Sunshine journalism and the G&T revolution

I have been trying desperately to think of one good thing about 2016. Brexit, Trump, Syria, drowned refugees, bomb blasts, terror attacks, the drought, the death of David Bowie, Black Friday, violence on campus, my personal life, oh dear, heartbreak, writing a painful book, losing a pet, moving house. I’ve been thinking about it all week.

Where is that one little ray of sunshine?

And it then it just struck me.

It has just struck me that this is the very first year in my adult life I haven’t been a South African crime statistic. Can you imagine that? I mean like, no crime has been committed against me, and as far as I remember, I haven’t committed a crime.

It might not seem like a big deal to you, but to me it is a startling and wonderful revelation. In the past thirty years I have been mugged many times, held at knifepoint, held at gunpoint, thieved and burgled more than I can count, robbed of three or four cars, armed robbed, home invaded, attacked and stabbed in the head, had all my possessions stolen; and then again. I've been to the cops more than thirty times in thirty years. You know, it’s like South Africa. 

I can’t even begin to come up with an inventory of stolen things, apart from my whole life, except to note that there was one ghetto blaster that had serious street voodoo and managed to not get stolen for close on twenty something years before dying a natural appliance death in rural Limpopo. God alone knows how that ghetto blaster pulled it off. 

So howabout that then? All of a freelance Friday, here I am, the chosen one, finally that fabulous statistic. I have been granted one whole crime free year in South Africa. And it feels great. Send champagne, send whisky, send fresh horses, send love; send a SA Crime Stats Award in chrome; send strength to the constitutional democracy’s arm. Oh wait, send some artisanal gin if you could. I’ve noticed – heh - there is a G&T revolution sweeping the country. Think amber, verde, rooibos infused, black pepper, basil, cucumber, decolonised. 

* Images courtesy of the Latitude Group & Francois d'Elbee x

The Relatives of Fabulousness

I could bear my self-pity no longer. I needed to get away from Heartbreak Hill and into loving arms. So I pointed my little white car, Princess, in the direction of Tzaneen and headed down the dizzying Magoebaskloof Pass to have lunch with my aunties and uncles at the Nut Village.

Reasons to be cheerful 

It’s a beautiful, soulful drive and luckily for me, they live next door to each other, so it’s like two for the price of one: One roast chicken and a bottle of wine gets you two momma bear hugs and two avuncular cuddles, on tap. Plus, jackpot, they also have wine. And both uncles are called Mike, so that’s one less name to remember after the wine.  The Nut Village – its real name is the Macadamia Retirement Village – sits calmly and quietly on the banks of the Tzaneen dam and has gorgeous gardens, indigenous trees and a host of extraordinary characters including my fabulous rellies. I always sign into the Nut Village as the Ministry of Fabulousness, and I always cite the reason for my visit as: G&T. 

And it’s always so good to lunch with the aunts and uncles. 

Billo Tooley

We all stem from one Billo Tooley who came farming in Agatha, near Tzaneen, in 1904 and begat the wild Tooley clan who are still alive and kicking and doing everything from politics and cheese making to brewing beer and having their hearts broken. There is strong ancestry and deep love; never a shortage of gossip or wit. I never met him, but Billo Tooley was a strong and handsome (ahem) man, they tell me. He married twice – once to Muriel Frances who started this particular Tooley branch that I lunched with; and then second time to my grandmother Elsie Margaret whose branch and lineage I’m afraid, is unquestionably madder.  Oh dear, that’s me. 

My grandmother Elsie

But I love my aunts and uncles stories. Depending on their moods and the weather, they regale me with tales of avocado farming and the perils of growing cucumbers in subtropical climes; the goings on at the old tennis club and how they found the biggest mashatu tree in deepest Africa. They tell me about how they once took ten children on a flatbed truck to camp in Mozambique for a month, how my mother once hung naked from a tree with my godmother Jean Solomon, how that lot lost everything and that bunch turned out disastrously, how so and so married twenty times and how one aunty once left her baby behind at a party. Mostly we just love each other and love each other’s company. I draw deep from ancestral wells when I lunch with my aunts and uncles at the Nut Village. I leave them with a fuller heart and belly.

The road to the rellies

They are older and wiser people, they have known deeper, greater life and they ease my broken heart, up my humour. They impart love and wisdom and the sense of this lovely quote I found from author  Louise Erdrich that: "Life will break you. You have to love, you have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree (or in our case an avocado tree) and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."

Someone bring me a river, a hippo and a G&T please

The Lowveld bush is my happy place. If I could right now, I’d be deep in the bush with Darling, a cold G&T in hand, cruising slowly with all the windows open, perchance to spot an impala under an ancient fig or a pod of hippos basking in the sun like giant aubergines.

Hippos like giant aubergines in the sun 

Living in Limpopo I have been blessed to be able to disappear into the Lowveld bush in between all the madness, and as that good old-fashioned bushwhacker TV Bulpin wrote: “There is nothing quite like it anywhere else on earth. There is a sense of a presence brooding over this wilderness, imparting to it an indefinable character and allure.” This presence he says, embodies all of our longing for adventure, discovery and exhilarating freedom, and is the most unforgettable thing about the Lowveld. Yebo yeah. 

Some of my best soul moments have been seeing the creatures of the bush. A very muddy terrapin in a puddle in the Kruger, a wild dog puppy with satellite-dish ears in the Klaserie. A leopard that simply slunk across our path in Garonga, a hippo dancing at dusk at Ntsiri, a herd of elephant crossing the Timbavati river road in Kruger. And the trees and the rivers, the sunsets, the sunrises, the smell of woodsmoke. 

Sleepy buffalo calf x

Loved for its bushveld spirit, the Lowveld includes the Kruger Park that stretches down from Punda Maria in the north all the way down south to Malelane near the border of Mozambique and Swaziland. It includes the luxury private reserves like Sabi Sands and Mala Mala and the humbler provincial reserves and parks; the Limpopo Valley and the meeting of the borders of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe….where it seems like the elephants an baobabs will never end, although we all know the sad truth that humanity seems ever hellbent on destroying the wild and its creatures. And thank you for the places where they are at peace. 

Pregnant rhino x

I need this virtual reflection of the bush after a befok crazy year in which I packed up the old family farmhouse, packed up dad who went off to Hermanus, packed up myself and packed, many, many suitcases and went to Jozi countless times, New York, Hawaii, Malawi, Ilha de Mocambique, Thailand, and Maputo twice.

Muddy but determined terrapin x

And as the famous South African rhino conservationist Ian Player said, the wilderness is a place of reflection. It's by considering the wilderness as a whole system that one starts to find its real magic. Everything in the bush is interconnected – from the slenderest grasses to the biggest trees - and the more greater the connection the more powerful the amazement. 
Bring me a river, a hippo and a G&T please someone…

Soul spot of note - the Timbavati River Road in the Kruger