(E&E)² tales: The summit of Mount Mabu [3/4]

A tremendous cacophony rumbled through the Hospital Rural de Mocuba as a troupe of vervet monkeys rattled across its corrugated iron roof. The village of Mocuba was to be the botanists’ last stop-over, the last outpost of civilization, before they reached the forests of Mount Mabu.

 ‘I’m surprised by how organized everything is. I kind of wasn’t expecting that,’ Alan said, idly scratching at an insect bite.

‘With new funding, is possible,’ Eduardo said. ‘We start our ARV program soon.’

‘ARV?’ Olivia asked.

‘Antiretroviral treatment program,’ Eduardo explained, without elaborating. In northern Mozambique, living with HIV is seemingly as normal as living with pollen allergies in Cape Town. ‘Come, I show you cholera ward. Is new.’ Alan and Olivia followed Eduardo down a long unlit corridor. In the hallway was a little bench on which five women, dressed in colourful skirts and tattered T-shirts, were waiting to be seen by a clinical officer; they passed them in silence. Both botanists were sweating, but the small Portuguese doctor didn’t seem to notice the heat or the humidity at all. They turned into a large room that smelled of fresh paint, containing forty low stretcher beds in neat rows.

‘European Union initiative,’ Eduardo said, gesturing to all the empty beds. ‘Now after the civil war, is possible for Mozambique to prosper. ’ Each stretcher bed had a circular hole cut into the canvas, with a plastic tub positioned underneath it. Alan briefly thought about what the plastic tubs were for, and shuddered. He could tell by the look on Olivia’s face that she had thought about it, too.

‘Seems like you’re ready for the worst,’ she said weakly.

‘We had a big cholera outbreak in the spring. Many hundreds of people were brought here, but is not possible to treat them with drugs. This cholera is resistant to tetracycline antibiotic, you see. Is only possible to give oral rehydration therapy. Then we hope for the best.’ Alan desperately wanted to go outside. The paint fumes were giving him a headache. It was time to leave the village.

‘Dr. Texeira, it’s been a pleasure and an honour to stay with you and meet your family. May you continue to do good work here at the hospital,’ Alan said, shaking Eduardo’s hand.

‘Give my love to Christina. She’s been so kind to us,’ Olivia said.

‘Please, the pleasure has been all ours. Good luck on your little trip. I hope is possible to find the flower, yes?’

Pressure drops. Temperature rises. It was still sunny, but thunderclouds the colour of basalt were piling on the horizon, beyond the plots of cassava and fields of sugarcane. The Land Cruiser was loaded and ready, but Olivia wanted to buy sundried fruit and cashews from the roadside vendors before they left. There were children everywhere: balancing rusted scrap metal on their heads, laughing; chasing chickens; kicking a weathered football around, their toes stained red from the dusty streets. It was so hot. They walked past a crumbling Portuguese church, shot to pieces twenty years ago and never rebuilt. Some houses had roofs of corrugated iron, others were thatched with palm fronds. All had stands of banana and papaya growing by the front door. Alan caught himself wishing for a moment that he could share this with Daniel, that Daniel was with him. A group of girls were washing clothes in the Licungo River. Although Alan had been told stories, he hadn’t actually seen any crocodiles on its banks so far, nor did the girls seem much concerned by the possibility of reptilian predators lurking in the brown water.

The shacks were built right up to the banks of the river, right among the reeds. They would most certainly all be submerged during a flood, he thought. He was right. This is the place where nature wipes the slate clean. This is the place where people start anew, building on yesterday’s tragedy.

 

Image credit: Hospital Rural de Mocuba © Christopher van Belle

(E&E)² tales: The summit of Mount Mabu [2/4]

Olivia squeezed lemon juice over her calamari salad. It was a quiet evening at Arnold’s on Kloof Street, which by Cape Town standards meant the average wait for a table was around 15 minutes.

‘How’s the ostrich?’ she enquired, absently licking a finger.

‘Rather tender,’ Alan responded, still mulling over the expression on Daniel’s face when he’d dropped him off in Observatory on his way over. ‘Although, I’d prefer it more well-done. I never claimed to have a very sophisticated palate.’

‘Apparently, they suspect arson. Too many bushfires at too many locations to just be random. Such a shame. All those grapes. All that wine.’

‘I wonder if it will spread all the way to the Hex River Valley. They have some really excellent vineyards there,’ Alan sighed.

‘Oh, that’s where I grew up!’ Olivia brightened. ‘De Doorns, with the snowy peaks of the Hex River Mountains all around!’

‘Now I understand how you got into botany. There’s a lot of cool stuff that grows there and nowhere else.’

‘And now you understand why I’m totally crazy and you shouldn’t be going on collecting trips with me. My dad always said I had a little bit of The Witch in me,’ Olivia said, bringing a glass to her lips.

‘Witch?’ Alan asked, perplexed.

‘You know. It’s a folktale. The Witch of the Hex River Mountains.’ Olivia squinted at Alan’s apparent ignorance. ‘It’s even got an orchid in it. Surely you must have heard it before. No?’ So the evening progressed with Olivia telling Alan the story as her lips were stained successively darker shades with glass after glass of Pinotage.

 

In the whole of the Hex River Valley, there was no-one as beautiful as Eliza, the only daughter of Jacob Meiring. Charmed suitors came to the Meiring farm from far and wide to court her, but none could win her hand. The truth is that Eliza was too proud. Because of her conceit, countless men left the Meiring farm with empty hands and broken hearts. One day, a young man named Filip appeared. He was different from the rest. He sat upright on his horse. His hands knew what hard work felt like. He had a clear laugh, clear as snowmelt. Eliza knew that this was the man she had been waiting for. But she was still proud, and therefore decided to send Filip on a quest. She said, 'Pick the red disa orchid that only grows on the Matroosberg, the highest peak in the Hex River Mountains. Bring it to me so that I may know you are worthy of my love.' Without a moment's hesitation, Filip set off on his mission, riding upright on his horse towards the gravelly mountain paths. He tied his horse to a wild almond and continued on foot. Filip climbed the steep slopes with a smile, higher and higher. When he thought of Eliza, his laughter was clear, like snowmelt. Filip climbed up the dangerous mountains, his hands cut by the jagged rocks. Then he saw the red disa blooming above him on the sheer cliffs. 'At last. Come, my bride awaits,' he whispered, hugging the rock. But as he reached up and snapped the stem of the orchid, the rock beneath his feet crumbled and he fell to his doom. When Eliza heard of Filip's death, she became delirious. Her father locked her in the attic of the farm house, but to no avail. In her grief she found inhuman strength: one night she broke the shutters from the window and escaped, her despair driving her barefoot up the mountain paths. She was never seen again. Everyone who worked the Meiring farm searched and searched, but the only trace that remained of Eliza was a red shawl, snagged in a wild almond at the foot of the Matroosberg. Not long after, the people of the valley started talking, as people do. 'Her beauty bewitched a young man. Her pride cost a young man his life,' they said. 'The witch got what she deserved,' they agreed. 'Her soul will have no rest as she searches for her Filip, even though she will never find him.' Even today, whenever the wind howls around the peaks of the Hex River Mountains, it does so in the anguished wail of a witch. And when the moon glimmers on the first snows of winter, they say that Eliza Meiring walks the mountain paths of the Hex River Valley.

 

Image credit: Hex River Valley © Mike

(E&E)² tales: The summit of Mount Mabu [1/4]

Alan awoke to find his pillowcase covered in blood. Harsh mid-morning sun streamed in through the window. Daniel must have opened the blinds before he left for work.

Alan tightened his grip on the toothbrush as he calculated that this was his fourth nocturnal nosebleed of the year. The first quarter at UCT was still six weeks away. He rinsed the razor under the tap as the reporter on 567 CapeTalk mentioned that Sir Lowry’s Pass was closed to all tourist traffic because of choking smoke. There were fires everywhere. From the historic Vergelegen wine estate in Somerset West to the township of Khayelitsha out on The Flats, it seemed that the whole peninsula would eventually succumb to the blaze. The hot and windy weather was set to continue all through January.

Using the wipers, Alan removed a fine layer of ash that had accumulated on his windshield, before driving up to Kirstenbosch. Table Mountain looked much like it always did, but there was something weird about the light today, as if everything was observed through a layer of insipid tea.

 

The modest 1930s architecture of the Compton Herbarium hugged the lower terraces of Kirstenbosch. It held almost a million specimens in its collection, mostly of South African plants, but also a few important species from other parts of the world.

‘Dr. Schroder,’ Alan repeated to the young woman at the front desk. ‘I have an appointment with Dr. Kennon at ten-thirty.’

‘Ooh… okay,’ she said eventually, lifting the receiver. ‘I’ll check to see if she’s in. Please sign the visitor’s book and have a seat.’ The girl seemed really young and a tad overanxious. Must be a first year student on a summer internship, he thought to himself. They always end up spending most of it indoors, making copies and manning the front desk.

‘Alan, after all the emails it’s great to finally get a chance to talk in person.’ Olivia Kennon appeared in the doorway. ‘Although, I have actually heard you speak, at that sustainable development conference in Johannesburg last year.’

‘I hope that didn’t bore you too much. I tend to go off on tangents at times.’

‘No-no, on the contrary, the tangents were a welcome break from all those boring talks on carbon credits and environmental policy. Please.’ Olivia showed Alan to a small conference table in the library, which smelled of crumbling monographs and ozone from the photocopier.

They started drawing up equipment lists and designing an itinerary. It was an impromptu thing, this fieldtrip, hardly more than a month or so in the planning.

‘So the main thing I want to do when we get to the site is to collect DNA samples and herbarium material of Polystachya songaniensis.’

‘That’s a terrestrial orchid, isn’t it?’ interrupted Alan.

‘Yes,’ continued Olivia. ‘Now, it’s known from Malawian accessions, but has never been reported from Mozambique at all. I believe that genetic analysis of this little orchid would provide me with supporting evidence that all of the isolated islands of Afromontane forest used to be connected in one large megaforest that pretty much covered all of south-eastern Africa.’

‘That is, until the climate changed and all the species had to seek refuge on the cool, wet mountaintops.’

‘Exactly.’ Olivia was thrilled that Alan saw the connection. ‘Oh, and I also promised a colleague in Pretoria I’d collect some lichens for him. He’s quite excited.’

‘I’m just excited to get out there. Ever since those Darwin Initiative guys from Kew discovered it, I’ve been dying to go and do a proper census of all the caudiciform succulents, perhaps with a slight emphasis on the Euphorbiaceae.’ Alan grinned.

‘Should have known you’d be interested in all that weird stuff.’ They tried to stifle their academic chuckles in the quiet of the library. ‘Are you going to involve any of your students?’

‘No, it’s too short notice, really.’ Alan paused. ‘You realize we might get several papers out of this,’ he said, imagining the grants pouring in.

For more than two hours, the botanists talked excitedly, bouncing around ideas, debating dubious taxonomy, arguing about GPS receivers and the merits of different malaria prophylactics. Then, Olivia looked at her watch and said, ‘Well, Dr. Schroder, I am glad we had this opportunity to discuss our expedition. Unfortunately, I have a series of afternoon meetings I need to attend.’

‘That’s always how it goes at the start of the year, I guess,’ Alan said, getting up from the table. ‘I suppose I should get to campus. I’m lecturing a second year course in plant diversity and I still need to draw up some sort of study guide.’

‘Why don’t we continue this tomorrow over dinner?’ Olivia suggested. Alan found himself strangely attracted to Olivia, on a cerebral level. They shared an intellectual connection, something Alan felt had been lacking in his life lately. No matter how much Daniel seemed to care about him, he never did laugh at Alan’s science jokes.

 

Image credit: Cape Town Fire © Web Design Cape Town

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