I get the feeling that a deep fascination for the African bush and its wildlife is something universal, something tightly wrapped in the DNA of all mankind. Or is this just the cloistered view of a South African who can’t remember better times than his visits to the Kruger National Park, or the Timbavati, and who holds the belief that a bushveld experience seems always to be the highlight for any of our foreign visitors lucky enough to get there?
The question to ask, I guess, is why this is so.
Is it the silence, the tranquillity, the sense of something unspoiled, the excitement of being privy to the unexpected, to the sudden and often explosive raw rhythms of nature? I suspect we could come up with a heap of theories that tie back to the mainstream of man’s primitive origins, our disenchantment with the concrete sprawl of our modern cities, the ugliness of the relentless development we see around us and the crowded tempo of modern life.
And it would all be unimportant.
The fact remains. The bushveld is a place where I, and most people I know, are most at peace and very happy to be in.
The bushveld is also where I first met Mario Cesare, under a Mopane tree, where we tested fly rods and compared casting styles, somewhere back in the 1980s. But that day is a convoluted story all on its own. The important thing is that we still share a friendship and a few common passions – fly fishing, the bushveld and wildlife. So we have been in each other’s company fairly often since we first met, always in remote places, either viewing wild life or fly fishing. And I was quick to understand that Mario’s passion for wildlife is underpinned by a deep empathy for it and an incredible understanding of its many huge machinations and its tiniest intricate nuances. It’s an understanding the likes of which I have not encountered to the same level in anyone else. I’m tempted to think there are ‘naturals’ at this sort of thing, just as we know there are naturals in sport, and that Mario is a natural conservationist. I get the sense that a lot of what happens in his head happens naturally, was just fed empirically along the way in his many years deep in the bush aided by his keen powers of observation.
Not that I should even hint that I’m an expert judge of the qualities of conservationists and naturalists. I am working on a hunch here, but it’s a hunch backed by my own observations during the many hours I have spent in Mario’s company. More importantly, it’s backed by the testimony of many people who are knowledgeable about these things and who happen also to know Mario well. I have been alongside Mario on many rivers and streams and if there’s one thing I am sure about, it’s that I can tell a lot about a person by just quietly watching how they approach a testy fly stream. Mario’s approach is studied, observant and skilled. I would guess he’s the same in the bushveld around big game as he is in fly streams around trout.
Man-eaters, Mambas and Marula Madness is more than a series of stories about one of the most successful private game reserves in South Africa. It is that in large part, but in many ways it is also the story of Mario’s life, as a family man, as a manager with high responsibility, as a committed diplomat and negotiator for the rights of wild animals and as a humble, compassionate and celebrated conservationist. It is a book richly woven with the tapestry of his life experiences, with charming bushveld vignettes from mambas to man-eaters, with humour (conservationists are paid not so much in currency as in sunsets), with wonderfully fresh insights into the intriguing ways of wildlife (you will never forget his touching story of the brotherhood among buffalo bulls), with accounts of the threats posed by fences and poachers, and with his few encounters with the prospect of sudden death.
This is also a book I have long hoped Mario would write. His head is too filled with the mysteries and intricate workings of this aspect of the natural world to let him slip quietly away one day without leaving us – and the generations to come – with a record of his experiences and insights. Fortunately, Mario has always been a committed note keeper and now at last we have much of that in book form. But as good as this book is, I hope there is more Cesare writing to come. Man-eaters, Mambas and Marula Madness has left me, as I suspect it will leave you, with precisely that sentiment.
April 2010