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Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia - 2005

Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia - 2005

Jacek Pałkiewicz
2006-06-25 14:23:32

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among the leafy acacias. This was Africa, kingdom of the animals, where man is an interloper.
We arrived at Sikumi Tree Lodge to the sound of drums calling everyone to dinner. Later, with childish delight, I climbed the ladder into my en-suite tree house where I lay awake listening to the hypnotic sounds of the African night: the static call of tree frogs, an owl searching for its mate and, far away, the low and ancient roar of the lions. At dusk the next day, we found a young male lion lying nonchalantly in the shade near the track. You have to see a lion in the wild to understand why he is king of the beasts. Captivity robs them of their regal dignity and no camera can capture the intensity of their gaze. We stopped the jeep and the lion barely deigned to turn his head. Just the black tip of his tail flicked back and forth. Harsh, amber coloured eyes stared at us unrelentingly from an enormous grizzled, maned head, exerting the kind of calm authority and lack of haste which only comes from an unthreatened position of power. After a few minutes he stretched and rose to his feet, turned his back and ambled disdainfully into the bush, tail still flicking rhythmically from side to side.

Matobo Hills
Our final days were spent in the Matobo Hills. It was here that the veneer of colonial Africa was finally swept away, symbolically marked by the bronze tombstone incongruously set into the rock of this sacred burial site of Malindidzimu, the resting place of spirits: "Here lie the remains of Cecil John Rhodes". The blue of the sky is even more vivid in the Matobo, the burnt orange and burnished gold rocks providing an absolute contrast where they meet the sky and reflect the gold of the sun that warms them. And here I felt I was in yet another Africa.

An Africa where that intense undercurrent I had first felt in Victoria Falls bubbled up and broke to the surface, a hot evocative lava which is the power of Africa. A strong sense of elemental spirituality pervades the Matobo; one that here man and beast live together, united by something more powerful than their own will, a power that seems to emanate from the land itself. It is the innocence and mystery of origins; the starting point that people have been struggling to return to ever since, a stillness that holds the history of everything that has been before and died away, the quietness of all that is yet to happen.