Photogiraffing? It’s hard to photograph giraffe in Ithala Game Reserve when you have a Jack-in-the-Box popping up in the jeep right in front of your lens every time you’re ready to depress the shutter. And then the laughter gives camera shake.
Tag Archives: Tommy Swanepoel
Afriski 2014
*** publishing now, but a story I wrote six years ago after our annual winter trip to Lesotho – just ‘parking it’ for the archives! ***
The resort has taken another leap forward this year under PIN management since they got 51% share and with that, management control. Most noticeable was the parking, the roads and the walkways are neater and better paved. This makes getting around easier and safer. In an earlier year, Aitch once slipped on ice and got a big fright. The whole complex is tidy, too, where before material and equipment would be left lying around.
Much of the accommodation has been upgraded – notably the two big units which have been completely re-done and their outside staircases enclosed in glass (red arrows);
Two completely new staff quarters have been built below the dams which frees up more accommodation next to the restaurant. I think its up to 240 beds. Up to 800 day visitors can arrive on a busy weekend day in school holidays!
The restaurant is terrific now. They have expanded to upstairs and down, take two sittings and were fully booked Sunday night. Professional chef, lovely grub.
Weather was two perfect days – midday saw ladies skiing in skimpy tops! One day was too windy for the skilift to run, so the slope people used the Pisten Bully to take people to the top instead. And three average days. With us was the Naude family Michelle and Craig and their three boys, and Tom’s mate Lungelo.
Not moving forward this year was the kids enthusiasm! Jess didn’t ski / snowboard at all – sore knee & wrist. Tom spent about half his snowboarding time doing other things, including sleeping! Three of the five boys who went with us were out on the slope early until they got kicked off when it closed – keen as mouseturd, like Jess & Tom used to be – so it was fun seeing their newby enthusiasm. Times change!
So come next January my two will have to convince me we should go – or we’ll hire out our week for the first time after eight years! Ons sal sien . . !
~~~oo0oo~~~
Hypotheses, Theories and Us
Here’s your muti Tom, I say. He has already snuggled into bed. You need to remember to take it yourself, fella.
“It’s open to scientific debate, Dad” says my sleepy open-minded critic.
True boy, that’s why we see if it helps you. As long as you benefit from it we give it, if it stops helping you we stop giving it. (I’m chuffed that my “Question everything” lessons seem to be working!).
“Do I take it for the rest of my life?”
Well, that’ll be up to you. Once you’re on your own you’ll make your own decisions. I won’t be involved.
“Oh. Night night Daddy. Love you”.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Hluhluwe LUXURY Camping!
Its a sudden decision: Let’s go to a game reserve Dad! – that’s Jess on Friday night.
OK! (I’m chuffed!). I’m working tomorrow, so you guys buy food and gather the camping stuff. Be ready when I get home at 2:30pm and we’ll go to Mkhuze. Remember the tent, mattresses, pillows, your swimming cozzies.
Cecelia helps them. Minenhle & Andile join us. As we head north to Zululand I realise we’ll be cutting it fine. The gates close at 7pm and it’s 3:30pm already, so there’s a change of plan: We’ll go to Hluhluwe/Mfolosi instead. Means no camping and no swimming.
At the gate the usual story: A pessimistic Ooh, you haven’t booked? Mpila is full. The bushcamps are full.
Keep trying, I say cheerfully. Oh! OK, I’ll try Hilltop camp. Just then the kids walk into the office and he gets interested in me and the kids, asking all sorts of adoption questions and Where’s my wife? and Is she a Zulu lady? and so tries harder when there’s no reply on the radio. Will you phone them on your cellphone? he asks me. Sure. We get thru, there’s a chalet available, we book and head off on what turns into a free night drive!
Tom spots an elephant running towards the road ahead of us, ears flapping. I slow down and it turns onto the tar road and walks determinedly towards us, causing great panic on the back seat. We reverse and wait, reverse and wait, giving him plenty of space, till he eventually finds a mud wallow, drinks and heads off into the bush, allowing us to proceed. It’s dark now and later on two more eles loiter on the road and we just wait patiently, watching them in our headlights. All the kids have watched the videos of the elephant flipping the car, so they’re nervous and don’t want to go anywhere near eles. A look at the video will show how many warnings the people in the car ignored.
At Hilltop they’re waiting for us, they give us our key and bring us an extra set of bedding and towels for the fifth body. Bleeding luxury for us were-going-to-be campers.
AND the big breakfast buffet in the restaurant is included.
The dawn chorus the next morning was fantastic. In that magic spell between pre-dawn and the screaming banshees waking up I made a cup of coffee and sat out on the deck listening in the half light. As the kids started waking two trumpeter hornbills landed in full view and the kids got a good look at them through my telescope. I issued a decree banning all post-5000BCE music and they just nodded, acquiescent (!). So birdsong was it.
Meals? All I had to do was eat.
~~oo0oo~~
Madagascar
I never really learnt to be circumspect. I tend to blurt. So what would you like to do now your second chemo spell is over, Aitch? We’d gone snorkelling at Mabibi on the Zululand coast after the first. A six hour drive in a 4X4.
Where? The Great Barrier Reef? But that’s in Oz, m’dear! You do? Um, what I meant to ask was: What, reasonably-speaking, would you like to do?
So I scurried off to do my homework. Costs, flight times, travel time to the reefs, what we could afford. With trepidation I showed her two alternatives: The Great Barrier Reef in Oz vs Madagascar, where we would live aboard a yacht, plopping overboard to snorkel whenever we wanted to.
Phew! She chose Madagascar – and LOVED Madagascar. “My BEST holiday ever!” she enthused afterwards.
We shared the boat with a delightful English couple, Dickie and Claire, with their two blonde girls Sonja and Natasha. Easygoing and relaxed, it was a blissful getaway. They were chilled and accommodating, and so were we. The crew, too, were wonderful folk, friendly, capable, and good chefs! Skipper Bert, chef ___ and teenage deckhand ‘Mowgli,’ who fascinated our Jessie.
It was Aitch, so homework was still done, naps were still taken, routines were kept as far as possible:
Nosy Iranja in the Mocambique channel:
‘My Best Holiday Ever!!’ – Aitch
Slippery Character
Showering one-year-old Tom in my arms in the ablutions at FlatDogs camp in Zambia I must have squeezed him a bit too hard, as he shot out of my arms like a slippery bar of soap and landed flat on his back on the tiled shower floor!
Waaah! he squawked when he got his breath back after a deadly-silent second! What’s wrong? call Aitch and Jessie from the ladies section next door (separated from us by a thin reed wall).
YIKES!! I picked him up hurriedly and spent the next few hours watching him intently. He was fine, thank goodness! a sueto continua! (the holiday continues!)
Much safer to hang our own shower in a tree on a sandy floor! (also in Zambia).
~~~oo0oo~~~
A bum Rap
Snoozing on Tommy’s bed tonight he lies down and puts his head on my stomach, disturbing me with the racket coming from his Blackberry.
Dad, listen to this rap: It’s 2 Chainz, he’s cool, huh?
All I can hear is a string of chanted F-words.
Dad, he says, taking a picture of my face from navel-level, You could be a rap star. We could call you 2 Chinz.
Hoses himself. So clever. Little squirt. Doesn’t realise these chins were bequeathed to me by my gran Annie and my Ma Mary. Heirlooms.
~~oo0oo~~
Generous Souls
Off we go to St Lucia estuary for a camping long weekend. Let’s take the minimum guys, we can buy food locally. Just clear out the fridge and bread bin and let’s go. We’ll buy charcoal and meat and etc from the local Spar. I won’t even take any wine! Rather we hit the road now, shop later.
Let’s take a tent for the three teenage girls, and the twelve year-old fella and I will sleep in the back of the pickup. The simple life.
Except I realise at the first tollgate that I have left my wallet in Westville. Complication. To turn back or not. In my rucksack I find Tom’s saving card, daily withdrawal limit R300. I had just changed his password, as we had not used the account for ages, so we were good to go. We just gotta be frugal, kids, we got R300 kuphela.
And that’s where they blew me away. All four of them said “Dad, we’ve got money! You can have our money, Dad”. They each had R200 pocket money for the weekend and offered it freely! What stars.
Thanks guys, I may need that, but I have enough to fill up with diesel and we’ll just go easy and discuss it before we spend anything, OK?
The next morning I managed to activate my eWallet and cellphone banking at an internet cafe so could now draw R1500 a day! Problem solved! I gave them each R100 to thank them for their generous offers. Their eyes looked like chocolates and ice creams!
Off we went to the game reserve (entrance fee R245) and to the water park (R120 for the four of them). We wuz rich! The girls bought swimming shorts with their own money.
The next day that amount I could draw had ‘kindly’ been reduced to R200 (“for my safety” – Thanks FNB!), so I had to make the speech again, and again they rallied around with their offer of chipping in, but with Tom’s R300 and my R200 we were fine. We ate boerie rolls both nights – cheap!
Here’s an isimangaliso* pan with buffalo, waterbuck and zebra (click on the pic). The Indian Ocean is just behind that high forested dune:
Tom got on with fishing . .
. . while the teenage girls did what teenage girls do . .
~~oo0oo~~
*isimangaliso means ‘miracle, wonder, surprise’ in isiZulu
My Final Words (in Inuit)
So I’m teaching TomTom to make sealed exits from his new Fluid kayak playboat in our pool. As a prelude to learning to eskimo roll. He was a bit nervous when upside-down in his lessons, so I want him to wear a diving mask and relax as he looks around and orients himself.
Long chats about how cold the water is and much procrastination, but we finally have the shortie wetsuit and the splashcover on and he steps into the boat.
Step into the middle and sit right down, boetie, I instruct him, get your centre of gravity low as soon as possible.
So he stands more erect. You look like you’re about to make a speech, I say.
“I would like all to know that if I die I want my will given to my Dad,“ he pronounces solemnly, standing even more upright in the boat. “And also to my big sister Jess; And I also want people to know I didn’t want to die.“
Sit down, you goat! You’re such a drama queen.
He sits, hosing himself, and it’s a few minutes before we both stop laughing and can get to the next stage.
SO: I’ll flip you now; Sit tight, brace yourself in the boat; Look at me underwater; Give a thumbs up; Look at the water surface; Only THEN pull the splashy release handle, put your knees together and slowly emerge from the boat. Slide, don’t kick. Then swim to the top; OK?
“Dad, you’ve got man-boobs!” he says, triggering another round of helpless laughter as we proceed nowhere fast . . .
But he did it. Three times. Whattastar.
Afterwards, we showered under the hot outdoor shower, so it’s no longer a complete white elephant and goes to prove I was right: You NEED a hot outdoor shower.

Dream On
Wake up TomTom, time to get up.
Ah no Dad, just let me finish my dream.
OK, but fast forward it, fella.
Five mins later: Come on, up you get!
It’s about Father Christmas, Dad.
Well, to stay on his good side you better get up, my boy.
He LOVES me Dad, I’m his best client!
~~~oo0oo~~~
A letter from an earlier time – dictated to Ma Aitch:
My Cousin
Cousin Robbie gets married to Sarah, and after the wedding – maybe it was all that “giving away” talk in church? – TomTom has a sudden thought:
Dad, will Robbie still be our cousin now?
Yes, boy, and in fact you now have another cousin: Sarah.
YAY!!
*(to add Rob Sarah wedding pic)*
Regrets? I’ve had a few . . .
One just this morning.
What should a great Dad do when his 5yr-old child comes running into the bedroom early in the morning grinning from ear to ear and squeaking breathlessly “Dad, Dad, come and look what I found! I found something new!”
Where, TomTom?, I grunted. And why is your head wet?
“In the bathroom, come look! It’s a fountain, Dad!”
I should have jumped up and gone and danced under the fountain with him.
Instead I said It’s the bidet, Tom, don’t make a mess.
“No, Dad, it’s not a bee day, it’s a fountain!” said TomTom.
He was right, of course.
Later, when I went through, the bathroom was flooded, the magazines next to the loo were soaked, and the washing in the wicker basket was soggy.
But he was ecstatic, and I shoulda got soaked with him. And I only thought of it once he’d beetled off to school.
Dammit.
The Considerate Crocodile
Now we’re driving home. Dad, did you see the lions come to drink and the one crocodile ate the little lion cub?
No, TomTom, where did you see that?
On TV.
Dad, if I was a crocodile I’d just live on the water and not eat babies. I’d be a vegetarian to other animals!
~~oo0oo~~
Movies from Mars and Venus
Jess & Tom watch a car chase with guns blazing.
Tom roots for the shooters while Jess holds her breath.
When its over a guy says to a girl “You OK?”
Jess (16) asks Tom (12): “Do you think he likes her?”
Tom: “Huh?”
~~~oo0oo~~~
That’s Haram, Dad!
Mohamed came to play, then ended up staying the night.
Mom Rookaya, in answer to my query, said “just not pork” so I thought I had meals under control.
Supper I pick up a packet of pasta and say “Here’s yours, you guys. Cook it yourself” to the two nine year olds.
NO DAD! THAT’S HARAM! says my TomTom.
What?
HARAM. You can’t give that to Mohamed!
Oh. I look at the packet: Cheese and bacon Carbonara. Oh, OK.
(Phew! You saved my bacon, boetie, I think. And who woulda thought TomTom would know these things, I think).
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
Later we go down to Vetch’s beach where they reflect on things . .
The Photographic Record
Every year Trish got a professional photographer to the kids’ parties. Me, I’m scrooge. I’ll take the pictures. I can do this! So at the kids’ uShaka Waterworld party I tried to photograph everyone. But I didn’t get one of lovely young Hannah, and she left early.
I told Tom.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, “She’s a brownie/blondie hair kinda person.”
Oh. That’s obviously okay then.
Tom with friends whose pics DID matter . .
~~oo0oo~~
Another brilliant, money-scrooging decision was not to have two separate parties, as Aitch used to. Turns out joining fourteen year-old girls with ten year-old boys was not a clever idea! These below do not blend well with those above. Who would’ve known?! I rushed around searching for bodies all day. Never again!
