runway. I gazed through the small, dusty window of our tiny yellow aeroplane. The airport was busy and the sky seemed to be teeming with other aircraft. Sweat started to trickle down my back.
“Lanseria Ground, this is Zulu Sierra – SRS, we are ready to roll!”
I shut my eyes tight and hoped that we would make it to the farm.
But then, suddenly, the dusty city mess of Gauteng fell away beneath our feet. The little yellow plane had stopped most of its noisy rumblings, and it appeared to be very much at home gliding among the clouds.
We gently floated on a warm air current. Aunt Ada laughed with pleasure. She was managing the controls of the plane with a touch as light as if icing a cake. I was beginning to relax. I peered to the back to see how William was doing.
It looked as if he had sat down on a snake! Every single hair on his body was erect. His eyes bulged from their sockets.
“Chill, William!” I tried to comfort him. “Look out of the window! The clouds look just like giant popcorn floating above the earth.”
William loves popcorn, but he remained tense.
“It takes too long to drive to the farm by car,” my aunt explained. “And on top of that, I am scared of traffic.”
Scared of traffic? I found it difficult to believe that that woman could be scared of anything. And surely a bit of traffic jam was less dangerous than traipsing among the clouds, crossing the paths of huge jets that flew at how many kilometres an hour?
“There are some sandwiches in a basket at the back, and a flask of coffee,” Aunt Ada said. “You must be hungry.”
Of course I was hungry. Or was I? The plane bumped as we were hit by a side wind and my stomach lurched.
“Baxter!” Aunt Ada called to the back. “Wake up and say hello to our guests!”
The bundle of skins stirred. A black nose appeared and two beady eyes blinked at me. The “skins” uncurled further and took on the form of a sturdy body, four short, strong legs and a bushy tail. A broad silver stripe ran over his back.
That wasn’t a dog.
Baxter was a real African honey badger.
Out in the Bush
I have a picture of an African honey badger in an encyclopaedia of animals at home, but I have never seen one up close. Not even in a zoo.
“Are you awake, Baxy?” Aunt Ada asked over her shoulder. “Honey badgers are nocturnal, you know,” she said in my direction. “Baxter is shy in the daytime.”
The only thing I knew about honey badgers was that they were supposed to be the toughest animals in the bush. Even a lion would not willingly take on a fully grown badger.
Baxter regarded me with clever black eyes. He decided that I needed to be fed. He dove head first into the picnic basket that stood on the floor below the back seats and emerged with a sandwich clasped between his teeth. He offered it to me.
“Thank you very much!” I said, surprised, and accepted the sandwich. Baxter nodded his head politely. Peanut butter and syrup were thickly spread on wholesome home-baked bread.
“Ben bakes the bread,” my aunt explained. I merely nodded and sank my teeth into the sandwich. I remembered my aunt’s koeksisters and was only too grateful that there appeared to be someone else in my aunt’s household who now took care of the culinary arrangements. William and I took our food very seriously.
Baxter was now offering another sandwich to William, but my dog regarded his fellow passenger with suspicion and curled his lip at the sandwich.
“Really, William. Where are your manners?” I scolded.
William growled.
I took the sandwich from Baxter and inspected it. “It’s the fish paste,” I tried to explain his poor manners. “I don’t think he likes that very much.” William shook his head and swallowed audibly.
“I know the problem,” Aunt Ada laughed. “It’s airsickness! Baxter, rather get him a plastic bag. There are some underneath the seat.” Baxter clearly understood every word she said, as he disappeared from view for a second and then emerged with a plastic bag clenched in his mouth. But William just cringed in his corner, closed his eyes, clearly waiting for the plane to crash and be done with it. Our bush adventure was not starting well for him.
I gazed through the window. The towns and buildings down below were becoming more thinly spread and the landscape was changing to a patchwork of farmland and gravel roads.
I loved flying!
“Do you want to try it yourself?” Aunt Ada asked. She showed me how to steer the plane with the yoke, making us climb and dive, and the rudder pedals that steered to the left or right. It wasn’t too difficult.
“The take-off and landing are the tricky bits,” she warned.
I could well imagine that.
Beneath us, the landscape turned wilder and more untamed. The straight lines of ploughed farmland unravelled into unspoiled stretches of veld with winding game paths snaking between the dark shapes of trees. I could see the occasional cement dam. The afternoon sun painted long shadows of the wind pumps over the trampled red soil that surrounded the animals’ drinking troughs.
“An elephant! I can see one, two … no, a whole herd of them!” I yelled, my heart beating in my throat with excitement.
Aunt Ada peered down in the direction that my shaking finger was pointing.
“Those are no elephants,” she growled. “Those are Jim Jackson’s cattle, and they are in totally the wrong place!” She pressed on the yoke and we dove down like an eagle. My stomach rose to join my heart at the back of my throat.
“Look!” Aunt Ada shouted. “Someone cut the fence. Over there, next to the big marula tree!”
But I saw nothing. My eyes were shut tightly as the ground approached much too fast for my liking.
We climbed out of our dive. My aunt was grumbling some words that my mother would not approve of. “It’s those darned poachers again!”
“Poachers?” I asked. I almost felt sorry for them, whoever they were. My aunt had a murderous look.
“We’ve been waging a war with them for some months now,” she explained. “It’s the illegal trade in rhino horn, a lucrative but barbarous business. And the poachers have been getting more and more obnoxious.”
“I’ve heard about it,” I said. “But why rhino horn? What makes it so special?”
“Ground rhino horn is regarded as some miracle drug in the East. It is rubbish, of course. The horn of a rhino is made of the same stuff as hair and nails. It is completely useless as medicine. But desperate people will believe anything, and unfortunately there are plenty of unscrupulous people about that would do terrible things for money.”
I could only marvel at the stupidity of some grown-ups.
