experience
I felt a peace like I had walked into a place I’d known all my life but had never been before. My Guide turned and grinned at me, watching my face closely. He didn’t even have to say it. The surreal, mist-green Malilangwe Dam had already said, ‘welcome to Pamushana’. “Have you been here before?” Takura, my Tracker, asked on my first drive later that afternoon. Had I been here before? Yes, but also no. The last time I had been to Malilangwe was when I was a little girl in primary school. I remember being amazed by the animals, excitedly capturing every moment before leaping to the next one. I couldn’t believe how overwhelmingly massive the landscape was. I tried to pay attention, no matter how it called to me, but my boundless childhood energy didn’t stop to listen. We didn’t have cameras back then, or I had probably lost mine, but the place left an imprint. Now here I was, over two decades later, yet it felt unfamiliarly familiar. The land I knew, the space, the dusty brown soil, the grey spindly twigs, the dry crackle of the branches beneath as our vehicle meandered into the wild. The wintry warmth, I also knew. I am, after all, a daughter of the Lowveld, but this time around, I was older, and the land continued to try telling me a story. I listened.
“There is a dagga boy,” Takura announced as the car drew to a halt. He was pointing at a buffalo that stood still just 10 metres away, staring right at us. “They are solitary animals, often ousted from their herd. They are known to be grumpy and aggressive.” Now, I love a safari as much as the next person, but when he said that, I wondered why we weren’t stepping on it and moving. I’m black. Black African. A thirty-something- year-old woman. And not to generalise, but we’ve been taught to run from danger, not towards it. Yet here I was, driving metres away from lions, encountering elephants on foot, taking boat rides alongside hippos. I remember thinking, these are moments my mother will never experience. Instead of running, I asked the animals, the land, what it was trying to tell me. Listen. My Guide and Tracker spoke Shona, my mother tongue. The stories they told about the people, the history, the lore were shared in both Shona and English. We stopped by some black rhino dung, where Takura and I knelt on the ground, and he told me a fascinating story about how it’s used to ward off your enemies. In this case, a daughter-in-law who is unwanted in the house. You do this by burning it and making sure she throws out the ashes the next day.
Previous spread Open to the elements, Pamushana is alive with the ancient energy of the land. Left This is a place to experience the wild as it was.
Powered by FlippingBook