I have not written about Matopos for a while - there were other things happening in my mind and heart. But I have been there many, many more times and have found myself thinking about the birth of Matopos. How was Matopos born? Did anyone witness that great event? It must have been a wild and torturous time for the earth to bring forth such a place, to nurse it through puberty and allow it to mature and cool down and settle here in the heart of Zimbabwe.
Of births, I have seen many. As a young child I sat watching my father’s fish tank, waiting the whole night for a guppy to give birth! (Yes, some fish do give birth to live fish/fingerlings.) I have disturbed many chickens, every few minutes, to see whether another chick has hatched. I even took an egg to school in my pocket once to make sure I didn't miss that wonderful moment when a wet lump of bloody down and pink flesh stands up to be a chick – proud and willing to take on the whole coop’s roosters! Similarly, I have watched and helped my dog, Tanya, give birth to a basketful of pups. I saw a giraffe being born once and even saw a shriveled little rhino taking its first steps in Zululand, still wet and unsure about this whole new world. I attended the births of two of my sons…much more dramatic and painful and filled with emotion, both of pain and suffering and ecstatic jubilance once we counted the toes and fingers and a nurse or pediatrician had given us the thumbs-up!
All of
these events have a component of time attached to them. For the rhino it must
have been a long, long wait, while for Papa’s guppies it was almost as frequent as the lunar
cycles but still, each time, caused a stir in the household. New life is
precious. Always.
When I
marvel over Matopos, I can only imagine the pain and suffering it required to
bring a place like this into being. The clouds must have built up into a
tremendous storm, with great winds sweeping the empty grassy plains, with not
much to make a traveler pause his passage. Then, like the first cracks of my
precious batch of ostrich eggs, but at a massive scale, the earth may have
ruptured, and I imagine some watery, rich soils oozing from this first sign of
new life. For days and days, like my baby ostrich, this new world may have been
eking its way to the surface, slowly breaking
through the inner layers of ancient earth forced from behind and below by the
eagerness of lava desperate
to reach the outside world; just like the first of Tanya’s pups, always the
strongest, most inquisitive and proudest of the litter. (I always cried when
the first pup was sold!)
I imagine
the earth opening and the first of Matopos’s great and immense ghommos and dwalas emerging from the inner earth,
wrapped in smoldering red blood that rolled off the sides into what we see today as the smaller
boulders and rocks surrounding the base of these grandiose granite hills. Some
would simply work their way out, sliding into a new place of existence with
great ease and dignity, while the smaller ones would be voided into piles of
rocks as if by some ghastly beast. Yet others would be flung by ancient
pneumatic forces deep into the birth-night, brightening up the sky like
fireworks announcing some great event. Cluttered rocks and the earth's rubble would be swept into
unimaginable configurations in bursts of energy, anger and relief. The noise
must have been incredible when the earth opened up and spat out Matopos. The
whistling of earth's gaseous excrement must have pierced through the sky like a
million steam trains, leaving great fires in their wake, ignited by sparks as
rocks were hurled through the sky!
I would
not be surprised if a few moons, smaller planets, meteors and other inquisitive
extra terrestrial marvels came to witness it… because it must have been an
event of great significance. It was certainly the birthplace of an international
conservation significance! Perhaps the geomorphologists – physicists and
geochemists or those who study the birth of geographic entities – may be able
to put a time or period or even an epoch on this event, but I suspect it took a
long, long time. It is, after all, a large place, perhaps not big in geological
terms but, nevertheless, a milestone in the evolution of the earth.
Once
those first cracks became evident the great herds most probably scattered, not
to return for many, many generations. Or not until the place calmed down and it
was cleaned up and sterilized like a theatre after the difficult birth of
breached twins or a hasty caesarian to save the life of a newborn. Here the process had
to take care of itself, over time. The universal healer, time.
Last week
a friend a pointed out an elephant shrew slowly making his way out into the
last of the summer rays to heat himself before his rocky tavern cooled down. I
can see in my mind how the larger herds, having not heard any further commotion
beyond the horizon for many a decade, like our little shrew, slowly snuck back,
like the animals of the veldt emerge after the thunder rolls away in the
distance. They came back, followed by their hunters in little bands of
prehistoric people who slowly wandered through this fledgling landscape like
the first visitors to a newly-established museum. Here they settled, some
demarcating their territories with song or dung piles, while our early brothers
and sisters painted the inside of their caves with elegant figures of what they
saw on the outside. The chaos subsided
and Matopos grew into a boisterous infant, not unlike the clumsy pachyderms
that frequent this place now, then into a young person blooming with her own
young and fertile as the veldt itself.
As is the
way with nature, the landscape today resembles the peaceful scene I encountered
one night when I could not resist the urge. I managed to sneak past a vigilant
nurse, and took a glimpse of my tranquil wife nursing a newborn son. I remember
the pain and angst of a new mother, but that scene of great tenderness, love,
devotion and complete serenity will always persist. Like Matobo.