Leseprobe Luangwa ENG Hist

EARLY 20TH CENTURY day. A new innovation was the so-called bush- cart or gareta, preferred by the ladies for riding out to High Tea. It consisted of a wooden seat with a sunshade and curtains, on top of a bicycle ECONOMIC AWAKENING wheel, and was pushed and pulled along by two IN THE COLONY OF bearers. Donkey carts and rickshaws were also tried out. In Fort Jimmy (an abbreviation for Fort NORTHERN RHODESIA Jameson, today Chipata) an attempt was made A journey into the Luangwa Valley in the first to tame four zebras, in order to yoke them to decades of the 20th century meant an arduous and an ox-cart, but the animals remained often adventurous affair: Steep marches on foot unpredictably snappy; nor were they able to be on the Escarpment, plagues of tsetse flies, ridden because their backbones are too soft for dangerous encounters with lions, loneliness and such loads. lack of water. At times access to the valley was even officially barred, so that sleeping sickness and At this time the North Charterland Explo- nagana disease, carried by the tsetse flies, could ration Company (NCEC) built up a successful not get out of the valley and into the uplands. transport business. It took hundreds of bearers Consequently the Luangwa valley remained for under contract and organised the exchange of decades spared from European influences, goods between the young colony and the untouched and authentic. motherland. From Chinde While at the Luangwa, as in the Zambezi Delta on ever, time seemed to stand still, the Indian Ocean a Dr. Livingstone being carried in a hammock-like machila around it a modern colony steamer transported the rapidly developed. Everywhere required import goods stocks of wild animals such as fabrics and orders from Northern Rhodesia more and more Admittedly these posed new concerns: diminished, and people were household articles to the complex. Billiard tables, pianos and agricultural vehicles needed better and wider paths than forcing their way into hitherto transhipment point at motors could no longer be divided into portable columns of bearers; they also had to be unsettled rural regions. Tete. From there treks with 20-kg loads, and so the NCEC was forced to provided with numerous depots along the way, Construction of roads propelled 200 to 300 bearers started, replace the bearers with ox-carts. supplying replacement animals and wagon under high pressure to shorten each of whom hauling a parts. The oxen were susceptible to disease and the long transport routes and load of approximately 20 quickly became foot-sore, therefore they were make travelling more kg. To reach Fort Jameson REST STATION fitted with horseshoes. At times lions attacked convenient. In the first years of they would be underway ‘THE GOOD HUNTER’ the rear wagons of the cavalcades which could colonisation European women for up to ten weeks. On the be several kilometres long. Somewhere in the middle of the stretch would travel exclusively in the return journey, after a long between Lusaka and Chipata lies the small All of these difficulties encouraged the machila, a hammock on one or palaver, they would carry modest village of Kacholola. Its name goes colonial administration eventually to expedite two wooden poles, carefully the colonists’ export goods back to Sydney Spencer Broomfield, who the building of railways. By 1924 even the oxen transported by African bearers. to Tete: cotton, beeswax, offered newly opened Government Rest treks were obsolete and transport times were House Bungalows for Travellers here in 1951. Behind these machila-bearers tobacco, red chillies and shortened to one week. the native porters would walk, ivory. Nobody wanted to His nickname Kacholola means ‘good hunter’. balancing the Europeans‘ carry chillies, because they Broomfield could look back on a colourful Until the railway in Nyasaland heralded the worldly goods on their heads. would pulverise on the life as a doctor, pearl fisher, ivory hunter and start of a new, industrial age, the 500 km long In the hierarchy these were Young dancers, 1931, Schomburgk’s way, covering the bearer farmer before settling down here. His link between Fort Jameson and Broken Hill lower than the machila- Expedition (SLUB Dresden, page 234) and his belongings with bungalow complex remained open until the (today Kabwe) was kept alive by the dutiful mail bearers. European men by dust. There was as certain early 21st century, albeit its offer became ever runners. It took three weeks for the mail contrast travelled by bicycle, accompanied by romantic idealism surrounding the weeks-long poorer, finally not even including electricity runners in their red uniforms to run between a ‘bicycle boy’, whose job it was to carry the treks, and it is said that they were often for cool drinks. At last the tradition-rich the two administrative centres. In the Luangwa ‘Kacholola Rest House’ completely closed its bicycle over bad sections of the route or conducted in cheerful mood. Around 1918 Valley they wore heavy overcoats in addition, doors. A few years ago however the renovated through marshes. A stretch of more than 50 km however this form of transport came to an end complex reopened once again. which were supposed to keep the searing heat could be covered by such a baggage team in a when rapid economic development made the from their bodies. 20 21 Luangwa Valley Schomburgk and his seven European not spread into the upland regions. Only companions – including his wife, a photographer, gradually did the colonial administration take scientists and technicians – as well as numerous the first steps in surveying the valley, in order helpers from Zululand led an unusual baggage to build roads in the future. From both sides at train: two open-top vehicles and two light trucks that time only dirt tracks and paths led down with the trademark ‘Opel-Blitz’, which had been to the Luangwa. No one had ever managed – specially refitted for use under challenging nor had it probably even occurred to them – to conditions. Herein were stowed the expensive film cross the valley in a motor vehicle. But cameras, recording equipment and still-cameras, Schomburgk did not allow himself to be tripods, binoculars, spare parts, tools and gifts for deterred, putting his faith in his expeditionary exchange, as well as four bicycles for particularly equipment, experience and technical skill. difficult road conditions. The Schomburgks had Very soon after Lundazi the road even brought their small dog, Putty. deteriorated, and the ‘Circus’ followed, at snail’s pace, a swathe from an old road project, ‘CIRCUS’ WAS WHAT SCHOMBURGK once cut through the Miombo forest but never further developed. Schomburgk described how DUBBED THE COLOURFUL BAGGAGE TRAIN, the indigenous people feared this forest BECAUSE EVERYWHERE PEOPLE FLOCKED because it attracted lightning. Even for his TO SEE IT WHEREVER IT TURNED UP fellow European travellers the dry forest was disconcerting. Many a time the engineer would Adventurous makeshift bridge, 1931, Schomburgk’s Expedition (SLUB Dresden, see p. 234) Against the advice of the British inspect the vehicles because he could identify administration the ‘Circus’ set its wheels rolling the peculiar loud cracking noises of seed from Lundazi in the direction of the Luangwa capsules springing up only as mechanical faults HANS SCHOMBURGK‘S PIONEER pygmy hippopotamus, hitherto deemed extinct). Then a process of maturing began and Schomburgk Valley. The valley, for its part, had been kept and would not believe Schomburgk‘s botanical JOURNEY 1931/1932 recognised how dramatic the changes were for the under wraps as a barred area for a long time explanation. And the cicadas buzzed loudly in a people of Africa and how much of a threat unbridled because of the widespread tsetse flies, so that way that made the engineer seriously fear leaky hunting was to the animal world. In 1912 he finally animal epidemics and sleeping sickness would valves. exchanged the firearm for the film camera. The wild FIRST MOTORISED CROSSING OF THE adventurer became a thoughtful explorer, research- Difficult journey through the Luangwa Valley, 1931, Schomburgk’s Expedition (SLUB Dresden, p. 234) LUANGWA VALLEY er of Africa and just as quickly a pioneer in German wildlife film-making. In the following decades he Hans Schomburgk‘s African expeditionary journey undertook numerous journeys through Africa, of 1931/1932 with its first motorised crossing of making documentaries and feature films and writing the Luangwa Valley is just as fascinating a story. travelogues and non-fiction books; he compiled a Schomburgk was at that point in time already over comprehensive ethnographic African collection, was fifty years of age and an experienced connoisseur soon accounted THE German expert on Africa and of the African wilderness; he had also walked was meanwhile even nominated as the military through the Luangwa Valley from west to east in attaché to the Liberian Embassy in London. He was 1907 as a young big-game hunter. a jack of all trades and remained thirsty for Born in 1880 in middle-class Hamburg, he was knowledge throughout his life. Yet because of his drawn to South Africa at the tender age of 17, where half-Jewish origins, despite his fame, the Nazi regime he worked on a farm and took part in the Boer War imposed a gagging order on him in 1940. While his as a dispatch rider for the British Natal Police. His works later became widespread and popular in the thirst for adventure led him into the police service GDR (East Germany), in West Germany Schomburgk in Northern Rhodesia, where he quickly became fell almost into oblivion after the war. However his enthusiastic about the wilderness at the British out- texts show a deep respect for all life in Africa and a post, traversing the vast country as a big-game philosophical wisdom that was still rare among hunter.

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