The Oliphants Backpacking Trail 17.07.2016

I tell them all ‘I’m off’, for nature calls. I slowly run a small distance from the camp site kicking dust as I speed, trampling twigs along the way. The crack of the dry brush echo loud, reverberating.  The silence is deathly, but the environment is very much alive. My disruptive footprints, erasing  any trace of beast that went before me, are embedded in the dry of the parched earth. One small step for man...Behind a tree far from anyone, I choose my place. Carefully, I scan my surrounds. With our shoddy human eyesight and our marshmallow-stuffed-in-ear hearing that human-kind have been gifted, I do my best to observe, to be aware. I see a kudu in the distance, but it scuttles on before it even sees me. Doing a final scan of the immediate shrubbery for any movement, I clutch the spade and begin digging a hole. The unzipping of the teeth of my trousers is clear, and the ruffle of my pants as they drop to my ankles is crisp. My shoes, I take off and eventually my trousers too. I’m totally exposed. I squat. My knees cracking. I am at my most vulnerable now to the teeth of a lion. I have a giggle to myself. If I could only see me.

We’re in The Kruger National Park, on a 4 day hike out of our place and in the kingdom of beasts.

The Toyota Landcruiser with its nobbly tyres and kangaroo-like suspension dropped us out of sight of any humans, any hint of civilisation.
We humans are a destructive force. By our ablutions and our clumsy foot fall, by our packaged treats we leave a trail of our presence.
By day we walked in silence in single file in hope of a sight of one of the Kruger’s inhabitants. Only the ruffle of our bags, or the distinctive shrill call of the fish eagle are the sounds of other. We hug the Oliphants River following in its sweeping, gently gushing, lively path as it snakes downwards. Every so often we see the death that drought brings-the largesse of an hippo slumped on the river’s banks exposed to the swirl of vultures above.

The hot sun begins its plummet. We settle upon the bank of the river and begin pitching our new age Space –worthy tents. Our four colourful tents bruise the earthy colours representing the landscape. Taking the cool plunge into the clear running water of the river we rinse the caked sweat off of our bodies, and the salted residue off of our lips. The sun has dipped beyond the earth’s edge, and the cold of night sweeps the landscape announcing its arrival. The moon replaces the golden cut-out left by the plummeting sun. The moon in its full glow hints at its creaky surface. The sequened night is ball-gown beautiful. Darkness has arrived. Only the light of the bulbously full-moon gives us any sight, until we don our light-sabering night-piercing  headlamps.

Our live-wire fire is an island of heat - it’s our water cooler for conversation. We chat and nibble biltong, sip a whisky and then call it a night...until our ranger spots a pride eyeing us out. The excitement drags us by our scruffs and we ogle them as they size us. We feel alive.

To rise at first light. To see the moon over in the western sky and to witness the sun break over the mountainous edge is a wonderment.  Slowly like a ghostly death the cold air rushes away as the giant sun presents itself, presenting the hint of a new day. The earliest up ignite the gas burner. On the bubbly boil we stir up our instant and dip our ouma.
We rise, the Kingdom rises. A new day has dawned in the Kingdom of Beasts.

Comrades marathon 2016 - The Ultimate Human Challenge

 A 7:30pm dash to Pietermaritzburg from Umhlanga on Saturday eve at the back of an Uber. 3 of us sausaged in, buckled up, looping up and down the rolling hills of the jaunt between the two towns.
The light of a phone screen bouncing off the dash. The flicker of the indicator. Silence pervades.
 Pietermaritzburg is only ever seen in the dark of night, or the dirty hours of dusk.
As a blind human caressing walls, feeling materials to get a ‘sight’, so our Uber drive hugged the curves, embraced the downs, geared for the ups, coaster’d the hills and beat the bends. We could ‘read’ the book presented on race day, 29 May 2016

The hapless Uber driver confused by Google maps eventually delivers me. I reach my destination where i’ll barely get some shut eye. I eat aggressively by fuelling my body for the onslaught. I’m relaxed, I’m calm. I’ve seen. I’ve been through this before. I’m out there to enjoy it.  And that’s all.
3:30 am Tolls. I bounce out of bed. I’m excited. I don my green kit, arm myself with chafe lubricant, nipple plasters, gums and goo’s, all for a great adventure. I punish two boiled eggs and an avocado pear. I am ready.

No moment I experience like the one stood standing at the start of the Ultimate Human Race-The Comrades Marathon. As Chariots of Fire plays, for those 2 minutes, the present world halts and my mind rushes a gushing storm drain. The thumping of the keys in the intro is a catalyst for my eyeballs to drain, and my emotion to rise. The past year of my life flips rapidly through my mind like an Ipod’s album cover shuffle. The glowing moments piquing my emotion-My time in Israel, my rapid marriage, the staccato life of marriage and it’s extra-ordinary ending, our time in Jerusalem, my career at a junction, the fling of my Copper product business, my running.  As the tears cross down my face through the crevicing and valleys of my skin, dripping off the edge of my chin, free falling down the length of my body, plummeting to a splash, the red square digits rearrange from a 5:29:59 to an even 5:30, simultaneously the cock crows and the cannon thunders.
We’re out of our first gear and we’re off on the start of the 2016 Comrades Marathon.

Doctor Doctor there's a fly in my soup 28.04.2016

The winter cold is upon us. As I breathe a sigh of relief that the heat has dissipated, my warm breath on an icy pane, fogs it. Clearing away the dirt, I peer outwards, looking at my life from beyond the fish bowl.
The travel bug isn’t a bug, it’s inherent in the endeavouring human. A bug can be cured. The desire to adventure is a yearning for experience, for chance meetings and off-the-wall episodes.
I’m not travelling at the moment but still the extra ordinary finds me.
Thrilled by the unknown, thrilled by the opportunity to tell a story, this is the Bear Hunters life.
This could end in disaster and it could end in relief, but either way, I have a story to tell.

Waking up to an ear muffled, with only the hum of white noise, no amount of ear-budding or digging was dislodging the problem. It was inevitable that I’d have to visit an ENT.
With the aromatic scent of brewed coffee filling the entrance, the fresh air and daylight flooding the hospitals innards and the de-clinicalised environment, the unhospital like hospital at Linksfield Clinic welcomed me. To here, I wasn’t a fearful visitor.

Having probed and tapped and buzzed and bee-bopped, the doc suggested the MRI scan.
‘Gsus, can’t you just give me a pill, and let me be on my way?’I thought. In conversation with my own brain, I continued to think, “whoa, I’ve only ever come ‘in contact’ with the MRI on a colour teevee show”.
Now I’m told I need to undergo one.
Heading down stairs to radiology, I asked how much this’d cost. In silence, she scrawled on the lined paper, R16 400.00. Blurting out an expletive, chocking back the tears in disbelief, I said ‘but I, I, I’m only on a Hospital Plan’.
 I was caught between Iraq and a hard place.(well, not really, I didn’t have a spare R16k lying around)

The adventure began when the doctor said, ‘National Geographic (name of health company changed for purposes) won’t allow you to be booked in for an MRI, but what we could do is have you come to Edenvale Hospital where I locum. Expect to spend the morning waiting for you’ll see how the other half live’. ‘hehehe’, I nervously giggled.
I arrived at Edenvale Hospital in my private-owned car, and parked in the empty, potholed lot.
I entered through the emergency room doors. Greeted by the wails of a poor girl strapped to a wheely bed bawling her eyes out and the heaviness of the trauma room, I sought ‘reception’.
The receptionist, his finger directed me to the ENT department.  Like a yolk-yellow canary I stood out in a sea of gray scale.
With a private education, a tertiary degree, a life of overseas journeying, and country club membership, I was simply another citizen seeking medical care at the expense of the State. Though I’ve spent everything on a private medical aid, I’m lead to believe it’s given me nothing. Ordered to pull a file, ordered to state my monthly income, my air time expenditure, food and clothing spend, ordered to be seated, ordered to linger for my name to be called, the waiting game began. Me,  the brown grey of the prison guards, the horror-orange of the imprisoned- shackled and sounding like loose change, the Sari’d Indian, the Asterix comic-reading engelsman and the poverty stricken masses, they sat seated waiting for a doctor.
Not far from soft suburbia, I was exposing myself to a harsh new world.

Now, with my referral letter to Johannesburg General, I headed there the next day. Johannesburg General Hospital, a monolith, a brutalist edifice sitting atop its perch, it’s beacon the red and white stripped chimney announcing it’s purpose. Parked, I did in the cold exposed lot-the ‘grand’ entrance to the hospital. The wide hallways and coloured ‘block’ indicators, the stream of people, pyjama- laden inmates attached to IV’s morbidly hovering along the crème linoleum floors, doctors in scrubs and flip charts, this was extra-planetary.

Finding the ENT department I booked in. 3 Doctors check-up patients in one room. There is no oak table or early century drawers, there’s no air-con or views onto golf courses. There’s no lollipop jar or human anatomy pop-up books, but there was thorough assistance, exemplary care. The doctor ordered me an audiogram, not for R600, but as part of my tax-paying right, she ordered me a host of blood tests, and then sent me to radiology to set up a time for the into-the-future MRI scan.

The radiology division bunkered in tons of heavy concrete, has its low slung ceiling and dimmed fluorescent tube lighting affecting a harrowing, dramatic experience. Natural delight, natural light is left outside behind these 13 inch walls. The tepid blue palette and the misery of people isn’t even a scene from a horror movie. It’s a reality. As I stood waited at the MRI department a sad blimey, pasty, unscrubbed man in pin-stripe jammies, frail to death with flexi tube plugging up his nostril waited patiently with head in hands for his scan. I was approached to book my time. Flipping through the over-used crinkly diary, the assistant appointed me a time in January, yes, in January.  In 8 months time.  Our ‘world class’ African city and its hospital has one single MRI machine. ONE flipping MRI machine.

Having studied, and having visited the Paimio Sanitorium, a convalescence hospital for the war wounded just outside Turku in Finland designed by the great Fin Alvar Aalto, I recognise we are worlds away from being first world. Great, we have shiny glass buildings, and Zara, but do we have efficient, democratic public transport, do we have health care, do we have social security, do we have a city free from crime, do we have more than one MRI machine?. That, would be World Class.

Aalto’s design ensures that natural daylight is necessary for recovery of patients, the design offers outdoor recover areas, landscaping, and vibrant colour palettes. It offers basins that help in reducing water splashing noises, and lighting fixtures that avoid directly pulverising the resting patient.
The Johannesburg General Hospital  ain’t no architectural masterpiece, nor will it appear in a glossy architectural magazine, but the people labouring there, the human resource taking care of the wounded, thoroughly investigating, were exemplary.
Doctors and nurses. Changing worlds, effecting lives. Thank G-d for community service.

For some unknown reason I bring adventure upon me, getting into the crevices of life. May I continue to do so in safety and health. From the roar of the Russian Bear Hunter, argh grr raaahh

Nights and Parks 13.04.2016

Waking up on a Tuesday morn i was worn out like a faded pair of under pants. Limp and thread bare, I wasn’t getting up. So I banked the late afternoon to get my mileage scribbled into my log book.

5pm and I was out the door, driving into the western setting sun to Melrose Arch where id launch myself on MAPG’s Tuesday 11kay run. I wouldn’t need to blow dry my locks for this was going to be a blitz krieg .
‘I don’t think you should go out so late, boy’ my mom managed to say. ‘But Maaa’, i moaned, ‘I run in the dark of morning anyways, it’s all cool’.

The ran began, and it came full circle. I made it to the junction where the fork to my right lead to the Melrose dump , a creaky road, car busy, pollution heavy and unpleasant for clearing my mind, the fork to my left lay an uphill slog my jellied legs weren’t keen to negotiate, and what lay ahead was a blanketed park sitting quiet beneath a blank night sky.

I chose the park run, not the fun run. I hot footed through Ethel Gray Park, at night. Alone. Moonlight, there was none. Silence. In abundance, but for a punctured sound that was extra ordinary. That sound?. In through this ear, out through that. Head down. I ran on. A little skittish though I was, but I was neither here nor there, couldn’t turn back so I motioned forward scaling the hill before me. As I crested I got scared for now I really was betwixt and between. Aaand so I plummeted down the hill rolling like a bouncing pin ball. There was no Sound of Music, just eery quiet, placid stillness. Then, suddenly, suddenly out of the unshaven grass, un-kempt bushes burst through some silhouetted cyborg yelping, ‘please, please help me.’
‘Sweet Jay-sus’, I blurted out loud, accelerating like an ADD kid jet fuelled on red juice, nearly soiling myself.  My rapid speed frightening the begesus outa me, I cocked my neck, oliver twisting right around to see behind me. With my eyes refocusing rapidly, signalling to my marshmellowy brain, it appeared to me that it was now safe to stop. I threw anchors screeching to a halt and duly back tracked. ‘please help me find my shoe’, he requested. Feeling it safe, together we trodded and stepped and stomped in the long leathery grass seeking out his one and his two. ‘I asked what the Fujimori happened?’ ‘they mugged me, had me in a neck hold, took my phone and my watch.’’ ‘yasis, boet’. “are you a yid?’ i asked. ‘Yes’ he said. ‘Well boet you best daven your brains out in the morning.

With that he hollered, ‘I found it’. Moving back onto the path, we two stood. I asked of his name. ‘Mark’ he said. ‘I’m Dan’, I responded. And with that our exchange ended. He reverted back to his parked car in the parking lot of the park, and well I had to break out of the caked salt that had crusted on my brow and headed back to Melrose Arch.

What quite happened that very eve, we will never know. Nothing is ever quite as it seems.
from the roar of the Bear Hunter, raaah, grrrr, raaaaah

Flight Simulation and other Stimulants 20.12.2015

 People are not a peppermint but rather a wonderment. Out there, there are many flavours. Good hearted givers and ruthless takers. There are takers and givers and those too that just are indifferent to know whether they’re taking or whether they’re giving.
This is story about a giver.

I’ve lived in the same apartment block as Dean for many a year now. Dean does night shifts.
Not getting much more than an ‘hello’ out of each other I thought he either dug graves or sat security reading hand-me-down magazines and drinking Miranda orange soda. I thought he wore dark pants and a white ironed shirt, with a collar as sharp as Lukes Light Saber since he just respected his security shift. I really thought he ate big loaves of white bread and pink polony. Having sat on my ivory throne I judged. Little did I know, it doesn’t matter what you wear, what hours you pull, what kind of bean you pull, or what you scoff. Don’t judge a beast by its hairy back.

After we both joined the body corporate, and after he failed to make many a meeting due to his werewolvian hours, I  figured i’d choon, ‘hey bud, what is it that you do by night for the elusive penny?. His radio controlled voice responded, ‘I work near OR Tambo as a flight technician for Comair’s flight simulators, kkkrrr, do you Roger that?’.  Salivating over my best t-shirt, I liquid lurched, ‘nooo waaay, i love jet planes’. ’I’m a pilot’, krrr Roger that’, he responded. ‘oh shawing dude, you’ve got to show me what you do.’
‘with pleasure, krrr over and out’ , said Dean over the imaginary microphone.
So we synchronised our clocks for a Sunday eve and with me, I brought Marty and his wee clone Eli.

We motor-boated through on Sunday eve to Kempton Park, a forgotten crevice but for that which it harbours-Johannesburg International Airport and Comair’s flight simulation campus.
‘it’s a Playstation 25’, gloated Dean, and by golly gilga-mamy was he right.
From the highway we could see the half-moon glowing hangars peering as the nose-end of the Millenium Falcon grazing past us as we did 120 on the highway. Once inside we were awed by the day-glo hefty, lofty air space. and there before us stood the giant simulation pods, formless, figureless, purely functional, at once static.

Dean gave us some insight and out of the corner of my oculus, the once static shifted. ‘it shifted, argh, it shifted.’ On hydraulic feet they hovered, moving slowly, yawing and banking ever so gently like giant hulks suspended in the open weightless sky. The simulators  suck their life from the multitude of wires plugged into the main frame extending intravenously into the pod as a reliant, needy patient. The behemoths move silently, unawares of the outside world, like arachnids constructing, engrossed in assembling webs.

From 18:37 to 18:39pm we were ejected from the quotidian into the extra-ordinary by the turn of a knob. Into the cockpit of a 737-800, we were flung, an exact replica. The flicks, switches, buttons, turns, and levers, a mangled ordered assembly that only years of academics and more of play would reveal their function.
Having been handed the pilots seat I sat at King Shaka Airport awaiting taxiing. I took hold of the throttle, grabbed the Kit-like steering control, slowly let the jets warm up and eventually pushed up on the throttle hurtling us to 350kays and hour, my ruddered feet kept us on the straight and narrow, and finally pulling up on the control we had lift off. It was phantasmagorical. It was sublime, it was supremative. I flew along the south coast, banked to the right and came round to land making sure my nose was up, my speed was pin point, my angle was within safe parameters and I had 2 red lights on either side of the cross hair. the touch down was safe

my back drenched and the caked salt giving me Elvis Preslian lambchops, this was the ride of my life. Me, Marty and Eli all got the chance to live another reality, to fly a jet plane. Dean gave of his time, and he pledged more.
By the Roar of The Russian Bear Hunter, this was a story about a giver.