Whatever You Do, Don't Run Page 10

  There was now greater outcry over their treatment and the pandering to a clearly racist regime. Yet in 1952 it was announced that their exile was not to be temporary and must remain permanent. Seretse, Ruth and their family would never be allowed back to Africa.

  After four years of international condemnation, the English government capitulated, allowing the Khamas back to Botswana. But there was one condition: They were to return as commoners, giving up any claim to leading the Batawana. After a very challenging nine-year relationship, one might expect that Ruth would want to stay in the country of her birth, but she stood by Seretse and accompanied him to Botswana.

  This was an age where many African colonies were pushing for independence from their European masters, and some were openly revolting. Seretse had been a thorn in the side of the British for years, and the South African government despised him. They perhaps expected Seretse to agitate and therefore be easy to imprison, getting him out of the way for good. But as if to foil them once more, he quietly took up cattle ranching.

  It was a job that he seemed peculiarly bad at.

  After several years of losing money, and cattle (which to an African man is the same thing, even if he went to Oxford), he gave up his cowboy ways and started the Bechuanaland Democratic Party in 1962. By now he and Ruth had had a brother for Jacqueline, named Ian, then twin boys, one of whom was named Anthony. The other reflected Seretse’s policy of forgiveness and was named Tshekedi.

  Seretse pushed for peaceful change from Botswana’s “protected” status and proposed racial unity and tolerance as a way to build the country. He gained the respect of regional leaders, and in 1965 he was made prime minister of Botswana by the English, but was in the strange position of being unable to travel to its capital. This was because the whole country was in the even stranger position of not having a capital within its borders. Instead the British administered it from a town called Mafeking, in South Africa. Seretse had been warned that if he ever went there, he would be arrested immediately by the South African government for marrying a white woman.

  A new capital, Gaborone, was hastily declared and built. It was located a stone’s throw from Mafeking but this time within Botswana’s borders. In many African countries the English were finding themselves the targets of violence, as resentment against colonialism built. They started looking at Seretse in a different light. He was a man who had always promoted racial unity and working together for the cause of the country. So in a reversal of attitudes, Seretse was welcomed in Gaborone by the English administrators and was even knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1966. Ruth, once a clerk, became Lady Mohumagadi Mma Kgosi Ruth Khama. This was a regal title befitting the queen that she briefly had been, but she was always affectionately known by the population as Lady K.

  European countries were shedding their colonies (unless they made them lots of money), and as Botswana only had protectorate status and was one of the world’s poorest nations, it was one of the first in line to be granted freedom. The British had only agreed to take it over in the first place so that the Germans couldn’t have it, and they were now quite willing to let it go.

  A story from this time, often repeated by the people of Botswana but rarely seen in history books, illustrates that even after all his trials, Seretse maintained a sense of humour. This was remarkable, as he was often insulted during the transitional period. Every time something went wrong with the process, the outgoing authorities would complain of a “nigger in the woodpile.” Seretse bore it, and when he was elected as the nation’s first president on September 30, 1966, reporters asked him many inane questions. One of the inquiries was whether he intended to change the name of the manor that once housed the colonial administrators but would now be the presidential residence. “Yes,” he replied. “I’ll be calling it the Woodpile.”

  Seretse immediately set about arranging Botswana’s economic future. He struck a deal with the European Community for Botswana’s beef industry and promised that the profits belonged to the people of Botswana. To ensure these profits actually went to the people, and not into politicians’ pockets, he established trusts, the interest from which went into health, education and infrastructure. In a move that marked him as very different from many other African leaders, he also established a vigorous anticorruption unit. And to this day Botswana is one of the few countries in Africa where bribes don’t settle the majority of “problems.”

  Ruth was just as busy. She started the first branches of many charities in Botswana, including the Red Cross. While it is often stated that she stayed away from Seretse’s political activities, there is no doubt that they shared an ideology, which centred around helping and advancing the people of the country they both loved.

  Just months after independence, Seretse received incredible news. In a place called Orapa, diamond deposits had been discovered—big diamond deposits. Within months Botswana was one of the world’s leading producers of the gemstone. Refreshingly for the region these were mined without any military involvement, making them “clean” and desirable to buyers of conscience. With the economic structures set in place by Seretse, the country flourished.

  In fact from 1966 until 1980, Botswana had the world’s fastest growing economy. The diamonds made the difference. But for once in an African country, money was spent on providing free health care and education. Medical insurance is close to free, and income tax is zero.

  In the years that the country he led was flourishing, Seretse was often seriously ill. He had a pacemaker fitted in the 1970s, but his medical troubles were not over. In 1980, as he worked toward independence for Rhodesia and a Southern African Development Community, he died from cancer. The country mourned in a way rarely seen for a president, or for a king, or the rare man that had been both.

  Many people expected Lady K to return to England, but she was now a Motswana (the term for a citizen of Botswana), as were her children. She stayed in Botswana, the country she and Seretse had loved as much as each other. In 2002 she died, and joined Seretse, perhaps in a place where they play jazz.

  Beau Goes Back to Nature

  The monkeys at Mombo were a problem, but the baboons were not. We waged a deliberate campaign against them nevertheless—not harming them but making sure that they never became so comfortable in the camp as to become pests.

  However, the camp was within their home range, and the whole troop would frequently cross the plain that fronted the camp and forage beneath and in the trees that shaded the tents. Among the troop was one of the strangest animals I have ever seen, even odder than Martina the hairy lioness or the stripeless zebra at Duba.

  At the time, there was a nudist in South Africa who had gained an unreasonable amount of prominence. He went by the unlikely name of Beau Brummel. Since the strange baboon amongst the Mombo troop did not have a single hair, not even an eyelash, I named him Beau.

  Beau the nudist baboon had skin the colour of dark chocolate, shiny and tight. His lack of fur made his orange yellow eyes beacons. Often as the troop foraged near the camp, I would notice him sitting on his backside, arms resting on his knees, as he watched the humans moving around. Maybe he saw something familiar in our hairless forms and wondered why he couldn’t join us. Maybe he was just doing what all baboons do, and I only noticed him because he was naked. Either way, he never made an attempt to become human (although in a strange moment of voyeurism he was caught peeking at a female staff member as she showered), and the troop didn’t seem to ostracise him. He fed with them, moved when they did, and on a number of occasions I saw him copulating—something baboons do openly, noisily and often.

  Beau’s condition did mean that he missed out on one of the most important parts of a baboon’s social activity. He would groom others, meticulously parting their fur and removing any ticks or fleas that he found, biting them before carrying on his salon treatment. But the favour could not be returned. Maybe this endeared him to certain lazy members of the troop, but it would have made him feel left out. Fema
les groom to show affection; males do it to show allegiance. If another baboon wanted to groom Beau, all he could do was glance over him once, pat him on his bald rump, and say “All clear, buddy!”

  One morning I found another way that his nudity impaired him. As usual I was the first guide to make it to the deck and was swallowing a cup of coffee that the even earlier rising kitchen staff had prepared. I scanned the plain, in the vain hope that some predator might make my life easy by being perched on a termite mound, and settled my eye on the baboons that were moving, softly grunting, and feeding around the deck. A distance apart sat Beau, clutching his knees and shivering. He was cold. I’d never seen an animal’s teeth chatter before, and my heart went out to him. I would have given him a blanket if I could, but he would have run away at any approach, and all he would do with a blanket was tear it up anyway. Baboons are smart, but not geniuses. Eventually he went and sat next to a female baboon, huddling against her. But she had a baby to feed, so she got up and walked away. He tried to get warmth from a young male who also moved on, then Beau sat back down, shaking and looking miserable, the gleam in his eyes dimmed.

  Beau’s lack of insulation probably made him more susceptible to colds and flu, and despite the darkness of his skin, he would have suffered frequent sunburns. But I watched him on and off for years; he showed no signs of ill health and it looked like he would lead a full life.

  About a year after I left Mombo to manage a camp farther north, I was speaking to a guide named Greg, who had taken over for me.

  “I saw Beau the other day,” he told me. “By himself.” Baboons are never alone, so something must have happened for him to be driven out or left behind. I was worried for him.

  Greg explained that Beau had come down to a channel to drink, nervously looking for a spot where a crocodile couldn’t grab him.

  He should have been looking behind him.

  A leopard we knew as the Bird Island Female barrelled out of a palm clump and, with the remarkable efficiency of her species, killed him almost as soon as he knew something was wrong.

  Damn, I thought. If it had been any other baboon, I would have asked Greg about how close they were, how good the viewing had been, and how his guests reacted. A lot of people come to Africa hoping to see some action, namely a predator making a kill. Guides are normally happy to show this, but when the victim is an animal that you have known, and named, it is like losing a friend.

  We reflected on this, not mentioning the hundreds of animals that we had seen get devoured and never cared for. Then Greg told me that the sighting hadn’t ended with the kill.

  The leopard had barely begun to feed when a hyena appeared. Hissing and snarling, the leopard gave up her prize. The hyena had only enough time to drag Beau’s body to a bush and start cracking his bones for the rich marrow within when lions appeared. They drove the hyena off, quickly devouring what was left and moving on, the portion so small they didn’t even stop to rest after their meal.

  “That would have been a great sighting, and I’d be envious,” I said, “if it wasn’t Beau.”

  “Yeah,” Greg said. “I didn’t like it at all.”

  What we both knew was that this was Africa, where life is often short and brutal. We didn’t really try to console each other. We both blustered about how dangerous it is to get attached to a wild animal, for if anything, Beau’s demise and extraordinary distribution just served to illustrate that in the end, we all go back to nature.

  Mona Lisa

  Each year, Pierre would bring a group on safari. Despite his French name, he was South African born and bred, but like so many people had relocated from his beloved homeland during the Apartheid era. He was successful in America, and as a way of paying something back to the continent of his birth, he brought out groups of friends on safari every year and gave the profits of the trip to an African charity.

  I looked forward to his groups, as the people he brought were usually deeply interested in conservation and a pleasure to take on safari. This year he brought a group into a camp that perched on the banks of the Linyanti River. I was temporarily managing the camp and having a brief hiatus from full-time guiding. The river that flows by it forms the border of Namibia and Botswana and is a graceful series of swooping turns and oxbow lagoons, filled with snorting hippos and basking crocodiles.

  As Pierre’s group pulled into the camp, I spotted potential trouble. One of the women was “dressed” for safari. Her handbag had the name of someone Italian in large letters on it, and the jacket she wore was made from the skin of some supple and probably endangered animal. There was not a crease in any of her clothing—an impressive feat, considering they had just arrived in a cramped light aircraft. Everything she wore was an unfashionable khaki or brown, but the entire ensemble was clearly worth more than the Land Rover she was riding in. The sunglasses alone could have shaded an African village.

  As we entered the main area of the camp, she sniffed, and to her credit managed to squeeze through gritted teeth the words, “How lovely.”

  I kept an eye on her during the stay to make sure she was enjoying herself, and she seemed to appreciate the recommendation I gave her not to put anything delicate in our laundry, as it was manned by tough women who treated stains as a mortal enemy and would rub a garment to threads if unchecked.

  This seemed to endear me to her, and she often sat next to me at mealtimes. To my surprise I found that I enjoyed her company. She just wasn’t an animal person, she said. She didn’t dislike them, but they held no real interest for her. This was strange to me, because I couldn’t imagine not getting a thrill out of seeing an elephant in the wild, even if I had seen them thousands of times before.

  She hadn’t really been interested in the trip, she explained, but her husband was a friend of Pierre’s and liked animals, so she had come along. In exchange for her smiling endurance of Africa, she and her husband were going to tour Europe and its galleries and museums the next year.

  “You know that the money from this trip is going to some fund to save rhinos, don’t you?” she asked me.

  I affirmed that I did, and she asked another question: “What does it matter if the rhinos die out? Is it really important that they are saved?” This would normally have riled me, and I would have normally given a snappish answer, but I had come to think of her as Mr. Spock from Star Trek— an emotionless, purely logical creature, at least with regards to her feelings for animals. Like Spock, though, I knew there were one or two things that stirred her, so I gave an honest reply. “If the rhinos are gone, maybe there is a dung beetle that feeds only on their droppings. It dies out, so does a bird that feeds on it, and that bird stops spiders from getting out of hand but now has an imbalanced diet and dies out.” She didn’t looked concerned by this, but I still had my trump card. “But to be honest, it doesn’t matter. No economy will suffer, nobody will go hungry, no diseases will be spawned. Yet there will never be a way to place a value on what we have lost. Future children will see rhinos only in books and wonder how we let them go so easily. It would be like lighting a fire in the Louvre and watching the Mona Lisa burn. Most people would think ‘What a pity’ and leave it at that while only a few wept.”

  She smiled at the end of my soliloquy and said, “When we leave I could give you a tip, or add it to our donation to the rhino thingy. Which would you prefer?” She had me over a barrel. My wages were insignificant, and I lived for my tips. But I had always claimed that I wasn’t in the job for the money, and in all honesty only a fool would be.

  So I returned the smile and said, “Save Mona.”

  Bird Nerds

  At nineteen years old, as I made preparations to head to Africa for the first time, I sat with my friend Richard, who already had safari experience. He was giving me a run through on things I should know. He pointed out that cheetahs have a long, lithe body built for speed, whereas leopards are stockier and more powerful. He explained that the white rhinoceros has a square mouth for cropping grass, while the bl
ack rhino has a hook lip for gripping leaves.

  Then Richard opened a massive book, the sort that would break bones if it were dropped on your foot, and showed me pictures that appalled me. The page was filled with seemingly identical birds with brown feathers. There was nothing about them that was in the least bit interesting, and I couldn’t imagine what sort of person would want to pay attention to them. I listened halfheartedly as Richard explained that while they might look exactly the same, the trained ear could determine their species by call and the expert observer could also use flight pattern as a clue. At one point he paused and asked if there was something wrong with my eyes, as they had glazed over.

  “Early onset cataracts,” I lied, not wanting to offend. “Tragically common in my family.”

  I was going to Africa for the animals. My perception was that people who watched birds wore funny clothes and had poor hygiene. They had beards (even the women) with bits of food stuck in them. Bird-watching was close kin to the dirty perversions of stamp collecting and crocheting cushion covers. I loved all nature, and regularly fed wild parrots in my backyard, but if someone had suggested I was a bird-watcher, I would have cringed and insisted that I was no such thing. Only people who couldn’t engage in normal activities like bike riding and seeing movies looked at birds and spent time ticking off the ones they had seen. I was a young teen when I started feeding the parrots and was becoming increasingly convinced that one day I might like to meet a girl and have sex. Being a bird-watcher, I was sure, would guarantee that it would never happen.