A metallic scratching and nasty squeaking from the tin roof above me woke me from my dreams at around 5:30 on Sunday morning. Something with claws was climbing around on the roof above me! I pulled the blanket and the sleeping bag, which I had put on because of the cold, up to my ears and bent my knees to make the best possible use of my body heat. It had become cold. My app showed me an outside temperature of nine degrees, and the thin boards of the hut were no real barrier for the cold outside air. While it was just becoming midsummer in Germany, we were reaching the height of winter here in the southern part of the hemisphere. During the day it was still often 25-30 degrees, but at night it could easily be as low as nine degrees.
The cold had already woken me several times during the night, but I hadn’t been sleeping very deeply anyway, because the cars and lorries had been tirelessly driving on the rough, coarse road and the cool, clear air had transmitted the soundscape of a service station directly to me.
I heard the nasty scratching on the roof again: ‘What is actually climbing around above me?’ I grumbled to myself and sat up in bed, annoyed. I had somehow imagined waking up on the first Sunday morning differently. Sleepily, I rubbed my eyes, stared into the hut and let the first week pass in review again.
It was really cold, but not only the nightly temperatures, my mood had also cooled down in the meantime and it hadn’t taken a week for me to slide into my first crisis. Basically, I had settled in quite well in the hut by now. I had been able to get almost everything I needed in town on Friday. Now I was still missing a small bedside lamp and a fly net so that I could open the windows at dusk.
The small wooden hut was really very rudimentary and looked more like a wooden garden shed with a bed and desk than a real house. There were cracks and openings to the outside everywhere, where insects could enter or hide. This was particularly worrying in a country that was also home to some truly nasty creatures. After each night, new little droppings could be found on the cross struts, and every evening, countless light-seeking moths found their way into the interior. All of this did not exactly create a homely atmosphere for me, as someone who is used to living in big cities. However, I was well aware of my privileged living situation in relation to the other students: I lived alone, so I had a relatively large amount of space and electricity in my hut. That was not a matter of course and not everyone had the same. Most of the students lived in pairs in a small space, many in large tents and some didn’t even have electricity. But sometimes I wondered if it wouldn’t have been better in a tent after all. At least you could lock everything in there – as long as the tent was intact.
The other students didn’t seem to mind these circumstances, though. Some even left their windows and doors open in the dark and had all their clothes strewn all over the place, supposedly a ‘paradise’ for spiders and other creepy-crawlies. That impressed me a little. Was I perhaps overreacting a little? Was my northern European sensibility just too sensitive?
However, my emerging sensitivity was further intensified by all kinds of insects that had taken a liking to my presence, especially my blood: my body, but especially my elbows, were now speckled with small, red bites. At first, I suspected an allergic reaction to the new, not yet washed ranger uniform. But Tom suspected rather small ‘sand flies’. Mini little mosquitoes that looked more like dust than like living creatures. On Tuesday evening, when I wanted to put on my fleece, I discovered a huge, fingernail-sized tick that had dug itself deep into it. “In the fleece? ‘How stupid can you be?’ was the first thing that came out of my mouth. But what worried me most was the fact that I had only worn this fleece in the common rooms in the evening – and not outside during a walk. So how did this huge tick get there?
‘There are a lot of ticks here, especially in summer, and some of them have bacteria that can make you ill. – Tick fever’ discouraged me even more. The fever was supposedly nothing serious like Lyme disease, but it still knocked you out for several days. I really didn’t need that! He himself had already had the fever twice, Tom added, and gave me the obvious tip ‘Always check in the evening!’ I did as I was advised and actually discovered a small black tick on my right lower leg the next day. It had already anchored itself nicely in the skin, but was very small. In my hut, I then tried to remove it with a tweezers (it was still too small for the tick card), but it put up a good fight. In the end, I won, and so I ended up holding the little beast between the forceps of the tweezers. When I wanted to check whether I had also removed the parasite’s stinging tools and opened the tweezers for that, the tick suddenly jumped away with a big leap. ‘Jumping ticks? WTF! Africa, you’re really giving it to me,’ I thought in horror, while I hastily caught this ‘thing’ again with my fingers and crushed it with my fingernails. Blood, my blood, pointed at my nail and on closer inspection, I realised that it was not a new ‘African jumping tick’ but a flea! I didn’t know whether to be happy about it though. I had never seen a flea that bit into the skin so hard and resisted removal like a tick!
As if that wasn’t enough for one week, on Wednesday I started having real stomach or rather intestinal problems. These had already made themselves felt on Tuesday morning, but on Wednesday I was at the point where I wanted to take medication – after two and a half days in the bush.
The hygienic facilities, i.e. shower cubicle, toilets and washbasin, also contributed to my overall mood. The ceramic parts were basically clean because they were cleaned daily by the hard-working household ‘ladies’, or as they called themselves from the end of the week, ‘heroes’. But the shower cubicles themselves were very rudimentary and made of simple, rough exposed aggregate concrete and rough wooden boards. One cubicle had tiles, for the others there was apparently no longer enough. There was usually water, often warm, but this was never reliable and very difficult to adjust correctly – sometimes it was so boiling hot, then again freezing cold. But at the latest when several showers were used on the line in front of you, not even a trickle would reach you. ‘Thank God I don’t have any hair to wash,’ I thought the first time I showered. It was not a European standard – but I hadn’t expected it to be.
The student kitchen that we had to use at the weekends lived up to its name and looked and smelled exactly as you would imagine a student kitchen for someone in their early twenties, away from home for the first time. I’ll spare you the linguistic details and let your imagination run wild. Anyway, I first had to get used to college life among all the kids with their issues, problems and sensitivities. Unlike what I had expected, they didn’t focus on nature all day long, but on the contrary, they were mostly concerned with themselves and their own, still small world.
The monkeys, on the other hand, enjoyed the lack of responsibility of my fellow students and took every opportunity to enter the kitchen through the door that had been left open again and to have an (egg) party themselves.
Then there were the rules and hieratic social structures, which I found unexpected for a nature school. In addition to the Monday morning ‘Room Inspections’, the ban on leaving the premises, bringing alcohol or ‘wandering around’ at night, there were also small rules about which table could be used for eating and in which order to queue at the food counter. I was quite accustomed to hierarchical structures and rules through the police – but I had also come to South Africa to escape them somewhat. The habitus lived at BNT limited my scope of action, my perceived freedom, undermined my sovereignty and subliminally created a feeling of immaturity in me – even if I was not the original target group. But I had to go through with it.
Besides the perceived lack of freedom, I was also actually dependent. I didn’t have a car on site. This meant that if I wanted to move away from the camp, I had to ask someone for a ride. This circumstance had been clear to me from the outset – also that this would not be easy for me. However, I had accepted this situation because I was too stingy to rent a car for the duration of the training at BNT just to drive twenty kilometres to the next town at the weekend. So this decision had been rationally reasonable. Emotionally, however, it led me further and further into an unexpectedly pronounced, mentally critical situation. The fact that I didn’t always understand everything immediately due to my poor language skills and therefore a lot of information simply passed me by, as well as the daily situation that I didn’t know anything (yet) but the others knew an awful lot, was the icing on the cake of my young unhappiness.
Development lies beyond the comfort zone
So it’s all rubbish in Zulu-land?Pack my things and go home? Back to familiar Germany? Back to independence and freedom and to my adult social environment, back to my safe, familiar comfort zone? But also back to bad weather, city life, everyday life and the same old impressions?
Not at all! Yes, all the impressions and circumstances were exactly the same for me and the feelings were there too. But I had expected some kind of crisis at the beginning. I had expected to be eaten by insects and I hadn’t expected a lodge with room service and a hot tub. But more importantly, this was only one, grubby side of the coin!
On the other hand, it wasn’t that dramatic: the noisy street was only so busy on weekends. During the week, cars or trucks often only passed sporadically from 9:00 p.m. on, and sometimes I could even listen to the sounds of nature in complete silence. Yes, it got very cold at night sometimes, but it was winter here and heading towards summer. Then I could complain about forty degrees and until then I had enough warm stuff with me.
The animals scratching creepy on the roof were the well-known, small grey vervet monkeys. They were a mischievous bunch, but I found them funny. The sand flies were really annoying, but it was partly my own fault. One afternoon, I thought it would be a good idea to sit in the evening sun, first in a T-shirt, then topless, and enjoy the sunset while studying. Unfortunately, the sand flies also enjoyed me there. I won’t do that again. From now on, I’ll be wearing long clothes in the evenings when it gets too warm for them. I’ll spray myself with DEET and maybe the regular consumption of the black seed oil I brought with me will help. As for the giant ticks, I can only keep searching diligently and otherwise just pray – but at some point it will get me, that’s for sure. Maybe without a fever?! Thankfully the fleas were not in my hut, but only in the sand, and kindly only one at a time settled on my legs.
My bowels had settled again. I had suspected the drinking water. This was normal tap water and was stored in silos, so-called ‘jojo tanks’ in the sun, until it was used up. ‘Drinkable’ as I was assured. But my stomach was weak and I just went ahead and filled my huge thermos flask with hot, boiling water in the evening and left the lid open overnight. So the next day I had warm, germ-free water to drink. ‘It’s supposed to be much healthier!’ and hopefully by the hot summer my weak European immune system will have adjusted to the conditions here.
Fortunately, I only have to use the student kitchen at the weekend. The showers are what they are. Cold and hot showers are supposed to be healthy, so maybe I’ll start with them. And my ‘garden hut’ – well, at least it was ‘my own’ hut. I had my own little kingdom and even a small veranda. Plus (almost) permanent electricity and my mosquito net. I managed well with that for the next few months.
My young college ‘fellow students’ were otherwise very, very friendly and helpful. Most of them were super open-minded and actually all of them were really very knowledgeable. Of course it’s stupid when you don’t know that much yourself. On the other hand, I was able to learn so much from them.
So the bottom line was that it wasn’t that bad at all and I hadn’t just expected an initial crisis due to all the new impressions, but that was exactly why I came here: to expand my comfort zone and experience new impressions and ways of life.
Strong nature, strong abilities
Just seven days had passed, but it felt like an eternity! I had so many impressions, learned so many new things and was literally ‘bombarded’ with names and information that week. But now I was orientated. Not only in the camp, but also slowly in the Kuleni Reserve itself, so that I could already take my first walks alone. This was something I really appreciated and it gave me a lot of energy!
I particularly enjoyed the sunrises and sunsets. The muted, dull colours of the earth and the plants themselves are phenomenal, but the sunrises and sunsets were in a league of their own. The nature in Kuleni was truly beautiful and omnipresent. There were traces of wild animals everywhere and sometimes they even showed themselves. Zebras, impala, warthogs, njala. The birdlife was amazing. So numerous and colourful – and in winter, too. I only felt a little sad when I thought that I had to recognise all these birds. But the best thing was: all this was right on my doorstep! Sometimes even in the truest sense of the sentence: On Thursday, Tom came to my hut to show me a green bush snake that had settled in a bush near the main building. Small, green, harmless. But easily confused with the local ‘boomslang’, one of the most venomous snakes in the world, as I learned directly from him. The poison causes internal organs to bleed until you bleed to death! The day before yesterday, my neighbour Steffen had a small cobra under his hut, which he pulled out between the stones using special tongs and threw back into the bush about 200 metres away. And yesterday, I found a pile of fresh little impala droppings and lots of tracks just 20 metres from my entrance.
What I also really liked were the group ‘walks’ every morning. I loved the walks. They were like strolls with a special theme. A short guided tour organised by an experienced student. You could sign up for one of the tours on offer the night before, and we set off at 6:30 a.m. and didn’t finish until breakfast at around 8:00 a.m. The idea was for the advanced students to practice guiding, for the other participants to repeat their material, and for me to be able to learn everything in small chunks.
This is how I learned how to find my way around in the bush, for example, by using sticks and the sun to create a compass. I identified my dominant leg, which is important to know in which direction you unconsciously drift when walking, even if you think you are walking straight ahead – and I learned to determine the compass direction without the sun and compass using a termite mound. During the tracking itself, the first tracks were explained to me, but I hardly retained any of the information – there was just too much at the beginning. However, we did discover the tracks of a leopard, which has its hunting ground here in the reserve – I tracked it. On another tour, all kinds of birds were explained to me (and how to catch them), and on yet another day, I got to know many interesting trees and bushes. For example, the wood of the ‘white ironwood’ is so dense and heavy that it sinks in water, but burns forever (if you can get it small enough). The curry bush, which grows knee-high everywhere, is yellow and smells of curry, is used by predators to mask their own smell and is said to relieve headaches. The Swazi Grape herb can be used to stick open wounds closed when the leaves are crushed, and the white latex sap of the toad tree can be used to stick all kinds of things together. I got to know the ‘Green Thorn Torch Wood’ tree, which is so firmly rooted in the ground that no elephant can bend it over and is revered by the Zulu, the local tribe, as a symbol of strength and resilience. The ‘Small Knopp Wood’ is also said to have strengthening, magical powers.
In addition to the morning tours, the first week was spent learning about firearms legislation and, in particular, how to handle firearms. I got to know the .375 calibre ‘bold action’ rifle through ‘dry firing’ and practised some of the drills extensively. At the beginning of the drill, it took me fourteen seconds, but by the end of the first day of training, I had managed to cut the time to nine seconds. That was a success and I really enjoyed it.
Suddenly my face started to glow. I had sat down on the veranda of my little hut to write this report. Now the sun had completely peeled itself out of the bushes and I was fully illuminated. ‘This is getting too hot for me, 22 degrees or not. It’s definitely warmer here,’ I grumbled to myself and moved into the hut. It was shadier there, but still cosy and pleasantly warm.
The door was wide open and the wind whispered rustling through the bushes and leaves. The fly net that I had hung in front of the door played with the sunlight, creating a pleasant, very idyllic atmosphere, a lovely ‘safe space’. I listened to the next gust of wind, which made the bushes around me rustle ag….
BAMM!
With an almighty crash, something very heavy and very large had crashed onto the tin roof of my hut and the ‘idyll’ was suddenly over. Adrenalin shot into my body and suddenly pushed my pulse from a slow 60 beats to 110. ‘What on earth was that?!’
I jumped up, climbed onto the porch railing and looked carefully over the edge at the tin roof. Nothing. Then my gaze fell on the green, firm fruits hanging from the tree next to my hut. They were slightly larger than a tennis ball and slightly smaller than a small bowling ball, but just as heavy and firm. The Zulu call them ‘Amahlala’, ‘Green Monkey Orange’. Because they taste so good to monkeys – once they have worked their way through the thick, firm skin and the woody layer.
‘If it hadn’t been for a monkey orange falling on my thin tin roof,” I thought to myself with a grin, jumping back onto the veranda from the railing and knocking my hands on my shorts.
I think it was time for a nice, sweet tea!
