CENTRAL AFRICA: Operation Noah

"We expected big trouble when the season's main flood waters hit the dam—and we have got it," said a dispirited game warden last week as he stood on the banks of Rhodesia's man-made Kariba lake. Before his weary, red-rimmed eyes lay a vast tract of drowning land. Two hundred yards away a dozen monkeys clung to the rocky crown of a tiny island that was being swallowed up in the dappled waters. The monkeys' ribs showed through their shrunken skin, their liquid, pleading eyes turned desperately this way and that.

Brown Fruit. The artificial lake, formed by the mighty Zambesi...