Africa!

Africa! (24 October – 11 November 2014)

I had been wanting to write about my travels in South Africa while I was there, but the experiences were so intense that it took a while to gather my thoughts about them. And every time did gather my thoughts, something else, as amazing, would scatter them all over again. So here I am, now, writing from memory.

It was my dream to go to Africa since I was about 4 years old when I watched a film called Okavango – Jewel of the Kalahari, which my uncle had recorded for me on videocassette, as it was being aired on Doordarshan - the only television channel commonly available in India in the 1980s. It captured the magic of the greatest oasis in the world, formed by the Okavango, which spilled into a delta in the middle of the Kalahari forest. The arrival of monsoon would revive the river, which would in turn transform a deadly dessert into a lush forest. I watched it, not once or twice, but innumerable times over the next few years. It was often the sole motive to go to my aunt’s place. Fed up with my obsession of watching the story of a dessert-forest and the lives of its wild inhabitants, my cousin one day hid the tape so well that it was never to be found again.

Africa was supposed to be the first foreign continent I would visit, but the fact that it was the third did not change how intensely I enjoyed it.

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Jacaranda trees and large craters

Joline and I got off to a slow start as we arrived in Johannesburg. The first impression of the city was of the beautiful and poisonous, Jacaranda trees in full purple bloom as we peered through the airplane window. And then there were large holes in the earth: mines left barren once they were exhausted of all they could offer. The Jacaranda and the barren mines eventually came to symbolize the contrasts we saw in the region.

The houses were built on large estates, behind high walls and electric fences. The B&B we were staying at was only a short distance from where my cousin lived, but we were strictly instructed to only drive no matter how close places may seem to be, for the fear of our lives. Only the blacks did so. “This place is like a grand prison”, Joline remarked about the tall walls and electric fences around the large, British-style private estates.

The “townships” we saw in South Africa were quite different from the slums one sees in Bombay. No one defecated on the streets, and every one had access to clean drinking water – it is perfectly safe to drink from a tap – and solar heaters, and everyone we saw had adequate and decent clothes to wear. Apparently the social security system also gives out cash handouts to the poor. Nonetheless, the poor had to live in satellite townships, removed from mainstream civilization. The transport system also appeared to be exclusively reliant on roadways, but there were hardly any public vehicles. One usually saw people asking for lifts by holding a few Rand in their hands. But hardly anyone, except overcrowded vans – the so-called taxis – would ever oblige.

The Apartheid Museum was stark. Although we were unable to spend as long at the museum as we would have liked to, it was revealing even before we entered it. We were warned to be careful because it was located adjacent to a township. “If you must go, then drive straight to the museum and do not stop anywhere near a township”, was the advice of genuine concern. At the entrance of the museum, Joline and I were randomly assigned a different race, and we had to enter through the appropriate of two gates – one was for whites, the other for non-whites. The gates were lined with plaques bearing hateful slurs – all derived from the reality of the apartheid – at the non-whites.

One of the sections of the museum was dedicated to the work Mahatma Gandhi did in resisting the racial discrimination against Indians in South Africa, and a little bit about his run-ins with Jan Christiaan Smuts. Being Indian, I knew of General Smuts, but not much about him. A mere footnote in my limited understanding of history, I knew of him only as someone Gandhi resisted during his time in South Africa. That has now changed, but I will come back to Smuts later.

We left the museum, wishing we had more time to appreciate all the exhibits in greater detail. But it was abundantly clear to us that the museum was not just about the past, as we, the only mixed race couple we had seen thus far, drove past the black townships, on streets where we not once saw a non-black person waving money at the passing cars, to dine at a plush restaurant where the managers were exclusively white, the servers exclusively black, and the clientele exclusively white (barring our table).

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The peaceful wild

Before break of dawn, we left Johannesburg for the Kruger National Park, and arrived in the early afternoon to check into the Skukuza rest camp. On the way we saw plenty of Impala and Kudu, and one Leopard tortoise. That was enough to whip up enough excitement for us to register for the evening safari, before we fell asleep in our little “bungalow” cottage. Fortunately, we were up just in time to make it to the tour.

I think we were quite lucky to see so many animals on our first safari:  rhinos, elephants, lions, buffaloes, hippos, giraffe, kudus, springboks, impala, zebras, baboons, and a few others that I do not remember anymore. I also had the opportunity to handle a flashlight in the dark, and managed to spot a few animals when their eyes lit up in the dark. It was my first experience of being so close to these gorgeous, wild animals, which one otherwise sees only in magazines and films. We were especially close to a white rhino – what an enormous and gentle animal he was. Nothing could have taken my attention away from him, except for what the ranger told us. Just the previous night 5 rhinos were poached for their horns – one was found alive, bleeding from a chopped up face.

We spent the next three days peering through our binoculars, listening for sounds, as we drove through the forests discovering something new almost all the time. We looked not only for the big animals, but also for birds and insects, and plants. The key was to patiently scan the landscape for minute anomalies, movements and sounds, and drive slowly, lest one should miss the most spectacular things. For example, what one thought were two small boulders, on top of a distant hill that was one gigantic boulder of a lighter shade, were actually a rhino and her calf. Because we drove slowly, we were able to spot a distant herd of over 70 elephants, which eventually crossed the street with no more than 20 meters between us, as we sat with our car engine switched off (the engine noise disturbs and annoys them). So awe-inspiring were the sights, sounds and smells that I have goose bumps even as I write about them. We could hear the low frequency rumble they made to communicate with each other, as about a dozen tiny calves scampered between the pachyderms’ legs.

A pride of 9 lions, camouflaged with the yellow of a sandy riverbed, however, was no problem to spot. Yes, they are beautiful creatures, but what is so extraordinary about lazy lions to cause a small traffic jam in the middle of a jungle! Perhaps the army of baboons wasn’t there to keep vigil over the pack of apex predators, as much as for the smell of people going bananas!

One of the most memorable moments of our trip was when one young giraffe went berserk with curiosity when he saw our car and madly ran around it for a few minutes, before joining one of his calmer siblings in peering at us through the windscreen. It was special, but we realized that it was only a phase in the youngster’s life, and that he would not be so impressed by us humans for much longer – like his mother, who wasn’t bothered about us, and went about munching on leaves without fuss.

Being in the wilderness was pulsating and peaceful at the same time. It was so peaceful in the jungle that I often felt the urge to step out of he car and stroll around to take in the atmosphere. But one was also acutely aware of the fragility of life there. An impala carcass, half eaten by a leopard, hanging from a tree was a good reminder. Yet there was a sublime peace even in the violence of the wilderness. It kept me very alert, yet it soothed my senses.

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The Fairest Cape

The second leg of our trip was in the fairest cape in the whole world. Cape Town, unlike Johannesburg was cosmopolitan, and relaxed. There were no electric fences around lovely houses, and people of all colours walked in the leafy avenues under a balmy sun. We finally saw other mixed race couples and gay couples, went to restaurants run by black people, saw white waiters, and black patrons. Finally it felt that we were in the rainbow nation.

My friends, Johann and Albertus showed us around in the city, and took us wining and dining to some of the nicest places in the city, which included Johann’s home – a quiet house situated in the breeze of the dramatic Tafelberg. Wine tasting and brunch at La Motte, albeit decadent, was a very memorable experience. La Motte is a quaint wine estate in Franschoek, surrounded by picturesque mountains, which looked stunning against a deep blue sky, and seemed to change colour as the day got cloudier later in the afternoon.

In Cape Town, we encountered General Smuts again. On a short tour of the city with Johann we came across two statues of General Smuts, and one of Cecil Rhodes. Johann began explaining why some South Africans wanted Rhodes’ statue pulled down, but I was more puzzled about why they would not want (not that I wanted them to) to pull down Smuts’ instead, considering that he was one of the key architects of apartheid in South Africa. “Are there people who look up to General Smuts in post-apartheid South Africa”, I wondered aloud. “There are some who do not look at Smuts as an apartheid villain, and I for one, am an admirer. In the context of the times, Smuts was actually a moderate”, said Johann. While Gandhi and Smuts were political adversaries (and appeared to disagree vehemently, as is evident in Gandhi’s autobiography) during the former’s time in South Africa, they held each other in high regard personally. Gandhi had gifted a pair of sandals he had made to Smuts when he left for India in 1914, which Smuts returned years later with a letter to Gandhi bearing the words: "I have worn these sandals for many a summer, even though I may feel that I am not worthy to stand in the shoes of so great a man".

“The groans of the dying and the blanched set faces of the dead… were enough to drive away all unwholesome feelings of exultation, and to remind one of the grim reality that war is. And even though these were the faces and the sufferings of our enemy, one had… a deeper sense of common humanity which knows no racial distinctions”, Smuts wrote in his Boer Memoirs. It is clear that Smuts’ idea of “common humanity” did not include the majority black population to whom he did not extend political or social equality. By "common humanity", he meant the white Englishmen. Yet, while referring to the problem of Gandhi’s satyagraha for racial equality for Indians in South Africa, he has also been quoted admitting that the South African policy, and indeed his own, of racial disenfranchisement was a “skeleton in our cupboard”.

I know too little about General Smuts to form an opinion about his politics, but clearly there was more to Smuts’ personality that had initially met the eye. I think he was far too complex a person – as most intellectuals probably are – to be identified with a singular facet. In learning more about Smuts, I discovered something about self-proclaimed Gandhians, and at any rate about myself, that perhaps would not quite sit comfortably with Gandhi’s ideas. My initial reaction to Smuts being celebrated as a South African hero was close to ridicule and disbelief. Perhaps we are too intolerant towards what we perceive as ungandhian, whereas Gandhi represented tolerance and forgiveness. Perhaps many of us mistake the Truth to be singular, whereas Gandhi himself experimented with it, willing to discard an older idea, should he later discover them to be false.

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Gentle Giants

After Cape Town, we visited Hermanus en route to Knysna and Plettenberg Bay. One of my pre-departure must do was to go shark cage diving in Hermanus. The idea of the adrenalin high as the most feared fish charges at your cage, violently shaking it with its fearsome teeth, seemed most exciting. But the “attraction” was shut for the first two days of our stay there because of strong winds. But we did get to paddle with the other giants of Hermanus – the Southern Right Whales.

Right Whales are the third largest mammals in the world, and one cannot usually see them whole while they are in the water. But one did not need to see more than its head, or tail, or fin to know that these creatures were huge. But then Joline and I were luckier than seeing these magnificent animals only in parts. A mother and calf were barely 20 meters away from our sea kayak, when the mother raised her head and tail at the same time. We could even see her eye! Joline, who was unfortunately sunburnt and seasick, momentarily forgot her woes and exclaimed giddily: “Wow! Its like a large, floating bus!” These curious creatures gently followed us almost to the shore waving their fins and tails outside the water as if waving at us. I had heard the expression gentle giants being used to describe whales before, but for the first time I understood why, and how truly gentle they are! Despite their size and proximity to our flimsy little kayak, not once did we feel, and we weren’t, threatened by them.

The boats to the shark cage diving sites were in service again the next day, but the idea of chumming the water to instigate a wonderful animal for our entertainment seemed cruel and vulgar. I was just too happy being a passive observer of nature. Actively stirring it seemed unnecessary, and I gave up on the idea.

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Finally in Africa!

I was about 4 years old when I watched Okavango – Jewel of the Kalahari. 27 years later, I finally made it to the continent. This trip was eye opening in many respects. Many people have asked if we saw the Big 5, but Africa is so much more than just that. There are so many more wonderful animals, trees, flowers, and insects to take your breath away. Not only is it rich in history, but it also has a rich natural and human present. This trip was a mere sampling of some of the flavours Africa has to offer. This trip, I think, was the first of many to come.