Out of Africa
Words & Images by Emily Herbert
Emily Herbert is an Australian writer and presenter and in 2018, found herself at a crossroads. Which led her, along with now-husband Adam, to the Okavango Delta in Botswana. In this piece Emily gives us a lens into her days managing a horse riding safari in Africa.
Time is a glinting current, sweeping below the small wooden bridge we stand on. That’s how it felt recently when I popped the sim card from my old camera into my computer. Photos from what felt like another century popped up on my screen and I splashed into the current and swim backwards, a flipping salmon battling the tide and all its odds.
I smell the crushed sage, feel the flat molten crackle of a white noon, hear the chuckle of hippopotamus a stone’s throw in the deep waters outside our tent, watch the red bauble of a sun slide as if on a pulley from behind the horizon. Africa. Botswana. The Okavango Delta. Felt and seen as if only moments ago. But no. Five – five! - years ago, bobbing in a whitewash of minutia, boiling on my shoreline. Tsunami events; weddings, babies, moving country, moving house. Dark green pools; the shaded minutes of a day. Domesticity, dinner, another load of washing. But, Botswana. There you remain, an ocean of memory.
The camera itself had been languishing in a box in Wales for the last two years or so; the detritus of our life packed up by my aunt in New Zealand, when the world’s borders folded down as easily as a paper aeroplane snatched from the sky and scrunched in a ball. Alongside my camera (missing a battery, disallowed by the post) there was a slim olive coloured notebook, filled with illegible scrawl. A diary of events, and in it, names I’d forgotten, stories that taste musty, like a stored woollen coat. The experience living in Botswana altered the blueprint of who I am. Expanded who I thought I could be, filled in lines previously untouched, territory unexplored. I came back braver, more capable. I thought I’d share a couple of entries from early in our life there, managing a horse riding safari in 2018.
07.08.18
Johannesburg. We’re aboard a tiny plane winging its way to Maun, Botswana. The plane is so small I imagine it’s made from cardboard, the way its hums and vibrates. I hope we don’t run into a strong thermal, or a cluster of dragonflies. The paper propellers might not take it. I’m deeply exhausted, after two frenetic months of packing up our life in Wales, renting our house, farewells, weddings, sending boxes of clothes and life things to New Zealand where we (think) will (maybe) move next year (god). Sorting Botswana visas, vaccinations, reading, wondering, dreaming, fearing, anticipating.
09.08.18
We’re here, in camp – a three hour drive through sand dune and twisted acacia, the roads nothing but vague pale indentations wending through thorn and brush, indiscernible from the animal tracks (elephant? Rhino? Lechwe?) that splinter through the bush like capillaries. The bridges across the deeper water are nothing but sandbags and rudimentary wooden poles tied together. I look out the car windows at the sinuous watercourses and clear, cola coloured floodplains and wonder what will happen if the jeep falls in. (Hippo? Croc?) I’m weary, and bewildered, and exhilarated by this Kalahari desert bush laced with permanent marsh and seasonal floodplains; grassy plains thick with calving animals, an oasis, bordering desert country. It’s country I don’t know and while its khaki colourings ring of home, compared to the lush laneways and verdant tapestry of Wales, I don’t understand it. We pull up the other side of the river to the main camp: Kujwana. The Okavango Delta is a made up of a handful of tightly held concessions. No concrete or permanent fixtures are allowed – the lodges are pole and canvas, the boardwalks native timber cut from the bush, the electricity comes from solar in the day, a generator at night. The drinking water is the colour of brine, pumped and purified from the waterways. It tastes clean and bright, with the look of Pepsi.
We load our things and camp supplies onto two large boats – everything from horse feed and human food to diesel and building supplies, as well as the constant rotation of staff,
a complete tangle of logistics and juggling – is trucked in every week. With 51 staff, 64 horses and up to 20 guests helicoptering in and out of camp, the breadth of the job is astounding. We have SO much to learn. My brain creaks with the task.
We motor the kilometre to camp, set up along the river. Everything is made from wooden poles and canvas. Our lodge is behind the stables on the lip of the river. There are no fences – an electric fence is rigged around the camp at night, and the night watchman builds a fire out the front of the stables and watches, rifle on his knee, alert for big cats. But the face of the camp is open and unblinking in the stifling heat of this extraordinary place. Anyone, anything, could wander in. And they do.
15.09.18
Funny/bamboozaling instance tonight. Adam and I host the guests every night, a long alfresco rectangular table in the main area of the camp, a rudimentary wall and roof overhead, the campfire and the river out the front. Our feet are in the sand. The guests this week – a group of Germans, all friends, 10 of them. [ the camp has 64 horses, 55 staff all locals with up to 20 guests split between two camps]. The dynamics are interesting. I watch and try to discern who gets along with who, what old grudges lie glistening under the surface.
The food is amazing, fresh and delicious. It’s unbelievable what the women who cook in the kitchens come up with, with their incredibly basic gas ovens. All our clothes are washed by hand, and ironed with a coal powered iron. (best not to put anything delicate in the laundry basket).
We pour more wine, ask more questions and then hear splashing – a huge shape lumbers from the dark, walks past the blazing torches, around the campfire, walking with purpose, metres from where we sit. Talk is silenced, forks hang mid-air, everyone freezes, eyes wide, breath short as the elephant strides slowly through the main area, through the trees, is gone.
Adam and I carry bear bangers around our necks – small pencil thin detonators used in Canada to deter grizzlies. Still, I’ve never used one. We’re in the deep end, as clueless as those sitting around the table with us. The guides are a kilometre away in their own lodges, resting. I imagine what would have happened if the ele had turned its power upon us, scattering us like bowling pins. I’m so alert here, to danger, to possibility. My senses are turned up to full dial and so colours are loud and smells are extreme and my nerves jangle with potential.
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