Mystic River, Vagina Flumine

“Hippo on the left”, said my guide Kaley.

We were in canoes, paddling gently down the wild and ancient Kafue River in deepest Zambia. Kaley and I in one canoe; my friend and colleague Sally and her guide in another. 

The Kafue is big and long and flows for nearly a thousand kilometres through Zambia before joining the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe. 

She – this river is definitely a she – is the lifeblood of the Kafue National Park, Zambia’s oldest and biggest.  And very far flung. It took us an hour and a half by air charter, an hour and half by road in a 4x4 and fifteen minutes by boat to get to the remote Kaingu Lodge from Lusaka. A soul spot. Deep soul. 

Now here we were, vulnerable little humans, paddling her ancient waters, trying to hug the banks, dodge the boulders, avoid the hippos. After a bit of initial canoeing in circles, you know, trying to sync paddling and steering.

“Hippo on the left”, said Kaley again, and then: “No that’s not a hippo. Come, paddle faster, let’s go see”, and we paddled furiously towards this scene…

A young male puku – think chunky version of our impala – leapt into the river on the left and started swimming. A massive crocodile leapt into the river from the right and in a few powerful strokes and one mighty snap of the jaws caught the puku and dragged it under.

Snap.

A wriggle and some splashing. Some bubbles.

We canoed over the bubbles.  Kaley and I had a moment of being mutually startled by the life and death scene we had just witnessed, aware that we just happened to be there and see a moment that existed outside of our humanity. "I feel sad for the puku", I said to Kaley, who said the puku must have been chased into the water by a predator, perhaps a lion or a cheetah. I felt happy for the croc though, so prehistorically reptilian-crocodilian, soon to be tummy-full.

And when I looked back, the She River had closed over again. Croc one; puku nought; life moves on, birth, death, life, flow...

Vagina flumine. Flowing vagina.That’s what an old friend commented on this photograph I posted this pic of the Kafue River recently; the metaphor of river as erotic, female, primal, flowing, cyclical. Birth, life, death. It got me thinking about my old friend Thecla and it got me thinking about river porn (snuff in this case) and the wild wet mysterious place I had just been.