Rasta has travelled a fair amount in Africa, and loves the company of new friends.
Rasta’s Fireside Story
We’ve been chasing today and only pull off the road as the sun sets. Our spot for the night is a flat rocky clearing in the bush land. As the camp sets up, Papa King pulls up his camp chair and kicks off his sandals.
“Hey you guys, come say ‘hello’ to Rock”. His toes wiggle over the granite. Most of the group stop activity and move to stroke the hard surface with their bare soles. “Hello Rock”, in chorus.
“Great to see some rock after all the sand”, the Greybeard remarks. (After all there’s an awful lot of sand on the outside edge of Africa).
“Rock here is just an infant Inselberg”, he advises. All work stops. I am fetched from my dashboard perch and placed on the warm skin of Rock near the camp fire.
I learn that Inselbergs are the mighty granite batholiths that soar from the flat landscape like teats on a sow’s belly in Mozambique’s northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa.
Kingsley continues: “One day Rock will rise above the landscape and become a mighty Inselberg.” He continues, “Hey Rosso, I’ve got an idea.” With a rueful lift of the eyebrow and a sly wink to his Mom this warm and pragmatic chip of Holgate flint sinks to his haunches at his Dad’s knee. Most Kingsley-generated ideas are floated past Ross, some of which are swept aside by a tide of logic, and some of which are carefully laid down in the Ideas Trove to be nurtured and burnished around future camp fires.
“We need to document these things”, King says. “We’ll put together a short expedition. We’ll find a local historian to pick out about twenty Inselbergs with historical significance, and then we’ll go to the top of them. We’ll take a few botanists and insect people to describe what happens up there, and of course we will write down the Inselberg’s stories”. I look at the moss and lichens growing on the fledgling mountain. Looks like moss and lichens to me.
Unflappable Ross says “Hey Pops, how do we get up there?”
“We just need to get someone to lend us a few helicopters or gyrocopters,” is the immediate response. “And a sky caravan or two for supplies. We won’t need the Landies then”. He chuckles, “And Mashozi, we’ll have to limit the white wine – can’t have you falling off an Inselberg.” The tough sun-toasted Englishwoman snorts. She’s used to her mate’s jibes. “What – no Captain Morgan either? We can’t have
YOU falling off an Inselberg. What sort of expedition would that be?”
Just then, the village elder and local schoolmaster enter the firelight. It is time to sort out the logistics of tomorrow’s mosquito net drop. Babu is roped in as interpreter and Kingsley weaves his magic with the local headmen. We’ll be handing out fifty nets to Moms with toddlers or babies at the village school tomorrow. Arrangements made, King sinks back into his chair as the visitors leave.
My mentor and spokesman, Big John, pops up the question that has been worrying me since we met the Expedition on the banks of the Rovuma River a month ago.
“I know your Adventure has covered fifty thousand kilometres around the Outside Edge of Africa, and you’ve dropped a hundred thousand nets, but surely it’s only a fraction of what is needed. Do you think you are making a difference?”
King places a tin mug of that black fizzy stuff with it’s high ranking amber stiffener into Big J’s hand. “Have I told you the story of the starfish?”
“Oh goody - a story”, I think. Kingsley begins his tale.
“There is this old man walking barefooted and shirtless along the beach. He’s alone, but not lonely. Every few steps he bends down and picks up a starfish stranded on the receding tide. He tosses the little fellows into the waves. After a while he is approached by a young man, who banters, “Old timer, there are thousands of starfish on this beach and on many other beaches, I see you saving a few, but do you really think you are making a difference by throwing back just a couple today?”
The old man smiles, bends down with knees creaking and picks up a tiny starfish. As he flips it into the shore break he mutters, “Sure made a difference to that one.”
Big John sits back, humbled.
The warm glow around this extended family (the Greybeard, Mashosi – his wife, Ross – his son, cameraman Bruce and media-liaison Annalie) blankets our group of friends and volunteers. King may be the nucleus that drives the expedition and keeps up the enthusiasm after 400 days on the goat tracks of Africa, but it is this family that provides the warmth and support that make this a wonderful place to be – here, tonight, camping on an Inselberg-to-be. I feel the rock’s warmth on my bum. YES, I know it’s alive and growing.
“Night, night Rock”, I whisper silently.
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