WORZAMBIA AND MALAWI ARE A WILD LDS NEW TWIST ON THE CLASSIC BUSH-TO-BEACH DOUBLE-HIT. PETER BROWNE REVISITS THE SOUTHERN AFRICA OF HIS CHILDHOOD AND FINDS HE IS STILL IN FRONTIER TERRITORY IN A VAST AND EMPTY AFRICA. photoGRAPHS by MICHEL FIGUET APART From up in my hot-air balloon I am struck by the vulnerability of the lone fisherman surrounded by hungry predators – and what Hemingway described as ‘miles and miles of bloody Africa’ when the water has evaporated, the roads Big John, when he moved north in 2006. have been rediscovered and the camps John was probably shot dead by hunters, reopened, the first people arrive for the although we will never know for sure.’ insanely short three-month safari season. The Busanga lions are stocky, with The camps are a major commitment unusually black manes. Because the for the operators, Wilderness Safaris, an camps are closed for most of the year, increasingly adventurous South Africa- their movements during the floods based company, which uses its own fleet had remained a mystery until last year of single-engine Cessna 210 aircraft and when a research group fitted them one hellishly expensive helicopter to with satellite collars. The results took n bed on my first night in transfer guests to Kafue. This despite the everyone by surprise. It had been Zambia, blanketed by warm, sweet-scented fact that Busanga will never deliver assumed that they headed north, away air, I could hear the intermittent roars crowd-pleasing, tick-all-the-boxes game from the encroaching water, but it seems of lion and the baritone laughter of hippo. viewing. Decades of unchecked poaching, they stay in the area, shrugging off a At dawn I watched the first rays of fires and trophy-hunting on the edges of cat’s inherent dislike of water to swim Isunlight lick the grassland; all around the park have resulted in skittish wildlife, between islands and, astonishingly, even me, puku and lechwe antelope grazed on and in wildly reduced numbers. cross the Lufupa River (a distance of the vast flood plains, ears twitching, the But there are encouraging signs of 80km in some places). In the insufferably horizon a silver shimmy of mist. improvement. Here is my list of sightings high temperatures of October, lionesses Kafue National Park is Zambia’s on that first game drive: red lechwe have also been seen resting in the low largest and least-visited protected area. and puku antelope (thousands grazing branches of trees to escape the heat and Although it has existed since 1950, there together), waterbuck (and an endemic flies – peculiar tree-climbing behaviour is very little infrastructure in the park: species I had never seen before, without previously noted in Lake Manyara successive governments have never had the usual white rump-ring), oribi National Park in Tanzania. the resources or inclination to invest (everywhere), roan antelope (in surprising The only shade around here, other in such high-class concerns as wildlife numbers), marabou storks, yellow-billed than on the island-clumps of palms and management. Surrounded by far more storks, crowned cranes, great white figs, is in the dense miombo woodland profitable big-game hunting reserves, heron and egrets, open-billed storks (the on the edge of the plains, where leopard the government-owned park has until undertakers of the bush), five buffalo, have been spotted. But this is also where recently remained one of Africa’s most a few wildebeest, one striped jackal. blood-sucking tsetse flies are most intriguing forgotten wildernesses. Towards the end of our drive we came prevalent. On approaching the woodland This is real wild-frontier stuff, especially across two lions panting in the shade of (the road past it provides the fastest in the north, where the Busanga flood a fig tree, occasionally licking their lips access to the game-rich southern plains), plains emerge from the water for after gorging on a fat lechwe. I knew the the guides hastily light canvas containers just three months of the year, exposing pair had visited camp the night before filled with elephant dung to hang off immense, open grasslands – an utterly (checking for tracks is one of the camp the front of the vehicles. The fumes pristine region unexplored and unknown, manager’s early-morning rituals), and are supposed to discourage the flies, vast and unfathomable. John D introduced us. ‘These are the leaving people relatively unmolested As I set off on the first game drive with brothers,’ he said. ‘They service three and only lightly smoked. my guide, John D Muleka, the heat of the prides in the area, so as you can imagine One afternoon we came across sun was already dissipating the rosewater they are always busy, always on patrol. a magnificent herd of buffalo several shades of dawn; soon any subtleties in the They took over from the dominant male, hundred strong; later we took a landscape would be lost to the pin-sharp clarity of southern Africa’s late-September light; by noon the temperature would reach 38˚C or 40˚C. But for now, with a A REGION ON THE UP… poor governance. Zimbabweans thought of cool breeze coming off the still-watery I was born in Zimbabwe, just south of Zambia as a backwater, and its president flood plains, there were plump, buoyant Zambia, when the two countries were known Kenneth Kaunda, a slightly camp figure prone as Southern and Northern Rhodesia. After scents in the early-morning air. to waving his white handkerchief, a source World War II they were bundled together, The Busanga Plains fan out from the of infantile amusement. Malawi was popular along with Nyasaland (now Malawi), into a Lufupa River, a tributary of the great with Zimbabwean backpackers, but you had federal realm of the British Crown, until Zambia Kafue. In the wet season, from November to be wary of President Hastings Banda’s ban and Malawi gained independence in 1964. on long hair (on men) and miniskirts (women). to about March, the fine, black-cotton After Prime Minister Ian Smith’s Unilateral Since Kaunda and Banda fell from power soil is slowly flooded save for a few low- Declaration of Independence from the UK, in the early 1990s, Zambia and Malawi have lying islands where enormous sycamore Southern Rhodesia resisted majority rule for remained relatively stable, in contrast to figs and palm trees grow. In mid-July, another 16 years and the region, including Zimbabwe’s spectacular economic collapse. Last Mozambique, erupted in a guerrilla war. When Opposite, clockwise from top left: dinner at year Zambia elected its fifth president since it ended and Zimbabwe became the darling Busanga Bush Camp; buffalo on the Busanga independence. In Malawi, Joyce Banda is of the international community, Zambia and Plains; relaxing post-safari; a watering hole southern Africa’s first female head of state.P B at Busanga; carved walking sticks; a hippo; Malawi suffered from underinvestment and the safari logbook; a male lion 000 motorboat out on a series of permanent extraordinary part of the world. Beneath predators and what Hemingway described lagoons and were quickly surrounded by us, hippo trails of flattened grass led in as ‘miles and miles of bloody Africa’. pods of hippo numbering 15 or more. For all directions from the sparkling pools. more than an hour we watched them wallow As the sun rose higher, we chased our ake malawi (also known as and swim and snort, disappearing near balloon-shaped shadow across the plains, Lake Niassa) is the most our boat for disconcertingly long periods, the papyrus wetland and thick woodland. southerly of the great lakes of then popping up elsewhere, ears and eyes Every now and then a lone figure appeared Africa’s Rift Valley. At 75km curious as to our presence; crocodiles slid far below: traditional fishermen from the Lwide and nearly 600km long, it is an off the banks into the water; white herons Kaonde tribe catching bream to dry and enormous, freshwater sea populated by landed gracefully on the shoreline. sell at market. Since the nearest village about 1,000 different cichlids (exotic fish), On our last day at Kafue we took a is 200km away, fishing trips can last weeks, many unique to the lake. It lies on the hot-air balloon safari above the plains; and I was struck by the vulnerability of border between Malawi, Tanzania and it felt like a grand farewell to this these minute figures surrounded by hungry Mozambique, and was a 19th-century The plains of Kafue National Park, Zambia hub for slave trafficking, as well as the passports stamped ‘exit’, we set off for the lodge could not be anywhere else headquarters for that trade’s most Cóbuè village, 12km across the lake, in the world. There are just six guest vociferous opponents: Scottish missionaries to buy entrance visas for Mozambique chalets, hidden between granite boulders led by David Livingstone, who sailed from the police station. and dense woodland, all with wide the length of Lake Malawi in 1861. Nkwichi Lodge is a further half-hour’s verandahs, quirky outdoor bathrooms Once our little Cessna had puttered journey from Cóbuè by motorboat. It is and huge, four-poster beds fashioned to a stop on Likoma Island in the northern hidden in a little cove on the miraculous, from gnarled old tree trunks. It owes its reaches of the lake, we were met by white-sand beach from which it takes its peculiar style to local villagers who built smiling staff from Nkwichi Lodge, on the name (nkwichi translates as ‘squeaky’, it with their bare hands.