As I stood at the riverside, I felt a little feint. I was looking down at the swirling depths off a high bank, and I felt myself start to topple, or so I thought. Perhaps I was standing dead still and firm. Perhaps it was in my head. It was a hot day after all , and I hadn’t eaten anything in a few hours. But it was a long way down from where I stood, to the rushing river below, and my balance seemed to be in question. I stepped back from the edge of the bank as a precaution. The deep swirling waters of the fast flowing river below were arguably unsafe after all the recent rain.
The swirling waters had been unsafe when I was here in this same spot a few weeks earlier. The water had been more off colour then. Off colour enough that on that occasion I had been swinging a streamer. It was cleaner now, and I was fishing the nymph, but as I stepped back from danger, I recalled that on my previous visit I had also felt light headed. I stepped further back and made my way along a narrow route through a patch of brambles, keeping my rod held high, and the fly between forefinger and thumb of the other hand, higher still to keep the leader out of the thorns. I made my way upriver. My mind was still on the prior visit, and the uncanny co-incidence of having felt light-headed on that day too. I paused in the bramble patch, and still holding the rod high, I turned and looked back downriver from whence I had come.
Then I noticed the monument to the kings on the hillside and my mind began to reel. Reel like it had when I was standing at the crest of the high river bank moments before.
We had just come from a meeting with a small group of teachers from the local schools. Once school business was out of the way, the conversation turned to fishing. Were Richard and I going to fish now that the meeting was concluded? Yes. We confirmed that indeed we did now plan to take our pleasure. The younger teacher, the pretty young lady with a black front tooth, asked tentatively about snakes. Were we not afraid of them, she wanted to know. I explained that, while yes, we were fearful of snakes, the grass was heavily grazed by goats and cows in these parts, and the chances are that we would be able to see a snake and avoid it.
She let that sink in for a moment, but she wanted to dig a little deeper. What about the water snake, she asked.
Water snake?
I said that any of the local snakes may occasionally cross the river, but that they didn’t live in the river. Being in the river was the safest place to be, I contended.
She was having none of it. No. The big black snake lives IN the river. Did Richard and I not know about it? I tried to explain that all the local snake species were well known; Were catalogued, and could be listed from a field guide, and that there was no big black, water-dwelling snake. She turned to her colleagues in frustration. What was the English name for this fearsome beast of which the Hlubi people were so aware. Her colleagues struggled for a name, and explained to her that these “umlunguus” didn’t worry themselves about the big black snake. But, she insisted: it eats people! Just last year a small boy was taken down into the depths by the snake.
Had she ever seen the big black snake, I wanted to know. No, she hadn’t. Neither had any of the others present. But this in no way detracted from her unwavering knowledge of said fearful beast. Did we not get it? Everyone knows about the big black snake. How could we not.
My mind then drifted to the late Bill Barnes, who had run the reserve further up the valley, and in later years the Trout hatchery nearby. Bill’s relative had told me that Bill swore by fishing in what he called “Dibble Dibble weather”, when the mist and drizzle crept up the valley and the sky darkened. He had thought the reference came from a children’s book, but I researched it and found that the “Dibble Dibble” was in fact an Aboriginal legend. It was the legend of a big black snake that would emerge from under river banks, in dark, wet, and moody weather, to take hapless children to its underwater lair. Bill, it would seem, was not afraid of the Dibble Dibble, since he reckoned that Dibble Dibble weather was when the big Browns of the Bushmans came out to feed.
But Des and Dawn had sung “They all went out on the lake, and they all got eaten by a big black snake” . This thing was taking on international proportions! So many unanswered questions!
I looked over at the bespectacled young lady with her white dress and her black tooth.
I started to realise that this matter was more likely to be answered with quotes from ancient texts. Maybe with reference to stories of the elders and warriors. The bible perhaps. But certainly a snake book or a Google search was not going to resolve this.
As I now stood looking to the monument, I recalled that it had been built facing directly up the valley of the Ushiyake, the tributary that came in from the north. That was the confluence towards which Richard and I were now making our way. Fly rods in hand. And the monument, with its list of Hlubi kings going back to the thirteen hundreds, had been built to face up that valley of the Ushiyake and the grave of the last buried king, Langalibalele himself.
I recalled too that some said one should not look towards the grave or hike in that direction, without certain rituals having been observed. I also knew that the names of the kings etched on the monument were names you would not find in any books. Not found in any Google search. They were ancient names, and they were strange, apparently being of Congolese origin, and certainly not names encountered among the Hlubi tribe nowadays. It was said that to walk with those strange names to your back, and your face towards the grave of the deceased monarch, required that you pause often, and that the guide whom you were obliged to hire, would sing out and wave his knob kerrie, and perform incantations, the frequency of such activities increasing as you progressed up the valley. At the annual cultural event, tribespeople headed towards the grave en-masse, but no doubt with a collective reverence and observance of protocol that carried great weight. That event had occurred just a few months prior, and my pal Ray happened to be fishing the river that day with his lady friend. Ray had observed the procession snaking their way up the valley on that reverent observance. I wondered if in such numbers, they too had to stop and perform the rituals that smaller parties had reported. Those individuals who had gone up, said that as they drew closer to the spot, the guide had become fearful, and said that they could not proceed any closer to the grave, for fear that terrible things might befall them. He felt giddy, and the best he could do was to indicate over his shoulder with his knob-kerrie, the general location of the venerated spot, not able to so much as face in that direction.
Ray had said that when the procession had returned, one young warrior had stood beside him and his lady and said how hot he was from the exertion on the hike from which he had just returned. He then suddenly removed all of his clothes and plunged stark-naked into the river right where they had just been stalking a wily Trout.
Strange days.
Standing there in the bramble patch, I turned back in the direction in which I had been facing when I had felt giddy, and wondered if that naked warrior was not afraid of the big black snake. I also wondered if I wasn’t feeling a little giddy again. I also wondered if we were encountering few fish on account of the bright sunny weather. Perhaps in Dibble Dibble weather…. But things, it would seem, were not black and white.
I shook my head and went to find Richard and see how he was getting on. See whether he had seen any snakes, or perhaps had a useful incantation to aid me in my dizziness.
