A Drink of Dry Land

by Chris Marais

  CCF put its money where its mouth was, running model livestock farms with cheetahs on them. Because they were farmers, they put their own advice to the test, and they hadn’t lost an animal to a predator yet.

  Part of their strategy was to encourage farmers to allow common game like springbok, kudu and hartebeest (preferred cheetah food) on their properties. The cats will only take domestic animals if there is nothing else or if they’re very old, or very young. Domestic animals, like double-cheese burgers, are invariably too fatty for clean-living cheetahs.

  Laurie had set up a powerful motivation tool, the Cheetah Country Beef Campaign. Interested farmers who practised cheetah-friendly livestock management were certified and paid a premium for their beef sold in the European Union to health-conscious and socially and environmentally aware consumers.

  CCF general manager Dr Bruce Brewer set up another win-win project. Because of historical overgrazing and droughts, the grassy plains of central Namibia had become “bush encroached”, infested with impenetrable thorn thickets. In 2004, CCF piloted a job creation project in which the intruder bush was chopped down and compacted into logs for wood fuel. Every barbeque with Bushbloks fuel logs helped expand the cheetahs’ habitat.

  But cheetah runs are by far the most photogenic innovation. “We’ve found that people will pay good money for the privilege of watching cheetahs race,” said CCF staffer Bonnie Schumann. One morning we attended such a demonstration and saw why they do, as Bonnie set up the lure, the same kind that greyhounds race after.

  Being allowed into a cheetah enclosure was much like being given a backstage pass to a fashion show. The cheetahs were impossibly elegant, their shoulders rolling as they sauntered like catwalk models, lithe and taut-muscled.

  As soon as they heard the whirr of the race mechanism, they raised their small neat heads, amber eyes wide, and began to trot with long loping strides over to the rag, which then sped away across the ground. They seemed to have a prearranged tag-team system where they would chase it one at a time, sprinting in the straights and cutting corners to pounce on it wherever they could. If they caught it, they would try to bear it off like a prize, and researcher Marianne de Jonge would have to jog over with a small piece of raw meat on a long stick to distract them.

  We all stood clustered together, trying to get pictures of the cheetahs as they flew around the track. We heard murmured exclamations, electronic clicks and whirrs around us. At first, I snapped a passing tail, a blur, a bush and a tourist before I got anything near usable: cheetahs at full stretch (covering eight metres in a single stride); cheetahs with only one paw on the ground, the other legs bunched and practically coming past their ears; cheetahs pouncing triumphantly on the rag in a spurt of dust.

  There were 28 cheetahs with CCF while we were there, almost all of them captured by farmers. In total, though, about 50 came through CCF each year. Some were immediately released onto other approved farms after a biomedical check. But all genetic material (blood, skin, etc) was archived for future use, like a frozen cheetah collection for generations to come.

  No visit to CCF could be complete without paying homage to the noble Chewbaaka. He had been one of those innumerable sad cases, a tiny cub whose mother had been killed by a farmer who wanted the cubs for pets. Most of them died from malnutrition. But Chewie (given the name by a French researcher for his habit of muttering under his breath when irked) survived.

  “He was nursed through the most horrendous first month,” said Marker.

  It was nearly midday, and yet Chewie was the ultimate professional ambassador cheetah, coming out into the hot sunlight from the delicious shade where he’d been sleeping, even purring while being stroked before climbing his “play tree” and posing for pictures. What a gentleman …

  Chapter 22: Etosha

  Pyjama Party

  Etosha National Park is the Main Event in any overlander’s journey through Namibia, so we were naturally very hyped-up to be a couple of hours’ drive from its southern entrance. But at a campsite some thousands of kilometres back, we’d heard about the museum in the town of Outjo and its very strange gemsbok trophy.

  The story, according to my fireside companion, began with a German called Hubert Janson, who settled in the Kaokoveld village of Fransfontein, near Khorixas. Janson dabbled very successfully in the making of brandy and wine in this desiccated part of the world. He also grew fine vegetables and fruit, I was told.

  But his love of hunting was legendary. One night there was a dinner party at the Janson household. A lion walked into the house. Janson’s guest picked up a rifle and wounded it. Hubert Janson calmly grabbed an assegai and killed it stone dead.

  “Your fireside companion indeed,” said Jules. “The only fireside companions you’ve had lately have been me and that old Lawrence Green. Is this another one of his famous tales?”

  “Yes, but wait,” I replied. “It gets better. Janson saw a very strange gemsbok one day. But because it was World War I time, the German farmers had had all their firearms confiscated. So it took him days to run it down with his lance.”

  “What was strange about the gemsbok?” she wanted to know.

  “We’re going to find out shortly.”

  We arrived at the drowsy, attractive farming town of Outjo and I was immediately tempted to try out their Bäckerei and then maybe later make a little detour into the Dorsland Bottle Store. But the gemsbok legend beckoned, and so we continued to the museum.

  What a jewel. With assistant curator Ellynda Haraes in helpful attendance, we located the “strange gemsbok” with its spiralling, freakish horn growths. This was the trophy donated by Mr Janson so long ago. It looked as fresh as this year’s daisy.

  But that, as they say in telemarketing, was not all. The Outjo Museum had a wealth of pelts, a cast-iron labour bed with well-worn stirrups, a “zonkey” (zebra-donkey cross) hide, a “zorse” hide (zebra-horse), a toy wagon made from an animal jawbone, a two-goat milk cart (complete with two stuffed goats), soap made from lion fat, all manner of smoking pipes, a walking stick cunningly adapted to measure the height of horses, a photograph of a Boer riding an ox on a hunting expedition, a twisted piece of corrugated iron that was a reminder of the famous Outjo Tornado of 1980 and an old Marais Family Bible from Otjiwarongo.

  Hours passed. Etosha was forgotten. The Outjo Museum rocks. Ripley’s people should know about this place.

  Finally we were at Etosha, and it was the best time of the year to be visiting this world-famous park. It was springtime, well before the rains. All life was concentrated around waterholes. The vegetation was low and sparse after winter, yet the rich mineral content of the soil had been transferred to the grass and trees, showing up in the plump rumps of all the animals. The zebras had half-grown colts, and many of the springbok had calves just beginning to sprout sharp little horns.

  A quick word of advice. It helps to have done some research on Etosha before you arrive. Essential reading is Origin and Meaning of Place Names in the Etosha National Park, Namibia by Berry, Rocher et al. Not the sexiest title around, but great information nevertheless. Many of the names of the places stem from the Bushman tribe called the Hei//om, or Heikun as the settlers of a century ago called them. Some sources say Hei//om means “tree sleeper”, referring to these people’s habits of finding night shelter in trees to escape the ever-watchful lions of Etosha. The origin, however, is still in dispute.

  But in general, tree-sleeping is not such a bad idea, considering that there are records of humans having been hunted by lions around here. Back in 1950 four Owambos were eaten in Etosha by lions, the fifth having escaped by rapidly climbing up a thorn tree and watching his mates become dinner. He stayed there for quite a while before being rescued by a passing police patrol.

  Our first waterhole was Ombika, shimmering in the white after-lunch sun, surrounded by zebras involved in a rather subdued pyjama party.

  We continued to Okaukuejo, which means “the woman who has a child every year”, and
is most famous for the nightly waterhole show right next to the camp. In fact, you can go there any time of day for a parade of wildlife. When we arrived, there must have been thousands of springbok filing back and forth, a moving mosaic of fawn, black and white. Every now and then a gemsbok would paddle out to the middle and stand in a trance, belly wet, bending its masked unicorn head every now and then to suck up water. The zebra and the kudu kept cautiously to the water’s edge while the tourists sat in their dozens, broiling in the sun and languidly writing postcards home, eating ice creams and looking up occasionally when a zebra brayed at a herdmate.

  The camp’s name, according to the aforementioned book, possibly comes from a number of legends. A woman of royal blood and her entourage stayed at this fountain. A local highborn guy fancied her. The night he was to pounce, however, he discovered she was in the midst of her menstrual period. So to mark his frustration, he called the spring “the place of red water”.

  “OK, so what has this got to do with having a child every year?” I asked the Wise One, who was reading to me.

  “I’m not sure, but here’s another one,” she continued.

  The second legend of Okaukuejo had to do with a villain who held a number of Hei//om girls as sex slaves around here. That still shed no light on the name, so we thought we’d drive off to the east to find more of God’s creatures.

  We drove towards our night-stop of Halali Rest Camp, slowing down when we saw a handful of cars at Nebrownii waterhole, just 200 metres off the road, 6 km from Okaukuejo. The springbok were gathering in little groups in the dense shade of thorn trees, utterly indifferent to cars passing less than two metres away. We had to weave among indolent zebra to get near the waterhole. Once we were past them, we saw what had so entranced the other tourists.

  Three massive elephants had converged on the waterhole, effortlessly putting dozens upon dozens of springbok, gemsbok and zebras to flight. They anointed their bodies in white mud, emerging like a trio of gargantuan ghosts from the past, from the days when the Dorsland Trekkers came through these parts and shot them like flies. They stood with their heads close in communion, paying scant attention to the gemsbok begging permission to approach the waterhole. One toss of their heads and the buck would scatter obediently before sidling closer to the water again, in that submissive way of thirsty minions.

  We checked into Halali Rest Camp. They’d given us a sub-standard room with a broken sliding door and some other tatty bits and we had to wait a while before another was organised. But what the hell, we hadn’t come for the room service. So we went off for sundowners to the Moringa waterhole, just outside the camp.

  As the daylight dropped away, a stroppy collared matriarch elephant with a suckling calf paced back and forth, head high, shaking her ears in anger at the unseemly attentions paid by a too-young bull towards one of the young females in her herd. He took one step too close and she let him have it with both trumpets and charged. He ran off to a bush 100 metres away and loitered there, nursing his injured dignity and trying to appear nonchalant before his audience of tourists. Mama led her baby to the area of cleanest water and they commenced hoovering it up. The defended virgin came and leaned gratefully against the matriarch. All you needed were a few bars of Bizet to complete the dramatic scene.

  All threats gone, the baby jumbo delighted in role-playing Lord of the Waterhole and, with high, fluting trumpet, outstretched trunk and little ears flapping, charged a lone gemsbok. The gemsbok simply passed all this aggression on by chasing a jackal away from the waterside. The jackal probably went off and snapped at a passing sandgrouse or something. And so it goes.

  The next morning we played a bit of Mr Ry Cooder to a few Burchell’s zebra out at Salvadora, which is also the name of a very useful toothbrush tree. Some of them didn’t appear partial to Chicken Skin Music at all. In fact, one whiffled his lips in disgust and left the scene, kicking petulantly at a couple of crows in passing. Two others stood there, mildly fascinated, their ears pricked forward. They seemed especially to like Cooder’s version of Good Night Irene, of which I too am rather fond.

  On our way out to Namutoni the next day, the yellow-grassed plains were dappled with mobs of grazing springbok. A stately, silver bull elephant stood alone in the mopane bush, picking out delicious grass tussocks with his trunk and fastidiously kicking the sand off the roots before eating them.

  Crossing the road, he suddenly turned to us.

  “You. Stay where you are. Elephant crossing, right now.”

  I took heed and activated the invisibility shield on the good ship Isuzu.

  At Kalkheuwel, a large band of breeding elephant was clustered around the waterhole like one big Tupperware party. The elephants were making pigs of themselves with the waterhole, showering and spraying each other and generally behaving like an oil-rich nation. You could actually see the water level dropping after half an hour of this jamboree.

  About 20 black-faced impala trooped slowly towards the waterhole, as self-effacing as a drift of autumn leaves. Or, alternatively, an oil-poor nation. They stood gazing at the elephants and the water wastage in polite consternation. After a short discussion among themselves, the impala turned and walked back through the mopane bush, their body language protesting in martyred tones.

  Such is the magic of an Etosha waterhole. You get sucked into the soap opera of the moment. Who needs to drive around? All you do is pick a spot and park. There might be nothing on the programme when you arrive, but be patient. Soon, a yellow-billed kite will fly over on mouse patrol. A cautious kudu will pick its way through the bush. Some crows may begin bickering on a stump. Suddenly, a zebra waiting in the wings will shake his Trojan helmet mane and 500 of his kind will appear at the water’s edge.

  By now, I was really looking forward to Fort Namutoni.

  “What is this fort fetish?” asked Jules.

  I’ve had it since I was small. I think it started with Fort Apache, USA. Then a fort in the Khyber Pass. Then it went on to Kitchener’s forts, built all over South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War.

  “Those were blockhouses,” said Jules.

  “Small forts,” I countered.

  And now it was Namibia, and its wealth of German schlosses. And the most spectacular schloss of them all, Namutoni, lay ahead. I had asked for a room in the fort, even if it turned out to be the size of a prison cell. I wanted to sleep inside a fort, for the first time in my life.

  “Beau Geste,” suggested Jules.

  “Exactly,” I smiled.

  We all live with postcard images in our head. For some, it’s the Eiffel Tower, meaning Paris and a funky honeymoon weekend and a snotty waiter somewhere on the Champs-Elysées. Others like Disneyland, the Mickey guy in particular. You might personally like the idea of the Serengeti, and the passing gnurk-gnurk of a million wildebeest on their migration up to the Mara.

  Me, I have things like the French Quarter of New Orleans, Pella Cathedral and Fort Namutoni burned into my brain. Bourbon Street’s fate is unclear, but Pella never disappoints. I was hoping Namutoni wouldn’t, either. That magical fort in the desert, cream-coloured at dawn, those crenellated walls – a mirage of the mind. I’ve never loved a fort so much I wanted to enlist, but so far I haven’t missed a good French Foreign Legion movie, either.

  My family tree indicates that a certain Charles Marais worked for a certain King Charlemagne in France, a long time ago. His main job was to lay siege to castles and fortresses. Once the king had moved off with his main forces to another possible conquest, my Uncle Charles would remain behind and starve the inhabitants of the fort in question to the point of surrender.

  “So it must be something in the genes,” I told Jules, as we drove in and were suitably awed by Namutoni.

  From small beginnings back in the late 1890s as a rinderpest checkpoint with fancy walls, Namutoni was rebuilt into a Rhinelander’s fantasy of a colonial fort. But first it had to have its very own siege, and that happened in late January 1904, when more than 500 Owa
mbo soldiers threatened the lives of those within its crude walls, who numbered only seven.

  It was the Kaiser’s birthday. The Owambos stormed Namutoni with spears and rifles. A furious little battle ensued, leaving many Owambos dead and wounded outside the fort. Night fell. The seven men slipped away under cover of darkness. They were found by a German patrol and escorted to the safety of Grootfontein.

  At dawn, the Owambos attacked an empty fort, which they trashed anyhow, just to show that there were, in fact, some hard feelings. A year later, the fancy fort was built. Nothing much happened out here until 1915, when South African troops under General Coen Brits took Namutoni.

  Some historians record that the South Africans found more than a million rounds of small-arms ammunition, 2 000 animals and 92 wagons in the fort. Lawrence Green says General Botha regretfully informed General Brits that he and his forces had to stay at Namutoni for longer than expected. Brits, rather famously, replied:

  “I have captured ten thousand bottles of rum. My men have as much wild beast flesh as they can eat. We are content.”

  Chapter 23: South West Afrikaners

  Dorsland Trek

  I first heard about the Dorsland Trek via the pages of a Herman Charles Bosman story called The Rooinek. South Africa’s favourite stoep-raconteur, Oom Schalk Lourens, accompanies his fellow Groot Maricans on a small Dorsland Trek of their own after the Anglo-Boer War. Even before the pitiful wagon train, beset by infighting and bad leadership, really bit into the Great Kalahari, children were dying and being swiftly buried along the wagon tracks. The women had stopped weeping; their hearts had hardened.

  “I think that this is the saddest thing that ever happens in the world, when women pass through great suffering that makes them become as men,” Oom Schalk notes.

  I was pondering on this story out at the Rietfontein waterhole in Etosha, watching a lone Wahlberg’s eagle perched uneasily on a Dorsland Trekker plaque, next to the gravestone of just such a Boer woman who died on the way.