I have a number of fond memories of Manyeleti, and I think that in a lot of ways, those experiences were responsible for whittling away to the core of my love of the bush. On one afternoon, our band of grubby, barefooted teenagers managed to convince the teacher, Stuart Walls, to allow us to have a clay-lat fight in a muddy pan. We chose our weapons, de-branching bendy sticks which would be used to launch our muddy projectiles. In the centre of the pan, we stripped down to our shorts and lay siege against one another, flinging tightly packed mud bombs with not so accurate aim. When they hit home, we were rewarded by a precocious thud and a yelp from one of our friends. In the midst of our battle, we were interrupted by a herd of elephants that meandered to the shore. The teachers and ourselves were completely oblivious to their presence, so engrossed were we all in our muddy war. So when they arrived, it was too late to retreat to the game vehicle and instead we called a cease fire and lay down in the thick mud. Our bodies were coated in an oozing brown and only our eyes winked from the surface, peering at the elephants. I am certain they knew that we were there, but paid no attention to our presence and the herd walked deeper into the mud, squelching and sliding to a point which was a bit more watery and began their ritual of thrashing the liquid onto their backs and wallowing in its coolness. If you have ever seen an elephant play in the shallows of a dam, you will know the pleasure that the onlooker receives, and watching from our eye-level vantage point is something that I will never forget. The low rumbles from their stomachs and the joy that they displayed some twenty meters away from us was very special. It might have been the mixture of our fear and some sense of admiration, but either way, there was a definite connection. Every since that day, I have developed a love of these animals and their is an affinity between their humanness or our elephantness that speaks to the soul.
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ContentSome thoughts about things, sometimes philosophical, sometimes just musings. The world through my eyes... Archives
March 2023
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