Torn Trousers: A True Story of Courage and Adventure: How a Couple Sacrificed Everything to Escape to Paradise

by Andrew St. Pierre White

  A mix of admiration and disappointment made me gasp.

  It wasn’t Idi. My adversary had survived. Even now, he was probably in his hideout, plotting his next assault.

  Still, it was a baboon, and it was dead. Very dead. A single round hole penetrated right between its black eyes. Like his friend Saddam, he never knew what hit him.

  Forget halo and wings, Matanta and Kekgebele now looked at me as if I were Zeus’s more dextrous younger brother—but with a big gun.

  “Nice shot, Andrew,” Jonty said, patting me on the back. “That’s very good. Even I am surprised…at you.”

  In truth, I tried to feel okay about what I had done—or rather, what Jonty had done in my name—but no matter what kind of a hero I was thought to be, the whole thing left me empty inside. I could only pray the raids would finally let up. If they didn’t, then the whole exercise had been pointless.

  Matanta broke my introspection by calling to Letabo. He had turned his sweeping skills to tending to the paths. Letabo dropped his rake and chugged over to join us. I was struck again by how slow he looked. Not simple or backward, but just not very bright, like the elevator never made it to the top floor.

  Matanta spoke slowly to him in Setswana. Letabo’s face fell, and then blanched. His eyes widened as he looked down at the baboon. Matanta shoved his shoulder, sending him lumbering towards the kitchen.

  “And that?” I asked.

  Letabo looked back at us with a mixture of despair and disgust.

  Matanta grinned at me. “He’s bringing a knife so he can cut off the baboon’s right index finger.”

  Jonty and I raised eyebrows at each other, and then I asked Matanta, “Do I even want to know the reason for that?”

  An air of saintly innocence settled on him, which I recognised as his prank facade. I would get nothing more out of him until the joke had run its course. I turned on Kekgebele. “You’ve seen how well I can shoot. Tell me what Matanta is planning.”

  Kekgebele looked first at me and then at Matanta. But instead of the usual hero-worship blazed across his face when he was with Matanta, he now looked anguished. The kid was torn between betraying his mentor or obeying the Chief with the gun. Matanta gave him a rakish smile, clearly eager to see how Kekgebele would respond under pressure.

  Just then, Letabo returned from the kitchen with a carving knife. Face puckered with abject horror, he bent down to comply with Matanta’s instruction.

  This I couldn’t watch. The baboon had been a menace, but I could not let his body be desecrated for a prank. “No! Stop.” I grabbed Letabo’s shoulder.

  He fell back on his haunches, letting out a strangled sob—relief, I think, at the reprieve. Matanta grinned, and then said something in Setswana. Letabo dropped the knife, scrambled to his feet, and stumbled away.

  Matanta chuckled. “I told him we needed the finger to put in a stew for the lekgoa’s supper.”

  My stomach roiled like a ship on a high sea. “Why on Earth would you say that?”

  Matanta winked. “Don’t you know, Rra? It’s an old Bushman recipe. If the lekgoa eat the finger of a baboon, it will make them clever, solving all the matatas of being stupid.”

  “Right,” I said, choosing not to be offended that he had called me—and every white man—stupid. “A Bushman recipe. A bit like your oxtail aardvark bones.”

  Matanta raised his hand for a high five. “Er, Rra, and it almost worked. But you are too smart for me.”

  Chapter 55

  My mother had a saying about Africa: it was always famine or feast. She was right. New Year celebrations a distant memory, our little bay continued to dry up as the water level dropped. Now, to get to the water in the main channel, we had to tread a path of rotting lily pads, lying on cracking mud. Beyond the river, the reeds and grasses on the floodplains had also withered and dried, exposing the muddy flats to the baking sun.

  It was a sorry sight.

  Worse, with the water level so low, it lost the benefit of being filtered through a thousand miles of reeds and sands. It was now no longer safe to drink without boiling.

  Added to this was the January summer heat. The last rains had fallen around Christmas. The burning air, dusty and dry, hung heavy over the camp, doing little to encourage activity.

  Once again, Andrew and I were due for leave, and we were tired. Tired of guests, tired of smiling, tired of eating huge meals three times a day, every day. In a word, tired of being camp managers. More and more, the prospect of going home and resuming a ‘normal’ life played on my mind. I missed Woodie, my parents, my friends, hot chocolate and cake at my favourite coffee shop. Life. Real life.

  My ingratitude wasn’t lost on me. Oh, how fleeting was my attention span. This time last year, I had been hankering to be here. But, such is life. I could not camp forever.

  It was such gloomy thoughts that occupied my mind one evening out on the runway. Andrew worked at sending the guests to sleep with some stargazing. I heard his voice take on a sharper tone than usual as he tried to show off the Coal Sack—impossibly difficult to see because one is essentially looking for blackness in a black sky.

  “How do you hope to see anything?” he snapped at one of the hapless guests trying to locate it with a torch beam. “Turn off your light.” The guest got such a fright he dropped his Maglite and popped the bulb.

  I snorted back a laugh. Yes, Andrew was tired and thin on patience, too.

  Amid all this star gazing, and torch dropping, I suddenly noticed something far more interesting in the sky—a faint orange glow just above the horizon.

  The next morning, I radioed Morag down at Scops. She had finally gotten one of the things she had wanted—to manage a camp. Sadly, Kyle and Milly had moved on because the Department of Labour had refused to renew their work permits. Ours had yet to come.

  “110, 638.”

  “Gwynn,” came Morag’s clipped voice. “What do you want?” I missed Milly.

  “Late last night, we saw signs of fire towards the south. It was too far away to worry you then, but have you seen anything today?”

  “Yes. It’s coming fast. It might be here tonight or tomorrow.” I detected concern in her voice. The low water level meant fire was our biggest threat, living, as we did, on a grassy island in reed huts.

  There was no point in trying to discuss strategy with Morag. She’d never listen to me. Andrew was another matter. I tracked him down and broke the bad news. “Morag says the fire could reach us tonight.”

  He tossed down his monkey wrench with a clank, and looked up from the toilet pipe he was repairing. “Things always look worse on the ground. Radio Maun. Ask them to get the incoming pilot to check it out for us.” He wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve. “We better hope it bypasses because I doubt we have anything on this island to fight a fire with.”

  On that cheery note, I went to make the call.

  That afternoon, Andrew and I waited with tense anticipation for Wes to land. Thankfully, due to the low season, we were not expecting guests on this plane.

  “Bad news, guys,” Wes announced as he hopped out the cockpit. “I took the scenic route. The fire’s burning across a sixty mile front. Measured it. Only torrential rain will stop it. Like the stuff we had over Christmas.”

  My teeth found my lip, chewing it as if my life depended on it.

  “When will it reach us?” Andrew asked.

  “Three, maybe four days. No more than that.”

  “Maybe we can order some firefighting gear,” I said, rubbing my arms for comfort.

  Both Andrew and Wes looked at me as if I had just sprouted a second head. Andrew flung his arm around my shoulders and said, somewhat patronisingly, “Wes, ignore her. It’s the heat talking.”

  I elbowed him in the ribs and snapped, “What? My reasonable comment is met with some nasty remark?” I guess it was fear, not heat that had control of my mouth because I didn’t usually snarl at Andrew. And he wasn’t usually demeaning.

  Wes smiled
at me. “Gwynn, the only way you’re gonna fight this monster is with aerial bombardment, like we do with fires back home in Aus. But, I can’t see the authorities paying for a lark like that. Best you guys can do is to have some boats ready to take you up north before it reaches you.”

  Joy. Just what I needed to hear as our world shrivelled up.

  “If you need me to bring you some petrol for that motorboat you’ve got hidden in the reeds,” Wes added, “just shout and I’ll squeeze it on board the next flight.”

  “Might be a plan,” Andrew said, his smug, patronising tone long gone. “We better hope we don’t have to evacuate at night. The hippos sure as hell won’t like that.” He tugged at his beard, eyes darting around the runway.

  Would this tiny ribbon serve as any kind of firebreak for us? I doubted it. Our only hope lay in the narrow river that flanked the south-eastern side of the island. But if the fire jumped that barrier…

  I didn’t even want to contemplate that. The reality was that we had no escape. If the fire came onto the island, we would be trapped.

  Still, life goes on. Meals had to be prepared, guests entertained, and cottages cleaned. Toilets still broke and needed to be repaired.

  Nights were different. With the southern sky a brilliant orange, it was harder to pretend the fire wasn’t raging towards us. In the evenings, we took our guests to the runway, not to view the stars, but to watch the advance of the inferno. With each passing night, the thorn and palms trees on the horizon stood brighter against the ever more livid sky. By the third night, the horizon had shifted close enough for us to see—and hear—the flashes of exploding palm trees.

  When a palm tree caught fire, it smouldered first. Once the sap began to boil, the tree roared like a jet engine. When the temperature reached boiling point, flames burst from its heart. Each little inferno lasted less than a minute before the palm’s flammable gasses were spent. If a large clump of palms were struck, the roar was truly frightening

  The fire was now a mere twelve hours away.

  Chapter 56

  D-Day.

  A roll call at both camps revealed a total of forty-one people on the island. We would never all fit in the motorboat. Like it or not, we had to make a stand.

  Trouble was, everyone looked at me to make the tough decisions. I think my success at shooting those blasted baboon had something to do with that. Then, at least, I had a shotgun, some ammo, and a friend with a lethal aim.

  Now I had nothing except for nine tiny fire buckets at Tau Camp, and six down at Scops. That, and four rubber fire beaters were the sum total of my firefighting gear.

  I thought back to my snide comment when Gwynn had suggested we order equipment. I laughed. Even if every person on the island was kitted out in asbestos suits and gas tanks, and wielded the most high-tech fire beaters in the world, we stood no hope against the coming inferno. I prayed for a shift in the prevailing wind that drove the flames towards us.

  Both Morag and I suggested to our respective guests that they move on to their next destinations. For reasons I will never understand, they all opted to brave out the coming firestorm. One of them even called it, “A great adventure. Something to tell my grandchildren.” If the idiot survived that long.

  Feeling the crushing weight of responsibility for all the lives on Noga Island, I sought out Matanta in the kitchen. A tense atmosphere greeted me. Somehow, preparing breakfast lost some of its urgency when lives were at stake.

  “Call the staff. We’re having a kgotla. Except at this one, I am the only person who gets to speak.”

  Matanta’s eyebrows shot up but he didn’t argue.

  Soon, everyone, guests included, gathered at the sandy patch outside reception. I studied their faces. Everyone was scared and it showed in the tightness around their eyes, and in the intense conversations.

  I called them to order.

  “The pilots say the fire will reach us tonight. We have to be prepared. Everyone who doesn’t have family in the staff village will stay on here.” A ripple of concern greeted my announcement. “This camp, and these lekgoa,” I pointed to the idiot guests, “are what feed you. If we don’t save the camps, you have no jobs. If we all split up, some of you at the village, some at Honey Camp, Robert at Romance Island, then we stand no chance of saving anything. We must work together.”

  I expected someone to say something but all was silent. They were taking me at my word that I was the only one to speak.

  “You will all stay at Otter Lodge. If the fire comes, you get your butts over to Tau as quickly as you can. We will use the duvets off the beds to fight the flames if we have to.” That would be as effective as trying to kill an elephant with a rolled up newspaper, but what else could we do?

  I turned to the guests. “I wish I could offer you safe passage out of here, but you’ve all elected to stay. Therefore, I am enlisting you in the firefighting corps. If you hear this sound—” I clanged two dustbin lids together, “please come to the runway with your blankets.” I heard the bright spark who had spoken about his grandkids snigger. I ignored him, and instead divided everyone up into teams with fire captains.

  That left nothing else for the staff and guests to do but wait.

  Not good at waiting, I headed over to the mic to call Englishman. “I’m bringing the motorboat down, do you want me to pick you up so we can see where the fire is?” I asked as soon as he answered.

  “Er Rra,” came his enthusiastic reply.

  Twenty minutes downstream from Scops, Englishman and I hit a wall of smoke. Coughing and spluttering, E’man, who had the controls, slammed on anchors, bringing the boat to a rapid stop. There was no possible way we would break through that pall without oxygen tanks. I was helping him negotiate a reverse manoeuvre in the narrow channel when a head popped up in the water in front of us.

  “Hippo!”

  Eyes the size of a hippo’s butt, Englishman opened the throttle as wide as it would go. The motorboat ripped through the reeds, and shot back into open water, missing the hippo by no more than a couple of feet. It reared up angrily behind the boat, clearly incensed by us, the low water level, the smoke, and who knew what else. It doesn’t take much to piss off a hippo.

  Eyes streaming from the smoke, we retreated a short distance and waited for the hippo to settle. After a few irritable snorts and much bubble blowing, it sank back into the river. We waited a few more minutes to ensure it didn’t have murderous intentions, and then turned our attention to the fire.

  I hissed in an acrid breath. Fear-induced nausea threatened to empty my stomach. In the drifting smoke, flames licked over the main channel, grazing the tree tips on Noga Island. Jaws tense, saying nothing, Englishman and I waited helplessly for the terrifying moment that a branch on our side of the river ignited.

  Then I realised how pointless our vigil was. The fire had the island flanked. Who knew where the jump would occur? It could have already happened.

  Seeing the threat up front, in person, honed my thoughts. “I’ve got this all wrong. I was going to throw everything I have at Tau. But if the fire jumps down at Scops—”

  “Er Rra, then it would be better to fight first at Scops,” E’man interrupted.

  “Let’s get back. I need to speak to Morag.”

  We returned to Scops to find Morag waiting for us. She looked pale, with dark rings around her eyes. I felt for her. I, at least, had Gwynn. Morag had no partner to bounce her ideas and issues off. Still, she had what she wanted—the title of camp manger.

  “So what’s happening?” she asked.

  “The fire could jump at any time. I suggest we both keep staff on the lookout. At the first sign of danger, radio us and we will come and help. If it hits us first, you come to Tau. Neither camp turns off the radio tonight. We’ll deal with flat batteries in the morning.”

  I didn’t bother mentioning the possibility of the fire splitting the island in two. If that happened, we would be fighting it on two fronts.

  * * *

&
nbsp; Dinner was a nervous affair. As far as the eye could see, dancing towers of flames marred the view across the floodplain. Every few minutes, a clump of palm trees exploded with a roar. The painted reed frogs were silent. Smoke hung heavy in the air, causing noses and eyes to stream, making breathing difficult. Added to that, a layer of airborne soot covered everything.

  Only the thin band of river stood between us and destruction. I shuddered, wondering how I ever thought I could contain that inferno with a handful of fire buckets, a couple of rubber beaters, and a collection of duvets. It was laughable. In a sick, distressing way.

  I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t keep still. With shock etched on their faces, every few minutes someone grabbed the binoculars to see if the fire had jumped.

  My biggest fear lay in the fire sneaking around the back of camp, trapping us under the trees between it and the river. There would be no escape. I leaned over to whisper to Gwynn, “Let’s check what’s happening on the airstrip.”

  She nodded, and we quietly slipped away while our guests absorbed the pyrotechnic display on the other side of the bay. We stopped on the runway. Eyes fixed on the sky, we turned a full circle. In every direction, the sky was livid and red. Flames, high as the tallest palm trees, leapt into the air both left and right of the island.

  Gwynn clutched my hand. “We’re surrounded by fire.”

  “Maybe this is what Dante meant,” I murmured, unable to believe we could be spared. “You know I love you, don’t you?”

  Gwynn laughed nervously. “That’s what you say to people who are about to die.” She looked at me through strained green eyes. “Faith. We have to have faith.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “And yes, I love you, too.”

  We returned to our guests. Driven by fear, we all huddled around the dining table long after the staff left for the night.

  It was about midnight when the radio squawked into life. The desultory conversation around the dining table stopped and everyone looked at me. Fighting to portray a calm I didn’t feel, I headed for the mic.

  It was Englishman. “Andy, it’s here.”