3 - Threeways

17 Apr 2010

Tokkie was just the way I remembered him, especially his voice. When he speaks images of red dusty roads and mopane trees and brahman cattle come to my mind. I remember vividly the first time I met him on the road to Threeways. Anna from Bubi Village was driving us to Threeways and we ran into him about halfway to the ranch. We hopped into his Nissan and he turned around to say hello to us. He greeted me by name, even pronouncing it correctly even though he had only seen it in an email, and I was nearly dumbstruck by the brightness and clarity of his sky-blue eyes.

He had aged a bit and had a slight limp, but other than that was the same Tokkie I remembered from three years previously. He led us out in his loping stride to his new Toyota Land Cruiser, and we piled in and headed for Pretoria. David and I sat in the uncovered back of the Cruiser in the chilly night air. We dropped Johnny off at his hotel and went to Dreyer’s house for the night. Dreyer and Tokkie are brothers in every sense of the word. They look and sound alike, are kind and pleasant to each other in the presence of company, and bicker and argue with each other when they’re not. It’s plain to see they love each other and want the best for each other. It’s also plain to see they grew up each with each other as most brothers do, brawling and competing and finding their separate ways.

It was a pleasant evening and we slept well until somewhere around 3 in the morning, when we awoke and could not find our way back to sleep again, though we did try until the birds began to wake up outside our window. David and Tokkie spent an hour or so loading up the trailer in Dreyer’s driveway, while I played with the dogs in the completely fenced-in, security armed yard that every sane and safe resident of Pretoria has. We finished our preparations, ate a quick breakfast and said a quick goodbye to Dreyer, and headed towards Johnny’s hotel. We arrived there a bit later than we’d agreed upon the night before, and so David and I were expecting it to be a quick pickup. However, when Tokkie did not return for a half hour or so we began to wonder what had become of him and Johnny. When they finally came out through the gate Johnny told us that Tokkie had woken him from a dead sleep and that he had not even eaten breakfast yet.

As I’m sitting here writing this backlog of the last few days, there are some interesting things going on outside of my hut. We are situated directly next to the kitchen and, in addition to the constant chatter of the kitchen staff and other strange unnatural noises, there is often the smell of the night guard’s cigarette smoke wafting in through my small window. It is around 6:30 at night right now and dinner is being prepared. From the strangled squawk of a chicken being dispatched it will probably be another hour or so before we actually get to eat anything.

Anyway, the four of us made it safely, and with a few pit stops along the way, to the border. David and I again rode in the exposed back of the Cruiser and, despite my best efforts to stay awake and enjoy the landscape changing around me, I fell fast asleep beneath the relentless sun and the constant battering of the air rushing by the truck. David also succumbed and we had more than made up for our short night’s sleep by the time we made it to the South Africa/Zimbabwe border. It was somewhere around 4:30pm when we got there, and we figured we’d be through in an hour or so and to the ranch by 7-ish.

The South Africa side went quite smoothly, aside from a somewhat long-ish queue to get to the exit-stamping window. We loaded back up and found ourselves in a complete melee of chaos on the Zim side of the border. There were so many more people trying to get into Zimbabwe than had ever been when we were there three years ago. It seems the switch of the nation’s economy from the laughable Zimbabwe dollar to the US dollar has had a positive effect on the country, and in a complete reversal of circumstances there were more people trying to enter Zimbabwe than trying to escape from it.

David and I felt calm and at ease going through the process of acquiring visas, but Johnny was skittish and spooked by the crowds of people pushing around us. Compared with India, I felt we had sufficient personal space around us and was not bothered at all, although had it not been for the desensitization to crowds which is a necessary part of survival in a place like India, I probably would have felt less at ease.

Somewhere around 9:00 that night we actually made it through all the hoops and inspections and pointlessness and emerged into a crystal clear Zimbabwe night. David and I lay down in the bed of the Cruiser watching shooting stars and breathing in the familiar smells of mopane campfire, sweet grasses, and the particular hazy scent of a dirt road exhaling the heat of the day into the still, cool night. We arrived at the ranch about an hour later and proceeded to greet Quinn, who we were already acquainted with from our previous trip, and Dirkie, his soon-to-be fiance. We then hurried up to the dinner table.

Dirkie is a slender blonde girl who somehow manages to fix her hair nicely and do her makeup every day even out here in the indifferent bush. She’s had experience managing two hunting ranches, and is now in charge of overseeing everything except the actual hunting of Threeways. Over dinner I somehow got the distinct impression that Dirkie despised me and wanted me to drop off the face of the planet. If she could not have that, then she would dominate over me like a malevolent helicopter and leave me with no doubt as to who belonged on the ranch and who did not. Being shown to my room and introduced to the kitchen staff only served to reinforce this conclusion I had somehow jumped to, and my joy and satisfaction at being back at Threeways, as well as my determination to be useful and hard-working during our stay here began do evaporate. I cried that night in our hut next to the kitchen to the sounds of the dishes being washed. It is the worst hut on the entire ranch, and I felt certain that we had been assigned to it to intentionally make life as uncomfortable for me as humanly possible.

The next day we woke early and went for a long walk in the bush. Since Tokkie acquired hunting rights to a concession on the Limpopo a year and a half ago, the ranch has not seen many hunters, and the animals we stirred up were much tamer than I remembered them being. The impala stood silently, rock-still in a position of astute wariness until we got too close for comfort and they bounded off lightly with the soft thud of small hooves in the dirt. They are some of the most common animals in Zimbabwe and are therefore not usually very highly prized, even being dubbed “goats of the bush.” For me, however, there is nothing goat-like or common about them. Their slender, muscular haunches taper down into delicate ankles ending in hooves that leave tiny heart-shaped prints in the sandy earth. The beautiful light tan of their hide is shaded slightly darker around the head and rump, and blends flawlessly into a bright white belly. The tell-tale M shape on their backside formed in darker hair serves to break up their appearance, and is mesmerizing as they bound and leap through the air with a lightness and effortlessness that is difficult to believe, lyre-shaped. I always feel sad when one of these is shot. Even though it affords me a fascinating opportunity to examine up close the beauty (and anatomy) of these animals, there is an essential grace and spirit that disappears in death, and the ungainly tangle of their limbs heaped in the back of the truck to be taken for skinning has always brought a slight shade of disappointment and sorrow to my heart.

When we returned to camp from our walk, we ate breakfast and chatted with the ever-jocular Quinn until Johnny was once again roused from his deep sleep and appeared at the table. We talked with him for an hour or so while he ate, and then he was whisked away to the concession where he is to hunt for buffalo. Directly afterward, we were informed by Tokkie that we were to sit in a blind for the rest of the day to hopefully plug a wildebeest. The Zimbabwe Independence Day was near, and the Campfire Council (a fancy name for a bunch of rural crooks who make bank off of leasing out hunting rights on communal lands) had ordered one for their celebration, the way one orders a pizza for a party.

Well we sat at that blind the entire rest of the day without seeing hide nor hair of a wildebeest, and very little other wildlife beside. There is a lot of standing water in various places on the property right now due to the sufficience of the rains this past season, and so the animals are not required by necessity to go to any one specific place to find a drink. So Tokkie came and picked us up around dusk and we headed out to see some of his cows. He wants me to “sort out” the mess that is his cattle records, and I really have no idea where to even begin. But it was nice to see the cows all milling around and chewing peacefully on their cud. Except for the heifer who was locked into the chute for artificial insemination. The process of inseminating the cow was actually quite streamlined in contrast to my memories of the way it was conducted three years’ previously, and it went quite smoothly and professionally as far as I could tell, although the heifer might have a different opinion if you asked her.

That night there was a large group staying in the overnight camp and so David, myself, Tokkie and Dirkie sat at a separate table from the rest of the group. I was expecting a sort of taciturn perfunctority from Dirkie, and was thrown completely off my guard when she began chatting amiably with me. When David and Tokkie stood up from the table to go fill their plates, she confided in me that Quinn had already bought her engagement ring and that she was expecting a formal proposal any day now. She explained that once she was engaged she would need to make frequent trips to South Africa to get everything planned and settled for the wedding, and that she would be in need of my help at the ranch while she was away. I was astonished and, I admit, somewhat skeptical as to the pure motives of her mild manner but slowly the hope of a friendship began to form.

Today David and I were again in a blind by a water hole for what seemed a very long time this morning, without seeing any sign of life at all, much less the sought-after wildebeest which supposedly are roaming the ranch in large numbers. Our two black game scouts retrieved us from our blind and we drove around for another two hours seeking our target without luck. Back at the ranch we ate a lunch of leftovers at the camp and then trundled up to the house to see what was going on up there. To our consternment, the man sent to collect the wildebeest for the celebrations was sitting there in the living room watching rugby with Tokkie and Dirkie. I could not hide my disappointment that we had not been able to procure the animal, as such incidents like this can very possibly have unforeseen negative impacts on Tokkie’s well-being and way of life here in Zimbabwe. Tokkie immediately made a decision about the situation and we hopped into his Cruiser to go after two impala instead of one wildebeest. He and the Council man sat in the front, while David, myself, and the two game scouts stood in the back. David pulled off two very accurate shots through the thick bush and two of the lovely animals were piled into the Cruiser. A third try was made and David and the game scouts were left to search the bush for the animal which was supposedly wounded, as it had not dropped dead where it had stood as the other two had.

Tokkie dropped me off at the house and went to take care of the impala and the Council man. I was left alone in the office with Dirkie, which caused some small amount of adrenaline to enter my system, and my wariness to re-exert itself. I was soon, however, charmed into chattiness (no small feat with someone as conversationally handicapped as I) and we were discussing our life plans and dreams as though we’d known each other for quite a bit longer than the 36 or so hours that we had. I’m really looking forward to being friends with her and I do hope that this trend in our relationship can continue.

David and I later on poked around in the much-expanded garden and made plans for our own seeds which we brought from good old WalMart in the states. After that we went with Tokkie to have a look at his bulls which he loves like children. They are gentle creatures and are generally more likely to trot straight away from me when I approach them than anything. But they are so enormous that whenever one of them does happen to make a move in my direction I have a hard time disobeying my instincts to retreat quickly to the other side of the fence. Whether intentionally or by mistake, if one of those animals happened to make rough contact with my small frame, I am convinced it would end badly for me. It may be a while before I move with confidence among them. It may never happen.

I am now sitting in my same undesirable hut next to the kitchen listening to David and Tokkie chat in the lounge area while the recently expired chicken finishes in the pot. I am happy, although not completely because my suitcases are as yet unpacked and things are somewhat in a state of disarray around me. But I’ve remembered what I’ve known all along: home is where my David is and I can be happy there, no matter how undesirable the hut.