A Dangerous Encounter in the Riverine Forest
Running for our lives from a swarm of angry killer bees
It was two years into my foray in Africa. We were in Gorongosa National Park, in central Mozambique, taking four visitors from Israel on a safari. All was going well, and we were looking for elephants. The Gorongosa elephants are known to be dangerous because they are afraid of humans, having frequently been shot at during the Mozambican Civil War, which ended in the 1990s. I had heard many stories of them charging people and vehicles, even flipping cars over, and Jay had cautioned us sternly not to leave the safari car under any circumstances – an instruction which would soon be blatantly ignored by everyone.
We were near the Musakadzi River, where the elephants often gathered, in a dense riverine forest. Jay was guiding the group with Tonga, a Mozambican guide he had trained back when he worked in the park. We were driving deeper and deeper into the forest, the path (it couldn’t be called a road at this point) getting more and more obscure, when we came to an obstacle: a fallen palm tree. Tonga paused.
“Just drive over it,” Jay instructed, and so Tonga did. Or, at least, he tried to. He successfully ramped the front wheels over the log, but was then stuck, the back wheels spinning on loose dirt and air as he tried to drive the rest of the way over. Jay jumped into the driver’s seat to take over, and with the roar of the engine and the spinning of the tires, nobody heard the ominous buzzing until it was too late. Suddenly, the air was alive with bees.
The four passengers leapt from the car as Tonga cried, “Run! They’re killer bees!” They had been nesting under the palm trunk, hidden from view, and our disruption of their home had woken them in a rage. I looked around and saw the four guests racing in opposite directions into the thick bush, Tonga sprinting after them, attempting to gather his scattered flock. Jay, meanwhile, had bolted straight into the deep forest in the opposite direction with barely a cry of “Run!” before taking off. He was running in a crouch with his hands over his head; killer bees often aim for the highest point, and, indeed, I could already feel some stuck in my hair, writhing as they tried to sting me. Luckily, they couldn’t reach my head through my big hair bun. I looked around, hoping this wasn’t our time to finally run into a herd of aggressive elephants, and then ran, bent double, after Jay. After a while we slowed to a walk, still slapping bees from our clothes, and crouched under some sturdy ilala palms.
“Where is everyone else?” I asked.
We looked around. There was no one in sight. “Must have gone the other way,” Jay replied. We cautiously crept back to the car, Jay emphasizing the need for silence in case any elephants were near; “they’ll hear us long before we see them.”
When we were a few dozen meters from the safari vehicle, the bees started up again, breaking the blanket of quiet covering the bush with a furious vibrating hum I could feel in my chest, and we retreated hastily. “They’ll stay around the car now, around their nest, and if we try to go back they’ll attack again,” Jay said. Sure enough, any time we approached, a few scout bees would fly out, full of wrath, and chase us back. A killer bee hoard, as the name implies, can be deadly, so we decided to abandon the recovery of the vehicle.
Eventually, we reunited with Tonga and the others, and made our way in silent single file to a point ahead of the car, weaving in and out of trees and crossing a muddy stream, until we came to a clearing nearer to the wider road leading back to camp. There Tonga radioed the base for help. As we sat waiting for the backup vehicle, we counted our stings. Mercifully, none of us were allergic and we had run away in time to avoid being seriously affected by the few stings we got. My luck was the best – all the bees that came for me were stuck in my hair, and I had no stings. The others weren’t so fortunate; Jay came out second best with three stings, and the rest of the group had many more. The Israelis, all war veterans, titled the encounter their second tour in the army, and, far from being disturbed by the danger, were thrilled with the adventure.
Even so, as soon as we made it back to camp, it was cocktail hour for all as we took a moment to cool the adrenaline!