Wild Spirit (25 page)

My head spun with the tumult of images – swirling red and white figures, drugged men leaping fires, wild naked men glistening with sweat. Then, suddenly, it was all over. The thudding drums fell silent, the rattles no longer swished, and the dancers vanished. In their place, an eerie quiet hung over the clearing.

We held our applause until one of the men nearby confirmed that the performance had ended. Then there was clapping and cheering, handshaking and a hubbub of voices, as everyone speculated on the meaning of what they'd seen. My eyes swept the faces of the guests – chatting, gesticulating, laughing – and I knew the performance had given them what they wanted, a glimpse of the raw Africa they wouldn't find anywhere else.

On the final night, we all gathered in Eamon and Noni's house for the farewell cocktail party. I watched the reactions of the visitors as they entered the living room, the looks of admiration as they took in every detail. Noni stood behind the panelled bar, setting out plates of food. Doug circulated, working the crowd of dignitaries like a diplomat. I could tell the entire visit had impressed the Comité beyond anything they could have expected. And
as I stood, having another of my ‘pinch me' moments, I saw a colossal black-and-white image of a gorilla mounted on the wall beside the fireplace. It was Arthur, the much-adored lowland gorilla who had loved to wrestle. My eyes misted over and I thought of Josie and Ikata. I knew why Eamon had put it there.

Towards the close of the evening, Vice-President Mébiame took me aside and asked me in French about the forest and why I liked living at Belinga. I told him it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me, that the world of the gorillas, the colobus monkeys, the leopards and the elephants had set my spirit on fire.

He smiled wistfully and said, ‘I would like to have had that privilege myself. I have never seen most of those animals.'

As the time of our departure approached, I wanted to fix forever in my mind all the changing images of wildlife that accompanied the seasons, especially the visits of migratory birds. The rainbow bee-eaters of North Africa – the ones we had seen in Saharan oases – spent six months of the year with us. I loved their exquisite colours – green, yellow and blue – and their high piping calls as they dipped and whirled in the air catching insects. Swallows also came south to escape the northern winter. They perched in hundreds on our powerlines like a parade of soldiers in black and navy uniform. Large black and white storks sought refuge in the clearing, ahead of fierce storms and gales. I had watched them trying to circle for a landing as the wind buffeted their huge wings. They looked ungainly with their long thin legs dangling down, but they were graceful and elegant fliers on a calm day. Cattle egrets also visited, their snowy white feathers and bright yellow beaks conspicuous against the green of the forest and the red of the ground. Belinga provided a natural resting place
for the birds on their long journeys, because they could pinpoint the clearing from far off. For me, the sight of these large flocks resting from their epic migrations was one of Africa's great spectacles.

From late June, I had more time to focus on the wildlife and forest, because Carol had been steadily taking over the various parts of my job. On 29 June, she did her first radio link in French without any assistance. I sat beside her, ready to help, but she didn't need me. A week later, she took over all of my tasks.

Suddenly I had nothing particular to do. For several days I felt myself in limbo, alternating between relief at the shedding of the burden, and emptiness because I was no longer needed. When that phase passed, the realisation dawned that at last I was free to go out on the tracks photographing whenever I wanted. I took the Méhari out often in the afternoons to capture images of the forest backlit by gentle sun. I stopped frequently, examining the minutiae of spiders' webs, the patterns on butterflies' wings as they sucked up salt from animal dung, the blossoms on the flowering vines that grew by the roadside. Each time I went out, the tinge of loss tugged at me. Soon I would leave it all behind.

 

Win had one last endurance test to face – driving the Kombi back to Libreville on the first stage of its journey back to Europe. Despite all it had done in Africa, it was still in good condition and we weren't ready to part with it. Kruger had sent the company barge up the day before to transport it downriver, and Win would be gone about five days. We would keep in touch by radio. I watched as the
barge, laden with empty fuel drums and
cantines
, women, children, and the Kombi, pulled slowly away from the bank. The sight took me back a year to the night we had landed at Mayebut and driven up the mountainside in the van for the first time.

That evening, I spoke with Win on radio. The river trip had taken ten hours, because the water level was dangerously low. He would leave Makokou at first light in the morning and hoped to reach Libreville by seven o'clock that night. Optimistic, I thought, but didn't say it.

I heard nothing until two days later, when he came to the radio in the Libreville office, his voice husky and flat with exhaustion.

‘It was a nightmare trip. The route was worse than ever. The mud bogs were thirty metres long. When I got stuck and tried to winch out, the handle sheared off, so I had to wait for someone to tow me out. At the first river crossing the ferry had broken down and was relying on a truck arriving at either bank to tow it across with cables. The second one was even worse. Lines of trucks were queued up either side because the ferry could only take two at a time. But I had a bit of luck there. There was a gendarme who asked me for a lift to Libreville and he managed to get us to the head of the queue. We got across just on dark, and were making good time when the engine started to splutter and stall – the old problem of water and dirt in the petrol – so I had to keep stopping to clean the fuel filter.'

‘And did it get better after that?'

‘Nope. I made dinner for the two of us about nine o'clock and we slept in the van – the gendarme in the front and me in the back – and the
fourreaux
feasted on us all
night. We left early next morning with just 300 kilometres to go. The route was drier, but littered with rocks. We'd just started when we had the first blow-out. I fitted the spare, but you won't believe it, within half an hour we'd had another one. By then, the gendarme had had enough, he flagged down the next vehicle and left me to it. It took me till mid-afternoon to limp into town on three good tyres and a flat. I'm staying at a
cas de passage
here in the African quarter. I haven't slept. The place is full of mosquitoes and surrounded by barking dogs.'

‘A month to go, sweetheart,' I soothed. ‘The worst's over now.'

‘On the bright side, I'm having dinner with Roger tonight. I'll talk to you again tomorrow.' I knew that a night of Roger's cooking and conversation would soon restore his spirits.

When we spoke on the radio the next time, Win was full of good news. He had spent the morning at the port and booked the Kombi on a container bound for Bordeaux. Better still, since all containers from Libreville normally returned to Europe empty, only a nominal charge had been payable.

‘And I'm bringing Roger back to camp with me for a visit,' he said. ‘He's going to be in Makokou anyway to install a new aviation beacon. We'll be up on either Monday or Wednesday.' It was wonderful news. We could return some of his lavish hospitality, and he would see Belinga at last.

They arrived on the Wednesday night, Roger in high spirits after the river trip by pirogue. He could hardly wait to see the countryside. He'd never lived in the interior, and now we – who had been new to Gabon just a year before – would be his guides. We chatted late into
the night: he wanted to hear all about the project and what our life had been like.

The following day was one of those rare sparkling ones where every leaf shone, the sky was clear, and it hadn't rained for a week. After breakfast, I took Roger out in the Méhari to Babiel, where we could look out over the mountains and forest to the north. After lunch, Win took him on a tour of the camp to see all the new buildings, especially Eamon and Noni's house. Then in the late afternoon we drove down to Mayebut and walked to the abandoned gold settlement at Camp Six. We knew the area was a favourite haunt for elephants, because the old houses were surrounded by banana trees. The elephants hadn't long gone: we arrived to find the ground strewn with freshly flattened vegetation and the red mud scored with their footprints. We stood and listened for any hint that they were still around, but there was none – we had missed them. Just before dusk, we drove up to Belvédère, the highest point on the mountain behind camp, and watched the sun set over the camp.

That night I cooked
lapin moutardé
for the three of us – rabbit in mustard and wine sauce. We lingered long over the meal, reminiscing and telling our African stories. So much had happened since our first meeting at the beach campsite in Libreville a year before.

Roger left early next morning to return to Makokou. We would see him in Libreville in the days before we left, and better still, he had invited us to visit him in France during the summer while he was home on leave.

 

By early July, I thought all the most confronting events were behind us, and we would coast gently up to our departure
date. Yet, unwittingly, we were about to put ourselves in the way of critical danger.

It was a fine balmy afternoon with no wind, and we were not needed in camp. As we had many times before, we decided to go out game-spotting in the Méhari. We planned to be gone only an hour, and as usual we didn't bother to tell anyone where we were going. Win was dressed in lightweight shorts and rubber thongs, and I had on my standard work clothes – jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers. We took the road to the Djadié along Bakota South, with the vinyl top of the Méhari folded down so we could see all around.

Bands of monkeys shrieked their alarm calls ahead of us and giant casqued hornbills called raucously overhead. Dense secondary growth two metres high flanked the route. We skirted piles of fresh elephant dung in the middle of the road.

We drove far out, scanning ahead for any sign of gorillas or a leopard. Soon it was dusk, when the bats left their roosts to feed, and flashes of reddish brown darted across in front of us. Their numbers quickly swelled to a continuous stream. Thick cloud had blanketed the sky, and visibility was low as we began the return journey, listening to the first stirrings of the insect chorus.

That was when the Méhari's engine faltered and cut out.

‘What the hell?' Win pumped the accelerator, turned the ignition off and on, and pushed his foot to the floor again. In the gathering darkness, the only sound was the insects. We waited ten minutes and tried again, but nothing happened. The fuel gauge showed half full, and the instrument panel gave no hint of the problem.

By then, all light had gone. With no torch, no weapon, no communications equipment and no protective
clothing, we were totally vulnerable. We knew no-one else would use the road that night. We had no food or water, and in the unlikely event that anyone missed us, they wouldn't know where to start looking. The choices were stark: huddle in the Méhari until daylight, or walk back to camp in the dark. The risks were enormous either way. The Méhari's soft vinyl top and plastic windows would be no barrier to a hungry leopard, and the mosquitoes would guarantee us a sleepless night. In the end, we chose the path of action: we would take a gamble and set out on foot.

It must have been after six o'clock, but we couldn't be sure because it was too dark to read our watches. Heavy cloud obscured the moon so that only a faint glimmer came from the wheel tracks on the laterite. I was conscious of fear, but I knew I couldn't afford to let it take hold – I needed to stay focused on the task and have faith that everything would be all right.

‘We're going to have to feel our way by following the wheel tracks,' Win said. ‘We'll go in single file. You set the pace and I'll stick close behind you.' I peered at the ground and placed my right foot in the shallow depression of a wheel track, then my left foot in front of it, heel to toe. Either side of the route, beyond the wall of secondary growth, the mountainside dropped away steeply. If we encountered a female elephant with young, we would have nowhere to run. We'd heard that a leopard usually wouldn't attack when there were two or more people. I held on to that thought.

‘We need to avoid brushing the leaves at the sides and disturbing anything venomous,' Win said. ‘Just keep to the middle.' We were climbing a steep rise. Win's rubber thongs slipped and slid and he struggled to keep them on.

‘You know, if we could make enough noise, we might scare off any animals ahead,' I said after we had been going perhaps fifteen minutes.

‘It's worth a try,' Win's voice sounded behind me. I began to bellow out a nursery rhyme at the top of my voice, ‘Three blind mice, three blind mice, see how they run …' over and over, pumping up my confidence. In time, my footsteps fell in with the rhythm. When I got tired of that tune, I switched to another, then another. The longer I kept them up, the stronger I felt.

We'd been going about an hour when Win shrieked, ‘Aaagghh! Something's just bitten my toe. I think I've trodden on a line of safari ants!' He ripped one thong off and flailed blindly at his foot and leg with it. If the ants attacked us, we would be in desperate trouble. They moved in columns of millions, and nothing could stop their advance. They marched straight through people's houses, and if an injured or trapped animal lay in their path in the forest, they devoured it alive.

‘Don't stand still here!' Win shouted. ‘Keep going as fast you can.' I stamped my feet hard and strode out as fast as I dared. All around us, the insects clicked and whirred.

Just then, something moved in the vegetation beside us. We both froze. Goosebumps formed on my skin and my heart thumped. I held my breath. All I could hear was the drumming of my pulse in my ears. There was still no moon and blackness enveloped us. I had no idea what we would do if something came at us at this range. We had no way of knowing what had made the noise, and my imagination leapt into overdrive: was it a leopard, a wild pig, an elephant? Perhaps it was just a small antelope, timid and harmless. I knew that panic would be
disastrous. I had to remain calm and have faith that we would make it. We waited for a minute, perhaps two, but the sound didn't come again, so we moved off, warier than before.

‘How long do you think we've been going?' I said after a while. It was as though we were moving through an endless black tunnel, and time was meaningless.

‘Oh, maybe an hour, maybe more – it's hard to say.' I thought back to our time in the Sahara when we had broken down. It was the only other time I had felt my life could be in danger.

We must have been walking for an hour and a half when Win called out, ‘Stop! Listen!' It was the faint low-pitched throb of a motor way off in the distance.

‘That's the generator!' Win shouted. ‘We're probably only half an hour away!' We quickened our pace as much as we dared. The danger had not passed, but I felt a surge of confidence – we'd covered most of the distance.

The rhythmic hum of the generator gradually grew louder, until finally we rounded a bend and saw lights glinting through the trees.

‘We did it!' I whooped, and punched the air. Soon we could make out the shapes of trees around us in the faint glow. Then we were at the edge of the clearing, where the brightly lit guesthouse beckoned with warmth, safety and familiarity. I stopped to hug Win, and we strode towards the pool of light.

It was after eight o'clock: we had walked for two hours. If someone had suggested we would ever do that in the African forest at night, I would have laughed in their face. Back at the flat, Win examined the stinging red lump on his toe and discovered a safari ant had embedded itself in
his thong. We decided not to disturb Eamon with the news about the Méhari that night, as there was nothing anyone could do until morning.