Kingsley Holgate - Afrika: Dispatches from the Outside Edge: An Epic Journey to Save and Improve Lives

Published in 2009 by Struik Travel & Heritage
(an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd)
Company Reg. No. 1966/003153/07
Wembley Square, First Floor, Solan Road, Gardens, Cape Town, 8001
PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa
www.randomstruik.co.za

Copyright in published edition: Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd 2009
Copyright in text, maps, sketches: Kingsley Holgate except map on front cover and preceding the list of contents: MapStudio 2009
Copyright in photographs: Bruce Leslie, except where otherwise indicated 2009

ISBN 9781770075047 (print)
ISBN 9781920545000 (epub)
ISBN 9781920545017 (PDF)

Publisher: Claudia Dos Santos
Managing editor: Roelien Theron
Editor: Leah van Deventer
Designer: Catherine Coetzer
Cover designer: Robin Cox
Proofreader: Joy Clack

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Dispatches from
the utside Edge

An epic journey to save and improve lives

Dispatches from
the utside Edge

An epic journey to save and improve lives

The youngest of three boys, I was South Africa-born in the tropical city of Durban in the KwaZulu-Natal province, on 28 February 1946. I suppose Africa beckoned from an early age when as a small boy my father the tall, somewhat serious Reverend Arthur, a missionary teacher held me on his lap and enthralled me with stories of the great Victorian explorers. Dads favourites were the exploits of the Scottish explorer Dr David Livingstone. I loved the bit when he got attacked by a Kalahari lion. There was even an old black-and-white etching to prove it, coupled with Livingstones words from his journal that read:

The Lion caught my shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to the ground below together. Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat.

I was a mischievous young lad, and the Reverend Arthur was strict. I remember a stinging hiding with a fly swatter for digging into the hot homemade sausage-roll snacks before theyd found their way into the prayer meeting next door.

On the other hand, I think I might have been moms favourite. Ivy May, with her ample bosoms and blue rinse hair, was delightful. She loved adventure and wed all be piled into an old Chevy to camp in the bush as we made our way on long missionary journeys into the interior. I loved the fire at night; the old canvas bell tent flapping in the wind and the sounds of the wild. Some of you who have been around long enough will still remember the sisal guy ropes, the wooden pegs and mallets and the hissing of the old paraffin pressure lamp. The seed of travel and adventure was planted.

Once out of school I went off to do the typical freedom, rucksack-on-the-back, grow-a-beard thing. It was the sixties, with long-haired hippies shacked up with cheap drugs at the Pudding Shop in Istanbul, where you could sell your blood to stay alive. I taught English in Tehran in the old Persia; worked in kibbutzim and put up machine-gun bunkers in Israel; lost all my bucks at the Oktoberfest in Germany; sold insipid, pink hotdogs with soggy onions from a wheeled cart to drunks outside a pub in England; and even got a job with a bunch of gypsies erecting kiddies fairground rides. I hated the dishwashing jobs and proved way too thirsty to make a good barman. When I met lovely Yorkshire lass Gill Adams I was 23, a beach photographer on Paignton Pier in Devon in the beautiful south of England, and missing Africa. We fell in love and, after an on-and-off stormy romance, Gill joined me back in Africa where I belonged.

Despite her Yorkshire accent, the Zulus loved Gill at first sight and, in return, she fell in love with Africa. They nicknamed her Mashozi, meaning she who wears shorts, and that name has stuck to this day. We travelled South Africa in an old Kombi and survived by buying arts and crafts out in the bush and selling them to curio shops and collectors. We got married at a small stone-built mission church called Mandawe Cross, situated high up on Mandawe Hill close to where KwaBulawayo, King Shaka Zulus great military kraal, once stood. The church only holds about 25 people and the steeple is designed to look like an , or milking pail. Old Father Herald, the Catholic priest who built the church, claimed that it had been erected there in the face of great Zulu superstition.

Local folklore has it that Shaka would force the sangomas, or diviners, to sleep out here under the stars in order for them to prove their immortality. It wasnt only the spirits of the many dead bodies slaughtered by the kings men that made the place dangerous, but also the huge local hyenas that had become man-eaters.