Tale guide

I know a monkey when I see one

(From Ann of Africa and the Bushman)

The incident involving the charging elephant happened at the very start of a weeklong excursion in the Kruger National Park. (Have you seen a lion kill?)

I thought that the failure of the reverse gear in the car’s automatic transmission box was problematic in as much as, if we encountered a dangerous situation again, we would not have that necessary option available to us.

Consequently, we decided that I would take the car to the nearest Toyota dealership which was to be found outside of the park in a town called Malelane.

On the following day, Ann put out one of our folding lounging chairs just outside the caravan under a shady tree and settled down with her cellphone and book for the morning while I went to try and resolve our gearbox issue.

The journey to Malelane took some time and it wasn’t until mid-morning that I was able to establish that the local dealership didn’t carry the necessary spares and that we would have to wait five days for the part to arrive from Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, back at camp, Ann had immersed herself into her book and was oblivious to the gentle movements of nature around her.

Unbeknown to anyone, the electric game fence around the camp had been disconnected and a troupe of baboons had found its way into the camp site and had quietly taken up a position in a semi-circle in front of and facing Ann’s lounger.

Ann heard the scuffling but initially ignored it. Once the noise finally broke through her concentration, she looked up into the faces of twenty odd baboons all staring intently at her, not more than five meters away.

She froze!

Very, very slowly, she reached down for her cell phone tucked away on the lounger next to her legs. She lifted the phone to her ear and dialed Richard, her ever caring ‘bushman’.

The phone rang as I was engaged in my conversation with the head mechanic in Malelane.

“Hello, sweetheart” I answered

“I am surrounded by a troupe of baboons” Ann whispered, her voice trembling with fear.

What she thought I could do about it 60 Km away, I was not sure and in hindsight, she wasn’t entirely clear either.

The idea that potentially dangerous animals could cross over the electric fence and gain access to the campsite was also a tad farfetched to my liking.

“She has to be mistaken” I concluded.

“No, my darling” said the bushman in a confident but patient, condescending tone, “they can’t be baboons. They are probably vervet monkeys”

The effect of his attempt to calm the situation caused an outburst akin to that of a bomb blast.

“I KNOW A F#@*ING BABOON WHEN I SEE ONE!” she exploded in a rage that would have stopped a lion in its tracks.

Apart from the damage to my ear and the bushman’s ego, her outburst was so loud that the baboons were instantly terrified and scattered in every direction and didn’t stop until they were all well out of range!

The bushman limped back to camp with a bunch of flowers resolved to make amends as best as possible under the circumstances.

By the time he arrived back at the caravan, the baboons had trashed at least four other caravans and some of them were running all over the freshly cut lawns, covered in flour.

Ann of Africa, on the other hand, was quietly reading her book on the lounger under the tree with a broom stick next to her.

The baboons had evidently come to terms with the realisation that to mess with this aunty was to dice with certain death and stayed as far away from our camp as possible.

The bushman, meanwhile, had learnt yet another lesson from the wild.

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