by Barry Saich
Shortlisted: PureTravel Writing Competition 2025
The Fear and the Beauty (A Surveyor in Africa)
The flood waters of the Zambezi River rose, slowly cutting off valleys and forming new islands as construction of a dam wall some 300km downstream of the Victoria Falls neared completion. It would provide a substantial source of Hydro Electric power for the country and in so doing become the largest man made lake in the world for its day. Lake Kariba, on the borders of Northern and Southern Rhodesia taking several years to fill, lay nearly 40km wide and stretching back along the Zambezi Valley for 250km.
As the levels rose higher, a myriad of wildlife became stranded on these newly formed islands and trapped along gullies and ravines. Snakes clung to disappearing trees and antelope huddled together in frightened herds watching the water creep closer. Then an army of Park Rangers and volunteers came to their rescue in a well-orchestrated mission called “Operation Noah”, the biggest wildlife rescue and relocation program ever attempted.
It was a hard won success and all manner of fauna from the smallest snakes and reptiles to great herds of African elephant were moved to the foothills of the Zambezi Valley beyond the encroaching lake.
As a young boy, growing up in Rhodesia, it fired my imagination to watch the footage of the rescue and it became my dream to one day work in the bush and be among its wildlife.
Many years later, the country was now called Zimbabwe, and I, a land surveyor with my wife running our own practice out of Harare, would at times find ourselves deep in the savannah, walking through the tall swaying elephant grass surrounded by the sounds and smells of Africa.
On one of these field trips, I was engaged by a farmer to survey his dam in order to determine its volume for next year’s irrigation of his tobacco and wheat fields. The dam was located in a particularly wild spot, far from his cottage and surrounded by dense woodland forests. The waters of the dam were extensive and completely covered in a floating purple weed about 3 inches deep. Underneath this carpet, the waters were cool and pure with the blackness of velvet.
We began the survey by running a series of lines across the dam in a small boat called “Survey One”. Along each line I read off the depths from the echo sounder and logged them while Never, my African assistant, steered the boat using a small electric outboard motor.
As Never and I gently drifted towards the shore to begin running the next line of soundings, my other more excitable assistant, Chris, began waving wildly at us from the forest edge…..”Nyorka, nyorka…this big !!” He then made a wide gesture with his hands describing a snake a good foot wide coming our way.
Looking a little confused, Never and I stared out over the floating carpet of weeds but saw nothing.
Then like a surfacing periscope, an enormous python rose out of the weeds, effortlessly glided to the side of our boat. Its magnificent head and neck was well above the sides of the boat. It looked first at Never, then turned and stared directly at me, then leaned forward and peered down into the bottom of the boat. Its eyes roving our survey gear, searching for anything of interest, such as a stray mouse that may have stowed away on board. Sitting there spell bound and speechless, we just watched, not moving, not breathing. Then this beautiful and truly majestic animal, having decided there was nothing more of interest between either of us or in the boat leaned back, dipped under the purple mass and swam off, occasionally rising again like the infamous Loch Ness creature to navigate its way as it continued across the dam.
Rather than continue with the survey for the moment, we moved closer to the shore and waded in to where Chris was still standing. There we observed a muddy, flattened path at the water’s edge that the python had taken when startled by Chris’s approach. Its trail was indeed a good foot wide !
As large and powerful, yet as gentle as the python was, it was a beautiful if not a little fearsome experience when we both connected so intimately with it.
The remainder of the survey was completed without any further incidents and I was able to calculate the volume of the dam for the farmer and assure him he had more than enough water for the upcoming season.
That brief and magical encounter with the ‘creature of the deep’ left a lasting memory and once again recalled Operation Noah and my dream to work in the bush.
Other encounters would not always to be so special…one in particular entailed finding myself trapped amongst masses of thick yellow webs strung from tree to tree filled with thousands of Yellow Orb spiders. This happened while undertaking a river survey in the summer rain season when spiders of all sorts were abundant. My escape left me covered in the sticky yellow webbing with a few crawling over my head, back and shoulders. But let’s not dwell on that one, I still have nightmares about it and now carry a big stick, called my ‘spider stick’ whenever in the bush !!
Photo by Sean Peter on Unsplash
