preferred doing it the hard way. Open trucks, tents, clients who cooked for themselves and helped pitch camp. If we got stuck, or had a flat tyre, everyone pitched in. “Africa is not for sissies,” was our motto. That was why I was somewhat surprised to see Ina at our departure, clad in a loose-fitting white trouser suit, high heels, straw hat and scarf, and dragging along a trolley case.
“Bliksem, Bruce,” I pulled him aside. “Did you at least pack some goggles for her? I told you you’d be spending most of the trip on the back of an open Bedford, didn’t I?”
He produced some welding goggles that looked like a glass diving mask, with a dark section that could be tipped up.
“This is mine. I told her we would be travelling with air conditioning and sleeping in luxury lodges – otherwise she’d never have agreed to come.”
I just shook my head. There were thirty people in our group, and in the end she was his responsibility, I hoped.
One truck broke down just before we reached Vaalwater and it was late at night when the exhausted convoy came to a halt at the closed Groblersbrug border post. Tents were pitched on the grass between the policemen’s lavatories.
Ina didn’t say a word.
The next morning she emerged from their two-man tent, dressed in sparkling white. Beautifully turned out. A Vogue cover girl, I thought. Bruce himself was wearing white overalls, the welding mask perched on his head as if he was some kind of First World War pilot. Liquor was not included in our rates, and at Sherwood Ranch, just across the border, Bruce bought six crates of beer.
Ina didn’t say a word.
At Nata water pressure was a problem and washing facilities were limited, but in the morning Ina came out to greet the new day, immaculately dressed in yet another new outfit. The welding mask now had a permanent place on top of Bruce’s head. Clad in his overalls, he started taking his liquid refreshments early in the day.
Ina didn’t say a word.
On the back of the Bedford the white overalls turned brown, while Ina gazed into the bushes, her hand clutching her straw hat. As Bruce grew dirtier and drunker, Ina seemed to become prettier and more chic. Bruce drank with a vengeance – it was as if he wanted to drown all the suffering of the past. And the welding mask was permanently on his forehead, the dark section tipped up like the antenna of an insect.
And Ina didn’t say a word.
The Savuti is known for its elephants that come marauding through the camps in search of oranges and water that careless tourists have fed them in the past. A bigger problem, however, was the nightly visits of hyenas. During previous trips they had carried off the clients’ leather bags and bitten holes in cool boxes. That was why, when everyone had anxiously retired to bed, Piet and I were on guard – and of course there was Bruce.
“Bruce, don’t you think it’s time for bed?” Ina’s voice came from the tent. As if for the first time she wanted to say that enough was enough. I heard the fear and uncertainty in her voice and chased off the scavengers, while Piet helped Bruce to his feet. Like a sack of potatoes we bundled him into the tent.
It became a long night for Piet and me. Wood on the fire, driving away the hyenas, dozing off, coffee. Finally first light. In the dawn hours we took a nap beside the fire. Then a blood-curdling scream . . .
“Ag, jirre, help! I’m blind!”
A deathly silence fell. Piet and I struggled to our feet, half dazed. Outside the tent stood Ina, wearing sandals, a sarong draped loosely around her waist, her hair in a carefree bun – ready for the day.
“Oh, shut up, Bruce! Your welding mask has fallen over your eyes,” Ina said as she took her place on the back of the Bedford.
Bruce never drank again.
Landmine
We were still sitting there when the child stepped on the landmine. With an earth-shattering roar her leg was torn off and her belly ripped open.
It was early morning when Leon van Kraaienberg and I took off from Nelspruit in the Jet Bell Ranger. He, an experienced chopper pilot, and I, commissioned by the Mozambican government to determine if there were any buffalo and elephant left in the northern provinces of Niassa, Cabo del Gado and Tete. It was a long way to fly. Right across Zimbabwe and Malawi, and then on to the Ruvuma River, which forms the border between Mozambique and Tanzania.
Actually I was lucky, for we were looking at fifteen hours in the air, while a ground crew with Lampies and Arnold behind the wheel was tackling this section of Africa overland. They were hoping to be at the rendezvous on the banks of the Lugenda River in five days’ time.
The exercise cost a great deal of money. For every hour that the engines were running, we had to fork out two thousand rand – not to mention the cost of the ground crew and other logistical expenses. The chopper was loaded with plastic fuel cans, because the distances were too great to reach the refuelling points on normal tanks. I realised we were flying in a potential bomb, but I put my faith in Leon, who came very highly recommended.
We flew over Africa at a height of five hundred feet. It was an incredible experience to see the world from that perspective. At Punda Maria – in the north of the Kruger Park – we roused a herd of elephant. I secretly hoped that we would also see it happen further north. Or had the terrible war in Mozambique resulted in all game being decimated in a bid to survive? Fortunately a war in that region had held no real strategic military advantage – which was why the Mozambicans had asked us to investigate.
Somewhere on a rocky hill in the middle of Zimbabwe the helicopter touched down and we refuelled from the cans. We had unlawfully set foot on foreign soil. I used the opportunity to light my pipe. A long trip like this one could get boring, and Leon and I had already spoken at length about our families, our pasts and our futures.
From the air the destruction of the African bush was apparent. The local farmers make use of the traditional “slash and burn” method, where the bush is chopped down, set alight and the ashes ploughed in as fertiliser – for a single crop and for only one season. Then they move on. Leon told me about his second wife and their child back home.
At one stage we flew across Lake Malawi. It is a huge expanse of water. An anxious thought crossed my mind: If this flying machine should crash here, how the hell would we come out alive? It would sink like a stone and we would not be able to get out from under the rotors. Not until the water had forced them to a standstill. What was more, I had never exactly been Mark Spitz. Leon told me his wish was that if he were to die, it would be in a helicopter!
Once everyone had arrived at the rendezvous, we set to work. The scenery was incredible, with mahobohobo veld as far as the eye could see. Scattered rocky inselbergs towering over the surrounding landscape. The Ruvuma River with its masses of water and countless herds of elephant, buffalo and Lichtenstein’s hartebeest! We saw sable antelope and kudu. Clearly the war had not wreaked complete havoc here.
A Pomzet antipersonnel mine is a terrible thing. Mind you, it merely does what is expected of it, namely to bugger up the person who steps on it in such a way that it costs a great deal of money, effort and logistics to evacuate him – or her – and to put the person together again. If it happens to a soldier, he is usually out of the game of war permanently. The state is obliged to supply him with a medical pension and to support and look after him, an
