Wildmoz
Once Upon a Time in the Timbavati Bushveld
Bushveld Sunset
This is part 2 and if you want the first part see here.
Timbavati Before the Fences
Childhood… Who remembers that? And if you do, how much? And of that how much, how much is true? And how much is colored by better memories, ignoring the facts. Good or bad memories… it does no good remembering the bad, but keep the good pure and unsullied by fiction, when facts are concerned.
That’s what’s so hard about the bush life. You are living in a dream anyway, so how do you keep to the facts? That is my task for this next article about being a child in the sticks, until I grew up in… ‘my bush.’
Well carrying on to the camp to the north of the Timbavati bushveld requires the crossing of a number of dry-bed rivers, small and large. Although in the bush, a small stream in flood is no time to cross. Crossing the rivers usually calls for a 4×4 or something like a Volkswagen, with weight in the back to get through the sand. In some places, the crossing is for eighty to one hundred meters, between tall reeds, over rocks and islands.
African Village Cooking Hut
Not Everyone’s Cup of Tea
As the day and the journey progresses, it begins to get really hot. Water bottles are hauled out; cloths are soaked for wipe downs and the air blowing through the windows cools you down.
After a long journey on the dirt road, we arrive at the Marula tree turn-off into the Timbavati bushveld area, where four other name boards are attached to the long-suffering tree. At this two-track road, you know you are almost home. Only three more rivers to cross and the game begins to appear, as if they know you’re friendly and have come to greet you on the road. Or are we intruders in an otherwise peaceful existence, causing them to run off further into the bush. How the animals react to vehicles in the wild will indicate if they have been shot at from a vehicle or not.
Here in the Timbavati bushveld, is a world far removed from, as some would say, ‘civilisation’ where the nearest small town White River is 170 km away. The mission station at Acornhoek run by Nuns, the nearest medical facility, is a little closer at 70 km. Here, there are no radios or phones, except that radio in the vehicle and used from time to time – once a week – to listen to the news, in case the country has been nuked or attacked. Anything else is of no consequence to life in the sticks.
Timbavati Water Hole
What do Francolin, Milk and Wildebeest Have in Common – Breakfast
Here in this Timbavati bushveld, growing up as a young boy, the day started by going out at 5-6am with a single shot .22 rifle to hunt francolin – a small ground bird – for breakfast. What you shot is what you ate, after the chef, (aka camp caretaker, chief cook and bottle wash) and you, pluck and prepare the meal in time for breakfast.
Orange juice! Now there’s a treat for breakfast that only happens when you’ve first arrived, until the two or three bags of oranges you bought on the road are eaten up. Another thing is fresh milk…well, sort of fresh, bought yesterday on the way down and after that it’s powdered milk all the way.
Yesterday we shot a Wildebeest for camp meat and rations for the workers, who are in a very festive mood today, having eaten meat last night. This means we get Wildebeest liver and kidneys with bacon for breakfast, instead of me hunting for francolin.
Bushveld Two Track Road
A Little Light Goes a Long Way
The bacon comes from the paraffin deep freeze we stocked when we arrive. That was my job, to fill up and light the fridge and deep freeze. And then every evening, the lamps at dusk. First, were the Tilley and Coleman paraffin pressure lamps, then came the usual four hurricane lamps, for walking to your bungalow when needed. These were always kept in the scullery. Each bungalow had a lamp hooked on the wall, which was lit by the occupant when bath or bedtime came around. The table Tilley was for the lounge and one Coleman for the stoep – porch – another for the kitchen. The last one was hung in the Boma, from a tree branch, conveniently placed to see the food on the side table and light for the braai – barbecue.
The time has come for supper, which, except when it rained, was always in the Boma, Timbavati bushveld style. A log wood fire is set up on the sand in the centre of the Boma and there the meat, onions and potatoes are cooked. Arranged around the fire with the tall dry reed wall at your back, you sit down in a beach-type deck chair facing the fire and everyone listens to the night sounds. A nightjar, then a hyena, some jackals and lions out to mark territory or hunt, a leopard grunting as it walks past the camp, a wood borer beetle drones in a post near my ear – um, ignore the beetle – a cacophony, sounding out the rhythm of night in the bush.
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