Nothing beats the bush

You know what was great? That for one week no-one was confused about their identity. We were not asked to respect an impala who had always identified as a rhino, or a slightly camp elephant who had always been drawn to zebras. For one week we were reminded that safe spaces are an illusion and that a trigger warning is what happens just before a predator breaks through the bush in search of your jugular.

In the Kruger National Park, it’s all about the present and the immediate. No-one gets cancelled for something they said on Twitter in 2015, but rather because they were the slowest in the herd and, as a result, became someone’s lunch.

Feelings don’t count that much. Where else could you sit in a car and chew on kudu biltong while admiring the horns on one of their cousins in front of the car? Where else would a day spotting herds assist in building an appetite for a meat braai?

Maybe the draw is the fact that the Kruger is one of the few places where time seems to stand still. Where in most areas there’s still no internet, and where the rules are unambiguous and clear. It is in many ways, a time capsule. It’s the ultimate Throwback Thursday, and reminds us of some long-forgotten basics. It undoubtedly is that need for simplicity that attracts many South Africans as well as tourists from around the world.

It’s one of the places where drivers welcome someone stopping in the middle of the road, because it might mean that they have sighted something interesting. And where twitchers, or “birders”, are accepted as real people. And not banished to the fringes of society like in the real world.

And it’s why each year in July, even though I don’t really care much for animals or conservation, we pack up and head to the area. It’s why, although I would lose no sleep at all if I never saw a Pel’s fishing owl in the wild again, we freeze too much meat, take too little charcoal, limited vegetables, and no fruit to speak of, and drive to the game reserve.

We are never alone. Along with the portion of the community who haven’t chosen to holiday in Umhlanga, we immerse ourselves in Kruger culture as though our survival depends on it. For a short period, we wake up before dawn to wait at the gate before it opens. We might have no idea why we need to be through the entrance while it’s still too dark to see a living thing, but we know that it’s important. If it wasn’t, why is everyone else doing it?

It’s a question of preference. Beach or bush? Sea or shrub? E.coli or malaria? Those travelling locally in South Africa can be divided into these two main groups. And where I have no doubt that mating rituals, primal behaviour, and survival of the fittest apply just as much at the Sands as it does at Skukuza, at least in Mpumalanga a predator is always a predator, and a leopard cannot elect to change its spots.