ALMOST MUGGED AT MAGWA

IN JULIA'S WORDS

The woman we asked for the road to Magwa Falls near Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape gave directions that were quite wonderful. 
In succulent English she identified landmarks in detail – the school, iFektri, the small shop, the triangle of grass – all of which we were to drive past. She said to stay on the road until we reached the waterfall. I love that approach: the listener striving to memorise the info, and each elaboration entirely irrelevant to finding the way. Just jigga straaaaight.

She was resting under a tree next to tea plantations psychedelic and expansive. Yes, she said, the Eastern Cape has long been where Glen Tea and Lipton’s and who knows who else have their tea plantations. And we thought you had to go to Kenya or Uganda to see such things.

The road ended at the rim of an incredible slash in the Earth where a dozy river fell in a lazy mist over the edge. Below where we parked our car, we could see under the hot summer sun leisurely rockpools and this coast's choice of scrumptious lushness surrounding it. Also, we could see a few young men leaning lizardly on the rocks.

Magwa's delicate curtain of water

Slowly we meandered downhill towards the river and the edge of the world to see for ourselves the waterfall. But immediately one of the men – probably the oldest, mabbe 23 or so – attached himself to us in a demi-goofed manner, mumbling vague keywords like “community tourism” and “guide” and “car guard” as he stumbled wherever we went.
He had this odd habit of repeatedly lifting up his red T-shirt and tucking the end under his chin to reveal his stomach. The other four followed us only with their eyes.

I was immediately prickly and on edge. No, thanks, don’t need a guide. No – oh, ok be the car guard – but PLEASE leave us alone. ALONE! PLEASE!

“I. G. N. O. R. E.”, advised Rehana as she and Picca led the way across the rock pools.

And I tried, but the mumbling and stumbling at our side continued, and my snappy responses got more snap, until FINALLY the semi-sane grunglet made his way up to our car.

We found a path and indeed followed it to where we could look down into the incredible chasm where the softly descending water catches the sun in rude rainbows. But I was distracted – by my fear of these boys.  
I chastised myself for being paranoid, for worrying that we were shortly to become statistics, for thinking of the woman who had given us directions at the tea plantations as someone who would become a witness and remember the two women in the BRC whom she pointed towards their shocking experience. 
Or our demise? After all, the boys may be scruffy and languidly rude, but there was no other reason to expect trouble. Besides them being South African men – sometimes called predators – and us two women alone.

“No Jules, stop worrying so,” said Rehana. “We’d have heard if tourists have been attacked here, it doesn’t go un-noticed.”

“Yes,” I grudgingly agreed. “But their last victims are the ones still listed as missing.”

So I tussled with my fears and urged myself to sink into what should be a gorgeous day’s day among warm rockpools under summer’s sun. We’d have a picnic on the rocks.

See that shady spot on the far side? We had plans 

We crossed the river again towards our car where we would make sandwiches before finding a semi-shaded perch on a rockpool’s edge. The red T-shirt dude had attached himself to two other mlungu women who had arrived and they’d gone off to see the falls. I didn’t envy them their guide.
But as we crossed the river two other of the men – actually just teenagers, scrawny as well as scruffy – roused themselves to follow us. The one with the black shirt was particularly in our faces, making a point to be exactly in our path as we made our way across the rocks.

“Name?” he asked, rudely.

“Frankenstein,” I eventually replied.

“What?”
“Frankenstein.”

A baffled silence. Hoo-fucking-ray.

“From?”

“Johannesburg.”

A mocking chorus of “Jo-hanness-burrrg” echoed us from all four wankers as we climbed to our car.

Still the two followed us up the hill, the one with the white vest less obnoxious than the black shirted bugger, but fixing us with this weird kind of leering grin (a gleer?).

At the car we had a very strange stand-off with them, as the two just hung around and gleered at us, poking odd statements our way here and there, while we tuned out and stared in the middle distance waiting for them to go so we could unpack our food and make sandwiches. FINALLY, all four drifted off.

“Yuck,” I said to Rehana as we prepared our picnic.

“Assholes,” agreed Rehana. “Let’s go down to the rock pools and eat our sandwiches while there’s no one staring at us.”

We found our spot; I relished the musical gushes and tinkles of the water as it made its way in a game of liquid hopscotch from pool to pool and then over the chasm’s edge. 
I was only just starting to munch my lunch in that kind of mesmerised mist that heat and water can create when I saw movement out of the corner of my dream: yup, a black shirt and white vest, the two serial fools coming down the hill. And not just towards the pools generally; towards us specifically.

This time my fears wouldn’t be doused.

“We’ve got company,” I told Rehana.

“I know,” she said. “Ignore, please.”

In their shambling, sauntering way they approached across the rocks behind us. For a while I did ignore, my back to them, sandwich in hand. But I started paying close attention when White Vest stopped about 5 metres from us, and Black Shirt walked slowly closer and to the right towards where Rehana sat.

It was at this point that Picca, too, started paying attention. She extended her sausage self menacingly, raised her enormously frightening hackles, bared her teeth and growled.

Very unlike this docile doggy. And very impressive.

Gleering White Vest, his hands behind his back, stopped. When I said, “Get him Picca, bite him!”, he took a very large step back.

But it all got very adrenalin-rush when Rehana suddenly went from sitting to alert-standing, glaring at White Vest and saying, “He’s got a knife behind his back. I saw the handle. You’ve got a knife behind your back,” she accused the gleering, shifty-eyed half-wit.

By then I was on my feet too, and Rehana and I were staring at White Vest, wondering what the fuck. And what the fuck next if he did pull out his knife and approach us?

His hands still behind his back, White Vest was now clearly trying to tuck his knife into the pocket of his pants.

Picca growled on. Then shrugged off her fierce impression and reverted again to the love-the-world doggy we’re used to.

“Get him Picca, come on,” I urged.

Wag wag wag, she responded.

Black Shirt, meantime, continued to sidle menacingly nearer to Rehana. Just arm’s length away now.

“We wa' money,” he said. “Or cellphone.”

Rehana and I both thought he had said, “We want money for a cellphone.” Could he be saving?

But he clarified. “Money and cellphone, all we want,” he said, eyes wild-hard, body language somewhere between attacking and fleeing.

It was the lamest attempted hold-up, really. Rehana and I spluttering rage, probably words like “Get lost” and “Are you mad?” and “You’ve got a knife you bastard”; and Picca rose to the occasion with a fresh show of pearly whites and rumbling growl.

Step by step White Vest and Black Shirt retreated across the rocks, their defiant looks perhaps a last ditch attempt to hold up their shaky pride in light of a failed robbery. Probably their first. Attempt, I mean. Lucky for us.

It was when I tried to collect the rest of the things – shoes, hat, Rehana’s iPod – that I noticed the half-sandwich I still clutched was shaking. Took an extra big bite to catch the cheese sliding out.

So it was that Magwa did not become Mug-wa, and we did not become nog a number on the wrong side of thugs who prey on the vulnerable haves.

And, really, I think Picca with her Just Don’t Come Here answer to their would-be attack was the telling factor. Yes, the juveniles were but novice criminals; yes, Rehana and I were not easily going to crumble to their demands; but a small, cross inja? This you just don’t risk.

Rehana and I have joked, after 10 months being absolutely vulnerable in 12 countries, that we’d probably need to come home to feel threatened. So right we are, though it’s funny in the not ha-ha-ha kind of way.

Picca the hero, having a blast on the beach the day before the mugging

IN REHANA'S WORDS

In the depths of rural Pondoland men carry machetes as they walk down the side of the road. We were struck by the casual transport of all kinds of weapons, mostly machetes but also several AKs, in the countries we’ve visited. In Rwanda men with machetes are ominous. And so are the men in South Africa.

We let our guard down for a few minutes while we struggled to relax in a beautiful environment – the soaring Magwa waterfall outside Lusikisiki and the tempting, deep rock pools above it. The teenaged louts foisting their attentions on us made it impossible to stay.

In a few short minutes we learned our lesson good. Our home country is where we are most in need of a guide whenever we step out of our campsite – to keep louts at bay, not to show us the way.

When I first saw the switchblade in the boy’s hand I pictured myself toppling into the rock pool in which I was cooling my feet with a knife in my neck. That’s all the fear I had time for. Anger took over.

It must have been one of the most inept armed robberies ever. The boy making the demands mumbled and his armed accomplice hid the weapon instead of brandishing it in our faces. I felt like going back afterwards and showing them how to do it properly. 

It never occurred to us to report the boys to the police after we told them to voetsek. What would our complaint be? A pathetic attempted armed robbery? 
We told the people at Amapondo Backpackers where we were staying in Port St Johns what happened. They phoned the elders in the community nearest the falls who decided to give all the boys who matched our description a good beating. A preemptive strike before anyone got ideas. Sounds like a good plan.

The attempted mugging spoiled only a few hours of our Wild Coast holiday. The rest has been amazing, as the hippies floating along the coast would say. We soared into the area along the spines of hundreds of green hills. 
It looked exactly like the landscape where Madiba is buried. Will we make the pilgrimage? I’ll check if Qunu’s on our route.

Pretty Pondoland

The hills circling Port St Johns are green and jungly, thick with vines and monkeys and thinning to tangled milkwood where they meet the beach. The air’s chewy and tasty – except on the beach where the air tastes and smells organic. The beach is plastered with towers of cattle shit.

The cattle stand for hours in the shallows, staring out to sea. It’s eerie. While millions of other cows and bulls seek soft grass and fresh water to wash it down, these hulking beasts choose to spend most of their day in sand and saltwater. 

Makes me think of Nongqawuse. In 1856 the teenaged girl promised the people of the Eastern Cape that, if they killed their cattle, an army of dead people would rise from the sea and slaughter the British. Maybe these cattle are seeking vengeance for their dead ancestors, waiting for the army to rise from the sea so they can slay them for coming too late.

Waiting in vain for something to happen

We’ve been spoiled by our sea and lakeshore accommodation on our trip so far, always camping or lodging a few steps from the water.
Port St John’s has no well-equipped campsite at the edge of the beach so we made do with a wooden chalet at Amapondo Backpackers, on a hill overlooking Second Beach.
We had to walk about five minutes to the beach but Pikachu never once complained. She was in heaven. There were monkeys to chase up trees and that’s always a lot of fun. The donkey at the backpackers was a bit of a puzzle though. It’s too big to play with small dogs, but it doesn’t know it.

Julia will never get over the fact that I said she looks like a breker in this photo

We walked, every day

REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD

ODOMETER READING: 265 651 (We’ve driven 26 879km since April last year)

IN REHANA'S WORDS

15 February

After we crossed the border into South Africa and passed through Zeerust in the North West, we gawked at mealie fields stretching as far as the eye could see and rubbernecked as we passed silos – the tallest buildings we had seen in a long while.

Julia nervously voiced the dark thought that had slipped into both our minds: were we going to tell people that the most developed of the 12 countries we visited was the one that was liberated last? 
No, I said firmly, we are going to tell people that if African leaders do for their people only a smidgeon of what the apartheid government did for the boere, our neighbours might eventually be freed from the yoke of smallholding economies (or words to that effect). 
The ancestors of the people who own these mielie fields and silos stole the land from indigenous people. Then their offspring benefited for centuries from cheap labour, soft Land Bank loans and price controls.

But still. The roads into Johannesburg were smooth and tarred. We passed very few mud huts, and only a handful of homes without electricity. The goats, sheep and cows were behind farm fences and couldn't stroll into the middle of the highway. 
We couldn’t believe how many new shopping malls had sprung up unnecessarily during our short absence and flipped middle fingers at the tolls on the smooth, delicious six-lane highway.

Oops, almost forgot there was an election. The Kagame-clean street in Magaliesburg is a sign

A week in Johannesburg was never going to be enough but was sufficient to do some admin and to get fierce hugs from our nearest and dearest.
The news soon spread that we were back – even in a city of eight million people its hard to be anonymous when driving a Big Red Car with a tent and other camping paraphernalia on its roof. Again, apologies to everyone we missed. We’ll be back. Our holiday isn’t going to last forever (unless we find a very generous funder).

I went to see a doctor who filled two syringes with my blood and sent it to the pathologists. Good news: The results are that I am infection free, with a dash of anaemia and a soupçon of dehydration. I have two weeks' supply of TB antibiotics to swallow and then I’m home free.

The anaemia’s not bad; I can eat it away and I am doing exactly that. My liquid intake has increased and my sweating levels have decreased (it was cloudy and cold in Joburg, for us at least). My mother said we were both very wrinkled and haggard and there was an amazing improvement when we left days later. Must be her food.

Ruhi Khan was shocked when his Nana and Julia arrived back home in the Big Red Car. His great-grandparents brought him down to the pavement from their flat, saying his mum was coming for him. When he saw the car coming round the corner he took three steps back and then peered to see who was inside. His smile was tentative, but his silent hugs were fierce.

Ruhi and his wrinkly Nana

It was good to be back in the land of washing machines and car washes. The Big Red Car needed some attention again. We discovered that the “faulty” car alarm unit had mysteriously disappeared in Kigali (no surprise, we were warned about the staff at Toyota there). The tyres were balanced and aligned so now we’re veering slightly to the right instead of hugely to the left.

After six gloomy days in Joburg, the sun blazed into life as we left. All along the N3 farmers were making huge bales of hay. It struck me that we hadn’t seen much haymaking in all the months we’d been north, despite passing multitudes of domesticated herds. 
We chuckled at the new signs posted all along the highway – an exclamation mark above the word “goats”. We didn’t see one goat but I licked my chops when we passed sheep.

Pikachu gave us a huge scolding when we shocked her with our reappearance in her Durban life. Jules finds her smaller than she remembers and I find her uglier than I remember (ugly in a cute way, of course). Pikka barked and nipped nonstop at our extremities until Julia said the magic words: “Want to go for a walk?”

Lying in the loving arms again

Durban was hot and humid and we loved it. While the locals complained and sought the shade on Valentine’s day, Jules, Pikka and I strolled leisurely through the wet, thick air on the beach. When we struck out on the promenade in the midday sun poor Pikka came to a standstill as her feet began frying.

Julia’s mum seems as grateful as my parents that we’re back. No amount of throwing of statistics at them seem to make much of an impact – like Zambia’s festive season road death toll soared almost 25% to 16 last year. I’m sure 16 people die every day on SA’s roads.

We’re now in the holiday section of our 12-month adventure. We expect working campsites, affordable chalets and washing machines wherever we go. Wow, have we been washing! I can’t get enough of the fresh baby smell that emerges.

We’ve been living so soft since returning to South Africa. The shower in Jackie and Tumi’s cottage is to die for – you could throw a party in it and you don’t have to wear flip flops! Their new house has every marvel of modern convenience that  a couple crawling out of the bush can hope for. 

Sue and Nick’s Durban home is equally well stocked and my stomach has stretched to at least four times its size since I arrived. Just can't get enough of steak and beetroot. The poor Brouckaert family were rudely dumped by Pikachu despite their intensive care for 10 months. She only has eyes for Julia.

Pikachu's last Sunday walk with Nick and Sue - till she comes to visit again

We are going to the Eastern Cape so we’re not expecting Woolies food at every turn. But we’re stocked up and stoked up, our petrol tank is full and Big Red Car is purring after her Durban service. Once again, we were surrounded by admiring mechanics as we collected it from the workshop.
One of them was trying to persuade me to install something that makes the front wheels lift off the ground when we roar off – he kept saying it was in Too Fast, Too Furious. Julia had no idea what that meant. I was sooo proud of her.

HOW ORGANISED IS THIS CAR AFTER 
1O MONTHS ON THE ROAD?

HOMEWARD BOUND

IN REHANA'S WORDS

I have been complaining about sand since day one of this journey. Yes me, who dreamed for five years about travelling up the Indian Ocean coast and along the Red Sea. Who obsessively studied other people’s blogs for tips to traverse deserts. Who planned to travel as far away as possible from cities with tarred highways, tiled shopping malls and carpeted houses.

Our tent has been particularly sandy these past few months as we’ve camped alongside lakes and rivers. I give the sheet a thorough sweeping with my hand when I climb into it every night but wake up every morning with at least a kilo of grit clinging to my sweat-drenched, sticky skin (or so it feels).

Stupidly, I had been salivating at the prospect of the Makgadikgadi Pans without realising that a pan contains thousands of acres of the white stuff.

It rained every day we were on the pan, so the sand didn't stick so much

But at Jack’s Camp, where we spent two nights last week, there was a fairy who dealt with the problem. We tracked sand every time we went into our tent, despite leaving our shoes outside. But when we returned, even if we left only for a minute or five, it had magically disappeared.
I’m not sure if the same fairy dealt with the sand we traipsed in everywhere else, and if she was the one who kept making neat triangles at the end of every toilet roll we used. Jack’s Camp pays that kind of attention to detail, yet I couldn’t imagine lolling about there all day and keeping the fairies busy.
The Makgadikgadi Pans stretched all around us, and that was where we went minutes after we arrived and where we spent most of our time in the next two days. 

Besides, it was too wet and cold to spend any time in the biggest swimming pool in the pans.

The chilly pool. I am told it is welcoming when it's 45 degrees Celsius in the pans

It rained both nights and most of both days we were at Jack’s Camp. The pans were a shallow lake in most places, shimmering wetly into the distance. It was fringed with green islands of grass populated by the biggest herds of zebra I have ever seen, with the cutest gangly babies.
There’s a zebra migration into the area every wet season – a far more attractive prospect than watching ugly wildebeest stomping around.

Best of all were the storms that raged around us as we went for our drives into the pans. In one hour I counted five of them circling us, some grey, some purple and some laced with sparkling rainbows. The sunsets were a spectacular light show – never before have I seen indigo skies.

We had a great guide, Ruh, and the best company – Jules has already raved about Roberto and Manuella, the only other guests at the camp while we were there. 
The staff were savvy, articulate and some ate their meals with us – a damn good idea, I think.

Ruh took great care of us in every middle of nowhere to which he drove us 

Jack’s Camp is a go-with-the-flow kind of place. The staff make most of the decisions (we will wake you with the coffee at 5.30am, then we’ll take you to see the meerkats just as they’re waking up) but they’re very good decisions so you just say yes to everything.

Worth getting up before dawn to catch sight of this cute critter

I had some misgivings about the San/Bushmen/First People interaction. I’ve probably said it before on this blog that I hate community tourism where they take you to a Gogo’s house and you pay to peer into her pots and her longdrop.

But this visit was great. The group of about 10 Bushmen (as they call themselves, with some Bushladies Roberto was glad to see) marched into the camp in their antelope skins, shook us each by the hand as they introduced themselves. 

Our guide, Ruh, stayed behind and left us in the capable hands of Xixa (dunno how to spell any of their names) who spoke excellent English and could translate for his own people. One of the young women (can’t for the life of me remember her name, Click something or other) also spoke excellent English and had chosen to return to her community after finishing high school where she was a boarder.

We went for a walk into the veld with the group for what turned out to be a remarkable learning experience. They stopped wherever they spotted a useful plant, dug it up, explained its uses and then carefully replanted it into the soil. 
One of the young men opened up tunnels in the sand with a digging stick and eventually unearthed a fat yellow scorpion, that his people use for betting games – like fighting or racing beetles. While we recoiled from the scorpion the toddlers came closer and giggled.

Handle with care

It was quite hilarious when the Bushmen showed us how they make fire by rubbing fire sticks into a pile of dried zebra dung.
They had minutes earlier all of them (except for the two toddlers) accepted cigarettes that Manuella offered and the four struggling to get their fire going all had lit cigarettes hanging from their lips. They used a Bic lighter. But still, we learned.

See the resemblance?

Take a bow, Prospero Bailey. Your gift of two nights at Jack’s Camp is the most generous I’ve ever received. If you ever develop a hankering for someone to turn down your loo paper each time you use it, I’ll be your fairy.

LEAVING

 

I’ve changed a lot on this journey – hopefully for the better and permanently. It’s even made me consider changing my final wishes. I’ve been quite adamant about the fact that I’d like my ashes buried under a tree at Kirstenbosch Gardens, but in Botswana I’ve met such magnificent baobab trees that I’m tempted to merge with them instead.

The “Chapmans” baobab near Jack’s Camp is reputedly 5 000 years old. Can you imagine what it would be like to be buried under a baobab – you could hang around for another couple of centuries! First prize would probably be to be interred under a baobab near a house where your family lives for generations. I have to think about this.

Chapman's baobab has featured in travellers' letters for hundreds of years

After Jack's Camp we spent three nights at Planet Baobab in Gweta and saw almost all of the 17 magnificent baobab trees on and surrounding the property.
We spent most of our time with a huge specimen, around 1 000 years old, which Jules dubbed Oom die Boom. It had a hammock in its generous shade, which was hard to leave.
We’d go there after breakfast and skip lunch because it was impossible to stop lying down after being prone in toffee-sticky humidity for hours.

Can't get enough of your shade, Oom

We stripped our sandy bedding when we packed up our tent in Gweta; we’re not going to be camping for a while and we’re going to be visiting our washing machine (blissful sigh).

Next stop Francistown. It’s been a while since we’ve stayed in a local guest house and boy do they get better as we get closer to Joburg. In Francistown we had two double beds in our room, DSTV, a fridge, a kettle with complimentary Ricoffy and Cremora and – T A H-D A H, for the first time on our journey – an airconditioner! Not one mosquito dared venture into our room that night.

The thick forest of trees followed us all the way to Gaborone. There were reports the day before we left Gweta that the A1 highway had been closed because a bridge was underwater. It was drizzling when we crossed the Serula River, but trucks were thundering across the bridge – the vast majority with South African numberplates.

Gaborone's CBD looks a bit like Edenvale's, only smaller. The Ministry of Youth and Sport has a magnificent edifice within which to conduct its important tasks.

Bustling central Gaborone

Botswana’s a bit disappointing. I was hoping that here we would find a government that at least provided some essential services for its people. But people are now paying school fees for the first time in decades, the department of education failed to pay providers so parents have to buy textbooks this year and electricity supply to most schools has been cut because bills were unpaid. The dropout rate is soaring and results at schools and colleges are dismally poor.

Electricity is a huge problem; Botswana still relies on Eskom for 70% of its supply and less than 40% of its population has access to electricity. 

The highways are potholed but after witnessing first-hand the power of the summer rains, I suppose that’s understandable. What less easy to understand is why the parts that have been fixed are such a crumpled patchwork.

According to the business pages in the newspapers, the mines are all producing more than expected and the CEOs all look as fat and happy as the cattle munching the summer grasses. What is the government doing with the tax and royalties revenue?

Next stop, Johannesburg, where I can start griping again about our politicians. It’s going to be weird to be in Joburg as a guest – I haven’t had that experience before. Apologies in advance to the people we won’t get to see. We’re only at home for a week or so before we head off to KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape for the last of our 12-month journey and a taste of camping in South Africa. There are reportedly washing machines and hot water in most campsites. See you soon.