The Warm Heart of Africa

Malawi, 2017

Ⅰ. "Somewhere, the zebra is dancing." -Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“Can we get any closer?” Bruce growled. He was staring down the barrel of a tranquilizer gun, preparing to shoot a zebra.

We advanced just a few inches on the herd, careful not to spook them. Bruce took his shot. A dart stuck into the rump of his target zebra. The creature seemed not to notice, continuing to graze.

“And now we wait,” he said. A large animal, such an elephant, would take twenty minutes to fall from a dart. We estimated five for the zebra.

We had tracked the zebras to a place called Snake Island. It’s a stronghold of trees surrounded by deep mud and watery patches. Sunlight dappled the land with yellow rays, peeking through saturated clouds.

The zebra become slower and slower until she finally collapsed.

When she hit the ground her zebra allies darted in every direction, running from whatever may be plaguing their companion. They watched from a distance as we moved in to support the unconscious animal. We grabbed her by the ears and held up her heavy head. Water was splashed over her skin and a towel placed over her eyes. We radioed for a truck.

We hoisted the mare onto a truck bed. She would have to be transported across the reserve to spend the night in a boma. This is an African phrase for an enclosure, usually constructed out of tree trunks, to store wild animals. She was to be sent off to another reserve to keep wild zebras genetically diverse.

My next morning started with a cup of piping, hot Kenyan coffee and some surprising news.

“The zebra’s gotten out of the boma,”

“What? How?”

“A hole has been kicked in the gate. The herd must’ve come to break her out in the night,” Bruce said. I could tell he was annoyed by the situation, but there was a definite glimmer of admiration in his eyes.

The mare’s boma was a solid ten miles from Snake Island. The zebras traversed the entire reserve to find her. Much larger animals had stayed in that boma, even giraffe. The structure was apparently no match for her loyal herd.

It was a full-on zebra heist.

Ⅱ. "Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings." -Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

East Africa has a long history of missionaries, all keen to ‘domesticate the tribesmen’. Some ruthlessly, some peacefully. Among them was a Scottish man named David Livingstone. He spent his career spreading gospel and an anti-slavery message. Through his explorations he advanced science, the abolitionist movement, and western curiosity about the African continent. Among other discoveries, Livingstone was the first westerner to lay eyes upon Victoria Falls. He was the one who named the notorious spectacle after noble blood. Scottish influence is evident across East Africa, much accredited to Livingstone. A mountain town in Malawi was even named Livingstonia in his honor.

After decades exploring the wild continent malaria took his life. Notably, when his body was sent back to Europe for burial it was missing one organ. Superstitious tribesmen were reluctant to send Livingstone’s dead body overseas. They feared his soul could never rest if he was not buried in the lands where he perished. So the compromise was to bury his heart beneath a tree in the Zambian floodplains. The British retrieved the rest of his body from Zanzibar. Some people leave their heart in Africa forever; I suppose mine’s lost somewhere in the jungles north of Livingstonia.

Orange water flooded my boots.

We were knee-deep in a waterfall. It cut through the rainforest like a blood vessel, feeding life into the forest.

The small pool we were wading in collapsed into a fifty meters roaring water.

I stood on the edge, balancing on slippery rocks. A sensation one could call fear, adrenaline, or the spirit-of-adventure was running up my toes. Heart pumping, I howled. My voice swept across the Great Rift Valley.

We marched on. The trail lead us over stony river beds. Deep orange land nourished an impenetrable sea of trees.

An offshoot of the trail took a sharp, nearly vertical turn. We looked at each other and shrugged.

Curiosity called. Hanging onto tree roots and surfing down mud, we made our way towards a rumbling noise. It was growing louder, like an aquatic stampede.

The trail lead us to a cave behind a waterfall. Beyond the rushing water was a lush mountain range. Our jaws dropped and our eyes grew wide. “Is this real?” our faces seemed to ask.

Dancing with the jungle beat that filled our bodies, we jumped around like children. The air was cool. Every pebble, leaf, and crevice was shrouded in mist. We felt one with the mountains, with life, with the never-ending chronicle that is nature.

We stripped down to the basics and bundled our clothes on the cave floor. We took turns standing beneath the fall, soaking up the whole world. I felt powerless to that jungle, lost in a land time had never touched. We found a spot on Earth that existed before God, before humans.

I was staring into emerald abyss. Folds of rainforest draped over hills like pages in a storybook. The jungle was speaking to me, whispering deep, dark secrets. It said things no man had ever heard. My skin stirred under the fall’s chilly pummel. I felt alive. I became a true wild thing that day, baptized by rich, orange water. It was monstrous. It was tarzan. It was heaven.

The trail continued.

Trees were getting thicker. Individual leaves were taller than me. I could almost see the oxygen leaving their pores. Somewhere, as we continued on our journey, we slipped into the Jurassic era. It happened slowly- we took many steps, winds, detours, uphill, downhill, over roots, and across vast countryside. Clocks were ticking backwards. Time was bending before our eyes. The trail took another steep turn, and we took the muddy plunge.

Eighty feet of roaring water tumbled down a steep jungle cliff. Brave vines conquered the exposed, orange Earth, showered by waterfall mist. We found ourselves near the base, roaring rapids racing past our feet. Even two hundred feet from the waterfall, rocks were coated in its dew. It seemed as if this place had never been dry. As if for centuries this stretch of earth had been living in the fall’s splatter. Each boulder surpassed my height. They lived out their destiny covered in mist. I was seeing mirages in the humidity, as if the boulders were exhaling rainbows. Vegetation exploded on every surface where roots could take hold. Those trees were monsters, with trunks broader than my shoulders and roots thicker than my thighs.

The Earth felt so much bigger than me.

Compared to the massive waterfall my hiking partner looked like a single drop of water.

Cool mountain water endowed me with wonder. It rushed over us. Trees soaked up the water and I soaked up their spirit. This must’ve been the heart of the Earth, and I was standing right in its orange bloodstream. We stood still, in awe.

Then we decided to go higher, to ascend above the fall. We climbed up, but lost the path. But maybe there was no path at all. We entered the realm of the pathless. So we just kept going up. We came to a stretch of muddy quicksand. Our journey took us uphill, knee deep in mud, grabbing on roots and trees to pull ascend. Spider webs were everywhere, the real big trapdoor variety. I thought of puff adders, black mambas, baboon spiders, leopards, and jungle beasts.

But I wasn’t scared.

I was one of them.