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There is power in the ground and in the sky.
The Zulus dance for rain, not here, but a thousand miles away.
The dusty ground cries out for water.
The dancers are calling on a great force that comes to life on the other
side of the continent.
The power on which they call is the Zambezi.
The mighty African river that is the force of life.
The story begins with a clap of thunder over the highlands of Zambia
near its borders with Angola and Zaire.
These herds too are thirsty, but the dry season is coming to an end.
The thunder makes the wildebeest restless.
This storm will see the rebirth of the power of the mighty Zambezi.
The river rises in the northwest corner of Zambia in the highlands of
south central Africa.
From here, it follows a long southerly route through Zambia to the Victoria
Falls in Zimbabwe.
All along its course, it is a force for life and for death.
Its birth is a quiet affair.
The rains form muddy rivulets that gather almost surreptitiously into
streams and finally into a river.
The recently stable landscape becomes a shifting setting for small dramas.
A chameleon's grip is secure, but the same cannot be said for the branches
it stands on in these turbulent times.
It sets off on a voyage into the unknown on a river that will dominate
the lives of those that live along its banks.
Streambeds that have long been dry will soon be transformed by the rains
into roaring torrents.
The long awaited water will bring life to most along its banks.
But to some as its power grows, it will bring death.
It carries with it silt from the uplands which will enrich the lowland
soils.
But it picks up other cargo along the way.
A wildebeest has paid the price of one clumsy panic stricken leap.
The vultures miss nothing from their vantage point in the sky.
But they will have to wait.
There are other eyes in the water.
The rains will feed the lowland pastures, but before that they will
feed the crocodiles.
The wildebeest carcass is vanishing before their eyes, but still the
vultures must wait.
Only when the last crocodile is sated, will they get their turn.
The bobbing carcass still bears enough meat to feed a squabbling assembly of
Africa's undertakers.
But soon even the vultures are finished with it.
The river will take the rest while they soar over the landscape looking
for their next meal.
Below them, the river winds on, down through the highlands whose hills it
has carved over the centuries.
The floods have died down now leaving their casualties on the riverbanks.
The carcasses of drowned trees will provide shelter for the river's
smaller inhabitants.
Here in western Zambia where eddies form quite pools, small fish find the
place to rear their young under the storm scared banks.
They're members of the cichlid family, known as mouth brooders because of
their unique way of protecting their babies.
The father carries his young in his mouth, releasing them only when he
feels safe.
Suddenly he does not feel safe anymore.
Suddenly he does not feel safe anymore.
The hideous jaws belong to the tiger fish, a fierce predator.
The cichlid father hastily gathers his brood into the safety of his own mouth
to keep them from the mouth of the tiger.
On a small scale, the tiger fish is among the fiercest predators in the
river.
The chameleon is too big for the little fish, but there are plenty of
crocodiles about and for young ones, a chameleon makes a convenient snack.
The chameleon's sharp hooked claws are not adapted for swimming, they are for
climbing on plants.
But out here, there are no plants.
The river of life provides an escape route for the time being.
With the crocodile watching, the chameleon dare not make a sudden move.
Finally, the crocodile lose his interest.
Chameleons may not be adapted to life in water, but hippos most certainly
are.
Ears, eyes and nostrils are all perfectly designed for endless days of
bathing under the African sun.
They live and there are thousands along the deeper parts of the river.
The only thing they don't seem to be adapted for is life in such crowded
groups.
Hippos spent most of their day dozing and the rest of the time, disagreeing
with each other.
As the current in the river slows down, the tide of life begins to flow
more strongly on its banks.
Male water bucks spar together, fighting for status, ready for the
mating season.
Both are too well-armed for anything more than a little light fencing.
Reedbuck is similarly engaged and equally cautious about accidentally
injuring their opponent.
If this is intended to impress a watching doe, it's not very
successful.
The doe is at least paying attention to the surroundings and with good
cause.
There is enough meat on the hoof on this riverbank to keep a lioness and
her litter well fed throughout the coming dry season.
But the antelope are well aware of the risks they take when they come to
drink.
The reedbuck have made their escape, but there are other drinkers at the
water's edge.
The lioness has three cubs to feed and she needs meat for them.
Now that they are weaned, she must hunt for four.
But today the weather is hot and the buck are weary.
The cubs will have to go hungry.
The lioness has a difficult time when her cubs are this age.
They are too young to hunt, but they are active and curious, liable to
disturb her quarry in her efforts to join in the chase.
But today, there will be no more hunting.
A bigger disturbance than three small cubs has just arrived at the
riverbank.
Unlike the antelope, elephants have no need to feel nervous when they make
their daily visit to water.
The predators simply back away, knowing that there is nothing for them
here.
The lioness will lead her cubs into a shaded place where they can wait until
night fall and better chances to hunt.
Along the riverbanks, the elephants can find plenty of food even in the
dry season.
Trees here plunge their roots deep into the ground, so that even when the
river is running low, they can reach its life giving water.
The baby of the family is not particularly hungry or thirsty, such
is the plenty in this part of the river.
He is content to watch his elders.
One female carries out a little do it yourself dentistry on a sore gum.
The youngster learns by everything he sees, perhaps he will need the same
remedy in years to come.
Grass is a seasonal food stuff here.
When the dry season takes over, it will be in short supply.
The adults make hay before the sun shines too strongly and the young ones
follow suit.
The river attracts other drinkers.
Warthogs are the preferred prey of a number of large predators, but they
come to the riverside apparently without a care in the world.
The young elephant is not quite sure what to make of them.
The adults have seen it all before.
At this time of day with the lions asleep in the shade, the riverbank is
a peaceful place.
The cool damp grass is a refreshing midday snack for elephants and
warthogs alike.
But other animals are feeding in the river itself.
The African fish eagle is a graceful and powerful hunter found all over the
continent.
Its swooping flight and unerring aim make it the emblem of these waterways,
it's plaintive call, the voice of wild Africa.
Even while it is feeding high in the trees beside the river, it watches the
water for its next meal.
All along the Zambezi and on lakes and large water holes all over Africa,
fish eagles have carried out their precision raids since long before
there were human eyes to admire them.
Now the
Zambezi has become a calm meandering stream, winding its way
through the endless reed beds and papyrus of west central Zambia through
the lowland swamps.
Here it is the source and support of all life.
Among the tall papyrus, the local people make the most of the river's
generosity.
The passing fisher folk are watched calmly by the greatest fisherman in
Africa.
But the river is not all generosity.
Jaws lurk along its banks.
In this trackless maze of reeds, it is as well to know exactly where one is
going and how to get home again and who the neighbors are.
There's enough fish here to satisfy the crocodiles, so they rarely worry
the people.
And a wandering python is more likely to be eaten by a crocodile than to
trouble the boys in their canoe.
Familiarity breeds not contempt, but ease in surroundings that would seem
forbidding to an outsider.
Something has disturbed the squacco heron, a heavy rustling in the reeds,
but the boys know what makes that noise.
The people here live not only among the reeds, but in them.
Their houses are fetched with them, cut from among the endless reed beds.
The reed is strong and light and waterproof if they are properly
selected and set up and they're free.
The
Lozi people have been living here since about 1600, when they left their
former home in Angola to settle among the swamps.
Here the living is easy in a gentle climate.
The broad Zambezi is their highway, their larder and their building supply
store as well.
They're not alone of course.
All around them, animals have also made use of this generous home,
feeding and making their homes under the enormous lowland skies.
Chief among them not surprisingly are fish eating birds.
The swamp is home to countless egrets and cormorant nesting in the reeds and
fishing in the river.
No one has ever tried to workout how much fish they eat.
Some live and breed here, while others come from far and wide on seasonal
migrations.
The river can supply them all and to spare.
As the expectant army of egrets waits on the bank, the river teems and
swirls with fish.
Catfish ride through the debris on the bottom and splash on the surface.
Cormorants are quick to pick off the younger smaller fish.
Catfish feed on the bottom, feeling for their prey with the whiskers that
give them their name or come to the surface to catch insects when they
often find an egret waiting.
As their huge yellow eyes suggest, stone-curlews are mainly nocturnal.
By day they stand dreamily about on the riverbank, as if they were
watching the egrets fishing.
Boys from the nearby village disturb the birds, but not for long.
All are equally members of the vast local ecosystem, dependant on the
river for all that they need.
The force of life here in the huge swamp stretching far south to the
Okavango delta is slow and gentle offering a rich and peaceful life to
all its inhabitants.
It will not always be this quiet.
The river has a violent future, not far downstream.
Here though, hippos still have a peaceful life.
They maybe built like wrestlers, but underwater they become ballerinas,
weightless in their home element.
All animals are specialized for their own way of living, from the burly
hippo to the elegant fish eagle, but some are specialized in unexpected
ways.
The little reed cormorant is like any other cormorant, but for one thing.
Because of its life among the reeds, it needs to be able to perch better
than others of its kind.
It has long flexible toes to adapt it to its reedy home.
The riverbanks are the watering place for the animal with the worst
reputation for violence in the whole of Africa.
Cape buffalo have been feared ever since white hunters first came to the
continent.
They might look rather like large cattle, but they are fiercely
defensive of their young and very dangerous when cornered.
An anonymous French author said long ago, "This is a very vicious animal.
If you attack it, it defends itself."
While they drink, the buffalo need to keep their eyes open.
The river is home to some of Africa's largest crocodiles which would be
quite capable of dragging an unwary buffalo into the water by its snout.
They do not stay around when a crocodile is near.
Without the element of surprise, the crocodile is harmless.
But the buffalo are taking no chances.
They have only one real enemy in the African bush.
Lions regularly take their calves.
When the two species meet, the hunger on the lion's face is matched by the
mute hostility on the buffalos.
The lion yawns in frustration, but it watches for a chance to attack.
The buffalo seems to be waiting for it to try.
All cats signal frustration by waving their tails.
The lion is no exception.
Cats have another thing in common.
When they're thwarted, they pretend they weren't really interested anyway.
As the herd makes its way from the river, it's very close to permanent
human settlements.
But the buffalo are no threat to the inhabitants.
They give them a wide berth.
The country here in central Zambia is open wooded savannah with wide
clearings dotted with acacia trees, good for agriculture where it is
watered by the river.
The people keep goats and grow crops in the clearings, but they have very
little impact on the wildlife.
Near one of the favorite watering places, the colony of carmine
bee-eaters have set up home.
The birds ignore the comings and goings around them.
They've become familiar with people and their domestic animals down the
centuries.
To the bee-eaters, people are no more of a threat than buffalo.
They carry on their urgent business under the very feet of the locals,
digging up nesting tunnels in the bank of the river.
Onlookers are likely to get a face full of sand.
As one woman comes to the bank, the birds fly out in a dense swarm.
But this has nothing to do with her movements.
Bee-eaters perform these mock panic flights even when they don't know any
one is there.
It might be to reassure them that the colony is not too crowded.
They soon return from their mass exodus.
The carmine bee-eater in other parts of Africa is a migrant moving from the
cooler northern and southern extremes of the continent to warmer parts where
it breeds.
But it lives in Zambia all year round, breeding between September and
November.
At this time of year, it's joined by a rarer relation, the white fronted
bee-eater which also shows no fear of people.
In fact, all the birds are content to use the bundles of reeds as perches
and to search them for any insects that might have sought shelter inside.
As the people work around them, the birds have an occasional aerial
census, if that's what their apparent panic attacks are really for.
The mighty Zambezi is at its most drowsy now forming oxbow lakes as it
meanders lazily between the reed beds.
The people who live here were not always river dwellers.
They're descended from Bushmen who fled here in the 18th and 19th
centuries to escape men who captured them and sold them into slavery.
The descendants of those men are dancing now far down stream for rain.
The Zulus were always a war like tribe, dominating those around them
with their ferocity and aggression.
For the peaceable Bushmen, there was no alternative, but to seek refuge in
the deep bush along the banks of what became to them the river of life.
The Zambezi waters the dry savannah along a broad sway on both banks.
A band of plenty wines across the plain, at its heart the silver ribbon
that is the river.
For the river people as for their neighbors upstream, the Zambezi is
highway and larder, well and washhouse.
Like Ratty in Wind in the Willows, they live by and on and often in the
river.
The river is their source of building materials too.
Its tall reeds are ideal for fencing and for the walls and roofs of houses
in this gentle climate.
The villagers have friendly neighbors in the bush.
Vervet monkey that have become tame and trusting, though often somewhat
light fingered when there's food about.
The houses are well built and monkey proof, but the open village square is
too inviting to ignore.
Beside an empty box with a very apt logo, the monkeys forage for scraps in
the heart of the village.
For the small boys, they're a constant source of affectionate amusement.
Safe with its price in the trees high above the village, the monkey can feed
at leisure, while the boys play below.
Their dance is strangely similar to that of the Zulus, once the scourge of
their lives, but now far away and no longer a threat.
Down by the river, while their mothers wash the dishes, the children go
fishing.
The fish here are small, but enough of them will make a nourishing meal.
The abundance of the river enables the whole family to play a part in village
life.
As evening approaches, the children play while their mothers prepare the
evening meal.
The men and the older boys will soon be home from their day on the river.
Under the watchful eyes of the vervet monkeys, another quiet day draws to a
close.
The river is bigger and bolder now, tree lined and more powerful when it
round its slow length through the reed beds.
Here another population of hippos find a perfect home in the clearer
shallows.
They glide as if weightless through the water, tiptoeing delicately along
followed by a cloud of fine silt.
Their life is quiet and restful here.
Where the river is wider and they have more space, there seems to be less
conflict among the fleshy irritable giants than there was further
upstream.
The river is their life.
They go ashore only at night to graze on the lush grass along the banks.
They glide about underwater not in search of food, but looking for relief
from the sun.
In spite of living in some of Africa's hottest climates, hippos are martyrs
to sunburn.
Further downstream, the vervet monkeys are much wilder than those that live
in the village.
Unaccustomed to people, they have to find their own living among the trees
without the benefits of scraps of human food.
They spend almost their whole time high above the ground, only rarely
venturing down to drink and occasionally to socialize on the
riverbank.
For them, the ground is not a regular source of food, but often the place of
danger.
While the young monkeys play, their parents keep a close eye on them and
watch for danger.
Even fallen trees close to the ground are more secure than the open
riverbank.
They offer a ladder to safety out of reach of predators.
The monkeys are really at ease only when they are high in the trees.
Even here, they take it in turn to act as look out while the others feed.
They don't need to go to the ground even to find water.
Cracks and clefts in large branches often contain a few drops to drink
even if they have to be winkled out with the monkey's long fingers.
They watch each other all the time to see what food there is or where others
have found water.
The trees, not the river are their highway.
Among all their busy activity, at least one pair of eyes is always open
to the approach of danger.
When it appears, the response is immediate.
The python is no direct threat to the monkeys, but all snakes are potential
enemies to all primates and the fear of them is instinctive.
Reason doesn't come into it, for monkeys anymore than for most humans.
When the snake crawls back into the grass the panic is over, and silence
returns to the tall trees.
The river broadens out a little further along its course to form white
marshes where Lechwe are at home.
With their broadly spread hooves, they don't sink into the muddy ground, but
seem to float over it without getting bogged down.
Elephants, in spite of their great weight also have very wide feet, so
that they too can walk safely in this treacherous terrain.
Where the ground is drier and an elephant can stroll unhindered through
the grass, the vibration of its heavy tread awakes another of the area's
residents.
Lions find it difficult to hunt on the marshy ground.
But because of the large numbers of animals attracted by the abundant
water and lush grazing, they're always in evidence.
They wait for animals on their way to and from the river, but not for
elephant.
The lioness finds a fresh patch of shade to wait for a cooler time of
day.
Loving water as they do, elephants find this part of the great river
valley an ideal place to live.
They gather in their family parties at favorite drinking and bathing places.
Total immersion is the favorite form of bathing here in the river.
The elephants show total enjoyment, too.
This is elephant heaven, water cool and sweet and wide.
Their bath over, the family moves off into the grasslands to find something
to eat.
But the great river's idyll is about to come to an abrupt, if temporary
end.
The cataclysm begins innocently enough as the river is split by shoals of
little islands in midstream.
Here, as in the highlands where it was born, it's not sweeping aside sand and
mud, but eating away at rock.
Each island diverts the flow a little, challenging the river to wear it down.
The channels flow faster as the river is constricted between the islands.
Water flowing at this speed has enormous power.
It erodes the rock over the centuries carving a channel through the softer
strata and leaving the harder layers standing proud.
The Zambezi has eaten away at the edge of the plateau as it dives more than
300 feet into the gorge below.
This is the Victoria Falls, the largest waterfall on earth.
Even in the dry season in November and December, it carries more than 7,000
cubic feet per minute.
In times of flood, it can exceed 24 million.
In the local language, it's called Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that
thunders.
The plume of spray can be seen and heard from miles away.
The falls are nearly 6,000 feet wide, but in places, the chasm into which
they plunge is less than 200 feet across.
The first European to see the falls in 1855 was the Briton, whose name
becomes synonymous with African exploration in the 19th century, David
Livingston.
He named them after the queen of England at the time.
Above the gorge, the cliffs are shrouded in perpetual mist.
People come to marvel at the sight that Livingston said would cause even
an angel to wonder.
Livingston believed that the falls were created by a massive earthquake
that caused a huge rift in the earth's crust.
But geologists today know that they were formed over millennia by the
erosive power of the water itself.
The spray drifts over the surrounding land to create a patch of dense
tropical vegetation, home to chameleons that feed on the abundant
insect life in the mist forest.
Waterbuck find a fitting home here and people too drawn by the hypnotic power
of the tempestuous stream.
The rains that fall on the far off Angolan border, feed the mighty power
of the river here in Zimbabwe, a world away from the muddy stream that gives
it birth.
This deep gorge patiently carved from the living rock bears witness to the
pent up energy of water that has traveled 600 miles across Africa.
The monkeys that live here are in a different world from their relatives
in the peaceful village, all those that lived in the tall trees by a
sleepy river far upstream.
The falls carve a huge gorge 45 miles long and 400 feet deep.
A thousand miles beyond it lies the sea.
Seven hundred miles downstream still far from the Indian Ocean, people rely
on the massive power of this river that rises so far from their home.
Deep into the night, the Zulus dance to the power that is in the earth, the
power that comes from the sky, the mighty power of the Zambezi, the Force
of Life.