To Bite A Python on the Head

And the memory of  “He-who-sees-with-his-hands”

14 April 2000

Friday afternoon again, and time to the record some of the adventures of life on the frontier.

It hasn’t been much of a week. The lions are still playing around the house, and some contractors building a house for a new neighbour, have been kind enough to come and warn that the big cats have been hanging around even during day time, “so please be careful.” OK...

Last night was a bad night. It sounded as if all the critters were having a party on the sandbanks at the river again. A singalong beneath the moon. They had me up nearly every hour since midnight to see just what was going on. Egyptian geese excitedly hollering with voices that bear an uncanny resemblance to that of Rod Stewart, hippos adding an element of baritone and bass that would have put amazing Ivan Rebroff to shame, while the impala went around supplying most of the general tune. The sound of a man whose throat is being cut with a blunt object – such as a wood saw perhaps. That’s the sound they make when they become amorous.

The banks of the Olifants River. It is here - when the wild figs are ripe that the the animals make merry so much that one sometimes cannot sleep at night.

Oh yes, its that time of year again over here. Some of the city-slickers who bought a property a few miles from here excitedly reported that they heard the lions making their “mating calls” all night. Well, it seems that everybody they told the story to at least had the tact and social grace not to burst into hysterical laughter and telling them that those snorts were impala and not lions! (Lions are sort of silent. Sort of eh... more discreet. These impala sounds are more eh... well, let’s just say they make it sound as if mating cannot be fun at all...) Oh, and then there was something knocking on my roof too last night. I snuck around like a nosy old woman, armed with flashlight and a handgun, but saw nothing. Just one of those things, I guess...

Mentioning the moon, brings to mind a visit of some neighbours who usually only stay down here during the cooler winter months. They brought a bit of fresh news which I found interesting, since it comes all the way from my birth land, Piet Retief. There’s a pretty nice mountain not very far from that town, by the name of “Hlangampisi.” In Zulu this translates to “The Meeting Place of the Hyenas.” This mountain is one of those incredibly weird and wonderful places which words just cannot adequately describe. It has an atmosphere that makes you feel as if you’re actually standing on a strange planet from some science fiction movie. The wind makes weird sounds, the light is oddly diffused, the vegetation is completely different, and even the rocks look strange.

Hlangampisi - seen from a distance and not looking remotely as tall as it actually is.

On the eastern side the mountain is even more strange. There is a huge crater, with nearly vertical cliffs all round, except for only one narrow crack, where a river leaves this weird valley. At this point, there are mysterious deep caves, enchanting waterfalls, and beautiful indigenous forests, and the locals call it “Hlangamvula” – the place where the rains come together. And indeed, when it rains, the angry black storm clouds usually seem to gather over this spot, and then expand from there.

The son of one of the German farmers, a fellow called Klingenberg, went hunting for some baboons recently. He was climbing some of those cliffs when his foot slipped and before he could catch hold of something, he went over the edge and fell straight down. Luckily enough, however, the sling of his rifle caught a tree, and it whipped him around and slammed him against the rocks. He managed to hang there, and finally slithered back up to safety, relatively unhurt but very much shaken. Looking down, he said he could see where he would have fallen to his death, fifty metres below where the Entombe river originates. “Quite a spot of good luck there old fellow,” as my British ancestors no doubt would have said...

There is very much to be said about this wonderful region, but I won’t go into too much detail. Maybe just to mention that in those caves there once used to live blood-thirsty cannibals. The last of them were apparently wiped out around 1870 when the German settlers moved in, but in some of the caves, human sculls and bones can be found to this day – still bearing tooth marks and knife-cuts in the bone. On the farm of another Klingenberg, nearby, there is a huge big rock where the victims used to be slaughtered and their heads bashed open with clubs and stones to extract the brains. Curious thing about that rock, and the cliffs behind it is that when you strike them, they utter the most hair-raising sound. It sounds as if everything is reverberating.

Further south from us, there is a place called Marloth Park. This is a property development in a nature reserve where the more affluent members of society like to own property. It is right next door to Kruger Park and the land actually forms a loop, bordered by a river, which cuts into the Park itself – which is always very sought-after real estate. This also implies a relative absence of crime, which counts for much in the New South Africa. But crime tends to follow the rich the way that a reputation seems to follows a bad woman. This is where the lions caught and devoured two bands of thieves last year, which I have reported about previously. Well, the lions have done it again! This time they caught a thief on a bicycle. I’m not sure whether they ate him also, but there’s a local rumour going round that those lions are now praying for more “meals on wheels!” The property owners seem to be most pleased with their new security personnel. And best of all – they don’t belong to any Unions.

Elsewhere, there have been a lot more crime this week, unfortunately. The owner of a small farm store, opposite the valley in which I used to live, has been attacked by robbers and robbed of what little cash he had. Poor Twesh was lucky. He didn’t get killed. Only badly insulted and slapped around.

But in- or near the Orange Free State there was a little incident that was interesting. Another band of robbers attacked this small little country store. They took 86 Rand (that’s about US$15) from the cash register, the owner’s cell phone, and his car keys. They then did the unthinkably wicked act of locking the poor owner into a chest-freezer and absconded. But the locals must have found out what was happening. They were soon tracked down by a horde of black figures which descended on them from all sides and started chasing them.

The robbers obviously knew what would be their fate if caught, for they seemed to have had the fear of death in their minds. Eventually one of them shot himself in the head to avoid being captured and probably also torn apart alive. The second one tried to do the same, but before he got that far the crowd caught him and oddly enough, prevented his suicide attempt. I take it that they did engage in vigorous non-verbal communication though, for it seemed that the fellow got fairly well injured anyway. Only the third one managed to escape to live and tell the tale of every robber’s worst nightmare come true: that of being lynched by a mob. Perhaps this is partly what the communist-indoctrinated masses meant when they used to scream: “We are the people and we want the POWER!”

The neighbour told me something else which I’d completely forgotten about. When we told him about the python that had eaten the waterbuck, he said that it might have been same one which had caught one of his workers two years ago. Apparently the man had gone to the river not far from that very spot, and had been attacked by a huge python. The terrified man said the nightmarish creature had its big coils all around him and was holding him so tightly that he couldn’t breathe. And then he managed to catch hold of the snake’s head. All he could do was bite it behind the head. This seemed to have saved his life, for eventually the snake let go of him and the two of them parted, both much the wiser for the experience. (I just wonder whether the snake got gangrene like that man who was bitten by his wife, I talked about recently...)

When the lucky man’s friends went tracking the snake the next day, they said his track was as wide as that of a vehicle’s tyres! The voice of fear has a habit of exaggerating sizes so I wouldn’t necessarily take it too literally. But still, those snakes to grow quite big. We don’t have too many pythons around here, though. Plenty of black mambas, however. But those are stories for some other time. Sooner or later there’ll probably be one because I’m always attracted to snake stories.

Somehow the conversation also turned to a man whom the old folkies still talk about occasionally. A big frightening man called Mbekizandhla. In Zulu this means “He who sees with his hands.” People were really afraid of him. He was actually not a Zulu at all, but a white man. A man whom people used to call “Doctor Potgieter” – despite the fact that he wasn’t a medical doctor. Mbekizandhla’s main claim to fortune was that he could heal people with his hands. They used to come to see him from hundreds of miles away. He would let them stay in special rooms which he had next to his house. Every morning he would get up at three, and start “treating” people by holding his hands next to their bodies, and very forcefully stroking up and down – yet never actually touching the bodies.

He would really work himself into a state doing this, and by nine o’clock he would be completely drained to such an extent that he had to stop. Some said you could literally feel some kind of “strange power” between his hands, and claimed that he had healed them almost miraculously. My neighbour said he went three times, but apparently “He who sees with his hands” could do nothing for his back problems... But that’s what makes life in the country so interesting. The kinds of people that you encounter here are often of the kind that make your jaw drop. Mbekizandhla eventually retired to some hellish spot on the Mozambique border and nobody has ever heard from him since, yet even today, nearly 20 years later, people still mention his name with superstitious awe.

News from Zimbabwe continues to be bad. There are now about 1,000 farms that have been invaded. Some farmers have been attacked and assaulted. It is terribly sad to see one family after another packing up what worldly possessions they can fit onto their vehicles, and moving off to the safety of the cities, while the mobs are cheering and jeering at them, waving their fists, dancing and singing “liberation songs.” Most of those beautiful, productive farms had been burnt down during the civil war, and those farmers had built them up from the ashes. Many had been bought from the current Zimbabwean government, so there is no truth in the accusations that they had “stolen the land.”

The Zimbabwe high court has again ruled that the police has to forcibly evict all these hooligans and that the farmers have rightful ownership of the land, but as before, the police seems to be refusing to obey in the least. The president has told the squatters they can and should stay, and while he is having meetings in Cuba at the moment, the deputy-president has simply decreed that “it is no longer necessary to occupy farms, since the law has just been changed, enabling the State to seize private farms without compensation.” Zimbabwe has also told Great Britain that if she should attempt to interfere, they are prepared to protect their independence with whatever force might be necessary.

They have in actual fact, had the insolence to unofficially threaten the UK with war if she should try to intervene! In the meanwhile, our South African farmers near Pietersburg are reported to be preparing their farms for receiving the Zimbabwean farmers if they should be kicked out the country. I believe that Great Britain has also agreed to offer the displaced white farmers British citizenship if they should be thrown out the country. At the same time the land-hungry masses near Wakkerstroom in the south-eastern Transvaal, South Africa, (where some of my family still farm), have also threatened to start invading farmland.

These people have a curious view on the ownership of land. They dogmatically and emphatically maintain that just as nobody can own the air or the sky, cut of a piece of it and say: “This little piece here is mine,” nobody can cut of a piece of land and say it belongs to only one person. To their logic, land is something that belongs to “the people.” This generally means that you can’t really deny others access or living rights on your property. This kind of stone age thinking is of course, ideal for political exploitation. President Mugabe has to hold new elections within the next month or two, but so far he has refused to announce an election date. Will Zimbabwe turn out to be the next in a long line of militant, extreme-socialist dictatorships?

This is becoming “old hat” now, but in neighbouring Mozambique, yet ANOTHER cyclone seems to be brewing up. That poor country is seeing no end to their miseries this year! This is now attributed to the El Nina effect, which is supposed to be the opposite of “El Nino.” It is also apparently what has been causing hundreds and possibly thousands to starve in renewed catastrophic droughts in Ethiopia and northern Kenya.

Oh, and there’s this town called “Middelburg” which I always drive past en route to Johannesburg or Pretoria, and where one of the other locals live, who own property close to us. There a sixteen year old delinquent has stolen an aeroplane for the SECOND time from the airport, and had buzzed his own school. This created such a panic that the entire school had to be evacuated in great haste. His father just shrugged and said that his son is as passionate about flying as other kids are about riding a bicycle. Somehow, the logic in his explanation escapes my poor, tired brain. But I think I like that kid. And I think I like his dad too.

I could got on a good deal longer, but I figured four pages is about enough. As I said, this has been a quiet week.

Many regards,

Herman

All Things Weird and Wonderful...

“There is always something new from Africa” — Ancient Roman Saying

Friday, 8 April 2000

I don’t know about people in other parts of the world, but over here, 2000 will probably be remembered for a long time, not only for having been the Roman calendar’s millennium rollover date, but also because it has just been such a completely odd year for most of us.

At the beginning of this week, we had the hottest weather. A nice warm wind, but dry instead of tropical and moist. Then on Monday night, massive cumulus clouds came boiling over from the mountains, creating a breathtaking extravaganza of light and textures as the sun went down, and finally toppling over onto the miles of dry bushveld. That night the wind howled, and it changed from being extremely hot, to being quite cold within an hour. It rained a little, and since then we’ve had the coldest weather so far since spring last year. On the Drakensberg mountains it has been snowing a bit, and the high interior is still shivering with really cold weather. In the Olifants valley it is just nice, although the cooler conditions and cloudiness tends to make us all feel miserable. – We’re just not used to it. Other than that, winter is slow in coming. The trees haven’t burst into their usual brilliant display of ochre autumn colours, and if it keeps raining like this, then many of them might hang on to their leaves and stay green all winter long – something which will make the giraffes very happy and which hasn’t happened in ten years of drought.

Always more news about Mozambique: Yesterday the third cyclone has swept across Mozambique’s northern Zambezia province! One of their ministers lamely reported on television that “we don’t know what we have done wrong to deserve this...” In the meantime I was told that an incident was screened on TV which showed a big Canadian cargo plane unloading flood relief supplies to the starving inhabitants. It then showed how a very irate inhabitant approached one of the officers and demanded to receive meat instead of basic foodstuffs. He was supposed to have kept on demanding and displaying such an evil attitude that the officer finally chased everyone out the cargo hold, closed the doors and told his pilot to take off and go home again! I wonder if anybody learnt the lesson as those hungry people watched that plane full of food fly away again and in my sinfulness, couldn’t help but think there was some kind of harsh justice in it. A lot about happiness is routed in thankfulness.

I saw something this week which I’ve never seen in my life before. It was slowly getting dark and I was still working at my desk, when I heard the desperate screams of some animal being murdered in the bush. It sounded so desperate that I immediately grabbed my camera and rushed out – minus shoes, which was incredibly stupid – to investigate. It proved to be a young waterbuck calf that had just been caught by a very large python. Unfortunately it was on the opposite side of the river, and not having the courage to swim a flooded river full of crocodiles and bilharzia, I couldn’t get close enough for pictures. But it was interesting nevertheless. The mother kept circling round and round, but the snake ignored her completely. It just lay there with perhaps one or two coils around the little calf’s neck. The rest of the reptile was just one big pile of black coils next to the little animal, so I have no idea how long it was. Thus it lay there until darkness descended. During the night it must have swallowed its prey, for the next morning it was completely gone. The snake probably won’t go far, so anyone on that side of the river might still be able to find it. It will also probably not have to eat again for the rest of the winter. That was one happy snake!

I had a friend who came to stay with us for a few months once, and he brought two smaller ones in a sack – his pets! We tried to play with them, but they just weren’t cuddly enough. One was about a five-footer, so they really weren’t big at all. They would sometimes bite, and with teeth as long and as thick as syringe needles, they inflicted nasty wounds that bled a lot. My friend kept one which eventually grew into a really big snake. One day he was lying in the bath with his snake, when the snake encircled him. It constricted him to the point where he had to call for his older brother to help him untangle the snake’s coils. I think he sold the snake after that.

But Craig always was an adventurous boy. Twice in national parks, I remember him stopping the car, saying that he had smelt a snake – and in both cases he found the snake soon afterwards. The second time was next door, in Kruger Park. He jumped out and almost immediately found an average-sized python – about five feet, I think. He chased it in the tall grass for a while, and then other cars began to pull up, trying to see what we had spotted. This turned to be a problem, because people aren’t allowed outside their cars in the parks. One minibus in particular, proved to be very eager to get a snapshot of my friend and kept driving backwards and forwards to get a clear shot with their long telephoto lenses so that they might claim a reward for reporting him. It all eventually came to a comical end when I drank a glass of water, and as they slowly drove past again, pretended so shoot its contents through the minibus’ window. The fellow tried to shut it so fast, that he ripped the window out of its frame! So he saved what was left of his ego by departing rapidly... Craig left the snake, and we all sped off in haste. He had numerous large bites on this stomach though, for he had lain on an ants nest, and not daring to move an inch, he simply had to endure slowly being eaten alive…

Speaking of which – I saw a long line of army ants again this week. Curious animals. They all march in one straight line and devour any living thing in their path. They’ll even raid the nests of other ants, and you can often see them carrying away the live pupae of ants and other insects, which they’d kidnapped. The locals are always glad when they pass through their huts, because the ants always clean it of all spiders, cockroaches, bedbugs, baby mice and other pests. There have also been stories of unattended little black babies that have been eaten alive, though. I can think of only one case, however, which appeared to be a confirmed one. I think it happened last year, and the baby was dead by the time they reached the hospital. If you’ve ever read Henry Chariérre’s experiences in his book “Banco,” (sequel to “Papillon”) you might remember that it took the ants three days to kill a guard which his fellow-prisoners had tied to an ants nest in French Guyana.

I also remember an old fellow telling the story about his adventures when cycling from Cape Town to Cairo many, many years ago. He claimed that while he was asleep, someone had stolen his boot-laces. He only found them a long distance from his tent the next morning. According to him, army ants had invaded his tent that night, and stealthily worked his laces out of his boots! Next morning he found their columns neatly carrying both laces in two long lines, and summarily relieved the critters of their loot. If you ask me whether I think that was true or not, I would just say that just as some shoe laces are longer than others, I think some stories are taller than most.

Maybe I should say something about our game warden too. He is a man with a funny sense of humour and always a taste for adventure. Like a few days ago when he was patrolling in the rain, looking for snares and poachers... He suddenly came upon a path, and in it, one of the local women was walking along in the rain. So in a moment of boredom and with the devil riding his shoulders and tightly holding on to both his ears, he decided to do something stupid. He sneaked up to the road some distance ahead and waited for her to pass a large bush. As she did so, he leapt from the bushes and roared as loud as he could. He said if it wasn’t for her having such a small mouth, she might have leapt right out of her skin for sheer terror! It seemed, he explained, that she got much wetter than could be attributed to the rain alone... A bit cruel perhaps, but she shouldn’t have been walking there anyway. They don’t want to listen and stop taking shortcuts where it is dangerous to do so. Like the one who was badly chewed up by a hippo two years ago. About a mile downstream from home. Did I tell you about it? She went to hide her moonshine amongst the reeds one night, and walked into a big mouth full of ivory in the process. And that was that. A very short story indeed.

Maybe I should tell you about their moonshine... Over here, for some bizarre reason, they have this really crazy belief that getting drunk should be an unpleasant experience. So they brew their own mixtures of sorghum beer. Only, it isn’t like ordinary bear. It is like thin porridge. Quite nutritious really, but it tastes like ah... sour porridge, I guess. And when this is fortified they like to add various secret elements for added “bite.” This comes from secret family recipes, handed down over generations. Popular elements are: battery acid, battery powder (the black magnesium dioxide from dry cell batteries), cayenne pepper, copper sulphate, alum, etc. The doctors say sometimes their patients die of massive ulcers, and occasionally, when something goes wrong with the recipe, the patient is already dead when he/she gets to hospital – with the entire lower oesophagus eaten away. I’ve got another acquaintance who is a really superb home-brewer. He brews descent beer and sell is to them on the black market, and justifies his breaking the law by saying that, “I’m saving their lives by selling them cheap, good stuff...”

Professor Marassas, one of my old lecturers, got famous for having discovered the reason why there is such a massive occurrence of throat cancer among certain tribes. He traced it back to their brewing processes during which they unknowingly cultivate moulds that produce unique  aflatoxins that cause this cancer. He was actually led to his discovery almost by accident, when he learnt that these beer-brewers had a habit of sometimes suddenly going completely mad – for good. He found that when he’d isolated the toxins and injected them into horses, the animals would suddenly go stark raving mad, and eventually flop down dead. Post-mortems revealed that huge parts of the brain had been completely dissolved! So if anyone offers you native beer in Africa – it is strongly suggested that you try to politely refuse!

Incidentally, those bold and daring boys who nearly buried their Landrover last week showed up three days ago, bearing precious gifts of designer candy to say thank-you – two large bags full! Apparently the neighbour had threatened to phone their school principal to inform him about the moral fibre that his students have been showing lately. Interesting how two bags of candy made the neighbour forget about his plans, though. I got one bag for myself, though. It was sweet indeed!

Finally, there always has to be something political to report in South Africa. This week again. In neighbouring Zimbabwe, the squatter-issue is becoming explosive. The white farmers are desperately trying to hang on to their land, while their farms are still being invaded by the masses who call themselves “war veterans.” The only strange thing is that from what I see on TV, most “war veterans” appear to be in their twenties or younger. Since the bush war only ended in the early eighties, they must surely have been the youngest “bush-terrorists” I’ve ever heard of.

Those poor farmers have major problems. Their farm infrastructure is being destroyed, their equipment sabotaged, broken and stolen, and there’s nothing they can do about it. President Mugabe is becoming more-and-more hostile towards the world for trying to intervene. His country is also in dire financial difficulties, owing to his army’s involvement in the Congo, and due to the fact that the farmers have completely stopped producing. Most of their national income comes from the sale of tobacco, so the financial pressure is mountain. The “war veterans” have already publically declared that if Mugabe goes back on his promises to give them their demands, they would start a new civil war. An interesting twist to the tale comes with the news that old Mr Ian Smith, the last white prime minister, has just started a new political party, together with a black political leader. He must be in his eighties or nineties now and is quite frail, but he’s a farmer too, and strangely enough, a lot of black Zimbabweans are howling to have him back. They say that under his government they still had jobs and salaries. Zimbabwe was a pretty good place to live in back then. Two black Zimbabweans told me they are “suffering too much,” and two or three months ago, another black ex-Zimbabwean said he’d never go back there because Mugabe is a hateful man who has ruined the country. Only fifteen years ago he was seen as a knight in shining armour, and the “deliverer from colonial oppression.” What strange circles history likes to make at times…

The other problem is fuel. Ttheir already bad fuel shortage is becoming worse. One can only buy 20 litres of fuel a day, regardless of the size of one’s vehicle, and it has to be tapped into a container – not into the tank. Apparently their one other sound industry, the hunting and tourism industry, is also in a panic as nobody wants to go on safari when the country is in civil unrest and they don’t know whether their planes would have fuel to fly them back out again. Our fuel prices have also shot up by 27c/litre, to nearly US$2,30 a gallon. Bad news. African transport is always something crazy.

Ever wondered why South Africa has some of the worst car accidents statistics in the world? Ask my neighbour at his hospital. Much of his time is spent sewing up the victims of people who’ve been in accidents where the vehicles were incredibly overcrowded, or went out of control due to non-roadworthiness. Take the following picture, for instance. How many people do you think there is on it? He recently had to write a police statement for a woman who was trying to sue the driver of a pick-up, probably such as the one here. There was nearly thirty people on it, and all were drunk. The vehicle finally went out of control at a ridiculously low speed, and some were killed and others injured. The plaintiff herself had only light injuries which weren’t visible any more by the time she came to the hospital. I guess she’s was thinking like an American, though: “If there’s money to be made in suing someone and it won’t cost me anything, then it’s worth a try!”

Or how about the picture of this old Toyota Landcruiser?

It is one used by a farmer not far from here. It is an authentic survivor of the Zimbabwean bush war. The bullet holes are still visible and in a land that’s alive with vicious thorns, the tyres are filled with solid rubber! It is started by borrowing the battery from the farmer’s Mercedes first. The one mudguard tends to fall off occasionally, and the front seat has a blanked thrown over to keep the protruding springs from puncturing one’s hide. It’s old and you can see the road through the rush-holes at your feet, but it starts at the first go, and nobody is interested in stealing it! So why get rid of something that still works great? Yes why indeed? Standing next to it is my dad, some years ago. Last time I heard, the old Landcruiser was still going strong after more than twenty years of sound service. The good just gets better!

Have a great week,

Herman

Landrovers and Black Label Beer

...and bush doctors and potholes

26  March 2000

This week’s dispatch is a long one. It comes in two instalments. If you get tired of such a long discussion of domestic fluff, just let me know and it’ll stop at once! Next week’s may be shorter, though. It all depends on what adventures the future holds in store for us...

Monday

Today has been an interesting day full of adventure. Actually, the adventure started late last night already when some youngsters came begging for help. They said they had two four-wheel drive vehicles stuck, and asked whether we could offer some assistance. So I went over to my dad’s home to drag him out (he was feeling a bit sick), and off we went, armed with shovels, jacks and cables.

When we got there, it immediately became apparent that nothing could be done until morning. It was a group of prefects who had been allowed some freedom to go on a holiday of their own making – without parents present. With cars and Carling Black Label beer, of course.

What they had done was almost beyond belief. They’d come down for the long weekend for some adventure on a neighbouring property. The grandmother of one of them had a very nicely customized Landrover, which they had managed to secure for the weekend. With this wonderful toy, they proceeded to explore the riverbed until it got stuck. (Yes, the same Landrover that got stuck last time, but this time with new kids driving.) It was hopelessly stuck. Right down to the axles in sand, and with shallow water flowing all round it. In trying to winch the car out, they had drained the battery until it couldn’t be started anymore. This brought into action phase two of their crazy adventure.

Apparently one of the boys had come down, driving his father’s Toyota Landcruiser station waggon. With this he headed down a very steep riverbank in order to try and jumpstart the stricken Landrover in the river. A route I wouldn’t have wanted to attempt, even in a much cheaper vehicle. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that the rains had turned the river banks into very slippery mud-slides! The cruiser went down over some rocks, which bent the steering gear, and then slid sideways. When it finally stopped, the boy at least had the sense to realize that if he moved any further, the vehicle would roll over. So it was at that point that their youthful bravado and spirit of adventure failed them and they came to call for help.

What made things worse, was the fact that our game warden had dropped by earlier that afternoon. He’d had enough of kids getting into trouble and then bothering him to help them out, so with a wicked twist of his dry humour, he told them something which got them all very anxious. He informed them that there had come reports that there were great floods in the mountains (it had been raining a lot again recently), and that flood-warnings had been issued. “Water had been ‘let-out’ further upstream” and should reach them in about an hour’s time! This must have scared them all half-silly. They started digging and heaving with much determination until they’d succeeded in embedding grandma’s Landrover so properly that all hope for extraction was lost. They later admitted that by this time they could just see their two very expensive vehicles being swept off into the Elephants River, and away to Mozambique. So we just smiled and said nothing about the fact that there were no large dams in that particular river, (which is merely a dry diver bed for most of the year anyway) and told them we’d be back in the morning. I thought they might as well do a bit of reflection as to the wisdom of their choice in adventure. Especially since by that time a good number of the fourteen in question, appeared to have given themselves over to the warm comfort of our country’s excellent wines and spirits. Perhaps it lifted their spirits somewhat, but I still suspect they must have had an uneasy night. Maybe not saying anything about the river was a touch cruel. But later events caused me not to regret this decision...

This is where the game warden told the boys the flood waters were coming from - up on the escarpment near Mariepskop where the Blyderriver Dam was.

Meanwhile, on the way home, we were stopped by three locals who asked us to call for an ambulance for one of their fellows who’d broken a rib and was very sick. We took them half-way home since it was on our way back and was already quite late with little light, owing to the cloudy skies. But when we tried to drop them off at the cross-roads, they refused to get off and walk home, like they normally would have. With the new lions and a couple of elephants that are now hanging around the area, they just couldn’t bring themselves to get off. We saw their point, and took them home. Only when they got off, the smell of native beer made me realize that they too, had been having a jolly weekend!

This morning the young party animals were still a bit groggy, and one-by-one they emerged sheepishly from the bush to come and find out what has to be done. The Landrover was still in the water and I noted that they’d written their class year and name on the hood of the car. This was so that they would be able to identify it later in Mozambique, one of them explained to me. The first step was to show them that a vehicle’s tyres should be deflated when attempting to drive on sand. – Always! Incredibly, none of them had known this. After a high-lift jack was applied, one-by-one the wheels were hoisted up out of the sand so that they could place rocks and planks beneath the wheels. After that, plus the installation of a borrowed battery, the Landrover came out easily enough.

But rescuing the Landcruiser was another matter. Anyone could see that it wouldn’t take much activity to make it roll over, and since the banks were steep, wooded and fairly slippery with silt, it would be a bit of a dangerous operation. Nobody feels like trying to help some bush-bashers rescue a car that doesn’t belong to them, and risk being sued for the price of a nice house, if it should roll over in the process. The doctor-neighbour and I managed to find the number of a big six-wheeler tow-truck in order to let them take the responsibility, but the boys had such a frightened expression at the thought of what this would cost, that we relented. They were told to dig away the bank above the Landcruiser, leaving only two pillars for the wheels to stand on. The idea was to reduce the angle at which the car was standing, so that its real axle could be dragged uphill without the car capsizing.

This took a fair amount of effort, and the boys got a bit dirty. But it was an adventure, and between pelting each other with hands full of clay, and retaliating by hurling foul language and insults back, they managed to dig away enough earth from above and below the car, using shovels and pitchforks. When finally the two remaining pillars beneath the wheels were removed, the big car slid nicely into a more reassuring angle. Luckily their newly-extracted Landrover had a very powerful mechanical winch with a long cable. So we nosed the Landy around, attached the cable to the Toyota’s tow-bar, began to haul in, and crossed fingers... The angels that no doubt work overtime looking after adventurous boys probably helped a bit, for the rear swung back nicely enough and nestled into the excavated depression. After a bit more shovelling the car eventually stood with its nose pointed at the river, and with a bit of effort, tugging and pushing, it finally made its way up the bank once more. As on the previous occasion, the kids showed their gratitude in terms that made sense to them: “Uncle, can we invite you for some breakfast with us? – And we think we’ve still have a little bit of brandy left.” (In South Africa, the terms ‘uncle’ is a term of endearment and respect, sometimes used in the place of “Mr” or “Sir.”) I could only laugh and protest that my age didn’t warrant my being called “uncle,” I already had breakfast, thank-you, and that since brandy is what got them into the mess in the first place, it would probably be best for them to avoid it for a while. So after their taking group pictures to add to their album of adventures, they cheerfully headed off and we went our separate ways.

Unfortunately they didn’t heed the advice about the brandy, and apparently they still had more than a “little bit” left. When the game warden got there later that morning, he found them, each with a glass full of “mix” – the local term for a mixture consisting of brandy and Coke in a 50-50 ratio! It seems that last night they stole some of our local signposts, and are pursuing their foolish definition of “fun” as merrily as before. So I guess there shall have to be some talks between us and their grandma in the near future... Let’s just see whether they survive their holiday first!

To be continued...

Back at the home front, the monitor lizards, Freddie and Sandra are now frequent guests. Yesterday the dogs got some marrow bones, which they would only growl about to each other, but not eat. So Freddy decided that if the dogs won’t have them, he would. He sat on the barbeque altar for a long time, chewing and trying to harass the marrow out of the bones. Sparkplug has not given up on trying to assassinate this intruder of his domain, but so far each of his different tactics have resulted in him being spanked very soundly indeed. He eventually did manage to drive Freddy off with one bone in his mouth, but I suppose the saga will continue yet.

Sparkplug and either Freddie or Sandra - looking for courage and asking for trouble...

My doctor-neighbour-friend has just been around for a sundowner. I always like talking to him, cause he’s got a sharp mind, he’s entertaining and always bears a load of interesting tales about his work as a doctor in a “bush-hospital.”

When our doctors qualify as physicians in South Africa, they are forced by a new law to do two years’ “community service” before they can be registered and practice on their own. Nobody likes this, but this is yet another one of those communist-ideas that was instituted by our government. (Cheap health-care for the masses). So my friend is in charge of the new “raw” doctors fresh from university. They are often sent to the far-flung rural state-owned “bush-hospitals” where mostly free healthcare is given to the illiterate masses. The conditions in these hospitals are usually “very challenging” as some doctors would put it in politically correct language. 

Anyway, one of my friend’s new doctors which he is in charge of, is one who got his medical degree from a particular university where medical degrees of questionable value are issued. Now, this particular young doctor has earned for himself, in the course of less than four months, the dubious title as “The doctor who kills more patients than he heals.” For this reason, everybody is afraid of him. It seems that he is still learning a lot... The fellow’s name is Joshua, [I changed his name]  and according to my friend, a new term has been coined at his hospital. When a patient dies as a result of physician’s error, they all say he has been “Joshuaed.” But this weekend a big sigh of relief went up at [name of hospital withheld] hospital when the poor Dr. Joshua X, got into a car accident and broke both his collar bone and his arm. Now he is out of action for a while, and the general feeling is that a few patients will now remain alive, who otherwise would have been dead. Incidentally, about the guy who broke his ribs... My neighbour went to check up on him, because the ambulance couldn’t come. He has tuberculosis as well (like most of the locals), which has gotten out of hand, because he doesn’t want to take his medication anymore (issued free by the government). He would receive free care and treatment at the hospital, but he vehemently refused to go there, saying “Ek sal vrek daar!” – I shall kick the bucket there! He obviously knows bush hospitals and what it is like to be “Joshuaed!”

A note of cynicism in this story? Undeniably. But this is just one of those things that happen in Africa, and which are talked about when people sit and watch the sun go down over a bronze-coloured Elephants river. These things just don’t amaze us much anymore. On the other hand, one of my friend’s good doctors had a very horrible experience last week. A woman had come to him to have him remove a growth from her ear, which was the result of an improperly pierced earlobe (for earrings). My friend refused to remove the growth, telling the woman that these things always grow back again. But she insisted. Finally, the only doctor willing to do the operation was this good young community-service doctor. He removed it OK, but in the process cut his hand through the glove. The woman didn’t look too bad, but her blood was tested anyway. She was HIV positive... The anxiety that that poor doctor will have to go through while he drinks AZT for a month can scarcely be imagined by those of us who haven’t been through it. Apparently AZT makes a person incredibly sick, and he has already been vomiting for a week. My friend himself, had to go through this once, and he says the word “hell” gets new meaning after a month of such uncertainty, waiting for the blood tests to either show positive or negative. And the worst of it all was that all of this happened for an operation which had not only been unnecessary, but not advisable as well!

One can only take one’s hat off for these brave “bush-doctors” who have to work for the smallest salaries under the worst conditions. One of his other young doctors has just gotten malaria, and his wife seems to have it as well. And since the senior surgeons (mostly from the Congo) draw salaries but rarely do any work, the work load is now very harsh on those doctors remaining in the harness. But they’re used to this by now. All in a day’s work.

With such working conditions, our doctors have to improvise a lot. My neighbour is just an ordinary general physician, but he has to do procedures which would ordinarily have been referred to specialists in any proper medical hospital. He just has to develop his own techniques mainly by trial-and-error. Luckily he likes making wooden stocks for guns and fixing engines and cars and making things, so he’s good with his hands. He just saws off bones, inserts screws and plates and clamps, and sews things up, and it seems to work. They have to improvise a lot, owing to the lack of proper tools, equipment and drugs, so these bush-doctors are generally very good. They also have to do simple eye-surgery, brain surgery, plastic surgery, and everything besides. Plenty of patching of gun- and knife wounds, and with Africa’s exploding population – hundreds of caesarean operations, because the locals generally have a genetic problem with delivering babies due to small pelvic bone passages.

It is no wonder that these bush-doctors are quickly snatched up by foreign countries as soon as they qualify. Their experience is usually very unique and far beyond their years or official training, because they have to handle very large numbers of patients and just have to solve most problems on their own. It is a pity, because we are losing large numbers of our best doctors this way. In the past, there was less money for health care than there is now, but all state hospitals used to be excellent. Now all are bad and when you get sick, you either go to a private hospital and pay through your nose, or stay at home.

One other thing which gave cause for comment was a patient that he had to treat for a bite-wound. This particular man had been bitten on his finger by his own wife. So deep that the cut reached the bone. He had to be put on intravenous antibiotics for five full days, while his finger swelled up like a Frankfurter sausage and became extremely painful. His finger finally had to scraped clean in a most gruesome little operation. The moral of the story? Human bite is extremely, EXTREMELY dangerous. Especially when you get bitten by someone who doesn’t believe in brushing teeth more than once every few days...

This makes me think of an incident we had on the farm, a solid number of years ago. Two of our workers got into a fight, which eventually degraded into a wild wrestling contest. It ended when one of them bit the other one’s nose off. He bit the entire front portion off so that only the two large nostrils remained. This man must be alive to this day. When you see him, you’ll recognise him instantly. He’s the one that bears an uncanny resemblance to Miss Piggy.

Tuesday morning

Found a waterbuck bull caught in a snare about two or three hundred metres above my home. It must have been caught last night, and the steel wire had cut deeply into the skin. I took some pictures, and the game guards were summoned to come and do a sweep, but the poachers will never be caught. It makes one extremely angry. They’re not poaching for hunger, but for sport. Hungry poachers check their snares every morning. They don’t leave the carcasses to rot in the snares, as the impala which we found only a short distance away from the waterbuck – also caught in a snare. This makes it so much worse. But our chief warden is a very good man. He wrote the anti-poaching manual for the Natal Parks Board, and enjoys hunting after poachers. One of these days he’ll probably make an example of one of them. The problem is that the poaching laws are so lax. Many poachers have been caught poaching elephants as many as three or five times already. In desperation some rangers have been know to have fed poachers to crocodiles in the past!

Friday

My teacher-uncle came for a visit. He had another interesting little story to tell about the ‘New South Africa’ – which is still held up a model for the triumph of democracy and justice before international eyes. In his town of Paulpietersburg – as in may other towns these days –the road surface has also degraded to something which South Africans had never known before. The town’s water supply system had been replaced some months ago, and the numerous ditches dug across all streets, were just filled in with dirt and left that way. With the rains, the already numerous potholes naturally just became bigger and even more numerous. Together with the terrible ditches, this has made a once pretty town quite an adventurous place to drive through! It was so bad, in fact, that when I was there last, a big fuel tanker had got stuck in an uncovered ditch just off the main street. It had sunk in so thoroughly that it was there for two days, and eventually had to be lifted out by a hugely expensive hired crane that had to be ordered from some faraway town or city...

Anyway, my uncle finally decided to let his school kids write letters of protest to the new town mayor, who is one of the typical ‘revolutionaries’ that now rides the gravy train. Most of them had clever little arguments, like: “The potholes are very dangerous. If a child should be riding his bicycle and suddenly has to swerve for a pothole, he could be hit by a car.” Or: “If a car should swerve, it could hit a pedestrian,” etc, etc. But one clever little fellow wrote more-or-less the following: “I want you to fix the potholes in our streets very quickly. I know what you do with our tax money! You steal it! You use it to buy booze for yourselves!” And then he went on to list the specific brand names in question.

The principal warned my uncle that there would be trouble, but he decided to send the letters to the mayor anyway. A day or two later, he was summoned to the principal’s office, only to find himself confronted by a highly irate town mayor. The mayor explained that he didn’t mind the other letters, but there was one which he found particularly offensive and unacceptable, and he very angrily demanded to know who had written it.

My uncle could hardly suppress a smile when he answered: “Your son!”

—   “Out of the mouth of babes . . . !” What followed was a long moment of silence, loaded with embarrassment and a lame: “Oh...”

We’ll see what happens to the potholes now... Regarding schools, my uncle thinks his school will only last three more years. The government has withdrawn all funding, except for some teacher’s salaries. The white kids are leaving the schools in droves, and are going for home-education. The black kids want to be where the white kids are, because discipline doesn’t exist in black schools and any attempt to instil it, is branded as racism. The whites don’t want to go to school with the blacks, because they feel that they blacks have morally unacceptable behaviour and bring crime, socialist-political indoctrination, destruction of culture, tradition, standards, Christian principles, etc., etc. Despite what everyone says, racial feelings are worse now than ever before in the country’s history. So education is a big mess here.

The potholes make me think of is supposed to have been like in Zaire, before it became the Congo, and also in parts of Zambia. There the local kids work as road-contractors. They fill in the potholes with soil, and when the truckers come past, they throw out hands of small change for the kids. It saves the government from fulfilling its responsibility, the kids make money, and the truckers get a road to drive on. Everyone wins. Of course, the rains always was the soil out again, but that’s the African definition of job creation. When the truckers stop throwing money, the kids stop their maintenance, and pretty soon the truckers start paying again. African logic... Pretty smart.

Incidentally, our biggest national trade union, the blatantly communistic COSATU, has warned the Government that if the state and the private sector don’t start creating thousands of new jobs really quickly, there would be really big trouble. This mighty trade-union is to a large extent the organization who determines who gets into government, so this is a dangerous threat. Their followers vote according to what the COSATU leaders tell them to vote for. The organization is enormously wealthy, and their leaders live in the greatest luxury and spend money like water. But they’re proud, and openly communists. They always wear red, and usually display the hammer and sickle with pride.

Speaking of communism, it seems our leaders have bestowed even more honours on Cuba. They’ve just signed an agreement for closer ties with Cuba and for “sharing information about the rest of the world.” So our closest national friends seem to be Fiedel Castro of Cuba, Mohammar el Quadafi [different forms of spelling] of Libya, and Yassar Arafat, that fanatic Arab. Oh, and also Saddam Hussein, the soft-spoken gent with the bad attitude. These national friends all give moral and ideological support, while the rest of the world is only there for soft loans. Phew! Some friends!

My uncle has been offered a job by one interesting black principle in a totally black school. A large new modern one.  This principal is one of the old boys. When his teachers strike, he chases them back to their classes with a long sjambuck (hippo-hide, used for disciplining cattle)! They’re all afraid of him, but his school is the only stable and successful black school in the area. When his teachers are late, he instructs the police to arrest them for theft – stealing the State’s time! But he is also a Zulu traditionalist, so he refuses to let any women speak at official meetings. He is very big, and when he shouts at any woman who dares to say a word in public: “You SHUT UP! You know nothing!” – they generally obey without objection! See why this Africa is such an interesting place to live in?

In my next life I’d like to be a Zulu. The men have only four duties in life: To make war or raid their neighbours, to plough the fields once a year, to occasionally work with cattle, and to fulfil their part of the matrimonial deal when it comes to procreation. They also have an interesting philosophy about women: Women are regarded in the same light as cattle. They are there to be bought, sold, traded, borrowed, hired out, and beaten at will. Women have virtually no rights, except maybe for the Fourth Amendment in Zulu law: “Women have the right to keep and bear children.” Preferably only female children, and as many as possible. This is because girls can be sold for cattle when they grow up. The father with many girls, is thus assured of a wealthy retirement.

So what happens when you want to marry? You talk to the potential bride’s father, and haggle – that’s what. You say she’s so bad and worthless and ugly, and you can only pay three cows for her, while the father says she’s so obedient and hard-working and faithful and brews such excellent sorghum beer that she’s worth twelve. And so you go on until the price has been settled. Then you pay a deposit and take her home. She’s yours to do as you please, until you’ve made all payments. Sometimes it takes years to pay for her, but this doesn’t matter too much. The nice thing is, that if you should become tired of her or she shows too much attitude or she just turns out to be less than what you thought she’d be, you’re always free to send her back for a refund. In that case she’ll probably get beaten by her father for having caused him financial loss, but other than that, there’s not much hard feelings. Any children are the father’s, but the mother has to raise them. Oh, and the other nice thing is that you can have as many wives as you can afford, provided you can pay for them. So what happens when you can’t pay for them but you want them anyway? You go and raid your neighbours and take what you like. Women, cattle, whatever. That’s the best bet for most young men. The only risk is that you might get killed in the process, but since both eventualities will end your quest for a wife, I suppose it is all the same...

So is this still going on in South Africa? To a surprising extent, yes, although it has been changing fast in these modern times. You can pay with money or cars or a house, or whatever, if you feel like it, but credit cards aren’t accepted as yet. I’ve also seen no wives for sale on the Internet, but I’m sure it’ll come... The problem is that women are becoming very liberally-minded under western influence, and this is leading to retirement in poverty for many fathers. This all sounds very funny, but in reality, this crashing of the ancient tribal systems is causing a lot of big problems for them and nobody really knows how to deal with it. The same goes for the land question, where tribal lands are owned by the chief, and he only allows those that he likes to live on his land. Now there are demands for private ownership of property, and the governments want to control that which the chiefs have been in control of for centuries... and so it goes. A big, big mess that has caused a lot of blood to flow over the last decade, and will probably take many years more to sort out.

Some mornings you wake up only to find that you’d missed a party. Yesterday morning was like that again. The sandbanks in front of the house has been absolutely littered with tracks of all kinds and descriptions. Sometimes herds of waterbuck like to sleep on the sandbanks next to the house. I think they feel safe next to a human habitation where they can see further. Especially when the flood lamps are left on at night. You can watch them from quite close-by, and they don’t mind noise and movement at all. Not at night, anyway. Somehow they must sense that there is no threat. Well, yesterday morning, it seems that the party must have been broken up rather rudely. Several sets of lion tracks and the deep imprints of antelope showed that lions had come to crash the party during the night. I couldn’t see that they’d caught anything, though.

The lions did give Joseph a scare, though. On his way to work, he suddenly saw the bush in front of him explode, and a whole herd of giraffe come flying out of the bush, their long legs flaying the earth with thunder. Although he is a child of the bush, this had come a little bit too suddenly for his nerves to handle, and he promptly took evasive action. And lucky thing he did, for a few moments later, the lions came tearing past him as they cashed after the giraffe. Joseph has now requested that he be fetched at home in a vehicle until such time as the lion-activity has subsided in this general area. Maybe this is a good thing, because those elephants are frequenting the area now.

So, I’ll stop before the week’s adventures grow any longer. Best regards and have a superb weekend!

Herman

Last of a Thousand Year Flood

Of Land Grabs, Monitor Lizards and a Foolish Fisherman

3  March 2000

“There is always something new from Africa” — Ancient Roman Saying

A storm is brewing across the Olifants River, where I was writing this Dispatch.  Usually when there was wind or lightning, the phone lines would go dead and remain out of service for several days, thus shutting off communication to the outside world.

Outside it looks like there’s going to be a bit of a storm. Hopefully the phone likes will stay intact so I can send this off first.

Well, another week has flown out the window, never to return. Meanwhile the monitor lizards have been back several times. They’ve been formally adopted now as part of the domestic population, and as is common practise when one adopts something, they now sport names. The smaller one is called “Sandra,” because of her resemblance to Grandma’s hairdresser. The other one is called “Freddie,” in memory of the lunatic-psychopath from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” thriller series. Sparkplug hasn’t learnt that they are bad news yet. He still has his moments of bravado in which he tries to get at Freddie, but each time Fred sends him rolling with one powerful flick of the tail!

Here I am back on the old farm with a pet monitor lizard of mine - a pretty small specimen still. Notice the gloves. That baby could bite with incredible force. It never really tamed down, and neither did the second one I had. That was my school uniform and I was probably about 17 years old.

By this time the news about Mozambique has become like so much stale bread, but it seems that the saga continues yet. It is still raining heavily in parts of the country. There have been new floods in Natal, and of course, much of the water from South Africa is still added to Mozambique as the rivers drain to the Indian ocean. The neighbour’s brother-in-law is a commercial pilot flying supplies into Mozambique at the moment. He says that what we’ve seen on TV so far is not a fraction of what it really is like. He says it is too terrible to describe how you literally see people dying all around you, with your very eyes.

In the meantime, the foreign aid people in our little town of Hoedspruit has been welcomed with open arms. One lady reported that some American soldiers walked into her clothes shop, and promptly bettered her best ever takings by 300%. Of course, with the US Dollar buying almost 6,5 Rands, and the Pound buying about 10,5 Rand, South Africa is a shopper’s paradise for them, and they do seem to shop till they drop. One thing is sure, everybody will be sad to see the foreigners go. Hoedspruit airforce base has been crawling with giant Russian Antanov freight planes, American Galaxies, British Telstars and droves of helicopters, but I’ve seen some of the big boys leaving this week. I was glad to note that so far the foreigners have reported that they have been delighted by the way that the South African officers and locals have welcomed them with old-fashioned hospitality. Even the droves of reporters, photographers and other sensation-vultures seem to be getting along well with the locals.

But there has been once incident which has been rather sad. This week some Americans went to explore some of our gorgeous waterfalls in the mountains. They climbed to the top of one of them, where one slipped and hit his head. The waters carried him away, and his friends just couldn’t rescue him in time. One of them who tried to get to him, broke his leg, and before he could do more, the poor fellow dropped over the edge and fell 70 metres to his death. I hear he worked as an aircraft mechanic for the Mozambique rescue workers. How sad that this poor man had to die when having come to save others...

Over in Zimbabwe the trial for the remaining farmers is still continuing. By this time 600 farms have been invaded by land-grabbing war-veterans in a move which the courts have declared illegal, but which has been un-officially sanctioned and encouraged by president Robert Mugabe. The courts have ruled that the squatters are to be evicted, but so far the police have refused to obey the court ruling. So the saga continues. I’m reminded of an acquaintance whose father once owned two profitable gold mines in Tanzania. He was kicked out with the clothes he had on his back. The same thing happened to him in Zambia. And after the drama when Rhodesia fell to the communists, he walked into South Africa with nothing. A once very rich man of seventy years old, who had to start all over as a motor car mechanic. These are the silent stories which the world’s newspapers have ignored completely. Many people are now saying that they’ve drifted from Kenya from state-to-state and now that South Africa is going down the drain, there is just nowhere else to go for them anymore.

Zimbabwe in the good old days - here my dad is staring out over the Zambezi Valley - or MMOBA as the settlers would say - "miles and miles of bloody Africa." This was before the land-grabs and before the wildlife was so sadly decimated. We have many happy memories from that valley.

Closer to home, our roads have first sunk into a series of potholes, and now whatever has been left between the potholes, is crumbling away like cookies. I had to make a trip to neighbouring Tzaneen on Monday, but came to a dead end in front of a flooded bridge. With long lines of cars waiting on both sides, we just stood around and watched the water for a long time. Big trucks and high four-wheel drive vehicles could get through, but a few of the more dilapidated vehicles tried as well. Amazingly, all of them made it. They emerged with water streaming from all doors, fanbelts screaming, and clouds of steam billowing from the hoods. One or two died in the water, but were pushed through by bystanders who preferred a touch adventure to the monotony of just watching the water. Eventually I had to turn around and take a long detour via another route, which was just about as big a mess as I’d ever seen on any road before. That road is GONE! The road connecting Tzaneen to the highway leading to Johannesburg has also been closed by mudslides so big that it just took the trees from uphill and re-planted them all over the highway! Bulldozers have now cleared a two-track trail so that four wheel drive vehicles can get through. In places I had to drive through lakes of water that came up to the car’s belly, and in some spots it was as if there were rivers flowing across, as wide as a football field. On the upside though, are the numerous wonderful waterfalls in the mountains where hadn’t been any in probably 20 years of intermittent drought.

It is hard to say how all the damage will be repaired. With mostly sunny skies, we’re all finally beginning to wonder what will happen next, since our province has announced that it is basically bankrupt. There was talk of central government funds to be allocated, but now that there have been other big floods all over the country, this will probably amount to very little. I know in Zambia the tar roads are so completely wrecked that everybody just drives on the gravel next to the roads now. In the Free State, my neighbour tell me, they’ve already scraped the tar off some of the important roads, and turned them back into gravel. But there’s a funny twist to the story... Out of 150 graders that the government was supposed to have had on its books, they could only find about fifty at best. Nobody knows what had happened to the rest! Just one more example of what’s going on in government.

Not surprising when you consider that and automatic teller machine was stolen from the national police headquarters in Pretoria. Or that a coin minting machine was stolen from the national mint, where it is said that it is physically impossible to steal so much as one cent! Or that high court judges are constantly having their wallets, cellphones and valuables stolen by their own people in court, or that in the Union Buildings (our government headquarter buildings), the ministers have to lock their office doors when they go to the bathroom, because when they get back, they frequently find computers and personal items stolen. Our president talks a lot about the “Great African Renaissance,” but this seems to be the biggest pie-in-the-sky since the Great Communist Dream.

In 1988 I met a man who told me that his brother worked for the CIA and that he had told him that South Africa would follow the classic road of Africa quite soon. He wanted to know when the government would change and “it would no longer be possible to hunt in South Africa.” Like the naïve boy I was, I told him that that would never happen without a bloody revolution or civil war first. Well. It seems to be happening, and we never even came close to a civil war! Where hunting is concerned, the government seems to be intent on killing the industry with its new hostile firearm legislation. Indications are that the new law will probably pass relatively unaltered. Foreigners will no longer be able to hunt with borrowed or hired rifles. They will have to be able to prove that they are competent users of rifles when they get into the country (nobody seems to have thought about how they should demonstrate their abilities to customs). And professional hunters, ranch-owners and farmers will no longer be allowed to own large calibre rifles, or own anything more than the smallest number of weapons possible. Handguns are to be severely restricted and preferably eliminated entirely. So no wonder so many white South Africans are still leaving the county for colder climes where there still appears to be a long-term future for them.

Back on home front, Joseph has decided that it is fun to supplement his diet with fish. So every day after work, he heads down to the river to go and fish. He knows about the crocodiles, but he doesn’t want to listen to warning and stay away from the water’s edge. The fishing isn’t great now, but he’s happy with his little eight inch yellowfish. It makes me think of a guy we had milking the cows years ago. He always had a bit of a bad attitude and I never liked him much. But one day I saw him walking with what appeared to be a large goose. So I called my dad and we set out in pursuit. It turned out that he had one of our large spurwing goose underneath his arm. At the question of what he was planning on doing with our goose, he nonchalantly replied that he was going to eat the poor beast! The exclamations which followed next are best left unspoken, but suffice to say that he was very rapidly relieved of his meal and hastily sent along his way.

This is where Joseph would sit and fish. The picture was taken during the inter months when the Elephants River is at its lowest. But even so, crocodiles are stealthy creatures who are well-skilled at making a meal of unwise fishermen.

This poor spurwing goose was part of a whole bundle of little downy chicks which one of our game guards once brought home from the veld, all tucked into his shirt and wriggling around his tummy. (Incidentally, you don’t want to transport them like that if you’re of European descent, cause they frequently carry poultry-lice which most of us find distressing in our clothes...) We raised them by hand, and they all turned into beautiful big birds, tame and full of character. They used to fly away and return for years and years. Most of them actually became quite old. So it was with some disgust that we viewed this attempt at kidnapping a docile pet for the purpose of one cheap meal...                                               

Over the years, I’ve had all kinds of really odd pets. But none as odd as the guy not far from here who has got a young hippo. She’s taken over his entire swimming pool, and it is an odd sight to see the massive animals squeezing herself through the doorpost in order to go and lie with the dogs in front of the TV! Oh, and then there have been a couple of cattle ranchers who have had giraffes too. It becomes a bit tricky to feed them when they grow up. You just can’t hold the bottle high enough! One of our most successful wild animal pets was Lulu. She was a tiny little waterbuck when we found her, blind in one eye. But she grew up into a big animal who thought she was a baby still. She’s still around on the old ranch. Leave a door open and she’s in the house in a flash. Quite eagerly looking forward to the perverse adventure of leaving a gigantic puddle on the carpet! Quite a few guests have reacted with wonder at the sight of seeing Lulu asleep in the garden, with a dog sleeping on her back. (They liked that in winter, because Lulu was a warm sleeping-mat!) There was also a red hartebeest that used to love surprising people by sneaking into the house, and critters of all other kinds, but those are stories for another time...

Right now I think I’ve said enough. Time to go and do something constructive once more.

Best wishes for a really good week.
Herman