FOR the most part our diet consisted of fried kingfish, smoked goat fish, boiled crayfish and sand. The sand got everywhere. I got so used to it in the end that I felt quite lost without it. For a back-scratching addict like me, it makes an excellent lining for a sleeping bag!
Towards the end of the week we bought a goat. It took a whole day of racketing round the swamps in the Land Rover to find the goat we wanted, locate its owner and settle the price.
First we paid our respects to the headman of the village and gave him half of our prize kingfish. Then we were offered a drink of coconut beer. The special brew for visitors is kept at the top of the tallest coconut palm and the snag is that the visitor who is honoured with the offer of a drink, is also expected to shin up the tree to fetch it.
The whole village gathered to watch the spectacle.
We each had a go in turn, with various mirth-provoking results, until Pete decided we had entertained them for long enough and completely shattered their belief that the white man is constitutionally incapable of climbing a coconut palm.
But we were no nearer to buying a goat, so we all piled back onto the Land Rover and kept our eyes open for goats, as we drove further and further into the bundu. There was an obscene yell from Pete, when a low-slung palm tree nearly knocked him off the roof and another from me, when Trevor braked sharply and almost dumped me in the undergrowth. He had, however, a very good reason for his seemingly erratic driving. He had seen a goat.
This was the beginning of a pattern which was to be repeated a dozen times in the next couple of hours.
Someone would shout “goat” and the Land Rover would come to a stop.
We would all pile out and inspect the goat, trying to look as if we knew a good goat from a bad one. Then someone would say “too thin” or “too old” and we would all nod sagely. Pete would shout “all aboard” and the great goat hunt would continue.
At one point we encountered three young girls, carrying drums of water on their heads. At the sight of us, they dropped their water containers and fled for the trees. It seemed a bit odd at the time, but I suppose there is a considerable possibility that we were the first white people they had ever seen.
We finally purchased a brown billy goat for the princely sum of 40 shillingi.
He was very well-behaved. He didn’t butt anyone, or make a mess in the back of the Land Rover. Had I not been so hungry, I could have got quite fond of him. He was a bit tough barbecued, but he made a jolly good stew.
Pete wore the beard as a sporran, until he found it had fleas and an unmentionable part of its anatomy adorned the gear lever of the Land Rover, all the way back to Johannesburg.
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