Denzil Bark

Cornishman in Africa: Guns at Dawn, well nearly.

2010-03-09T23:01:00.000-08:00

I have never professed to having a dull life, and in fairness I don’t think I could handle one either, that having been said at times dull does sound just a little inviting.
This weekend is a bank holiday weekend and interestingly so is next weekend, this week’s excuse is “Ladies Day” the reason, purpose or idea behind this, I have yet to fathom. I have asked a number of people and the stock answer seems to be “It is to celebrate the importance of women in our society” OK so a sort of self gratification day for half the population. But from what I could see in Lusaka this morning, the main purpose seemed to be to see if they could grind the whole of the city to a standstill whilst they wandered around aimlessly up and down the main thoroughfares of Lusaka, with a police escort. Mind you at least they seemed to be enjoying themselves, which is more than could be said for the drivers of the vehicles snarled up in the traffic chaos that ensued. It was gratifying to see that those that looked most pissed off where the women drivers.

Friday’s Bank Holiday is youth day. And I have an uncanny feeling that the reason for this will be “To celebrate the importance of youth in our society.” And that Lusaka won’t be worth visiting that day because all the traffic will be stationary again as, this time the youth of Zambia wander up and down the Great East, North and West Roads.(the equivalent to the M25) Wildly patting themselves on the back and telling each other how great they are and drinking ship loads of Chibuka (Lumpy, sweet, thick grain beer) and why not. No doubt I too will find something to celebrate and have a drink or two, but not quite as much as this weekend.

Saturday I was invited to a very good friend of mine Koob his birthday party. Now Koob and Jeanette have good parties, very good, the last one I attended there ensued much dancing and merriment with more than a fair share of alcohol abuse. I mentioned dancing, I use the term loosely, as I was informed the following day by a friend or was it my son “Watching you dance was like watching a terminator in a magnet factory” which I thought was a little harsh but probably not a million miles away from the truth.

True to form this Saturday, by about eleven o’clock I had ventured forth onto the dance floor and was moving around with the grace and elegance of a hippo with 30,000 volts stuffed up his bottom. But I was having fun and a surprising number of people were joining me out their, in spite of the risk of having an eye taken out or being smacked in the face as I tornadoed my chaotic way around the dance floor.

By three o’clock in the morning, I had done my full duet with Meatloaf to Bat out of Hell, lost my voice in the process, played air guitar till all the strings were broken and bruised my knees so badly I have not been able to walk properly since, as I skidded across the concrete dance floor on my knees head back singing my heart out and still playing my imaginary guitar. My knees are an interesting shade of purple and red currently. Luckily I was wearing shorts so I did not wreck my trousers but I have still to find my shirt that I am sure I was wearing when I arrived at the party.
I ended up leaving at around four, resisting the urge to stay until dawn as Koob was trying to convince me would be a really good Idea. (It really wouldn’t have been.) The journey home was uneventful, even the three police roadblocks that I have to drive through between his place and mine were all sleepily quiet with no registering signs of life just lights on doors open but no one home. A bit like I felt actually.

I snuggled into bed after a refreshing shower at quarter to five.

At five thirty, all hell broke loose.

Kalima Camp is a twenty hectare site at which you are invited to stay. Only two of the ten chalets are actually joined, the others are spaced out conveniently around the site. I stay in one of these conjoined ones and the other has stayed empty since Herman left about 4 months ago.
Now given the choice of all those vacant chalets, most normal people would chose somewhere secluded and quiet, as this is the essence of this place. But no, our new residents who moved in about a week ago decided they wanted to move in next to me, with only a thin block wall separating the chalets.
So as you can imagine when world war three kicked off that early on a Sunday morning. It had may as well have been in the same bloody room as me.
So all of a sudden I was violently awake, or was I dead, and in fact gone to hell, as suddenly, I realised that whatever was queuing up in the pain receptors from the previous evening was now trying to get out and redesign my head.
Mother, that was a good hangover, made all the better by my new neighbour's lack of volume control, choice of language and inability to shut doors without trying to invert them.
Anyway the verbal barrage lasted about half an hour, either they had cooled down run out of breath or just used up their entire vocabulary of profanities on each other and did not know what else to say. Eventually it ended with a final slamming of the front door and the car disappearing off up the drive.
Sleep was gone so I gathered what was left of my thoughts and proceeded with the day.
Sally who stays in the big house at Kalima, had also attended the party the previous night and was feeling by all accounts not dissimilar to the way I was. So we wandered around the camp for most of the day in a trance like state trying to avoid each other, in case one of us reminded the other of something they had done or said the previous night that your brain had decided that it would shield you from for a couple of days, until it thought you were up to facing it.
By four in the afternoon we got a bit braver and decided to have a braai and a couple of beers, we sat and watched the dam in peace and quiet. A little later over came my neighbor the one who was having the animated chat with her husband this morning.
It didn’t take a psychotherapist to work out that she was not happy (even though she is a little on the short side) grumpy would have been nearer. It was not long before we started to get the whole story from start to finish. Just what I did not need, but could not really just get up and walk off. So I sat, listened and cooked my dinner. During the course of the story she had put away a few vodkas, which I thought was not probably the best idea, but thought better of telling her as it looked like she needed them.
Her husband returned at about six and he came to join us at the bar. The atmosphere was tangible. It was like walking into a gas holder smoking a cigar. You knew it was going to blow but not just quite when.
And yes you’ve guessed it, they waited until they got back to the house and I had just got to bed to grab an early night to catch up with some of my lost nights.
Well this time it was even more animated than this morning’s episode, with screaming, crashing, wailing, and a selection of expletives I did not think possible. Again it was another half hour episode, (the standard allotted time obviously)the inevitable slamming door and car exiting stage left.
Great, peace and quiet and now at last, return to sleep. Snuggle down, eyes close with un-natural ease as I slip immediately into a state, not far from full sleep.
Bang, bang, bang. Denzil, its only me, can I come in.
Oh Shit.
I get dressed throw some clothes at my horribly abused body then go and answer the door. It’s my neighbor as if I had not guessed looking very red eyed and puffy. I invite her in and get her a glass of orange juice sit her down and hear the latest in their saga, not that I hadn’t just heard the un-edited version about five minutes earlier through the wall.
The long and short of it was that she was leaving her husband, not next week as planned, but tonight. Her son was on his way from Kafue to pick her up and he should be there in about an hour. (But I just want to go to bed.) Anyway we moved outside as she wanted to smoke so we sat on the veranda and she poured out her woes.
I don’t know how long it was, I seemed to lose track of time, I do that sometimes when I am tiered and bored shitless. A car pulled up that was not her husband. And we waited for her son to come over.
Next thing I knew armed police came running through the trees pointing guns at me. They got really jittery when I went to stand up, and insisted that I stand still with my hands where they could see them. (I wondered which film they had seen that in.) But thought it wise not to ask them.
It seems, they thought that I was the battering husband who had wronged his wife and they were going to sort me out either here or at the police station. It must have taken a good ten minutes to resolve the situation, most of the time with an AK47, and two hand guns pointing at my face. But we got there in the end and by three in the morning my visitors had gone, one neighbor was leaving for South Africa and her husband had disappeared into the bush.

I honestly do not go out looking for excitement. It just happens.
So if you want to come and stay. It’s only $40.00 per night per person and the excitement is for free.

Denzil Bark. (Taking bookings on +260 97 40 40 996)

Cornishman in Africa : Decision Time.

2010-03-08T23:38:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning is heralded in with four Rolls Royce jet engines pushing the British Airways 737 the final 10km of it’s 10,000km journey from London.
Turning a new leaf.
In exactly three weeks I will be sat at the airport waiting to board the same flight on it’s return journey back to blighty. Preparing to see my family again and to celebrate my daughter Kate’s birthday. This last year has flown by when I consider all that has happened, but when I think of time away from the family it seems like forever.
The big decision that has to be made whilst I am back in the UK is, whether and when do we make the plunge and haul the whole family out to Africa again to live forever. The whole idea of me coming out ten months ago was to set things up so that when the family came out everything would be in place so they could move seamlessly into their new environment without so much as a ripple on the water of their lives.

Well it has been for most parts successful, I have a place to live, I have security by way of a sound job and all is looking fairly rosy in the garden. There are however a few little trick points. The main one being that the salary that I am getting is one that is totally liveable and I am pleased I have it. However it is not what I was expecting to be earning by now and due to an oversight on my part, that I put down to an over-eagerness to land the job in the first place I have, I feel, rather sold myself short and boxed myself into a bit of a corner. The upshot of this being that whilst we will be able to live eat sleep and drink in comfort. School fees are going to be a bit of a struggle to start off with.
The private schooling system in Africa is, I must say, probably the best in the world. And I do not say this lightly. Over here not only do they teach the academia to a very high level, they also teach and instil discipline. The schools are not hobbled by do gooders who manage only to protect the rights of the stupid, lazy, violent and disrespectful.
In the majority of Private African Schools, rules are rules, they are laid out for all to see, they are simple straight forward and everyone understands them. Should these rules get broken there is a punishment, whether it be a beating or a detention or a task. It will be administered swiftly and without compromise. Nobody says that is unfair and you cannot do that. You can and they do. As a result there is a level of understanding and respect in the schools here that you seldom see elsewhere in the world. And the funny thing is that my children without exception are really looking forward to getting back into that system of education though they will sorely miss the school they are at now.
I must point out here that the school the boys attend in the UK is what I would consider to be one of, if not the best school in the country and it is run along as strict a line as can be. As a result the students that come from there are among the best equipped to lead the UK out of its current long drop. But they too have their work cut out to maintain their standards with all the red tape (it’s more like silly string than red tape these days) and bureaucracy that is vomited forth by the Muppets in government, in truck loads.
Sorry, please excuse me while I climb down off my soap box.
Oh yes affording schooling, the schooling is not cheap here either though I suppose it is comparable in relation to earnings with the UK, but even so it will still account for more than two thirds of my wages to put even three of the children into school here. Then there’s George who wants to stay in the UK to complete his A levels, so that too will be a challenge. Of course he wants his own place, car, food and all the other trappings that go with the lifestyle he is imagining himself in. Dream on.
The long and short of it is that by the time I return to Africa, we will have made our decision of whether to move lock stock and barrel to Africa and the chance of a lifetime where your children can grow up in an atmosphere more healthy, a work ethic all around them that shouts if you don’t work you die, and an environment that is stunning in its beauty and its harshness. Add to this the opportunity of helping many, many people who are less fortunate than ourselves.
We will also have to weigh up the fact that we would be leaving my parents who are becoming elderly and will, in a few years need to be looked after on a permanent basis. I have suggested that they come out and live with us in Africa, if my mother swore, I can imagine what she would have said.
There are also the good friends that we have in Cornwall and in the rest of the UK, but at least they are more likely to come out and visit.
We will of course be able to come home once or twice a year to catch up with family and friends, add to that when anyone comes out to visit, we may end up seeing some people more than we do now.
It’s not going to be an easy choice and I know that we will go over much ground many times before the final decision will be made. If it was just me making the choice it would have been made already, but I am a chancer and am prepared to take risks, make a plan, but that is not really fair on the rest of the family, it’s their future more than mine now and where in the world is going to best equip them with the tools they will need for a happy and long future in this world we are giving them.

It’s a tricky one but I think I already know the answer.

Denzil Bark. (Planning ahead)

Cornishman in Africa : A Really Fun Guy.

2010-03-01T05:50:00.000-08:00

A Fun Guy to be with.
I have always enjoyed food, from the moment I bounced into the world weighing in at a healthy ten and a half pounds, I was born to eat.
I was very lucky when younger I could plough my way through a minimum of five meals a day plus drinks and never put on an ounce, always rock steady at seventy five kilo’s.
As the years began to gang up on me so did the ounces, then they bought in their mates the pounds and now I just count in Kilo’s as there are less of them to the same end.
I topped out at one hundred and four when my thyroid decided it had, had enough of trying to keep me in check and ceased to function completely. I have battled my way down to eighty three and am aiming for seventy five again by the summer.
But the problem is the food. When thinking of the culinary epicentre of the universe, Ngwewere doesn’t exactly spring readily to the forefront of one’s mind. But since living here I have experimented with all manner of different types of food from parts of trees, insects, herbs, spices, parts of animals that you would not normally believe edible let alone tasty.
I am an honest foodie, If its good I love it and will have it again and again, if its crap, I will tell you and won’t eat it again. What gets me is the stuff that people tell you is great but, somehow I just don’t get it. Three foods spring readily to mind. Oysters, no I just don’t see what is so great about eating a live fishy thing that tastes like salt water with a lump the consistency of an egg yolk in the middle. And you are not supposed to chew it. Why not? In case you just might taste something bad? And who made up these non chewing rules anyway, they certainly don’t add to the taste of the product.
Caviar. No never really got that either, though to be fair it was a very long time last time I tried it, but I did enjoy the Ritz cracker it was on. Which in itself is probably against some other fine rule of eating odd things.
Away from things from the sea to a fruit. Papaya or Pawpaw. I lived in Ghana for a year and was served this tasteless pith every morning for breakfast, along with some fruit that was worth opening ones mouth for, Mango and pineapple. It was always the Papaya that was left, nobody liked it. It was not that it was particularly offensive it was just a nothing fruit. No vibrant flavour, no texture, well I suppose mush is a texture. It’s like sucking on sweet soggy toilet paper. (I’m guessing, right) So what is the point when there are so many other wonderful things to eat. And I have come across a handful in the last few months.
When the first scents of rain first filter through the forest, Life stirs everywhere. This explosion of new life is seldom more spectacular than when the white domes burst forth from the forest floor in the woods around Chengello. It is even told locally that you can actually hear them growing they push through the ground early in the morning when the mist is still has yet to be raised by the sun.
It’s called the Chengello Wild Wood Mushroom. Not extraordinary in its colour or shape, but they are the biggest I have ever seen in my life.
As a child you see, and conjure up images of Piskies sitting on large mushrooms. Well let me tell you the pixies of Chengello hold rock concerts under theirs.
These fungi can grow to half a metre in diameter which you might think would make them woody and tasteless. Oh, but they are not, get them fresh, carve them like a steak and cook them for just a few minutes in a splash of butter or oil with the minimal of seasoning and you will be rewarded with an aroma and taste that are superb. This will also make you never want to look at another oyster again.
When the Chengello Wild wood Mushrooms start to peter out around January there is a new phenomena in the Zambian mycological circus.
If only to be outdone by the Chengello on size, no other mushroom could outshine the Chililabombwe Chanterell for outright audacity in the field dressing brightly.
Normally mother nature gives us very clear signs. If it’s got a stripy yellow and black bum it’s going to sting you. If it’s got no legs it’s going to bite you.(well it can hardly kick you to death can it) If it’s big and hairy it will most probably eat you and if it is vividly coloured and looks like a mushroom it’s going to poison you.
But not in this case.
Quite why these delicate mushrooms that grow all over Zambia’s ever diminishing wooded areas, are such a fantastic Colour, I will never know, but what they overdo in colour, they more than make up for with the subtlety of their flavour.
The only slightly disappointing side of this shroom is that it is always full of grit. As the rains splash down all around them, the grit is washed up into the inside of the chanterell, and is not easy to get out again. Only by vigorous rinsing does it reluctantly relinquish its gritty stash. You have to be so careful of not damaging the mushroom because it really is a work of the finest art..
The last and to my mind the most fantastic of these Zambian trio of Fungal excellence is probably the most uninspiring to look at. But the Flavour is to die for.
I can see how pigs used to find them so easy to find. I left about a dozen of these Kalahari Truffles in the lounge one night and by the morning the whole house was stinking and there was not a canary left standing for miles.
These come from a small area in the East of the country and it seems that this is the only place they grow really well, I was offered about a ton and a half a year when I was once looking at exporting them to the UK but I thought that might just flood the market a bit.
Whilst their pungent aroma may put a lot of people off, I absolutely love them and have had them on their own, in butter, olive oil, delicate stews steamed, in brandy, on salads on toast just about every way. But it seems I am the only one in our family who likes them. Well me and the pigs that is. (Ok I walked into that one)
Roll on the truffle season.

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa ; Whoops I did it again.

2010-02-22T03:13:00.000-08:00

Whoops I did it again.
I don’t know if you ever have that feeling when you wake up in the morning and think. What exactly happened last night. Then with no provocation, memories start to come flooding back, and you are not 100% sure what is fact and what is just a dread fear of what might have happened.
I had another of those experiences this morning as I dragged myself from slumber and realised that there was actually no need, as it was Saturday morning and I had no need to wake at six at all.
The sun was not quite coming streaming into the bedroom as I had hung a bed sheet up over the burglar bars in lieu of a curtain(Why or how I don’t know.) I only have one curtain in the house, and that covers the window on the bedroom that looks to the front of the house. The other five windows stare unblinkered out onto the trees, grassland and dam that make up this tranquil wooded enclave that I have come to know as home, away from Cornwall.
The dawn chorus was in full swing with the Franklins, Louries and a hundred and one, different species of birds doing there damndest to drag me into Saturday. They succeeded.
I got up, sat down, got up again sat down, and decided against vertical travel. Crawling was going to be the best mode of transport to the bathroom. Unfortunately the paracetamol were on the top shelf, so I decided they would have to wait. I reckoned that, at best, I could probably reach, up and hopefully remember how to operate the taps of the shower. I did, and as the burst of cold water hit me, with it came some recollection of being very wet not six hours earlier. The million piece jigsaw that was the night before slowly stated to piece itself together.
Matthew and Lorain, and another friend Sally (Who is planning on moving into Kalima) had come round for a few drinks and some snacks the previous evening. The evening started about six, relaxed and sober. Chatting over the previous week and catching up on all the gossip, that manages to circulate around the African communities even faster than the proverbial drums could beat. As the sun went down the pace stepped up, not intentionally but that was just the way things panned out. The conversation was lively and fun, punctuated by laughter and serious moments. It was a lovely evening.
As the laughter became louder and more frequent, the serious moments fewer and further between, we put meat on the braai and the smells of sizzling borrowours filled the still air.
We ate we drank and we were very merry.
Now, sitting beside the dam on a beautiful starlit balmy evening is never a good idea when you have started on the second bottle of “Smirnoff”, the red wine has gone the same way as a number of “Savannah Dries” and a few “Castles”. The setting is idyllic, and I don’t know what it is in the human nature that when someone makes a ridiculous suggestion, you all think it’s a really good idea.
Now I blame Sally, but in fairness it may have been me in the past, on a few occasions. Sally decided that it might be a good idea if we went for a dip. And like a couple of silly school children, Matthew and I thought this was the best idea since dear old Henry Ford thought of his elaborate colour scheme for his “Model T”. We could not get our kit off quick enough.
Lorain had decided that there were enough children in the pool and she was going to stay firmly on dry land. (Well one of us had to be sensible, and dry.)
I charged my glass and staggered roughly in the direction of the dam, slipped on the teflon mud, landed on my arse and slithered unceremoniously into the water wearing nothing but a pair of black M&S underpants and the contents of my glass. Oh but the water was refreshing. Very shortly afterwards the peace was shattered by another two splashes and the sounds of satisfaction as Matthew and Sally both plunged into the crystal clear waters. We sat, we floated and swam about, gazed up at the stunning canopy of stars that had been laid out on the sky for our perusal. It was amazing.
Quite how long we stayed in the water I have no idea but I do remember having my glass refilled a couple of times while in there.
After a time, but how long escapes my memory, we came out and drip-dried in the warmth of the wonderful summer night. Needles to say we did not have the foresight to think about towels.
We settled down into another bout of, less comprehensible conversation and could have gone on till dawn. Luckily for our livers and our sanity Lorain (bless her) decided at about half past midnight that she ought to take her passengers home.
I cleared the decks at the bar and sat and just had one more drink, (that I really did not need (as the following morning pointed out)
How I got to bed, I have no idea. Who did the washing up, the clearing up and got my computer, speakers and other accruements back to my house will remain a mystery until the end of time.
The only thing out of place this morning were Matthew’s grey underpants hanging in the upper branches of a Mango tree about twenty feet from the bar (At least I assume they were his.)
Just don’t ask.

Denzil Bark. (Recovering slowly)

Cornishman in Africa ; Wet, Wet, Wet.

2010-02-22T02:46:00.000-08:00

Wet, wet, wet.
You may recall that I mentioned the weather in my last piece.
Well guess what, I am going to talk about it again. Not that I want to bore you rigid about it, or because I originated from Mud Island and that always seems to be the favourite topic of conversation there.
But because it is truly astounding. When I last wrote I had, had my nights sleeping out arrangements changed by the rain, now it is changing people’s lives.
It was Saturday when I wrote and it is now Tuesday and it has hardly stopped raining since. So what I hear you say, it rains for months non-stop in Cornwall. And, yes I have to agree with you, but when, as was recorded on my friends farm yesterday they had 95mm in one and a half hours. It tends to get a tad damp under foot.
It was five past four when I woke this morning and I could not fathom the reason.
Yes the rain was still pounding down on the single skin asbestos roof. An amazing overture of constant raindrops that almost joined as one to form the background rhythm, then the funky almost melodic beat of the larger drips compounding then dropping from the leaves and branches with a symmetry that was almost hypnotic. I lay there listening to the novel music for a few minutes and was gently lulled back to sleep again. Suddenly I was wide awake again, feeling something on my arm, then it was gone, I drifted again, only to be thrust awake again. I laid there coming round a bit quicker this time then realised what it was.
The water was now coming through the roof running along the beams and dripping down onto the Mozi net where the drips were dissipated into a heavy spray rather than a drip. They were slowly soaking me.
I read for a while as I knew sleep was gone for the night, I read until, when I turned the pages of the book they disintegrated and the book became too sodden and heavy to hold.
Ironically I decided a shower might help. And maybe less ironically there was water for a change. As soon as it was light (which was later than normal due to the grey sky) I thought that I would take advantage of the extra time I had this morning, and took a stroll round the camp in the rain. To see the effects of the water.
It was quite spectacular, the cottage nearest the dam was up to its DPC in water, the normal tranquil waters of the dam were a mass of seething muddy morass. And the water level has come up a good ten inches. Where it is normally mirror still there is now a current flowing across the dam at a good 20 km/h. The sound of a waterfall now verging on obtrusive, from the other end of the dam, where the water normally, gently spills over the dam wall and trickles under the track, it now flows a good foot over the top.
It’s hardly surprising there were drips coming through my roof and it’s still pouring down.
I left for work as normal with an inkling that the bridge at the bottom of the valley might just be impassable. True enough impassable was an understatement. The Amazon rain forest, it seemed had washed downstream overnight, landed up against the bridge and was desperately trying to drag the bridge itself downstream too. (See picture) So round I turned and took the long way to work. (one and a half hours as opposed to twenty seven minutes.)
Mid morning, and I had to make a call across town, the rain had eased but there were still puddles the size of an Olympic pool every couple of hundred yards. Then once again the heavens opened, it was more a waterfall than rain, I can honestly say it was the heaviest rain I have ever seen, and I have seen monsoons. The effect this had on the roads that were already full to capacity was devastating. The water level rose feet in minutes. The world’s favourite car the Toyota Corolla (of which there are probably more of here than people) drowned, they just could not handle the amount of water. They were giving up the ghost left right and centre, the water was up past the trim on the door and over the wheels, the only things still moving were 4 x 4’s and busses, all of which were creating tremendous bow waves that were not assisting the plight of the Corolla. I don’t know if you have ever seen one of those duck races where the release hundreds of those yellow plastic numbered ducks into a river and they race down the river. Well that was the scene down Chandwe Musonda Road about twelve thirty today, except they were Corolla’s not ducks.
I made it back to the office only to find the yard and car park that normally bore the neat painted lines demarcating the parking spaces resembled more the Helston boating lake. (without the Ducks and geese)
The water had reached a level where it was now flowing into the reception and was threatening to lift all the parquet flooring down the passage.
It’s not a week since all the pessimists and tree huggers of Lusaka were saying what a terrible drought we were having and speculating that we had seen the last rains for the season all the crops would die, the dams would be empty and it was the end of agriculture in Zambia. And it was all the fault of “Global Warming” caused by people in Chelsea driving four wheel drive vehicles.
I notice it is no longer “Global Warming” but “Climate Change” so they can blame any glitch in the weather hot or cold, dry or wet on those who choose to drive a substantial vehicle.
I just giggle and wonder how many of those “blame it on others” were driving around Lusaka today in Toyota Corolla’s, and will go home tonight and throw their sodden clothes into their 200kw tumble driers.
I’m just glad it’s raining and wish there was a way we could just manage the storage of this invaluable commodity better.
P.S.
Since writing this I found out that today, three people were swept off the bridge in the picture. Trying to cross to get to School and work. The man who was swept off has been taken to hospital and is in a critical condition.
The grandmother and her grandson have not been found and are presumed dead as nether could swim.
My thoughts go out to them and their families. Africa is a hard and unforgiving place.

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa. Rain Stops Play.

2010-02-19T04:20:00.000-08:00

I love this climate. Where in the world can you fairly reliably predict the weather without the need of thousands of pounds worth of expensive meteorological equipment.
Without too much fear of contradiction I can say that after the first week of April the rains will be over. (You might get the odd isolated shower but that’s it.)
In October you will get the next scattered splatterings, then on the tenth of November the first real rains will start. Increasing each month until February, after which they will begin to become less frequent until April.

Even during the rainy season there is a eighty percent chance that the morning will be dry, with the clouds building as the day wears on, until by five o’clock the sky is a mass of huge thunderheads hanging fully laden waiting for the moment when the relinquish their heavy load over the land.

The temperature too is interesting and varied, with the end of the rains in April the temperatures start to fall from daytime temps of about 28 down to July when at night it can drop to below freezing but during the day the norm is around ninteen degrees. August sees the start of spring and temperatures steadily rise till December when they peak to about thirty four degrees. Then with the rains it starts to cool a bit until April when the cycle repeats itself.

My master plan this weekend was to go down to the Zambezi and to have a look over a plot that I have identified there that would make a lovely place to build a house.
I was going down early on Saturday morning meet the owner of the land and to camp on the land to see what the night time noise was like. It’s very easy in Africa to find what you may think is the most beautiful tranquil spot, only to find when you move in that there is an illegal Bar a few hundred yards away that plays ridiculously overly load and distorted rap music all through the night, bending the ears of all living things within a five mile radius.

Unlike most days it had rained all night and was still raining in the morning. Driving through the mountains I was up in the clouds in what can only be described as fog, a rare occurrence in Africa.

As I dropped down into the Valley the rain stopped and the sky began to clear a little, with small patches of blue appearing more and more frequently. By the time I arrived the ground was drying well and as I opened the car door and climbed out of the air conditioned cab I was greeted by the rich and humid smell of damp drying soil.

I met Charles (again immaculately dressed) by the side of the road and we set off in search of the owner of the plot. We picked up the head man of the neighbouring village as he knew the whereabouts of the owner and continued on our journey.
To get to the plot and the owner, we had to cross the Kafue river which flows into the Zambezi, and in itself, is a none to insubstantial body of water. To do this you have to use a pontoon bridge. Basically a raft with two, one hundred and twenty horse power diesel engines that whir, clatter and smoke as they fight against the current to get you over safely. Fortunately they succeeded. Only last year the entire pontoon had turned over whilst carrying a fully loaded fuel tanker across. The river crossing is only about one hundred and fifty metres but costs a staggering ZMK 40,000 this is £5.33 which in Africa is a ship load of money. And that is only one way. I cannot begin to see how the locals can afford it seeing the general basic wage is only ZMK 300,000 to ZMK 400,000 per month.

We eventually found the owner of the land a lovely wizened old man with grey and black hair and beard and a set of teeth that looked like he may have been chewing on a hand grenade when it went off. He spoke a little English and I regaled him with my finest knowledge of Nyanga, unfortunately, as I was informed on the way back in the car, he spoke Shona. Charles, the owner and the headman thought that was hilarious.
The upshot was that he agreed to sell me the plot, he would speak with his family and inform them of his decision and we would meet again next weekend to negotiate the price. (I had hoped to do that this weekend to save another expensive trip.)
We headed back to the plot to measure the area, I had brought a GPS with me so we could get an idea of the size as it is difficult to judge when you are walking through thick bush. When we got there we also found that it is difficult to walk in a straight line in thick bush and when we looked at the map after walking what we thought was the boundary it was more like a dot to dot drawn by someone having a seizure and bore no resemblance to the plot we were looking at.

I had noticed as we had been walking around the plot that the bits of blue in the sky had given way to bits of black, not grey, black. And with a sound that appeared to go straight through me and a flash of light that almost blinded me it seemed that Victoria falls had moved four hundred km downstream. Within seconds we were soaked to the skin and the ground had turned to the surface of a giant bar of soap.
We slithered our way back to the car and decided that camping out was no longer an option. Our sounds of the night would have to wait for another weekend. I dropped Charles (Now looking rather more bedraggled than dapper) and headman, (Still grinning at my linguistic cock up) back to their respective homes and headed back to the City.

The journey back was incredible, punctuated by the most fantastic electrical and torrential downpours I have witnessed in years. Vehicles were coming to a stop on the road as they could see nothing with the rain so heavy. The thunder and lightning were simultaneous. The massive cracks of thunder making you physically jump, even through the insulation of the car and over the sound of of the engine and rain.

By the time I got back to Kalima, the rain had stopped and the sun was out. The smell of freshly mown grass greeted me as I climbed wearily from the car.
The bar was calling me, so I went and had an ice cold Mosi Gold. I sat and gazed out over the dam watching a couple of Purple-crested Louries jumping from branch to branch, up a tree, as the sun lowered itself gently over the horizon.
Not what I had intended this weekend, but still an interesting day out.

Denzil Bark (Back in time for tea.)

Cornishman in Africa: So follow me follow, down to the hollow!

2010-02-18T15:52:00.000-08:00

So its Saturday morning the sun has not even thought about hauling itself up into the sky.

Twenty to four to be exact when for some reason, unknown to me, I woke up.
Seeing as the alarm was due to go off in twenty minutes anyway I thought I might just as well get up, have a nice relaxing shower and leave a few minutes earlier. As I have sort of come to expect, don’t expect anything.
You guessed it, no water. I wandered over to the new water tower stood clad only in my usual night attire and was pleasantly surprised to find that the tank had just drained over night and all that was needed was to turn on the pump and refill the tank. Sorted.

I eventually got on the road by five o’clock and had a nice slow drive down to the Valley. The slow drive was not entirely out of choice, the turbo on the car packed up last week so the car now has the performance characteristics of an asthmatic slug. But the journey was pleasant enough and the scenery fantastic as the orange sun reflecting bright reds and then yellows off the underside of the storm clouds that dared to linger around the peaks, then they in turn disappeared as the sun rose up behind the mountains that demarcate the boundaries of the Zambezi valley.
I was sitting beside the river having a full English breakfast by seven o’clock and the sun was now hot as it played down upon us. I had arranged to meet some friends there, Koob and Jeanette, they had travelled down the night before. The breakfast was good as usual at Zambezi Breezers where I stay when working down there. Once finished I made my way down to Chrundu to make a few calles there and to pick up a friend and colleague Charles. Charles was as ever immaculately dressed.

We were going out to some rural areas along the river to try and find a suitable piece of land, The piece I had identified before was a bit too close to human habitation for my liking and add to that the fact that the owners were asking about three times the going rate for the place.

We got to a place called Lilongwe were we left the tar road and headed into the bush, asking for directions we picked up a chap who said that he knew the area well and that he could direct us to exactly where we wanted to go. We travelled through small thatched villages with their red sun baked clay walls and smoke stained roofs, scabby chickens running around looking thin and emaciated. (I suppose they daren’t put on weight) Dusty children in ragged clothes, but with great big smiles snotty noses and waving arms.

I never could understand why the Africans never built chimneys in their houses. If you have ever been to visit or been to a meeting in one of these houses you will know that 5 minutes in one of these houses is the equivalent of seven years smoking twenty Capstan Full Strength. I mean it can’t be that difficult to have a hole in the roof with some sort of raised cover to stop the rain coming in, but no they would rather choke and go around with red eyes and smelling like a bonfire. Anyway the villages looked good.

We got deeper and deeper in the bush and eventually it began to thin again as we reached the place we had been looking for. I must admit I was rather disappointed, There were hardly any trees left, the cultivation that had taken place was half hearted and weed strewn. It was definitely not what I was looking for.
We decided to strike right along the river towards Siavonga to see if there were any more suitable places down there.
It was not long before we were back in the thick of the bush and far from civilisation, only the birds for company and whatever wild life lay hidden away in the brush. The ground was a richly punctuated mosaic of Hippo and elephant spoor with a neat overlay decoration of bird and insect prints.

The ground was getting softer and we had to pick our way through, at one place in particular we had no choice but to drive through a particularly wet bit, I felt confident as I had four wheel drive so that should not be a problem. I had checked the depth and bed before entering so launched in. We made it about three quarters of the way across before we had ceased all forward motion, and were instead heading more in a vertical direction. This did not bode well. The vehicle eventually came to a complete rest with the minimum of wheel spin and absolutely no wheel spin from the front wheels as for some reason unbeknown to me the drive to them had disappeared into the either somewhere over the past thousand or so km, thus rendering the vehicle a very heavy two wheel drive car. About as much use where we were as a chopsticks in a jelly eating competition.

Talking of jelly, when we exited the car that’s what we found ourselves up to our shins in, but this was thick and black and smelly.
I looked at Charles and saw how immaculately dressed he was and thought, Oh dear. But it did not seem to faze him, he just whipped off this socks and shoes rolled up his trousers and got stuck in
First off we tried the usual rocking back and forth with plenty of manpower pushing and pulling but realised fast that she was stuck fast and we would need to make another plan.

The area was mainly scrub bush about ten to twelve feet tall, quite dense and interspersed with grassy tufts, the occasional Mopani tree growing taller every hundred yards of so.

We cut small branches from the scrub bush and pushed it as far as we could under the tyres and tried again. Still nothing.
Normally in Africa, as I have mentioned before when you stop, no matter where you are, people just seem to grow out of the ground. But not today. We were miles from anywhere, phone signal? Not a chance, and to cap it all the bush was so dense that if we did set off to find help we would never find the car again for days. And if and when we eventually did we would probably find it had either been used as a climbing frame or a toilet by the local Hippo population. And from all the tracks about there were thousands of them.

So we had no option but to stick with it and get it out. The next plan was jacking the vehicle and get something with a little more traction than jelly, right under the wheels. Now jacking a car with a bottle jack in mud was never going to be easy, it entailed getting down in the mud, digging a hole in the mud pushing a strong piece of wood down into the hole to place the jack on and trying to raise the car. There was no chance of getting under the axles so we had to jack on the chassis. Which as you can imagine raised the body but not the wheels. It was hot and filthy work, but after an hour we managed to get some branches under the wheels by jacking up and down, getting a better purchase each time. We laid a track of branches to the edge of the hollow and finally we were out. We were all by this time covered from head to toe in thick black mud.

It took another hour to get back to the tar road. We dropped of our guide where we had met him, gave him the equivalent of four days pay and got back to civilisation just before dark. In time for a shower and clean up before dinner and a well deserved beer.

We had not achieved our aim for that day but we had another African experience. The sights the sounds the wildlife the challenge, that all add up to change what may seem a fairly arduous task into an adventure. You just don’t seem to get that elsewhere in the world.

Denzil Bark

Cornishman in Africa : Tower of Bubble.

2010-02-06T01:42:00.000-08:00

I have recently spent two and a half weeks back at home in Sunny Cornwall. Sunny it wasn’t but fantastic it was to be back with my family again. It was four months since I last saw them and that was far too long.
It was nice as well, to have such little luxuries as water that came out of the taps (it tasted like crap admittedly) but it was always there, electricity that did not go off when it rained. I used to creep downstairs in the middle of the night just to check. But sure enough it was still working.
I am now back in Africa and getting settled into the routine of things.
I say routine but to be honest the only routine that there is, is that it gets dark in the evening and light in the morning and as far as I know that has not gone wrong for some considerable time. But don’t bank on it.
Now as you may know if you have been following my antics that I always seem to be having a few issues with water where I stay, and after a major overhaul of the entire system, it seemed that it was just about sorted out. Apart from just a few leeks (4 to be exact) between the main 10,000 litre tank and the Bar (the furthest point where there is water) These leeks have been turning the ground around them into a perfect swamp the ideal breeding ground for my favourite insect, mosquitoes. They also have the added disadvantage of being able to empty the main tank in about an hour (the leaks not the mosquitoes) when there is a power cut, which just goes to show that they are fairly substantial leeks.
Shortly after I got back from the UK the plumber came around to have a go at fixing the leaks and to finesse the water system as the automatic ball valve had stopped working and the staff were having to turn the water on and off manually.
This plumber is a lovely guy, friendly smiley face and ever so helpful. Unfortunately he is to plumbing what Genghis Khan was to babysitting. And the only reason that he has such a lovely smiley face is that if he didn’t he would have had it punched in months ago.
Anyway whilst he was round we had the inevitable power cut that went on for about twelve hours,(I am sure that it was not the plumbers fault, but I bet if he was not there it would not have happened. He’s just lucky like that) when it did come on it unfortunately only came back on one phase. Now our borehole pump is a three phase one and does not take kindly to being asked to work on one third power, so it objected in the strongest possible manner and curled up its toes and died. So again we were with no water. So it was down to the dam twice a day to bathe and wash in the somewhat murky waters that I shared with the Leguvaans (big lizards about 1- 1.5m long that eat most things but tend to disappear when you approach) fish, frogs, snakes, numerous species of water birds and a few snakes, then there is the leaches,, eels insects and billhazia carrying snails that frequent the shallows too. Add to this the fact that there is a crocodile farm just across the valley and you never know when they may have had a break out. So as you can see a bathe in the dam while sounding vey romantic, the novelty can wear off quite quickly. But as there was no immediate alternative, it did the job.
Fortunately within a couple of days a brand spanking new shiny borehole pump arrived, and the plumber fitted it. Water was returned to Kalima Camp, and all was well again on the water side of things. (even though he still had not fixed the leeks.)
Or so we thought.
Now our water tower is a concrete block built structure some twenty feet tall, this is then topped by a ten to fifteen foot tall steel structure that carries the 10,000 litre water tank. This gives a very good head of water and wonderful pressure – normally.
It’s difficult to know just where to start and I don’t want to attribute any blame or speculate on whose fault it was. But that bloody plumber.
I mentioned the nice new borehole pump? The one the plumber fitted?
Well he decided that the best place to fit it would be at the bottom of the borehole, by that I don’t mean a meter or two from the bottom but right at the bottom. In the sand and silt.
So while the pump struggled to pump mud and silt up forty feet to the water tank, once there, in the tank it settled, and as I am the only resident at the camp currently, I was not pulling off very much. So the tank managed to fill to within about one foot of the top, before it gave up.
Now I don’t know what 10,000 litres of wet sand weighs, but obviously more than just water, as it was at this stage that the entire water tower decided that it too had, had enough of the plumber and threw itself mercilessly to the ground with such force it could be felt in Haiti. As you can probably imagine the mess and devastation were tremendous, and it was obvious that this was not going to be a quick fix but would take a good couple of weeks to put this right. Luckily I have a good selection of friend who have invited me around for baths and showers so I am not having to resort to the dam too much.
The plumber has not been seen or heard of since, and he was not as many suspected under the collapsed water tower. But don’t worry I am not looking for him. And if I ever do bump into him I wonder if he will still be wearing that happy smiley expression.
Not for long.

Denzil Bark

Cornishman in Africa: One Hell of a Run.

2010-02-06T01:33:00.001-08:00

Today has been one of those days, incredible. But true!
I knew yesterday that I had to attend a meeting in Ndola at 10:30 this morning so I prepared last night to leave about 05:30 and take a steady drive the 350 km to my destination.
I woke at 05:45, and thought bother. I dashed around getting ready, relieved that we had water as we had been without for the past two days, due to a power fault on one of the phases that burned out the borehole pump. I left the house at ten past six feeling fresh having just had a cool shower. I must admit though that I was not feeling 100%. I was not sure if it was the salad I had eaten the night before or what.
The day was cool with many clouds but with blue all around them, which made it bright and pleasant. The rich greens of the surrounding foliage at it’s best in the rainy season, adding to the enjoyment of the drive.
I made it about 100 km when I had no option but to pull over into the bush as things definitely were not right below. Now, I was dressed in my best meeting attire, white trousers and neatly pressed shirt, tie and nice shiny shoes. There are no nice toilets or washrooms on this route (or any other for that matter.) so the bush is the best one can hope for. Its surprising how awkward you feel when you know what you have to do but the logistics of carrying out the operation are not that simple. I first had to remove my trousers completely so as not to mess them up before the meeting. Secure the car then wander deeper into the bush.(a fine sight I’m sure as I wandered into forth, perfectly attired except for the small detail of the lack of trousers and carrying my bog roll) Find a suitable place and to execute the job in hand. I cannot believe the number of passersby in the bush who just sprout out of nowhere, look surprised and mutter a polite good morning. Anyway, job done get dressed again quick wash and off down the road. Happy comfortable and clean.
Well I was for about another 50 km when another bout of the old peeping tortoise heads occurred again. Same routine, off into the bush, disrobe, job done and back again to the road. This happened four times before 09:30 when I finally arrived at Ndola having pushed on as hard as the poor car would go, to take my mind off other things.
When you get to Ndola you come to a big roundabout and turn left for the city centre where I was headed, to try and get some bread or something similarly bland to give my tummy something to work on.
Unfortunately I turned right and realised my mistake almost immediately. I found somewhere safe to turn and did a U Turn in the road to take me back to the roundabout. As soon as I turned a policeman sprouted forth from the ground and pulled me over. By this time I was feeling rough as rats and was not at my best.
The policeman sauntered over to the car and explained to me that I had crossed a solid white line down the middle of the road, and that this was in fact dangerous driving, an imprisonable offence.(I’d heard this line before.) He would not accept the fact that you could see for a good 2 km in both directions where I turned, and there was not another car to be seen, heard or even feel the slightest presence of. He said that I would have to accompany him to the police station.
He jumped in and off we went. I tried on the way, to explain my predicament and surely there was another way to resolve this situation, but he was having none of it. We arrived at the station and I was shown into the duty sergeant’s office, where I had explained to me the gravity of my offence. It was apparently two offenses, crossing a solid white line and causing an obstruction. Though who I was causing an obstruction to, I will never know. The fine was to be ZWK 270,000 about £33.75. I explained that I was on my way to a meeting and that I only had ZWK 150,000 on me. He said “That will do but I can’t give you a receipt”. So off I went all charges dropped.
I went off to my meeting, which coincidently was very successful, and I set off for home again at just before midday. My tummy having seemed to have settled a bit by now.
The journey back was fairly quick with very little other traffic on the road and I started to relax as I approached Lusaka. The speed limit on this stretch of road is 100 km/h and I was cruising just above this.
I had been stopped for speeding a couple of weeks previously and during a long debarkle with the lady police officer, she said they do not waive speeding tickets unless it is an emergency. At that time it was too late and I would have looked pretty dumb if I had tried.
Anyway I was trolling along quite happily when out from the side of the road jumped a male police officer and flagged me down. I parked up on the left side of the road whist he went back to his speed camera and the female constable who was manning it.
I thought it had to be worth a go, so I half tumbled out of the car clutching my side and forcing myself to go red in the face as I struggled and stumbled across the road clutching my side. I recognised the police woman straight away as the one who had stopped me no less than two weeks previously and to whom I had promised that I would never speed again in the hope of leniency, I thought I was done for.
As I hobbled to where they stood. She said “You were flying.” I said through my best pained, red faced, dribbling expression that this was an emergency and that I had to get to the hospital as it was agony. They looked at me a bit oddly with the first signs of panic starting to show on their faces. “It’s kidney stones and I’m going to pass out if I don’t go now.” Of all the cheek, she said “All right then just give me ZWK 70,000.” I showed her my empty wallet and screamed, “I haven’t got any bloody money, I have to go, NOW”. (still dribbling) They said “Ok off you go, quickly!” (They were looking very worried by now)I struggled back to the car and set off towards Lusaka.
I stopped laughing by the time I hit the outskirts of town. Having had kidney stones I know just how painful it is.
Yes, I know it’s bad, but I could not have been doing more than 110. And she did give me the idea.
As you near Christmas especially, and always towards the end of the month, the occurrences of roadblocks at least quadruple as they all try to get a little extra cash to bolster their paltry wages.
It is a corrupt place, as are so many places in Africa, and yes I should follow all the rules and be a good citizen. (Yeh, right)

Denzil Bark. (Out on good behaviour)

Cornishman in Africa : Another Great Idea?

2010-02-06T01:24:00.000-08:00

I have been considering an idea for a while but it was not until a friend decided that he wanted to do something similar that we agreed to go for it, and share the price of the container.
My master plan is to buy an old Land Rover, either a 1996 Defender 90 or a 1998-2000 Discovery which should come in at about the same price of about £2500.00 if you shop around a bit. Then have it done up ready for the African Bush. By this I mean
Recon engine, gearbox, diffs, prop shafts, brakes.
Raised suspension with all the correct ancillaries associated with that to help you over the lumpy bits.
Front guard incorporating winch to pull you out of the squidgy bits.
All the under body guards to protect the tender bits.
Roll bar to protect the occupants when I get a little over zealous and also to stop elephants squashing the cab when they sit on you.
Rock runners with jacking points to change the tyres that have just been holed by the acacia thorns.
A decent set of wheels and tyres to grip the surface of Africa.
And all the other little bits and bobs that end up costing and absolute fortune, lights, poly bushes, water pump fan and new radiator.
For those of you who have no interest in cars, I apologise for boring the pants off you for the past few minutes. (I expect I will continue to do so for the next 10 as well. Sorry) I will try and not to get into specifics any more. The long and the short of it is, that I want to bring in a car (Land Rover) in that looks like crap, is over twelve years old, but runs like a dream and will do for another fifteen years.
The thing with this is that when vehicles come into the country they get valued, and those who do the valuing have their own rules, laws and weird idiosyncrasies. So much so that a good friend of mine bought a Toyota Prado in the UK for an absolute snip and brought it over here.
The problem was, that although he had the genuine receipt for the vehicle. It was in such good condition it was decided at the border that this car was far too good to have cost that so they banged on another £4,000.00 to the value.
You may not think that is too bad, but the problem comes because you then have to pay duty, on THEIR value + the cost of getting it there, and then you have to pay Vat on the cumulative amount of that.
Let me explain better.
Cost of Car £ 5,000.00
Cost of transport here £ 1,000.00
Customs value cost + £ 4,000.00 (that’s the scary bit)
Total duty value £ 10,000.00
Duty @ 25% £ 2,500.00
Sub total £ 12,500.00
Vat @ 16% £ 2,000.00
Grand Total £ 14,500.00
So as you see the good value car you bought in the UK cheap, has all of a sudden spiralled out of proportion and turned into an expensive one.
My plan is instead of having a car that looks great, have one that looks tatty at best. Bring it through at the value I bought the vehicle for and have the body and paintwork done over here where it is about a quarter of the price of the UK.
The other thing is that if you sent over a commercial vehicle. Duty is only 15% not 25%. If you sent over the parts separately most are at 25%. Fit them to the car and they are also 15% as they are part of the car.
This means.
Cost of Land Rover. £2,500.00
Cost of doing up. £ 4,000.00
Cost of transport here. £ 900.00
Customs value cost (minus ) £ 4,000.00
Total duty value £ 3,400.00
Duty @15% £ 510.00
Sub total £ 3,910.00
Vat @16% £ 625.60
Grand Total £ 4,535.00
What spend doing up £ 4,000.00
Total cost of vehicle here £ 8,535.00
So the long and short of it is for a car that costs £1,500 more you actually end up spending nearly £6,000 less.
As to whether this idea will work, who knows. But I think it has got to be worth a go. If it does I will drive the vehicle for a few months while I have the next one built. Then do it all again.
And besides at the end of it, I end up with the ultimate Bush vehicle and I will end up never selling it. Which was not the plan.

Denzil Bark

Cornishman in Cornwall: Contdown to Hometown.

2010-01-30T00:02:00.000-08:00

Five of the reasons I put myself through all this.

It is now fifteen weeks and five days and eight hours since I waved a tearful goodbye to my family on Camborne station. To disappear half way round the world to work and build something for our futures.
The sight of my families saddened, tearful, faces gazing up the platform after me as I disappeared from their lives for four months, haunted me then, as it has every night I have been apart from them.
It made me want to get off the train at Redruth station and come straight home again. But I just kept going further and further away knowing I was not going to see them again for far too long. It was horrible. The one thing that kept me going was the fact that I knew I could make things happen in Africa, I could change lives, build futures and deliver the goods, and by doing so build a better life for my family too.
Sharon and I had discussed it all at great length, involving the children in as many of the decisions as we felt fair. It was going to put a tremendous strain on Sharon, holding down a full time job, looking after four children and having to deal with me being away. (Which may have been the one saving grace, but I’d like to think not) We also realised that it would also affect the children in ways that we would not see at first. We did not realise just how close and tight we were as a family, until we took it apart. We had decided that whilst this was going to be a ridiculously difficult year, if things worked as we hoped they would, it should all be worth it. So we buckled down and got on with it.
For me it has been easier, my life has been full, with new challenges every day, new experiences to keep me busy and a nose to keep firmly to the grindstone to prove my worth. Sharon has had to battle on through the same routines that she has faced for the past two years, in a house too small and weather that only seems to know shades of grey. Now though she did not have the support she used to have, and to compound it, she also had twice the workload.
It’s funny looking back at it, when I first left to come out I thought that things were pretty well cast in stone and I knew what I would be doing and where based. Since that moment things have been turned on their head, changed around I have taken on much more diverse and interesting roles, Greater responsibilities. I am travelling much more than I imagined and as such am seeing more of this country and its people, I would also to mention the plethora wildlife, but I can’t, as they appear to have eaten it all.
I feel that I am now winning, the first three months were a fairly relentless banging of one’s head on the proverbial wall, but in the last month the foundations that I laid in the first three have finally held firm and we are now building, and it feels good. I now know that we made the right decision, I know that we are building a stable future for the family and it was not just a final fatal ego trip before I gave up hope and sank into the abyss of menial work in grey England.
I have learned probably more about myself this past four months than I have learned about Zambia, I have had many good times and a few shit ones. Most of the shit ones however have been down to me not being prepared, or me just missing my family too much than I could cope with at the time. The good ones however have been spectacular, only tainted by the fact that I am experiencing them on my own and not sharing them with those I love most dearly. I have tried to put down my experiences down in print but I am unable to communicate fully the true magic I feel and have experienced. I also did not start from the beginning. It’s too late to go back now as the moment has passed and the details have faded.
There is however much more to come as it going to get a lot more exciting as things escalate and more than likely get a bit more out of hand.
Within five days the hurt that I have been feeling over the past months will all evaporate, to be replaced by the overwhelming joy of seeing and holding my family again.
We will make the most of every moment that we are together not wasting a word by making it a harsh one, or a thought that may turn into a bad one. For all too soon the festive period with be over, the children back to school, Sharon back at work and I once again will be standing leaning out of the carriage window hating the moment when we are torn apart again.
At least it will not be for so long this time as I really don’t think I could bear that.

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa: Shocking Realisation.

2010-01-29T23:26:00.000-08:00

I am forty six !

Why this thought chose to be the one that woke me this morning, I have no idea. I thought there must be a reason so I dwelt on it for a while as the sun rose in the sky and the invisible bird sang its tuneless song to the whole neighbourhood. That reminds me a friend of Charlotte’s mentioned the other day that this invisible bird may in fact be a frog, so for the past few mornings as soon as the day has given enough life to my legs to operate in a fashion that resembles walking, I have been dashing around the chalets in my underpants gazing up into the trees trying to find the invisible bird. Which in itself is no mean feat because at the moment with the rains, the ground around here is like lightly greased Teflon in Slipperysville. And well worn Crocs are not renowned for their adhesive abilities. I have on more than one occasion ended up on my arse with my feet in their bright yellow Crocs wrapped round my ears looking rather foolish, as I slip virtually naked down the hill to the dam. But all this effort was not in vain. I can now categorically say that the invisible bird, is a bird, and is not always invisible, but jolly good at hiding. My next challenge is to Identify it properly so I know what name to put on the endangered species list when I get hold of it.
Anyway back to my thoughts of where I am in life’s unceasing countdown. I realised that I was probably thinking of all this as I was feeling so rough having thoroughly over done it last night, and have been careless enough to have given my entire system a right old kicking on all fronts lungs liver and stomach. I was now feeling all the ills from what seemed like a perfectly good idea last night.
So as of today, I am not drinking during the week, I will cut down to one cigar a day and I am going back on the diet that jumped whole heartedly out the window this weekend.
Being forty six means in the great scheme of things that for a reasonable innings I have only got another twenty four more years left. And I am sorry but that really is not enough. I have so many things to do that will require more time than that so I am going to have to eke out at least another thirty five years more. Now I have good reason to believe that I can do this as my great grandmother lived to one hundred and three and only gave up smoking when she was ninety nine. On the flipside my grandfather only made it to fifty seven so maybe I won’t draw too much comfort from that.
Then there is the whole retirement issue, what a nightmare. I sincerely hope that when I reach retirement age I will not be working for anyone else, but will be able to continue doing my own thing working for myself as long as I am physically able. My father retired at sixty five and basically from a man who was full of life and fit in both mind and body, suddenly had nothing to fully occupy his mind, he now suffers from chronic altsheimers and does not know what was going on one hour ago, how or what is going on around him and who anyone is apart from my mother. It’s tragic to witness and I really don’t want to end up like that.
When I am at retiring age I want to be living in Africa with lots of space and my children around me, at the first signs of mental decay I want them to send me out into the bush to go and feed the cats.
I have decided as of now, I am going to make sure that I never regret a day. And live each one to the full.
At the age of forty six it’s time to start growing up.....................

Nah there’s enough grown up people in the world already and they still manage to cock it up.

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa: Too Serious.

2010-01-29T23:12:00.000-08:00

Picture of the Bar at Kalima Camp. (where I live)
Getting too serious.
Over the past couple of weeks, you may have noticed that the humour and life was trickling rather than gushing, and to be honest That is how I have been feeling. The good news is the light has been relit the weight lifted and the bottom well and truly kicked.
Last night I had invited some friends round for a barbeque, I call it a barbeque and not a braai as it would normally be called in Africa, because it was pissing down with rain. A phenomenon normally associated with English outdoor cooking rather than African. Luckily about an hour before my guests were due to arrive the skies cleared the sun burst out from behind it’s grey sarong and the day was transformed.
Anyway we had a splendid evening chatting, eating and drinking with the backdrop of the dam, the trees and the wonderful variation of grasses that grow so abundantly around the dam.(and burn so ferociously when they dry up in July) At about eight we became aware that we were all having to raise our voices to be heard over the background noise that had been slowly but steadily being building up.
Frogs, there must have been thousands of them, they start with a gentle ping, which is answered by another’s ping, then their mates join, until the din that ensues drowns out virtually all other sound. And it is such a high pitched ping it goes right through you. You know the level of sound just before pain where the sound makes your ears ring. Well last night it was at that level, it was incredible. We went to see if we could find them but to no avail, and that game was cut short anyway when we stumbled across a rather large snake that we did not hang around to identify but from its girth I would imagine was a cobra. We decided that wandering around in the dark in long grass near a lake whilst half pissed was probably not the cleverest of things to do, so we went back to the bar and continued our conversations at a slightly louder level. My guests left at about eleven and I was left to the clearing up to the accompaniment of ten thousand pinging frogs.
Fortunately they had all gone horse, or were too busy doing other things to go ping by the time I got to bed, so It was just the sound of the crickets and the nightjars to gently lull me into sleep.
This morning I woke late as the sun was not blazing in through my bedroom window as it normally does at five thirty so I laid in till six. (luxury) I had to go to town to meet a local silversmith who I had commissioned to make a silver bangle for me. He made the first to my design and after a couple of minor adjustment he came up with the piece I was happy with. Great, so I asked him to make another five all exactly the same. It had taken him two weeks and he rang me earlier this week to say he had completed them all and would bring them over to me. He duly arrived and brought from his pocket a piece of paper wrapping the said articles and he unwrapped it in front of me. I was speechless. You may recall me mentioning the African curved ball a little while ago. What he bought along that day is living proof that it is alive and well and operating in Lusaka.
From the first piece that he made, I was baffled when I tried to work out what the resemblance could possibly be to these lumps of scrap metal he held in his hand before me now. Now I am a patient, calm and well mannered person normally, but this gentleman really did push my patience this day. I looked at him, showed him the piece that he, himself had made but two weeks previously, and asked him if he could spot any slight differences. Spookily enough he could and after about ten minutes more talking he finally conceded that he had made a mistake. I corrected him, that what he had made in fact was a total load of crap and that he really ought to go back to his bush workshop. Empty his pipe of the strange substances that he had been smoking for the previous two weeks and start again.
He had rung yesterday to ask me to meet him this morning at nine. I rang before leaving just to make sure he hadn’t forgotten our meeting and that he had got the new bangles. He assured me that all was fine and that he was there already waiting.
I arrived and he was his normal jolly self and he produced from his pocket a screwed up piece of paper containing what I was hoping would be five perfect copies of the one he had previously made for me. Well we were getting closer. He had three, they weren’t perfect but they would do, you have to allow a bit for these arty types I suppose. I asked him where the other two were, and he promised me faithfully they would be ready by Wednesday this week. We will just have to wait and see. My worry is that these are presents for the whole family, and I fly back to the UK for a couple of weeks on Saturday.
I am just hoping above hope that we do not see the sudden resurgence of the dreaded African Curved Ball.
Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa : Another Week in Paradise.

2010-01-29T22:52:00.000-08:00

Alone I sit tonight, no power and little for company but Strumble, Mumbles and Derrick the forlorn Zambian. Unfortunately they are all made of wood and we sit here together in the poorly illuminated room that is home. Strumble is a beautiful oak rocking horse who has travelled the world with us and all the children have grown up with and ridden until they had their own horses. Mumbles is a grey back seagull who had lost his beak at birth, so we bought him cheap in Chichester. Luckily for Mumbles, we had a very good friend who made lutes for a living and who had the empathy with wood that only a man who made perfect 14th century musical instruments would have. (I bet he had never been asked to make a seagull’s beak before.) Derrick on the other hand is a new edition. I bought from a local craftsman in Lusaka and who has an expression that epitomises the issues in modern Africa.
Anyway the four of us are sat in the “living room” with nothing for light but an oil lamp burning citronella oil in the vain hope that it will keep the mosquitoes at bay. (It doesn’t, but it smells marginally better than paraffin.) The power went off again at 19:00 again as it has done every night I have been home since Saturday. It seems it is some sort of power shedding as they call it, Though it only seems to affect the capital and surrounding areas.
Power is a funny thing. We spent six months in Zimbabwe with about four hours power a week (and that was in the middle of the night) but we managed. Everything from the morning cup of tea to all the meals were cooked on the open fire, yes we moaned, especially in the rainy season but it was somehow special. About eight weeks after being booted from Zim, I will never forget Sharon saying as she got frustrated with the small electric cooker.” I miss cooking on an open fire” That is something I never thought that I would here her say. The thing is this was hardship for us but its everyday life for the majority of Africans.
And I think that is it. Being out here you prepare for and are able to put up with the idiosyncrasies of Africa and all that it throws at you. In England, life is very comfortable and everything works and you become complacent.
If it snowed in Africa tomorrow for a month I can almost guarantee that the place would not grind to a halt. People would still go to work. They would build snow ploughs, drink even colder beer and sell the stuff to the Congolese and make a plan. Yes they would moan a bit but they would get on with it.
So why isn’t Africa a superpower? It has the most fantastic resources.
Because when it comes to doing anything more than putting the next meal on the table, the wheels fall off. And please don’t get me wrong I am not a racist. My friends and I have discussed this at great length (and yes I am talking about my local friends here.) and they will admit the same. They will plant enough maize for this year to feed their families. Not a bit extra in case it is a bad year or if it is a good year for them to sell on. They live for today, because that is here. Tomorrow is another day, and we will sort that out, when and if, it comes.
I am not saying that everyone in Africa thinks this way but the majority of people do.
On the up side they have something that is fast disappearing in the West and that is to consider those around you. Family, family values. Due to circumstances that have conspired to be prevalent here. A family is no longer you your wife and your children, but a family unit can cover three generations, cousins second cousins and beyond. And within that group there may only be one bread winner. Nine times out of ten, through that sort of adversity they make a plan and gear up. Though unfortunately only until the next harvest.
I think where I am coming from here is that we have a tremendous amount to offer Africa and there is even more than we can take away. And I don’t mean oil, diamonds and wood. But giving business, economic conservational and agricultural acumen. And learning the true values of what we are and how our decisions and actions affect others around us.
We have to get out of our self centred ruts and help others see the bigger picture too. You will be surprised just how much you learn. Mostly about ourselves.
So, me sitting here moaning in the dark while my friend moves his family 700 km on the back of an open lorry down treacherous roads in the rainy season sort of pales into insignificance in the bigger picture.

Denzil Bark (On his soap box)

I hope this was not too depressing. (remind me not to write when I am pissed and lonely)

Cornishman in Africa : Dog and Bone Moan.

2010-01-29T22:30:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the picture.
Communication has always been one of my things. Where ever I am in the world I need to be in touch. When I had my first house I had two phones in every room, both separate lines and in the bathroom four. Two by the bath and two by the loo, so I would not miss a call.
Then there were the mobile phones, when they first became available I got my first one, it cost £1850.00 they were car phones then, they had not become mobile. Once they did however, I had to be the first to have one and was the size of a reasonable sized family house. It was a daft price and that was just to buy the phone, the calls were another story. I never will forget my phone bills they were the equivalent to the debt of some third world countries. And of course as technology moved on so fast I was buying a new phone every two months trying to keep up with the shrinking size of handset and the increased performance. I am not nearly as bad now, but still need to have comms.
Recently, Zain (a major airtime company in Zambia) who I happen to be with for my airtime, decided to do something to their transmitters that rendered them as useless as a wet tissue when you have a runny cold. My phone signal went from a strong six bars down to a sporadic two, but only when it was stood up on its end, in the window, on the transmitter side of the house. I tolerated this very ungraciously, for two days then threw my toys out the pram, dashed out and bought an MTN sim card, whilst at MTN head office I noticed that they had a very cheap phone on sale, and it was cheap ZWK60,000. (which is £7.66) I thought at that price you can’t go wrong, it’s also endorsed by the airtime company having their logo blazoned all over it. I’ll give it a go I thought, then I at least can have one phone on each network, so hopefully I should get signal. So I bought one.
When I got home I opened up the box and threw away the packaging, (you know the one with all the writing on that says instructions.) and proceeded to assemble the phone, first I was staggered by the lightness of the phone, then by the fact that it did not have a separate battery, but this was in fact an integral part of the unit, and the only way to get it out was either with an angle grinder or an axe. This was not a problem as the phone had a charging port. Anyway I inserted my new sim card and put the phone on charge.
Within two hours the phone was charged and I went to make my first call. Much to my immense surprise it actually worked and I got through to the destination I required, the sound was ok, all be it a little wobbly and quiet, but it worked, and those problems can often be put down to atmospherics. So I was suitably chuffed, ended the call and went on to try and programme the phone with all my numbers and settings. I have probably programmed more phones than I have had cold breakfasts. But I did actually have to go and dig the instructions out the bin, to check that the phones capabilities were as it initially seemed. I know without fear of contradiction that my first Motorola I bought twenty years ago had many more features than this phone. As a direct result, the settings that had been programmed into this phone at birth were somebody’s or some working groups decision. All I can say is I would like to meet the fellow or fellows and find out just what it was he was smoking at the time.
I have now lived with this phone for fifteen days, six and a half hours and it’s driving me nuts.
It has a ringtone that could wake the dogs of hell, not only because it is so ridiculously loud it has broken all the windows in the office, but also because it has the single most irritating excuse for shitty noise that you can possibly imagine. It does not even come close to constituting a tune and barely comes under the description of sound. Best of all though, because it is the poverty model of cheapest phones in the market place today, it has no bloody volume control. Can you believe that any phone would come without a volume control, I use my volume control on my other phone about five times a day, depending on whether I am in the office, out in the fields or in a meeting. It only has one tune, it does not have a conference mode, in fact the only mode it does have is embarrassing, you cannot even turn the irritating sounds off. The tune is embedded so deep in its silicon heart it cannot change. As if that was not bad enough, it makes more than one sound. Whenever you touch any of the keys it sounds like a cat being stamped on, and at similar volume too. Then another area they have scrimped on is the earpiece speaker. It has got all the opposite traits to the ringtone speaker, it is ridiculously quiet, and has a range of sounds that could put dear mother nature herself, to shame. (It wasn’t atmospherics when I first tried it.) The downside being they don't resemble any of the sounds that were initially conveyed to the mouthpiece of the corresponding apparatus at the other end of the line.
And the final thing that gets me, that is no fault of the phone, is that two out of three people in Zambia have bought these phones because they are so cheap. So every time someone in Zambia receives a call two thirds of the population take their annoying yellow phones out of their pocket to shut the bloody things up, before anyone notices. But of course no one will notice, as everyone else is doing the same themselves.
I has reached the stage where If I don’t strangle this phone someone else in the office will.
Yes it was cheap and yes it does serve a purpose for the masses. But to me it is the most annoying thing since the crazy frog.

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa: Working Weak.

2010-01-29T22:12:00.000-08:00

A week in Zambia.
It has been an interesting week. I returned from Chirundu on Saturday when it rained a lot. I pulled into the yard on my return, only to slide sideways towards the trees and to sink up to my axles in gloop. Oh dear I thought. No actually I didn’t. (I thought lots and lots of bad things that are not strictly, politically correct out here)
It seems the guys had been asked to dig drainage ditches either side of the track, but they had piled the topsoil and silt up on top of the drive. A bit like smearing 30cm of lard across a main road on a bend, then sitting to watch the ensuing mayhem. (The sort of trick I would have loved to have done as a child)
Sunday I spent quietly at home just catching up with jobs and getting the last of the Christmas presents. While the guys dug out my car and scraped the mud and silt off the drive then went with wheelbarrows to go and get rocks and gravel to make it passable again. Oh yes, it rained a lot. Sunday night, it was bed early, but I did not sleep particularly well because it rained a lot and I mean a lot.
Monday morning I set off to work in Lusaka, it was raining a lot, but by now I hardly noticed. On my way to work I cross a bridge over a small stream. The bridge is about 3 meters high and the stream constantly flows under it about 5 to 10 cm deep. It’s about 50 meters long 4 meters wide and is bereft of handrails and architectural flair.
As I approached the bridge, I was first surprised by the large number of people standing on either side (about 150 in all on both sides) most had umbrellas and those that did not had rather fetching yellow and red hats made of plastic. On closer inspection it became apparent that these were in fact Shoprite supermarket carrier bags being used for the purpose of keeping heads, hair or wigs dry. About 70% of the women over here wear wigs or hair pieces, which did surprise me. It’s a huge market with most women favouring straight hair.
Anyway the hair is totally irrelevant to anything I was talking about.
As I got a bit closer I was staggered to see that the tiny normally insignificant Ngwewere River had turned into a raging torrent second only in spectacle to that of Vic Falls. It was gushing about 70cm over the top of the bridge, a huge seething serpent of brown muddy water. I must admit I did think about driving through as the prospect of going round the long way did not thrill me. But after closer inspection I decided against it as it was too early in the morning to go rigging fancy safety strops and securing the car between trees so as not to get washed away. And whilst the car could have waded through if it was still, or slow flowing, I really did not want to end in the river upside down bobbing away downstream like a sausage in a water park. So I turned the car round and an hour and a half later I was at work.
I spent the day catching up, having been away the past week. Then had to brief on the situation in Chirundu, the problems the opportunities the challenges and the potential end gain. We had the opportunity to grasp a huge contract if we could act fast, and have fool proof systems in place to operate it. The customer had been badly let down by their largest operator, and were seriously in the soft and smelly. We had to move quickly and deliver if we were to get it. By the end of the day I had a new baby to look after and to control. This was going to be interesting. I left the office at 18:00 and was home again by 19:30 after having done some shopping on the way back.
Tuesday morning at 05:00 I was on my way back to Chirundu and I was actually quite looking forward to my new challenge. The drive up was without incident, but it still is a spectacular drive when you are not is a hurry, crossing the Slow but strong Kafue river then running along the flood plains before slowly climbing into the hills. The hills get steeper and the roads get wider (Thanks to a vast road building project by the Chinese) then before you know it you are on the escarpment and you work your way down into the Zambezi Valley. The scenery is breathtaking, my only sadness whenever I travel this road is the shocking lack of wild animals, the habitat is perfect. It’s just man’s greed that took away the rights of these animals to enjoy it too. Don’t worry I am not going to climb onto my soap box now. I’ll save that for when I’m having a real I hate Africa day. (They don’t happen often)
On Monday I had explained that I would need a whole host of equipment to take on this new contract and I was assured it would all be in place Wednesday or latest Thursday. I was instructed not to start anything until we had all the equipment and everything was in place.
Wednesday I had a call to say there were some delays in getting hold of the equipment and it probably was not going to happen this week. The manager for the contract company was joining me for lunch. By the time we had finished I had agreed that we could start that afternoon and everything was in place and would run like clockwork.
In truth with the systems I had set up there was no reason for anything to go wrong, it just would have been extremely handy to have all the hard and software so we did not have to do everything manually.
It was 17:30 before head office found out that I had started and then the phone calls started. Unfortunately both my phone batteries died simultaneously and we had a power cut ?
If we had not started that day the contract would have been awarded to another and we never would have got it back.
Thursday morning 05:00 the information was in their inboxes to prove that everything was in hand and running smoothly. We had at least started and got through the first phase of which there are four. By the time the next orders came through Phase two of the first orders were complete, and by 17:00 the first order was through phase three for now and temporarily out of our hands. Order two was at Phase one. So the cycle had started and it was only going to get faster and more furious. I was loving it, a real buzz.
By Friday we were into a rhythm and we were pumping, things were advancing under controlled pressure. I had to go back to Lusaka in the evening and was not looking forward to leaving the coal face.
It has been a good week, achieving a lot but always being wary for the inevitable “African Curved Ball”. I know full well that whatever happens next week will be totally different from this one no matter what I do to influence it.
That’s why I love living in Africa.

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa; Land of hope ends poorl.y.

2010-01-20T01:08:00.000-08:00

I am not sure what it is in my genetic makeup that causes it to happen. It’s not that I look for a fast buck, want to have more than anyone else. I just want to have enough, and the things I want are normally a bit different to what others desire. To start with at least.
My father was always very careful and calculating, saved for everything before he bought, never overstretched himself and never really has had to worry too much about money.
My brother the same, always done fantastically, worked very hard, saved and got what he wanted, he has done particularly well through it. Even my children seem to have a better grasp on financial reality than I, they are all carful people.
So quite where did I go wrong. When I see something I want I don’t want to wait for it I want it now. I can always see the vision of what the thing (for want of a better word) has the potential to turn into, create or help me achieve and it will only be to the detriment of all if I should have to wait.
Now I am in a situation where I need somewhere to live, as I am working away from home for a while. Most people would probably go out and rent themselves a nicely furnished modest town house for easy access to work and close or in town for a social life. But to me that is a waste, why rent an average place where there is no real long term benefit. When you leave it, you have nothing to show but a wallet as empty as a Zambian litter pickers meeting.
For those who know me, alarm bells will be ringing at such volume as to deafen Beethoven. You see I have a bit of a history of being stitched up like a kipper when it comes to land deals. I have lost so much money and land that I probably could have retired by now if I had taken better advice. But never mind that is water under the bridge now.
Now talking of water and bridges, I have found a piece of land no more than 20 minutes slow drive to work which I think would be perfect. It has upsides and down sides. I am a great believer in concentrating on the upsides (which is why I am where I am and my brother is where he is) and giving a little less time to the downsides.(Which is where Adrian concentrates and what he is particularly good at spotting.)
Now I am going to break all habits and look at the down sides.
1) It has no electricity.
2) It is too big. (why would you want with 25-50 Acres anyway?)
3) It has no running water. (Well it does but that is another twist)
4) It is over a mile from the nearest dirt road.
5) You are thinking of buying it from a chief. (last time you did that you lost a house a borehole, 100acres of land and a fantastic dream along with about £100,000.00)
6) It has no house.
7) Your neighbours are Crocodiles, Hippos Elephants, Lions, Bush pigs millions of birds, Fish, Billions of insects and a village of locals about three miles away. (So you will probably get eaten if you live there.)
OK. Now the bit that I listen to:-
1) No electric bills, no power cuts or overhead power lines. (I will use solar and wind) Only need Fridge, freezer, lights and low power usage sockets.
2) It has enough room to build a main House and if we feel like it later some lodges to bring in extra income. All this without being crowded or spoiling the environment.
3) It DOES have running water (About 400 billion litres per second) it’s just in the river, and that forms the southern boundary all 500 metres of it. Oh yes and that river just happens to be the great Zambezi. So solar or wind pump up to a settling tank, gravity feeding through 1 micron filter then finally U.V. filter for drinking water. But direct to grey water system.
4) I can build my own road. It might get a little sticky in the rainy season but we can always make a plan and if the worst comes to the worst, I can go to work by Boat.
5) Ok so we got burned before. This time after hearing the deal from the chief, I will personally go to the minister of lands and check that it is all above board and legal.
6) Ok yes you have a point here, But building is very cheap here and if I spend on building what I would spend on Rent, the house would be paid for in a year.
7) That’s why the place is so special, where else in the world can you live with all this and still be in work in 20 minutes.
8) I have the opportunity of owning a place in a setting virtually unrivalled in the world. Even if I moved, it would be the holiday place to die for, you can rent it out. It’s two hour’s drive from the country’s international airport. (One, if you use the local Mini Busses. And you thought the Lions were dangerous) It lies totally secluded apart from that which is natural, in beautiful virgin bush. When the sun rises in the morning it comes up over the river, dancing fantastic warming colours over the surface. The calls of the wild animals go on long into the evening adding to the feeling of seclusion but not solitude.
So you see, to me there is no doubt this is the best plan going forward. I am going to pursue it and work out how much it is all going to cost. And if it does not stack up or not make good financial sense.
I will probably do it anyway because it’s just so nice. (I’m doing it again aren’t I)

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa.I’m glad I’m not a cat! (I’d be dead by tomorrow afternoon)

2010-01-13T11:33:00.000-08:00

Over the past twenty four hours I have had my fair share of adrenalin rushes, In fact if I were to have another heart stopping moment in the next five minutes I think it would do just that, because the gland that produces the adrenalin has just gone on strike. He only normally has to work about once or twice a month unless I am on holiday or something, then he has his work cut out a little more. But over the last twenty four hours he has had to produce enough for my fight or flight on no less than six occasions.

It all started quite innocently enough whilst I was sitting at a bar on the banks of the Zambezi having a few drinks and a chat with some friends when I decided to answer a call of nature. Off I trotted, just out of the fall of the lights and was about to go, when the undergrowth that I was about to pee into moved off sharply to my right for about three metres, then I could see the full size of the crocodile I was just about to pee all over. He was not a particularly big one only about six to seven feet, but enough to give you a very nasty nip. The croc had stopped in the middle of the lawn and the guys at the bar had seen him so came out with torches sticks and pans and gently encouraged our friend back into the river. I returned to join them at the bar, where that little episode was the topic of conversation and the jokes got progressively worse as the evening went on.

I don’t know what it was about that evening, it seemed that everything wanted to come and join us. It was raining very hard as it had been for the last couple of hours. About eight thirty the bar began to fill with flying ants, they are about two inches long including wings. Unless you have ever experienced it you cannot believe the magnitude of the spectacle. Every square foot filled with at least six flying ants and around the lights one for every square inch. Millions and millions of them. The owner of the bar said I hate it when this happens, all the mess to clean up. Then she handed us each a beer mat to put over our drinks so that we did not have to share with our little flying friends. I mentioned that when they were clearing up in the morning I would dearly like to have some for my breakfast. (No seriously, they are very good and if you get the chance to try them, do it)

The evening came to a close as tiredness set in and we all wandered our weary way back to our tents, three of us went off in one direction and the rest went in the other. We were chatting animatedly as we made our way back. When all of a sudden there was a crashing, snorting and sound of much watery movement about 4 metres to our right coming out of the river. I had my torch with me and shone it to where the noise was coming. Three huge, no I lie bloomin enormous, Hippopotami hauled themselves up over the bank, I flicked my torch off immediately and backed quickly back to a clump of bushy trees we had just passed. I dragged Karen and Steve back too as they just seemed to have frozen petrified. Now I have never been up close and personal with a hippo before, let alone three, all I know is don’t get between them and the water No one ever told me what to do if you bump into a trio of them on the way back from the pub. It doesn’t happen that frequently in Troon.

I had no idea how they were going to react whether in fact they had actually seen us, but I can’t see they would have missed the torch, or maybe it just blended in to the flood lights of the bar. I have no idea. All I know is that we stood there motionless for about, well to be honest I have no idea, at the time it seemed like forever but in retrospect it seems like seconds, we waited until the hippo’s had moved off around the other side of some other tents and trees and moved swiftly towards our tents, I said cheerio to the others and shot inside my tent, with great relief.

I thought the incidents would keep me awake all night, but I went out like a light and slept right through.
I woke at 06:00 in the morning and checked carefully around the camp before venturing out. I laid my clothes out for the day and went and had a shower, fantastically refreshing. I dried off and started putting on my clothes, I cussed hard when I realised my nice clean ironed white shirt had fallen on the floor, I picked it up and put my arms in the sleeves and pulled it on, Then I thought that I had better check it was not too dirty having fallen on the floor, I flipped it off to examine it when I noticed a three inch long scorpion just below the collar on the inside. I am petrified of scorpions. This was number three, when the adrenalin kicked in I knew the taste, I took the shirt and contents outside and flicked it into the reeds by the river. I regained my composure and went for breakfast.

I love my English Breakfasts and at this place they do a very good one (as long as you don’t mind what time you get it) This morning I was in no rush as I did not have to be in work at any specific time. Sod’s law, breakfast arrived bang on 07:00 I looked down and I must say I was a little disappointed. Then the waitress came from the kitchen with a cereal bowl of what I was looking for, Flying Ants. Well they were flying no more obviously. At night when they come out and go careering around chasing stationary bright objects, they get tired and fall to the ground, loose their wings then amble off with the first partner in the same predicament to find a new nest and colonise it. Only about 0.001% succeed the others just go and find a light to get mesmerised by, drop their wings and just die, only to be scooped up in the morning by some eager humans popped in a pan and cooked. Anyway they were fantastic, a little more cooked than I would do them myself, these were crispy all the way through, I prefer mine crispy on the outside and more gooey on the inside. But they were very good and put an interesting slant on my English Breakfast.
I packed up the tent, then set off home, briefly calling into the office on the way out to pick up some files.

The rain had eased off and it looked like it was getting brighter though the clouds hung on the peaks of the hills of the escarpment making it look all the more imposing.
The road was quite deserted though I did pass a few lorries labouring up the steep climb in what must be near to first gear as they hardly seemed to be moving though their engines were working hard as the black smoke that belched from their stacks intimated.

As I neared the top of the escarpment I was on a piece of road that had two lanes going up and one coming down, I was doing about 80kph on the inside lane round a sweeping bend when suddenly around the corner came a huge long bonneted American style truck, pulling an empty flatbed trailer, doing about 100kph + and entirely in my lane,(two whole lanes away from where he should have been) There was no point in braking, it would have only put me less in control at the time, I took straight for the drainage ditch and the truck missed by no more than a foot, I got straight back on the road without slowing, and thought how jolly lucky I had just been. If I had been in a more cumbersome vehicle, it would have been goodnight Denzil. It was not till after another couple of km that I started to feel a bit shaken up as my latest adrenalin buzz subsided.

Whilst on the escarpment I had come across a surprising amount of wildlife, mainly primates. I came round one corner to find a badly injured dog half on and half off the road, on the other side. As I got closer I could see it was just moving so I pulled up close wound my window down to get a better look and see if there was anything that I might be able to do.

Good grief !!! The thing leapt into the air half toward me half towards the road and I realised it was not a dog at all but a large baboon, and it was not injured. What I thought was a nasty injury with the skin removed turned out to be its aroused and ripe bits looking every bit like a bad car crash. Well the sudden movement towards me through an open window of what I thought was an injured dog, just about finished me off. I was off down that road like a Zambian taxi driver.

As I came down the other side of the escarpment the road turned back to a normal one lane in each direction type of affair. The rain increased to such an extent I slowed to 40kph lights on with wipers on flat out. Visibility was down to about 50m. It was about now that I cast eyes on the third being that day that deemed it their duty to remove me from the face of the planet. Quite why he thought that it was his divine right in his huge freightliner flat nosed juggernaught, to straddle the white line so thoroughly that everything else should be forced off the road, I have no idea. He was not going to slow down for anything. I could not believe the ignorance of the driver.(I use the term loosely.) Once I had picked myself out of the ditch for the second time in as many hours. I thought how lucky I had been. (Again)

Trust me, I do not go out courting danger, I may not lead a particularly quiet or normal life, but this was a particularly scary 24 hours, and the weird thing is that if you put it in as a film script it would be thrown straight out for being too farfetched.

You may think that I have exaggerated or made this up but I am telling you this is just as it happened.

I am thinking of running totally unscripted adventure holidays for bored Cornish folk with Denzil Bark. You never know what will happen next.

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa. Not what it says on the tin.

2010-01-13T11:29:00.000-08:00

There are many wise sayings that tell us that we should not judge a book by its cover, and I am sure every language and culture has their own slant on it. The trouble is we just can’t help doing it.

Chirundu is a place of which I have had many experiences, albeit brief, experiences, I thought that was the best way to treat Chirundu. Get through and out as quickly as possible.

When asked if I would like to go and spend a week down there my immediate reactions were mixed. Yes it would be great to spend a week near the river and all its wildlife, but in Chirundu, I really could think of many nicer spots.
I arrived in Chirundu and made my way up the dusty, litter strewn track to the office, even the sign with its peeling faded paint exuded the feeling of neglect and despair.

I had come here with a purpose and was not going to get sucked into a depressive state of mind by the environment. I pounced on Chirundu like a tick on a dog. It did not stand a chance, I engaged everyone and grasped every opportunity to see more, find out more and try and learn, just what made this place tick. I travelled back and forth over the bridge between Zimbabwe and Zambia, I met officials from the top brass in Customs and immigration, to children begging from the passing trucks. I watched and helped as they stripped down vehicles and rebuilt the loads. Talked to store holders, and the fish selling ladies, and others who sold everything, including themselves, it was a fascinating insight to the hopes, fears and aspirations of these very genuine and kind people.

As the week continued I began to see the real Chirundu opening up before me and I began to have a warm feeling towards this place and its hard working people.
In the evening I drive out along the dirt track for about 10 km to a riverside camp. My home for a week is a large two bedded tent erected on a raised platform under a tin roof with an en suit bathroom, an odd mixture really, but very functional and comfortable.

At this time of year the place is almost empty, the last overland truck (A large 4x4 lorry, converted to carry passengers on Safari) left the day that I arrived and apart from that, there have only been another two couples in the whole week, apparently it livens up at the weekend. In the evenings I sit on the veranda of the tent listening to the nightjars lamented song, the hippo’s, snorting and chuckling to themselves, and the constant swirling of the great river just 5 meters from where I sit. In the dark of night the hippo’s come up and graze around the camp, sometimes joined by the not so welcome crocs that come up to see if there are any unsuspecting dogs or humans lying around outside. It’s not a good idea to go wandering around the camp after midnight without a good torch and an even better pair of running shoes. I must admit I was glad I chose an en suite tent.

The sunrise in the morning about 05:30 is worth waking up for every time. As the sun pokes its head up over the horizon it illuminates in fantastic shades of orange and reds the mountains of the Zambian escarpment. Picking out in shadowy silhouettes the valleys and contours of the terrain. As the sun rises further the reds turn to green as the true colours of the trees become real, and the shadows cast by the low sun disappear as they are bathed with the sun’s rays as it rises ever higher in the sky. Beneath all this, the great river relentlessly surges on, its surface never still as the undercurrents and eddies constantly swirl to come up and disturb the shiny surface.

I could sit and gaze in wonderment at this panorama all day, as elephants, hippo’s crocodiles and a plethora of exotic birds cross this living canvas, but I know I have work to do.

Since the first day here I have had the same full English breakfast every day. It’s a good breakfast well cooked, with good portions of real smoked thick bacon with just the right amount of fat left on. 4, lean pork sausages, a good dollop of baked beans, an inch thick slice of fresh tomato, lightly fried and two bright yellow, soft yoked, turned fried eggs with toast and all the trimmings. I ordered my breakfast on the first day about 06:30 and it arrived about 07.30, I complimented the chef on his great breakfast and asked if I could have exactly the same the next day at 07:00 prompt. No problem sir. So the next morning I got there at 06:45 and waited, the waiter came out and said good morning then scurried back into the kitchen, I sat and wrote a few emails and waited, and waited.

At 07:05 the waiter came out of the kitchen again and came over to my table I was expectantly anticipating him delivering my steaming hot perfectly cooked breakfast, but no, he came to the table and asked politely, what would you like for breakfast this morning sir.
I asked if he remembered the conversation we had, had the day before, he assured me that he did, but he just thought he would check, it did not dawn on him to check 20 minutes earlier when he had greeted me in the first place. But never mind my breakfast duly arrived at 07:45 and was if anything even better than the day before’s. Again the waiter came to whisk away the plates and I asked if he could get the chef. They both came back, and again I complimented him on his culinary wizardry and tipped them both well. I then asked if there was any danger that I might be able to have my breakfast at seven o’ clock the following morning so that I would not be late for work for the third day running. I was assured in none to uncertain terms that it would be no problem at all. They always start at 06:00 so I could have my breakfast at 06:30 if I wished. I told them this would not be necessary and 07:00 would be perfect if they thought they could manage that.

That night the heavens opened, a terrific thunder and lightning storm and torrential rain all night (Its incredibly loud on a tin roof) it was still raining when I woke the next morning. It was not worth getting up early as there was no visible sunrise. I arrived at the dining area dead on seven unfortunately twelve minutes before any other of the kitchen staff, it seems that rain renders all alarm devices in the Zambezi valley totally useless. I have subsequently given up asking for my breakfast at a precise time, and just have it when they feel it would be a good time for me to eat.

Sorry, I went off on a bit of a tangent there about breakfast, the thing is I really want to get into Chirundu in the mornings now, to get stuck into the day and get things cracking. Once you get into the swing of the place it is addictive, you can make things happen, build things, change things. I think that is all to do with the fact that if you want to do something, you walk over to the man who makes the decisions, knock on his door and talk to him, come to a conclusion, he may need to make some phone calls while you are there, and it’s done. If you need to see anyone else about it you walk to see them, and repeat the process, until you have achieved your aim. And I think that is it with Chirundu. It is like its own little principality, everyone is there within walking distance from the highest to the lowest, everyone knows everyone, you can get anything, you can do anything, (as long as it is legal of course) you just have to be determined and have the right attitude. I can honestly say that I really like Chirundu now and if I was told that I was to be working here permanently from now on, I would be delighted.
I still wouldn’t live in the town though.

Denzil Bark

Cornishman in Africa; Into the Valley.

2010-01-05T05:46:00.000-08:00

Coming from Cornwall there is an automatic attraction to water, albeit normally the salted type with big waves.
There is however a distinct lack of coastline in the two countries that I have chosen to make my new home. Funnily when applying for my work permit I had to include all certification to back up my application, I could not resist putting in my Offshore survival training certificate.
I reckon that clinched the granting of the permit myself.
Recently I was offered the opportunity to go down to a place on the Zimbabwean and Zambian border called Chirundu, for a week to look into a few issues that were arising down there. Of course for the chance of a challenge and a glimpse of the Great Zambezi again, I jumped at the opportunity.
After the issues I had last time I went away, with fuel, I decided to get well kitted up, so I went out and bought two new jerry cans and filled up the car tank and the two cans, just to make sure I had plenty. Its only one hundred and seventy five km to Chirundu but I would be staying well out of the town, and travel back and forth each day.
You may think that is a little odd if you have not been to Chirundu, but I have been through there on many occasions and it is a place to make you shudder, whist the setting itself is stunning. The town is clinging to the steep sides of the river then spills out over into the surrounding bush. Unfortunately it is not a town of substance, it has no shops just ramshackle stalls, it has no hub, it has no soul. (or so I thought) The only thing that breathes life into this town are the trucks that pass through it. Wheezing their black carcinogenic fumes into the town too.
A whole industry of freight forwarding and freight clearing has grown up all around, in offices that range from comfortable stone built ones to ones that are made of cardboard and that move closer to the river each time it rains. The biggest industry in Chirundu however is prostitution, with nearly 50% of the inhabitants being involved in this trade one way or another. The town is filthy, dirty with litter occupying every square foot of the place and the smells of burning refuse, dust and drying fish fill your nostrils for most of the day. (am I painting a bleak enough picture for you here?) On the other occasions I have come to Chirundu I have been passing between countries and have had to face the harrowing ordeal of the whole customs and immigration process, thus making the Chirundu experience many times worse. I’ve always just wanted to get through and out as quickly as possible.
So that is why I was not going to be staying in town.
The day I was planning to leave I happened to wake at 03:00 and could not get back to sleep so decided have a leisurely breakfast and make an early start. I searched the fridge to see what was there, that probably would not resemble food by the time I got back in a week’s time. The breakfast menu was suddenly looking like snails in a butter, sorrel, garlic and bacon sauce, with chicken gizzards liver and bacon, with fresh asparagus on the side. Before long I decided just to go for just the asparagus, and take my chances with the rest when I got back. The asparagus was fantastic with butter and a hint of garlic, swiftly followed by fresh orange juice and 2 mugs of espresso. I was on the road by 04:45 out of the bush and into the city. There is something magical about driving through a city in the early morning when it is just pulling itself, into life again. I have never passed through Lusaka so quickly and quietly before, it was a pleasure. Out of the city and into the outlying areas becoming more and more rural until at last I got to the foothills of the escarpment. The escarpment is a truly magical place with breathtaking scenery and hundred foot drops off the side of the road, the hills are steep and the roads and countryside are littered with the carcases of fallen lorries. As with the animals who die here, the trucks too are stripped to the bone of anything that may be of any use. Reminiscent of the olden day Cornish wreckers, hundreds of people live in these hills eking out a living from the unforgiving terrain, animals were hunted to extinction years ago so they have to survive on what they can grow or find. It is rumoured that if you break down in the hills, and unguarded, a truck and a forty foot container can be stripped to its bare chassis, container emptied in one night, There will not be a sign of any of it, by day break.
The morning I came through I saw many women walking, all in the same direction along the road, once I had travelled about fifteen Km I came across an upturned lorry, carrying what seemed to be seed maize. The hill tribes must have thought all their Christmas’s had come at once. At the scene of the crash there was a group of some three hundred people waiting to liberate the cargo while a single guard stood trying to keep them at bay.
I drove on by wondering how long he would be able to hold them back, noticed the hundreds of people coming along the road from the other direction. I realised then it would not be long. There were another six broken down trucks on the way through the hills, two side by side on the brow of a hill on a sharp bend, I just had to go by and pray as I did. If anything had been coming the other way I would not have stood a chance.
I arrived too early, as I had hoped. I decided to go and have a little explore. I took a dirt track off to the left and just kept driving deeper and deeper into the bush, the terrain changed as did the bush, lines of trouser ants crossed the path, these were big ones so I decided to stay in the car not stop to observe. A couple of km further in I found what I was looking for DUNG, yes dung, you cannot believe how excited I was when I saw it. (I never thought that a pile of pooh would ever have this affect on me.) As you have more than likely guessed it was elephant pooh, I stopped got out and studied it, One of my best friends used to be a big game hunter and taught me all about, and how to age pooh. A skill I have not had reason or desire to use in Camborne or in fact any part of Cornwall, and in fact it would be a completely different science as pooh in Africa tends to dry up and eventually blow away where in Cornwall it just gets wetter and wetter then dissolves and eventually flows into the sea. (Appologies for those who are eating, and Sara who hates even the mention of the “P” word.)
Anyway, after much prodding, poking, breaking, squeezing and sniffing, (you don’t have to sniff, that’s optional) I established that this elephant had been through the day before and not that morning. I drove on and on finding more evidence of elephants, but unfortunately not the actual fantastic creatures.
I arrived at a clearing and came upon one of the most spectacular sights in the world. The great Zambezi river stretched out in front of me, fast flowing hugely wide and incredibly powerful, how the elephants had managed to cross I don’t know but they had, and there was evidence of them travelling in both directions from the angles of their spoor, unless they were just messing me around by walking in backwards, But I don’t know if elephants have a sense of humour.
I sat on the banks of that river for about an hour in total seclusion, lost in the magic of the whole scene, the birds the animals the insects the fish and the river, all coming together to create an amazing haunting ambiance that will stay with me forever and always pull me back to this part of Africa.
I could have stayed all day, in fact all my life, but I had to pull myself away and carry on to Chirundu. A place I was not looking forward to visiting but discovered another type of magic which rather surprised me. I’ll tell you about that another time.

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa: Ants in Pants.

2009-12-29T05:32:00.000-08:00

Beware the trouser ants.

I remember as a child my parents taking us on holiday and one day we were particularly excited to find out that they were taking us to Burnham Beaches.
My brother and I were chatting about whether the beaches would be the same as they were in our beloved Cornwall, would they be sandy and long like Hayle or pebbly and steep shelving.
As it turned out we were sorely disappointed when we found out that they were made of wood The beaches in question were beech trees.
We were gutted and the day only got worse as we had to go on a long walk. No buckets and spades no ice creams, just trees leaves and walking. Could this day get any worse?
Yes it could, whist walking along in my sandals (ideal beach wear, not so good for wood walking) I managed to get a piece of twig wedged in between my foot and the shoe. In an effort to dislodge the twig and hence alleviate the immediate discomfort I sat down on a very convenient two foot high mound that was neatly situated directly beside the path.
It was a lot more cushioning than I expected for a soil mound, and then the reason why became startlingly apparent.
I had just parked my bottom on a red ants nest, whist the ants were probably more than a little surprised that a ten year old boy had decided to sit on their beautifully made nest they were also a bit annoyed, and whist they invited me in, it was not for tea and biscuits it was more for a main meal. Theirs.
My parents duly hauled me out in floods of tears and brushed off as many of the hungry critters as they as they could.
Unfortunately it took a full humiliating undressing in the middle of the woods to get rid of all the ants that had decided to explore the inner sanctums of my clothing.
This was my first experience of ants at odds with me.
When we moved to Africa, insects were one of my wife’s biggest bugbears. (no pun intended)
But in reality when you have good friends around you who are keen to share their knowledge it does not take long to learn what to take a close look at and what to steer well clear of.
We moved from Zimbabwe to Zambia in 2006 and had a nice place in the bush.
It was basic but had all the main amenities as well as a large garden.
We tended to live outside on the veranda most of the time and often walked around the garden in the evenings.
One particular evening in January 2007 I was walking in the garden and stopped to take in the beauty of the whole place, in the half light as night is coming in fast there is much to see in the way of bird life and spectacular sunsets.
As the final rays reflect of the thunder clouds that are themselves exploding and glowing with internal electricity.
I probably stood there for about five minutes. When an incredibly excruciating pain burst forth from all around the tops of my legs and my nethers.
Because of the darkness I could see nothing to give clue to what could be causing this pain, so I started to walk to the house. The pain immediately increased, so I stated to run, the pain intensified again.
I started to rip off my trousers and looking down realised the cause of all this fuss.
There were about three hundred 1 - 1.5cm long, large headed and even larger pincered ants attacking my legs and bits.
Sharon wondered what on earth I was doing. Never before in our 15 years of marriage had she seen me get my kit off quite so quickly, let alone do it at a full sprint.
Once relieved of my garments I started to brush them off, but they just don’t let go, they would rather relinquish the grip on their heads than they would on me and my bits.
By this time I was in the kitchen, Sharon had realised that this was not some strange new courtship I had developed but was in fact in pain, and it was not going away, so she came to help. (Albeit in fits of laughter) You can imagine the scene (it’s not a pretty one) Sharon and I having to prize off the remaining ants and heads by dislodging their pincers, it took a while but we got there in the end.
We subsequently found out that these are fire ants, or soldier ants and I am sure they have many other names too, I thought of quite a few that night.
They leave there nests to move or to hunt for food, They travel in huge columns miles long and about 8 cm wide and they are unstoppable. If you stand in their path they don’t bother to go round you they go through you.
They have been known to devour an entire chicken house full of birds in one night.
They will travel through a house clearing out any living thing in it, any scraps or molecules of food they may come across. When they attack humans you don’t feel them coming either.
They don’t just bite your ankles, they are very fleet of foot, and rush up your legs to where it gets warm, wait till there is a good couple of hundred of them there, knives and forks at the ready, then send a signal, and all dive in, in unison.
The next encounter we had with these was when we were camping up at Ndubuluba in the North of Zambia. It was early morning and the sun had not yet raised it’s head above the horizon and Sharon stepped out of the tent stretched and took in the beauty of the morning. A couple of minutes later, off came the clothes and amid a mass of flapping brushing off and swearing, I realised exactly what had happened and went to help.
The reason I thought of this story now is that the little blighters got me again last night as I was standing at the bar. Luckily these were smaller ones and not so many, but still not good.
Whilst they are not pleasant to be on the receiving end of they are fascinating creatures. We have since come to know them as trouser ants, because if you suddenly see someone ripping off their strides for no apparent reason, there is a pretty good chance that they have got a whole host of trouser ants tucking into their nethers. (You will have to find another reason if you see someone doing that in Cornwall though.)

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa: Christmas Boerboels.

2009-12-24T00:37:00.001-08:00

Before coming to Africa they were something that I had never heard of.
The closest I could think was Glass balls one hung on the Christmas tree in December.
They would always get knocked off during some raucous game and smash into millions of tiny pieces, only ninety nine percent of which would be picked up by the Hoover, the rest would later get stuck in the soles of your feet because you were running around the house with nothing on your feet, even though you had been told by mother that you should wear your slippers around the house at all times.

Boerboel. A name that strikes fear into many Africans, black or white.
To others they are the epitome of the perfect family pet. (apart from the terrible wind)

When I first went to Zimbabwe for the interview I stayed with a family who had one called Zulu, he was a good sized dog. Maybe I should describe a boerboel. They are similar to an English Mastiff but with a longer snout, they are apparently a mix of a Mastiff (spookily enough) and a long legged bullterrier, whatever that is when it is at home.(some say also great dane and Rottweiler, but I have my doubts) The truth of the matter is that nobody really knows what has gone into them apart from the English mastiff bit.
They were bread to protect families on the great African migration and later to protect Mines, families and homesteads. As such they are unlike most guard dogs in that they are very good family dogs. So they are smart and catch on very quickly, if you are excepted into the house they will protect you also. This is what happened to me on my first visit. Zulu befriended me and stayed with me the whole time I was there. Of course I fell in love with the breed and when we all moved out there it seemed like the logical choice. Not least because Arthur was petrified of big dogs having been snapped at on two previous occasions by large hounds.
So we bought Willow and Mulberry, two beautiful pedigree Boerboels eight weeks old and already weighing seven kgs (and that was just their paws)
They were pampered, petted, prodded, poked and most of all loved to pieces.
They came everywhere with us stayed in the back of the double cab when we went shopping and were always there when we came back. Nothing was ever missing from the back in fact on a few occasions we even found some extras in there. (fingers, hats gloves)
These dogs grew up big and strong and were known throughout the neighbourhood as the lions, they stood about 75cm to the shoulder and weighed about 75kgs, they were huge. They were also very obedient. If you whistled or said, no (loudly) they would stop in their tracks and just stand.
We often went walking in the bush at the weekends with the dogs through our land.
The land was criss crossed with tracks leading between small villages and homesteads, so there were often people wandering across the land which was fine. Just occasionally the dogs would see someone before we would, and go careering off through the bush. It was a game to them and it made it all the more fun if their prey ran. It invariably did. If they only stood still the dogs had no interest what so ever. Children also bore no interest for the dogs whatsoever which was lucky really.
On one occasion we were walking up the drive and there were three young men walking towards us, they did not see the dogs to start with and they swaggered on up our drive in a fairly arrogant fashion.
The dogs shot out of an adjacent field at that moment onto the drive from a field and saw the three, and the three saw the dogs (lions) the three guys turned and ran so fast they left two shoes behind. It did not take them long, about three seconds, until they realised they were not going to outrun the dogs so headed for the trees, unfortunately the only trees within two miles were small saplings about 4 metres tall and 10 cm across the trunk.
The three young men shot up the trees to the top and the inevitable happened, the trees just bent down to the ground with the three occupants just at nose level to the dogs who had caught up buy now. The poor guys were absolutely petrified and could not move, which was just as well really as the dogs just lost interest as they were not running any more.
We released the guys from the trees and introduced them to the dogs and explained that they were just family pets and had not as yet killed too many people. I don’t think they were very reassured, and they left pretty quickly. We never saw them again and the reputation of the lions grew. Many of our friends were burgled or attacked at their properties, funny enough we never had any bother. We always kept the dogs inside at night though so no one could poison them, then break in.
A couple of years later we bread Mulberry with a Large Brindle male and on the 21st December 2006 she had 9 strong healthy puppies, which she reared fantastically even letting the family handle them right from the start.
We fell in love with all those puppies and hated it when it was time for them to go. We were going to keep one which we chose as it was the runt, well it looked it for the first three minutes until it started eating and within a week was by far and away the largest this was Boris. The other one we also wanted to keep was lighter than the rest so we called him Zippo and the name has stuck to this day.
So if you ever have to choose a dog and want a bundle of fun, and you have a huge garden, enjoy walking a lot, oh you will also need a good sense of humour and deep pockets when it comes to feed bills. I can whole heartedly recommend a Boerboel.
This was when we discovered the true meaning of Christmas Boerboels.

Denzil Bark.

Corrnishman in Africa: Christmas Shopping.

2009-12-24T00:32:00.000-08:00

I have not seen my family for 10 weeks now and it hurts. I am going to see them over Christmas for two weeks when I leave the sun baked lands of Africa to return to the windswept and probably cold and damp land of Cornwall. But boy am I looking forward to seeing them all again.

I decided this weekend to start my Christmas shopping. The decorations are going up in the shops and the Christmas style special offer barkers are up in the shops with pictures of bells, baubles, holly and SNOW! Yes snow. It’s about 36 degrees here and yes whilst we have had our first rains, I would be prepared to bet my left ear that we will not have snow here in Zambia this festive season, and that has nothing to do with global warming. It just isn’t going to happen. ITS SUMMER HERE. I guess it’s just one of the hang ups that has been inherited from our colonial forefather’s memories of Christmas. And that’s probably why they left the UK in the first place because it’s so bloomin cold and wet.

We are not doing any big presents in our household this Christmas, just small and thoughtful. So I decided to go to the craft market at Arcades, as that is usually a good place to get something reminiscent of Zambia without breaking the bank.
I arrived early and had a brief scout around before popping into Spar to pick up some essentials that I had forgotten to get yesterday and to collect my thoughts, without being hassled by overzealous store holders. I dropped those back to the car and started Christmas shopping in earnest.

There are some genuinely nice pieces at the craft market and there is also some tat. You have to walk up and down the avenues a couple of times to distinguish the different qualities of similar products and once that is done you get in and start haggling.
Now haggling is something I enjoy and find it hard to get out of the habit of when I get back to Cornwall. You get some really odd looks in Tesco when you are at the checkout with a rather large queue behind you, when you are going through every item trying to beat the poor till operator down in price on each one. It seldom works and usually results in a supervisor being called and you being asked to either by at the price or leave the store. Where’s their sense of adventure.
Haggling here, I always feel you want to be fair and firm if it is too much walk away, don’t screw the guys too much, they need to make a living too. If you are happy to pay so much, go that far, then no further. If you find it cheaper later on, on another stall, well you have just learned.
Ear rings, necklaces, bracelets, bangles, purses, bowls, key rings, pictures for Sharon, Kate and George’s girlfriend Jade.
Animal statues, woolly hats, key rings, bangles, semi precious rocks and pictures for Henry Arthur and George.

I got a number of other trinkets for the whole family. What I like about buying from this sort of place is each of these things are a little different from the bits and pieces that you can pick up in the UK and for a fraction of the cost, whist putting a bit of money into the pockets of the craftsmen that make them. And don’t worry I am not under the illusion that it is only the craftsmen that are selling at the craft market. Most of them are traders who have bought from the craftsmen, but they need to eat too.

Its quite an intense experience purchasing in this type of environment as there is always someone trying to grab your attention and cajole or guilt trip you into purchasing from them, even though there isn’t anything on their stand that you really want.
If the young and disenchanted of the UK had the get up and go, that a lot of these guys have over here have. a) they could make a lot of money and b) they could learn a lot about self respect and making things happen for themselves.
I came away feeling quite happy with what I had purchased, comfortable in the fact that I have probably got half my Christmas shopping sorted and not so happy that I will more than likely have to pay excess baggage on the way back to Cornwall.

Denzil Bark.

A Cornishman in Africa: Paying to be fit.

2009-12-20T16:01:00.000-08:00

When I first came to Africa I found the whole driving thing quite similar to that of Cornwall, just a little more erratic.(and a bit more scary) Though the one thing that did spook me a bit was the road blocks, it’s one thing being flagged down at a road block, but being flagged down by a man with a gun is another thing. People just don’t carry guns around in Cornwall, there is no need.
I must tell you there is one road block I go through every day on the way to and from work where there is a policeman who wears a very posh jacket, High visibility and blue, I did not pay much attention to it to start off with then I realised that I recognised it. Next time I went through I took a more careful look. Bold as brass across the back and the front was the motif “Royal Mail”. Very nice and I am sure it keeps the chill out!

Anyway back to the road blocks, I have got totally used to them now and don’t bat an eyelid when I come to them, just be polite and courteous and you usually get straight through without a second glance. This having been said, there are instances where the occasional Plod may be either a little hard up, having a bad day, takes umbrage to your appearance, or just wants to be awkward. Then you get the slow, walk around the car, the testing of the lights, the request to see your metal warning Triangles (and they have to be metal, they can’t be the far superior plastic highly reflective reflecting triangles) I have also been asked to prove that I have a fire extinguisher in the car, as apparently that too is a legal requirement. Then of course there is the Driving Licence. Now the driving licence is a real bone of contention. I used my UK driving licence when I first came out and did so for about a year, but having been stopped at numerous road blocks, I was told on a couple of occasions that this was only valid for 6 months then I had to get a Zambian one. Which apparently seeing as I already have a UK one is just a matter of transferring the information onto the Zambian Licence.

So seeing as I had been here six months this trip I decided to do the decent thing and get one. So I filled out the forms, paid the money and did the first part. Then I was told that I would have to have a full medical. I did not see this as being a problem as I consider myself to be in fairly good shape. Now this medical took the form of a four part test. Hearing, Mental agility, Sight and finally the Physical.

Once we got to the medical centre having rung ahead to make sure the doctor was there, we got right down to the medical and things started to become apparent.
HEARING. This would be the bit where he told me how much he was going to charge me to write out the medical report.
MENTAL AGILITY. This was where I had to decide if I was going down this route and if I could afford it. (As it turned out there was no other route)
SIGHT. Looking deep into the depths of my wallet in the dingy office, to see if I had enough money there.
PHYSICAL. Standing up, money in hand, leaning over the desk to the fine doctor, to hand him the money.
If you manage to pass all four tests to the required standard you are deemed medically fit to drive on the roads of Zambia.
OK, so that is the tricky medical bit done so I went back to the traffic offices only to be told that I would in fact have to sit a driving test and pass a spoken test on the Zambian Highway code. That’s fine I thought it will be interesting to be tested again. The same day I went over to the testing centre. Here I came across a door with the sign Chief Road Traffic Officer. I could not resist it, I knocked and went in.

The gentleman in charge is a very nice, polite, well informed Zambian who told me that I did not in fact have to have a Zambian Driving Licence and was quite legally entitled to drive on my UK licence in Zambia for the duration of my stay. Only if I took up permanent residency might I need one, then I would also have to surrender my UK licence, as you are not allowed to carry two. I thought this all a little odd but thanked him for his time and left his office.
Outside, my examiner had arrived. I thought well, I have come this far I might just as well go the whole hog and finish it off.

We pulled out into the traffic and off down the road, we had not gone 20metres when he said, you have passed Mr Bark, if you can take the next left and park up in the car park on the left under the tree, I have some paperwork to complete then we can return to the office in about half an hour. I really thought he was joking but oh, no this is driving test Zambia style.

So true to his word, when we got back to his office he furnished me with the piece of paper showing that I had officially passed. Then back across town to have my photo taken for the actual licence and that was it. A six week wait and I picked up my full Zambian driving licence.
It does not surprise me now that the standard of driving is what it is in Africa, if this is what it takes to get the licence. (Just pure determination and about 100,000 Kwacha)

Denzil Bark.

A Cornishman in Africa: An interesting night in Mansa.

2009-12-17T15:37:00.000-08:00

Now I don’t mind roughing it a bit and have spent more than a few nights under the stars, with nothing between me, the ground and sky but the clothes I fell over in. I mean laid down in. I have made shelters out of branches, leaves, grass and moss, and slept quite comfortably in them.
One thing that really gets me, is a dirty hotel room. I don’t know if it is the fact that you are paying for it or just the fact that someone has slept there before you and part of them is still there. If it’s not clean it’s not nice.

I recently found the Guest house from hell. I was in the position of being in a small town in the far extremities of Zambia, with very little fuel, as the fuel stations in town had just run out that day, so I did not know how long my stay was to be. I only had a limited amount of money and knew that, when the fuel did arrive, I had to be sure there was enough money left to buy the fuel for the return journey. So I was on a budget, a tight budget. In Mansa there are basically two places to stay, one up market Hotel and one down market guest house. Up market was mega bucks and would have swallowed all my money in just one night, down market I could afforded to stay for 5 nights.

I opted for down market, big mistake. I should have seen the writing on the wall (but I couldn’t because they were textured and filthy) when there was a pair of worn out flip flops on the floor of the bedroom, that the cleaners (I use the term loosely) seemed to have inadvertently overlooked. These were evicted into the yard where they stayed until the next morning when I left. Then there was the bathroom. Now I have seen some pretty ropy tiling in my life but I have never seen it done in brail with mud for grout. The taps were interesting too, I can only assume that they were decorations, because they were certainly no use for the function that I was hoping they might perform. There was a towel on the back of the door which resembled the type of attire a sumo wrestler might wear and it looked a little like he may have been wearing it for a fortnight during some very strenuous bouts.

The mirror was set in a plastic surround, the type you may have found in a tip in the UK in the 1970’s. It had also been used by a good number of the previous occupants of the room as an ashtray, so it was part melted with brown burns and stains on all the flat surfaces. The plastic cup had grooves where cigarettes had melted the rim and retained within it were three spent matches, I suppose I should be grateful that there were no cigarette buts in there to keep the matches company.

The bedding however (I only checked the sheets and threw the rest off) seemed clean, though it is difficult to tell when they have a fern pattern and they are shades of mid to dark brown.
When I checked in I took the liberty of ordering dinner. T’ Bone steak and chips, I thought it would be hard to get that wrong. I asked to have it at 18.30 when the service started. 18.30 duly arrived and I made my way to the dining room and they bought out my meal. They delivered it fully clingwrapped, over cooked and cold. Dumped on the table unceremoniously, leaving me to unwrap the condensation covered offering. I have never had a meal served in such a fashion so I had to see what it tasted like in case it was a local delicacy. You could say I was brave, or stupid (the latter in retrospect). The meal did not disappoint, it tasted just like it looked, diabolical. I took it back to the kitchen and inserted it where I thought it would feel most at home, then suggested to the kitchen staff that they did not charge me for it.
Totally dejected and hungry I went to my room and drank one of the warm beers from my warm fridge that I had been bought earlier.

At this point I must explain that I was not alone in this fine establishment, there was a group of church stewards staying there for a seminar, though it sounded more like a canned laughter convention in overdrive. Every five to ten minutes there was an explosion of forced raucous laughter, which went on till about midnight. These guys also had a really weird habit of walking up and down outside the rooms ringing a hand bell every half hour. The first time I heard it I thought that it was a fire alarm and dashed out into the car park in my underpants. I stood there on my own for a couple of minutes feeling rather foolish, then went back to my room.
I decided then to go to bed and read.

The mosquitoes from the entire north east of the country decided to come and join me for a goodnight story, so I dropped the Mozi net and tried to tuck myself in. The holes in the net were as numerous as they were large, and the net hung with the remains of splatted bugs that a previous occupant had seen fit to eradicate.

The areal barrage continued but was only to be out done by one that came up through the mattress. I am not sure whether it was fleas, bed bugs or some legendary African beast, but about an hour in I finally gave up on sleep. I went to the bathroom to find I had come up in red welts up my legs over my body and up my arms to my fingers. 97 to be as exact as I can be, without having got someone else to count the ones out of sight.

I decided to have a bath and try to feel clean. This meant trying to cajole the ornamental lumps of metal on the end of the bath into relinquishing some of their brown sludge. It took an hour and 23 minutes to run enough water for me to at least dampen myself.

I decided to drip dry rather than using the thing hanging on the door.
I sat on what appeared to be the cleanest thing in the room, a chair and finally nodded off to sleep about 03.30 with the whining of the mosies to serenade me.

At 04.30 there was that bloody bloke with the bell again outside my room.
Breakfast at 06.30, should I? Or should I not? Well I suppose I have paid for it, I might just as well have a look at it. It was described as a full English breakfast. A frankfurter, a piece of boiled pig, I think he called that bacon. An egg that had been laid by a budgie, then left in the sun to solidify. The orange juice came from one of those nice machines with the glass tops and a paddle inside that you help yourself from. That was strong, warm, orange squash. I chased my breakfast around the plate for five minutes and ate half the frankfurter.

I went to reception to pay, explained politely that it was not the best night I had spent in a Guest house, packed my bags and left I did not care if I had to sleep in the truck I was not going back.
I am not generally a moaning bastard, but this place took the biscuit.
If asked would I go there again, the answer would have to be yes, on the condition that I could take Gordon Ramsey with me, just to see if he could manage a whole night. And not swear!!!!!!!!

Denzil Bark.

A Cornishman in Africa: Monkey Bites Mother

2009-12-17T15:34:00.000-08:00

One of my best friends in the world, whilst having the most ridiculously frustrating African day, came out with what I thought to be a truly wonderful saying. “It’s enough to make a Monkey bite his mother.”
I think it really sums up true frustration in an African Context. I have tried use it as little as possible, so as not to over use it and cheapen it.
Today however I have used it twice, and I fear before this trip is over, I may well have used it a few more times.

On Thursday, I was asked if I would like to accompany a shipment of 2 tons of water analysis equipment on a 1700km round trip across Zambia. Of course I jumped at the opportunity, and started to make preparations.
As with any long road trip the success or failure of the venture depends on planning. Fortunately for me the planning for this trip had already been done by a seasoned campaigner who had been moving medical equipment around Africa for years.

There were however a few grey areas, the first being the fact that we were to be travelling in a brand new truck (A Tata) with only 48 km on the clock, now given the choice of a new one with 12 or an old one with 200,000 I would go for the old one every time.
The second problem is the new Lorry needed markings on the door to state who it belongs to and what all the company details are. We had not got them yet, but it was OK because they were coming at 08.30.

Thirdly. The fact that we have just got over a chronic fuel shortage which thankfully now seems to be over.
At this stage let me point out the plan for this trip was quite straight forward. We leave at 09.00 drive through to Mansa stopping only for fuel, (We had rung ahead to make sure there was fuel available) picking up lunch on the way, eat it on the hoof, switching drivers as necessary. Arrive Mansa somewhere around 19.00. Stay the night. Unload Saturday morning at 07.00 leave at 08.00 and return to Lusaka for about 18.00. Itsounds straight forward doesn’t it. Well the sticker man arrived at 09.00 with the stickers but the details on them were wrong. Oh joy. So off he went and said he would be back in an hour with the right ones. At 12.00 and after about 23 phone calls he returned and the details were perfect. Unfortunately he had just brought the proof and the real ones had not even gone into production. So the best option was to drive the lorry to the factory, wait for them to produce the stickers, apply them to the side of the vehicle so that we may be on our way.

By 14:00 we were on our way.

The journey went smoothly with Mr Phiri at the wheel. A real gentleman of some sixty odd years, but solid as a rock. We reached Kapiri Maposhi, our first fuelling point by 17:00 only to find that none of the four fuel stations had any diesel. Bother I thought. (I did not think that at all actually) So in true Zimbabwean fashion we had to make a plan. In Africa when there is a crisis there is always someone nearby ready to lend a hand. (as long as he or she can make at least one hundred per cent profit) Sure enough it was not long before we had found someone to help. We were careful not to get a local mix of 50/50 diesel paraffin mix. We managed to secure 40 litres of diesel. Whilst filling up the tank, a bit of a cufuffle broke out amongst the young entrepreneurs about who’s customer we were, and who was to get the money. During this Mr Phiri got jostled a bit but no harm was done. We filled our tank and were on our way again. By the time we left, the last vestiges of the sun had fled the sky and darkness was setting in fast.
At this point Mr Phiri pulled over and said that I could take over the driving. Now since leaving Lusaka I had, had a couple of trouser browning moments, which is not unusual on Zambian roads but I had started to recognise a pattern. Mr Phiri it seems has excellent eyesight but unfortunately it only seems to venture as far as the end of the bonnet. Which even more unfortunately for me and the other road users, on a Tata 173S is about 14cm in front of the steering wheel. So when darkness sets in it is reduced further.

I drove for 60 km and we pulled into a very nice lodge (The Forrest Inn) just outside Mukushi. It was by now just after 19:00, they had one Chalet free but at least it had three beds. We ate, had a drink and turned in for the night. It was at this stage Mr Phiri realised that he had been relieved of all of his money, we assumed that it had been during the cafuffel at the fuel stop. You have to be constantly on your guard in any environment.

I was woken at three to the sound of a striking Match and the room illuminated, then the lit match went winging across the room and landed on the floor. (Luckily stone floor) It turned out that Mr Phiri was checking the time. He obviously has no luminescence on his watch. I do wish he had just asked.

At 04.50 Mr Phiri left the chalet and I thought thank heavens for that at least now I can get some sleep and stop worrying about being burnt to a crisp in my sleep. Oh no, two minutes later I heard the Tata start (an unmistakable clatter) then it revved and revved until the airbrakes realised then I heard it driving around the site. Bear in mind this is a beautiful, quiet, secluded, very high class site where people go to get away. The sound got louder until I realised that Mr Phiri was going to park the lorry next to his bed. And he did, with the wonderful deafening, (at that time in the morning) sound of the air brakes explosively hissing as they were applied. The night was officially over, I got up and showered grumpy.
Breakfast at 06:30 lightened my mood as it was excellent, Eggs, sausage, tomatoes, bacon, beans and chips for some reason. All this with a selection of fruit juices and toast. Cooked to perfection. Brilliant.

We were on the road again by 07:00 Mr Phiri driving of course. I offered to take over but he vehemently refused, he is the driver so he must drive.
We reached Serenji our next opportunity to take on fuel, we pulled into the fuel station and to our surprise they had diesel so we said fill her up.

Oh no sir, we can only let you have 50 pin (50,000 Kwacha about $10.00) which is 8.3 litres. Great that is going to get us about 42 km not as far as the next town. After haggling to no avail, we found out where the owner of the garage lived, drove out to see him and after some negotiation he ended up giving us a letter to say that we could have another twenty litres. (every little helps) We stopped for a nature break about two hours on so I took the opportunity to dive into the driver’s seat, having by now had my nose planted squarely upon the inside of the windscreen about twelve times, disappeared off the roads 4 times to miss oncoming trucks, and had my neck broken by random gear selections.

I managed to keep control of the helm until we reached the longest bridge in Zambia. Where a particularly friendly Police officer wanted to tell me his, the regions and the bridges life story. This involved going for a walk across, underneath and beside the bridge, by the time I had, completed the tour and been cajoled into dropping Plods brother back to his village, Mr Phiri was firmly back in the driving seat.

Things went OK as there were no other vehicles on this stretch of the road, and then the reason became suddenly clear. Not only had the other lorries disappeared but so had the road only to be replaced by something resembling the surface of the moon.
Pot holes! Now you may remember I mentioned these once before, but these are different, this is a tar road not a dirt road. Dirt road potholes are bigger but do not have shear sides normally. These ones have sharp edges, when your wheel drops into one, it forgets not only what it is and what its purpose in life is, but also what direction it is travelling in.
Add to this the fact that the chances of these potholes actually being seen before it is way too late and you may begin to imagine what the last 134 km of my journey was like.

The cargo that was so beautifully loaded to give perfect weight distribution, ended up in my ear. I have concussion from the number of times my head was bounced off the roof, and my spine is now 3 inches shorter and has more kinks in it than a sixties rock band.
I don’t think an F1 car can change direction so quickly even on preheated tires, let alone brake so suddenly, and still manage to drive into all but three of these remarkable potholes on a 134 km stretch of road.

We finally reached the client at 16.30, shaken and stirred. We unloaded the cargo then went to find accommodation for the night. (but that’s another story)
And you know what really gets me.
We have to do the whole journey back again tomorrow!

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa: Friendly Fire?

2009-12-08T22:22:00.000-08:00

The 21st of December is our longest day out here, whilst the lengths of the days do vary it is nothing like the variation you see in Cornwall. Where for you it can be dark in the evening at 16:30 in the winter and yet in the summer it will stay light till nearly 22:00 and a similar variation at the other end of the day. Here the variation in hours of daylight is only about one hour, half an hour at each end of the day, so without fear of contradiction you can say it is going to get dark around 18:00.

It gets dark quickly here too, you don’t get the lingering hours of dusk and half light. All of this shattered the illusions that I had before I moved out here of sitting on the veranda drinking a gin and tonic and watching the sun go down at about 21:00. In reality by the time you have left work, fought your way through the traffic, down the tracks to home it is just about dark before you get there. So we have fire. Which we cook on warm our water with and sit around in the evenings to either keep warm or just gaze into.

We have fire, then we have fire. I don’t know if you have ever flown over Africa, but if you have and you have gazed down at the beauty of this fantastic continent, you may have noticed that there is always a part of it burning. This has its upside and down sides, the upside being that, as a broad sweeping generalisation the Africans are not up there with the Japanese when it comes to litter consciousness and as such. Africa is a bit covered in litter, but once a year this gets cleared up by the big hot Hoover that comes along clearing all in its way. When this happens every year it is not too bad as the grasses and the bushes take a bit of a kicking but in general the bigger trees tend not to be too put out by this.
It’s when there has been no fire for years and the bush has grown up tall and dense, there is leaf litter and Human litter piled up deep and dry. Then life gets interesting.

Last Sunday I was on my own at the cottages, apart from Mutonga who’s turn it was to work that day. He was out and about watering the plants and grass, using up the water we have to use so we don’t blow the pipes up. I was leisurely going about my work and cooking the meat for my lunches for the week which I do outside on my braai along with all my cooking.

All of a sudden the sun went out, it was uncanny, I know in Cornwall it sometimes happens that the sun may go behind a cloud for a while, (like three months) but over here it is very rare, and add to this that it cast a brown eerie hew over everything, it was very odd. Anyway I looked up and saw the sky was obscured by smoke. Seeing the direction it was coming from I grabbed my phone, (Unfortunately it’s the only camera I have currently.) and ran to the best vantage point, that happened to be the bar.

It was not more than a couple of minutes before Mutonga had joined me. It was quite impressive a huge plume of smoke and at its base a wall of fire about 75m wide and rising into the air a good twenty metres as it engulfed trees in its path.

The wind direction was taking the fire towards the dam and away from the cottages which was a blessing so we stood and watched it in awe. It swept through the trees and bush at the edge of the dam and onto the grass then crept right up to the water’s edge engulfing the reeds along the shore as if it was coming down for a drink. When the fire reached the end of the dam the wind changed, first dropping so the flames died a little, we thought that it might peter out.

Then to our horror and amazement the wind turned around fanned the flames back into life and propelled them down the next bank towards us and the bar. Mutonga went immediately to get help from as many people as he could muster in the immediate vicinity. I got hacking the grass and reeds down that were nearest to the bar, then went and got the hosepipe from behind. It took about 5 minutes to roar up that side of the dam and reach me, the heat hits you like a sledgehammer. Luckily the fire was now in the shorter grass and had lost a lot of its ferocity. Mutonga was back with his friends and we set to work beating and dousing the flames. That limb of the fire was brought under control fairly quickly, but we had noticed that with the change of wind, the fire was going back towards the cottages, and all around were huge trees and very thick bush.

With the fire by the bar now out, we left one person there to keep an eye on that and the rest of us now numbering four, went to tackle the bigger blaze.
Where the fire had come out of the bush and into the long grass it was not too difficult to gain control, just choking and burning hot, our biggest worry was that there was no break in the trees between the fire and the houses. We set about cutting a fire break, we just had to get about 30m through thick bush, trees up to 5 inches thick and a bamboo forest. Unfortunately the only tools we had were 2 shovels a slasher and my bush knife. The next four hours I probably lost more weight that I would have done if both my legs had fallen off. This constant hacking and dragging was interspersed with having to run back and beat the fire out where it was trying to get across the vlei again into the trees on the other side.

My head and face was burning my throat was dry, hands were bleeding so I could hardly keep hold of the knife, the blisters on them had gone through both layers of skin and were settling into the muscle. Where you cut through the bamboo it is so dense you are forever slicing your hands on the bough you have just cut as you go to cut the next.

At 18:00 we had cut a 5m swathe through the bush, it was not really enough but the fire was within 20m of us, the wind had dropped a bit and had enabled us to back burn to give us a little more breathing space.

At 19:00 we had won, and what a battle it had been. I went to shower looked at myself in the mirror, it was not a pretty sight. My hands were a mass of blood, the hair on my arms was gone the hair on my head was all singed and my clothes had more burn holes than I could count. On retrospect I wish I had taken a picture. It was not the relaxing Sunday afternoon that I had envisaged. But my God it was fun.

We all met at the bar and replaced a lot of those lost fluids with Castle.
We did not light the fire that night.

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa: African Curved Ball

2009-12-06T01:51:00.000-08:00

The flow of life in Africa has its own special pace and direction, things will happen, but no matter what you as an outsider to do try and influence this, it will continue to wind on down its own course at its own pace.

You may believe that you have made a breakthrough and the project that you are working on has taken on a new lease of life and in fact you are going to complete ahead of schedule. Then Wham! Something that you thought was set in stone, totally guaranteed, turns around and smacks you in the face. It lets you down so spectacularly you are now going to finish two months late at best.

It’s what a very good friend of mine described as the African curved ball.
But that is life in Africa and if you cannot deal with it you should not be here. You just do all you can to deliver your part of the deal, to the best of your ability on time, then deal with the rest, without exploding.

There is a new water main going in where I stay to serve all the cottages. The old one was put in when there was just one house here and has been added to ad hoc as new cottages have been built. So the half inch pipe is not really adequate when eight people all want to shower at the same time. (not all in the same room I hasten to add)

So a master plan was devised, the trenches dug. (This was another great thing that Rolf got a lot of stick for.) and the pipework and fittings bought. The main pipe was going to be quite a large expense so as a money saving measure an old 3 inch plastic irrigation pipe was used. This would be fine but this pipe had half inch holes every meter. But never mind, lots of glue was bought and lots of patches were made. It was at this point that I realised there was just a slight chance that there was room here for the old African factor to creep in there and turn this good idea into a disaster.

The job was to take a week and it was all going to start on Monday. We were informed that there was a chance that we may experience some disruption to our water supply. (African understatement) Well Monday came and went. Unlike the plumber. On Tuesday he pitched up and started making connections. The guys who work here had dug all the trenches, laid all the pipework in said trenches. They were now feverishly sticking patches on the seven million holes along the length of the main pipe.

The water was to be turned off at 07:00 each morning then back on again at 17:00 which is fine as I get up early have a shower and am gone to work by that time in the morning and back after that in the evening. All the other residents have similar routines with no one being here during the day, giving the plumber and his team a clear run at the day.

The progress of the work was steady (Polite for slow.) and at the end of the first week the first cottage was nearly ready to be connected, unfortunately not with water, just the pipework.
After returning from work each and every night to no water and much bemoaning of this fact, we were each given a hosepipe to connect our houses with water and we managed like this. The colour of the water was interesting. And the fact that whatever had chosen to seek refuge in the hose pipe over night often came back to join you on your toothbrush in the morning. Which is always interesting when you are half asleep and thrust a tired bedraggled exotic African insect into your mouth first thing in the morning it makes for a steep waking curve.

After three weeks all the houses that are occupied were connected, the trenches were gone, all backfilled over the new pipework. The place was looking almost back to normal. It had been a long hard three weeks and the plumber and his merry team just wanted to go home. It was 17:30 on Friday afternoon, the final connections were made at the base of the fifty foot water tower and the water turned on.

Now I have never been to any of the American national parks but my brother Adrian, tells me that Yellowstone is particularly impressive. Huge gouts of water bursting from beneath the earth’s surface throwing thousands of gallons of water hundreds of feet in the air. (You know exactly where this is going don’t you)
Spectacular does not begin to scratch the surface of beginning to describe the spectacle that unfolded before our eyes.

As often on Fridays after work we were gathered at the bar beside the dam. We could hear it coming, not comprehending exactly what it was at first, then realisation dawned upon us and we all went to investigate.

The plumber had probably opened one tap somewhere as a token gesture to vent the system, then dropped the contents of a ten thousand litre tank down a three inch main, from fifty foot. The hissing of air came first as it was compressed, then pops and cracks as the air had nowhere to go and was being hotly pursued down the pipe by the angry water. Then it came, water erupted from the ground in spouts every twenty meters or so, exploding into the air in a selection of gushes squirts and fountains depending on the size of the orifice it had burst forth from. The amount of topsoil that was moved down the hill, in its self would have been a major feet of engineering on any normal day.

The plumber worked till midnight to get our hosepipes reconnected so we had water again.
Another two weeks have since elapsed, the holes and cracks in the main have been fixed and all the houses are connected up to the new main line.

Now here’s the irony of this whole thing. This work started because there was not enough water pressure, guess what, there is still not enough water pressure. They have to keep at least four taps running constantly watering the gardens so the main pipe does not burst again.
So when your next water bill comes through from South west water, don’t feel quite so bad about it. Or I’ll send my plumber round.

Denzil Bark.

A Cornishman in Africa: Hungrier zan zer Heurl

2009-12-02T22:49:00.000-08:00

You may remember me mentioning my friend and neighbour Rolf. He is the one with the odd looking dogs that bark a lot and don’t like apples. I have known Rolf for about 3 years, he has been a very good friend to me and my family. Rolf is German and speaks very good English but he does put his own unique and wonderful twist on the language. He has a tremendous sense of humour and is one of the most politically incorrect people I know.
One of his favourite phrases is zan zer Heurl. Someone may be hungrier zan zer heurl, hornier zan zer heurl, tierder zan ze heurl more drunken zan zer heurl the uses of zan zer heurl are almost limitless and I think Rolf found most of them.

Where I live there are eight cottages on a twenty hectare site. These cottages, most thatched are nestled in the trees on the banks of a dam (small manmade lake). Up till recently these dwellings were occupied by four pilots from a local charter company myself and Rolf. There is also a bar there, I say bar, it is a small thatched round building with a kitchen and a bar inside, there are no drinks or no barman. Outside there is a bamboo shaded area with a large wooden picnic style table, and an organic patio heater. This pleasant spot is the general meeting place where those staying in the cottages tend to congregate. We sit around, talk and sometimes have a drink or two. At 19:00 our main man Joseph serves up his culinary delights. Such well known dishes, as bangers and Mash with grated cucumber. Roasted chicken and fish. And Spaghetti bolognaise with extra carrots, and green tomato chutney, and of course cabbage on chips.
Invariably after the meal we relax and chat until 21:00 then trundle off to our appropriate homes and get our heads down for the night.

It was on one of these quiet evenings when we were sitting around chatting, that my curiosity finally got the better of me and I had to find out the answer to a question that had been puzzling me for three years, what is zan zer heurl? is it a German Mythical creature? is it an exclamation of such magnitude that there is no translation into English? Is it a German military officer from history with a vivacious appetite. I had often speculated as to the meaning of this wonderful German phrase.
So I asked. Big mistake. The reply went something like this.
“So, what is it, are you stupid, vhy for not you don’t understand your own language, you know zan zer heurl, you know vere ze devil lives.
Hotter than hell, hungrier than hell hornier than hell, it all fell into place and we all fell about laughing.

We have shared many laughs around that table and I am sure we will share many more, but unfortunately not with the same group of friends who were there that night. Three of the pilots who were there have gone back home, one to Australia, one to South Africa and the other to England.
And probably saddest of all Rolf just disappeared.

The Friday night Rolf, Herman (The last remaining Pilot) and myself were sitting at the bar around the table chatting our usual non sensical twaddle as we sometimes do on a Friday evening. All was normal, if anything in retrospect Rolf may have been a bit quiet but by the end of the evening we were all laughing and hooting and generally taking the piss out of one another.
The next morning I joined Rolf for coffee at the bar at 06.30, again all was normal and I went off to work at about 07.30 and he went into town after giving Joseph a chicken to do something inventive with for supper, saying that he would be back for the meal that evening.
They found his car at the airport on Sunday and we have since found out he was on the morning SAA flight to Johannesburg the day before, on Saturday.

Why, he left so suddenly and did not tell his closest friends, his girlfriend or his employer we will probably never know. It has been the topic of much conversation and speculation around the table at the bar. But what could drive him to just up and go, leaving his weird dogs behind.
All I know is that we miss him zan zer heurl.

Denzil Bark.

A Cornishman in Africa: The trouble with puddles.

2009-11-26T23:04:00.000-08:00

Rain in England is wet, cold, monotonous, grey and generally miserable. Over here it is different for a start it does not happen every day, in fact it happens so infrequently that you really look forward to it, a concept that never crossed the lonely planes of my mind when I lived in Cornwall.

I have been back here this trip for seven months now and not so much as a drop has fallen, well I lie a little there I have witnessed drops but that is all they were, not enough to make the ground wet all over, you could still walk between the drops on the ground without touching them. But in about 6 days this is all going to change. The first rains are called the settling of the ashes, and that is a pretty accurate description. It normally builds for three or four days with the air becoming more humid in the afternoon until the day the heavens open. Usually it starts in the afternoon, great big, juicy drops of fresh quenching water, the impact when they strike the ground sending up a puff of dust, then as they get more frequent so the ground starts to transform from the dust bowl it has become over the past few months, into a dark brown wallow. As the flow from the sky intensifies, then the thunder and lightning, the likes of which you can hardly believe if you have only witnessed a thunder storm in Cornwall. The lighting cracks, then nano seconds later a boom of thunder so deep and loud you feel it passing through your chest, for those with a week heart some of these booms, I swear would end their time in this place. And for those with poor muscle control they will find themselves with other all sorts of other problems. It will normally rain in the afternoons for about a week or ten days. Then stop for a few weeks, before the intervals between these bouts become shorter and the rainy season sets in, in earnest.

That is a brief outline of the rains here and the passion it invokes.
Once the ground has soaked up all it can consume the water flows where it can flow, then settles and rests where it cannot.
This brings me onto the subject of this piece, Puddles. Now puddles in Cornwall are inconvenient, a nuisance at worst. I never forget as a child being told the rime about a rather absent minder doctor from the midlands who managed to step in a puddle that came up to his waist. I think his name was Foster but that’s by the by. What my point was, that it was preposterous to think that a grown man is going to find a puddle in Gloucester that would ever come up to his waist then step in it. This having been said, in the past few years with the floods there it’s becoming a common occurrence.

The roads here as I am sure I have mentioned before are an interesting experience, not least when you get off the main roads and get onto the dirt. Some of these are well maintained but others are not, it is these un-kept roads that become interesting when it rains.
There is a stretch of road (I use the term loosely) that I used to travel every day on the way to work, as the rains came the road became slippery at first and then very slippery. Because the roads are cambered, the idea being, the water runs off. Your vehicle realises two things, the first being it now has a mind of its own and the second being its got a wicked sense of humour. the last thing it wants to do is to go in a straight line, even if you do manage straight forward travel, there is a better than good chance that the back end of your vehicle will be travelling along beside you. A friend described it to me as trying to drive on a bar of soap. I must point out at this time this is not a stretch of road 100m long, there are 17km of it.

The roads after a couple more days of rain decide they have had enough and decide to leave, they do this by attaching themselves to your wheels and try to come to work with you, this makes your vehicle even more uncontrollable and about three times heavier.

The final stage and one that tends to stay for most of the rainy season is where the huge pits that have formed over the past 9 months fill with water. I can tell you this without fear of contradiction, we saw a car in a puddle and the water level was up to the roof lining. It seems the driver had driven into the puddle, not knowing how deep it was and it flooded his engine. It was then about half way up his doors, so he decided to leave it there and go to get help to tow it out, By the time he got back to it(It had rained non-stop since he was gone) the water was to the roof. These puddles are also, not clean ones like you get in Cornwall, they are thick and gloopy, more mud than water and the mud stains.

This was an extreme puddle but I can guarantee that I will have to drive through at least 10 puddles over 60cm deep and some even deeper every day on the way to work.
The other reason for finding cars in the middle of puddles, is an interesting one, and one that should stand as a warning for those who like to drive fast through puddles.
In an interestingly helpful way to try and solve this whole puddle problem some friendly folk decide to remove the puddles by filling them with rocks and rubble. And these folk being punctual as well as helpful, if at 17.00 the said puddle only has two 40cm square boulders in it, that is how it will stay until the morning when they return to work to find a 4x4 with no sump and no front axle keeping the boulders company, and a rather unhappy owner awaiting their punctual arrival back to work.

When the rains finally stop the roads take about another month to dry out to a reasonable level when progress can be made along them at an acceptable speed. Until next year!

Denzil Bark.

A Cornishman in Africa: Starlight Barking

2009-11-24T23:29:00.000-08:00

Now in October out here things are pretty warm and when your house has a single layer asbestos roof it is no longer a house it’s an oven. Your house heats up throughout the day as the roof acts like a grill gently cooking everything in your home so when you get back after a hard days work it resembles a blast furnace, so the first thing you do is to open all the windows to get a nice through draft, but unfortunately its now 18.30 and the breeze cuts off like a guillotine, but you leave them open anyway, in the vain hope that at least some of the heat will vacate the premises. This in theory is a good idea but in practice just sends a great big invitation to all the bugs and especially mosquitoes to come on in and join the party. So by the time you go to bed you have a room full of bugs and a room temp of still 45 deg C.
So you are now lying slap bang in the middle of your bed, semi naked. I say in the middle of your bed because you are petrified of rolling over in the night and the cheek of one buttock touches the Mozi net because that sets off claxons and flashing lights all round Moquitodom and they all come down for the feast at Mr Sweaty’s bottom bar. Sorry I am wandering a little from the point.
The nights are usually very still and sound carries across the bush veldt for miles.
My neighbour Rolf has two Jack Russells (with inordinately long legs for some strange reason, maybe it’s the long sharp grass and Darwin’s theory)

Well Rolf's dogs decided to go for it last night, barking like beasts possessed, at a bushbaby. The time was somewhere around midnight, now this bushbaby is smart and he was obviously leading them a merry dance, jumping from tree to tree then sitting for a while in the tree laughing at them. The dogs were going berserk.

When it comes to annoying animals the place where I live abounds with them. These bushbabies, as well as winding up dogs have another interesting habit. Break dancing, yep that’s right, Break dancing. Now you may think that I am joking but I can assure you that most nights there is the Ngwewere bushbaby break dancing competition going on, on my very thin asbestos roof. The noise is astounding, it must be even better to watch, one day I am going to video it.
The next most annoying creature is a bird who bursts into song as the first hints of daylight begin to grace the sky with their presence.

Unfortunately this particular bird was not given the gift of song, it instead repeats the same monotonous note in one second spurts every second for hours, very loudly right outside my window.
This bird was given one gift however. It is totally invisible. And that is why it is still alive.
Anyway, these dogs keeping me awake. I waited for about 30 minutes hoping that someone else to shout at them, knowing full well that if I got up and did it a. I would be on the lunch menu again for all the bugs in the room and b. I would never get back to sleep again. but in the end no one else did so I decided to do it myself. I got up wandered to the door and they stopped. I waited, silence, I waited some more, nothing so I headed back to my bed and the little buggers starting again, I flew back to the door grabbing at the fruit bowl on the way passed and stormed through the door in my underpants (and you don’t want to know how attractive that is) I hurled a couple of apples as hard as I could out into the darkness, there was a slight yelp and two white shadows (?) darted away into the yonder. (Apples were the only thing that came readily to hand that I thought would stop them but probably not kill them) Once again silence abounded, apart from what I am sure was a slight sniggering from the trees above me. Anyway the dogs did not come back for the rest of the night and they took a wide berth around me the next morning.
Suffice to say I did not get back to sleep, but was ready and waiting to try and find that bloody invisible bird.

Denzil Bark.

Cornishman in Africa. My long suffering brother

2009-11-20T23:34:00.000-08:00

I am away in the Valley and he is across vast tracts of land and ocean in America.

When my computer hauled itself into life this morning a big orange icon burst forth upon my screen telling me it was the 20th November. Which coincidentally is my brothers birthday. Now I love my brother very much and he has been very kind and forgiving to me helping me out of a number of scrapes. And to be brutally frank I’ve been a total git to him. So Adrian I am sorry!

For the time when we were children living in Berkshire. We had two tortoises, (Cedric and Charlie) they were both Girls. Even though we were obviously terrible at sexing them you would have thought that as a process of pure chance we would have got one of them right. Anyway Adrian and I used to take it in turns to go out into the garden and hunt for, and pick dandelion leaves for Cedric and Charlie as they really were rather partial to them. So there I was wandering around the garden in the dark autumnal morning looking for dandelion leaves. Mother had gone to take father to the station, for his daily commute to the other side of London, so I knew the house was empty except for my brother who did not like mornings at the best of times, and was never at his best in them. All of a sudden I noticed the bathroom light go on and realised that he was probably groggily, washing himself up there. Now the sink in this upstairs bathroom was right in front of a large frosted glass window that overlooked the garden. Whilst looking up at the window my wicked sense of humour got the better of me. I thought that it would be hilarious if I got a clod of earth and winged it up to the window, so it made a noise, it would frighten the life out of my dear half asleep brother. Well I certainly wasn’t wrong on that front.

I found the perfect clod, about the size of a cricket ball and just the right weight, I let it fly on the perfect trajectory. Unfortunately I had got the force all wrong. If it had not been for the house in the way, it would have probably reached the moon. But unfortunately there was. My little muddy projectile hit the window right in the middle at the weakest point, it did not make a small hole, but dragged the entire window with it, on its way through. My clod hit the ceiling leaving a fantastic brown splatted skidmark. At least I think it was the mud, Adrian was very frightened. He was also covered in Glass. He had been washing his face in front of the window, when it all rather imploded in on him. He thought the bottom had fallen out of his world, when in reality it was probably nearer the other way around.
And on top of this he was livid, absolutely bloody livid. I thought at this stage it would be a good time to leave home and to go and see the world, as I certainly was not going to be very popular round these parts for a while. The main flaw in my plan was that I was only seven.
My family eventually forgave me but I never think they appreciated the humour in it as much as I did and still do to this day.

The worst I did, and I do need forgiveness for, but I am sure Adrian will never give it to me is when we were on Holiday in Devon at Bull Point Lighthouse, I was probably about 11 and Adrian would have been 13.
It’s a lovely spot, the lighthouse perched hundreds of feet on a fairly precarious headland that is suffering badly from erosion, the old lighthouse was slipping slowly, inexorably into the sea. The land around the lighthouse was open grass fields and heath land. The whole headland was suffering from the same erosion by the sea.
Adrian and I used to play for hours on our skateboard (We only had the one between us in those days) down the two mile long smooth private road down to the lighthouse or with our kites in the fields beside.

One day whilst playing in said field I was exploring on my own and went to have a good look at the cliff edge.(As 11 year old boys do) It was amazing, with the erosion what looked like the cliff edge was not, the actual edge had slipped about 1m down and formed a grassy ledge about 1.5m across. Then beyond that the abyss. 150 feet of nothing before the broken and boiling sea and rocks. Another one of Denzil’s wicked pranks sprung to mind.

The next day Adrian and I were playing with our kite in the field beside the lighthouse, the wind was blowing gently up the field from the sea, I was holding the handle of the kite near the bottom of the field and Adrian was at the top ready to launch it. He threw it into the air, and in an effort to help it gain altitude faster, I ran backwards down the field only looking up at the kite, I kept on running without looking then it was too late, I was gone. Just a heart tearing scream as I went. Falling to my horrible death hundreds of feet below ripped to pieces then smashed on the jagged rocks. The kite fell lifeless from the sky.
Adrian came running down the field, tears pouring from his eyes, crying out my name and screaming no, no.
It was when he was about 3m away my cheerful face popped up from the cliff and said “Had you going there!” He beat the living daylights out of me. And I guess I probably deserved it, but it had been beautifully orchestrated, timing, the landing neatly on the ledge, everything, down to the kite, as it drifted helplessly downfrom the sky.

I thought that he would see the funny side of it in about ten minutes, and we would be rolling around in fits of laughter for the rest of the holiday reliving it. It’s been 35 years now and I’m still waiting for him to see the funny side. I don’t think he will now. So sorry Adrian.
As I say I have been horrible to my brother, these are just two of many things that have happened, I just haven’t got space to tell you any more now.
Have a great birthday Adrian.

Denzil Bark.

A Cornishman in Africa: Roads not Rhodes in Africa.

2009-11-17T22:40:00.000-08:00

I have been driving, after a fashion for 29 years. I say after a fashion as it has been an interesting driving career, starting when I really should not have done, borrowing my father’s car when he went out when I was only 16 and driving around the area cruising for chicks, we were never very successful, mainly as I have always professed because our cruising machine was a light metallic green Ford Cortina MK 3 estate. But it probably had more to do with the fact that I was ugly, spotty and could not see over the steering wheel.

I then passed my test and got my own car and things only got worse, over the next ten years I managed to get through over 53 cars, I kid you not, and these are just the ones that I can remember, unfortunately a disproportionate number of these never made it on to a next owner, and ended up in various hedges rivers and in more than one case in the sea. I as you may have realised am still alive and I believe though my antics are not to be recommended, I learned a lot from my mad early days. The greatest of which being anticipation. It took me 53 cars to learn it but if you want to survive on African roads, it is the best thing to know. The important thing to note is that it is not anticipation of what is going to happen, but what with a strange twist of fate, might happen.

Now the roads here in the capital are busy, busy and chaotic, with vehicles passing on all sides, whilst we are supposed to drive on the left, it is more often the case that you drive wherever there is a gap. Don’t even think about leaving a safe breaking distance between you and the car in front because if you do, before you can draw a dusty, exhaust filled breath, there will be twelve taxi’s or minibuses in the gap, all cussing you hard.

One really shouldn’t laugh but just the other day whilst coming home from work There was a white Pajero driving along in front of me, when without so much as an indication or much thought for what was around it, the car stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The passenger doors flew open and three large chaps disembarked to the curb. The doors were slammed closed and the Pajero launched forward again only to pull up equally abruptly and the rear passenger door flew open again I assume to let out another passenger who had, had a change of mind. Unfortunately the resulting incident, necessitated more a change of underpants than a change of mind.

Unfortunately for all parties there was a cyclist, a big, very fast cyclist who had seen the first batch of passengers disembark, thought his way was clear to go zooming up the inside without the need to check his speed but had not allowed for the Africa factor and a door being opened in his face at 35 miles an hour. The resulting impact could be heard over the BBC world service news bulletin, and over the sound of the fan in my car wheezing away at warp factor three.
The door on the Pajero I feel sure will never close again, this is assuming that they can in fact find it. The big guys bicycle will never ride or even fly again the way it did that day, and I am sure that there will not be a stand up row at such volume down Lumumbwa Road for a long time.
All parties seemed to get away relatively unharmed (They lived) I never did hear the end of the row or discover whose fault it was deemed to be.
But it was bloody funny to watch.

Denzil Bark.

A Cornishman in Africa: Tummy Troubles

2009-11-17T22:33:00.000-08:00

I cannot beat around the bush and please excuse my crudities.(no, not the snacks you got before a meal.)

I have not been feeling too smart today, in fact the world fell out of my bottom, which in truth it has been doing since Wednesday.
This is one of the wonderful and many symptoms of malaria. The others are equally fun, ranging from the feeling that you have suddenly moved to the Arctic Circle in a cold snap, then ten minutes later realizing that no, in fact you have just moved house again and are living in a blast furnace in Ghana.
These symptoms you would think, would make you say oh, I seem to have something wrong with me.
But oh no, the malaria bug is clever and has thought of that, he has sent his little bugs up to the brain and pulled the plug on the part that controls all rational thought. Then they take that power plug and stick it into the part of the brain that controls really weird and strange dreams and then turn the power right up to Max. Any spare power they come across, they plug into the vomit reflex, because they really do have a wicked sense of humour.
All in all this makes for quite entertaining viewing from the outside but when you are on the inside it’s not quite so good.

So on Friday afternoon after a particularly hectic move between Siberia and Accra, I decided to hit it hard with the Coartem.
Now Coartem is a truly wonderful drug, It works particularly well in this end of Africa, but it is expensive, that having been said I always keep two courses of it with me at all times. The only thing is that you have to be sure that you have malaria before taking it, because if you don't. It too has a wicked sense of humour and will beat the living daylights out of you for taking it when you should not have.
I think this is a really good idea and should be introduced on all drugs and would end drug abuse over night.

The upshot of this was that by Saturday I was feeling remarkably better so much so that I decided to walk the 20m to the car and go shopping. Unfortunately, Coartem mends the brain quicker than the body, I probably made it about 12 m, before collapsing in a heap of jelly, after ten minutes I made it back to the house and within another ten I was back in bed feeling rather foolish and dusty.
Sunday I was still as weak as a kitten but able to maintain horizontal movement.
My wife being some 10,000km away in Cornwall, was a little worried that I was fading away and not looking after myself so in an effort to alleviate her worry I decided to take some pictures of myself.
So after about ten minutes trying to work out how to get the timer to work on the camera, that is in the phone, I managed to set it up.
Then, what should I wear to prove I was not wasting away, Maybe just my pants, NO ! After the first two shots I realised that this was looking horribly like a porn shoot from some fat fetish site. I decided pants were not a good idea, so I added shorts, and after another couple of shots it became more and more apparent that I have probably put on weight and not lost anything at all since being here. And to send my darling wife some picture of her fat white husband in various states of undress really was not on.
So I got rid of the pictures, and have decided to go on a diet.

Denzil Bark.