The rains arrive

The vehicle speeds down the old Sodwana Bay road, heading south, several of us on the back. Soon the luminous yellow fever tree trunks, just past the Zuka junction, tower over us and we turn off into them, heading away from the newly risen sun. The Cruiser winds its way out of the drainage line and soon we are out in the open. We labour up the eroded, rocky tracks to the fenceline that borders Harrowgate (part of Phinda) and the property called Nkonka (Bushbuck), recently bought with old family oil money by andBEYOND shareholder and Zuka owner Tara Getty. Fixing this fence, another one destroyed by fighting giraffe, we have to marvel at the scenery of Nkonka stretching out before us. Row upon row of steadily climbing mountains receding into the distance – just beautiful!

Gospel music competes with R&B and traditional Zulu music. All out of tune with each other and with the birds also taking part in the morning concert. All emanating from the cell phones of kakhi clad team members as we work side-by-side. Three per team. Five teams. We’re digging holes for a new fence to run along the dam wall of the Mzinene River. Where water used to flow we can now clearly see the drag marks of a crocodile tail in the mud. Around these spoor are the prints of other animals, animals with nothing between them and community land except a dry river bed. If we don’t put up this fence we will lose animals we still want and the community may gain animals they don’t want. Dangerous animals.

The ova’s (two-way radios) never cease to deliver both important messages and idle, often humorous chatter. In crackly Zulu and English, mixed equally. A rather frantic call comes in. In Zulu. A couple of poacher’s dogs have been spotted, inside the reserve. Inyathi (Buffalo) anti-poaching springs into action, searching out both dogs and poachers. The radios are abuzz and we follow their progress. The dogs they catch, the poachers sadly no.

Thembankosi must have been eyeing my bag for some time. He eventually plucks up the courage. Will I trade my bag for a couple of izagila (knobkieries) when I leave? It’s a deal! As we drive home by bag bounces along on the loading bed at the back of the Cruiser behind me. Thembankosi picks it up, carefully, and hangs it up on the railing. I hear him say to the others quietly, “It will get old if it rests on the floor.” I smile at this gesture, no sense in inheriting something old and broken I guess.

Lightning carves up the evening sky in the distance. The tension of every human and animal waiting for precious rain to fall on this dry ground just adds to the static in the atmosphere. The earth here is thirsty. Thunder rolls ahead of the streaking lightning and the clouds darken. And then the rain falls. It plummets to earth soaking everyone and every thing below. Sitting under our tin-roofed verandah we watch the pyrotechnic lightning display, through heavy, ground-soaking, blissful rain. Chirping frogs celebrate with us – 35mm overnight! Each day after the rain the umbrella foliage of the Flatcrown above our roof gets markedly denser, a flamboyant expression of rebirth made possible by the arrival of the rains.

A Sunday game drive with experienced ranger Thulani is a joy. Two brother cheetah rest up on the dam wall on the marsh. A small herd of impala, across wind from them, graze a short ways away, blissfully unaware of the danger closeby. It seems like more than a half chance to one brother. He stands up, head kept low. His tail flicks from side to side. His brother will not be tempted away from an afternoon nap though and so he settles back down. The impala are left untroubled. The grapefruit orange-red sun sinks beneath the haze and eventually the horizon. Thunder rolls gently across the grasslands, telling us of distant rain. The stars slowly emerge to keep the sliver moon company. Thulani sneaks a quick glance up to the heavens as we drive along in the balmy evening air. Smilingly he tells us of growing up, when his parents would warn him as a child not to look up at the stars. “If you do you will wet your bed…”. Thulani and many other Zulu children always ran between huts in their homestead, in case they looked up by a mistake. A good ploy no doubt to discourage wandering off at night. Tracker, Thomas, has worked at Phinda for 18 years and not much gets past him. The spotlight flashes up and down, telling Thulani that he has spotted something. A little chameleon’s camouflage has failed him, as he perches on the wrinkled leaves of a gwarrie bush. Thulani tells us that most the guys I work with are afraid of chameleons. They are one of the few animals whose eyes move independently, a sure sign of menacing powers.