The Watering-hole at Halali, Etosha

Namibia is God’s own country, we’d been told (and so it proved – in veld, and desert, and rock – although the human ecology is, as everywhere, fragile) but the noon heat and the night freeze the multiple inconveniences of camping the long kilometers on difficult roads, in cramped cars the tentative footsteps of uncertain company, our fellow travellers: these strained us, kept the city pent up inside even as we searched through the demanding beauty of wilderness. Our hairpin journey took us from Oanab Dam to Waterberg, from Spitskoppe to Sossusvlei; at its northern zenith lay Etosha, where we’d come to see game. Within an hour’s drive there were lion, giraffe, zebra and so on, captured by our eager cameras and so on, for three days as leopard, cheetah, elephant, jackal numberless grazing buck birds beyond identifying and so on passed before our startled, wonder-full view. Unwittingly, we’d give them personalities, say things like He’s just chilling in the sunshine This one’s nervous, that one’s calm and Look at the baby – so cute! One sunset, greedy, we named animal items on a wildlife wish list: you went for hyena, for their comical ears and clumsy walk; I chose rhinoceros, because I’d never seen one before. Some time around dinner, we quarrelled and rapidly advanced through the stages of argument – stifled anger, obvious resentment – ending, as we’d frequently done, in a willful, bristling silence. The group had decided to visit a watering-hole lit up at night “for our viewing pleasure”, and grudgingly we followed, watching other couples holding hands, snuggling against the evening chill. We joined a quiet crowd, sitting hushed as at a theatre when the house lights dim. Darkness. Spotlights trained on the black water. After half an hour, enter stage left a single hyena, gangly, bungling, sniffing his way to the still edge of the pool. Then another, two or three more, and soon there were seven at the water, lapping loudly, scoffing, splashing, snorting, drinking for all the night to hear. They’d start at a noise, then return to the watery fray. Suddenly, at no given signal, exeunt omnes, stage right. A long while later, when both of us had softened slightly, but neither would show it – while, alone amongst those in the rocky auditorium it seemed we felt separated, unnaturally parted – a rhinoceros trundled his heavy bulk though the backdrop of trees, and into the night scene.          We passed binoculars, shared the close-up view of his small sunken eyes, his snout curved into twin horns. He was not fully grown; as he emerged from the pool, baby boots of water darkened his ankles, belied the show of adult independence. Slowly he weaved between the props of stone and grass and disappeared offstage. As if on cue, they had entered our lives, observed us, performed for us, taught and delighted, and having played their edifying parts moved on, to secret lives and obscure thoughts. That was our mistake, to think they cared about us, to expect they’d make us reconcile. We held hands briefly but soon we were fighting again. It doesn’t help to muse, although we can’t help musing, on what animals think about if they think at all. It doesn’t help to wish we were beasts, acting on instinct, letting senses dictate a non-time, an always-present in which we eat, sleep, feed, hunt, hide; in which fear is not fear as we know it and anger, frustration, resentment, regret are unabstracted, unreflective – always passing if they pass at all. It doesn’t help because we are beasts, acting on instinct, barely able to dictate to atavistic claws with half-baked reason, to match procreating urges with nurturing acts. It doesn’t help because our passions are brute and fleeting. We cannot achieve a state of grace, past and future redeeming unmitigated now. Still, I find myself wishing I was an animal. But I can do no more than hope that when I am observed by any who care to or can observe me, making my way (bewildered by the dark, blinking in the spotlights) across the stage – that then I will be found drinking cool water with you: mating for life, licking your wounds.

 

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