Taratibu

Taratibu is an elephant reserve about 150 kilometers west of Pemba. It was built and is owned by Jacob. I am certain he has a last name but I don’t know it. Most everyone here goes by first names, even Muhammed and Muhammed. Here, his name is pronounced “Ya-kobi” and he is kind and gentle. He is one of those people who you can simply look at and see their kindness. I ran into him last week and I knew I liked him when I shook his hand. This encounter led me to Taratibu. 

Rapha, Ana, Ali, Ruth and I loaded up the black truck with noodles and cookies and cameras and headed west. We stopped in Mieze for bread, bananas, tomatoes, and peppers. You have to plan your own meals. Small huts come furnished with twin beds and an ice cold shower. We drive until we see a dirt road that looks insignificant enough to look familiar. Rapha and Ana have been before. Once on the dirt road we are glad we have the 4x4. We drive through 45 kilometers of the real Mozambique. No electricity, no shops, or restaurants, just huts. Tiny and sporadic. Everything in dirt orange and brown underneath a big blue sky. Children come out to greet us. Swollen bellies. Women wave too. The men play it cool, ignore us and sip their hot gin. 

We drive until a fork in the road. Three people stand watching us. The right fork is a large hill, invisible on the other side. We stop. We roll down the window. They looked lost and so do we. We find out that they are our Guide and our Cook. They want a ride to work. They jump in the back of the truck and off we go. We drive into the camp and into another world. The grounds are lush and green. The rooms and common areas are thatch and wood and beautifully constructed. I have seen Jacob’s architecture here in Pemba and I recognize his handiwork. A closer look at the guide and cook and an introduction reveal Dennis and Laurinda. Dennis is dark and bald with a deep voice. Laurinda is small and neatly dressed in a western style floral dress that buttons down the front, not a capalana. She is thin and wiry and has big hands. She is pretty. She informs us that she is there to wash our dishes and will cook for us if we need her to. Dennis is our guide and will take us to look for the elephants.I never figured out who the third guy was. 

We take ourselves to our rooms which are three small round huts with twin beds and a bath. The construction is Jacob’s and well done. The bathroom is tiled and all water comes from a spring just outside the door. There are no mosquito nets because there are no mosquitos. 

We gather in the large pavillion where there is a small stove and refrigerator. The power is by generator and is on from 5pm until 8:30pm. We made grilled cheese sandwiches and drank cold bottled Cokes. Dennis came to find us. He was dressed in a dark green shirt, thick material, neatly pressed, with epaulets, thick black belt, matching hat tucked into his pants, matching dark green pants, army boots. He smells like cheap cigarettes, even cheaper booze and sweat. He smells like Uncle Henry. I am only making the association now, some 25 years later. His voice is so deep and he slurs his words a little. Pretty certain that is just the way he talks and not the booze. I catch every 10th word as I do with most native Portuguese speakers. I listen for about 60 seconds as I know this is important stuff, but then my brain starts to hurt as I try to translate and I give up and start to day dream about getting to see the elephants. I notice we are dressed a little alike. I am wearing army green pants too. Cargo pants from J. Crew and a white v neck t-shirt with my Mary Jane Keen’s. No socks. The only thing I get from the speech he makes is Rapha’s translation. “If the elephants start to charge, kick the ground to raise up dirt and run in the direction that the dirt falls, because that is the way the way the wind is blowing”. That sounded really complicated. I quickly kicked the dirt for practice. It went in the direction I kicked. I wondered if that was wind or inertia, I turned the other way, kick and the dirt changed direction. I then decided I would stick close to Dennis in spite of the smell and that perhaps his odor was the best indicator of being upwind or down. 

We traipsed through what looked like the set of Jurrasic Park for an hour and a half and I was absolutely mesmorized. I kept getting left behind for being complely awestruck. I could only recongize one or two trees. Dennis pointed out the amarula tree and elephant dung. We walked through areas that had been burned for one reason or another. We walked inside a large dry riverbed. There were huge chunks of granite everywhere and we walked across large mounds of it. One minute I was in an absolutely foreign terrain and the next I was at the Conyer’s Horse Park running the Granite Grinder. It was identical. Trees and cacti and moss on mounds of granite. 

Taratibu is surrounded by a range of granite mountains or inselbergs. They are grand and their colors constantly changing hues as the African sun moves among them. The rolling clouds hang low as they always do around here. 

We see a few elephant tracks and some dung, but that is all we see of the allusive elephants.

We come back to camp for cold drinks and very, very cold showers. We gather in the large pavillion and prepare our spaghetti. We break out the deck of cards and enter into a rousing game of Hand and Foot. I win. We rush to finish our game before the generator is shut off and we are left to spend our evenings in very, very dark night. I crawl in bed with my headlamp and Kindle and read a Chapter in The Wives of Henry VIII. 

I wake to Ruth calling my name. We have all overslept for our 5:30 guide with Dennis. We scramble eggs and make coffee and load in the truck. We drive through deep forest until we come to a wide riverbed. We take off our shoes and step in. Two men come from the other side of the river to greet us. Their chests and shoulders both covered in flies. The flies scatter when they reach shake our hands but light on their thin faded shirts a moment later.  Inside the riverbed we find large lion prints. We have looked for the illusive elephants from above, now we are looking from within, the watering hole. We trudge up the riverbed following closely behind Dennis. All fear of much of anything fades as I stand amazed to be seeking real elephants in the heart of the jungle. With a Canon and an iPhone. We have no luck in the river and climb a mountainside. There we inhale stunning 360 degree views of the African subtropical rainforest below. It is Sunday morning. We lie on the granite mountainside and bask in the sun. Dennis hides in the shade. 

We come back to camp for lunch and naps made mandatory to save our friendships and meet up again for another hike up another mountain in the afternoon. We are learning how to do it at this point and sit quietly perched on the side of the mountain passing cookies and binoculars watching baboons play in the trees. We scamper back down to beat the sun. Laurinda brings us a warm bowl of xima piled high and a pot of stewed matapa, peas, tomatoes and onions. It is great except for the bits of dirt that are inevitable for some reason in meals like this. We resume Hand and Foot and play until the clock strikes 8:00.

Determined to see elephants or at least more of this fascinating playground, I set my alarm for 4:50am. I make the coffee with my headlamp on my forehead, but the sun is already rising. Rapha and Ruth join me and Dennis shows up with his trusty pre Mozambican civil war gun across his back. 

We walk inside another riverbed this time. This one is dry but I keep getting sand inside my Mary Jane’s. The sites are incredible as this forest is waking up. The noises are all so unrecognizable. A bird. A monkey. We step on ancient rock. A canopy of lush green trees drips with morning dew. I feel it on my face and in my hair. I soak it in. I snap pictures and rush to keep up with the others. Wet sand in my shoes. 

Taratibu has captured my heart. I will never forget it. I will remember my time in Africa and I will remember my kids and the ocean and I will remember Taratibu. We arrive to find Jacob loading up a truck that looks like  a small military tank. He steps out to greet us. He asks if we have had any luck and we shake our heads. He then tells us the sad story. In the past 6 months they have found 45 dead elephants. Poachers have come with AK-47s and killed them. They have left their offspring behind. They killed a pregnant mother who gave birth when the killed her and then they killed her baby. I thought Jacob would weep telling us the story. He told us of the orphaned elephants. There are no elephants left now, he told us. He has thought of trying to capture the orphans and create a space for them. His reserve is now just a getaway and not at all an elephant reserve at all. There are no elephants left. We shook our heads and looked at our feet and for a small moment we felt his pain. He has invested over 20 years here in this place. He created Taratibu. It is his heart. 

It is a fascinating place. The silence, the stars, the jungle, Dennis. I never dreamed I would ever get to experience something quite like that. It was an honor to get to go and experience Jacob’s creation of Taratibu and God’s creation of the African jungle. This world we live in is so gigantic. I cannot get my head around it all. The jungle 3 hours away. The villages we passed through. The children with swollen bellies and rags. No education. No doctor. Uttermost ends of the earth. I haven’t a clue what to do about any of it. The orphaned. The hungry. The poor. The elephants. I do believe I am getting to see it all for a reason. I want to go back, just to take it all in one more time. But now I home. I have work to do. The day of celebration of Mozambican Independence is over. And my little vacation is over. I have eager students who will be greeting me in the morning and a vocational school to run. A task almost as daunting as tracking down elephants poachers. I reckon we all have our calling and our place. Jacob’s heart is big enough to fight for the orphans of his world and I am standing right in the middle of a life of fighting for those in mine. I wished you all could have been there. It really was amazing. And if you are ever in the country, you must go!