Camp life
This is a post by Pieter Hugo from the field on a National Geographic supported expedition to explore the Okavango River system from source to sand. 90 days, 1,000 miles, 3 countries, 2 rivers, 31 adventurers, 100% open data. Join us in real-time as we explore the beating heart of our planet. IntoTheOkavango.org
We rise with the sun. Gotz and James are generally first up, usually before sunrise, with the rising light just tinging the eastern horizon. This place never disappoints when you make the effort to drag your weary body from a cosy sleeping bag to greet the day with the sun. Never mind the cold, never mind the never-quite absent ache in back and shoulders and neck. Get up with the sun, if you can. It’s worth it. First order of the day is to get the fire started. These days it’s pretty easy. There’s plenty of dry tinder and kindling around and, often, coals still glowing from the night before. Closer to the source, up in the freezing mists and dazzling cold of the Highlands, it was a different story. The nights were icy, and wet enough to smother any coals in dew and coat the grass and kindling in an icy layer of dew and frost. There, I had to remember to collect a nice bundle of dry tinder from grasses dried by the heat of the day. Neglect told do so, and suffer the consequences: struggling, with fingers numb and aching with cold, to coax a reluctant flame from a bundle of sodden twigs and grass. Fire made, kettle on a trivet above the flames, percolator perched just so to catch the best of the heat. Many are the cups of eagerly awaited coffee we have lost through careless placement or inattention at a crucial moment. Now we can warm our hands at the fire and listen as around us the daytime world comes slowly back to life.
Slowly the camp, too, awakes. Steve comes tousle-headed from his tent and joins us for that crucial first cup of life-giving coffee. Giles emerges from his slumber and plonks down next to the fire, hardly able to speak a coherent sentence until a jolt of strong caffein is coursing through his veins. We go through a lot of tea and coffee here. I set a pot to boiling for breakfast, and stoke up the fire underneath — mealie meal porridge must be cooked in water at a rolling boil. A handful of salt, and seven or eight cups of coarse yellow maize meal. Stir well, and remove some of the heat from under the trivet. Now cover with a lid and leave to steam. Add some peanut butter and a tin of jam and stir in thoroughly. It does wonders. Or, when there’s time, I’ll make vetkoek, fried dough balls, a rare treat, but a good trick to have up my sleeve. While breakfast is cooking AJ and Gotz check their nets for the morning’s catch of fish. Species are identified, DNA samples taken, location recorded, and then carefully preserved. This is the first ever comprehensive fish survey of the Cuito, and AJ and Gotz are diligent at their task.. Meanwhile James and Giles are busy in the production tent, tweeting and uploading and downloading and doing all sorts of clever things I don’t really understand. Other people will be breaking down tents, packing bags, stuffing sleeping bags in sacks and generally getting camp broken down and everything ready for departure. When breakfast is ready everyone will drift in and help themselves, the porridge washed down with copious amounts of coffee and hot, sweet tea. Recently we’ve also been drinking a lot of strong, hot ginger tea, great for digestion and for tired, aching muscles. Lunch containers are filled with left-overs from the night before and then it’s time for the big pack up, and loading the boats. Load, offload, a standing refrain. A final kettle is boiled (surprising how much of camp life is spent waiting for kettles to boil) and the dishes, cups, spoons and pots are washed and packed away. Then the boats are loaded, water bottles prepared, final checks are done and everyone is ready for departure. A last quick look around for socks left hanging or cups hiding in the bushes and we push off from the bank, into the current, for one more day on the water. Cuito River dreaming.
We hit the bank some time after 3, and once we’ve decided we like the campsite (or been forced to settle for the hand we’ve been dealt) the first order of business is to decide where the kitchen goes. I light a fire and get the kettle on before the boats are even off-loaded. A fire makes what was just a place a home and a hot cup of coffee or tea is always welcome after a long day on the water. We offload the boats, food boxes congregating around the kitchen area, gear boxes and Pelican cases around the big blue production tent that Giles, by now, will be busy putting up. Cups, plates and spoons are unpacked onto the kitchen table and , inevitably, a percolator goes on the fire. Tea, coffee, sugar and milk are unpacked and, once the fire is established, the beans go on to boil away until soft. AJ and Gotz get their nets set, James is always wandering around with a camera (or, recently, getting ready for a drone flight), Neil is doing his film thing, and GB, Tom, Schnapps, KG, and Water are busy putting up tents, collecting water, and gathering firewood. It’s a scene of ordered chaos, like a bunch of ants colonising a new outpost. I treat the drinking water to make it safe to drink, which we’ve only started doing from just before Cuito Cuanavale, always in the bucket with the big white sticker. Tents pop up like mushrooms and people drift in and out of the kitchen area, getting cups of tea or coffee or just popping by for a chat and a sit-down around the fire. Kettle and beans on the go and cup of coffee or two down and I go and pitch my tent, and ideally have a quick bucket bath and a fifteen minute lie-down before my night work commences.
Then it’s all about supper. I divide the beans into two — a smaller pot for the vegetarians and a larger one for the carnivores. I add 3 or 4 heads of chopped garlic and whatever fresh vegetables we have available. If there’s a lot of veg in danger of spoiling I’ll do a separate pot of veg, with lots of oil, sugar, and salt. I add herbs and spices to the pots, and whatever we have in the way of extra heartiness, whether soup powder, sauce powder, or stock cubes, Everything is done on an open fire and that entails a lot of fire management to keep everything bubbling away merrily without burning. I have to time the beans carefully because they won’t go soft if I add anything salty too early, so I have to get them cooked through first before adding biltong, stock, or whatever. Then it’s time for rice — around ten or eleven cups, to make enough for supper, and have left-overs for lunch the next day too, Once the rice is on its way the daily spoon hunt begins. It’s always intriguing because spoons here seem to have a life of their own and there’s never the same number twice in a row. Finally the rice is cooked and the beans are ready and everyone is summoned to the fire for supper. A general silence descends over camp as everyone devotes themselves to the serious business of rice and beans. Yet another kettle goes on for dish water, and dirty plates, cups and spoons are collected, washed, and put back on the table, ready for action in the morning. Final cups of tea and coffee are drunk, and gradually everyone drifts off to bed, or to nightly tasks like data management, uploading, photo editing, or emails. I pack away everything that shouldn’t stay out overnight, and have a final look around camp. All squared way, the fire banked up for the night, and then off to my tent to crawl gratefully into my sleeping bag, to lie and listen to the sounds of the night, and drift peacefully off to sleep until another reddening in the east summons us once again to attend to the joys of the sunrise, and of the early morning fire.
