There’s a great survival tactic: how to say no

THE INVITATION, in green ink, was on recycled paper made from previously recycled paper which had originally been made from elephant dung. Environmentally terribly friendly though it was, I instructed Threnody to decline it.

The invitation was to spend a week in the bush on one of those survival courses where one goes without cake forks.

I went on one once and survived. They give you your money back if you fail.

A dozen people paid good folding money to spend a week learning how to survive on food from the veld. This saves a great deal on catering. Meals were almost as frugal as those nouvelle cuisine meals that young northern suburbs wives cook.

No, wait, “cook” is the wrong word. They arrange the food on the plate as if they were arranging ikebana for a Japanese funeral.

On arrival in the bush, we shuffled our feet like recruits on their first day in the French Foreign Legion. We were forced to dump our shaving kits and underarm deodorants, half-jacks, cellphones, jelly babies, worry beads, All Bran and bottles of pinotage, which all went into storage until the end of the course.

The proprietor said: “We have all just survived a plane crash in a remote part of Africa. That’s our situation. All we have is what we stand in.

“For the next week, we will survive on what we get from the bush.”

I then realised he was using the “royal we”, because he disappeared – rushing off, I suspect, to the nearest French restaurant – to reappear only at the end of the course.

We were left facing his subaltern – a lean man who looked us over sympathetically. Some participants, separated from their cigarette lighters for the first time since they were 12, stood with trembling lower lips.

It was growing dark and little night sounds intruded, like the grunt of a hungry lion. Somebody, reasonably, asked about a fire. Somebody else observed: “You’ve taken all our lighters!” Somebody else said: “I think you should know I’m a lawyer and my cousin is.”

But our guide wasn’t to be intimidated and told us that fast food was available – fast food like impalas and kudus. The trick is to catch them. As for fire, he scouted around for suitable sticks to rub together.

It transpired that he used to teach army commandos how to survive by eating each other.

He was to show us how to make fire; how, by using twigs and grass, we could build a five-star thatched safari lodge for the night; how to prepare impala garnished with dung beetle larvae and a side plate of bladderwort and hoof scrapings.

The wild, he said, was like a supermarket stacked with good things. You just help yourself.

The lions, of course, feel the same way and also metaphorically push their trolleys along, looking for the meat counter.

Our guide knew his stuff – like how to beat off mosquitoes and elephants. He knew how to find his way by the stars or the sun and how to suck pebbles when one is dying of thirst.

We learnt to find water by observing the direction that doves and sandgrouse flew in the late afternoon when they seek the same.

We made fishing lines out of bark and hooks from thorns. And caught fish that tasted like industrial sludge.

“Oh goody,” said somebody who claimed his cousin was Angela Day, “caterpillar soup again!”

Meals ended with coffee from the witgat. Witgat coffee is different from Nescafé – like wildebeest droppings are different from hot cross buns.

I declined the invitation to do the course again because I’m no good at this survival thing. I can’t even suck a pebble for long without chewing it.