“The taxi drivers in town.” This was my sporadic reply to a question posed to me asking about the most dangerous and challenging situation I have ever found myself in. The interviewer chuckled, and repeated, “No, but seriously…?”
Seriously. How do you explain such a moment — one which is relative? That fleeting moment which lingers as an afterthought and changes as time goes by. It creeps into your subconscious, and it finds a cozy place where it settles as a neuropath that develops in your brain. One where your senses are exhausted, tested, and tried to such extremes that you have moments where you question everything about it.
Daybreak finds my hunter and I sitting close to a camel-thorn wood fire, for the morning air is chilly after the night’s rain. It is end of March in Namibia and the coolness is a welcome surprise, caressing us in the eery stillness engulfing the camp. The sound of the fire-crackle is the only reminder of the present, as our thoughts are lingering on the previous day, and no word is spoken between us. It is slightly disturbing. It is fitting.
There are some things in this world which defies conventional description, where language and words fall short of recounting experiences or the complex emotions behind them. Africa offers little middle-ground; landscapes that demand huge acceptance, to the extent that one would lose oneself, willingly and at times unwillingly. The vulnerability of it all, steering us to elation or defeat. A love-hate relationship. You either can’t endure, or the charms sink deep into your bones, never to leave.
It was the second last day of the hunt. The morning started cool. Later, we would long for but a moment of this bliss. The greedy sun has claimed the last drop of dew from the green thick brush. We are searching for a black rhino. A specific one. It is an animal worthy of its name — black; as in feared, dangerous, aggressive. With its bad eyesight, it relies heavily on smell, and leaves nothing to chance or inspection. He rarely moves off, confronting everything and everyone, while leaving a trail of destruction. The landscape, as if to mock us in our challenge, lies before us in never-ending stretches of sandy ancient river-beds called omurambas, jotted here and there with standing pools of water. The surrounding sandy plains are an entangling mess of bush, shrubs and trees offering visibility barely from one rifle to the next. In a different setting, this forest would be beautiful. A vibrant mix of African wattle, wild syringa, camel-thorn, silver leaf cluster, African and common teak trees flowering purple throughout, and interlaced with a variety of raisin bush, yellow wood, lavender fever berry, kalahari white and pink Bauhinia, peeling bark and buffalo thorn. But today it offers no solace in its beauty. Today it only challenges us, sneers at us, contemptuously. It is the perfect home for black rhino.
The only control we even pretend to have is over our own survival. And that is vulnerable. And it feels wonderful. We bare ourselves against elements that the hunting grounds offer which no human can control or cope with — a great difference when compared to the hunted. Our sedentary lives goes against every aspect of it. Our skins turn to blister under the scrupulous sun, our mouths dry up and parch quicker than we hope, always carrying water with us, always rationing water, always noticing water. Water and fire, there is no ground without them. Our rifle biting uncomfortable hard into our shoulders, while trying to find the correct balance to distribute the weight of it on our upright sapient bodies. We walk uncomfortably outside, exposed, enduring all the elements and ponder on sameness — trying to relate to animals by studying them to a moment of confrontation. Sometimes we are friends, sometimes we become predators.
It is noon and the sun stands still right above our tired bodies, scorching us viciously as to reprimand us for our naivety. We are finally, after more than five hours, on the same track as the day before. It is fresh. This hunting area offers no grace. There are no roads to cut off tracks, no fixed drinking spots, but an array of waters randomly plotted throughout this large area. A skewed left toe has given him away. Our San tracker can move much faster than us, but is carefully moving slower as usual, not because of his regard to us, but because of the different play at hand. Our eyes are useless, as the thickets are not revealing anything but a green sea of leaves and branches. For days now, our relying on our eyesight could only confirm the freshness and uniqueness of the track in front of us, and not the beast before us. Searching for black rhino, which stands not tall enough to be able to spot it over the brush, now seems a futile endeavour. Our other senses have to be retrained in haste. Listening, smelling, feeling and perceiving. But the wind has shifted. We cannot continue in this direction. The rhino will smell us and we will keep bumping it, driving it to an even more aggressive state. The fifteen kilometers that lies behind us is work undone, its only revelation the animal’s direction. Time was suddenly revealed to be utterly surreal, an impossible demanding reality. We can’t buy more time, the hunt’s end is within a day. Self-pity washes over me, and I’m growing tearful as I drink my last tepid water left in my backpack. I am drained and tired and thirsty. I shouldn’t be here. I am timid and weak and useless.
The veld becomes the testing ground, the transition to hunter some sort of final examination. We go into places that are wild, and the natural elements take firm hold of our vulnerability. We doubt and we try to find reasons to postpone, to give up, and to mull on all of the reasonings that we should not and could not continue. The other side of vulnerability is that it doubles as tenacity in certain circumstances. I grapple to understand which is what. I’ve learned to mitigate these anxieties with the people around me. Like my trusted tracker, friend and motivator. And that motivation was earned step by step, as it continues to be.
My tracker Abraham whispers close to my ear, “You can and you will do this.” My boundaries are shifting. It’s reverberating. We took rest in the cool of the shade, with clouds building around us. At some point I drifted off but was woken in what felt like seconds after my slumber by the sound of thunder. How lovely it was to feel insignificant in this moment. It took a minute or two for me to catch my breath, collect my guts, put my backpack on and sling my rifle over my shoulder. My tracker jokingly asks if I’m okey and I laugh because it’s more admirable to have a sense of humor than to cry, and I sort myself out. We keep walking. Forever. Later, the wind has picked up and more clouds are forming above us. The San tracker is scrutinising the track in the omuramba now, and he pauses every so often as to listen intently and gaze out at the sea of green before he follows his intuition again straight into the abyss. The hunter and I exchange looks as we make our way behind him.
For a while now, we have heard some cringing of brush and the sound is now distinguishable. A rhino feeding. “Slowly”, the tracker indicates with his arm language. I came to learn his silent language in the last days he lead us. At first, every moment made me jolt, as I anticipated our quarry in front of us. But most of the times, it was to show out a hiding place, a gathering of sorts, a resting spot, a fight, a love-story, a kindling, a water-quenching bulb, the distinctive projecting remnant of a stump by a feeding black rhino, a birthplace, a bone…It was just astounding what this little man was telling through his hands and arms. At some point during the warmest part of the day he stopped at what looked to be a random bush, and started digging underneath it. There, like magic, a bulb appeared in his hand. He cleaned it and explained to the hunter and me to chew on it. It was gold in the form of liquid. This little man, this magician, this great wanderer, this master of the veld, this gifted one. The ancient art of the San coming to life in front of me.
But this time he goes down onto his haunches, looks back, his eyes wide and searching for me. “It’s here, right in front of us.” A deep and wild smell of ammonia fills the air.
This is the thing that we come to when we talk about being in the veld. The fear that sits in our stomach, in the swirl of voices between our ears, in our stiffening diaphragm when our breath is stolen by fright.
When I initially started guiding dangerous game, the fear was equally external as it was internal. Everyone told me what could happen to me, as if I — a woman living in this modern world — hadn’t already thought of the possibilities. I have children, I should tend to them and my husband and my home. I should be responsible. I should assist, support, or better yet, stay at home. There is truth behind all of this fret. And these warnings have branded themselves into my psyche with the hottest kind of flame. But death awaits, anyway. I am not immune to it. And hunting is shaping my relationship and redefining who I might be in the face of it. I’ve been in the presence of unpredictable people, seen the flashes of rage in eyes, felt the dark wind of an impending threat, and I was able to side-step and exit slowly and deliberately. The prey outwitting the predator. Now, in these vulnerable moments, where I am forced into it, fear serves me well. A predator lives in me. I am a hunter.
We have worked so hard, covered so much ground, wanted this so badly. This is where it happens. Slowly we creep closer. Our senses are heightened, our rifles all of a sudden but a feather in our hands, and no thought of replenishing our dry bodies passes through our minds. If only we could see the animal. Carefully not to make a noise, we push on. The thorns are suddenly elevated in their grip, and the pulling and tearing through my flesh hurts more painfully than ever before. We try to move around him, trying to search for but a glance at him to be able to positively identify the correct animal, and if so, to have an opening large enough for the hunter to make that perfect shot. The wind is not our friend, we know this, but we take our chance regardless.
And then, abruptly, vibrations of aggressively rushing feet shakes the ground below us, and short warning puffs of snorts fill the surrounding stillness. Time stands still. We are ready, and before me the scene transpires in slow motion. Forever slow, painful minutes that pass, with the deafening sound of breaking branches rolling towards us from a world beyond our domain. We have no chance. Within what was probably not even a few seconds, a flash of black brute appears through the bush with extraordinary speed and even more incredible agility. And in a blink, a heartbeat, a moment — he is gone. There is no coming back, there is no reminiscing. He is gone. My Garmin watch beeps irritably, warning me with a constant “abnormal heart-rate detected” vibration on my wrist as we unload our rifles, take rest underneath a tree and calm our nerves. The sun was setting, and we realised what passed between us. Not only a black rhino, but also a chance undone.
Hunting. It is humble and magnificent at the same time, and it is natural. When hunting, we become animal, and it occurs in a realm where death has a different consequence. The greatest thing hunting gifts is the ability to look past what is obvious, to value landscapes for what is not easily seen, for potential, and for the promise of surprise. We explore the marvellous reality of life and the unapologetic chances that we are not meant to fear, but bravely embrace. One which serves a purpose of connection.
“Are you ready to go?” Our tracker’s soft voice disturbs the silence around the morning fire. We exchange glances in the dark, and I cannot read his expression. It is our last day. I feel humbled but strengthened — a feeling that only hunting brings about. I get up from my chair, my legs aching from the previous day. I look towards the hunter. I read his face, and I understand his revelation. He is content. He is connected.
