Into The Thorns

Chapter Fourteen

 

The Family

Part 2

 

George Sibanda

When I used to visit the Landreys at Matetsi during the school holidays, one of the young “picannins” who sometimes got dragged along on our adventures was a son of the Denda Safaris “mechanic”. I put inverted commas around the word mechanic because as amazingly skilled as some of these bush mechanics were, they had little, if any, formal mechanical training. This young fellow’s name was George Sibanda. He did not attend school, instead, he helped his father in the Denda Safari garages at Matetsi, and later graduated to “spanner boy,” drawing a very meagre salary.

 

Anybody who has lived in the wilderness will know the true value of “bush mechanics”, and there is no short cut to being a bush mechanic – you have to first do the time as “spanner boy”.

 

When I returned to hunt at Denda in 1983 as a licensed professional, I bumped into George who was no longer a skinny boy, but a strong, happy young man but still spanner boy at Denda.

 

In 1985 when we started our own safari company, I employed a cook from Victoria Falls, named Edward Mathe. Edward had only been with us a few months when he asked me if I knew George Sibanda. I did not recall the name but when Edward mentioned where he worked I remembered him. Edward told me that George’s father said that George was ready to go out and find a job – he could “spanner boy” at Denda no more. We agreed to give him a try, and Edward sent a message up to Victoria Falls, and in due course he arrived.

 

This man turned out to be the best worker we ever had. Peter Sebele was a tracker, a specialist. His work situation was different to all our other employees. When there was a safari underway, he worked. When there was no safari, he went home. But George was a worker. He was a mechanic, driver, gun bearer, Number Two tracker, and general handy man. In due course he obtained his driver’s license and he became an excellent welder too. He was honest, reliable, and even tempered. He is dead now. He has been dead five years, and I miss him terribly.

 

Even though he could not read or write, he was a clever, gifted individual. One of those people who can patiently sit and take a gearbox apart, study it, and know how it works. He had the dogged patience necessary to lie in the hot sand underneath an ailing Land Cruiser far out in the bush, mopane flies swarming around his eyes, and make that truck well again. I cannot count the times on safari where I said to myself “Thank God we’ve got this man”.

 

Like Peter, George became part of the family. When he married we knew his kids. When they were sick, they went to our doctor – when they were in need, they received our help. In fact George’s second wife was the daughter of our maid who worked for us for fifteen years before she passed away. As George became more skilled, and more reliable, without our really consciously noticing it, he absorbed more of the duties which I used to have to carry out, many of which I hated. He had maturity and self-confidence – surprising in one who is illiterate.

 

We found ourselves passing duties on to him which basically gave more free time to me. He would drive several hours to National Parks offices and collect game scouts, or deliver ivory or collect permits. He would go with one helper to town to purchase fuel, or groceries or hardware. Much later, when we started operating in Tanzania in 1995, George would share the driving with me on that tedious five-day journey between Bulawayo and Arusha.

 

George loved his work. He was not much of a tracker – in fact when Peter became tired on the trail it was usually I who took over from him – but George contributed to the success of the hunt in so many other ways. He was always ready to try something different, something out of the ordinary, and it seemed that he was always the one who came up with valuable information from the locals. George spoke Shona, English, Sindebele, Kalanga, Lozwi and Mnambia fluently. When we began operating in Tanzania he quickly picked up enough Swahili to get by and later, when I went into business in Mocambique he wasted no time in learning a smattering of Portuguese. A gifted man indeed.

 

George had worked for us for about thirteen years when he was helping me build a trading store for Peter out at Peter’s home near Tsholotsho. Whilst we were engaged in this task I realised that George, even though he had not yet given us the years that Peter had, was a big part of our business, and had given us sterling service. I asked him if he would like to own a store at his home near Victoria Falls. Initially he said yes, but a few weeks later he said that he would prefer it if we could help him purchase a car. We promptly gave him an old Toyota Hilux which had given us more hard safari service than Peter and George combined! A few weeks later, when George drove into my yard in a snazzy little Renault town car I asked him whose it was. “It’s mine” he replied. He had done a little work on the old Toyota, sold it, bought a much newer, more fuel-efficient runabout, and had some cash left over! After a little thought about the whole thing, I wasn’t really surprised.

 

When we finally phased our business into total leopard hunting, George became virtually indispensable. He was mature enough, keen enough, and reliable enough for me to be able to send him off with one helper, fuel, baits, and a long-range radio into remote areas, in order to find large unhunted male leopards. And find them he did.

 

I remember clearly, even today, five years after his death, watching him drive up the steep incline into the mountain camp trying his best to act bored and nonchalant as he reported his findings. Translated from Sindebele, our conversation would go something like this.

 

“I see you George.”

 

“I see you also, Baba.”

 

“If you have come all the way back to camp, it means that you have encountered some problem, or it could mean that you have found the sign of a large leopard.”

 

Delaying the finale as much as he could he would announce tiredly “I have had some problems with the radio – which is why I did not speak with you yesterday. I have looked into the piece which you use to speak, and I have seen some wires loose there. But I have not tried to fix it.”

 

“George. You have come all the way here, a three-hour drive, to tell me that the radio is broken? Why did you not go to Mr. AJ’s house and ask to use his phone?”

 

Now he would be battling to suppress his grin. George had prominent top front teeth with a large gap between them, and he had an infectious open laugh to boot. He would reach into his top pocket, but I already knew what was in there. With great ceremony followed by suppressed laughter, and egged on by the watching staff, he would hand me the two sticks representing the length and width of the front track of a supercat.

 

“This leopard fed on my bait last night” he would announce. (I liked the “my”) “He ate much meat. I cleared a shooting lane before placing the bait, and there is a good position for the blind.”

 

Sometimes George positioned the blind site in a spot slightly different than the place I would have chosen but most times he had it dead on. He was an observant man and very seldom had to be shown something twice. He took great pride, and I believe pleasure, in being able to successfully coerce leopard onto bait. He was content in the satisfaction of knowing that he was doing his job well.

 

When 2002 came around, George, like forty percent of all Zimbabweans, must have been carrying the AIDS virus. A bout of malaria left him emaciated, and his painstakingly slow recovery had us worried. We took him for tests and the news was the worst. Unlike Peter at a later stage, George never really seemed to accept, or believe that with good food and antiretroviral drugs he could still live a good life. It was upsetting to see such a once strong, alert, willing person, try to tackle his job with his tank on empty.

 

I was on safari in Tanzania when my wife told me via the radio that things had taken a dive for George. He was on a hunt at Marula with our friend Neil Lindsay when he “went crazy”. Neil said that his sense of balance had deserted him and he had a wild look in his eye and he was talking gibberish.

 

My wife went out to Marula with her friend’s son along to help, and she brought George back to town. She said that journey was heartbreaking. She put him in hospital in Bulawayo but the care and attention he received there was so poor that we put him in a cottage at our home, and hired a nurse to attend to him. His mind cleared, but maybe sitting there helplessly in the morning sun, like an old man with nothing to do, sapped his spirit as much as the hospital did. George’s wife died in July and I believe he saw the end coming. I was out in the bush when my wife decided he was just too ill and we could not give him the medical attention he needed, and he was admitted to the infectious disease’s hospital. I came back from safari and sat with him at the hospital trying my best to convince him not to give up, but he died of meningitis in August.

 

We drove his body up to Victoria Falls and we attended the funeral, where I was asked to speak. But I could not. All I could see was George’s happy face, his gap-tooth smile, the countless fires we had shared, the camps we had built, and the mishaps, adventures and triumphs we had seen during seventeen years of safari together.

 

I promised myself that one day I will return to George’s grave and there I will place a headstone:

 

‘George Sibanda. Born 3rd June 1963 Died 23 August 2002. Honest, brave, gifted, a much loved man who never shirked a job. Rest in peace.’

 

Bee Ngwenya

In 1989 we returned to the Matobo Hills, and began construction on the camp at the southern end of AJ’s property on the Ingwezi river. It was a beautiful, tranquil place tucked in against a big koppie, right on the edge of the Ingwezi which was mostly just white sand for most of the year. Giant acacia albida trees shaded the spot.

 

The bush telegraph directed a stream of men from the neighbouring communal lands to our camp. They were looking for work and we hired about a dozen of them.

 

Homesickness, drinking problems, wanderlust and poor work, resulting in firing, thinned these people out and kept bringing in new faces. One of the few who survived right from the beginning was a fellow named Bee Ngwenya. I had very little to do with Bee in those early days. I was running the big game concession up at Matetsi in the far northwest of the country and a fellow named Gerald Oosthuizen was building the Ingwezi Camp. Gerald gradually took Bee under his wing when he began exploring the area and cutting hunting roads, and as it turned out, Bee knew the place quite well. It was obvious that he had been actively poaching these ranches on and off for some years. He knew most of the waterholes and just about all of the overgrown bush roads. His knowledge was valuable and he was an asset to Gerald, and of course to our operation.

 

Bee knew nothing about safaris, leopard hunting or trophy hunting, but he was a hunter none-the-less, and he was quick to learn. Gerald took some beautiful big leopard in those early days and it was a learning curve for both Bee and Gerald.

 

When we pulled out of the Matetsi concession and decided to expand the operation at Marula, I began to do more of the leopard hunts myself. I had Peter as my number one tracker and George as my right-hand man, so there was no real need for Bee as part of my own hunting staff. But he was extremely useful in helping other professional hunters who were unfamiliar with the area. Bee was always keen. In all the years we have known him that is the one trait in his character that stands out – his eagerness and his keenness to take on a task, no matter how daunting or unpleasant, nor how far that task may be.

 

As Bee’s safari experience grew, so his tracking ability improved. He had many opportunities to work with Peter and this gave him the confidence he needed to step into the role of genuine safari tracker.

 

With the decline of Peter’s health and the demise of George, we found ourselves more and more reliant on Bee. Although he never possessed the mechanical aptitude that George had, he developed into a very good reliable driver and he took on the leopard baiting duties with enthusiasm and, surprisingly, with good success.

 

The highlight of Bee’s safari is when he has baited a large leopard and, just like George used to, hands over the measuring sticks to me with great ceremony, beaming from ear to ear. Excited, pleased, and proud.

 

Bee is a great character at our leopard parties. Sometimes the staff will stage a play after the singing where they act out the whole hunt. Bee always takes the part of myself and he takes the opportunity to portray my character, especially my bad qualities, mercilessly. He pretends that the staff have made stupid mistakes when building the blind or hanging the bait, and he remembers every insulting phrase or curse word I have used in all the years he has known me, and he uses them to berate the others. It is hilarious. He is a pretty wild dancer too and he stamps up a good dust storm during the festivities.

 

In my years as a soldier and as a professional hunter, I have not come across many native Africans who are proficient riflemen. But Bee is one. I commenced teaching Peter, George and Bee to shoot at around the same time, but Bee progressed a lot more quickly than the other two. This was an added bonus for me when sending him on baiting duties because he could hunt and kill impala, and shoot bait cattle without having to return to camp for bait meat.

 

Like his mentors, Peter and George, Bee is not loud, obnoxious, unreliable or a troublemaker. He is a pleasant, keen talented hunter and he has a good future ahead of him in the safari industry. The guard is changing, but I feel certain that Bee Ngwenya will forge his own special place in safari life in the western Matobo, and I am proud to be able to say that we were able to start him on that path.

 

Luka Maphosa

In 1989 after finalising a deal with the incumbent concessionaire on Matetsi Unit Two, we commenced operations in that well known big game area. The concessionaire, Innocent Dube, already had several of his own staff in place at the camp near the Guyu River, and one of these was a cook named Luka Maphosa. At that time Maphosa was about 27 years old. He was a hardworking individual who got along with everybody, and like Bee Ngwenya, no task was too much to ask of him. Maphosa’s cooking skills, however, were of the very basic garden variety. If Maphosa were a car, he would be the go forward never-give-up Land Rover. But he would not be the Porsche or the Maserati. But that was fine with me. Hard working and good natured would always take my vote way ahead of brilliant-but-temperamental.

 

We did our darndest to decrease the weight of Maphosa’s bread rolls and add a bit of zest to his stew. We tried like hell to imagine the moisture still in the roast. But the food stayed the same. Medium, okay, Land Rover food. I’ve never been one for fancy starters and four-course safari meals. I am usually just too damned tired once we return to camp. I suppose it is a failing of sorts. I’ve hunted in many safari camps where the vittles laid on would not be out of place in the Ritz. They were wonderful. But unfortunately not in my camp. But I liked Maphosa and he liked us and for eighteen years very few of my clients have ever complained about the food. I go to bed at night with a full, happy belly and I would say that just about all of my clients have too. When we left Unit Two in 1995 Maphosa came with us, much to the chagrin of Innocent Dube. In safari camps there is usually an order of rank, or structure of hierarchy. Of course not all operations are the same, but most have a similar arrangement. Sometimes there is a native camp manager who is top dog amongst the safari staff – especially up in the East African hunting areas – but in many operations this post is also held by the chief cook.

 

In our outfit the most respected and senior man has been Peter, but he has always eschewed any managerial “head man” type roles – he just does not need or want the extra responsibilities. So Peter, George and Maphosa have evolved purely by circumstance, into “head staff’ in our company and Maphosa I think, enjoys that role a lot more than the other two do.

 

Luka Maphosa has been a faithful hard-working part of our safari life for many years and I hope he remains with us for many more.

 

In our years of running safaris in four different countries we have worked with many natives, and it’s not my intention to bore everyone to death by giving the life story of each one of them. We have seen so many amazing, funny, good, and often bad, incidents over the years with our staff and other peoples’ staff, that I could fill another book recounting them. But I cannot resist briefly mentioning just a few.

 

Graham’s tracker, Tshani, is a tall gangly unkempt individual who loves to show off in front of the other staff. He also loves strong drink, and at one of our leopard parties up at the mountain camp one of the clients offered Tshani some whisky. “Hot stuff’ as Tshani calls it.

 

Tshani answered “Yes, please Suh!” He then commenced downing whiskies chased with beer, becoming louder every minute, regaling all the other workers with his many adventures and tales of derring-do. Needless to say he was unable to present himself for hunting the next morning, and Graham set off without him.

 

That night, Tshani had still not returned and nobody at the camp, or at Graham’s ranch headquarters, knew where he was. The next evening, forty-eight hours after the leopard party, Tshani presented himself for duties. His eyes were blood red and his woolly hair and scraggly beard were matted with grass and dirt. He had also lost his shoes. White mucus crusted his eyes, nose and lips.

 

“Where have you been?” Graham asked him.

 

“I have been in the bush Bwana,” he replied, “the drink.”

 

He stood there like we were all supposed to know exactly what had happened.

 

“Where are your shoes?” was Graham’s next question.

 

“I do not know Bwana, I cannot find them. First I lost my shoes, then I lost myself, but now I am back.”

 

His simple explanation coupled with the simple look on his bemused face was too much for Graham and I and we just cracked up.

 

When I was still hunting for our friends the Landreys up at Matetsi, Kim returned late one evening from the lion blind. They did not have the lion but they did have a funny story.

 

Between camp and the blind Kim and his client came across a large waterbuck bull which the client shot. They loaded the trophy and continued on to where they had the lion feeding. Kim parked the vehicle about a mile downwind from the bait, and he and the client walked quietly to the blind, leaving the tracker in the car. The francolins fossicked around getting ready to roost. The first hyena called. Lion hour approached quickly.

 

But on this particular day the lion decided not to approach Kim’s bait via the elephant trail that it had been using for the previous two days. It decided to use the road which had fresh droplets of blood on it – the waterbuck blood which had seeped out from the back of the Land Cruiser! Kim’s tracker was asleep up on the hunting seat when a thud and a snuffling noise, coupled with the squeak of the sagging Land Cruiser springs woke him. He looked down – three feet away at the tailgate, a huge full-maned lion was standing there with its front feet up on the truck, its giant fluffy dark head monstrous in the twilight as it found the source of the blood.

 

The lion saw the tracker move and grunted in surprise, dropping back down onto the ground where it began to growl ominously. Time to go. The tracker leapt out of the Land Cruiser and he must have streaked through that mopane woodland as if on fire.

 

Kim and his hunter, oblivious of the goings on back at the vehicle, sat quietly in the blind being eaten by mosquitoes. Finally they had had enough and walked back to the road. The lion by this time had moved off. Kim was puzzled as to the whereabouts of the tracker. He whistled for him a few times but received no answer. Maybe, for some reason, he had gone back to camp, but that was unlikely. It was a long walk in the dark, with all sorts of nasties wandering around the bush. Kim started the vehicle, turned it around, and suddenly heard a shout. He turned the car off and then he heard the shout again from the high branches of a mopane tree about fifty yards away. “What are you doing there?” Kim asked the tracker “Why do you not answer when I call you?”

 

The tracker told Kim about his unpleasant meeting with the lion and he said that he did not want to answer for fear that the beast was still nearby. He refused to come down until Kim drove the vehicle near to the tree: He then sprang straight from the branches down into the truck. From that day on he refused to wait in an open Land Cruiser at night. A Land Cruiser with cab and doors was fine.

 

We were sitting around the fire down at our Bubye River camp in the southern lowveld enjoying our drinks waiting for the cook’s call for supper. We were trying out a new “town” cook who had assured us that he could cope with safari life in the bush.

 

I heard George’s hysterical laughter up near the kitchen, followed by Peter’s muffled chortling, so I wandered over to see what the occasion was. George was sitting on a box by the kitchen fire with his hand to his mouth, doubled over with suppressed laughter. The new cook, however, was not wrapped up in fits of mirth and was going about his business with a bemused frown.

 

“What’s the joke George?” I asked, and to the cook, “Come on Joseph, we’re all still waiting for our snacks!” This sent George into renewed spasms and he rolled about with Peter following suit.

 

Finally when he could speak, he answered, “The new cook says he doesn’t want this job Bwana” more laughter.

 

“Why?”

 

“He came back from speaking to you at the lounge and told us that you had told him to ‘hurry up and bring the snakes!’ – now he says he doesn’t want to go out in the bush to find the snakes you want, he says he is scared of snakes!”

 

At this they rolled about in more laughter while I just stood there with my beer in my hand contemplating Africa.

 

Snakes, Snacks.

 

I shook my head. Was it possible that this fellow really believed that I wanted him to go out into the bush at night and collect snakes?! Needless to say, he never made it.