The Hyena

I don’t think I ever slept so well in my whole life. I must have had about eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I woke, disembarked, collected my bags, got my passport stamped and stepped out onto the soil of Africa, and was shuttled to my hotel in Sandton City, a suburb of Johannesburg. I checked in, collected the envelope left for me informing me of the planned meet and greet at such and such a time. Suppertime, I thought. I had something to do before that, though. I checked the time, discovered I still had a couple hours before the meet and greet was to begin, so I deposited my bags and made my way up the hill to the shopping mall a block away.

I needed hiking boots. I know what you’re thinking. How could I come to Africa for a safari vacation and not bring hiking boots? There’s a simple answer to that. I forgot. It’s as simple as that.
I found a shoe store and wouldn’t you know it, it being Africa, and right next to a fairly large hotel, they had an abundance of them. I tried on just about every type they had before I found a pair that satisfied me. Before I found the one pair that actually fit me. Almost fit me. Beggars can’t be choosers.

I walked back to the hotel, just a block away, and had to walk past a newly formed pack of young toughs that hadn’t been there when I scaled the hill. My hackles rose. I’d read more than a few dire passages in my trusty Lonely Planet Guide, warning of potential violence in Jo’burg. Don’t wear jewelry, they said. Don’t carry money. Don’t walk the streets by night. Don’t walk the streets by day. Don’t be alone. Lock your doors. Don’t carry a gun. Do carry a gun. Kill anything that moves before it kills you. Run away. Don’t come to Jo’burg! I exaggerate only slightly.

I was not mugged, despite the scrutiny they gave me. The fact is, they probably only gave me the old up and down because I, the pasty white boy in shorts and golf shirt, was obviously a regular curiosity, a tourist. I tried not to look back as I passed. I tried not to hurry past. I tried to keep my cool. I think I did. But they could probably smell the fear radiating from me. Note to self: try not to read scary shit in travel books before arriving at your destination.

The meet and greet was fun. We were supposed to eat, or so I gathered, it being held at what I considered suppertime, but we didn’t. What we had was cocktails. Too many cocktails. When I say we, I mean me, others as well, I imagine. Long story short: no food. Some of the others decided to head up to the mall for dinner and shopping. It turns out I was not the only one to arrive sans hiking boots. I wanted to go; I wanted to get some food in my belly; but jetlag had taken its toll and I was too drunk to do anything except go to bed. Which is what I did, getting another twelve hours of sleep before boarding the bus for the first leg of out journey around the Cape.

We had a long haul ahead of us before arriving at Karongwe Private Reserve game lodge, our first and one of our primary destinations. It took us the better part of the day to get there, steadily climbing into the rising rocky terrain of the Drakensbergs. We stopped for a quick lunch in Witbank (some fast food chain, as memorable as any other), arriving at the Reserve about six hours after departing.

It was a hot ride despite our bus being air-conditioned, arid hot (it took a little while for the air to fully condition the space, but dry is dry, cool or not), necessitating our need to buy water along the route. My still being somewhat jetlagged and a little hung-over had little to do with the decision; everyone had need; everyone clambered off the bus to buy some when the opportunity arose. The time passed quickly, though. There were thirty or so of us to meet, in spite of the meet and greet. One can only absorb so much in a couple of hours.

We arrived and were shown to our cabins. I couldn’t have asked for better. They were modelled after kraals, the round thatched huts the Zulus lived in. Exteriors aside, they had all the necessities: bathrooms, porcelain washbasins and ewers (if one were inclined to use them and not the working shower), and mosquito netting. The rooms were air-conditioned, but air conditioning has never been much a deterrent to mosquitoes, and there were mosquitoes. We were camped along a tributary of the Koronge-We and Olifants rivers, and wetlands were aplenty about. I discovered that mosquito netting doesn’t breathe as well as one would hope. I used it that first night, but thereafter I tempted fate and trusted in the screen windows and my malaria shots.

Don’t get me wrong. It was quite posh. I loved it. But there were few lights illuminating the yards. We had to be guided from the common hut to our rooms by a groundskeeper, who invariably looked like he’d have rather been abed rather than escorting we inebriated tourists to their rooms.
We needed to be escorted, though. There were no fences. There were no walls. Anything could wander on through the Lodge at any time, as we would soon discover.

We were drinking with the staff. And when I say staff, I mean the white staff. Apartheid was alive and well in South Africa despite it being put to rest. The Blacks were still kaffirs. And the Blacks still held all the menial jobs, where the whites held the better paying guide positions. After a few hours of drinking games, we were all a little askew, the staff even more so than we were. Two Aussie girls left to go to the loo, strategically placed outside the front door. They weren’t gone for long.

They hurried back in yelling, “Hyena! Fucking hyena!”

“Where?” we asked.

“Literally right outside the door!”

The staff leapt up and ran to the entry, fumbling with the snaps holding their pistols in place. The guide behind the bar fished out a rifle with a scope before following, careening off the doorframe as he passed through it.

“Where was it?” I asked. “What was it doing?”

“It was just sitting out there, like a dog, right beside the loo.”

I’m not sure what worried me more, the hyena running loose out in the yard, or the guides running about looking for it, pissed to the gills and armed to the teeth.