Quite by accident last night I was taken back to events fifty years ago. These events played out at Kwafala Rapids Camp in the Kafue National Park on the Kafue River a tributary of the mighty Zambezi River. An innocent question about fishing led me back to the river. On one day I went out fishing with a guide / ranger near a reed bed half a kilometre away. He was fully grown and I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. We caught five pike and two bream {perch}. We rowed back to camp and had fish fresh from the river cooked in foil and butter on the braai. The next day I watched him pulled under the water a couple of metres from me by a crocodile.
Based on our success three adult rangers and three children went lure fishing the following day. I was the eldest, there was my sister and a fellow child staying in the camp. We rowed out towards the reed bed and a hippopotamus came up under the boat dumping us all in the river and capsizing. One of the guides could not swim and he tried to grab hold of me. I swam away. I had a bronze medal water life-saving award. He drowned and floated off in the current downstream. The remaining two rangers tried to right the boat but the breeze block anchor prevented it. I got struck on the head by the boat refusing to be righted. I swam to a nearby island and the other two children followed me. Soon the two guides also followed. The one who followed my path to the island was taken down by a crocodile. Thrashing, screaming, more thrashing and silence. The remaining guide, Richard, was in shock. I made him get moving and we headed back cross the islands to within hailing distance of the camp, the other side of the rapids. Getting back into the water after what we witnessed was not easy. We waded and swam between islands for several hundred metres to get near camp. I don’t think the other children really understood. I did. When we hailed camp, the dead by crocodile guide’s wife began her mourning ululation as the tropical dusk fell like a portcullis. It is a sound impossible to forget. We were stranded wet in darkness on a small island in the middle of an African game park, where there were hippos and crocs.
My father drove through the night and came back several hours later with a kayak canoe from another camp. He and the other boy’s father navigated by lamp and our shouts to where we were. They had a gun, blankets and food. At dawn we paddled back to camp.
On the way out of the park I had to write my statement to the police because the policeman was illiterate. I feared I would be in trouble for not saving the drowning man. I carried guilt. I could have done better. I could have saved him. I could not rely on adults. A few weeks later I was back for autumn term in a genteel English preparatory school in Gloucestershire. My behaviour in school was poor and I was in trouble a lot. I had seen things none of my classmates had.
Nobody could see this in me. I looked normal and seemed to fit in, eventually. Retrospect suggests that I met most of the DSM-5 criteria for delayed onset PTSD. I nearly had a heart attack when I was followed by a tiny fish swimming in the Mediterranean in Southern Italy. Years later I went into “tachycardia” during a night dive off Sharm El Sheikh. I self-medicated, I exhibited risky behaviour, I was hypervigilant anxious, I had a suicidal ideation, I was volatile. I was detached and observational and struggled to have friendships.
I think to myself what lies ahead for all those poor souls in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. I had a mere “tickle” of trauma. It played a big part in my life. What is stored in that vast endless well of trauma caused by all the vicious brutality? Millions or what is left of millions carry things, things seen and now unforgettable. They will be as deeply scarred as their countries. The burden of human inflicted trauma is severe, deep and unyielding.
Last night I had a dream with some of the N floor crew from UMIST. A place and a time where the memories are generally fond. Back then life had not gotten overly complex. The ghost of Kafue was perhaps still in its coffin. Buried perhaps by activity and self-medication. I did not tell them of the Kafue.
It is one of those things, by no means unique or special, the effect of which you cannot convey. All of us have marks and scars. A fact we tend to forget in our interactions, which can be insensitive and abrupt.
It never occurred to me to tell my various therapists about the crocodiles and the river. They never asked. It was easier to reach for the Prozac.
This speaks for the quick and the convenient, the preferred modus operandi of our times. Scratch the surface and put on a plaster. Next…
It is my belief that sooner rather than later humanity is going to have to look in a more profound way at the so-called mental health crisis. The malaise is deeper, mind after mind is rejecting the way society goes through the motions of life and living.
The time is not yet, but it is soon.
Dreamyoga 