Wilderness Family: At Home with Africa's Wildlife

PART 1 -- Mahlangeni A Remote Meeting Place In a faraway corner of the northwest region of Kruger National Park, there is a heart-shaped basin of sand and forest where two rivers meet. The Little Letaba enters the basin from the north, the Greater Letaba from the west. They come together in a swirl of froth and gurgling whirlpools, then settle down to continue sedately onward as one waterway, the Letaba River. Its gently moving waters are full of hippo and crocodile, its sandy shores patterned with game tracks. On all sides of the river basin, mopani woodlands roll away into a vast landscape of wilderness and solitude. The area is called Mahlangeni, which is the Tsonga word for "meeting place." One of the most isolated ranger sections in the park, Mahlangeni was home to my game-ranger husband, our three daughters and me for eleven years. Our house on the north bank of the Letaba overlooked the merging rivers and the forested basin. Squirrels and mongooses played in our garden. Bushbuck and monkeys were daily visitors. A lone leopard patrolled the neighborhood at night. Other neighbors included baboons, hippos, elephants and lions. Throughout the years various strays and orphans from the animal kingdom were temporary members of our family. Our days were filled with magical moments and unforgettable adventures. How We Got There Kobus was born and raised on a bushveld farm in the Northern Province of South Africa. Since his early childhood he has loved the African bush and its creatures and wanted to protect them from destruction. Although I was also born on a farm in the Northern Province, not far from where Kobus was born, we didn't meet until almost twenty years later when we were both studying at the University of Pretoria. After discovering that we shared not just a first name (mine being the feminine version of his) but also a farm upbringing and a love of wild places, we became good friends. The first time we went out was to see the movieBorn Freethe story of George and Joy Adamson and Elsa the lioness. It was the most beautiful movie either of us had ever seen, and afterward Kobus confided to me that his dream was to become a game ranger. It occurred to me that my dream was to become a game ranger's wife. We got married after we graduated. Kobus applied for the position of game ranger with South African National Parks but learned there were no vacancies. So we went to live in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, where Kobus worked as a journalist and I as a translator for three years, then moved to Johannesburg where we lived and worked for another six years before Kobus finally received a letter from the warden of Kruger National Park, inviting him to Skukuza, the operational headquarters and largest of the park's tourist camps. We read the letter a hundred times to make sure it wasn't a dream. The letter also stipulated that "the applicant's wife be present at the interview." I wondered why, but lost no time in making arrangements for my mother to look after my three young children for a couple of days. We arrived at Skukuza in the evening and spent the night in the tourist camp, hardly sleeping but listening to the enthralling sounds of the wilderness night. In the morning we reported to the chief ranger's office for our interview. It was conducted by the chief ranger and the park warden. They looked stern and official. They asked Kobus why he had applied for the job, and why he would want to leave a good job in the city to work in the bush. Kobus answered simply that the bush made sense to him and that he had wanted to be a game ranger for as long as he could remember. They seemed satisfied. They then turned to me and gave me aKruger, Kobie is the author of 'Wilderness Family: At Home with Africa's Wildlife', published 2001 under ISBN 9780385658126 and ISBN 0385658125.