With no recourse to Western doctors or medicine people rely on him absolutely and - whether through the

With no recourse to Western doctors or medicine, people rely on him absolutely, and - whether through the chemical properties of his potions, or through auto-suggestion - many of them are cured of their ailments.By Western standards, his village is desperately poor. The people live in grass huts, without electricity or sanitation, and their water has to be fetched from a stream two kilometres away. Their diet consists almost exclusively of maize, which they dry, grind and cook into a kind of porridge. Their circular, grass-walled stores, raised on stilts to keep out termites, are frequently raided by elephants. The nearest hospital is 20 miles away, but most people have no means of reaching it; and even though a few rural clinics have been established, they lack most basic equipment and drugs."We depend heavily on traditional doctors," said Joseph Mwanza, headmaster of the school in Mwizala, another village close by. "Without them, many of us wouldn't have reached the age of 25."Parents are supposed to contribute two dollars per annum for each child attending his establishment, but in practice the families have so little money that this year only 60 of the 320 pupils have been paid for. "We are born in poverty and grow old in poverty," he said cheerfully, "but we can't get ashamed of it, because it's not a thing of our making."One cause for optimism is that money from wildlife tourism in the South Luangwa National Park, whose eastern boundary is close by, has now started filtering through to local communities, instead of being creamed off by central government.Mwizala has benefited not only from an official scheme, but also from the generosity of Robin and Jo Pope, who run tourist camps and walking safaris in the park.The village, in consequence, has a supply of clean water from its own borehole - an incalculable benefit; but it is still looking for funds to buy modest extras such as mosquito nets for visitors to sleep under, and a volley-ball for the school.For anyone caught up in arguments about rural conservation in Britain, it is a salutary experience to visit a country where rats, boiled whole and dried in the sun, are regarded as rare delicacies, and where the idea of set-aside - of paying farmers not to grow food - is not merely incomprehensible, but manifestly insane..

AS WE enter the woods our guide, Chris Salisbury, tells us to pause for a moment before we step off the beaten track. "We ask you to unburden yourselves of one thing, one reminder of the world you are about to leave behind - your watch. This," he says, smiling, "symbolises your willingness to participate in everything thrown at you." And he opens a green velvet bag, and we give up the next 18 hours of our time. "He's Robin Hood really," someone quips, and physically, he could certainly pass as a modern-day version, with his naturally-coloured clothes and his shoulder-length hair, topped with one of those wide-brimmed hats you see people wearing on BBC2 survival programmes. It's 6pm on a Saturday night, and 25 of us - assorted families, couples and friends aged from about five to 50 - are about to go on a "wild night out", an event run on a nature reserve in the Dart valley by the Devon Wildlife Trust.The "nights out" started a few years ago as a way of encouraging local schoolchildren to take a new look at their environment, and are now run every summer, and can be joined by members of the public from all over the country.We've been told to bring outdoor gear, a sleeping bag and a torch, plus "a healthy appetite and a mind clear of preconceptions". The night, Chris explains, will be divided into four walks of about an hour and a half to two hours each. One to our campsite, one after dinner, one rather alarmingly scheduled for before breakfast and one after it.The first we embark on is an Earthwalk, of the kind pioneered in the Seventies as an antidote to the rather staid nature rambles of the day Sensory awareness is the name of the game.

Chris is carrying two ancient wicker baskets, covered with rather twee checked tea towels Whenever he stops, he pulls out a different set of props. At one point he has us all walking in a crocodile, one hand on the shoulder of the person in front, holding mirrors at an angle so we can look up at the trees At another he is hosting a "smelly cocktail party". We collect the most pungent and aromatic things we can find and then return to the group for a mass sniffing-session.Our base for the night is a small clearing by the river and, although the event may be billed as "wild", roughing it is not on the agenda. When we arrive at the camp we are introduced to four volunteers from the trust who will cook our food (organic, vegetarian and locally grown), help us put our tents up if necessary (certainly necessary in my case) and generally make our stay more pleasant by giving out such home comforts as roll-up mats should we require them (my daughter Ella and I somehow manage to get two each).After dinner, as a warm-up (literally and metaphorically) for bat-detecting and owl-watching, we play games where members of the group are blindfolded and have to listen out to catch their "prey". We enjoy ourselves so much that it's quite a while before we head off up the river valley in search of the real thing.We may have got away from civilisation, but a bit of 20th-century technology still comes in handy. Chris uses a small black "bat detector" to track the bats' sounds, usually inaudible to the human ear.