Aidan Hartley is the Spectator's Wild Life columnist.
Colombian jungle The first day I was in Bogota I saw a big yellow bus speeding by, full of old-aged pensioners dancing Salsa. I knew I was going to like Colombia. They say there’s a jungle plant here called burundanga. If somebody spikes your drink with burundanga you lose all free will. You hand over
At first he was coy. ‘Yes my brother,’ Salim the dealer smirked. ‘How many kilos you want?’ It had taken us only a day to find a man in Tanzania who would sell us ivory tusks from poached elephants. We met Salim in a Dar es Salaam hamburger joint and the whole exchange was ridiculously
Malindi, Kenya I’m at Malindi’s Driftwood beach bar, nursing a Tusker beer. I’m gazing at the Indian Ocean. The day was hot: 110 in the shade. Now at dusk, a cool zephyr rises from the sea. The moon climbs. Lateen dhow sails puff towards the fishing grounds. The bar fills with surfers and deep-sea anglers.
Before disembarking at Bulawayo airport I stuffed the book I was reading in the front-seat pocket. It was Peter Godwin’s fine When a Crocodile Eats the Sun. I did not want to be carrying anything that might identify me as a subversive — or a foreign correspondent. Mugabe’s Zanu-PF goons threatened two-year jail sentences for
Laikipia ‘That elephant is almost human,’ my wife Claire said. ‘That,’ I replied, ‘is the problem.’ I called him Stomper. Like people, elephants are sly and voracious. When I bought a farm I became set against elephants. I love big trees. Elephants are to Africa’s fine trees what gales are to England’s oaks. When a
Laikipia ‘Let us go in amongst the cattle and talk,’ said the Councillor Jeremiah. That means a serious matter is to be discussed. It was evening, and the cattle were already in the boma. We went in, and Jeremiah let me know we must prepare for cattle rustling at Christmas. After the worst drought in
Kiwayu Island, Kenya I came on a holiday to unwind and decompress but I have just been handed the bill and so I think I will have that heart attack after all. We are at Mike’s Camp on the desert island of Kiwayu north of Lamu, my favourite place in the world. This is where
Kuala Lumpur I dropped into Malaysia armed with F. Spencer Chapman’s anti-Japanese guerrilla war memoir The Jungle is Neutral and took his words to heart. ‘It is the attitude of mind that determines whether you go under or survive. There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ Chapman survived the jungle’s ‘green
Kenya An image I will never forget is of Ben Freeth’s three little children on the front lawn of their farmhouse west of Harare with Comrade ‘Landmine’ and his gun-toting, drunken gang zooming up the driveway. The ZANU-PF attackers threatened to burn down the house that day if the white farmers did not leave. I
Indian Ocean As a child I wandered Kenya’s north shore beaches. On coral reefs I hunted rare cowries. The Bajunis in their outrigger canoes taught me how to fish. I knew my nudibranchs from my trepangs. Inland it was still mostly wild forest, teeming with birds and elephants that amazingly came down to swim in
Indian Ocean Coast I am woken at dawn by bastardised Australian and Swahili. ‘Wakey wakey hands off snakey,’ says Abo. ‘Comin’ out, malango?’ These are my surfing buddies: Daudi, Tony, James, Bumblebee, Mud Prawn. Surfing should be cool and fashionable. But our average age is 50. We look like vagrants. Abo has gout and walks
Kenya While staying recently on a lonely farm in the Highveld east of Johannesburg, I met a grey parrot that could sing ‘Die Stem’, South Africa’s apartheid-era national anthem. That bird was certainly out of step with the times. We all know that after Mandela’s 1994 election the rainbow nation switched to ‘Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika’.
Zimbabwe ‘Ah, and no cake to offer you!’ Mrs H— said. ‘I would have baked one if only I’d known you were coming.’ It was teatime in Zimbabwe. A golden afternoon sunlight streamed across the shrivelled garden lawn and the mopani woodland beyond. Mr H— chipped in, ‘But of course the telephone is cut off,
Laikipia As our farm manager Celestino Sikuku drove home with two other workers last month a gang of bandits waylaid their vehicle. It was an inside job. Somebody had revealed that the car was carrying the payroll. At the first gunshots Celestino halted the car, slipped the others the cash and urged them to run.
‘Where’s Ajay?’ My producer Ed and I are making a film about India’s coalfields. ‘Ajay is busy.’ I complain, ‘But he’s our fixer. Why isn’t he out fixing things?’ In the world of journalism, a fixer is employed to arrange things on the ground. Paleologue in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop was a fixer. Others get fixers
36,000 feet When I was a teenager on a flight to Nairobi I sat next to a pretty Kenyan girl the same age as me. We got talking. Out of the blue at 36,000 feet she slipped me a scrap of paper on which was scrawled, ‘I LOVE YOU.’ ‘That’s nice,’ I said. I did
Port-au-Prince Haiti seems almost beautiful from the air. Hillsides eroding into the Caribbean like a rained-on sandcastle. Up close I struggle to find redemption. There are cheap rum tots and poor citizens warming up for carnival, but no hope. I want to find black pride in this, once the richest nation in the Antilles. Here
Africa I found the former President of Sierra Leone sitting beneath a mango tree outside Freetown. Valentine Strasser wore ragged shorts and nothing else, not even shoes. Sweat streamed down his face like tears. He sipped palm wine from a dirty plastic mug and since it was still morning he was not yet very drunk.
Aidan Hartley says that Somali piracy is very well-organised and efficient and is opposed publicly only by militant Muslims — who may yet seize power in Mogadishu The ceaseless piracy off Somalia’s shores — another, Singaporean tanker was hijacked last week — is giving rise to a modern, real-life version of the novel Scoop. Evelyn
The Kenyan Highlands The Great Depression hit Kenya hard. European settlers were often as poor as the ordinary Africans they were supposed to lord it over. When commodity prices collapsed there was no money at all. My late father remembered how white farmers survived on a diet of zebra biltong and maize meal. They wore