. Until you looked up at
the night sky. The moon had set and the heavens were strung with
unrivalled starlight against deep blue-black velvet such as you never
saw in Britain. Here in the tropics the Milky Way blazed opalescent
as morning mist on the moors and the sky was huge with the light of
suns, billions of light years away. They were tiny sky-diamonds that
glittered like celestial frost, mocking the sultry warmth of the
rainforest at night. It always moved her. She and Tom had loved to
stay up late and gaze and gaze at them, wrapped up in each other’s
arms. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and willed the tears back. She
had known visiting the Falls would be a trial, but she hadn’t had the
dream for so long now she had thought she would be spared on that
count at least.
It always began so beautifully, with her and Tom making love that
night – well it was barely the evening actually - when they had run
all the way back from the Falls to their little lodge about a mile
upriver out of Vic Falls. They had both felt so humbled, yet excited
by the mighty roaring and reverberation that filled every sense just
as she had described earlier that evening to the others. And they had
both cried a little - well Tom had shed a few manly tears pretending
there was grit in his eye - she had wept buckets and he had held her
tightly, comfortingly in his arms. Then, with the closer contact they
found they could feel the Falls in each other and began to get so
aroused by the sensations. The vibration from the rock underfoot and
the warm damp mists from the cascade falling like a caress on bare
shoulders, arms and legs, that it completely set their libidos alight
as they stood at the edge of the southern cataract wall of the gorge,
with a dozen or so others. Before they really knew it she and Tom
were kissing and touching passionately. Someone had coughed
meaningfully and then someone else had started giggling and they had
abruptly recalled where they were and run off, cackling like hyenas.
They had kept on jogging, hand in hand, until they tumbled back into
their little room at the Lodge and then fell onto the bed, barely
bothering to pull off what clothing they had on and the sex hadn’t
stopped for hours and hours – they had missed dinner at any rate and
could only get cold room service when they had finally stopped to get
their breath back.
But it was after that hurried meal that the dream replayed, when they
were so soft and gentle and loving. They had lain together whispering
quietly to each other, tenderly kissing, stroking warm skin and
tasting each other everywhere, hardly able to bear a second when they
weren’t touching each other somewhere. It was when they both knew
they would never want to be apart again ever. It was the night he had
asked her to marry him. And it was the night that she had conceived,
although of course she hadn’t known that at the time. They had gone
on whispering and stroking and kissing until they had fallen asleep
in each other’s arms, spent and blissfully tired, still listening to
the dim thudding of the Falls in the distance, with the starlight
falling on their beautiful nakedness.
It was not the time that she had been bitten and caught the disease.
That had been several weeks before and it was still incubating then.
She had started being sick occasionally, feeling vaguely ill, but
hadn’t realised what was happening to her. It was enough to stop her
contraception working anyway. But by the time she had found out she
was pregnant and had contracted malaria it was far too late because
by then Tom was dead and her life was over or so she thought. The
life of their baby was over before it had even started – she had
miscarried after only six weeks, devastated by grief, feverish and
exhausted by the insidious disease, so like a bad bout of gastric
‘flu, but poisoning her blood and invading her womb, befouling the
placenta. It had killed the darling baby that was all she had to hold
onto after the news had come through that Tom and Sister Teresa had
been murdered by terrified ‘soldiers’ in a tiny refugee camp on the
Tanzanian border with Zyanda. She couldn’t remember much about that
time because she had fallen into a minor coma the day after the
dreadful news came through, and, when she came around a few days
later, she had lost the child as well. Her co-workers had already
sent for Claire and begun to make the arrangements to send her home
to England where she could recover properly and then heal her grief.
And of course she did recover eventually, but she doubted she would
ever heal fully.
But the dream mercifully left out that bit, although in a way she
would have preferred to linger over those awful days to what it did
move onto. Always the same. That perfect end to the night and then
she dreamt she woke up and everything was white. She was always alone
at first. Tom wasn’t there and she was just sitting on the ground and
gradually the white light turned golden and someone touched her
lightly on the shoulder. It was Terry. She hugged Sophie and kissed
her lightly on the cheek. Which was very strange because they had
never really been friends at all. But it felt right in the dream up
until the kiss, because that was when Sophie realised that Terry
wasn’t wearing her nun’s habit, but a tribal dress and that she had
great wounds in her chest and on the left side of her face. Terry
smiled as much as she still could and whispered ‘I’m so sorry Sophie.
It was my fault, but I could not stand there and do nothing.’ and
then she was gone, and that was always where she began to cry because
someone else was coming.
It was Tom of course, but she couldn’t see him properly at first as
the golden light was so intense. It worried her that he didn’t seem
to have any lower arms, until she realised he was holding something…
someone. Someone very small. He held them tenderly and seemed to be
humming softly at them. Then she could see him properly and his head
and torso was covered in blood and so was the baby. Their dead unborn
baby, but it seemed to be alive and smiling at her. He came and knelt
down in front of her and leaned over to kiss her softly on the mouth.
She could always taste the blood, his blood from the wound on his
forehead that had trickled all down his face. She never looked at the
baby – she couldn’t, but she knew it was there because it brushed her
breast with its little hand. Tom spoke to her too. Just a few words
‘It’s OK Soph – I’m looking after her. Don’t worry babe.’ And then he
was gone too, with the baby, and then she would really wake up,
sweating and crying frantically, her lip or her tongue bitten and
bleeding.
‘Don’t worry babe.’ Those were his last words to her when he left,
with Terry looking so sanctimonious and noble up in the lorry cab,
driving drugs and medical supplies to the agency’s distribution depot
in Tanzania. She rubbed her lower lip thoughtfully. At least she
hadn’t bitten it too hard this time. She let the tears come finally –
they were a release now and maybe she would be able to get a few
hours sleep at least. How glad she was that they had to come to the
Livingstone side. It would have been too awful to stay in Vic Falls.
Well she wouldn’t have come on this trip at all of course if they
were staying on the Zimbabwe side. She had never been back there
since those wondrous few days that had meant so much to them both.
So far as her poor heart was concerned she did not wish her memory of
that time to be disturbed and tarnished. Some wounds never healed.
But she didn’t have a monopoly on grief – that had been her mantra
for a while back in England - she wasn’t the only person who had lost
the dearest, truest thing in their life. The one person she wanted
still after all these years. And it was good to see the Falls again
and remember something so beautiful and honest and fine. But not from
the same place, because she couldn’t go back there. It was lost to
her and she had already let it go a long time ago. Some things are
worth remembering though, even if it gives pain. Some pains are
supposed to hurt and should never be forgotten.
Sophie woke with a start and grabbed the telephone which was buzzing
annoyingly. Adam’s voice crackled down the line. Was she joining them
for breakfast and then a short excursion over the bridge and lunch at
the Victoria Falls Hotel? She told him no for both breakfast and trip
and said she’d meet them all in the lobby later in the afternoon,
when they departed for Lusaka and the next leg of the safari. Before
flopping back down on the pillows she reached over and turned the
fans up a little and watched the wicker struts making flickering
shadows on the ceiling. She smiled at another memory. The yanks would
love the Vic Falls Hotel that still pulled in rich punters and their
much-needed currency even now in the bad times – it was so beautiful
and so incongruous. Maybe they still had a steel band playing in the
lovely, lush tropical gardens every lunch-time? You could sit out
there and eat very thinly cut cucumber sandwiched between immaculate
slices of fresh-baked white bread on fine china, sipping hot Indian
single estate tea that arrived in steaming silver teapots. Then carry
on relaxing out on the verandah, or under the enormous thatched
umbrellas and listen to ‘Yellow Bird’ or imagine you were sitting on
the ‘Dock of the Bay’ with cape doves and the ‘wireless’ birds
providing a weird backing track to the ridiculously kitsch metallic
warbling of the steel drums; trying to decide whether to have a
dessert now or wait until it was time for afternoon tea and scones
with thick cream and fruity jam, or even lemon curd, or ginger
preserve! Her mouth watered slightly at the thought of the English-
inspired delicacies that seemed so right still in such a different
climate and culture. In a different century now as well. Anyway, she
would hear all about it when they got back later on. She didn’t need
to go there herself, her memories were enough.
No. She would stay here and sleep on a little and then read her
paperback, or write in her diary, out on the little patio. She had
inspected the room service menu very thoroughly the day before and
she could order Assam tea with cucumber sandwiches and plain scones
with ginger preserves and cream for her self-indulgent solitary
luncheon. It would be good to be quiet and keep her own company in
peace for a few hours out there, where, if she cared to look, she
could just see the rise of the great smoky white towers of water-mist
over the top of the rainforest and listen to the thunderous voice of
the Zambezi rolling on forever. And remember how truly good it had
been for them both.
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