Three Blind Mice (a couple of spiders and a magic broom)

Today I facebooked a friend who lives in the north and was reminded how diverse South Africa is. Being a Capetonian, I broadly refer to any province north of the Cape as “The North”, a place where elephants and lions roam the bushveld. Three years ago, before exploring “The Great North”, (which I then called the Transvaal, (and there I go giving my age away) I imagined it as a countryside infested with mine dumps and the leaders of SA business. I thought the Kruger Park was a little camped off area somewhere near Joburg which you could drive through for the day and spot a leopard or a rhino the same way our family used to drive through High Noon Reserve in the Cape searching for Springbok or a lonely Ostrich.



After contacting my friend I smile to myself. I will always associate Joe and Jonelle with the bushveld since we met them during our Field Guide Course which we did together “Up North”. The one month course was extremely educational and gave me insight about nature and during this time got to view and study many wild animals. I finish typing the message to her and lie back on my bed to watch two huge spiders scurrying along the beams which hold up our grass roof. This about encompasses the total of my wild life viewing here in Qolora Village. Well, besides the big spiders, there is a mouse who has recently moved into our rondaval but who I’ve only seen once. It was not a cute little 3cm field mouse that dashed across the floor either. He was bigger and blacker and has managed to eat the food out of the mouse and escape unharmed. I hope I don’t put a shirt on one day to find my boob sticking out of a gaping hole where he’s gnawed off the fabric to make a nest for a family of 20 in my clothing cupboard.



Rather than game viewing, I am learning some fascinating things about the Xhosa people here in rural Transkei. For instance, yesterday Mandisa told me about her neighbour’s problem with bees. Apparently a swarm of bees moved into their house. The local medicine women (probably the same ones we saw flapping their arms around on the hillside last week) were summoned to do their thing at the bee infested house. After their visit, the bees duly left. The family were so happy that they decided to slaughter a cow and have a big celebration and a chat with their ancestors. The Xhosa people have a very high regard for the spirit world and confer with their ancestors about all important matters. Being a Christian Xhosa definitely does not exempt you from such beliefs as one must always please the ancestors to ensure good fortune. I’ve thought about it and to me it’s much the same as you or I would occasionally talk to a deceased loved one. They just take the whole business more seriously. Modern man lives in a world engulfed in superficial crap where it’s each man for himself whereas I think the Xhosa people here in rural Transkei have a simpler, slow evolving lifestyle therefore their old beliefs still carry weight and haven’t been thrown away in exchange for vanity and power.



As a white person, I must say I do find some of their customs rather strange yet very intriguing. A custom which is still practised here which I confirmed with the locals is the broom and boobjob thing they do. Apparently, when a young girl starts showing signs of puberty and her breasts start appearing, she has to have them swept. An aunt or grandmother will take her outside before sunrise and using a straw broom, will brush her naked breasts to prevent them from growing too big too quickly. So there you go girls, if you are worried about ending up with an uncomfortable double D bra size and you happen to be outside in the garden blowing a troublesome wart to the moon, you can just as well grab the garden broom to brush your boobs and see what happens. Mmmmm, I wonder how loudly the Xhosa locals would laugh if I told them that many white don’t walk under ladders, open umbrellas indoors and have a thing about salt.



So, on that note if Theo can’t catch our resident mouse I might have to spit in a bowl and stir in some powdered tree bark, sprinkle in some sugar and leave an inviting Hansel and Gretel trail to the door as I exit backwards for the mouse to follow me out and the spirits to not follow me in. If that doesn’t work I’ll have to ask the medicine women in white to come do their magic here before the mouse extends his family to an uncomfortable size. I haven’t got a cow to slaughter afterwards to celebrate but I do have a few sheets of rice paper which I still have left over from our Japanese food stash and which I’m still trying to figure out how to wrap tripe in. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have a Savanna, it might be dry but I can drink it.

Bush Wacking

I’m starting to have my doubts whether spending R13 000 each (a chunk of my pension) on a 28 day Field Guide Course is a good idea for me. I’ve checked out job offers for couples at Game Lodges and they seem to want the guy to take the people into the bush to look at the bokkies and they want the chick to stay home and answer the phone. Probably rightly so since imagine me out there in a jeep with 6 Americans in the back going Oh My God, Oh My God as I disappear into the sunset without a clue as to where I’m going. I rely heavily on GPS and without my glasses I wouldn’t know the difference between a baobab or a boa constrictor.

One of the subjects the course covers is Astronomy. My current knowledge of the stars is that if you join the dots then you can outline pictures of Greek Gods and scorpions but you have to stretch your imagination big time and I know the southern cross is supposed to help you find your way but I’m not quite sure how it works. I mean if I follow a star like the 3 musketeers did, the direction seems kinda vague. I’d just keep going and going in a straight line as if I was chasing the end of a rainbow to the end of nowhere. Can’t see how that would get me back to the lodge after a night of game viewing with 6 Americans fretting in the back seat.

Another subject is Amphibians. I think that’s creatures who live in the water but who aren’t fish. And I have a feeling its limited to fresh water i.e. an octopus is not amphibian but a frog is. I’d need some brushing up on that I suspect.

Reptiles. Crocodiles are dangerous and you can make handbags out of them but I’m not sure what they do with the pointy bits. Face inwards possibly? Digging for a tampon in the bottom of your handbag would be a mission mind you.

I’ve just checked - another subject is Arthropods. And here I thought that was the name of a fatal disease. After reading further I realized its spiders and insects. Funny, I’ve been pondering about Mosquito’s lately. As far as I know it’s the female who bites you and sucks your blood for a meal. So what I’ve been wondering is what does the male mosquito eat to survive? The female? I mean what species, (other than humans where the male can survive on meat and the female on chocolate) do the males eat one thing and the females eat a different food type. I’m puzzled.

Actually all the subjects offered in the Field Guide Course do intrigue me. I’d like to know more about the moon and how it magnetically pulls the water in my body towards it. I’d love to know more about animal hierarchy – I think animals are way more intelligent than humans realize. I’m also intrigued by mans development through the stone and iron age. Learning about botany (possibly even lobotomy) wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I think it will come in handy when the budget is stretched and we need to know which leaves are edible to chuck in the stew.

So doing a field guide course would be interesting and maybe I wouldn’t be expected to be all gung-ho and carry a machine gun over my shoulder to protect the Americans from a charging rhinoceros. Mind you it sounds more appealing than hanging a toilet brush over my shoulder and answering the phones.

I’ll think about my options some more while I try and figure out where the heck Mpumalanga is. I still work on the old system of Transvaal and Free State so I think I have enough stuff to think about before I find time to count the legs on spiders and insects to see what category they fall into. Next week I’ll get the magnifying glass out cos I’d be expected to know the difference between a millipede and a centipede and as far as I can remember we’re talking a lot of legs here.