Krüger - The Wilderness Family

MAHLANGENI

IN A FARAWAY corner of the north-west region of Kruger National Park, there is a heart-shaped basin of sand and forest where two rivers meet. The Little Letaba enters the basin from the north, the Greater Letaba from the west. They come together in a swirl of froth and gurgling whirlpools, then settle down to continue sedately onwards as one waterway, the Letaba River. Its gently moving waters are full of hippo and crocodile, its sandy shores patterned with game tracks. On all sides of the river basin, mopani woodlands roll away into a vast landscape of wilderness and solitude.

The area is called Mahlangeni, which is the Tsonga word for meeting place.

One of the most isolated ranger sections in the park, Mahlangeni was home to my game-ranger husband, our three daughters and me for eleven years.

Our house on the north bank of the Letaba overlooked the merging rivers and the forested basin. Squirrels and mongooses played in our garden. Bushbuck and monkeys were daily visitors. A lone leopard patrolled the neighbourhood at night. Other neighbours included baboons, hippos, elephants and lions. Throughout the years various strays and orphans from the animal kingdom were temporary members of our family.

Our days were filled with magical moments and unforgettable adventures.

KOBUS WAS BORN and raised on a bushveld farm in the Northern Province of South Africa. Since his early childhood he has loved the African bush and its creatures and wanted to protect them from destruction.

Although I was also born on a farm in the Northern Province, not far from where Kobus was born, we didnt meet until almost twenty years later when we were both studying at the University of Pretoria.

After discovering that we shared not just a first name (mine being the feminine version of his) but also a farm upbringing and a love of wild places, we became good friends. The first time we went out was to see the movie Born Free the story of George and Joy Adamson and Elsa the lioness. It was the most beautiful movie either of us had ever seen, and afterwards Kobus confided to me that his dream was to become a game ranger. It occurred to me that my dream was to become a game rangers wife.

We got married after we graduated.

Kobus applied for the position of game ranger with South African National Parks but learned there were no vacancies. So we went to live in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, where Kobus worked as a journalist and I as a translator for three years, then moved to Johannesburg where we lived and worked for another six years before Kobus finally received a letter from the warden of Kruger National Park, inviting him to Skukuza, the operational headquarters and largest of the parks tourist camps.

We read the letter a hundred times to make sure it wasnt a dream.

The letter also stipulated that the applicants wife be present at the interview. I wondered why, but lost no time in making arrangements for my mother to look after my three young children for a couple of days.

We arrived at Skukuza in the evening and spent the night in the tourist camp, hardly sleeping but listening to the enthralling sounds of the wilderness night.

In the morning we reported to the chief rangers office for our interview. It was conducted by the chief ranger and the park warden. They looked stern and official. They asked Kobus why he had applied for the job, and why he would want to leave a good job in the city to work in the bush. Kobus answered simply that the bush made sense to him and that he had wanted to be a game ranger for as long as he could remember.

They seemed satisfied.

They then turned to me and gave me a lecture on the hardships and privations that a game rangers wife could expect to endure. They warned me of the almost unbearable summer heat, the danger of malaria, the general hazards of the bush, the inconvenience of living far from doctors, schools, shopping centres and other amenities. They reminded me that not even basic services such as telephones and a regular mail delivery were available. They talked at length of the extreme loneliness that one might experience at a remote ranger station, telling me that a game rangers work often took him away from base for long periods of time, leaving his wife home alone. How would I cope with that? Go home and think carefully about this, they said. Give it at least a month. And if you both decide, without reservation, that you are still interested, let us know.

Kobus and I went back home and talked daily about what life at the Mahlangeni ranger station would mean for us. My main concern was for my children. What if one of them became ill? Or was injured? Where would they go to school?

And yet I so wished for my children to grow up in a time and place where pleasures would be simple, and experiences rich. Wouldnt the advantages of a wilderness childhood far outweigh the disadvantages?

I believed they would.

So Kobus and I confirmed our interest in the posting and, soon after, received the news that Kobus was hired.

Two months later, in the autumn of 1980, we had sold our house in the city, packed up our belongings and, together with our children, were on our way to a new life at this remote meeting place in the land of our dreams.

THE WARM AIR was thick with the earthy smells of the riverine woods and full of the songs of a thousand birds. Splashes of afternoon sunlight played through the traceries of trees on a buttercup-yellow house. Tree squirrels peered down at us from the sprawling branches, twittering enquiringly, bushy tails at full mast. The whisper of small lives was everywhere.

Three blond-haired little girls, Hettie, aged eight, Sandra, seven, and Karin, two, skipped and danced among the trees, babbling and laughing.