Two Bits – 11 March 2016

Holidays are great. We’ve spent the last week in the ‘Berg, just doing the things one does on holiday: walking, talking, eating and reading. And endless games of Scrabble. I had one brief moment of glory when I started off the first game using all my letters to score 70, and so built an unassailable lead, but was stomped horribly in all games after that. I usually do quite well which is what you’d expect from someone using words for a living, but last week Rose scored a hat-trick of wins. This, she reminded me, is why she has the university degree and I don’t.
Holiday reading consisted of Into the River of Life, the biography of Dr Ian Player, written by the Mercury Idler columnist, Graham Linscott. Player was one of the founders of the ‘Duzi canoe marathon and the man widely credited for the success of the Umfolozi/Hluhluwe game reserves and saving the white rhino from extinction. That was followed by Drakensberg Ranger, a part-autobiography of George Hughes, game ranger at Giant’s Castle who went on to head the Natal Parks Board in the transition to becoming Ezemvelo Wildlife.
They tell wonderful stories of encounters with wild animals and reminded me of several experiences that will last me my whole life, as clear as if they had happened yesterday.
As kids we lived in the veldt, always barefoot of course, and without a care for the dangers that lurked. One day I was walking along a footpath far from home up to a cave where we used to play. I suppose I was six or seven. The path was fringed with grass, overhanging it so I couldn’t see the path itself.
In mid-stride I stood on something cold and slippery that moved. Without really thinking about it, I knew that I was about to stand on a snake. In a millionth part of a second I jumped what felt about six feet high and came down running. When I stopped I saw that it was a Puff Adder that had been basking on the warm path. Luckily it was sleepy and slow, otherwise I might not be here today.
The next memorable encounter was when doing national service on the Caprivi Strip, back in the bad old 70s.
My section, or half-section really, as it was just three guys, was walking a long-range patrol along the Cunene River. Army service was an education in many ways, not least because of the characters you were thrown together with. At the time I was in a Cape Town regiment. One of my companions was a boilermaker from Woodstock and the other a clerk in the education department. With me, an appie reporter, our combined knowledge of the bush and wildlife was precisely nil.
We were given firm instructions to camp each night in the first growth of trees well back from the riverbanks, and well away from the well defined paths cut by elephant herds that came from the interior to drink every other day or so.
One day we were presented with a problem. When dusk came, we were in the middle of a wide floodplain, maybe a kilometre between the river and the place we were supposed to camp.
But we knew better. There was a nice cluster of green maroela trees growing right on the river edge that would make a perfect campsite. And with only three small waterbottles, we would have had to face a very long walk to refill them, which in that killer Namibian December heat was frequently.
So we chomped down our exciting meal of cold bully beef and dog biscuits (no fires allowed, so the fat in the beef was thick and congealed. Lovely!), rolled out our sleeping bags under the trees and drifted off to the Land of Nod.
Much later I was woken by a steady rustling and snapping of branches. What the hell! There was no moon, pitch black and I could barely see my hand in front of my face. What was going on?
For some reason I stuck out my hand . . . and placed it on a large expanse of warm flesh, bristly with wiry hairs! It was the leg of an elephant!
By the faint starlight – we were all awake by now – we could see that a herd of elephants was browsing on the maroela leaves. They were stepping between us in our sleeping bags, no more that a few metres apart, while reaching up into the trees. Of course they knew we were there, but paid us no mind at all.
We were scared witless! Would they kill us if we made a noise? Would we be no more than troepie roadkill (or bushkill) by morning? We’d heard that banging metal dixies (all-purpose food tins) together frightened elephants off, so, brainless idiots that we were, we banged them together like drummers at a rock concert. The elephants ignored us. Luckily. Imagine if they’d been irritated?
Finally realising that we’d better get out of there, we leapt out of our sleeping bags, grabbed whatever kit we could find in the dark, and hightailed it away as fast as our legs could carry us.
It was on one of those patrols that we saw what elephants could do if they had a mind to. Whole trees had been ripped from the ground and scattered around like pick-up-sticks. Such powerful beasts, yet one part of the lasting memory of that encounter was that the elephants had chosen to do us no harm.
That was a first – and very close – first encounter with elephants for all of us raw townies, and very lucky to be able to live to tell the tale.
So holidays are good, to think back on our lives and what happened, and what might have been. As the old saying goes: ‘Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.’
This holiday I was just sitting.

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There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.