A Road Runs Through It

This feels like Botswana, I said to Kanti as we slowly drove north-east on the tarred main road. He in the back seat, me behind the wheel, windows open, guarding against the lurking Covid-19. Cutting through the Dinokeng Game Reserve, about 50km north of Pretoria, with unfenced bush on either side, the road was like that out from the Chobe reserve in Botswana. Big game like elephant were just as likely to step out from the bush, though at about 21 000 hectares, the carrying capacity of the reserve requires their active management. Impala and zebra however made their crossings with familiarity. I wondered if the lions of the reserve ever lolled on the edges of the road or crossed it. There is an incongruity of tarred main road and wild animal that at first is confusing, then seamless – like that in northern Botswana.

Fazel and Salim were ahead in Salim’s Pajero, out of sight in our convoy to Larry’s Dam as we had paused for longer off de kleine Serengeti. An expanse of open plain well populated by the likes of eland, giraffe, zebra, impala, blue wildebeest and warthog, the name is fitting. Not so much so “Larry’s Dam”, a vestige of one of the many farms that have removed their fences to make up the lands of the reserve, accessed through routes off the main tarred road. This is unlike the distinctly unitary nature of other reserves. Rather it is a necklace. The lands string off the road like pendants.

The prettiness of a carpet of pink pom pom flowers deceived. They are alien. A deliberately introduced thrip from South America is being used to control them, without harm to indigenous plantation because the thrip only feed on pom pom weed.

We passed a Yellow-billed Hornbill, sat comically atop an image of a giraffe on a signboard to a lodge, before turning off to the dam. As we drove up, a lone crocodile glided across its length – to what we on another day observed was a favoured swampy inlet. Lesser Striped Swallows flew relentlessly in and out from their mud nests under a low, overhanging concrete platform, drinking from the dam on the wing. A number stood on the platform. In what looked like a kind of apartheid, only White-throated Swallows lined a wire below the platform. But the sky was a post ’94 vision of a zig zag of intermingled species swooping on aerial insects. Apparently, swallows are referred to as a “bird of freedom”, because they cannot withstand captivity and mate only in the wild.

A Pied Kingfisher evoked awe and excitement as it hovered, high up, wings beating furiously, then dived into a splash and made off with its catch to a dead tree nearby. An African Jacana showed off the reason for its incredibly long toes. Seemingly walking on water – like Jesus, Kanti echoed of its common description – it paced then darted, to and fro, on submerged lily pads to snatch aquatic insects. Bigger than the male of the species, this could have been a female. The male would have been home, nest-building or tending any eggs or chicks. She would not be faithful, taking other mates to produce other clutches of eggs.

Of mates and eggs, Fazel’s and Salim’s wives had packed them off for the weekend with delicious beda wali bread – as well as masala chicken and roti, and mutton dhal and rice – that we now regretted not having brought with us to snack on at the dam. Still, we looked forward to it – or the obligatory braai – on our return to our accommodation, a pleasant collection of individual one-bedroomed chalets. Perfect for precaution against Covid-19 risk.

The trill of a Woodland Kingfisher gave way to the high-pitched wail of Black-backed Jackal as the sun went down and beckoned us in the direction of our lodgings. Khoi legend has it that the jackal’s back is black because it carried that sun. Other jackals all around took up the call. Sure enough, on the approach to our lodge, just outside its electrified fence, a territorial pair readied for the night’s forage. Like the other animals of the reserve, they seemed not very habituated to vehicles and moved off. For livestock farmers for whom the jackal can be a problem, their free prevalence in these former farmlands was the clearest sign of natural rehabilitation.

Over a variety of braaied sausages with rolls and potato salad, seated at least 1.5 metres apart, discussion ranged from best wildlife experience to the #MeToo movement, and the silence of society on the abuse men too may suffer by women; the permission that struggle discipline in the 1980s demanded for some love relationships; the future security of our young adult children; business, stocks, and retirement savings and plans. And like a road runs through it, the night carried the liquid call of the Bubbling Kassina.

GALLERY