The scout headquarters is in a superb location right in the middle of town. It is dry even in heavy rain and can be properly secured. But it will be rough sleeping.
We learn that Lorenzo, the master of a large catamaran who had promised to provision the expedition, is not coming at all. He had also promised a film crew. Without them it will be hard to make a proper record of the construction process. Both Wolf and Tom are experienced underwater cameramen, but they will be fully occupied in other activities. Resources will be further stretched.
And without Lorenzo, there will be no Jacopo. Jacopo Querci, who was scheduled to come on Lorenzo’s boat, is an Italian geneticist working in South African. The plan was that at Saya he would have taken DNA samples from a wide range of organisms but especially corals. Tom says he would have been able to collect data of real value to biogeography because the corals at Saya are very little studied. “Corals on the east coast of Africa and islands off that coast ultimately derive from the Indonesian archipelago [many millions of years ago]. The stepping stones were Chagos and of course Saya”.
At last good news. Walking back to the dockside, I see Wolf doing a little jig beside a large pile of boxes. This is load number one. Well over a tonne. It was due nearly two weeks ago.
We assemble an inflatable dinghy that came in the shipment – a tough 4.2 metre (14 foot) job that Wolf bought second hand through eBay. This is to be a tender to the Orphee and principal dive boat at Saya. Putting it together turns out to be tricky. But it’s great to be doing something. By 1.30 we’re tired out in the hot sun, and stop for beers and star fruit. We decide to call the dinghy Eurydice, the beloved wife Orpheus lost to the underworld.
I read on the BBC web site that Al Qaeda were duped when they tried to buy nuclear materials. Instead, criminal traffickers sold them canisters dipped in low-level radioactive waste from hospitals to make the Geiger counters jump - hopelessly crude fakes. A US official notes that in the purchase goods of this sort there is not a long established history of consumer protection. Here, I think, is a real opportunity for Consumers’ Association, ready, aye ready to tackle consumer detriment.
Hartmut Kubitza, the skipper of the Vaka-lele, can be off-putting to those not accustomed to steady stream of off-colour remarks directed at all and sundry. He is a very experienced sailor. He has sailed round the world on his own twice without GPS in the Vaka-lele, a boat he built himself in Australia (the name means flying boat in one of the languages of the South Pacific).
In West Germany Hartmut had studied engineering and economics, and then became active in the far-left revolutionary protests of 1968. “My God, man, we had 100,000 students on the streets against the police. But when we set fire to cars we lost the support of the entire working class. There’s nothing worse you can do in the eyes of a German worker than destroy a nice car. And without them you don’t have a revolution”.
Hartmut was held in jail for a year. Eventually, he was released without charge. German law gave him a criminal record nevertheless – simply because he had been in jail. A raw nerve of bitter anger flames up in him. “That bloody Joschka Fischer [now German Foreign Minister]. That guy aided and abetted bombers and murderers [Baader-Meinhof], for Christ’s sake!”
There are other reasons for his anger and turmoil. Hartmut’s father was a certain General Kubitza – just about the only German senior officer to survive the Battle of Stalingrad, in which around a million German troops died. “For Christmas, they ate rat”.
Shortly before contact with Germany was cut off by encircling Soviet Armies, Gen. Kubitza received news of the birth of Hartmut, his first child. The Field Marshal told him to get on a plane – one of the last to leave. Shortly thereafter, the high command bunker took a direct hit, killing the entire top brass except for a general and a colonel who were on their way to parlay with the Russians. Hartmut grew up hating the father he also loved.
Hartmut has an estranged wife in Germany, and other former wives around the place. He has two beautiful young daughters whom he sees once a year. Their pictures – colourful sailing boats and tropical fish – line his boat. He earns his living chartering around the Indian Ocean. “But I’ve earned enough money for one season. Now I come along to Saya with the crazies”.
Caspar Henderson
© GrainOfSand Ltd 2002 | To see the world in a grain of sand, And heaven in a wild flower,
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