Bella became Aitch’s most beloved dog of all, eclipsing TC the Original and even Matt the Beloved. It was a tall order to take Matt’s place in Aitch’s heart but Bella did it by following her like a shadow, paying attention, winning her obedience classes – and by sheer longevity.
She reached the ripe old age of seventeen years and died just before Aitch. She’s buried at 10 Elston Place; whereas TC, Matt and Bogart are all buried at 7 River Drive.
Here TC is not happy with this newfound nuisance! Not another black puppy that’s going to end up bigger than me! The third one!
– Bella Best-Behaved – and her rosette –
In her final obedience trial at Canine Academy, she and Aitch got into the finals with a friend and her pedigree Alsatian. They were neck and neck until the time they had to do “go away” things (as opposed to “come here” things). Bella went as told; found what she had to; waited there until asked, then brought it to Aitch. Meantime the Alsatian stumbled a bit at that task. In congratulating her, her friend turned to Aitch and said, “If you asked Bella to fly, she would!”
Here’s Aitch with Bella facepaint, and both disguised as fairies, with haloes and wings:
– Bella’s main goal in life was to please this woman – Aitch shoulda stuck out her tongue and they’da been twins! –
First puppy. That was TC whose name didn’t signify much but we couldn’t think of another and settled on TC which teasingly was for “Terrible Canine” or “Terrific Canine”. Maybe the character from the TV show Magnum P.I influenced the name too. She was born on Melrose Farm of Mouse the Jack Russell by that he-man and character Stan the dark Staffie and was a gift from Dave and Goldie Hill, new parents of Tatum at the time. This was December 1988.
Stan with Goldie; Mouse with Tatum:
– dogs aren’t allowed on the bed at 7 River Drive – much . .
TC with her siblings before weaning:
We still lived in a flat but were moving into a house soon. Flat life suited TC:
– Top Dog surveys her domain –
But so did the great outdoors:
And even though three younger new arrivals outgrew her . . .
She outlasted two of them and remained Top Dog:
Her big friend and sparring partner was Tess the bull terrier from next door. Great mates they were, but occasionally when we near they’d go at each other with much snarling and hound-dog insults.
Once I held Tess high overhead with TC attached to her leg in a firm bite, both growling furiously, then dumped them in the deep end of the pool before they would quit their nonsense!
TC lived to fifteen, outliving Matt and Bogart. She is buried at 7 River Drive Westville on the banks of the Mkombaan river under a kanniedood tree, the paperbark commiphora (was Commiphora harveyi). She just got old and tired and slower and thin, and died quietly in her basket one evening.
I’m rich. I have an early Willie Bester, complete with crushed Mainstay Cane spirits bottle top and torn-off piece of an Omo packet, framed in cheap SA pine, painted with pink primer.
Read this from Smithsonian Libraries and weep:
Contemporary African art from the Jean Pigozzi collection / foreword by Mark Gibourne; [day of sale, June 24, 1999]. London: Sotheby’s, 1999. 132pp., 57 lots. illus. (color).
The 1999 Sotheby’s auction of works from the Jean Pigozzi collection was the first major sale of modern African art by a top auction house.
Remarkably, all the works sold. Most fetched more than the estimated prices. Realized prices ranged from £2,000 to £7,000. The top price was a Willie Bester mixed media work going for £10,000 (pre-sale estimate, £4,000-£6,000). Not bad. The sale was billed as a benefit for Unicef and to establish the Jean Pigozzi Prize for Contemporary African Art.
Confession: When Aitch bought it in Kaapstad one early holiday while we were rich and child-free, I raised my eyebrows and thought Hmmm . . .
~~~oo0oo~~~ Sent: Thursday, 17 November 2016 Subject: Willie Bester art
Aitch’s Willie Bester artwork is looking even better – again. One was sold at an auction of David Bowie’s African art collection. Admittedly there’s a “David Bowie factor” which one art dealer reckoned added 50% to the prices.
Willie Bester’s “What Happened in the Western Cape?” fetched R358,000.
~~oo0oo~~
She’d have done this if she was still around, so here goes:
“Remember how you said ‘Are you mad?’ when I bought it in Cape Town, Koos?!”
**mumble** Well, I didn't say 'mad'. I'm sure I said, "Are you sure?" **mumble**
It was January 1993 and Aitch paid R2660 on budget over six months on her credit card. She pinned the slip to the back of the painting. What an investment! Note how they used the old shook-shook credit card machine.
~~oo0oo~~
– Willie Bester –
More about Willie:
Born in Montagu, Western Cape in 1956. He began painting murals as a child, and it was also then that he first developed an interest in recycling industrial and waste materials. As an adult, Bester worked for 15 years as a dental technician’s assistant before rekindling his love for art. His first solo exhibition, held in Cavendish Square in 1982, was mounted without the assistance of a gallerist. Bester went on to study part-time at the Community Art Centre in Cape Town where he was exposed to the idea of art as a political tool.
Following this encounter he had a meteoric rise to fame in the early 1990s, exhibiting at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg before taking part in exhibitions in Dakar, Senegal, and in numerous centres in Europe, including Africa Remix, which was mounted at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2005 before travelling to the Pompidou Centre in Paris and thereafter to Johannesburg.
Bester has received numerous prestigious awards including South Africa’s Order of Ikhamangu (Silver). Most recently, Bester exhibited at the Changchun Sculpture Symposium in China where he was voted the most popular artist and honoured for his innovative use of materials.
~~oo0oo~~
Bester’s mixed media works have frequently included passages of painting that have contained strongly naturalistic elements. Continuity is also evident in Bester’s sustained preoccupation with apartheid’s legacy, and the empathy and dignity with which he represents the dispossessed.
Curriculum Vitae
Training – 1986: Community Arts Project, Cape Town.
Exhibitions – 1982–2003: Eleven solo Exhibitions in South Africa.
1988–2001: Five solo exhibitions abroad – Dakar, Senegal; Trento, Rome and Turin, Italy; and Brussels, Belgium. 1989–2004: Participation in approximately thirty group exhibitions in South Africa.
1991–2005: Participation in approximately forty-six international Exhibitions in thirty-five cities and towns in the UK, Italy, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, USA, Cuba, Germany, Canary Islands, Spain, Austria, Senegal, Brazil, India, Malaysia, and Ireland. This includes several biennales and high profile exhibitions.
Collections
Iziko SA National Gallery, Cape Town; Johannesburg Art Gallery; Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum, Port Elizabeth; Durban Art Gallery; Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg; Pretoria Art Museum; University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; University of the Western Cape, Bellville; University of South Africa Art Gallery, Pretoria; Department of National Education, Pretoria; Department of Foreign Affairs, Pretoria; South African Broadcasting Corporation, Cape Town and Johannesburg; Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town; Contemporary African Art Collection, Paris; Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC.
Awards
1991: Merit Prize, Cape Triennial.
1992: Prix De L’Aigle, 4th Grand Prix International D’Arts Plastiques de la Vlille de Nice, France.
2003: Honorary medal for promotion of Fine Arts: Suid Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns.
2004: Order of the Disa, Members Class, Government of the Republic of South Africa.
So here we go: It’s January. A new year and a new school for Tom. High school.
He sure looks swish in his new tie and blazer and sleeveless jersey. He is so looking forward to this new school even though he hates the grade eight compulsory short pants! Long pants are from grade nine.
I bid him farewell and he sets off up the road. Years of doing the carpool lift to school have come to an end.
Eleven Years after Aitch decided we had to move out of River Drive, Tom walks to school.
Just as Aitch had planned. *
300m as the crow flies, 500m on foot including a detour through the shopping centre!
~~~oo0oo~~~
* In 2003 Aitch said to me on the driveway at 7 River Drive, “We must sell up here and move.” I said, What? No, I’m going to die here. Right here in River Drive, on the left bank of the Mkombaan river.
“No you’re not,” she said, “We have to move.”
Why? I asked, already feeling myself conceding defeat to the resident estate agent. I knew she’d have a good reason.
“We’re out of the school catchment zone,” she said. Which school catchment zone? I asked, puzzled. “Westville Boys High,” she said. What’s that got to do with us? I asked, faintly. “I want Tom to go to WBHS,” said she who knows things.
But he’s only TWO! I said, sensing victory.
“I know,” she said, delivering the coup de grace. We moved.
Friend (and Dusi Great) Andre Hawarden started a rafting outfit so we thought, ‘Hey Let’s Bumble Down the Tugela with him!’ Summer of 1990.
I took my kayak and got a discounted self-propelled ticket. Aitch perched on one of Andre’s proper oarsman rafts – the best kind – where you sit and admire the scenery as the galley slave propels you downstream. When you have to paddle alongside as crew you miss the scenery in the rapids, as your head is down. Aitch sat behind like Lady Muck and admired the oarsmen’s physiques as they toiled.
Lowish water at the Ngubevu put-in, after a hairy ride on Farmer Vinnige Fanie’s truck. We had perfect weather, great grub, good company. Fellow Kingfisher paddler Les Keay was also along, powering the second raft, so we had good Dusi power all round. Figtree Beach campsite ranks with the best anywhere. Whattapleasure to camp there again.
Here’s the old paper album – photographed and scrapped:
Amazing riverside campsite – Figtree Beach Camp:
Pirate raiding parties and water fights:
Jamieson’s Bridge – the end is always too soon! Especially as we now face the DANGEROUS part: The return trip in Vinnige Fanie’s truck!
As we were going to have a small wedding out in the sticks, we held a Pre-Nuptial-Party at Kingfisher Canoe Club back in 1988 to celebrate with friends who couldn’t make it or who hadn’t cracked the nod. Who to invite and who to discreetly ignore is one of the things that makes the lead-up to tying the knot vrot with danger as anyone who has gone singing to the gallows well knows.
I was reminded yesterday about that happy gathering by Barbara Mason, who I only occasionally see as she lives a normal and sane life, parallel to the madcap canoeing world that links me to her hubby Charles (him a legendary paddler, me a used-to-be wannabe).
She told me she quotes from my speech of that night to this day. I had forgotten that I’d even spoken, but she assures me I spake thus:
“Aitch and I gave careful consideration to the pros and cons of getting married, but we decided to go ahead and get married anyway.”
As I settled in the seat of the Delta Air plane en route to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico to look for waterbirds, I read in the abandoned newspaper that I’d scooped up, that the one thing I did NOT want to be doing was flying over Easter.
When is Easter? I asked the stewardess. ‘Tomorrow’ she chirped brightly.
Change of plan Aitch, I announced: We’re going to Oklahoma instead of the Gulf. I explained and showed her the newspaper and my reasons – airport congestion, overbooked flights – us on a cheap Delta 30-day pass.
Aitch sighed and agreed. Oka-ay. She’d been dreading going to Apache: ‘They’ll all know you and I won’t know anyone and I’ll feel left out and . . ‘
But now she had to face her fears. As soon as we landed at Dallas-Fort Worth we booked the next flight to Lawton Oklahoma, heading back north instead of carrying on south. There was just enough time if we scurried. Aitch decided she’d skip the loo and go once we were airborne. Mistake. It was a narrow little propeller plane like this, two seats a side, a narrow aisle, no hostess, no loo. Ooh!
We landed in Lawton after dark and she made it. We set off further north for Apache in a rental car. Apache: My hometown for a year as a Rotary exchange student in 1973. This was 1988. Arriving on the Patterson’s farm outside town we saw a ‘yuge’ SA flag waving from the flagpole! Jim had borrowed an oversize flag from the SA consulate in Houston to welcome us!
Jim & Katie Patterson, the loveliest couple in the whole of the USA were just the same as ever!
They welcomed us with open arms to their beautiful and comfortable ranch house and it was as though we hadn’t been apart for fifteen years – during which time I had received exactly two letters from them. ‘Well, Peter’ said Jim with his crooked grin and twinkling eyes, ‘We didn’t want to flood you with correspondence.’
One night as Jim and I settled down to watch a ballgame, Katie and Aitch decided BO-ORING! and left on a night drive in the Ford LTD looking for owls. Both girls were already suitably lubricated, plus they took extra stocks of their tipple. Knowing Katie, that was Bloody Marys. They had the windows down and were hooting weird owl calls and hosing themselves. When they returned they were laughing uncontrollably, leaning against each other for support. Jim and I looked up from the TV in bewilderment.
They had seen a possum snuffling around and Aitch was fascinated – she always LOVED the little night creatures. Katie followed it offroad into the fields, keeping it in the headlights. When it stopped she manoeuvred so it could best be seen and whispered to Aitch “Shall I kill it?” She was surprised at Aitch’s distraught look of horror: ‘No! No! Don’t kill it!’ Then she twigged: “No, no, not the possum! I meant the engine!”
They collapsed laughing when they both “saw it” and were still laughing helplessly when they got back home where Jim and I were shooting the breeze, drinking cold Coors and occasionally watching ‘the ballgame’ – Basketball I think; OU I think. Someone won, I think.
One morning I woke up to breakfast in bed. It was 1st April, my birthday – thirty three years young today – and Aitch delivered a tray of healthfood goodies. Mental health food, yum!
– Second birthday in Apache! – 33 – I had also turned 18 here –
Jim n Katie arranged a lovely barbecue poolside and invited my best mates from high school back in 1973. Jay Wood and Robbie Swanda had made the year unforgettable and here they were again, also with wives now; Robbie wearing the Optometry rugby jersey I had given him in 1984 when I visited after kayaking down the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon.
– Jay Wood & Robbie Swanda come for a barbecue – Robbie wears my Optometry rugby jersey, number 8 –
– Jim unwraps the winter covers early for Aitch –
Jim even unwrapped their white Caddy Eldorado convertible from its winter covering earlier than usual and presented Aitch with the keys. She drove as far as the gate and then said ‘I think you must drive now Koos.’
– Koos! It’s too wide! – You drive! –
All I got was this old tractor that I had driven for Jim back in ’73. Life is so unfair.
– here’s what I get to drive (memories of 1973) –
OK, in fairness, he also gave me the keys to the beige Chevy Suburban you can see in the background with the door open. Which was so much fun I missed the Rotary meeting! Now THAT was embarrassing! Unforgivable! Everyone was forgiving / understanding (‘Well, you ARE on honeymoon, after all’), but that REALLY was a major gaffe! Damn! Fifteen years later and ten thousand miles away I have ONE meeting to remember and I forget it! *blush!!* We were out in the countryside looking for a Vermilion Flycatcher and I just clean forgot. We did see a lot of birds that day, but not this one:
Vermillion Flycatcher in flight by . .
Well, our five day trip to Apache stretched to a week. Wherever we went all I got was an elbow in the ribs as the local inhabitants shoved me aside and crowded around Aitch. Every now and then one would mutter over his shoulder at me: “Now you look after this gal, boy! Y’hear?” Aitch’s dread of going to “my” hometown had turned into a reluctance to leave “her” hometown!
After ten days I sat Aitch down and said “Now listen girl, we still have things to do, places to go and people to meet. We can’t stay in Apache forever!” She was having a ball, reveling in the attention and she and Katie were getting on like a house on fire. I suspect on all their jaunts when they would breeze off in the LTD saying, “Ya’ll stay home and watch the ballgame, y’hear?” that Katie was teaching her how to manage me and telling her how she managed Jim. Aitch obviously soaked up the lessons! It was Katie who had asked me as a seventeen year old back in 1973: “Peter, who do you think chooses the marriage partner?” Following my confident (wrong) answer she put me straight, telling me how, when Jim arrived for his first day of work at the bank in Oklahoma City she had turned to her friends and announced, “I’m going to marry that man!”
So it was very reluctantly that Aitch agreed that I could book for the next leg of our extended honeymoon.
~~oo0oo~~~
PS: I needed a haircut, so took myself off to Oscar and Sonia’s barber shop in town. I had dodged them back in 1973, letting my hair drop down onto my shoulders. Their son Dallas was in my second senior class.* Oscar and Sonia were full of beans and mischief and could ‘stir’ wickedly and hilariously.
I walked into the barber shop and said to the man while he slaved over some oke’s scalp – in my best Okie accent – ‘I have a complaint! I had my hair cut here in 1973 and I’ve never bin satisfied!’
He stopped snipping, stared at me over his specs for a good while; then his eyes widened and he said “Peedir!” Not bad, fifteen years later.
…
That I remembered. What I hadn’t remembered was a prank I played on Oscar back in 1973. Sister Sheila recently (2020) returned the letters I had written to my family back in South Africa way back then.
One letter told how Oscar had loaned me a projector to give a slide show and talk. I asked if he wanted it back the next day. ‘No,’ he said, ‘That’s too late.’ I said How’s midnight tonight? ‘No,’ he said, ‘That’s too soon. I’d prefer four in the mornin’.
We left it at that. I gave my talk. With me was my good Apache mate Robbie and fellow Rotary students Eve from Durban and Helen from Zim. We went back to Robbie’s house and jol’d. Then at 3.15am, we drove out to Oscar and Sonia’s farm outside town in Robbie’s Mustang. I knocked persistently and Oscar dragged himself to the door where I said, Hope I’m in time! I thought you might be wanting to show some home movies?
He blinked, gulped, then fell right in: ‘Yes, Yes,’ he says ‘I did. Come right in.’ He led us in shaking his head muttering ‘This Boy’s Alright, inne?’
He and Sonia then insisted we sit down and proceeded to show us way too many slides with total bullshit commentary: ‘This is a picture of Mars taken on our second trip there . . ‘ This (a picture of their farmyard, or of Dallas as a kid) was Paris, France on our third trip there . . . ‘
Robbie and I were hosing ourselves, Eve and Helen were falling asleep. Sonia then announced it was actually Oscars birthday, so we sang him HBD and left after 4am! Not often you catch Oscar and Sonia at their own game!
~~oo0oo~~
The thick old honeymoon photo album has been discarded in downsizing and selling our home, but not before recording all the photos. Here are the Oklahoman ones:
My potted history of the two farms on opposite banks of the Umkomaas below the Hella Hella:
About fifty years ago when The Beatles were still The Quarrymen, a Pom family Wimbury hopped on to the mail ship in Pomerania to boldly go forth and do work in the colonies for the Great White Queen.
On board that ship was an 18yr old nubile South African on her way back from a gap year before they were called gap years, in Europe. Especially Italy where she learned some Italian, some Italian cooking, and did you know Lyn had a magnificent opera singing voice?
The Pom family and the Seffrican lass hit it off on board ship and soon the Wimbury family of England met the Payn family of Hella Hella on the banks of the mighty Mkomazi.
– the Payn homestead at Hella Hella –
Meantime elsewhere a Jo’burg architect called Porter was making a good living and buying farms as a hobby. One of them became the Harold Porter Nature Reserve in Betty’s Bay. He sent his son Barry off to PMB varsity to get a BSc agric and then bought him a farm on the right bank of the Mkomazi opposite the Payns. This magnificent 5000 acre farm had the imposing Hella Hella mountain on it.
They called it Game Valley Estates and stocked it with nyala, impala, zebra, wildebeest and blesbok to add to the bushbuck, duiker, warthog, reedbuck and oribi that were there. That was the only time they ever stocked it. ca 1970.
Well, Barry had a Landrover cabriolet and wore short pants and long socks, and Lyn wore dresses so it was inevitable. They spotted each other across the mighty Mkomazi, their eyes locked and the two families were united in a river dynasty, solving the problem of parts of Barry’s farm being cut off from him and him having to traverse the Payn land to get to ‘Ottos.’
– ‘Otto’s’ homestead nowadays –
Except not really, as Barry and the Payn parents had quite a prickly relationship, kinda like porcupines meeting and sniffing but not embracing. So the farms were never united, Barry would grumble about how they didn’t appreciate the value of game fencing; when Mrs Payn put the farm up for sale and Barry could have negotiated they never got round to discussing a price and Trevor English bought it for a good price and Barry STILL had the prickly feeling of having to traverse someone else’s land to get to the other half of his farm! And English didn’t appreciate the value of game fencing.
Barry the bachelor stayed at Otto’s, so his and Lyn’s eyes actually probly locked while he drove his Landie across their lawn, not trans-river. Once they got wedlocked they moved up to Highover.
– Barry & Lynne’s old Highover homestead from 1974 (Warren was a 1yr old!) –
Where they had a little porcupine – rescued when a Ford F150 did a caesarian section on its Mom at 65mph. It used to scurry around in the walls of their house between the corrugated iron and the rhino board inner walls. They also had Warren there. We bumped into him by chance visiting Hella Hella a couple years ago, and together we checked out the ruins of the house up on Highover where he was born forty years prior.
Later Barry and Lyn built a lovely new home at the foot of the Hella Hella, and the little Wimbury baby girl was growing shapelier and shapelier and she went nursing at Addington where the Weermag had sentenced a newly-knighted luitenant in the Medical Corps to hard labour: “You arre herreby sentenced to live in Doctorrs’ Quarrterrs and test eyeballs, including those of the 600 nurses ensconced in the Addington Nurses Res”.
What could I do? I obeyed. One of them was called Richenda Wimbury and she said you must come with me to a farm called Hella Hella. I took a peek at her legs and said OK. And so I met Lyn and Barry. It was 1980.
– Me, Barry, McDuff, Richenda, Warren and Lynne at Hella Hella –
Later Richenda did audiology and moved to Wentworth hospital where she met a cardiovascular perfusionist called Trish Humphrey in 1985, arranged a Sunday braai and introduced her new friend to me and my friend Bernie the Jet. That was Aitch and the rest of that part of this tale was history.
Barry now had two young girlfriends, and this latest one would botanise with him! They would spend hours with their bums in the air and their noses in the grass. He wrote a love letter to his Botanising Buddy:
Dear Trish , In memory of past pleasant hours spent botanising on Game Valley ; and in appreciation of your enthusiastic company and assistance on numerous trips up to Highover . I hope you enjoy the CD ROM , it’s unfortunate that my scanner can’t scan 35mm slides , I have a far larger collection of slides and many are of better quality than the photos used in this presentation . Just enjoy ! Some of the identifications may be a little off the mark so don’t let that worry you . Love , Barry
In 1988 Aitch and I got married at Hella Hella. We had been frequent guests and would continue to visit often for years to come. The farm meantime had been declared a Natural Heritage site. It was going to be the first marriage on the farm, but a Pee Aitch (professional hunter) and his chick got excited one night around the braai fire and suddenly got married. Technically, you could call theirs a shotgun marriage, right?
Here you can see their Natural Heritage Site plaque and certificate on the wall behind the bride-to-be:
– Ma Iona teaching Aitch how to sort a husband out –
KCC mate Andre Hawarden made our wedding invites, complete with named rapids on the Dusi, Umgeni and Umko in case any guest wanted a quick paddle on the way!
– that imposing Hella Hella behind us –
We started raising kids around 1998 and that led to less visits. Later Barry & Lyn sold the farm to a consortium who finally united the two Hella Hella farms into one logical unit, doing what I wished Barry could have done decades earlier. Of course it’s always easy with someone else’s money! Oscar Wilde said “Advice is wonderful stuff – in the giving.”
They bought a lovely unit in a complex in Umzumbe on the KZN South Coast, and Barry hit the trail, traveling far and wide on birding trips. Their son Warren was selling big trucks nearby; Barry’s brother’s Litchi Farm was close – outside Port Shepstone; McDuff, the younger son did heavy duty diving (oil rigs n stuff) all over the world; Lyn got busily involved in the local ‘Akward Society’ as we joked – orchids – and other affairs. Barry kept busy with birding, atlassing and other avian pursuits and committees.
After Aitch’s first chemo in 2007 we went to Hella Hella for the first time since those days, staying in the lovely new cottages next to The Approaches. We woke up one morning and there was a big furry creature on Aitch’s pillow. It was her hair!
Then in 2011 Lyn died of breast cancer, Barry got a leg infection and died, and Aitch died – also breast cancer. February, April and July. Annus horribilis.
Recently a vulture hide in Oribi Gorge was unveiled: Barry would be delighted that it’s not just called “Barry’s Hide”. It’s called
The Barry Porter Memorial Vulture Viewing Hide.
You’ll understand why he would have loved the full formal title when I tell you he made us a tool to dig up plants. It had a handle like a motorbike, footsteps to step on to dig deep and the blade was made of the high-tensile steel of a cultivator blade. A Plant-Digger you might think? No. It had a neat label on it:
Porter’s Powerful Patented Plant-Pincher.
He also made us an intricate bird feeder labeled:
Barry’s Bizarre Balancing Bird Bistro. I found a photo with a bit of the bird bistro in the background behind Kiza Cele holding Jessie in the garden at 7 River Drive Westville. Note the dead branch for photography so you didn’t get artificial metal in your pic; the platform for seed; the various arms had spikes for oranges, cradles for bananas and pawpaws and small holders for suet and nuts. A full-buffet Barry bistro indeed!
One of Aitch’s list of ‘things to do’ once we knew she had cancer, was to visit her twin sis in Botswana. Janet quickly mustered her network and arranged a trip to Hwange, Zimbabwe’s wonderful big national park. We’d been once before – also with Janet. Her friends Beks and Sarah Ndlovu of African Bush Camps own a concession and run a very special camp at Somalisa in the south-eastern area called Linkwasha.
Beks calls it his Hemingway-style camp. We called it bliss. Unpretentious tents from the outside, luxury inside.
The weather was amazing! Bright sunshine, then huge gathering clouds, then pouring rain and back to sunshine in a few hours. Repeated daily. Enough rain to bring out the bullfrogs – the first time I have seen them, not for lack of looking. They were out for their annual month of ribaldry: Bawdy songs, lewd & lascivious pixicephallic behaviour. Lie still honey, lemme love you! Also gluttony. Then hastily raise a bunch of different-looking kids, and it’s back underground for 11 months of regrets. I was a bit wild; I wonder if she’ll still respect me next season?
The rainstorms were spectacular!
We were dry under the Landcruiser canopy and enjoyed every minute of the downpour. Once, unbeknown to us, Janet at the back had water pouring down her neck and was getting freezing wet! She didn’t want to spoil the beauty and awesomeness so suffered in silence. When she told us back in camp we roared with sympathetic laughter as she turned the air blue with choice expletives!
After the rain there’s sunshine, and the bush telegraph page is wiped clean: New spoor becomes clearly evident. Aha! The lions and cubs passed this way!
After a good soaking the animals would have to drip-dry. We could get under cover and have hot showers, hot drinks and warm dry clothing.
– warm & dry ladies après le déluge –
I think Hwange has become my favourite of all Africa’s big parks. It is simply fantastic.
Those sand roads are very special, smooth and quiet; a breakfast spread on a termite mound out on Ngweshla or Kennedy pans is special too.
Prologue – I had dashed off an email to Aitch in February 2009:
Hi Aitch – As ‘they’ so crudely put it, we need to ‘shit, or get off the pot’ as far as a decision to get to Okavango and to Beks Ndlovu’s camps this year. Either soonish (March), or September / October (very hot). We must decide yes or no, and if yes, who could we leave the kids with? Dilemma – K
–oo0oo– So glad we stayed on the pot! The kids were fine; We got to Botswana eleven months after that email, in January 2010, then flew to Kasane, where Karen & Mike Bullock kindly hosted us; Then Janet trekked us on into Zimbabwe for Aitch’s last – great, unforgettable – Hwange trip.
Finally got round to making a collage of some of the birds we saw up in Zululand a few years back. Aitch and I went for a breakaway luxury weekend. It was dry – very dry – and the lodge had a water feature running right under the sundeck. Every bird from miles around (as well as all the animals) had to come here to drink.
It was perfect! Aitch was not so strong, so we chose to skip the game drives and ensconced ourselves comfortably on the deck, binocs, camera and telescopes handy. Tea or beer or coffee or gin would arrive at regular intervals. A casual wave would see them added to the bill. For dinner we walked ten metres back into the dining room! Breakfast was back on the deck.
– That deck from below – – That Deck – Happy customer in her spot –
Just past this popular bathing spot a waterfall plops into a pool where animals come to drink, And prance – like reindeer.
~~oo0oo~~
Back Story – True Confessions:
What are you doing for Trish on Friday? asked Feroza, my super-efficient practice manager. Why? Am I working? I asked. NO-O, it’s your 20th anniversary! Oh.
It’s Wednesday already, so my mind starts racing. After 20 centuries it slows down and needs this kind of wake-up call. This jolt of OMG, I better not cock this up!
What is the last thing in the world that I would enjoy? I asked meself (gotta avoid the accusation of giving things for HER, when they’re actually for YOU)? It’s late notice and I’m working on Saturday, so I’m looking for a one-day something somewhere.
I know: The thought of lying around on my tummy in a spa for a few hours in daytime while someone slobbers oil on me sounds like what Beelzebub will probly sentence me to when I go to His Place, so I start looking for day spas and then I get the genius idea (or I spose really, the departure from the purely noble, selfless intentions): What about a spa in a game reserve where I can watch birds and other creatures while Aitch spas! Hmm . . .
Aha! A quick search turns up Thanda Zulu, 20km north of Hluhluwe. That means just for the day is out, so I impose on Feroza (again) and I’m released from Saturday work. Now I’m booking a night in a game reserve. Um, with a spa. This doesn’t seem so hard anymore.
On the website I go to booking and click on online booking and payment. As the page disappears heading for the one that takes your credit card for melting, I catch sight of two things: R6100pppn and “phone direct for savings deals.” So instead of committing online, I phone Johannesburg up in the hinterland and the BEAUTIFUL, gorgeous lady on the other end books me at R1950pppn. “Local special – You are South African, right?”. Rrrrraaait, I roll my RR’s and regret there aren’t any R’s in Swaaanepoel.
And so we ended up at a Zululand bushveld game reserve in the middle of a long drought with a water feature below a deck five paces from a pub. Aitch had in the meantime gleefully sold the kids to friends, getting in the spirit of adventure as she always did. So its double gin and tonics for me, erbil tea for her, while watching birds drinking and bathing in clear running shallow water on smooth rocks (OK, artificial rocks, but beautifully done) seated in a deckchair, binocs and camera in hand.
We skipped the game drive that evening in favour of lurking around the deck. Ditto the morning drive. Her spine couldn’t take the bumping. Our VW kombi was of course fine – smooth!
Aitch went off to her “treatments” (which I didn’t think she needed – ahem). And although she loved them, she hurried back whenever they were over and appropriated her camera back from my amateur and forgetful efforts). Because of the cancer, Meme the resident therapist, refused to do the massages Aitch had been looking forward to. “Can’t stir up the lymphatic circulation, darling!” she admonished, peering over her bright pink designer spectacles. So Aitch had more time at the waterhole than she would have – and loved it!
Our stay was a mere 24 hours, but it seemed longer and we saw, up-close and personal, 48 species of birds. In all my years of hanging out at waterholes I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a parade.
It’s the fourth time we have celebrated your birthday without you. And it’s not the same. It was chaos, of course. After two weeks of hum n haw, the kids decided we needed to go to Butcher Boys in town for big steaks. Then they decided on John Dorys nearby for fish n chips. Then Jess decided not to go.
In the end TomTom, Lungelo & I went to the nearby centre. They each had a R99 mixed platter, I had steak and we brought two calamari n chips home to Jess & her friend Tarryn.
When they’d finished the boys walked home and I finished a second glass of wine and paid. Just before I left a lady at a nearby table came over. She knew Tom from aftercare and was all complimentary. I thanked her for helping to get the lil bugger to pass!
After she had showed the Barnard heart transplant file to the class, Jessie’s teacher said “Didn’t your Mom also sail yachts, Jess?” (she knew, and was drawing my Jess out of her shyness).
Back home she comes and says “They want to know if Mom really sailed a yacht”.
So another album gets dusted off and the tale of the three yachts is told:
– 36ft fibreglass Danné from Cape Town – St Helena – Brazil – Caribbean;
– 85ft aluminium hull, wooden deck Chrismi II as a charter yacht in the Caribbean;
– 60ft wooden sailing ketch Drumbeat to Bahamas – Bermuda – Azores – France.
Aitch the navigator – like an ancient mariner, with chronometer, charts and sextant.
Jessie’s grade 10 class had Dr Chris Barnard and Heart Transplants as a subject last week.
When she told me I asked, ‘Did you tell them your Mama worked with him?’ Actually, no she hadn’t. She vaguely knew Mom had done it, but wasn’t confident enough to step forward. My shy Jess.
So out with Aitch’s old albums of her working next to the old sleazy charmer, still quite young back before 1983 (when he retired). She says he tried his luck to get her to go out with him one night, as he apparently did with all the nubiles on the team.
And there in the pics was Aitch in theatre greens and mask: The cardio-vascular perfusionist operating the heart-lung machine – ‘the oxygenator’ – that kept the patient alive once the blood circulation had been diverted away from their own heart and lungs. And there was the famous cad watching. And there was a heart in a jar.
– The Prof and The Mom –
Off to school went the album the next day and Jess was the focus of much attention and oohing and aahing. Which she loved.
We flew in on our first trip to Malawi in 1990. Just me and Aitch. At Lilongwe airport we hired a car from the brochures on the desk, not from the kiosks in the airport. Well, the man on the phone said they didn’t have any presence at the airport to save money, but they were nearby, they’d be there in a jiffy. And they were cheap. I like that.
The airport emptied till it was just us, so we took our bags to the entrance and sat in the shade waiting. There was no-one there but a bored youth sitting in a dark blue Honda with sagging suspension, but we were chilled and the airport garden needed birding. Eventually I went back to the desk to phone the man. He was amazed: “My driver should have been there long ago!”
‘Twas him. ‘Twas our car: The dark blue Honda with sagging suspension. “No, no,” we laughed, “There must be a better car than this!” – thinking of the rough roads we’d be traversing. “Come back to the office and you can choose another car,” said the friendly man. So we did. The office was his house, and we inspected his fleet. Well, bless him, of course it was his best car, he’s good people; so off we headed to Kasungu National Park in a dark blue Honda Civic with Formula 1 ground clearance. We were on safari, and this was our jeep.
In the park we drove with one wheel on the middle bump and one on the left edge of the road. On the open road we drove slowly and avoided anything above deck.
While I was unpacking to occupy our bungalow I froze: a serval! Wonderful! We always love seeing the smaller wildlife. I tried to signal to Aitch as the long-legged cat walked out of the long grass into the clearing. I didn’t want to scare it, so I whistled low and urgent. Aitch came out, and we watched as it came closer and closer.
And closer. And closer till it rubbed itself against my leg! It was the camp pet, it had been raised by the rangers.
We headed further north – to Vwaza Marsh, and then up high to Nyika Plateau, 10 000ft above sea level; then south again to Nkhata Bay, beautiful Lake Malawi and warmer weather. The car went like a dream at twenty km/h and even sometimes at thirty km/h.
– smooth highway! –
South of Nkhata Bay we suddenly came on a stretch of smooth road! I crept the needle up to forty km/h. Then fifty and eventually sixty! Wheee! “Careful, Koos,” admonished my Aitch, clinging white-knuckled to the dashboard (kidding! sort of). Then we came up to the big yellow grader that had smoothed our path. It moved aside and we went past with a wave to the friendly driver. The road condition was now back to interesting, so I slowed down to forty. “Slow down, Koos,” admonished my Aitch. We’d been doing thirty, so this still felt fast to her and I knew she was right, but I had tasted speed . .
WHUMP! We hit a brick and I knew immediately Fuckit Mrs Tuckit that we’d be getting to know this remote stretch of Malawi. I parked on a low level bridge and leaned out to peer under the car: Oil pouring out of the sump. Do you have any soap? I asked Aitch. Here, she said shoving a bottle of liquid soap into my hand. Um, no, a bar of soap. Ever resourceful, she whipped out a fat green stick of Tabard mozzi repellent. Perfect, I said and shoved it in the hole. It went into the sump without touching sides! OK, we were going to be here for a while . .
– uh oh –
– now the Black-winged Red Bishop – Euplectes hordeaceus – thanks wikipedia –
To break the tension I took my binocs and went for a walk and straight away things got better. “Come look!” I called Aitch “A lifer!” A Fire-Crowned Bishop flitted around in the reeds of the stream we were parked above. ‘Um,’ she said, ‘Don’t tell me that’s why you stopped here?’ Grinning, she made us a snack on the bootlid and we waited. Before too long someone came by. On foot. Two schoolboys who said, Not to worry, we know a mechanic in a nearby village. He will fix it. Great! I said, Would you ask him to help us, please? thinking, Actually guys, there’s no sign of a ‘nearby village.’
An hour later, a car zoomed by without stopping. Unusual for Malawi. Another hour later and a Land Rover stopped, the driver got out and shook his head sadly. He couldn’t help us, he said, as he was in a government vehicle. As he drove off we saw his female passenger appearing to give him a thousand words. He stopped and walked back with a 5l oil can in his hand. “I can’t sell you this oil because it’s guvmint oil, but I am going to give you this oil,” he said. Great, we accepted it with alacrity. It was half full. It was a start.
Another hour or so and three figures approached us on foot, one with a greasy green overall and a red metal toolbox on his shoulder. It was our mechanic and our schoolboys. They had come through!
– my mechanic watches as I tap tap – check tool detail on left –
Soon he had the sump cover off and I started tapping the hole closed using a shifty and a spanner. As I tapped I asked if anyone – perchance – had a bar of soap. Nope. No-one. Holding up the cover to the sun I tapped that malleable metal until not even a glint of sun shone through. I had closed the hole. As we started to replace it, I muttered “I’d give twenty kwacha for some soap,” whereupon one of the guys whipped out a sliver of red Lifebuoy soap from his pocket.
– our rescuers –
Boy! Did the others turn on him! “How can you be so unkind to our guests?” was the accusation and they refused to let me pay him more than four kwacha for his soap, despite my assuring them that it was worth twenty to me. As we prepared to depart after pouring in the guvmint oil, we gave them each a cold can from our hebcooler, paid the mechanic his modest dues (he didn’t charge traveling costs) and gave the schoolboys and the mechanic each a cap. I had two spare caps and Aitch had one. A pink one.
1500km later we handed the car back and I told the man at the airport: “Please check the sump. Its leaking oil.” It wasn’t, but I wanted him to check it.
~~oo0oo~~
More pictures of our journey from Aitch’s album:
– road near Rumphi –– up on Nyika plateau – 8000ft above sea level –– Nyika Plateau very special rolling grasslands –– sure, sometimes we did save money – I like that! –– and sometimes we splashed out –
~~~oo0oo~~~
The whole album, as I have now discarded the hard copy:
