I woke to the popping of automatic weapons in the middle of the night. I shot up, struggled with my mosquito net, grabbed my revolver from under the bed, and sat there, trying to catch my breath and piece together in what direction the noise of gunfire was moving.
Did I hear it start from the left or the right? My sleepy brain couldn’t remember. Were they softer first and then louder, or the other way around?
I looked out the screen window into the dark blue night. After not hearing another sound, I lay back down, still clutching my pistol. A few minutes went by.
I jumped at the sound of more gunfire. This time it was very close. Then there was yelling and running, coming closer and closer to my barracks. My hands were shaking so much, I could barely hold my pistol.
I swung my head from one window to the other until I heard what sounded like footsteps sneaking up to my window. There were words spoken in Portuguese.
“UNITA!” Jon Baggs had warned me that the former Angolan rebel forces still had a presence post-Savimbi and were actively making incursions into Namibia for bush meat and possibly ivory. But I didn’t expect they’d come so close to the station. I felt like a sitting duck, lying exposed on my bed.
I dived under the cot, gripping my pistol with both hands. I rolled over and faced the bedroom door, cursing. After conducting a twenty-year war and losing the subsequent election, Jonas Savimbi had taken to the bush, and even long after his death, some of his men lingered and were hungry. The rangers thought it was just a matter of time before they’d raid Susuwe for supplies.
After a long stretch of silence, I was getting so tired that I couldn’t hold my position any longer. I rolled onto my back, still gripping my pistol to my chest and wishing I could get rid of the image of a faceless head with the brains removed before dozing off.
The noise of gunfire woke me again. Disoriented, I shot up and banged my head on the metal frame of the cot. “Shit!” I had forgotten that I was still under the bed.
The barracks seemed to be surrounded by the popping of what were most likely AK-47s. I rolled over and faced the door again. And again an interminable wait lay ahead.
It was silent for so long, and I got so uncomfortable, that I finally reached my hand up and grabbed my pillow from the bed and put it under my head. That was infinitely better.
I tried not to think about scorpions as a scops owl trilled in the distance. A little while later a leopard called, meters from my window—the signature sawing of wood rasping back and forth, back and forth. I was glad to be inside. And with no more gunfire and no more yelling, I fell asleep, only to wake in the morning with a throbbing headache and a lump on my forehead.
I carefully extracted myself from under the bed. I couldn’t believe I’d been able to sleep on the linoleum floor like that, but it had felt safer than lying on my bed, which felt exposed. I wondered what had happened in the night. It was six thirty and I couldn’t find out until the ranger office opened at eight.
I got up, pressing the lump on my forehead, hoping it wasn’t too obvious. I walked to the kitchen and filled the kettle, lit the stove, and brushed my teeth. I stared at the lump on my forehead in the mirror, and pressed at my puffy eyes.
I took an icy shower, and, chilled to the core, I made a mug of tea and sat on my porch. I still had an hour to kill before the ranger’s office opened and decided to go for a drive to see if I could figure out what had taken place the previous night.
While driving along the floodplain road, I passed the rangers next door sitting on their porch with no shirts on. Thick slabs of meat hung from a clothesline in front of them. I slowed to a stop.
“Good morning.” I wasn’t sure how to start a conversation about what might have happened with the shooting when they all looked so casual. I turned the car off and got out.
Gidean stood up, threw on his shirt, and approached. “Oh, Catherine! I was just heading over to see you.”
Judging from the rangers’ demeanors while lounging about on their porch, what I had thought was a raid was probably something a lot less sinister.
He could tell what I was thinking. “Yes. Sorry for all the noise.”
I tried to keep a poker face.
“You see, we had this road-kill kudu and the lions, they were trying their level best to eat it.” Gidean sensed my embarrassment. “We kept chasing them off with shots but they kept coming.” He looked down, guiltily, knowing full well what noise they had made.
I tried to appear calm. It wasn’t their fault that I had interpreted their fun as a hostile takeover. “And the Portuguese?”
Gidean nodded. “Eli speaks it when he’s excited.”
“Of course.” Gidean had mentioned that some of the rangers had learned Portuguese in Cuba when they were in exile with SWAPO as African freedom fighters before Namibian independence.
I needed to be strong. I could do this. “Listen, I was hoping to stop by the office when it opens. Will you be there?”
“Eight o’clock sharp.”
“Great. I’ll see you then.” I got back in my car and started up. As I started to pull away, Gidean tapped on my roof and I stopped again.
“You might take the floodplain road north. There’s a leopard kill in a tree about five kilometers up on the left. She might still be there on the carcass.”
I smiled. “So, it’s a she? I think I heard her terrorizing the baboons yesterday.”
Gidean nodded. “The station is her home.” He hesitated, as if he just remembered something. “Catherine, please don’t go farther than the river turnoff. There are reports of incursions. We’re hoping the army will help us investigate. We don’t have the firepower at the station to handle this on our own.”
“Understood.”
It was just after eight o’clock in the morning when I arrived at the office after my abbreviated safari. I stepped into the dark office and saw Gidean and Natembo sitting at the desk entering numbers into a large ledger.
They both looked up as I entered.
I nodded a greeting. “Hello, Gidean. Hello, Natembo.”
Gidean stood up. “Catherine. Did you see her?”
I shook my head. “No leopard, but I did see the impala in the tree.”
Gidean nodded. “The very one.”
I took a seat across from them and Gidean sat back down.
The ubiquitous faded posters on all the government office walls projected a sense of lethargy. There was a general species identification poster, a barely legible outdated map of the region, a staff picture that was so faded and yellow it was hard to make out who was in it, and an old research study of elephant movements in the region. There were pins and flags from sightings in the early ’90s showing lots of elephant movement down south into Botswana along the Kwando, but no movement of elephants into Angola; only one made a brief foray into Zambia and back.
Old badly tanned predator skins hung on the wall, presumably for the benefit of the few tourists that happened to come to the office to register before going down to Nambwa Campsite, twenty kilometers south of the station. The signs that were hanging along the road were so illegible it amazed me that anyone bothered to stop in.
I watched Natembo entering numbers from a scrap of paper into a book. “Is this some kind of record?”
Gidean waved a hand casually. “This is how we keep track of elephant mortalities.”
I looked down at the numbers. “Oh, I see. How do they get reported to the head office?”
“Every month we total these numbers and radio down the totals along with the rain- gauge data.”
“Does the data get reported to the ivory trade commission?”
Gidean shrugged. “I really don’t know what happens to it.”
“In Kruger we filled out a form for every elephant mortality that gets reported. Have you heard of an ETIS form, the Elephant Trade Information System?”
Gidean and Natembo looked at me blankly.
“When we saw a carcass, we reported the date and time of the sighting, exact location of the carcass, estimated age, and cause of death if known.” I looked down at the entries. “All you are putting in here is a number, but no other information. Aren’t you supposed to include other information?”
Gidean nodded. “When that information is known, yes.”
I looked around the top of the desk and saw an empty elephant mortality data form collecting dust in the corner, the ETIS form that I had just asked about. “You’ve seen these, right?”
The rangers nodded.
“Why aren’t they being used?”
Gidean sighed. “You see, Catherine, it is much better for us to keep these books. The pages are bound together and we won’t lose the data.”
“I can see that, but why are you not including all the data that you can on each mortality?”
Natembo held up the form. “It is very difficult to know the information needed on this form for every elephant. Whatever is known is entered into this book.”
Gidean smiled. “We don’t actually have many mortalities within our protected areas. What is more important for poaching is the reporting outside protected areas. This is outside our jurisdiction, falling to the game guards. We need them to fill out these forms and submit them to us, but they are not doing so.”
“Maybe Nigel will let me give the game guards a briefing on this.”
Gidean nodded.
Natembo looked up. “The real problem is the ivory passing through the Caprivi. There are people in the villages involved. The people that know things are not talking.”
“I have another meeting with the induna scheduled for Thursday. Our last meeting was postponed since he had malaria. I can bring this up.”
Gidean nodded. “That would be good.”
“But right now, I’m going to meet with the local doctor.”
Both Natembo and Gidean looked at me with concern.
I shook my head. “I’m not sick. I just want to find out about the work he is doing with the Red Cross.”
Gidean looked relieved. “I am very glad to hear that you are not ill.”
I got up. “I appreciate that.”
“If you are able to build trust with the induna, he will be an important ally.”
“I hope so.”
“He is not happy with us. We had to arrest his son recently.”
“How come?”
“He had three tusks buried in his yard.”
“The induna mentioned that. He said it was a setup. Do you think he is innocent?”
“We are proceeding with the case. We need more evidence,” Gidean explained. “But, you don’t get treated very well in this prison, even if you are the induna’s son.”
“I see,” I said as I made to leave.
Gidean and Natembo stood up and nodded good-bye. “Go well,” Gidean said, and smiled.
Just then, a woman burst into the office and ran to Gidean, collapsing into his lap in hysterics. Gidean put a hand on her head, whispering soothing words to her.
He looked up at me. “This is Bernie’s wife.” Gidean shook his head. “Bernie is one of the other rangers stationed here. He is very, very sick this morning.”
“What’s wrong?”
“He is suffering from very bad coughing.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“We are having a problem of transport. Our ministry vehicle is in for a service and we are having no vehicle to take Bernie to the hospital.”
“I can take him. I was planning to go see the doctor anyway.”
“I will accompany you,” Gidean replied.