Zambian Bush Walk

Well, I'm still in Berlin for another week and then heading to Copenhagen for five days for WOMEX before returning briefly to Berlin and then flying to Frankfurt to catch a plane for Thailand and Laos for three weeks on the way back to NZ. More about Berlin soon but I'm busy booking gigs for NZ summer and trying to crack Australia, US and Europe in 2010 so flat out right now. In the meantime for my four dedicated followers, here's a story I wrote about a bushwalk gone wrong when I was in Africa 16 years ago.


Our dusty, well-travelled safari truck rattled to a halt at the head of a valley somewhere in the wilds of Zambia. It was late afternoon and down below us we could see herds of wildebeest, antelopes, zebra and other creatures slowly making their way up to the waterhole. I’d been on safari in East Africa for the last three weeks and I was pretty excited because finally we were getting to see some real live African wildlife. Up till then I’d only spotted a few dead snakes on the road and dealt with some rather pernicious monkeys who inhabited our campground in Mombasa (they kept stealing my fruit).

To date the trip hadn’t exactly been the wildlife odyessy that I had been imagining when I booked from London. Our truck driver/tour guide turned out to be a good kiwi bloke from Rotorua and in general he seemed to be of the opinion that you’re wasting your time looking at animals when you can be drinking the very reasonably priced local beer in various bars along the way. Unfortunately, the majority of the rest of the occupants of the truck were young English kids doing a bit of travelling in between School and University and they seemed to be of the same opinion so we ended up bypassing the gameparks of Tanzania for the bars of Malawi.

But anyway, here we were now in an actual gamepark, although as usual my co-travellers seemed to be more interested in cracking open a few beers and throwing a frisbee around so I left them to it and went for a walk in the bush. I leisurely strolled along the ridge up the valley following what appeared to be quite a well defined path – must be a village round here somewhere I thought. There was a herd of Kudu moving steadily along the valley floor about 100m away from me and I kept track with them. What beautiful animals. Ever since I was a child I had wanted to come to Africa and see the wildlife on the savannah where they belonged, not behind zoo bars. And here I was - just the antelopes and myself. Those beer-drinking, frisbee throwers back there didn’t know what they were missing.

Suddenly one of the Kudu appeared about 50m ahead of me on the track. It was the dominant male – he was quite splendid. About 1.5 metres tall, he had two twisting horns, a shaggy mane and white stripes on his body. It occured to me then that I was actually on a game trail and I couldn’t help but noticing how large and pointy the horns were on his head. Hmmm – I wonder if these things ever attack people. I stood stock still - there was a slight breeze on my face so I could tell that I was downwind from him. He didn’t seem to have noticed me yet. For now it appeared that the Kudu was more interested in something else. He appeared very alert and was looking intently away to my right - nose and ears twitching – a picture of concentration. I followed his gaze and there in the long grass I could see a pair of ears and the swishing tail of what appeared to be a large cat.

Suddenly it dawned on me – here I am in the African bush alone and defenceless and over there is quite possibly a large hungry lion. At least the Kudu is drawing its attention for now. No sooner had I thought that then with a flick of its tail and a curious barking noise the Kudu was gone. Ok, well here I am in the African bush - just a lion and myself. Hmmm. It’s not like in New Zealand where you can wander in the bush as much as you like and never encounter anything remotely dangerous. It probably didn’t help that I was also quite magnificently stoned as we had just been sampling some of the extremely potent Malawi Gold on our drive through the gamepark. Well here I am stoned alone in the bush with a lion just over there. Damn AA Budget Safaris – this probably wouldn’t have happened on one of the more expensive trips.

I tried to remember what to do if you encounter a lion in the wild. I vaguely recalled reading something about how you should charge towards it shouting and waving your arms thus making it think that you are the dominant creature (or was that if you met a bear?). Anyway the idea didn’t seem particularly attractive at this point. Or I could climb a tree I thought eyeing up the fairly scrawny acacias around me but - hang on - lions can climb trees too can’t they? Or, I could do what every nerve in my body was telling me to do - run like hell. I’m a fairly good runner – in my younger days I’d represented my school in short and middle distance events and I’m still reasonably fit. Plus I was currently downwind – the lion hadn’t noticed me yet. But don’t lions usually hunt in groups? I glanced around - I could be surrounded by them… I flicked through the options again in my head: charge the lion, climb a tree, just stand still and hope it goes away or run. Oh fuck it, I’m out of here. I turned on my heels and ran the fastest that I had ever run in my life half expecting at any moment to hear a roar and fell claws in my back and teeth in my neck. It was probably about 1500 metres back to the truck and I’m sure I covered it in about three minutes although at the time it seemed to take a lot longer.

Finally I arrived back at the camp – no one had even noticed my absence.
Feeling rather foolish, I decided not to reveal my misadventure to my travel companions, whom I was suddenly very glad to see, so I grabbed a beer and shouted, “Hey pass me that Frisbee!”

Shortest Night

Outside my window: 6:35am, Sonntagstr. Freidrichshain, Berlin

This morning I got up before I went to bed, had a cup of cold gravel, beat myself with a broken bottle and walked for 17 miles on my hands to work down the mines, picking coal with tweezers for 26 hour day with no breaks (said with a strong Liverpool accent).

Ok well that's not entirely true but the bit about getting up before I went to bed sort of is and you could say that running an independent record label is like mining in some respects eg hanging out in dark places, chipping away at things, etc.

Lately I've been getting increasingly nocturnal and it culminated on Friday night/Saturday morning when I didn't get to bed till 9am, slept the whole day and was woken at 6pm by the church bells down the road. It was all in the name of work of course. I'm here in Berlin managing the Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band and promoting Monkey Records and part of this involves researching venues. So it was in the name of research that I went to see Disasteradio - play at the infamous Bar 25. Paul Taylor alerted me to the fact that the gig was on and I let about half a dozen other NZers know about it but none of them showed up (slackers), the general reaction was 'How much is it? I'm pretty broke and I went out all night last night' or 'I saw him in Wellington not so long ago.'

As it turned out it was 8 Euros and worth every cent. After a few beers at my place we cycled up the road getting there about midnight. No sign of Disasteradio yet so we sat by the firepit and swigged from a hip flask of rather cheap brandy (at least I think it was brandy - for 1 Euro and 79 cents you can't expect too much). Disasteradio came on and performed with the aid of a laptop, a couple of keyboards, MPC and a mic for the odd distorted vocal. Blink ie Mr Low Hum was there and jumping about enthusiastically - just want you want for a tour manager - somebody who will leap around at the front of the gig looking like your biggest fan (which he probably is). We chatted afterwards about the logistics of touring Europe/NZ, but not for long because they had to get in the tour van and drive for ten hours to South Holland.

After that Paul and I went and checked out the back bar which was churning out some good old German minimalist techno and met some friendly locals - next thing it was 8:30am and the bar was closing and I was stumbling out into the bright sunshine.

Upon arising at 6pm to the bells ("The Bells! The Bells!" say it in a Quasimodo voice), I went to my friends' place nearby for a spontaneous dinner/breakfast party and we stayed up talking through the shortest night of the year - about four hours of darkness. Cue another early morning bike ride home through the streets of Berlin.

Now this blog was going to be about the Benkas first proper Berlin gig at Mauerpark as part of the Fete de la Musique yesterday - a European-wide festival of free music on the summer solstice. But I've rambled on and having taken on criticism of my first blog attempt for being too long and also having the suspicion that only three people actually bothered to read the whole thing (thanks), I'll keep it short.

Suffice to say the sun shone and we basked in a beer garden being entertained by the band who were also trialing new member Rachel on violin. The band was on form despite not having practised in the last month or so and Benka was his usual charasmatic, entertainingly debaucherous self. The free beer flowed (all over Ben at one point), we sold a few CDs, squeezed some emails out of people, had some good feedback and are booked for a follow up gig in the same bar on the 12th July. A couple of people asked me what langauage he's singing in and I said I thought it was a Kiwi dialect of Serbian or something. Once the Benkas had finished, the thunder and lightning descended, the free beer ran out and I got wet watching Jazzanova play on the main stage in the rain.

Oh yeh, one of my favourite musicians played in Berlin last night - Tunisian oud player Anouar Brahem and his quartet. I couldn't make it, I was managing the Benkas. On our walk to the gig at Mauerpark we walked past a music store and I saw an oud in the window and felt a pang of regret but I had my duty to attend to... that's right I am a martyr. My favourite album of his is Le Pas du Chat Noir - check it out.

Ok... so maybe sitting in the sun in beer gardens drinking free beer while your band plays and staying out all night 'researching' venues isn't quite like working down the mines - it could be worse. I saw a documentary on five of the most dangerous jobs in the world at the film festival two years ago and running a record label didn't really figure.

That's it... I'm starting to ramble again - time to stop. Maybe I'll just have a wee lie down...

Thanks for reading (all three of you) and goodnight.

My first blog ever

Brent at Nostromo Books

The human brain is an interesting thing.

I had a dream last night. Or actually it was probably this morning as I remembered it as soon as I woke up (after hitting snooze for the 3rd time).

I dreamt that I was a ghost. Now there did follow a rather detailed description of this dream but I received some criticism for writing too much in this blog so I've cut out the details - people have such short attention spans these days.

Anyway it’s rather obvious to me why I had this dream. I read two short stories by Koji Suzuki, Japanese horror writer and author of ‘The Ring’ and ‘Dark Water’ before I went to bed. I hadn’t intended to read them but I’m staying in someone else’s apartment in Berlin and I didn’t feel like reading the few books I’d brought along (incidentally one’s on Jung) and most of her books are in German, French or Japanese and the only 3 English novels I could find are Catcher in the Rye (finally read it last year – it’s stupid but I always put off reading it due to the fact that John Lennon’s killer had a copy in his pocket), The Echo Makers by Richard Powers and Dark Water. I had just finished reading the Echo Makers last night, which is about a guy who suffers a brain injury and develops Capgras, which meant he made a reasonably good recovery except he didn’t believe his sister was his sister or his dog was his dog and started having paranoid delusions that there was a complex conspiracy against him and things were being hidden from him. The story takes part in Nebraska where a massive crane colony comes to roost on it’s annual migration and there’s a subplot about how development is threatening the vulnerable wetlands the Cranes are relying on. Overall not a bad book although not one of my favourites and I don’t know if I agree with the Guardian or the Times rave reviews but hey I’m no literary critic.

Anyway there was talk of how modern brain research seems to think that the brain is made up of a whole lot of different modules and it’s a miracle we have a sense of ‘I’ at all. The ‘I’ just appears to be some sort of consensus reached by all the different parts of the brain to fool us into thinking we actually have some control over what we are doing. Think about that next time you have trouble deciding what to wear or what to have for dinner – it’s a miracle we ever get anything done at all.

There was also talk of the reptilian brain and this morning it occurred to me that maybe my flying dreams are related to the fact that I’m descended from pterodactyls or something (I was flying in my ghost dream). Now that would be cool but probably not that likely – maybe a flying lemur then (mammalian brain?). This was the main thing I took from my dream. That plus a resolve to read something apart from Japanese horror stories before I go to sleep tonight.

I don't even believe in ghosts or at least won't until I see one myself. I had convinced myself by the time I was eleven that they didn't exist based on the fact that my father died in our house of cancer while I was away on school camp and never came back to see me to say goodbye. Even though I would lie awake at night for weeks afterwards waiting. Surely if there were such a thing as ghosts that's precisely the sort of situation when they would appear? I've also been a devout athiest since I was a child and used to skip bible class so a belief in an afterlife doesn't really fit in with my world view. I believe that this one life that we know we have is wondrous enough without having to believe in a better one afterwards (this is probably quite an arrogant thing to say because I have the luxury of being a middle class European with a reasonably good education living a good life in a peaceful country so apologies to people with not so great lives hoping for a better one afterwards - I could be wrong). However (based on my own beliefs), I'm quite happy to believe that when I die my body will decay and fertilise the soil and that will be that. I think I'd like an avocado or a feijoa tree planted on my grave - no headstone, just a tree and then people and birds and flying lemurs can come along and eat the fruit. That would be cool.

Speaking of flying and books and ghosts. A friend of mine stepped off the balcony of his apartment a few nights ago back in Auckland, except he didn’t fly – he crashed to the earth. He used to run a second hand bookstore where I would work one day a week and he would pay me in books. A gentle, kind and generous, although slightly eccentric person, he was always very supportive of all my creative endeavours, even the more ill advised ones. Last time I saw him was at a friend's dinner party about a couple of months ago and he seemed doped up on something and not very happy. I wished I'd talked to him more that night. He will be well missed - RIP Brent.