Operation Blue Lagoon

This is not a story about a fumbling 1980s adolescent romance in tropical waters (for those that remember Brooke Shields in her early career). Unsurprisingly, Blue Lagoon is not a unique place name, and this particular one is a National Park not far from Lusaka, in Mumbwa province. It was close enough for an easy weekend trip, and was billed by different websites as good for birdwatching and an ‘undiscovered gem’.

I had also wanted to visit because my father had mentioned a loose family connection: it had once been a cattle ranch run by a friend of my great-uncle, Colonel Critchley, and his wife Erica. My historical curiosity was piqued, both by this link and the thoroughly colonial-sounding moniker. I imagined a man in khaki, a large moustache, perhaps a monocle and an attitude to match. The reality was in fact much larger than life, and the caricature my mind had drawn.

Lieutenant Colonel Ronald (‘Ronnie’) Critchley had come to Zambia – then Northern Rhodesia – after WWII, a professional soldier looking for a new life after an unconventional war. Critchley had gone from Sandhurst into a cavalry regiment, and learnt his soldiering in the interwar period when horses were gradually being phased out in the new era of industrial warfare. He was described as “a six-foot-eight Hussar who liked to say that he had joined Sandford’s mission because he was too tall to get into his regiment’s new tanks.”

In 1940 he had joined Mission 101, a Special Operation Executive outfit who operated behind enemy lines in Abyssinia, gathering information and raising local insurgencies against the Italian fascist forces. Critchley showed himself to be resourceful, daring, tough, and effective, carrying out long reconnaissances on foot. These efforts helped to restrict the Italian fascist forces and ultimately pave the way for the British-led forces to re-take the territory and re-install Haile Selassie in 1941. Mission 101 was eventually disbanded after the Italians were defeated, and Critchley returned to Delhi with his commander, Colonel Orde Wingate (an even more eccentric character, who on occasion addressed his troops wearing nothing but a shower cap, and believed disease could be cured by mind-power alone).

Wingate’s next operation was in the forests of Northern Burma, where Critchley was to become commander of a zone of operations within the territory of the hill tribes, including Karen and Chin peoples. The aim was to supply and organize resistance to the Japanese forces, eventually turning that into offensive attack. At around the same time – in 1942 – my great-uncle, Ian Grimwood, became a prisoner of war at the fall of Singapore, and my father, Peter, was born in Bombay, India.

Critchley was awarded a Distinguished Service Order for his work during the war, and following a posting of a couple of years as a military attaché in Buenos Aires he left the army and wound up at Blue Lagoon. The country and wildlife must have appealed to him, as he became the founding president of the Northern Rhodesian Wildlife Conservation Society, holding the position for 20 years. Ian Grimwood got to know him during this period, as he was at that time the Chief Game Warden of Kenya, and they were both key in advocating for wildlife protection, in an era when poaching was on the rise.

When the Zambezi was dammed to form Lake Kariba, at the urging of his then-wife Erica, Critchley threw himself into organizing Operation Noah, the scheme by which volunteers tried to rescue animals stranded on islands by the rising waters. Erica aided by publicising their plight, while Critchley raised funds, and organized people and equipment (such as the M.V. Erica).

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M.V. Erica - Used as part of Operation Noah, and also to transport my father during his field work around Kariba 

Our own ventures into rural Zambia had of course been much tamer, though not without colonial overtones. A previous weekend away had been to the Lower Zambezi, where we had camped in the grounds of a lodge that also offered luxury ‘safari tents’. We roughed it with a clean shower block, power points at the tent sites, a pool, and a riverside bar complete with pool table.

This trip should be a little more adventurous, or low key at least, we thought. Andrew had tried to confirm by phone that Blue Lagoon was open, and that we could actually camp there. This seemed difficult to ascertain – the accommodation seemed to be closed (‘for renovations’), but we were told that camping would be possible.

After leaving the Great East Road, Google Maps led us down roads of ever decreasing size and quality. We found some road signs pointing us towards the ‘self-catering’ lodge that we had read about online. But we still doubted there was actually anything there, as the road became a track meandering through villages. The vegetation changed a little, becoming a band of thicker vegetation and shrubs. Beyond that, I thought, would be the kind of place I’d build a lodge.

As we rounded a corner, a collection of ochre-coloured buildings emerged into view. It contained an ample house with a shaded concrete verandah, a bunkhouse nearby, a few small inhabited houses set a little further back, and a couple of handsome looking chalets with steep thatched roofs. The grass around the buildings was mown, and there was a circular arrangement of rocks with a birdbath and some aloe vera plants in the middle of this lawn that betrayed a distant history of garden cultivation. The house was shabby, but had not fallen into ruin.

We pulled up, hot, dusty and looking for the campsite. Parking under some large shady trees, we stepped out onto the crackling brown carpet of leaves. The wind blew hot and strong. Andrew went to ask for directions to the campsite at one of the small houses nearby.

He returned to let us know that under the trees was actually the campsite. We had already arrived. Feeling exposed and surrounded by car-worn children, we got out the cool boxes and food bags, and set about addressing the immediate priority: lunch. After that, things seemed much more palatable, and we began the collective task of tent assembly (with multiple adults required for the Crichton’s mega-tent – 2 bedrooms and a living room!) The kids explored and played in both the dirt and on the verandah of the locked house, where there was shelter from both wind and sun. Not from vervet monkeys though, who were quick to make off with carelessly placed bread rolls and fruit.

We set off to see what birds could be seen, and sought directions from the caretaker. She told us that there was a single road out and back, with a turning circle at the end, but that the viewing platform had burned down last year. We took the cars, and edged along on the vehicle tracks, that took us past a crumbling concrete hide, in the process of being overtaken by trees and grasses. The tracks became part of an elevated levy that would have benefited from some grass trimming. The depth of the vehicle tracks too meant that our not-quite 4WD scraped its undercarriage and bumped along with disturbing loudness. We passed a plaque set up in memory of Erica Critchley, ‘the one who loved Zambia so much she cared for human and natural resources’, dedicated by the then President, Kenneth Kaunda.

At the end of the path we found the former viewing platform, and a view that took in vast expanses of grass and some evidence of wetland in the foreground. Not quite a lagoon in the dry season. In the far distance - visible with enormous lenses or binoculars - were large herds of lechwe and other antelope-shaped beasts. We toasted the sunset, and crawled back down the levy path.

By the time we had set up the evening braai and had cracked the second beer, everything felt very homely. We had access to a toilet in the bunkhouse, which sometimes flushed, and the family of the caretaker had filled up a nearby bucket with water for us. We had plenty, and we were glad enough to pass on our camping fees to her.

A fire, with toasted marshmallows topped off the kids evening, and a shared hip flask of a single malt topped off ours.

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My father, Peter, recalled overhearing ex-military men opening up a little to each other about their wars over a whiskey and an African campfire. A zoologist studying animal behavior for his doctoral fieldwork in 1963-4, he had been looking for an area to study large groups of animals in an unflooded valley. His uncle, Ian Grimwood, had written to introduce him to Colonel Critchley, and he had gone to meet him largely because of the interesting person he would indeed turn out to be. He described the meeting, at the Blue Lagoon ranch, thus:

“Not being good at timing travel, I arrived while he was lunching, at one end of a long table, with a uniformed servant standing against the wall behind him. He rather curtly welcomed me (without standing up) and told me to sit at the other end of the table while he finished his meal. I did; he did. As he finished eating, he slightly raised his head and said (if this were a novel, I would say “barked”); “Cigarette!” “No, thanks” I said. “Not you. The boy. His name’s Cigarette.” And that is all of our conversation I can remember. But I can confirm that he was indeed well over two metres tall, with a military bearing, and just as you wanted: a thoroughly colonial man.”

(With thanks to my dad, Peter, for much of the historical background)