bush

I stand on the deck above the Switsongo Boutique Guest House (check it out @www.facebook.com/switsongo) in the heart of the wildlife estate. All around me is Bush for hundreds of miles, or it looks like hundreds from here, from where I stand in the hot African wind, the sun even hotter. It is 4pm, two hours ahead of the UK, and time for a glass of wine. I can feel the desert wind, see the red sand game tracks winding like snakes through the reserve. Trees go on for ever, all the way up to the Blue Mountains, the Drakensburg range, reaching to 11,424 ft up into the sky within the border region of South Africa and Lesotho, and stretching for 1,000 km. The very thought of climbing that high peak puffs me clean out.

I search the Bush for heads, for movement, anything. A male giraffe would top these trees, easy and a scurry might mean zebra or Wildebeest or Kudu, the most beautiful, in my opinion, of deer with those stripe markings, that artistic shading, those twisted horns and those velvet eyes. Dinner for lions, but there are no lions here, no elephants, no crocs, no hippos, no danger, but wait……..I forget the leopard, but the kudu don’t, nor the impala, nor the kudu, the wildebeest, the warthogs, the bushbuck, waterbuck and all the other something bucks that nose around here pinching resident’s azaleas. About this time, a bit later, these offerings of dinner grow jumpy, move to ‘safe’ harbour, become alert and watchful, pulling in the teenagers from their raucous play, warning them. Also, around this time when porcupines are waking up and warthogs are doing this leopard jumpy thing, the termites get antsy (please excuse the pun, unintended) because it is quite the norm within this synergistic symbiosis for one of the above to make a frickin big hole, dug deep into the mound, one that can reach way over man’s head and be as wide as public toilet, sort of like a fairy castle to look at but looking is enough. Inside that mound are thousands and thousands of munchers which probably would bite your bum if you were to, unknowingly, rest it there on a big walk. Don’t do that. These ants are an inch, more, long and don’t welcome anyone much, not least a resting bum. In fact, all hell would let loose. A scout would alert and within seconds the super troopers would be on full attack mode. Although they would not eat you from the bum up, they will make sure you spend a long time regretting such contact with their fairy castle.

However, porcupines, aardvarks and those grisly chestnut warthogs don’t, frankly my dear, give a damn and one of them will, as aforementioned, dig a big hole deep into the castle, impervious, it seems to attack. During the day, the mostly nocturnal porcupine, or aardvark shuffles itself out into the night, I’m so not leopard food, just as the warthog, I so am, snuffles and grunts her way in, beckoning babies. They, it seems, are also impervious to ant attack which I’m sure they must encounter, but when I look close up at that thick skin, see a thick skin thing in their small and unintelligent eyes, I get it. It is all fight or flight for these squealers and maybe that is how they survive. I digress.

The sun is sinking, soft and slow, light dapples changing every moment, the light melting from butter yellow to a gentle gold. I see no giraffe heads above the trees but I sense they are there, out there, somewhere. Whether or not I see them seems unimportant. Just to know they might be there is a wonderful knowing. Just to hear the stories on the hot hot wind, to know that down there, down there, life is being lived and on the very edge of survival and every single night.

I am here. I am watching. I see this. I am upright, bright, lively and alive. There is nothing better. Nothing.

sausage tree

They tell me the sausage tree hasn’t flowered for years. It is now. Two fat crimson blooms, deep as trumpets, hang down and waggle in the hot wind. A sugar bird dips its beak into the nectar, then throws back its head to swallow. Only two blooms as yet, but tomorrow rain is promised. I sit in the dappled shade of a jacaranda and over there a coral tree waves fire blooms at the sky. It’s super hot today and the sky is wide and blue with just faint brushstrokes of cloud. I look up and all I see is colour, bright primaries, nothing muted or almost there, but loud in my eyes, almost blinding.

I woke early this morning, around 5 am and opened my curtains slowly. There she is, Shiloh the Peaceful, a heavily pregnant Nyala, a deer in a land of many different species of deer. Her body is light tan, softly streaked with white and she has chosen the safety of this small reserve to give birth. Her herd could be anywhere but she needs solitude for the task ahead. I could reach out and touch her, she is so close to my window. She looks at me. I look back but she isn’t alarmed and soon her head returns to the ground, to pick the watered grass, her nourishment. Keep safe, I whisper. She would make a fine breakfast for a hungry leopard and there is a big male that walks this place at night. Many other deer have made this place their home. Little hunched Bush Buck, jumpy Impala and, now, Shiloh the Peaceful.

Swifts cut through the blue above my head whilst petrol blue blackbirds scuttle along the ground. On a walk through the bush yesterday I saw grasshoppers as long as a Scottish housemouse, green at first until they spread their crimson wings. When the rains come so will the spiders, the scorpions, and the snakes. When the new arrivals gathered this morning for a power point induction, we learned the guidelines for a safe and happy stay here. Some have come for a few weeks, some a few months, a few for longer, but the rules around wildlife are always the same. How to behave in the wild is not a matter of choice, but of survival. All of us gave our full attention, needless to say.

When encountering anything with venom, claws, teeth or trunks, don’t change shape. That’s the nutshell of it. No flapping of arms, no running, just very slowly back away, or, in some cases, stand absolutely still like in musical statues. One guide, whilst out in the bush came face to face with a cheetah. Although raw terror shot through him and every natural instinct was to run, he knew better. Standing completely still and in silence, he waited as the cheetah came towards him brushing the skin of his leg and moving on down the dust track. Easily advised, this standing still thing, but the truth is that any movement, any attempt to run would have been disastrous. However, not one single wild animal has the slightest interest in humans, beyond curiosity. They don’t fancy a human for lunch, nor do they carry ill intent towards us, nor do they think and reason as we do. They run entirely on instinct and will not harm any of us unless we do something foolish, like flap or run.

We are all wise to remember that this land is their land, not ours.