Her recovery proceeded without any further hitches and thereafter visitors to Doornleegte had the opportunity to come into close contact with white as well as black rhino. It was a bittersweet success. While I started to dream of a free life in the reserve for a re-wilded Munyane, I had stopped indulging such dreams for Bwana. Nevertheless he, like Mothlo and now Munyane too, was thriving. For that time I was content not to wish for too much more.
More came anyway. It started very quietly, but after 30 years of marriage I didn’t need a banner headline to tell me something was brewing.
Clive had always been a generalist, a kind of life-ecologist: interested in everything and in the way each component connected to every other component. He had never lost a child’s fascination with the world and enjoyed sharing that fascination with others. It was a most attractive quality to which people, adults and children alike, responded. I did myself. But there was a downside. He collected. Friends, stories, experiences, rhino skulls, grass seeds, bits of history, photographs, rocks…
When he started coming home with extra-long weathered wooden poles I suspected that it might be more than just the usual collector’s mania. At the wilderness school and in some of the bush camps similar poles had been used to create striking rustic screening fences, but the poles kept coming. Not just any old poles: they seemed to be specially selected – poles with history and character. I refused to enquire. If he had another scheme, he was going to have to come right out and say so. For the longest time he didn’t.
One day we were driving back from Vaalwater. About 40 kilometres out of town the route to Lapalala leaves the tarred road at a sign that says Melkrivier. You turn left and the gravel road takes you past several farms until you reach another Melkrivier sign. For Lapalala you keep left. The right takes you into the area named after the small river running through it. For most of the year this was hardly more than a “spruit”, a stream. But when in flood it ran white with chalky sediment, hence Melkrivier – Milky River. As far as one could see from the road this didn’t appear to be a particularly prosperous part of the Waterberg. Farmsteads tended to be modest. Here and there one would see derelict echoes of more successful times. Four kilometres from that second Melkrivier sign was one of them: an old school, fallen into disuse, for the children of pioneer families.
As we approached the junction I said something to the effect that it was a pity that no one had been able to find a use for the place – it was such a distressing reminder of time passing and of good effort going to waste. Instead of keeping left for Lapalala, Clive took the right-hand turn, and said, “Well, I’ve been thinking …”
The old school environs were overgrown and strewn with garbage. A melancholy place. Clive filled me in on the history. In the early years of the 20th century, especially in such a remote area, building a school to serve a tough farming community was not a simple matter. This one had its genesis in the amalgamation of two smaller farm schools, but the negotiations over the new location became so delicate that it had to be settled by exact, witnessed measurements with a surveyor’s chain. The precise mid-point between the two feeder schools lay just east of the Melkrivier.
For the first teachers’ residence, corrugated iron had to be imported from England. The hostel required another import: Italian prisoners of war who built it out of cement bricks. The design was undoubtedly influenced by the conservative and careful parents of the pupils: boys one side, girls on the other side, the teachers’ accommodation separating the two. Large black iron pots over an open fire served as the kitchen.
From those humble beginnings the Melkrivier Primary School expanded. More pupils, more teachers, more and improved buildings, a school bus, even street-lights. But in the 1980s its heyday was over. Pupil numbers dwindled and at the beginning of the ’90s the school closed. By the time Clive and I saw it, what was still standing and left un-scavenged was already depressingly close to a ruin. We strolled through the remains of a garden. It had evidently been laid out with care; the well-grown trees, shrubs and aloes must have been given a really good start to have survived the years of neglect. There was something terribly forlorn about that unloved garden. It seemed such a shame.
But that was from the human perspective, of course. There were geckos sunning themselves on the cracked wall of what used to be a fishpond. There were spiders and beetles and busy lines of ants. Lots of birdlife too, and all the while we were there, the call of a Burchell’s coucal – liquid burbles falling and falling again, over and over.
I found myself swept along with Clive’s vision for the place. It really was a beautiful plan. He pointed out that it would also be an eminently practical plan, supported by the whole family: the prospect of having to inherit their father’s 14 rhino skulls had become a running joke between our two sons. His Melkrivier plan would put a stop to that.
It was a lengthy process leading up to the purchase of the entire 100-hectare site and arriving at an integrated design and business plan with input from trustees and board members, but eventually in 1998 Clive’s hoard of wooden poles became the handsome and characterful perimeter to the entrance of a cultural museum complex. The Waterberg Museum preserved artefacts from the Stone Age, the Iron Age and pre-industrial settlements up to the 1800s, as well as from the pioneer settler history of the Waterberg. The Rhino Museum – the first in Africa – focused on the natural history and conservation of rhino, and housed among many other objects of interest those 14 rhino skulls. The Eugène Marais Museum was dedicated to the famous poet and naturalist who chose the Waterberg as his refuge, as the study area to develop his ideas on Holism, and as the place to end his life. There was also an art gallery, a library, a tourist information centre serving the Waterberg Nature Conservancy, and a licensed restaurant, Walker’s Wayside.
Closer to the little river, well away from the other buildings and busy-ness, there rose a small 12-seater chapel, open to anyone who needed to find a quiet space for contemplation or a private ceremony, or a place for remembrance and thanksgiving.
In the years that followed, that day – the enthusiasm and freshness of our hopes, the scope of it – has stayed with me. Did Clive sense the approach of something? Did I? I don’t remember that either of us said so, but then how often doesn’t it happen that one becomes aware of something moving, beckoning from somewhere just out of sight, and you don’t mention it to anyone? You just acknowledge to yourself that a particular course of action feels appealing, or necessary, even inevitable. I do remember that the enterprise had a sense of rightness about it, a sense of agreement that sustained us through the very demanding period of planning and restoration that lay ahead.
It was a demanding time on another front too. It began with a phone call. For us in the reserve in those days it was landline or nothing. Most of us didn’t bother with cellphones, and those who did very often found themselves in a locality without a signal. So people phoned when they knew they’d have a reasonable chance of finding you at home. Early mornings, evenings or, as in this case, lunchtime.
It was sandwiches and salad on the verandah. We’d only just sat down. I hoped it wasn’t going to be a long call. Even though Clive had been happy to do no more than grab a cup of tea and drink it standing up, I’d insisted on something a bit more substantial and a lot more relaxed. I needed it as much as I told him he did. Somehow we were always having to hurry on to the next thing that urgently needed doing. It had proven to be a hard habit to break.
I heard just enough of Clive’s side of the conversation to gather that he was talking to someone in the offices of the Northern Province (later to become Limpopo) provincial government. He came back out looking slightly stunned, and sat down. “That was Annemie de Klerk. You won’t believe what she told me. Asked me, actually.”
Annemie, from the Department of Environmental Affairs, had just returned from the USA where she’d been impressed with the UNESCO Man and Biosphere programme. She wondered if Clive would be prepared to present this idea – the Wa
terberg as a biosphere – to the members of the Waterberg Nature Conservancy.
“That’s it,” Clive said. “That’s our next step.”
As the first ratified biosphere in the savannah biome the Waterberg would be globally recognised, with biodiversity conservation and ecologically sustainable development balanced within an integrated management system. There’d be a core zone made up of areas of the highest conservation status: nature reserves such as Marakele, Masebe, Moepel, Wonderkop, Mokolo and the Nylsvlei wetland system. Around them there would be the buffer zone: mainly private farms with a conservation mandate, incorporating the Waterberg Nature Conservancy. Then the transitional zone where different forms of land use would be accommodated – economic activity, agriculture, the Waterberg’s 26 rural villages – in a way which would not adversely affect conservation.
Lapalala, due to the fact that it represented high conservation value, supported by environmental education and eco-tourism, would lie in the buffer zone. Its importance in safeguarding the core zone would in turn safeguard and enhance its own intrinsic value.
Clive was fired up. This was about more than Lapalala, but Lapalala itself couldn’t lose. In fact, without going this route, it stood to lose too much. The way the world was going the challenges for anyone engaged in the preservation of wilderness were ever mounting. Policymakers tended to not speak of wilderness and conservation; they spoke of resources and land use. Wildlife conservation was nothing more than one form of land use – there were others that to many decision makers seemed more important. There were rumblings hinting at insecurity around conservation priorities or support for such priorities in the longer term. Clive pointed out that, in a biosphere, the stakeholders of the Waterberg Nature Conservancy would find their voices joined and strengthened by that of the National Parks Board, the provincial government and the conservation agency of the United Nations, UNESCO.
“We’ve got to go for it,” he said. “I’ll call some people tonight. Dale first – he’ll support it. And then the Babers…”
With that I knew that we were heading into a campaign, one that would probably take years. Consultations, meetings, documents, presentations, travelling, more meetings. The Waterberg Biosphere Reserve was something Clive could already see, something that he wanted to see.
My mind was racing. “Where will you find the time?”
For once my anxieties spilled over. What about this, what about that, what about a hundred other things.
It wasn’t the response he needed. “Conit…”
He seemed to be searching for words. I waited, but after a moment he simply got up, walked down the steps, through the garden and out of sight. I heard the Pajero drive off. I knew he had only minutes to get to an appointment at the reserve office up on the plateau. He’d hardly eaten anything.
I had appeared ungenerous and didn’t like that picture of myself. I felt tired. Tired of seeing everyone else’s side of every issue and accommodating that, and of watching Clive do the same. Tired of seeing my husband wear himself out working for causes and issues, labouring on behalf of other people’s interests. I was tired of worrying about him.
The wife’s job description included this, I knew. You stood by. Not only by his side to share his dreams and successes, but as a witness too to the erosion of fatigue and of the world’s unkindnesses. Your every protective instinct might rear up, but you’d be told, “Water under the bridge. Let it go.” So you stood by and picked up the pieces.
There was the distant sound of a vehicle. Visitors driving out of the reserve after their stay in one of the bush camps, I thought. Later I’d find their comments and thanks in the visitors’ book. Always glowing. Always sad to be leaving. Always promising to return. There’d be lists of the animals and birds they’d spotted. Something wonderful they’d witnessed described with rows of excited exclamation points. Some people left poems. Children left drawings of lopsided antelope or a smiling giraffe or a Thank You garlanded with hearts and stars.
I listened as the vehicle approached, then slowed down for the turn-off and realised they were coming to Doornleegte for a last rhino visit. They were early. But the bus with the children from the wilderness school wouldn’t be far behind. By the time they arrived there had better be a smiling, professional woman to welcome them. One who had the answers to their questions and the tact and patience to help them overcome their ignorance or fear. A neat, self-assured woman who would pose for their pictures and let them stay for as long as they liked to admire the creatures she herself admired and loved so much.
I cleared the table and went to the bathroom to wash my face and apply a token lick of lipstick. In the mirror was a middle-aged woman with reddened green eyes. More grey in the blonde hair than she remembered noticing before. Her skin – a fair German skin after all – needed more protection against the murderous African sun. Her hands too could do with some pampering. Though, pamper as she might, they’d still be worker’s hands.
Just as well, I thought. The elegantly manicured hands of women with elegant and manicured lives would not last through one day of Doornleegte’s unfeminine work routine. My work boots didn’t go with petticoats and lace. I didn’t embroider or paint or pot. My work involved shovels and buckets and paying attention to animals’ excretions. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I didn’t smell nice. But would I have it any other way? I loved my life – all of it. Also, perhaps especially, those parts that required a bit of backbone and grit. The woman in the mirror had the grace to look ashamed. “Zählen Sie Ihren Segen,” (Count your blessings) I told her, and turned to face the rest of my day.
Shortly after the last of the visitors left, I heard the Pajero return. I finished up at the rhino enclosures, got cleaned up and then took a tea tray to Clive’s studio. He was rummaging through his sketchbooks. He looked up and after a moment cleared a corner of the table. I put down the tray.
He pulled me over to the window. It was open, letting in the warm velvety air of the bush. In the late-afternoon light the trees glinted and shone: bronze, copper, jade, gold. Apart from the ever-present cicadas and birds, it was utterly quiet.
Clive leaned his head against mine. “Tell you what,” he said. “When it’s all over and done we’ll leave them to it, and then these two old elephants will lumber off and have themselves a nice long holiday.”
NINE
Home
WHILE THE MELKRIVIER DEVELOPMENT and the biosphere initiative ate into every spare moment we had, there was a young white rhino engaged in a battle of wills with her foster mother over the matter of weaning. I was attempting to shift the emphasis away from Munyane’s supplementary feed – her beloved milk formula and game pellets – to grass. Every day we’d set off on our rambles to her grazing grounds, Munyane in a sunny temper, playful and cooperative enough to humour me with a perfunctory effort at grazing. But then she’d suddenly stop, her head up, large ears twisting, a snort and she’d be off: a headlong charge, red dust flying as she launched into a dogged, unrelenting attack until the enemy was lying pulverised at her stomping feet, and she’d be snorting and wheeling, bulging eyes searching for the next termite mound to vanquish.
It was impossible to be stern with her. Her antics were less amusing though when it wasn’t a termite mound or a fallen branch in her sights, but the 12-seater bus which the field officers from the wilderness school had ill-advisedly left in the Doornleegte driveway. Just like Bwana and Mothlo, Munyane appreciated motorised transport, especially the kind that had mudguards and bumpers tailor-made for the sharpening of horns, and that most inspired refinement of the ordinary rubbing post, a sliding door. She was just as inquisitive as Bwana and more active during the day. This was to be expected: the open grasslands, the natural habitat of white rhino, offered good opportunities for vigorous play and exercise, while the black rhino’s natural inclination was to remain sheltered and concealed in its preferred overgrown habitat until night time when it would be more active.
The first time t
he gate to Munyane’s enclosure was left open for the night the Doornleegte kitchen received a spring-cleaning to end all spring-cleanings. Clive protested, but was told that, if he wasn’t prepared to help, he should just go to bed and sleep, astonishing as it was to me that he could do so while an innocent and ignorant little rhino calf was wandering alone and unprotected in the wilderness, prey to a multitude of threats. He made the point that she was not a baby anymore and not all that ignorant either – her instincts were intact, and if I wasn’t reassured about the extent to which she’d acquired proper rhino behaviour I wouldn’t have opened her gate in the first place. Besides, this wasn’t another Bwana scenario. Munyane was a female, and like all females she would know exactly what to do if a male were to cross her path. On the whole he rather thought his concern should be for the male.
I tackled the kitchen cupboards which had to be emptied, none too quietly, of all their contents and scrubbed and re-organised. Halfway through the night I discovered that Munyane was back, fast asleep in her sleeping quarters as if nothing unusual had happened. This became the pattern: if she felt like it she’d wander off in the evening and by morning we’d find her waking up after a good sleep in her old quarters. I was enormously heartened by her placid acceptance of her freedom, and grateful too. She was growing into a massive animal, her need for grass was growing exponentially – the rangers who cut Bwana’s browse every day also brought fresh grass for her, but it was an unsustainable arrangement.
A Rhino in my Garden Page 13