Big and old weather beaten trucks laden with huge deep freezers filled with what is believed to be fish caught from the Kafue River outside Lochinvar National Park with fishermen dangerously pitched on top always pass by our Lochinvar Camp site. They are on their way to lucrative fish markets in Lusaka city almost on a daily basis. The sight of these trucks is not a new and strange one to me as I have always seen them pass this way since I was a child growing up in this same area.
The trucks and people on board are all properly documented and their “cargo” properly levied by the department of wildlife authorities for passing through a government protected game area the Lochinvar National Park. Unfortunately, the description of what is truly contained in these deep freezers laden with ice blocks inside is not correctly declared to wildlife officers by its owners but simply declared as all fish!
Lochinvar National Park is in southern Zambia. Called by some as one of the greatest birdlife sanctuary in the world, Lochinvar is one of Zambia’s main birdwatch paradise magnet. The park is bordered in the north by the Kafue River located in the Kafue flat game management basin. It is also home to one of Africa’s largest concentrations of birdlife and is extremely rich in a variety fish species. This has given rise to the mushrooming of many makeshift fish camps built out of river reeds. These were initially meant to be temporal living quarters for fishermen but now have turned out to be ungazzetted permanent human settlements. It has now attracted all manner of undesirable characters. Some of these people are hardcore criminals running away from the long arm of the law in cities to hide in this unpoliced crammed human settlements. With it has come all manner of anti-social behavioral vices such as drunkenness and promiscuity of married women getting involved in illicit love relationships with some master fishermen in order to be able to access good fish parcels to sale in major cities. With the Zambian economy “biting” hard in most towns and cities where many able bodied adults are out of employment as a result of Coronavirus crisis. Unable to support their families financially, this seems to have become the “New Normal” of most Zambian dysfunctional family set up. These fish camps in the Kafue flats are also home to many undocumented illegal immigrants from some neighboring countries such as the war-tone Congo DRC. For some of our own local unmarried sisters, they have found love and marriage with these foreigners. Most of these foreigners marry our local ladies purely for convenience sake to legitimize their stay in Zambia as permanent residents through marriage to a Zambian citizen.
On one fateful day, an old dirty looking fish truck blowing thick half burnt diesel smoke in the air passed by our Lochinvar camp site. As usual, it was full to capacity and was having serious trouble moving forward. It so happened that I was just returning from my routine camp site ground inspection all round it. After the truck passed me, I got curious on seeing a strange trail of small dotted line of dripping water the truck was leaving behind on the ground. On closer inspection, I discovered this was no ordinary water dripping from the truck but was water mixed with fresh blood. Well, for all I know no amount of slaughtered fish cannot produce this amount of blood to spill from a moving truck. I then followed this trail of dripping water on a dusty road for close to a kilometer. Truly I discovered that much of what was coming out from the moving truck was indeed mostly blood. This got me thinking seriously hard. What is it that is contained in these deep freezers that these trucks carry? Could it all be all fish or an addition of something else? Knowing that some of these fish camps are situated in the Kafue Game Management Area, home to thousands of endemic Kafue Lechwes, could it be that some of these fishermen where involved in some clandestine activities against the order of nature?
Being a person who believes in fact finding before arriving at a conclusion, the following day I got into my vehicle, drove and visited the main fish camp, known as Namalyo. Upon my arrival at Namalyo, I disguised myself as one looking to buy fish. But the elegance of my clothing and stylish vehicle sold me out as a no fish buyer at all! No person of my caliber and looks comes this far to buy small amounts of fish, they reckoned. I was therefore looked at with a lot of suspicion where ever I ventured to in the camp. I was eyed as a possible under cover government agent. No one was willing to cooperate with me with my fish trade inquiry. At long last, one old man summoned some courage to find out whether I first had reported myself to the camp chairman before coming to the fish harbor as that was the required area protocol. I boldly replied in the local language that I was no alien to this land but a bona fide indigenous person who required no special permit to visit the land of my fore fathers. He sincerely apologized to me for his uncalled for action. This earned me the freedom to visit and venture deeper into the slums without any interference from anybody. When I went through one of the smoky lane, I heard a female voice calling from behind my totem African name. This came as a total surprise to me as only a close relative of mine can call me by my totem traditional African name. Well, a smiling woman emerged from one of the shacks holding a baby in her arms. Unbelievable, I saw one of my relative, daughter of one of my uncle living nearby our village. She was equally surprised to see me ducking through these smoke filled in-between huts paths. Well, I informed her that I was merely trying to see how people in these fish camps live. She invited me inside her shack, which to my total surprise was well furnished with comfortable sofas, a two band radio and small TV all powered by solar energy neatly displayed in a corner. After a while, I was introduced to a man who emerged from one of the inner rooms as the husband to the same lady. I tried to greet him in our local native language but he failed to respond accordingly but simply smiled. I was later informed that he was originally from neighboring country of Mozambique and spoke Portuguese. We therefore resorted to communicating with each other in the general Zambian local Nyanja language. After I set him at easy and told him I was his in-law, he was happy to share with me the daily life on the fish camp.
He narrated to me that some people living on these fish island camps where wildlife poachers masquandaring as fishermen. At night, they sneaked into the protected Kafue Game Management Area to slaughter the Kafue Lechwes enmass and skinned them right in the Kafue grasslands. Then they made arrangements with truck owners to transport the Lechwe game meat by hiding it right under the fish in the deep freezers then cover it with heavy ice blocks. This now explained to me what I saw on the fate day when the truck was leaving a trail of blood mixed with water. It was a special game meat contraband mixed with fish destined for the Lusaka market. After talking for a while, I requested that I visit the toilet to answer to the call of nature. I was met with a stoney face and I wondered what that meant. I was politely told that there is no toilet facility available nearby. I was requested to visit a nearby room, pee in an empty plastic water bottle and “offfload” human excrete in a plastic bag and leave them there. I was told these would be disposed off in the deep Kafue waters at night by canoe. This was simply shocking news to me. I reasoned how so many people living in these close shacks could operate without any toilet facilities. How and where did these people get their clean drinking water? With so many children around, I wondered how and where they accessed health care services and schools. Well, I reasoned this could provide an excellent case study site for World health Organisation (WHO) for the transmission of water borne disease such as cholera in Africa. When all was said and done, it was time to bide farewell to my nice hoists as I was not prepared to do this unclean act of using a plastic bottle and plastic bag for a toilet.
After reaching home that same evening, I told my family what I had been told at Namalyo fish camp and how privileged we were for living a seemingly “comfortable” and normal life. I told them that trucks we saw passing near our campsite where not afterall carrying only fish as we are made to believe. They were also carriers of the much sought after bush game to cities in Zambia and also to Congo DRC for commercial meat business. But what surprised us the most was wondering whether the local wildlife protection officers in Lochinvar National Park were not aware of this underground poaching of wildlife for game meat taking place right under their noises. I just amazed me to what extend and extremes people are prepared to go to earn a living by destroying our precious wildlife and other natural resources without an aorta of shame in their mind.
Now, each time I see a truck passing by our campsite, I am pretty sure it is carrying game meat and contributing to the decimation of few remaining Kafue Lechwes in the Kafue Game Management Area. I now disgusted by the sight of any of these fish trucks passing by our camp site. They are accomplices to the rampant poaching taking place in the Lochinvar National Park and the greater Kafue Flats Game Management Area. Twenty years ago, there were 250,000 Kafue lechwes roaming in the Kafue Flats Game Management Area. Now in 2020, there is only an estimated 20,000 Kafue Lechwes left in both Lochinvar National Park and the greater Kafue flats! Just what needs to be done to save our natural resources especially our wildlife from total destruction in Zambia and Africa in general is beyond my comprehension. I reckon part of the solution to save the endemic Kafue Lechwes in Lochinvar National and Kafue Flats is to demolish these fish camp. People must then be taken back to their original homes outside the Kafue Flats Game Management Area and all illegal immigrant deported back to their respective countries of origin.