Africa addio Page #2

they killed 27 whites

and 5000 blacks.

Kenyatta announces that in addition to

the undying gratitude of the nation

the Mau Mau will be granted the lands

and houses of the white colonists

in which they carried out their deeds.

The whites are itching to get out.

The windows of real estate agencies

are covered with sale offers.

Easy payment terms seem absurd

to anyone who doesn't know how

to savor the bitter irony.

Installments for up to 99 years.

Gloomy irony in the graphic composition,

desperate irony in the text of the ads.

Everything that belongs

to the white colonists is for sale.

Those with time turn to Indian merchants

to hold an auction in the garden

of everything accumulated by three

generations that cannot be carried away.

The Indians do a good business.

The new black bourgeoisie

spare no expense.

The ancient home is quickly emptied.

The family watches on the sidelines.

The seized houses, empty and silent,

await their new owners.

In the entire immense

East African territory

English colonial law

permitted whites to build a house

and acquire property

here and only here.

In two centuries, the new colonists

transformed it into an oasis of green.

The Africans learned to admire it,

then to desire it, and finally to claim it.

When the Golden Age is over,

the Plated Age begins.

In the highlands,

where 150 whites lived yesterday

The agrarian reform ignores

the arid immensity of the Lowlands

to express the new spirit

of Uhuru only here

on these freshly seized fertile estates.

But on the whole, it can distribute

just one acre per family.

So this land that earlier was perhaps

too much for too few

becomes too little for too many.

Uhuru has nothing more to conquer.

Only the dead have remained

to occupy a little land.

Now they, too, have to clear out.

The Indians have sold that off, too.

J. B. Johnson was the most famous

breeder of racehorses in the highlands.

He was killed by Kimathi's Mau Mau

on the steps of his farm.

These were his stables.

Before turning them over

to the new owners,

his sons chased out the horses

and set them free in the savanna.

Six months later, all the

"old land" horses are living in freedom.

But when the Africans surprise a herd

at the mouth of a narrow valley,

they're trapped inside

by the sound of shouts and old gas cans.

For the Africans, the horse is

the symbol of the white man.

Just like the whites,

it refuses contact with other species

and withdraws from

the contagion of mixture,

surrounding itself by an emptiness

that runs from itself to the horizon.

For the Africans,

the horse is physically racist.

It fears the black

and refuses to be ridden by him.

Without the presence of the whites,

its back is bare.

Its natural architecture is mutilated,

like an equestrian monument

from which the hero was toppled

by a sudden act of violence.

Like the white man, the horse is noble.

It has delicate skin.

It's sophisticated

in its choice of food.

Like the white man,

it is timid.

Just a little noise

will frighten it away.

Like the white man, the horse is useless.

All that it's good for is to be eaten.

The Boers are returning to South Africa.

They have revived the wagons on which

they arrived 400 years ago

in search of a homeland.

They could have chosen

boats or airplanes

as the English did to return to Europe.

Instead, with controversial intentions,

they loaded their families

and possessions on old wagons

from their wobbly epic and now move back

across 1000 miles of history.

The demonstration is hard and trying,

just like the entire destiny

of the Boer people.

Its meaning is tragic and precise.

The long African adventure is not over.

It starts here.

The old laws are no longer valid.

The new ones are yet to be written.

There's no one to protect the savanna

from vandals or hunters seeking meat.

For those who want to rob Africa

of all they can as quickly as possible,

the right moment has arrived.

If before it was absolutely forbidden for

Land Rovers to leave the roads or tracks,

now they enter the savanna with impunity

and wildly weave back and forth

among herds of elephants

to frighten them, divide them

and separate the mothers

from the babies.

Here's the quickest way to get

your hands on a little elephant today.

You exasperate the mother little

by little. You provoke her reaction.

Then you draw out her pursuit

as long as possible

giving the illusion

of letting her reach you

and when the poor beast

can't go on any longer

she'll be too far from her baby

to be able to defend it.

The price of a baby elephant

is around $3000...

assuming, of course, that it arrives

safe and sound to the ordering zoo.

The average is one out of ten.

The others don't survive

without their mother's milk.

But today,

Africa is an infinite reserve.

Where you can't go by foot,

you go by jeep

and where you can't go by jeep,

you go by helicopter.

Of all the types of safaris

that a hunter can choose from today

this is the quickest.

It's called

"elephant safari in a quarter hour."

The helicopter leaves from the

hotel terrace and drops the hunter here.

Then it goes to find the elephant

and chases it toward him.

The hunter fires, usually poorly, but with

a caliber big enough to bag a dinosaur.

Then he finishes it off

at point-blank range.

Just enough time for a souvenir photo,

and then he's off.

In the absence of modern transport

and the power of guns,

the Africans make do with numbers.

Up to 10,000 of them gather together and

surround an area as large as a big city.

Then they squeeze the vice.

Across the great line

traced by the Zambezi

the Wildlife Society has established its

headquarters in an old abandoned farm.

It's a large organization supported

mostly by private Anglo-Saxon capital

and does what it can to save what it can

in the midst of so much disorder.

Every message received or sent by radio,

every motion of the rake on the

large table in the operations room

corresponds to a massive displacement

of animals in some remote area.

The goal of so much feverish activity is

to collect at least some of the animals

from the areas most infested

with poachers

and transport them to territories

that are safer and better controlled.

After millennia of fascinating silences,

mysterious habits,

pathways covered in obedience

to the orders of nature,

man has imposed upon African fauna

wild tourism by train, bus, plane

helicopter, and even balloon.

Operation Crocodile calls for the

transfer of all the reptiles in the park

away from the mouth of the Rovuma

that is infested with poachers.

The traps are set during low tide

and marked with colored balloons.

It's estimated that in these waters

more than 20,000 crocodiles

have been killed in the last six months.

The operation in progress

saves 82 of them.

They will reach more peaceful waters

after having slept for 300 miles.

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