On Friday, Bill took the day off and we all set off on another family outing at 5:30 in the morning, this time for the Pilanesburg Game Reserve. It is located in the Northwest Province of South Africa, about three hours from Jozi (I love that the long name of Johannesburg has been so cleverly shortened in so many fun ways!). Keep in mind that we are travelling, all five of us, in a sub-compact Peugot, aka The Blue Lion. This makes for some very cozy driving, particularly when the little car must accommodate a 6 foot X Bill, a 5 foot 11 Caroline, a not so shabby 5 foot 7 inch me, and an almost as tall 5 foot 2 Alexander. And little Quince is rapidly catching up at 4 foot X. Caroline very very kindly sandwiched herself between Alexander and little Quince for the outbound 3 hour trip plus the 6 hour tour through the park. At one point, Bill leaned over to me and said: “Left. Right. Black. White. Yes. No.” – referring to the fact that every time Quince said something, Alexander would insist that the opposite was true. Once it was about whether Xhosa was a “click” language. Quince: yes it is! Alexander: no it’s not! Other times it was about history (Quince: “I KNOW MY HISTORY!). And at other times it would be something about nature -- even the nature of the soul (see subsequent blog post), and so on and so on. In any event, surely this earned Caroline either a pair of wings or sainthood, or perhaps both.
And then, the Game Reserve: Alexander had been telling me about “weaver birds” for a couple of days, but we hadn’t come across any of their woven nests yet. But he spied a tree full of them as soon as we arrived. Perhaps a good omen for the animal watching to come?
The dirt roads in the game reserve were a bit worse for the hard rains that had been coming down, and the ruts sometimes were deep enough so the poor Blue Lion, bearing the weight of 3 adults and two children, touched bottom briefly. And some of the lower lying areas were still flooded. We just held out breath hoping that we wouldn’t either stall out or get stuck in the mud because the signs everywhere warned us not to get out of the car, that one should expect to encounter dangerous animals etc. But fortunately, we were never forced to risk sacrificing one of our party to the lions. (I was particularly relieved, since from the rumblings in the car, it sounded like I would be the one voted out of the car to push….)
Fairly quickly we began to see gatherings of Wildebeast, Zebra, Impala, Waterbuck, Reedbuck, Springbok, and the like. Even a jackal, and I could SWEAR I saw a cheetah or a leopard -- there was a distinct flash of spottedness. All pretty amazing for me, but little Quince was very soon bored (she didn’t understand why there were no animals on HER side of the car, and why is it that she NEVER gets to see anything??!). Alexander wasn’t so much bored, as he was jaded about these creatures: “It’s JUST a Zebra.” And later regarding a Springbok: “It’s JUST an Impala with horns.” In trying to understand what Caroline meant when she referred to him as “jaded,” he did learn a second new word, though: blasé. He said he’d seen the word in books, but had thought it was pronounced with a long “a” like “blaze.” At least that made him laugh. And once we began seeing all of the baby animals (it’s summer here, after all), he warmed back up to the animal watching. Alexander filmed one of the babe wildebeasts nursing, and we will try and post that clip later.
We were ALL fascinated with the dung beetles. Two beetles, each about an inch long, working together in the most amazing way to move – and very quickly! – a two inch in diameter perfectly round ball of dung off the road and into the shrub grasses. We were too entranced to even remember to take a picture. And we were all also fascinated with the animals on the other side of the size spectrum: the hippos. They are huge creatures, but mostly they stayed submerged in the water so you’d just see them floating around looking like big flat rocks.
We stopped for a picnic lunch in a safely fenced in area next to a group that was having a jolly time barbecuing up a feast.
At one point, we saw a couple of cars stopped on the side of the dirt road – almost always a sign of an animal sighting of some sort. And there it was: a RHINO. Unfortunately it was walking away from us, so all we could see was its butt.
We truly thought that all we were going to get was Rhino Butt on this trip. Rhino poaching is apparently a serious problem in the Reserve. There is a myth that their horns have medicinal properties, but it is a myth that has developed "legs" and thus has unfortunately created a very lucrative black market for their beautiful scary horns. Despite our worries, lo and behold, we then saw another pair of them, and much closer to the road this time.
And a little while later, a trio of them. And finally, towards the end of the drive: seven of them all together. At one point, they were so close you could actually hear them grazing, hear the tearing of the grass. When they would turn towards us and STARE, it was truly intimidating! We will try and post the video of this. It was an all-Rhinos, all the time kind of day – a very special rhino day. Bill pronounced: big Quince’s specialty is RHINOS. And I decided that perhaps my personal totem is the Rhino. They are awesome but strange looking creatures, with those huge foreheads stretching between ears and eyes, and with those double fierce looking horns.
Towards the end of the drive, we realized that we hadn’t yet seen any elephants or giraffes. Caroline was bemoaning the lack of giraffe sightings – her favorite animal. She acknowledged that perhaps SHE had been a bit jaded by the many many giraffes they had seen on their first trip to Pilanesburg, and had taken that embarrassment of riches for granted. And then we saw one lone giraffe, a bit off the road, but close enough to get a good look. All was right with the world.
On our way out, we made one final stop to see what a little sign said was an historical marker. It was in a little cul de sac at the end of what was barely even a road. The historical marker made it clear that even this place – this game reserve – is deeply marked by the ravages of apartheid. The Reserve was established in 1979. On tribal lands. Which means that the people were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in 1980. And given economic “restitution” for the theft of their lands in 2008, only two years ago and almost 20 years after the supposed end of apartheid.
For the drive home, Caroline had reached her limit on being snuggled up with C & Alexander for hours, and Bill swapped places with her. I wonder if either of them will ever recover from folding up their long legs into pretzels to fit in that middle back seat. Things of note from the drive home: rival gangs of goats. Informal settlements. People walking along the side of the highway. But more about those in another post.
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