23

 

Uncle Ben and I are alone in the Land Rover. It’s the same model used in the movie Born Free. Bright light is blazing through the dirty windshield and hot air rushing into the cabin through the large openings where the doors used to be. On the back stands a black man with the darkest skin I have ever seen.

Uncle Ben stops and asks me if I want to drive. He knows I would love to. He warns me that it will be difficult driving and if we get stuck it will be a long walk back to the farmhouse.

‘It’s probably more than a day’s walk, and we have very little water. We’ll be travelling some distance in a dry riverbed, through thick sand. Do you think you can handle it?’ I am blindly confident, not the way I feel when people ask me to play cricket or rugby.

‘I’m sure.’

‘We’ll need the red lever—that’s low range—for the next stretch.’ The yellow lever pops out as I move the red lever back. It hooks. I move it forward again and back, and then it slides in.

The concentrated torque causes the vehicle to leap forward.

‘You hardly ever need first gear when you’re in low range, Nick. Try pulling away in second.’ The transfer case gears whine, and the Land Rover is thrown from side to side as it cuts through the deep sand.

‘Now build up speed.’ There is urgency in uncle Ben’s voice. ‘We need to get up that embankment. Faster, faster!’ Before me an almost vertical riverbank looms, the engine races, and the vehicle starts climbing. Some of the wheels lose traction, then grip again, and we crest the bank.

‘Well done, Nick! You’re good at this, aren’t you!’

We follow a track up the side of a plateau, over large mounds built to cope with the slim possibility of flooding. As we reach the top I look back. Below us the plains stretch as far as the eye can see, and the dry river looks like a darkened line scribbled untidily on the immense expanse.

We drive towards a windmill that has been erected in the middle of nowhere to feed the concrete water trough providing a lifeline for animals of all kinds. Next to the trough is a wire cage. I can smell sheep droppings, and there is a smell of decaying meat in the air.

Uncle Ben walks around to my side, looks down and shakes his head. ‘Those bastard baboons,’ he says and I walk towards what is left of a lamb. Like a spineless fluffy toy, I think. There is still fur, dirty dull-wool covered skin shrinking around its putrid frame. The animal’s head seems hard and old. The eyes have been pecked out and the mouth is open. The expression the lamb now carries is of a forgotten tiny death.

The black man takes a metre long metal rod from the back of the Land Rover and walks over to the cage where a baboon is pacing back and forth in a space probably no more than twice its size. She becomes highly agitated as we approach, exhaustion and thirst forgotten, for she has never been this close to humans. From her back an infant crawls around her for protection—it knows its mother is distraught. When it reaches her chest, her arm moves instinctively to cradle it.

Uncle Ben takes the rod from the black man and carefully chooses a position in the wire mesh of the cage. He rests about ten centimetres of the spear on the bottom V of the mesh and moves the rod so that the point aims directly at the baboon’s chest. My uncle and the animal move continuously, as if in sync.

The baboon hesitates for a fateful moment, and the spear drives into her chest. She grips the steel shaft, but the force pushes her against the back of the cage. The metal slides through the fine muscles around the animal’s chest, finds a path between two ribs, tears them apart and punctures her left lung. Now she grips the spear with both hands but doesn’t have enough leverage to pull it out.

The baby clings frantically to the stricken mother, its eyes wide as they follow the attacker’s movements. The third stab penetrates the mother’s organs again. The rod is pulled out, coated with mucus and blood. The lung boils through the hole, making gurgling sounds. White, red and pink froth bubbles out over the black hair, and then sucks back. Now the rod gets shoved into her abdomen, lacerating her organs, and eventually the mother’s body can take no more shock and she collapses. The baby silently clutches its lifeless mother.

They open the cage and drag the mother out, with the bewildered infant still holding on tightly. The black man tears it off its mother by its back feet, swings it, screeching, through the air and brings it down on the edge of the concrete base. It takes only this one movement to pulverise the little animal’s skull.