A BLOODY BEAUTIFUL LIFE

 Fetching carcasses for the lions

 

 I’m sitting on a log in the shade of a shed on a game farm in Zululand, writing whilst carcasses are being loaded onto the truck.

I don't have a photo which captures the beauty of the landscapes I describe. So here I am writing this blog.

It was Woman’s Day, a National holiday, but I had been called to collect 2 dead cows down in Kwa-Zulu Natal. I very reluctantly left Bell Street where I was spending the midweek holiday with Shanead. My parents were in Jhb where my Dad was both consulting with his patients as well as consulting a heart specialist about his own symptoms and Phillipa was helping my sister Chantal with her divorce case. So Shanead was alone and we were enjoying the time in a proper house. She was cooking lunch for the two of us and at the same time working on a Biology project at the kitchen counter.

Before leaving I needed to ascertain whether it was necessary for me to take the trailer or if the cows were small enough to both fit onto the bakkie itself which would make for a simpler trip. I was told the cows were big, bring the trailer.

I left Shanead and drove to the Sanctuary, reversed up to the trailer but then hesitated, dejected. I had no staff at the sanctuary that day so I sent a message to the farmer asking if it would be all right to fetch the carcasses the following morning. I could see that my message hadn’t been received and it goes against my protocol to simply just not pitch up. It turned out that hitching the trailer was surprisingly easy, Leon had had the trailer modified and it now had a great big jockey wheel with the facility to lower the entire stand thus giving a whole lot more lift than any trailer I had worked with before.

Micah my Golden Retriever was on the back. Trailer hitched. I set off. There are a few things one needs to travel with when fetching a cow; a sharp knife, gloves for handling the winch cable, water x2 bottles (one to drink and the other for washing the blood and fur off before driving home) and a phone so as to make contact with the farmer as to the specific location of the cow as it most certainly would not have conveniently died alongside of a road.

The drive from the Free State down the escarpment into Kwa-Zulu Natal changes from yellows, ochres and khaki into greens, blues and grey. The bright foreground hillsides and valleys are littered with hundreds of sculptural Paperbark thorn trees in their winter starkness each one so beautiful it could be the centerpiece of an African lodge. The foreshortening of the background to this startlingly clear landscape shows depth only by the gradation in the shade of blues into stormy greys and almost black of the mountains beyond.

I forgot my sunglasses at Bell street. The sun is sharp. The air is dry. I constantly reach for my lip ice which is back in my bakkie and not in the carcass collection vehicle that I am driving.

Mountains of Cumulonimbus add a softness to the colour pallet. Beams of sunlight enhance the feeling of being in an oil painting. Nothing moves, not even the cows.

Then I see moving colour. I see the top half of a man seemingly slipping speedily through the sea of tawny grass, synchronicity of timing has us pass perpendicularly through the same riverscape, I on the N3 National bridge whilst he crosses the rusted iron bridge, I briefly see that he is furiously peddling a bicycle before his lower half disappears once again as his road re-enters the long veld.

I pass an Indebele mud house with a washing line so full of bright colours is feels that a set designer has been at work. A black eagle does a backward U-turn and plummets to the earth, my car has passed too fast and I don't see the upward loop of the U formation. I think that one ought to travel this land by a slower means, my Toyota on the tar road only allows brief cameos of this slow life.

I anticipate that the hard part will be finding the dead cows and loading them onto the trailer, but on arrival I find that both carcasses have already been stripped bare by the farm workers so I leave with an empty trailer.

I love the fact that I have traveled through this landscape today. I arrive home to my tent and light a fire to heat up the donkey.

The following day I set off to collect several blesbok carcasses. I use Leon's delivery van as only some of the meat will be for the lions, the rest has been well worked so will be processed as biltong. I take a look at the GPS co-ordinates I have been sent and see on Google Maps that I will be heading out past Verkykerskop. I set my phone to direct me to the pinpoint.

I am listening to 'All the Light I Cannot See' by Anthony Doerr. I don't have headphones with me as I am accustomed to listening to books and music via Bluetooth in my own bakkie. It is so loud in the van that in order to hear my book I have to hold the phone to my ear.

Micah sits on the seat alongside of me, it is too small a space for him to curl up in and so he finds the trip more tiresome than I do. After Verkyskerskop which is yet another stage set, a caricature of a town, I turn onto a dusty dirt road from which most of the dust has blown away leaving it a road of stones. So many I cannot avoid them, so we rattle and bump along loudly.

After a while I become unsure that it is correct to be driving for so long, I pull over, well stop in the middle of the deserted road, to check Google who has been quiet for too long it feels. There is no signal. I drive on until I reach a T junction. The map is still on my phone and I manage to trace my way to the destination by using it as an old fashioned ordinance map. The filaments of white lines on the screen; through some portal of unfathomable thought, actually represent the network of stones, dust and dry roads of the world I am really in.

I do not pass workers in fields, I do not pass another traveller on the roads. I am glad Micah is with me. I find the farm and two men who ask me who is going to load all the meat. I pay them to drop their reluctance and help me. We set off for home. Now that I'm more sure of the way, I let my concentration wonder. Eventually the racket inside of the white van becomes white noise and I get to look around. The Eastern Free state mountains are unassumingly unreal. It is a surprise to see one. In what feels like an eternity of barren land there exist a scattering of these monumental sienna toned rock buttresses. It is so beautiful I stop to take photos. I breath in the dry landscape and feel the world around me.

I am happy to have slowly rattled through this landscape today. I arrive home to light a fire under the donkey for my camp shower on the side of the rock mountain on which I have pitched my tent.