Shaped by red lands
An essay about Zambia and Devon, and about being shaped and formed
Some things, when exposed to water and soil and time, end up looking like something else.
A first encounter with the Victoria Falls, at the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, is with the distant spray that rises 400m in the air. It can be seen 50km away. From here, such a vast vein of water seems unlikely as you look along the thirsty road ahead, or out into the thorny earth-dusted bush. But then you hear it – white noise that turns to thunder as you approach. You move towards it like a dowsing rod; you’re getting closer, closer, it’s touching your skin now as you walk along mist-moist paths and round draping wet greenery until finally, it comes into view. It comes into more than just view – it comes into everything that is: vision, smell, head, gut, skin, breath, awe. You’re deaf with it. The force of it seizes you and all you can hope to do is stay standing. For a moment or maybe millennia, it is the only thing that exists.
Dr David Livingstone was the first European to see the falls, in 1855. He named them for his Queen, a name that masks the spirit of the falls with foreign tradition and lifelessness. In the local Lozi language, it is called Mosi-oa-Tunya which means ‘the smoke that thunders’. A name of reverence and recognition. The falls channel the Zambezi river, and at over a mile wide in rainy season, it is the largest sheet of falling water in the world. It is this water that soaked into the earth of me, and brought life.
Once, sitting with a coffee during a work break, losing myself in the waterworld, I was jerked back into flesh when I noticed people swimming at the top of the falls, a hundred metres high. I knew that this was possible; there’s a pool right at the top of the falls that is a final pause before the water pours, where rock and current holds you back. But logic stands no chance when fear shows up, and my eyes were fixed, waiting for the surely inevitable fall. They were ok. When I jumped off the Zambezi bridge, tied to a bungee rope, I saw no possibility that I would choose to jump on my own. So they tied a man to me, and he jumped for us. How do some people have such self-control that they’re able to override ancient instincts, to override life? Is the wise thing to control, or to let go?
Gravity worked well – we fell, and fell, and fell. Then elastic kicked in and we pinged and dangled and bounced under the bridge. We eventually got hauled up and pulled into the underbelly of the bridge that joins Zambia to Zimbabwe, where we were separated. Surrounded by metal rafters and air, I looked up at the bridge above, along the gorge that the river flowed through, and down at the white water below. Crocodiles lounged in the sun on rocky river banks. Here, underneath the world of men, I felt peaceful. A voice interrupted.
“You know, you will never leave Zambia”
“Huh?”
I looked up; a figure extended an arm to me, but brightness stopped me from seeing clearly. A hand pulled me up. When I was in a less precarious position, I felt something in my hand.
It was a small black carved figure that looked like a cross between a snake and a sea horse.
“It’s a Nyami Nyami, the river god, the god of the Zambezi. Once you’ve drunk from the Zambezi, you will always return to Zambia. It will protect you.”
A nice touch for the tourists. I thanked the figure, which I could now see was a man. I noticed his eyes reading me, working out whether I had heeded his words.
“You believe me. You’ll be back.”
I tucked the Nyami Nyami into my pocket, climbed up, and resurfaced into the hot copper world above.
The man and the Nyami Nyami were right. I did return to Zambia, many times. I lived there for a while too. I sometimes wonder whether I might find that man, ask him what he knew, what he’d seen.
Once, walking with others, we found the scattered bones of a hippo. They’d taken on the colour of the earth, no longer white. The guide shouldered his rifle and poked around. I found a lone tooth in the bones, as big as a fist, and put it in my bag. I could feel my companions think it a strange thing to do. The impulse to keep it came from not wanting to forget how this place made me feel – its expanse; its possibility; its stories that sit in the soil waiting for a body to inhabit. I didn’t want any of it to fade like a suntan. Today, the tooth is on my desk, and I pick it up often, peering at the remnants of earth deeply engrained in the dry cracks, touching past and future traces of myself. The tooth (pictured) is a talisman, reminding me of what could have been, what has become, what might yet be.
In Zambia, I notice things that connect me to my home in Devon: trust in local stories; farmers hidden in valleys or behind impenetrable scrub; history and names of people and farms and tracks forming oral maps. But it is the red soil which most immediately connects these places in my mind. Depending on the place and weather and time of year, the red can take on shades of rust, bronze, lobster, orange, black. In Devon, the colour comes from an ancient desert that once sat on top of modern-day Dartmoor. Over time, the desert – sun-baked and weather-beaten – gradually wore away, its iron-rich sands washing eastward, seeping into the soils, becoming part of the place. As the desert slipped away, it exposed underlying granite; formed hundreds of millions of years ago, and now a familiar grey feature of modern-day Dartmoor visible as outcrops, or ‘tors’. From above, these tors become grey islands in a sea of shifting savannah-like gold grass. Up close, their hardness feels at odds with the softness of the surrounding people and hills, which roll like clotted cream.
In Zambia, I have slept near huge granite boulders underneath a southern hemisphere sky, the stars exotic in their unfamiliarity. The granite here is strewn over the landscape, surrounded by dry soil and space. So much space. The space surges into me, expanding me, making me larger. Now, in Devon, hill-constricted, pandemic weary, and westcountry weather dreary, I seek out Zambian films and photos, breathe them in, close my eyes. As I type this, a photo memory flashes up on screen, of four years ago, when I was in Kenya. A comment from a friend there had said, “welcome home, Elizabeth”. And suddenly, I feel homesick for a land that is not my home. But migratory birds know multiple places - do they know them all as ‘home’? In Zambia and in Devon at different times of the year, I see Nightjars – mysterious, bark-disguised birds. Do they see me? Am I part of home for them, in both places?
My first time in Zambia, the time that I jumped off the bridge, came about because 20 years ago, I’d gone to University to study medicine. I wanted to be a Doctor. Or rather, I had decided to be a Doctor. I did well at science in school, I liked people, it seemed a clear choice, a sensible choice, the only choice. Caged up, I soon joined the ‘wilderness medicine’ society, and would inexplicably dream of ranches in big landscapes. I went camping when I could. I was seeking escape and expanse, not control. I jumped at the chance to volunteer medical skills in Zambia two years into my degree. That first trip was when I found the hippo’s tooth, when I was given the Nyami Nyami, was when, near the end of the trip, surrounded by night, the Milky Way unrolled like a pathway across the sky, inviting me somewhere I could not yet see. The old prophet says, “Stand in the crossroads and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls.”
The old way, the good way, felt like the unknown way. I asked, and walked in it, and stopped doing medicine, and started to hear and follow my (were they mine?) instincts. I worked with charities, ran a charity, travelled, lived abroad, basked in not knowing, found rest in my soul for a time. The path took me deep. Recently, I’ve had a sense of being in water that’s slowing winding around a plug hole, round and round, circling for a long time. And now, the water’s picking up speed, circling faster, whooshing, getting closer to the centre, unable to escape the pull of momentum. I do not know what comes next, but I know it’s deeper still.
Water and soil bring life, but they can bring destruction too. In Japan, after the 2011 tsunami, I saw the impact of too much water; kilometres of homes and community flattened. And soil, when not properly nurtured – when it becomes tired from chemicals and productivity – withdraws life from the things we try to grow. How to respect the life that water and soil can give or take away? How to listen and let their forces shape us rather than destroy us, so we become like smooth rocks perfectly fitted to the world? Soil forms, water flows, gravity pulls, soul calls. When you feel it pull, make sure you’re strapped in.
The world I have known – international development – needs a rethink. Local politics, a world I currently inhabit, needs a rethink too. These are worlds full of fear and control, of misunderstanding and othering. Rethink is too tame a word. These worlds need re-shaping, re-imagining; they need excavating from beneath layers of tradition and appearance and jargon and lifelessness. I want to help do this, but I couldn’t without first being found and shaped myself, by red lands and the people in them. And the thing with forces and erosion, with being shaped, is that it never stops, until the thing being eroded finally trades its own shape, via a billion pieces of itself, to join the shape of all things.