Peter Comley - Django: The small dog with a big heart

DJANGO CHRONICLES THE TRAVELS OF A FEISTY FRONTIER TOWN DOG AND HIS BEMUSED HUMANS AS THEY EXPLORE THE WILDS OF AFRICA.

Crossing international borders creates hilarious situations while his charismatic nature wins the respect of reclusive tribesmen from remote and endangered cultures. Many dangers confront Django, be they aggressive wild animals or even more hostile humans. Seemingly oblivious of his diminutive stature he courageously faces every challenge and in the process saves a number of peoples lives including that of Peters wife, Salome.

Peter Comleys thirty years as a professional guide has led to many humorous and sometimes startlingly perilous incidents in some of the remotest places in Africa. Acknowledged as one of the Dark Continents leading guides, Peter, when he is not leading safaris, can generally be found in one or other secluded paradise, writing books and articles on travel and wildlife.

Django

The small dog with the big heart

Peter Comley

JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS

JOHANNESBURG & CAPE TOWN

In loving memory of Salome

19542010

Late is never better.

A Cowboy is Born

Maun The Place of Reeds. It should have been called The Place of Goats, I mused, or perhaps The Destiny of Donkeys. In the shade of a mopane tree outside the Duck Inn a goat was dancing on the bonnet of a hire car, striving to reach the ever-receding leaves. Little dents were appearing. The driver was sitting at a table next to me, smiling ruefully at the scene while he sipped on his beer. He made no effort to chase the animal away when it moved to the roof and teetered on its hind legs, its sharp hooves beating a tattoo as it continued its tireless quest for the leathery foliage. Perhaps the vehicle had let him down in the bush and he was exacting revenge on its owners.

In the 1980s, Maun was a virtually inaccessible dustbowl 300 gruelling kilometres from the nearest paved road. A small but exceedingly energetic frontier town, its human population was outnumbered by the goats, cattle and donkeys that roamed the rutted tracks. The livestock needed more grass than the Kalahari could produce and so, when the wind blew, the sand billowed off the naked land and blotted the world from view. Dust stung the eyes, blocked the nose and, if you opened your mouth to protest, clogged the teeth.

And I lived here by choice not only that, but I had enticed my future wife, together with her favourite cat, away from their city comforts to join me.

Maun lay just south of the Okavango Delta one of the worlds wildlife treasure chests and, as such, was an ideal springboard for the slumbering tourist giant that was just beginning to stir. The runway had recently been tarred and, in season, there was a regular drone of small Cessnas taking off and landing as they conveyed their clients to the few lodges that were scattered through the Delta.

Dusty 4x4s brought rugged, sunburnt and decidedly dustier tourists to town and deposited them at campsites and rough budget lodges, where they crowded the showers and the bars. They partied either because they had just survived the wilderness, taking home memories of snarling hyenas, mating lions and trumpeting elephants, or they were about to disappear into that wilderness in search of their own adventures. Maun was a lively place.

Unfortunately, with life comes death, and death must play its parallel role in any tale about this wild piece of African bush. The puppy you give your child for Christmas could become part of a pythons New Year banquet just a week later; the sparkling eyes of the graceful impala youve been quietly observing together with the stalking predator could glaze over in death moments later.

A dog a humandog if you like came into our lives as the result of the death of Marmalade, Salomes rotund ginger tom. Marmalade put me in mind of Garfield, the overweight comic-strip hero, except that our feline was considerably chunkier. That I played an unwitting role in his departure from this world has haunted me since the night he suffered a stroke. I argue in my defence that he was old and indolent, his idea of exercise being to stand, stretch and take two arthritic paces to his bowl of milk. He did, however, try to wake me, not Salome, to let me know that he was in distress and as I struggled irritably to avoid surfacing from a deep sleep, I clearly remember kicking him off the bed and onto the floor.

Some time later, Salome woke me in a panic.

Theres something terribly wrong with Marmalade! He seems paralysed from the waist down!

And there he was, prone on the floor, scrabbling with his front limbs and growling deeply; each accusatory mewl percolating from some inner depth: Why did you forsake me in my time of need? Murderer!

So it was in the middle of the night that I drowsily chauffeured Salome and her limp pet through the thick, sandy tracks of Maun to a sleepy government vet who, after a quick examination, declared that Marmalade was beyond help.

Salome was distraught. She could not bear to witness his suffering but neither could she mouth the fatal words. I sounded calmer than I felt.

I think its time to put him out of his misery.

She nodded consent and fled the room, unable to watch her beloved Marmalade rendered into a state from which he would never awake.

Hold the cat down, then, while I put him to sleep, the vet instructed.

The very last place that I wanted to be was in that vets living room as he charged a syringe with the lethal fluid that would take the life from a fellow traveller on this planet, and one who had been my wifes close companion for nearly two decades. I felt like an executioner as I held his wriggling limbs until they stilled.

Not only am I a murderer; I am also a con man. For many years I have been a professional wilderness guide, charging people good money to explore with me the remotest spots in Africa when, in fact, I would happily part with my own meagre resources for the privilege. This engenders a certain amount of guilt but not enough, it must be said, for me to change my calling. Regrettably, this very lifestyle, with its regular exposure to animal death in varied forms, did not equip me to console Salome in her grief, and for days nothing I could do or say would cheer her up in the slightest. I tried all the platitudes: These things happen, It was time for him to go, and He had a good life. Each attempt successively induced a longer, more miserable, but surprisingly tearless, face.

Lets find another pet, I suggested eventually, my mind secretly filled with the image of an endearing German Shepherd puppy.

No. Its too soon to replace Marmalade, she protested. I just couldnt bear it.

She moped around the house listlessly until our neighbour, Bobby John Bulger, a sinewy, phlegmatic American wildlife scientist who had spent the better part of a decade living with baboons (hence his name, from the Afrikaans word bobbejaan for baboon), came up with an ingenious idea to lift flagging spirits a video and popcorn evening.

That sounds like fun! Salome responded with much more enthusiasm than she had shown for anything since Marmalades passing watching a good movie is her idea of pure escapism. Besides, this would be a novelty for us in the Maun of 1988. Bobby John, you do the popcorn, Ill go to town and pick up a movie of choice for each of us and we can make a whole night of it. Peter, you can sort out the machine, and dont forget some fuel for the generator, OK?

At last, she was being her assertive self again.

We did not own a video machine, or a television for that matter, largely because we had no steady source of electricity. Two obsolete Rolls-Royce generators, which in their heyday had powered searchlights during the London Blitz in World War II, had found their way to Maun. They only served a four-kilometre radius and since we lived 10 kilometres from Maun we were spared the power surges that reduced the innards of most electrical appliances unfortunate enough to be in use at the time to a tangle of charred wires and molten plastic. This meant the townsfolk of Maun had good cause to be grateful that these museum pieces did not work very often, yet they grumbled incessantly about the lack of reliable electricity.