The bush parted with the sound of rustling dry undergrowth and paws rapidly striking soft sand, and from out of a cloud of red dust we suddenly came face to face with a monstrous black-maned lion loping at full speed, head down, and his eyes focussed. Botha, my Khoisan companion, dropped instantly to his haunches, and I instinctively followed his example.
My heart had stopped, frozen in that terrifying moment. We were so close; I could see his enormous leg muscles rippling beneath the skin as he charged forward. Like a stone statue, I crouched motionless, hardly breathing. My focus was fixed entirely on this beast they call the King. In what seemed a very long time but was in fact a flash, the lion charged right past us. He was so close that I could have touched him, and I could smell his strong pungent body odour through the dust that powdered up into the air as he ran. In another flash he was gone and I was left confused and terrified, but overcome by a wave of relief, all at the same time.
Botha and I had been walking for days and found ourselves deep inside the Kgalagadi, a desert widely known as the Kah-lah-hah-ree that extends over nine thousand square kilometres across Bohts-wah-nah, the Northern Cape of South Africa, and Nah-mib-ee-ah. It is not really, nor even officially, a desert, given the annual rainfall that sustains life for the hundreds of animals, trees, and plants that have made this their home over thousands of years and have all adapted to the fluctuating temperatures and generally dry desert-like conditions.
Botha, son of Hermanus Khoi, a village headman, had offered me an opportunity of a lifetime to spend time with him in the desert. So far, we had spent three nights in the wilderness. If he left me now, I thought, I wouldn’t have a clue how to get out again.
We stood quietly looking back, our eyes following the charging lion as it disappeared into the near distance. Earlier we had passed by a small herd of gemsbok (or oryx in English). Beautifully tall, standing proud against the background of red sand dunes shifting in the wind. We could see the clouds of dust from the herd on the run. Botha explained that the lion was part of a pride that had ambushed the gemsbok and had likely picked out a young buck for dinner. He had never found himself in the flight path of a charging lion before and under any other circumstances he would have detected the presence of the pride long before the close encounter. He was clearly upset with himself.
It took no time at all for me to appreciate that Botha, who spoke a version of Afrikaans, had bush skills that were on another planet, let alone level. Finally, our nerves settled, and we carried on walking in a north-easterly direction, occasionally stopping for Botha to examine a stem of grass or a twig on the edge of a bush or some animal spoor in the sand. Today was completely still, which could explain how he didn’t detect the presence of lion downwind from us. It was probably forty-odd degrees in the shade. We had rested under a camel thorn tree during the midday sun. We had sat quietly, speaking very little and usually only when I asked a question about this strange and awe-inspiring habitat. We spoke in soft undertones as if not to intrude in nature’s wonderland. Above us, a huge nest of sociable weavers interweaved the branches of the tree. It must have been home to maybe five hundred birds or more, and when they suddenly all left the nest simultaneously they flew in a twisting tornado-like formation high into the sky in a spectacular murmuration.
As the sun began to drop towards the west, Botha indicated that we needed to find a place for the night. We built a small fire under the shade of a grove of camel thorn trees before Botha motioned me to stay as he slipped out of sight with his bow and arrow at the ready, in search of some food.
The Kah-lah-hah-ree is arid, covered by sand dunes interspersed by dry riverbeds and populated by small tufts of grass, bushes, trees in some places, and kilometre upon kilometre of desert sand. I had read somewhere that there are huge tracks of water in the earth deep below the desert surface, which feed occasional water holes that seem to come from nowhere. There is an ancient feel to the place. Its silence is over twenty thousand years old. Its night sky is among the brightest on Earth and the trillions of stars twinkle from millions of light years away. There are moments that take your breath away, like the colours of dawn and dusk. Here, forked-tailed drongos mimic warning calls to unsuspecting meerkats, which run for the cover, offering the bird the opportunity to feed on their food morsels.
Botha returned with a hare, which he deftly skinned and strung on a skewer before placing it across two forked sticks above the fire. Then he took me to the edge of the camp and started to dig down into the sand under a large tuft of grass.
What are you looking for? I asked.
N’abbas, he replied. The ‘N’ was expressed more as a click than an ‘N’.
N’abbas? I queried, not having clue.
Wait! Botha smiled, surprised at my ignorance. He gently loosened the soil and slowly extracted a truffle-like small potato no bigger than the palm of his hand. He gave it to me to hold as he moved to another spot where I noticed another crack in the ground near the grasses. Soon Botha had found five reasonably sized vegetables, which he peeled and sliced. They taste like a cross between a mushroom and a potato. Very pleasant in both taste and texture, it turns out that it is a delicacy sought out by the Bushmen, as well as a cross section of burrowing wild animals like meerkats and foxes.
We settled down under the canopy of stars, feeding on roast rabbit as the night fell to the sounds of insects, owls, and far away hyenas.
This is God’s country, where your soul finds its way to the heavens all by itself, as it has done for the Khoikhoi for tens of thousands of years.