LETTER FROM Ithala
Sitting alone in a wilderness like Ithala Game Reserve soon turns your thoughts to where you fit into the food chain, writes Toast Coetzer.
There’s a sign here that warns of crocodiles. Swimming in the Phongolo River is out of the question, then. But it’s also good: Places with crocodiles are properly wild places. Ithala Game Reserve wouldn’t make a top 10 list of South Africa’s best wildlife refuges because it lacks the glamour – and size – of a Kruger, Kgalagadi or Hluhluwe-imfolozi. It’s tucked away in a hilly corner of Kwazulu-natal near Vryheid. To reach it, you tumble down a narrow tar road from Louwsburg. Ithala is between Louwsburg and the Phongolo River, in a landscape of densely wooded valleys.
It’s a Wednesday in February and there can’t be more than five other tourists in the reserve, most of whom I nodded polite greetings to over breakfast at Ntshondwe rest camp. It’s no surprise that I’m the only person at the Phongolo picnic site.
To my left, the Phongolo River rushes seawards, quickly, brown and frothy with summer’s generous rains. The road that comes down into this valley is almost throttled by the encroaching bush. Somewhere along the road I saw a giant kudu bull. He stepped to the side, entering the green wall of vegetation. When I stopped alongside, seconds later, I couldn’t even see the tip of a horn. Ithala just swallowed him, like a pebble thrown into a pool.
Nature sings all around me. It’s humid; it smells of water, leaves and soil. Every casual glance I give to my surroundings immerses me deeper into a kind of trance. I’m hypnotised equally by the shrill din of cicadas and by the soundless chug of sap running down the trunks of giant fig and Natal mahogany trees.
It’s hot, in the thirties, but a wind moves through the valley and cools my back. Some impala nearby flick their tails. The main players on the soundtrack are birds: a peanut gallery of starlings, the bubbling solo of an oriole, the abstract honk of a purple-crested turaco, the melancholic sub-song of a coucal, and, occasionally, the wind-diffused quatrain of an African fish-eagle that trickles down from somewhere up high.
A pin-tailed whydah takes up a prime perch on a dead branch in a sweet thorn tree. I glance over my shoulder to check if the grey-headed kingfisher is still sitting where I first saw it. It is. A fast, dust-green bird flies past: African green-pigeon.
As often happens when I sit in a wild place, my thoughts play the “What if?” game. What if I had to suddenly survive in this valley with nothing but a pocketknife and a packet of dried fruit? No car, no phone, no wallet. Would I make a rough lean-to using reeds, and set up camp next to the Phongolo? Could I trap a fish, somehow, without being ankle-dragged by a croc? Could I set a snare and catch a bushbuck for the pot? Hang on, could I make a fire without matches? Would I wake up one morning with an elephant by my bedside, eyeballing me calmly? Would the local baboon troop eventually take me in out of sheer pity?
Wild places also inspire me to dream of what South Africa looked like before industrial-era humans built roads and fences, dug mines and the foundations for cities, first Balkanizing and later completely scattering the pieces of nature’s perfect puzzle. I fantasize about that moment early travellers must have had in the Karoo, witnessing the trekbokke – those mega-herds of springbok that covered the land like ants.
It’s much harder to imagine what the future will look like. How do we hang on to the wild places we’ve got left? How do we protect the parks and reserves we’ve fought for, for another hundred years? The Kruger will celebrate its centennial in 2026. Will it still be with us in 2126?
One of nature’s gifts is that it confirms our own existence – our place in the universe. Elsewhere – in our daily lives, boxed in by four walls, answering to the tings of nonsensical notifications – it’s easy to forget that we’re nothing but a part of the food chain. A food chain in which, without a doubt, a crocodile occupies a higher position than we do…