Author: Hoffman

Sometimes the Universe smiles at you. Towards late afternoon It lets you find a waterhole. It’s almost clean enough to drink from, if you scoop carefully off the surface. Around the edges you find the signs of many ungulates that came to drink, and even some predators. And you move away a bit and gather a pile of wood for your fire against the night prowlers, and prepare your lair.  Then, as you finally lean back against a log with, perhaps, a little red wine you have left, the sun dies in slow splendour while a black-glad catafalque party...

Lidi de Waal, artist, poetess, muser and oft-savoured Facebook companion carries home little bits and  pieces, and a Sea Bean, from her beach-browse. And some end up in (another) bowl somewhere on a shelf, or on a table, or tucked away in her mind, for later wistful caressing. And some time later, Lidi muses about her browsing, and the Sea Bean, which is really the African Dream Bean, on Facebook and it takes me back to a sweltering hot afternoon on the banks of the Ruvuma River, on the very edge of Mozambique. Back there, in the deep shadows...

The converging game paths have been hinting at a waterhole somewhere ahead all afternoon. It turned out to be an unexpected black basalt basin in the endless sand veldt, about the size of a suburban home. I filled my water containers and moved away a bit and found a generous tree to sleep under, far enough from the pool so that I would not disturb visiting animals. As the sun began to stretch the shadows eastwards, this bull herd came gently swaying out of the thornveld in single file. I was downwind from them so they were unaware of...

A small breeding herd of elephant; six cows, with two sub-adults, one a young bull. We would fairly regularly come across such evidence of their wanderings – breeding herds, single bulls, small bull groups, and usually just take note with a brief flutter of excitement, perhaps a passing remark. But it was the baby tracks that made me pause here – actually of two, one no more than a week old, the other a month, or so. Perhaps it was just a rare frame of mind I was in – a kind of reflective tenderness, for this subtle evidence...

You can listen to voice recordiong, or read through the text below. For days, it was a kind of a destination – “the Ruvuma.” It drew us on, as if it held some reward. But now that we are here, it does not feel like a destination, and there is no reward. It is just part of the bush. We could actually wade through with our packs balanced on our heads and just wander on, through more trackless wilderness. To civilisation and its bureaucrats, it is a border, with Tanzania. But in this remote wilderness it is just a...

You can listen to the narrative below, or read through the text. Enjoy!   The sun played hide-and-seek between drifting clouds. A breeze from the south-east slipped in under the shadows and laid a chill on the skin. John caught me indulging in as much warmth as I could catch, and a bit of Stephen Hawking, while my companions worked on the reedbuck I had shot for the pot. I had taken on John as go-between and translator, but he quickly migrated to tea-maker, cook, general go-for during rests, and snap taker. I always take at least one book...

For this week I thought I’d return to my hinted promise of more stories about the Bruegel picture which I wrote about on the 17th Nov 2019. For some context it might be good to scan it again. This story is about a wonderful old chief and a rogue hippo and the Chefe du Posto who was with us. We left the nomadic bush family the next day and headed northeast, roughly in the direction of the Zambezi delta – as good a direction as any, I thought. About two or three days on, walking along an old elephant...

It was visible from some way off, this ancient camel thorn. It demanded to be viewed in its full glory, with nothing of the shrub-land obscuring it. Even in death it still towered over its surroundings, more mesmerising than in life.  A piece of sublime earth art. It tells, with agonising clarity, of hundreds of years of life in its brutal world. How it had hopefully pushed out its new growth. How the rough winds and the eland bull’s horns had torn at it and split it, how the long droughts had slowed it, then stopped it, and its...

The male had planted his forefeet wide and lowered his body and lapped from the thin sheet of water running from the seep amongst the reeds.  Then he had crossed the stream and lain down on the cool sand with a casualness that said, “I fear nothing here.” It is his right front paw in the centre of the picture. The left hind is partly visible on the edge to the left. The marks to the front of his toes are small drag marks made by his pads as he lifted his paw forward. If you look carefully you will...