Man-management & the Mamba
A black mamba raiding a woodpecker nest. This is a very rare sighting in the bush
There’s always one. That’s what they say. One person who is part of a team working together that always manages to fall asleep on the job... or not turn up at all!! Having someone like this as part of a hard-working team in one of the most remote parts of Africa, where all problems need to be solved on the ground through cooperation and creative thinking is a big issue. In Botswana, the government-imposed labour laws very much favour the work force over the company, something I am very much in favour of. This is great in ensuring fairness in working conditions and pay, but not so great when individuals use this to their advantage and let down their hard-working colleagues. The attitude of ...I’m going to go and sleep under that tree while you are all working because I don’t care, and you can’t fire me... sums this up quite well.
I had just moved to the iconic and awe-inspiring Okavango Delta and was chomping at the bit to get stuck in and explore my new home. If you’ve not visited the Okavango Delta, it is difficult to describe just how indescribable it is! Picture a lush oasis rising out of the dry Kalahari sands and expanding as far as the eye can see, even from one of the light aircraft used to make your way around it. It is almost completely flat (with about a 2-metre change in height across its entirety) and this is part of the reason it forms. The Kavango river flows down from the Angolan highlands and is contained within tectonic fault lines until these fall away and release it out into the flat northern part of the Kalahari desert. The influx of water into a desolate desert provides a seasonal lifeline to many of Africa’s iconic species, and even more that have rarely been heard of but deserve recognition. I am digressing from the story... The Okavango is somewhere you just have to go and experience first-hand. The juxtaposition of wet and dry habitats densely filled with animals makes it a wildlife enthusiast’s haven. Even if you are not a wildlife enthusiast, you cannot fail to have your breath taken away by its unquestionable beauty.
So, having arrived at the first camp I was going to manage in the Okavango Delta, the most important first step was meeting the team of wonderful people who made the camp run and ensured high quality safaris for everyone that came to visit this special place. The best way to meet the team, I believe, is to get stuck in to the job and make yourself one of the team. On my first morning in camp, it became clear there was an issue with one of the septic tanks. For those that don’t know, septic tanks are where toilet and water waste is collected and stored, and bacteria break everything down over time leaving the entire process clean, with water being the by product. However, sometimes detergents or other cleaning products enter in too large proportions and end up killing the bacteria meaning the waste is not broken down and the tank fills up. One of the tanks, deep underground, was overflowing and wastewater was now seeping up to the surface. We were very aware of our environmental impact on the Delta, so this needed to be fixed fast! Gathering our team of camp hands and guides, myself included, we started to dig up the tank so we could fix it. There were seven of us, six digging down to the large tank in 41-degree heat (105 Fahrenheit) while one of the camp hands ‘rested’ in the shade. What he was resting from I will never know because he hadn’t done anything! I asked him when he was going to be ready to start helping the rest of us and the reply was somewhere along the lines of ‘I’m not going to help because you can’t make me.’ At this point one of the guides told me this was normal behaviour for him and trying to do something about it would just waste time and energy and not change anything. Fine, the priority was the hole we were digging ourselves deeper into.
But I did have a plan. As we were all side-tracked dealing with the septic tank, the usual day to day duties were being neglected. I gave our lazy camp hand a list of other duties that needed to be done and asked him to choose one to do. I thought this would kill two birds with one stone as he would be out of our way and therefore not cause disrepute within the team working hard, and it would get done at least one of the other jobs, with him feeling as though he had chosen to do it. He chose to go off and cut the long grass growing up under the almost kilometre long walkway that ensured safe passage for the guests walking between their rooms and the main area. All he needed was a long-handled scythe and he could keep himself busy for the rest of the day. Out of sight, out of mind and so we pushed on for the rest of the day, successfully digging out the septic tank, clearing it out and re-setting it so it worked again and then covered it up under 8 feet of sand and soil again. This had taken most of the day, so all the guests had departed for their afternoon game drive by the time we finished. I hadn’t spared a second thought for our lazy labourer and assumed, as he had not come back to us for any reason, he had got on with his job, finished it and gone off to find the best shade under a marula tree he could.
It took the guests arriving back from their evening sundowners having seen lion, leopard and wild dog (lucky does not cut it!) before we knew something was wrong. The first radio call came in that there was no water for a shower quickly followed by a second and a third. The whole camp had no water! I was trying to think, how had we caused the water shortage, we were working on the wrong end of the water system, the outflow not the inflow! It was after dark, but we needed to sort the problem. Myself and some of the other managers all headed off to one end of the camp and two of the other staff members headed down to the bottom of the camp with us all planning on checking the water pipes for leaks and meeting up in the middle of the camp. When building a camp, the easiest and safest place to run water pipes is along the underside of a structure. If you bury them, elephants can smell and hear the running water and will dig them up to get to it. So, the pipes had been fixed to the underside of the walkways spanning the length of the camp.
The two staff that had gone to the bottom of the camp quickly radioed us that there was a big leak in the pipe, underneath the walkway close to them. We were the other side of the u-shaped camp set up but needed to get to them quickly so we could fix the pipes and everyone, including us who had been in the ‘pit’ could have a desperately needed shower. We decided to take the shortcut across the island instead of going all round the walkways, one of the other managers in front leading the way as I was the newbie. We were all people from the bush except one and so were not worried about walking through it, even in the dark. I always kept myself aware of my surroundings and was confident I would know if we were about to stumble into a buffalo, hippo, big cat or elephant. Anything else we didn’t really need to be wary about. Or so I thought.
We had just about reached a set of steps that would lead us up on to the walkway close to the leak and in the soft glow of moonlight I saw some movement ahead. The manager leading us had just put his foot onto the first step as I uttered one word in a sharp and commanding but not too loud manner. “Stop”. The way I said it immediately resonated with him and he did, mid step. The guys behind me became panicked. ‘What can you see?’ ‘Is it a Leopard?’ ‘Are we going to be OK?!’ I mustered a muted ‘Shut up and stand still!’ At once, everyone else saw what I had spotted, a large black mamba was starting to unfurl itself and glide out from underneath the first step to the walkway. Now everyone was frozen and silent. I’d like to believe it was because they were listening to me, but it could have been pure fear rooting them to the spot. The snake slithered past us within a meter, well within striking distance but we hadn’t harmed it, trodden on it or cornered it, so I knew (hoped!) we were going to be OK. Once it had passed us, everyone rushed up onto the walkway and adrenaline coursed through our veins. Had I not noticed the movement and gotten everyone to stop, I am sure someone would have stood on the snake. Then we would have been in trouble.
The black mamba is the most feared snake in Africa. So much so that almost every snake identified by non-experts is labelled as a mamba and so is bad news and fair game to be dispatched, in their view. Mambas are unquestionable the most venomous snake in Africa possessing a potent (mostly) neurotoxin that shuts downs their preys (or any other mammals) nervous system. The human body functions unconsciously. We do not have to think about taking a breathe. Our heartbeats are not regulated by our conscious though. It is our nervous system that regulates these vital functions and it is these that can quite quickly start to shut down after a mamba bite. Mambas have developed this venom to incapacitate their prey as quickly as possible after a bite so they do not lose their meal. It takes them quite a lot of energy and effort to replace their venom stores so they do not want to waste it unless they know they will get a meal from it. It is for this reason that mamba bites are actually very rare. As we managed to unwittingly demonstrate, they would much rather slither off out of the way than bite for no reason. As long as they are not feeling under attack, we as humans, are safe and can instead marvel at these amazing animals that deserve their place in the ecosystem just as much as any other animal. A big plus for the mamba is they are excellent rat catchers keeping local rodent populations in check.
Moving back to the task at hand, we went under the walkway to the leaking pipe, which had very obviously been cut with a scythe, and we fixed it quite easily. Whether the pipe had been cut on purpose to spite us or whether the lazy labourer was just over-zealous with his scything I will never know, but he very nearly caused a nasty black mamba bite.
This story has a happy ending, all the guests and everyone who had dug up the septic tank got a lovely and hot, albeit slightly late shower, and all that Africa could throw at us for that day was washed off, resulting in another memorable story for the campfire.