“Holidays in Africa?” Often when I’m about to set out, I’m asked this question in a slightly puzzled tone.
For those who have never visited it, the continent is often associated with poverty, hunger, unstable government and terrible tropical diseases. Another negative connotation is a presumed difficulty in social relationships with African people due to the racial conflict which followed the colonial period.
This isn’t totally wrong: conflicts, diseases and high mortality rates are easy to find. Countries among the richest in the world in terms of mineral resources turn out to be among the poorest in democracy, in a situation of total lack of technological progress. Paradoxically, it is precisely in Africa that huge reserves of the raw materials for this progress can be found: cobalt, diamonds, uranium, manganese, zinc, emeralds, gold, silver, malachite, tin, cadmium, tungsten, radium, germanium and many others.
Another question is “Why?” – rather than lying in the sun, as one does on a “real” holiday, reading a nice book and waiting for the evening to indulge in music and dance, why would one want to drive hundreds of miles to reach a place where the word hotel probably doesn’t yet translate? “Why” drag heavy luggage which doesn’t hold evening dresses, makeup and high heels but camping gear, tents, sleeping bags and whatever else you need to survive far from the nearest supermarket?
Sometimes I can explain by showing the photos I have brought back, even though they really cannot reproduce all the beauty of the few days spent in a natural wilderness.
This mysterious continent possesses the allure of the contact between the hand of man and virgin Nature. The impenetrable forests, the golden sands of the deserts, the brilliant white beaches and the luxuriant animal life – this is Africa. No other continent displays such a vast range of colours, from the fiery red of the soil to the azure of the seas, from the deep blue of the skies to the violet of the sunset. The delay in the advance of progress has preserved Nature in its original state, the way it was in the West many decades ago, before the vast green plains were covered and brutalised by tons of concrete. Few of us can still remember the Adriatic or the Tyrrhenian coasts as they were before the invasion of the beach umbrellas and bathing establishments, and when the sea still smelled of the sea.
You are swept along by the desire to dive into the flood of emotions generated by the colours, the scents, the uncontaminated landscapes, and this is why you arrive in Africa after one flight and another, after hundreds of miles of unmade road.
I felt as though I was in one of those places described by sci-fi writers, on another planet or in another dimension, where time and space had no part. I was in the midst of the most absolute nothingness. The moment the wind fell and stopped caressing what little vegetation there was, you felt an absolute emptiness, a total absence of life. Even time seemed to stand still.
Nothing moved, nothing made a sound. Every form of animal life was absent, except for insects and an occasional bird. Nothing could disturb that silence, scores of miles deep. And it’s exactly that, the silence, your first impression of that fantastic place called Kubu Island.
Kubu Island is a tiny isle within the basin of the Makgadikgadi Pan, an ancient salt lake dried out thousands of years ago, in the north-east of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana.
The greatest spread of sand on the face of our planet is extremely old. Some 100 million years ago, as a result of the fragmentation of the primordial supercontinent, the new continent we call Africa was born. It has undergone continual changes from its birth up to our time. In the Ice Age of five million years ago, the cold, dry atmosphere absorbed almost 70 percent of the humidity, causing the disappearance of some of the rivers and the drying out of the vast territory of Africa. Later the climate warmed up again, bringing back the rain and the humidity; much of this water flowed into the basin of the Makgadikgadi Pan, creating one of the continent’s largest lakes with a surface area of 30,000 square miles. But changes in the course of the rivers and the return of a drier climate caused the lake to dry out again, producing the vastest area of salty sand in the world.
To reach Kubu Island you cross the salt flats for many miles. Swallowed by the desert, you cannot remain indifferent to the panorama that extends all around you, while a flood of emotions washes over you: freedom, curiosity, bewilderment. The reflection of the sky and the clouds in the grains of salty sand creates a far-off mirage of the sea, fantastic and illusory, actually inexistent.
After a few miles the landscape changes, and rock formations appear, and weird trees with no leaves (real, this time) – the baobab. It’s a sign you are on the right road, for Kubu Island is a stony isle which hosts hundreds of baobab, some of them really old, which can live for centuries.
The trees, which look like rocks with their gigantic trunks which can measure yards in diameter, create a fascinating, mysterious and certainly unique landscape.
Since there are no services of any kind, this area is rarely visited by tourists, and even then only by those who are more adventurous and well equipped. And while there are plans by some construction companies to create well-appointed camp-sites, the hope that Nature can keep its command, that only Nature may change the face of this place, springs up spontaneously at the sight of one of its most fascinating miracles.