– life – bokdrols of wisdom –
Walking single-file to supper in Thembe Elephant Park camp one early evening with Jess bringing up the rear.
“Dad there’s a snake!” she said, and pointed out this vine snake at about her eye level two foot off the path. We had all walked past it.
Beautiful. Aitch took the pic.
She’s a great spotter, our Jess. While Tom waxes lyrical all the time, she’ll say “What’s that?” and we’ll see some new creature.
When I paddled the Berg river marathon in 1983, that crazy 200km (‘241km Pete!’ Giel van Deventer reminds me. He’s the Berg historian) f-f-freezing f-f-flatwater f-f-foolishness, the oldest oke in the race was Ole man Myers (ancient: 60 if he was a day). He lost his boat one night when the waters rose (he’d left it too close to the bank). Next day he had to find it downstream and take it back to the start – and so arrived at that leg’s finish VERY late – even after me.
When word came to the camp that he was arriving we all gathered on the bank to welcome him.
He paddled up in the dark singing:
“Roamin’ in the gloamin’
by the bonny banks of Clyde . .“
Ian Myers
~~~oo0oo~~~
Ndumo – Camping alone – Extract from my diary:
Tonight I decide to cook rice, lentils, green beans, potatoes and chicken washed down with a fine claret in a silver goblet. Mug. OK, it’s actually stainless steel.
YUM!!!
If you must know, the meal was actually a KOO tin (chicken biryani), but you can read the label, all those ingredients are there. But I added the green beans as an inspirational touch. From a separate KOO can.
Delicious!
And the better news: There was two whole litres in that fine claret box.
~~~oo0oo~~~
footnote:
Soon after, KOO wins South Africa’s Best Brand Award. Coincidence? I think not.
The Dundee (pronounced DinDear locally) athletic club and the Dundee Hysterical Society run a 21km foot race called the Isandlwana 21 or The Fugitives’ Trail half marathon every January on the closest Sunday to the 22nd which is when the homeland-defending Zooloos routed the wickedly-invading Poms in 1879 and gave them a well-deserved smack on the snoot. After this thrashing Mrs Queen Vic dished out her Crosses by the dozen like smarties to cover up their embarrassment. A fig leaf for the Empire’s nakedness, I say. ‘Have one of her crosses, mate, just don’t tell her what actually happened, mKay?’
The race starts on a hill overlooking the Isandlwana mountain and ends at Rorke’s Drift.
I went to run it one year and it was very special: Half the club members manning the water tables dressed as Zulus in full regalia, and half dressed as pith-helmeted, redcoated Poms. Some of the former were pale and some of the latter dark, to add to the hilarity. I was appropriately dressed in my Savages Club black n white vest with my number 482 on show. This was quite a while ago, shortly after the actual battle, I spose. When I joined Westville Club in the 21st century I was given number 8754357808F. I don’t think they valued me like Savages did.
The oke who started the race looked like a drunken Pommy colonel, his nose as red as his jacket. He had no gun, no whistle nor no trumpet. He had a moustache, and he rambled on about who had done what to whom in 1879 – a potted history in which I think he underplayed the extent of the well-deserved smack on the snoot. And then, when the ‘off’ time arrived, he shouted:
‘Course, in my specific case, all the Zooloos running that day were well ahead of me. Nevertheless, just like Mrs Queen Vic, the DinDear athletic club dished out Victoria Crosses liberally that day, even to slow coaches.
~~~oo0oo~~~
The race result was something like this photo above.
We crossed the Buffalo river at Rorke’s Drift and finished at the famous mission of the same name:
I think the finishers medal is rather special – a cross between a Victoria Cross and a Zulu shield:
I later gave mine away to a great cause.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Aitch and I took Jess & Tom up Table Mountain in Cape Town. We took the cable car up, and Aitch took it down as well.
Here the kids are – about to walk down Platteklip Gorge.
They bounded down like rock rabbits. I felt my knees wobbling about halfway down, so I sat down ‘to examine some interesting little flowers’. Was stiff for three days after!
Got back from the Brauers’ palatial new home in the ritzy suburb of Gramadoelas in Tshwane – that ancient seat of my forebears the Tshwanepoels (we have landclaim rights there) – landed at Kinshasa Airport and set off to my car. OK, bakkie. It’s waiting for me in 1A in the parking garage proper. (King Shaka airport, really).
Usually I park under shade cloth, but I thought what the hell, I was a bit late so I took a shorter route; the undercover is closer to the boarding gates.
Okaaay, I’m sure it’s here. I’ll check again.
Up and down all the rows, including the ones I knew I wasn’t in. Nothing.
Try level 0, one down (even though I KNOW I was in 1A, I memorised it and said to myself “Remember 1A: You can’t get better than that: 1st class and an ‘A’ result”). Nope. Try level 2, one up. Nope.
So eventually I had to go to security. To report my car missing, ask where the SAPS was to report the theft, open up a ‘missing car case’ and ask if they had CCTV cameras. Already I was imagining it on a lowbed trailer on its way to – I dunno, Monaco? Paris? where bakkies like mine are highly desired.
‘No’, said the perky 21yr old at the parking office with a smile, ‘You can’t have lost your car, where did you leave it?’
‘1A’ I said, my spirits lifting as she said it with such absolute certainty! I thought ‘They don’t have cars stolen here. I can see that just by her demeanour!’
‘Try -1A’ she said. “MINUS ONE AY” is how it sounded.
‘There’s a -1A?’ I asked, ‘Yes’ she burbled brightly, ‘Two levels down from 1A’.
There it was.
~~oo0oo~~
A rare sighting of the foot of the dreaded white wino . . .
next to a black rhino footprint.
=======ooo000ooo=======
Mutiny on the way to Lilani Spa. It’s cold and drizzling, so the back seat of the bakkie thinks cycling has become a seriously kak idea and they’re making it known:
I’m NOT riding!
We’re NOT going!
You can’t force us!
It’s too wet!
It’s too cold!
‘Snot optional,’ I intone each time. ‘Snot optional’.
This got them giggling and making up their own snot sayings:
She SNOT riding.
He SNOT riding.
We SNOT riding!
SNOT funny, Dad! SNOT funny, Pete!
So off they went pedaling in the drizzle, shivering and shouting and giggling. I drove ahead to get out of earshot of the whining. Looking back, here come the four of them . . . What a goon show!
The road to Lilani is 17km of downhill. All long gentle downhill. It’s Lazy Man’s Biking Paradise. From Ahrens to Lilani you don’t have to pedal. You simply place your bum in the saddle and gravity does what it did to Newton’s apple. What’s not to like?
And when you get to the bottom, what do you have to do? Jump into the hot springs mineral waters and soak. If you’re 9 to 15 yrs old of course you’ll take great delight in saying repeatedly, ‘Dad it smells like a fart,’ cos it’s sulphur springs, and it does, but its great.
Downhill biking, warm water, cold beer if you have a driver as I didn’t, and – almost always – solitude. Heaven. If you haven’t been to Lilani Spa, get your ass over there. You can drive right in if you like, and you can stay overnight too.
Here are The Four Mutineers again:
We were in a bakkie this time, not a VW kombi, cos Aitch was gone and the ban on bakkies – ‘the suspension is too hard’ – no longer applied.
~~oo0oo~~
An Earlier Mutiny which may have given them ideas . .
Ducked off to a game reserve again yesterday. Third time in a month! This time Hluhluwe.
Tom was off ritalin (at his request) and MAN did he talk!! Non-stop for HOURS! I loved it. A running, stream-of-conscious patter of the life and thoughts of TomTom!
A lot of it was about hunting.
Dad, I’ve decided to give fishing a rest for a while, I’m going to do hunting.
Mmm?
Yes, I need a rifle, can I have an M16? and I’m going to hunt kudu.
Actually, Tom, that’s not how it works, fella. You need a licence to shoot a gun, and you need to pass a course before you can go hunting.
When can I start, Dad?
I’ll phone my friend Andre and ask him. He was President of the KZN hunting club at one time.
Will he take me tomorrow?
He starts reading my Smithers mammal book. Looks up kudu and starts learning about them. Amazed that I know a lot of the answers to questions he asks me from the book.
I tell him he needs to start with grasses, then shrubs, then trees, then birds. WHY, Dad? Well, hunters need to know what animals eat, and they need to know what birds are doing as they stalk their prey. The Go-Away bird will shout when it sees you and that will alert the buck, and as you walk past the little warblers will go quiet and the buck will look up to see why. Oh.
Dad, if I shoot a buck right up its asshole will the bullet come out its mouth?
TOM!!
Just kidding Dad, you know I wouldn’t, but I’m jus saying . . . So an anatomy lesson followed about the tortuous route a bullet would have to take to find the mouth if it started at the a-hole.
Dad, is it true you have to eat the liver of the first buck you shoot – raw?
Can I shoot birds with my air rifle?
How do you take the skin off a buck? Do you have to carry the buck home after you’ve shot it?
Dad, what does Nyala taste like? And kudu? And duiker? And wildebeest? Can you eat a warthog? Can you eat lion meat?
ens.
Every now and then: I love you Dad! Arsecreeping, see? Possible translation: You don’t really mean Forget it! about the M16, right?
And Jessie? Quietly listening to her music and looking out. She spotted the lion, the rhino, the lone ele, the eagle, a snake in a tree, etc.
She took that lovely pic of the long-tailed Paradise Whydah.

Walking around in a campsite which shall remain nameless (I don’t want anyone to disturb him), I heard a host of birds kicking up a big fuss. I couldn’t see anything, so lay down on my back and searched the whole tree with my binocs. Then a toppie revealed him by flying right at his head and slapping his face with its wings! A big beautiful black mamba, who just quietly took the birds’ abuse. Maybe wrote down her name . . ?
I carefully marked the spot where I’d lain on the dirt road to spot him, so I could find the snake again – I know how snakes can ‘disappear’ – and went back to our chalet nearby and called friends Jon n Dizzi to come and look. I got them to X Marks The Spot . . . and I could not find him! I searched thoroughly, but no go.
We assumed he had moved off, but after my friends left I lay down again and searched the branches again. He was in almost the same position! He’d hardly moved. How the heck had we missed him? The incredible camouflage power of ‘not moving!’
Then while lying on my back on the mowed lawn I spotted a butterfly land on a blade of grass and twist its abdomen, wriggle, then fly off. I went to look and found a neat single spherical egg laid on the under-surface of the green blade of grass. Beautiful. A greenish-yellow colour, I think. I thought I took a photo of the egg but I can’t find it.
~~oo0oo~~
toppie – Black-capped Bulbul, Pycnonotus tricolor
black mamba – Dendroaspis polylepis
Here’s a GIF to help spot him more easily: head left, tail right
My auntie Pat (Mom’s sister) used to pass through Harrismith every year on her way (with husband and 2 daughters) to the Wild Coast. They would call in again on their way back three weeks later and she would be as brown as a ripe old berry. I mean seriously deep berry red-brown deep deep tan. Skin looked like rich dark leather. On her way back to Blyvooruitzicht where she’d make all the other gold mine cherries jealous. Internally tanned too, I guess, from the booze and cigarette smoke. Happy as Larry. Looking forward to next year’s trip already and already sad that she would lose her tan up in BlayFore, as they called their home settlement. She proved she was absolutely right to do so and to ignore all the health police by keeling over dead one year, approaching Harrismith after another glorious holiday at Mazeppa Bay. Heart attack. Nothing to do with tanning.
—————————————————–
On Wednesday, June 12, 2013, pete wrote:
Check Tom’s lips in the pic: Yikes!
Under a previous regime if I’d brought him home looking like that I’d have been in for BIG trouble!!! They’ve had sunblock maybe five times in the last two years!
———————————
In the old days you had not had a proper summer holiday if you didn’t have a cold sore to prove it. Now, in Australian cities, it’s punishable by public humiliation.
Beware of things lurking when out for a carefree stroll in the veld.
Outside Mapungubwe in October 2013 I spotted a male lion running free on the tar road. As I got closer he ducked under a little bush. Amazing how I would never have spotted him had I not seen him dive under it!
The can in the foreground of this picture is on the edge of the tar road, the bush is at the bottom of a steep little bank – about 3m down.
He’s there, believe me! A full-grown lion is under that little bush. A short while later he bolted and ran along the fence in the opposite direction to where I was going on my way to Limpopo-Lipadi in Botswana. I was too slow with my phone camera. (this story repeated – more or less – here).
The stay at Kaoxa was great. When I told hostess Virgeenia I’d been sent there by my friend, young David Hill, she exclaimed:
Hau, that one he makes us laugh!
I had the camp to myself and prepared an elaborate bachelor’s supper, mainly liquid: A Black Label beer, then a couple G&T’s with ice & lemon, biltong, crisps and tomato sarmies. Made with old-style slice-it-yourself white bread. Whattafeast.
Next morning the ants had tried to hijack a stick of biltong, but had only moved it about 40cm. A few thousand of them put a thin stick on their backs for a getaway, but they were too slow.
The chalet was clean, comfortable and had a lovely porch overlooking the valley. The communal kitchen was well-equipped and the fridge was cold with lots of ice. I enjoyed a magic sunset and sunrise. I watched distant eles in the valley for supper, one under a baobab; the Mocking Chats woke me on the thatch roof, squirrels scurried along the branches and I had a klipspringer in full sunlight for breakfast:
Later I checked out the Drifters mobile safaris camp on Kaoxa land. What a special site, ensconced in the rocky hillside among huge boulders!
Interesting sights were an ele looking tiny next to a baobab and a giraffe looking short next to a massive free-standing boulder, the landscape miniaturising these large beasts.
—–Original Message—–
From: pete swanepoel:
Did I tell you I saw a beautiful male lion running along the fence on the tar road outside Kaoxa? Obviously escaped from the De Beers reserve, he was as worried as hell! When I drove up next to him he dived under a bush and wouldn’t move, even when I put my foot out and rustled the grass.
See the picture I took. I’ll be even more wide awake walking in the bush now when I see how little cover a big male lion needs!
Cheers
——
On 2013/11/07 David Hill wrote: Did you stay at Kaoxa? How was it? Let me know so I can let Duncan have some feedback. We were up there for his 60th beginning August – twenty five old conneko’s – beautiful.
2013 at a glance
Didn’t think I ever would, but I have the trailer now.
“Tell me a story and get a discount” I said in my ad on gumtree.co.za
“I’m going hunting in Namibia said the man in Cape Town – and it’s going to cost me courier fees.”
He got R1000 off! Paid only R4000 – Whattabargain!
Especially as I was selling memories:
Cape Vidal
Lake Sibaya
Midmar Dam
Malawi
Zambia
Friday, December 20, 2013, pete swanepoel wrote:
Went back to Mfolosi today. Kids were mad keen, especially Jess. Determined to see a lion.
So we did. A lovely big male. I thought that’ll keep her quiet for a while. Only to find out later that dear old silent-one Jess couldn’t see it from back in the canopy where she and her friend Sindi were snugly seated – at their request. But – being Jess – she didn’t say anything at the time!! There was a car blocking her view and she didn’t say a word! Had a quiet drizz in my arms at the picnic spot afterwards! Ai! Die Kinders! (Tom would have raised hell if HE couldn’t see it). I’m amazed Sindi didn’t say something. She’s not usually shy.
To my embarrassment I notice I took 44 pics – and not one of the kids.
Steve wrote: Haai. Next trip make sure Jess is in the front seat and has charge of the binoculars!
Me: My Jessie had choice of seat, being the oldest, and has her own binoculars. All she needed to do was squawk and we could have edged forward by a metre or so but she froze. As she does. The good thing is now we’ll have to go back!
It gets hot but nothing Sahara. I don’t use aircon in the bush. We drove north in October, which the Zims call suicide month, without once switching the aircon on. All windows down is all. When it gets too stinking hot wet towels work amazingly well.
My godson Gary Hill worked as a ranger at Mala Mala for a couple years. Also had a ball, took lots of pics and ran their blog. Loved it, but has moved on. They pay shit and prospects are few, so after a while its comes time to move on.
Find his swansong here:
Brauer wrote: Lyin’ and dandelion??
Surely they don’t qualify as communities. (The kids had said ‘Dad! Don’t stop here!’ I asked why not. ‘Too many “communities” Dad!’ What?! Look at the “communities,” Dad!’ they said, pointing at the local people. I shook my head and asked them when they last looked in a mirror!! Pests).
“WE sang rap”?? Must have been THEY and then the old toppie serenading them with a bit of Mama Mia accompanied by eyerolling.
Me: Hey, WE sing:
I woke up in a noo Bughatti
I woke up in a noo Bughatti
I woke up in a noo Bughatti
I woke up in a noo Bughatti
I woke up in a noo Bughatti
I woke up in a noo Bughatti
and
My nigger, bad nigger , my nig nig nigger
My nigger, bad nigger , my nig nig nigger
My nigger, bad nigger , my nig nig nigger
My nigger, bad nigger , my nig nig nigger
My nigger, bad nigger , my nig nig nigger
and
I gonna PICK the world up and gonna drop it on yo fuckin head
What? You don’t know the classics?
~~~oo0oo~~~
PS: Later Jess told me she HAD seen the lion but just not as well as she’d have liked to!
PPS: My favourite sighting was the meadows full of flowers. They were amazing!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Pics of my self-styled “NOT communities” on other trips:
~~~oo0oo~~~
Let’s go to the lion park, Dad, I’ve never seen lions!
This is Jess. I remind her that she has, actually, in Zambia – but she was little – five years old, 2003. I must show her the pics in South Luangwa Park.
They’re in hard bargaining mode, as we’re on our way to my folks’ place in PMB. It’s my ole man’s 91st birthday lunch, which is why I’m dragging them to Sleepy Hollow. It’s not their best place to visit, so I agree: Behave sociably and we can go to the lion park after lunch. OK?
By the time we get to the “Lion Park” it’s closed, but we can “see the lions only”. Same price, one hundred Saffrican Ront. I decide stuffit, let’s rather do this properly. “Stuff these lions” I announce, “We’re going to Mfolosi game reserve for the day tomorrow”. “Let’s go and see if we can spot some real lions”.
We left at 6:00am sharp and were in the park at 8:40am, already paid and entered, R240 for the five of us and the car for the day.
We had a ball. The kids were expert spotters, we saw lots & lots of eles, rhino, buff, giraffe, nyala, impala, bushbuck, wilderbeasts, wartpigs ensovoorts. – And a clear sighting of a gorgeous bush shrike!!
We sang rap and Mama Mia all the way there and back. And we laughed! These brats have decided they don’t like mixing with too many communities. Especially in crowds. Used to be bantu, then plurals, anderskleuriges, euphemisms, etc. Now its communities.
“Don’t stop here, Dad” as we drive through a village, “there are too many communities here”. I threaten to buy them each a mirror so they can check their mahogany brown selves whenever they think of such nonsense, but they just hose themselves at me.
They must have introspected a bit, though, because at lunch at the picnic spot they announce: “Hey we’re the only communities here!” To shine them up I made them do a spot of community tribal dancing in a tree.
And of course the two 12yr olds Tom & Lungelo couldn’t miss the opportunity to disgust the teenage girls by letting rip on the way back, causing a hasty winding down of windows and heads hanging out for fresh air till the green fumes could waft away.
So the lion park sparked a search for ‘real’ lions.
We didn’t see a lion this visit, but I heard a whole lotta lyin’.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Saffrican Ront – South African Rand; worth anywhere from US$1.42 (1973) to less than a dime (2015)! Depends when you ask;
ensovoorts – etc.
~~~oo0oo~~~
