The Zimbabwe Hill

“You know your trouble, Fred, you don’t listen” said Geraldine, as I returned from the local shop with what apparently was the wrong flour. I mean, there were at least four different types – isn’t flour….just flour?

I did think about mentioning that no-one is perfect and considered reminding her of the time she, due to colour blindness, made a rhubarb tart from celery but it didn’t seem likely to cut much ice. Best just leave it.

It took me back a bit to when I was a young geologist and finished up working in a remote part of western Zimbabwe, just after independence in the early 1980’s. We were lucky that the client was a major international company, meaning that the camp was really luxurious and based near a small operation that was staffed by government officials eliminating tsetse fly that caused trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, thankfully shortened to trips, that affects human and cattle. I know a few teenagers that may have it. The village, called Lusulu, had a few houses, offices and an airstrip (more of that in a later blog) and, crucially, a rondavel with a bar, freezers (cold beer) and a dart board.

The pub at Lusulu

Binga, on Lake Kariba

Led by the Senior Tsetse Field Officer, Dick, the small team of guys plus us geo’s did what comes naturally and gathered in the evenings for a few jars and some exercise in the form of darts, listening to the drums of nearby villages conversing with each other. One day, I wasn’t busy and Dick said he had to go to Binga, on Lake Kariba, to meet the District Commissioner and would I like to come?

Sartorial elegance in Zim

Next day, off we went in Dick’s ancient Series 2 Land Rover, both dressed in the de rigueur kit for formal occasions in Zim of short sleeved shirt, shorts with a belt and long socks and shoes. It’s nearly 100km to Binga, through some spectacularly remote bush but that’s about 100km further than Dick’s Land Rover usually goes. It’s usual trip was 100 yards from his house to the office, stopping at the pub on the way home.

There was a large barrel on water on the back of the Landy which I soon realised got us up the steep hills, by stopping regularly to throw it on the plainly-inadequate radiator – and it wasn’t even a very hot day, as it was winter.

Anyway, we got to Binga about a year later and we went to the DC’s office, which looks over the lake and the village. Dick said “Right, I’ll be an hour with the DC, so take the Landy and look around, after that we’ll have lunch at the hotel and head back”. He muttered something else but I wasn’t really listening as I contemplated driving the mobile scrap yard, but I jumped in the driving seat as the team leader, who’d been on the back, slipped apprehensively in the seat next to me.

It started, huzza, so off we went down the steep hill to the lake, with a sharp bend at the bottom to the hotel and crocodile farm at the end. Halfway down the hill, I applied the brakes, or, more accurately, I pushed the brake pedal, but it had all the effect of firing a catapult at a jumbo jet. The team leader looked at me, with eyes bigger that I thought possible, and said “pump, pump”. I pumped the pedal like a bloke with an uncontrollable nervous tic and eventually the Landy slowed at about the rate of the Titanic, and, with the bald tyres scrabbling for grip, we made it around the corner.

Arriving back to collect Dick, I mentioned the brakes were a tad dodgy and he said he must bleed them and he said he had mentioned “they need a bit of a pump” but maybe I wasn’t listening? Anyway, we had a nice lunch and we headed home, collecting the bits of the Landy on the way that had fallen off on the morning trip.

Zimbabwe seemed a long way away on a recent walk on the moor although it was unbelievably hot. Napoleon feels the heat terribly, as a black dog, so I stayed close to the infant De Lank river so he can dip in and out. The moor looks splendid in late summer but the first signs of autumn are unmistakable and I looked at the heather flowers which found protection in the middle of the spiky gorse bushes.

In the Pennines, where after the 12th of August the grouse are ducking and diving, much of the moor is controversially burnt off to promote the growth of heather shoots for the young grouse, but Bodmin remains unmolested and natural.

Heather blooms surrounded by protective gorse

I looked up from the floral display and was amazed to see a medium sized falcon, shaped like a large swift or sickle, traverse right in front of me – an adult Hobby. I watched transfixed as it flew up the valley, the slate grey back and black primary feathers clearly visible. What a treat. The Latin genus name, Falco, originates from the Latin word for sickle. It is such an adept flyer it has been reported to catch Swallows and Swifts, but dragonflies and other insects are more common. This was almost certainly a migrating bird but what a lovely thing to see.

A Hobby in flight

All around, there are the signs of the season beginning to change. A flock of Goldfinch, beautifully called a Charm, sat on the fence near the old mine workings and they will spend the winter together, with their lovely distinctive tinkling calls.

The great thing about the UK is we have four seasons and they are all distinctive and can be celebrated – summer is drawing to a close!