The night had been quite good, but since the hut was made of simple wooden boards, it had become quite cool at 12 degrees outside temperature. My bedding, on the other hand, had kept wonderfully warm, so I could even remove the dark red, fluffy blanket. Unfortunately, the environment here was unexpectedly noisy. But it wasn’t any birds or wild animals that had robbed me of my night’s sleep, but the rough road, which was obviously not far away. The trucks in particular were making so much noise that without earplugs I could hardly have thought of sleeping. In personal protection, I always have to have something in my ear, but here I had actually been looking forward to a few months without anything in my ear.

Wian, a small, short-haired, muscular employee of Bhejane and former rugby player, had announced that he would come in the morning to see ‘if everything was okay with my hut’. These are my words. His words the night before were: ‘Room Inspection, 06:30 a.m.!’ This announcement reminded me of my time in the barracks during my training with the federal police – when I was 18 years old. A long time ago, a great time, but I was glad it was over. All the more I was irritated by the announcement here, at a school for nature guides. But it was a different country and a different education system and a lot would be new and different for me. I was prepared for that.

While I waited, I stretched a little in the gentle morning sun and then sat down on a chair in front of my hut to watch the sun rise. Suddenly I heard something squeaking behind me. I turned around and saw a dozen large black birds coming out of the bushes behind me. My first wildlife encounter here in camp! I remained calm, but they seemed to have already spotted me, but still showed no interest in me. The group busied itself, pecking at the ground, and then headed straight past me, gathering in front of Steffan’s hut, all the while chirping loudly. By now, he was definitely awake. ‘Good morning,’ Wian called, with a friendly, benevolent smile on his face.

Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs and two slices of white bread, or optionally thin cornflakes with UHT milk. You could also make instant coffee from chicory or black tea at a tea and coffee station with a large water boiler. I spontaneously opted for black tea. In my opinion, you can count on reasonably decent quality tea even in remote places. All you need is water and a bag (greetings to the English). With coffee, on the other hand, you can ruin a lot more. For example, with instant coffee. Or chicory.

After breakfast, I had a little time and used it for a first exploratory walk around the campsite: there were three ‘camps’ in total. In other words, small clusters of huts or tents where the students were housed. Some of the accommodations were made of wood like mine, but in the back area there were also several safari tents. These were tents that were as large as a hut and were furnished, and had a wooden floor. I learned that there was usually no electricity there. ‘But more nature and fewer roads,’I thought. I followed a red dirt road that wound through the undergrowth and into the grassland and suddenly found myself standing in front of a group of about eight warthogs. They looked at me with interest, but then hardly let themselves be impressed by me and after a while disappeared back into the undergrowth. I was thrilled, because I only knew wild boars from Germany, but I had never been so close to them.

At 9:00 a.m., I met Olga again and received my first set of learning materials: weapons. Funny – I hadn’t counted on that. Room inspection and weapons – I felt like I was back in my youth.

Since I had originally booked with a different school, but they were no longer able to train me, BNT had kindly taken me on. However, this also meant that I joined the courses a little out of order and now first took part in the training to become a trail guide. Trail guides are nature guides who explore the wilderness with their guests on foot instead of by car, thus much more directly. This suited me very well, because I was interested in the direct, intense encounter with the wilderness. However, since on foot you lack the supposed metallic protection of a safari vehicle, the guides were legally obliged to carry a rifle with a ‘penetrating calibre’ – strong enough to stop an elephant in an emergency – for the protection of their guests. But first of all, it was time to swot up on weapons. The documents consisted of two parts: A thin DIN A4 booklet of 20 pages and a thick booklet, about the size of a college block. ‘First the thin one,’ I received from Olga. ‘When that’s done, there’s the first exam and then the thick one!’

‘When do I have to know this by?’ I asked as I left the office. ‘Weekend? By the weekend would be good!’

I opened the documents.

‘Whew!’

The thin booklet was mainly about legal regulations in South Africa, with the corresponding specialised vocabulary. The thick booklet was more about the practical side, and especially about the rifle and the mechanics themselves. I could do more with that. ‘Well, this could be something.’

At 10:00 a.m., Christa, who runs the Nature College together with her husband Dylan, gathered us at the large, now extinct fireplace. We were randomly divided into six groups and were to deal with the formation of a new society in the context of an end-time scenario. A fun game, but my head was buzzing, my eyes were getting heavier and heavier and I was getting a slight headache. All the new impressions, names, processes, but above all the constant English conversations took their toll on my concentration.

I wanted to take a short power nap during my lunch break and was already on my way to my hut when I stumbled into a group of animals again. This time they were monkeys. ‘Vervet Monkey’, as I had learned in the meantime. The same species had put a grin on my face while I was having breakfast at the seaside hotel in Durban, but this time they only elicited a tired smile from me. Either it was the tiredness, or I had already become accustomed to the high incidence of wildlife. ‘But that happened quickly,’ I thought, ignoring the grey animals.

After lunch, consisting of two tennis ball-sized greasy fried ‘bread balls’, white beans in spicy tomato sauce and two slices of sausage, there was a meeting for everyone. It was mainly about general rules of conduct and how to behave in the event of conflict – things that should be self-evident, I thought. However, the way it was presented, and in particular the depth with which it was presented, reminded me a little of primary school, and for the first time I thought that it probably wasn’t that self-evident after all. Slowly, the ‘room inspections’ made sense.

But it was only when I found out about some of the ‘camp rules’ that I really understood what my youth had been like: leaving the camp only on weekends, no ‘wandering around’ without a reason after 9:00 p.m., no alcohol in the camp and a maximum of two drinks a day from the BNT shop Khoffee Khaja. The latter was fine with me. I didn’t need alcohol. But the rest of it annoyed me and left a bitter taste in my mouth, as these rules clearly curtailed my freedom and sovereignty. ‘Every rule also has its story,’ I reassured myself and slowly realised where I had ended up. It was not so much an adult education centre as a nature college. A college full of students in their early twenties who had left home for the first time. In my early twenties, I only had parties, girls and entertainment on my mind and didn’t need rules like that. ‘Well, it’s only for a few months.’

After this meeting, I urgently needed to move around and continued to explore the accommodation. Diagonally opposite the main stone building, with a large kitchen, dining hall, office and two lecture theatres, was the stone wash house, including a small gym and the student kitchen. Behind the main building, I could make out a kind of empty ‘greenhouse’, but here it was more of a ‘shade house’. Nets here served to protect the plants from the sun and to keep the water in the soil. Behind the fireplace, which was located at the main building, a magnificent view of a valley full of scrub and trees opens up to the south. I took a few photos, fetched my laptop from my hut and went back to the now almost empty common area.

With a heavily sugared tea, I sat down at a table in the large common room next to Otter, a

tall, blond student, probably also in his early twenties. Otter was a ‘bird of paradise’ in the truest sense of the word. Last night he was wearing a long, brightly coloured and patterned shirt, which was probably inspired by an indigenous design. But above all, he had some finely engraved birds on his neck, arms and shins. But what was most striking was his manner. He had definitely drunk from the ‘chatter water’ and was extremely open-minded, but always friendly. For me, as an introverted observer, it was almost a bit much, but I liked him. My eyes fell on the Gopro, which was lying on the table next to Otter.

‘Do you make films?’ I asked.

‘Yes!’ Otter replied, beaming with joy. ‘Just for fun, but I’m quite good at it.’ We talked a little about filming and technology before I turned to my laptop.

‘Where do you come from?’

Tom, a BNT employee in his early forties, dark blonde, about my height, but with alert eyes, called out and sat down next to me.

‘Germany’

We chat a little about why I’m here and what I usually do, and when I tell him that I mainly earn my money with personal protection, he suddenly pricks up his ears.

‘So you do martial arts?!‘ he asks me euphorically.

’A little” I answer cautiously. I don’t like it when people brag about their “great” fighting skills. I consider showing off to be a weak character trait.

Tom then told me that he had been doing Krav Maga for five years and sometimes did a spontaneous session here in the camp with Otter. He invited me to join him next time, or even better: if I had time, to write to him and see if it was a good time for him too. Then we could train together for a bit and he could learn a few new things. He enthusiastically searched for me in the Whatsapp group and wrote me a personal message so that I had his number handy.

My phone vibrated. I glanced at the message:

‘TOM’

As the room slowly became louder and louder, I stopped working on my laptop. On the way to the hut, my eye fell on the sports room and on Wian and Tom. They were standing at the back exit, fiddling with a barbell and discussing something animatedly.‘I’ll ask where you can do pull-ups here,’ I thought to myself and turned left to get behind the building. When I came within earshot, I could hear the two of them talking about how they could attach something under the canopy of the ‘gym’.

‘Hey guys, do you have any idea where you can do pull-ups here?!” I asked, leaning against a wooden post.

The two turned to me and began to grin broadly.

‘We were just talking about that,” Tom replied, holding out the bar. Wian explained to me that until recently the gym had been the student kitchen, which had now been moved to a larger, newly built room. That’s why the gym finally has a canopy – the old dining area of the student kitchen. In the future, you could do yoga or Pilates or something there – ‘… or boxing and pull-ups,’ Tom shouted. But there was still work to be done. The three of us discussed where the best place for the punching bag and the pull-up bar could be, and I suddenly felt right at home.

I hadn’t even been there 24 hours and had obviously already found like-minded people. Great!

Hands up, weekend

Friday. After a last lunch together, the weekend was officially launched and we were finally allowed to officially leave the premises to go to Hluhluwe for shopping.

Without a car on site, however, I was dependent on a ‘lift’ from one of my fellow students and so I headed for the sandy, red car park with Kai, Kayle, Becky and her friend Ross. There were lots of huge SUVs here in all conditions and I was curious to see which one we would get into. Surprise: in none. With all those huge cars, I had hoped to find a ride in the smallest car in the yard, a mini Nissan. But I was happy to have found a ride at all. Four of us squeezed into the small car with the kids and together we sped off to Hluhluwe with good, euphoric vibes and loud pop music. It felt good to see something different after all the days in the camp – even though there was still plenty for me to discover in the camp and in the Kuleni Reserve – a change of scenery was refreshing.

Hluhluwe itself was 20 minutes away from Kuleni and was THE centre of the area. Here you could find almost everything your little heart desired. Two petrol stations, two large shops, a doctor, a pharmacy and even a hardware store.

The first stop was the supermarket ‘Spar’. Here we were almost the only white people again and it took forever for me to get my stuff. There was no tomato sauce, but a million ‘ketchup’, tons of rice and a huge meat counter. I still needed minced meat for my Bolognese in the evening, but the guys strongly advised me against buying it in the supermarket. ‘There is a butcher here that is a thousand times better!’ The checkout process then took surprisingly long. No, almost forever – nobody was in a rush here, quite unlike my experiences at German supermarket checkouts. Finally out of the shop, I went to the butcher via another supermarket, where I finally got my tomato sauce and where the checkout lady also took forever, of course.

‘Stop stop’ Ross suddenly shouted as we drove past a roadside stall. He wound down the window and shouted something at the saleswomen in Zulu. After a few wild words that I didn’t understand, a fragrant yellow pineapple and four large green balls were handed through the open window. ‘What is that?‘I asked, pointing to the huge green round balls. “Avocado!’

‘Avocado? ” I asked incredulously. The fruits were as big as mangoes and round like a ball. “Very tasty,” Becky assured me. ’And very cheap. Four for the equivalent of 5 euros,” Ross added with a grin.

‘Well, I’ll get them next time too,’ I thought.

‘Now we still need good bread,’ Ross shouted, whereupon Kyle loudly intervened: ‘First to the butcher!’

The butcher was an encounter in itself. According to the signs, alcohol was not allowed there, but donations were collected for needy animals. ‘Huh?!’

I ordered a rib eye steak on Kyle’s recommendation, whereupon the employee first disappeared into the ‘warehouse’ and heaved a quarter of a cow to the front, which he then sawed right in front of my eyes. With two steaks and 500 grams of minced meat in my hands, I left the butcher shortly afterwards, €10.50 ‘poorer’, and was prepared for the barbecue in the evening, called a ‘braai’ here.

On the way back to camp, Kai steered the car onto the grounds of the ‘Zulu Croc Resort’. ‘What are we doing here?’ I asked in amazement. ‘Buying bread,’ Kai replied.

‘Oh yes… here?!’

‘Yes, they have special bread here.’

The bread was not freshly baked, but was in the freezer. What was special, however, was that it was German grey bread! Imagine that! After a week of white bread, I naturally also bought a whole loaf, full of anticipation.