Breakfast at Badgers in Helen Joseph Road with Jess and two of her mates. A large greasy soulfood brekker on a windy Durban morning.
They gave me a present, too. The bill.
Meanwhile, Tom and a mate had gone off to have a haircut in downtown. On their return they offered me their Fathers Day pressie: A large braai with them doing everything including the buying. All I had to do was pay.
I saw them get a bonfire blazing and some time later this evening a plate was marched in, loaded with beef short ribs and boerewors with a token vegetable teetering on the edge: a chicken wing, braai’d golden brown.
I shoulda taken a pic but I only remembered halfway through. Delicious! Washed down with Cardboardeaux – a 2018 vintage.
Jessie’s Tummy Mummy Thembi became a good friend thanks to Aitch and her conscientious follow-up and ‘adoption’ of Thembi. Aitch nurtured her and encouraged and empowered her. She arranged classes such as computer and sewing courses; she had her teeth seen to and hugely improved by the state orthodontists at Addington and King Edward hospitals.
Once a month she would take Jessie – and me and Tom sometimes – to meet for lunch with Thembi. Aitch would also take her supplies and goods to sell; Jessie loved those lunches. She and Thembi would gossip and giggle and point at people walking past commenting on their looks, dress, gait, whatever. Scandalous! They loved it!
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Once we took Thembi back to Port Shepstone so she could show her Mom and Gran that Jess was fine. She had left them at age thirteen to go and work as a domestic servant for a family in Chatsworth.
– Thembi’s Mom and Gran seated; Thembi’s long hair –
Thembi longed for a boyfriend, and when she met a guy who was very good to her she was very happy. But tragically she then contracted AIDS; Aitch pitched right in and arranged to meet the chief HIV / AIDS doctor in charge at King Edward, who saw to it that Thembi got good treatment and got it in time. She sickened rather quickly though, and grew weak.
Jess wrote to her when I visited her in Addington:
She died on the 19th of August 2010 in the Albert Luthuli hospital, after a stay in Addington hospital. I took her boyfriend and her brother Dumi in the kombi to buy a coffin and then to fetch her body; then arranged for them to get her remains – and themselves – to Port Shepstone.
Thanks to Aitch’s calendars and the death certificate, I now know Thembi was born on 2nd July 1983 and was fourteen when Jess was born.
Lydia of London is what we called Jessie’s room-mate on her field guide course. It’s a year later now and Lydia is back in SA doing her Masters thesis on vultures and people, including sangomas and the muti trade.
So the girls decided to get together before Lydia heads off back to London. We spent a lovely day in the reserve, not uneventful! In fact we saw nine interesting stand-offs: Three avian, where pairs of red-capped robin-chats, camaroptera and bulbuls chased and challenged each other; three mammalian, where two bull rhinos, two bull buffalo and two bull giraffes sorted each other out like boys do – much huffing n puffing, little action; and one inter-species where a chameleon huffed at Lydia as she rescued it from becoming road-kill.
The eighth was a fraught Rhino vs Ford Ranger:
This old bull had been pummelled and bullied and gored by a bigger younger bull who marched him backwards for a couple hundred metres then took him into the bush where we couldn’t see them but could hear the grunting change to squealing, ending in this guy emerging bleeding. We then got between him and the aggressive one and I decided I’d better get past. Upon which this poor fella tucked his horn down and feinted at the vehicle as we scooted past. I think Lydia of London did frown at me somewhat, but I decided I couldn’t have an unseen victorious rhino in the bush on my left, so I decided to scoot past the losing rhino on my right.
On a more peaceful note, Jess made us a lovely lunch, we saw a finfoot in the river, and we organised a dozen vultures to do a special flypast for Lydia of London!
We also saw a rhino named Frank:
(Couldn’t resist! Got a pic of an ele with egrets with that caption on whatsapp and thought of this picture).
The ninth event was a champagne opening, where Lydia tried her best not to intervene as Jess struggled, miming in the background with great restraint. But eventually she just had to assist her old roommate.
We stopped in at the Hluhluwe Spar to buy provisions on our way further north to camp in Mkhuze. Busy, crowded, more bulk items than city Spars. We gather our stuff and pay at the till.
As we cross the road to the bakkie, Tom looks up at me, lugging his Spar plastic bags: “You realise you were the only peach in there, Dad?” he asks. “People were thinking ‘What’s that umLungu doing in here?’ he says.
Actually, I think they were wondering why that umLungu takes so much cheek from that umfana.
~~~oo0oo~~~
umLungu – dignified older person
umfana – precocious, insolent, shorter, younger person
Here’s that stunning hawk moth on my coffee flask again: StopPress! I now know its a Sundowner Moth, likely Sphingomorpha chlorea, thanks to Christeen Grant’s lovely blog.
Saw twelve animal species (specials were banded mongooses and painted dogs) and 65 birds, but very few pics of those as I had scarecrows with me! Instead we have a TomTom selfie! – or rather ‘ussie’ . .
Jess saw fairies in Jayne Janetsky’s Gauteng country garden way back around 2005. Jayne had little fairies and fairy lights among the fascinating boulders hidden in an indigenous forest copse. Also hanging from the branches and around the pond. Jess has always remembered them and still refers to them from time to time, years later. So it was a lovely surprise to get this email from Jayne – now living in Mocambique:
2017/05/26, Jayne Janetzky wrote: Thought Jess may like to look through a book I wrote for grandson Tyler – it’s about the faeries she remembers.
Talented daughter-in-law Ansobel did the illustrations!
Wonderful! I replied. And the best part of all – It’s ALL TRUE! I was there, I saw it! The great big rocks, the pond, the fairies themselves! The lights! Jess will love it.
I found an aerial view of Jayne’s cottage and its magical garden.
Here I arrowed the cottage with the (really, genuinely) magic adult veranda where liquid flowed and wondrous meals were served. The popping of champagne corks was an everyday sound here – now that is truly magical!
Also 1. The flat rocks which made such an interesting feature in the front garden; 2. The magical forest with a trail through it past high boulders and a pond, every nook and cranny with fairies and fairy lights and candles! Jaynee knows how to do theatre!
Adults who do things that kids never forget are magic adults.
I’m coming down to Durban to buy a parrot. Where’s Overport? asks the ole man. Parrots can live for eighty years, so what better to get as a pet when you’re ninety five in the shade yourself?
Then the ole lady phones, all worried – as ever. Can you tell us how to get to West Road in Overport, Koosie? I say I’ll try, I’ll look it up, I’ll phone you back. I need to hatch a plot. I phone back and say, Come to my place for lunch, I’ll leave work early and I’ll take you, it’s not easy to find. She sounds dubious but she’ll try that.
She phones back, amazed. He saw sense. We’re coming for lunch, she says, relieved. A rare visit to the son’s home! She can’t see, he can’t hear, so she was dreading looking for a small parrot in a strange haystack, driving by feel and touch, with a driver very disinclined to listen to anything she has to say, and quick to blame.
When I get home they’re on my stoep and Jess has given them tea and Tommy is busy cooking lunch for everybody – pasta carbonara. My children! Bless them! I had told them, I’d love it if you’d give them a polite hello, but you needn’t stay, just make your excuses and go. They decided to completely exceed all expectations and charm the old bullets, the granma that loves them and the old goat who denies them. Proud of ’em!
Off we go to meet Sumie who has three baby African Grey Parrots in a box. His grandfather breeds them in Utrecht. The old man had asked Sumie to choose his own from the three. He checks them out on the tailgate of my bakkie in West Road Overport, picks one and now I think, Here comes the bargaining.
R2500, says Sumie. No way, says the ole man and shuffles off to the front seat of my bakkie. He comes back slowly on the uneven pavement with the bird magazine in his hand, stabbing his finger at Sumie’s ad: R2300; He gives a pained moaning, Now I have wasted my time coming all the way from Pietermaritzburg. Sumie says to me, ‘I thought I wrote R2500!‘ To the customer he says, Fine, Uncle Pieter, R2300.
And the food for free, says the ole man. That cost me R100, Uncle Pieter, I’ve just fed them, so give me R80, says Sumie. It’s my birthday on Friday (true), counters the ole man, You should give it to me as a gift. How old you’ll be? asks Sumie. Ninety Five says the ole man. So they settle on R50.
Now they debate whose box is better. Sumie has a shoebox – it’s wider. Ole man has a box some electronics came in – it’s deeper. Ole man realises if he takes Sumie’s box he gets both, so he settles on Sumie’s shoebox.
We go back home to eat chef Tom’s delicious pasta lunch, followed by ice cream and coffee, and off they go back to Maritzburg. The ole man changes into second too soon up the steep hill, has to stop and start over. He would have hated it that I heard that.
~o0o~
And I didn’t take a single photo! The parrot pic is off the internet. Damn! Well, here they are with great-grandkids:
And I just thought: When last did I post a recent pic of my favourite children? Here they are willingly posing for me:
We’d been meaning to go for ages but, you know – procrastination.
The idea of a long road trip up north is a common dream and – like many Saffers – we planned to do it ‘one day’: We would go on a “safari!” Safari: a Swahili word meaning just plain journey. Probably originally from the Arabic سفر (safar) meaning . . . a journey.
Then one lazy day at home in 2003 I read a lovely interview with an Austrian bloke who had traveled down through Africa on his own from Vienna to Cape Town on a motorbike. The journalist interviewing him asked him about the trip, his adventures, his highlights and his challenges. He’d had a fun time.
The journo then looked down at his bike and said: “Hey – this is a dead-ordinary street bike! What on earth made you choose this bike for your African safari?”
“Choose it?” he said “I didn’t choose it. I had it”. That did it! I got up right there and then and started pacing around. ‘Acting strangely’, according to Aitch.
Within a few months of reading that Wake-Up! What Are You Waiting For? call we had hopped into our petrol 2,3i 2WD four-on-the-floor manual, no difflock VW Kombi with 195 000km on the clock and headed north.
Two little problems: While procrastinating we had adopted Jessie, now five, and Tommy, now 22 months old. But what the heck, even after we’d modified the kombi it was still a six-seater. There was room for them!
It looked like a standoff. At a small pool of water in the dry sandy riverbed of the Black Mfolosi river a male Bateleur and a Tawny Eagle contested the scarce resource. Both stood on the sand at the water’s edge and hunched their shoulders at each other.
I watched a while then scanned all around. Suddenly I heard a cry above me. Two birds circled each other in the air just above our vantage point on a bluff overlooking the river. I looked back at the waterhole. They were gone, this must be them. It was. The eagle was dive-bombing the Bateleur shouting a hoarse kraak kraak. The Bateleur screamed defiantly, dodging the move.
The eagle circled to gain height and folded its wings and took aim again, the agile Bateleur dodging with a sideways roll.
The Bateleur then landed in a tall dead tree while the eagle was climbing again. Soon the Tawny was on his way down again, zooming straight at him and knocking him off his perch. They banked and circled and strained to gain height again, the Bateleur’s wingflaps surprisingly noisy. Once again the Tawny won the climb and launched a dive.
The Bateleur folded his wings and flew away low over the tree tops away from the river.
The Tawny landed back at the pool where it all started, victorious.
High above a white-backed vulture and a Yellow-billed Kite, witnesses to the dogfight, still circled in the thermals.
Wow! Who needs a lion kill?
Oh, Jessica. Yes, dear. I didn’t realise how long we’d been here. We’ll drive now and look for lions, honey.
I can’t believe it! What’s that noise? In My Own House!
On our sea cruise to Mocambique a song was played over and over ad infinitum. It got people crowding the dance floor and forming swaying lines of bodies on the boat and on the beach. It was Hamba Nawe and Jess loved it.
But now Jess had found an Afrikaans version, and our house was sounding like a Steve Hofmeyr shrine. I was aghast. I thought “This Cannot Be!” I’m going to . . .
BUT: I remembered what dear old Mom Mary had done and said when I played Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love full tilt in her house in the Free State back in the seventies: Nothing.
So I was a diplomat. A long-suffering diplomat. I mean, if my Mom could listen to a shrill I’m Gonna Give You Every Inch Of My Love! in the Vrystaat in the seventies, I could chill in Westville, KZN in the next century, surely? Dads will just have to try n be as brave as Moms.
Jess took to ziplining like a duck to water. Calm and unfazed, she’d inspect the gear, make sure all was hooked up and away she’d go without a blink.
She’d been a little nervous before, so I had sat her down and said, ‘Jess, it’s a very strong cable, well attached on both ends and has a breaking strain of three tons. You weigh less than one tenth of one ton, so you’ll be fine. The extra cable also has a three ton breaking strain. Your harness and safety cable can each hold a ton. So you’re fine, kid.’ She nodded.
So how did she do? Check her out! My brave girl. Nonchalant even.
Jess and I spent two nights at Mkhuze. It’s looking very dry and animals were few and far between. Still, we saw lots of the usual dependables: giraffe, zebra, impala, hippo, nyala, wildebeest and – at last! – one elephant. A young bull right next to the road. Jess, who watches too much youtube of eles goring and flipping cars, and had a scare in Tembe Elephant Park ‘thanks’ to bad behaviour by a senior ranger, did not want to hang around, so we drove past him.
Also one band of Banded and two individual Slender Mongooses.
But lots of birds. I won’t give the boring – to me exciting – list (78 species) but I will tell this story. In Mantuma camp – here:
I went looking for pinkspots (pink-throated twinspots). Like this:
– oops! dont know where I got this image to credit – I see it’s all over the web now – whoever took it: beautiful and thank you –
I followed their high-pitched trilling cricket-like sound and found them and more! There they were, in a bird party in the grass! Blue waxbills, green-winged pytilias, grey-headed sparrows, yellow-throated petronias, yellow-fronted canaries, red-billed firefinches pecked alongside the pinkspots on the sandy soil. And in the tree directly above them a small flock of red-billed wood hoopoes, a dark-backed weaver and a golden-tailed woodpecker. Just that one bird party made the whole trip worthwhile. I stood twenty metres from them and watched through my Zeiss’ for ages. ‘Saturation Views’!
On my way back to the chalet I watched a black cuckoo-shrike give a full, relaxed display all round me. I didn’t know this jet-black bird could be so BLUE! In the sunlight his ‘black’ shone a beautiful cobalt blue. This picture I found on ethiobirds is the only one that captures it well. See the difference!
they squealed and ran out of the campsite shouting “Pete! I’m taking an uber home!” and “Dad! I’m taking an uber home!” Pests.
We saw kudu, nyala, hippo, buffalo, giraffe, mongoose, zebra, warthog and hyena. Sindi pipes up on a drive: “There are no animals here!” She meant we hadn’t seen an elephant or a lion.
Pig, chicken, potatoes, beans. And champagne. Clean forgot the salad but it wasn’t missed. We had two types of gammon: Slices from Woolworths and a whole one cooked by Dad, who had – horrors – mistakenly bought an uncooked gammon and had to cook it this morning. Once it had been the oven an hour or so, I read the instructions: ‘Boil in a big pot of water . . .
A Best Gammon Vote was taken and – bearing in mind they’re only getting their prezzies in January – the kids – unanimously; by a wide margin; and by popular acclaim; and unopposed – decide Dad’s was best. By far.
as sides: Lay’s chips in the packet; tomato sauce out of the bottle –
She passed her matric, so got to choose her holiday. A Safari, Dad! And I want you to come along.
Well, wasn’t Dad pleased!
We went to Nambiti outside Ladysmith, KwaZulu Natal. To Springbok Lodge. Jess loved the accommodation and the food and the big beasts.
There were also wonderful little beasts and blommy cheese.
Then this! The best sighting: I had been polite about birding all along – it was Jessies’s trip and she wanted big furry smelly creatures. Also we had Poms on board. But when a quail flushed and Tascha drove on saying ‘Common Quail,’ I said ‘Whoa! Let’s have a look, please.’ Luckily it obligingly came out of the grass and back onto the track where we could see it was special. I got a reasonable picture, but Tascha got a better one with a better camera. Here it is: A Harlequin Quail!
The food was really special, the chefs and servers took great pride in their work; The chalet was comfy; Jess and our Ranger/Guide Tascha the Pom, took to each other and so Jess loved the drives.
Here the two of them watch three male lions threatening to attack hippos in a dam. The hippos were having none of it, so there was a standoff. Lots of bared teeth in the distance. Threats, splashes and bad language.
On the other end of the scale I watched a tiny green mantid nymph (half the size of a matchstick) rock and sway, trying to look like a leaf, then dart forward on his four legs – holding his boxing gloves up in front of his nose; no wings yet; then he’d sway and mimic a leaf in a breeze. Amazing feisty little fella was stalking ants and challenging them to a duel, it seemed. I stared in awesome wonder and clean forgot to take a picture!
Well done, Jess! And thanks for sharing a lovely celebratory trip, my star!
Mkhuze is dry. Very VERY dry! Nsumo Pan is empty. One little mud puddle has about twenty hippos huddling in it, caked in thick mud. Their farts probly don’t even bubble to the surface now.
At the entrance to KuMasinga hide, a chap with stunning new Swarovski binocs and a huge bazooka-like Canon telephoto lens asks, “You a birder?” Spotted my Zeiss binocs I suppose. In the next two minutes he’s told me the Swarovskis are R36 000, only Canon lenses “of course”, Mkhuze was last this dry in 1963 when he first visited, Swarovski gave him the binnies, he wouldn’t pay that much, and his name is Ian Sinclair.
“No shit?!” I said, “I’m a fan, I’ve got all your books”. “Got them here?” he asks, “I’ll sign ’em for you”. Faint Oirish accent. So he walks back to my bakkie with me and does just that in the only one I have with me.
“I’m writing another one. All of Africa’s birds. Photographic.”
Where are you staying? I ask. We’re staying at Ghost Mountain Inn”. “Ah”, I said, “They’re licenced to sell beer and whisky.” He grins, “And I’m licenced to drink it! I’m Irish!”
In the hide, a bird party is sipping on the nectar of a profusion of red flowers. Fellow Irishman Tommy is photographing them with his bazooka. Ian is guiding him on his Africa trip. “What’s that tree again with those red flowers?” Ian asks of me. “Schotia” I say “Schotia brachypetala“. “Vernacular?” he asks. “Weeping Boer Bean”, I say, thinking he’s having me on. “Ah,” he says.
“I’m going to tell everyone who’ll listen that I told Ian Sinclair something he didn’t know,” I say. “Oh, I’ll deny it,” he says, quick as a flash.
Ian Sinclair! Well that was definitely the most interesting mammal I spotted on this trip. Read more about Ian here.
The feature pic shows that weeping boerbean tree at the waterhole. Ian said visit me if you come to Cape Town. I said I’ll bring whisky.
~o0o~
Enjoyable birding list:
White-backed vulture, yellow-breasted apalis, chin-spot batis, brubru, bulbul, sombre and yellow-bellied greenbul, golden-breasted bunting, orange-breasted bush shrike, camaroptera, yellow-fronted canary, long-billed crombec, pied crow, laughing, red-eyed, and cape turtle doves, emerald-spotted dove, FT drongo, blue-grey flycatcher, crested guineafowl, white helmet-shrike, African hoopoe, trumpeter, crowned and yellow-billed hornbills, YB kite, black-winged lapwing, red-faced mousebird, BH oriole, RB oxpecker, petronia, green pigeon, African pipit, 3-banded plover, puffback, fiscal shrike, bearded scrub robin, scimitarbill, grey-headed sparrow, cape glossy and black-bellied starlings, woolly-necked stork, white-bellied, scarlet-chested, purple-banded and grey sunbirds, wire-tailed swallow, blue waxbill, village and dark-backed weavers, cape white-eye.
Few animals: Tortoise, zebra, nyala, impala, waterbuck, kudu, warthog, giraffe, wildebeest, hippo, terrapin, slender mongoose, rock monitor lizard (Jess spotted these last two). Eleven big male nyala in one tight little herd.
~o0o~
Went with Jess and Jordi. Tom visited friends. We stayed in the safari tents. A yellow-bellied greenbul ate our crumbs right at my feet on the deck, and two thick-tailed nagapies (bushbaby / galago) raided our kitchen while we ate supper. Everything’s really hungry!
And a tiny little plant all alone in the dry dirt between the tents:
![20180617_111609[1]](https://i0.wp.com/bewilderbeast.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/20180617_1116091.jpg?resize=620%2C465&ssl=1)
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Jessie’s Tummy Mummy Thembi became a good friend thanks to Aitch and her conscientious follow-up and ‘adoption’ of Thembi. Aitch nurtured her and encouraged and empowered her. She arranged classes such as computer and sewing courses; she had her teeth seen to and hugely improved by the state orthodontists at Addington and King Edward hospitals.
