In this story on my solo safari into the South-east of Angola, I travel through the Middle World.

Journey Through the Middle World

In this story on my solo safari into the South-east of Angola, I travel through the Middle World. In Africa, across most of the more remote countryside, one finds ever fewer signs of the Modern World as we know it. Even the few artifacts that could be recognised as “modern” may be adapted to different purposes, and look different. This story is about my observations while travelling through the Middle World on my way to the wilderness. You can watch the video here Enjoy!...

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The right front paw of a wild dog. Hoffman van Zijl Wilderness Wanderer.

Terror

The right front paw of a wild dog. We found this single imprint in a sandy spot that was bare of vegetation. But we found more, when we looked around carefully – six, eight, maybe ten more sets. Their paws are soft, so their sign is easily missed… We had been wondering why the bush had been so strangely empty of medium-sized and smaller ungulates for something like the last two days – almost no zebra, no hartebeest, no impala, no kudu, no waterbuck, no wildebeest, no eland… The ones we did glimpse seemed unusually skittish. The wild dog...

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Smoking the meat from a meat hunt. Hoffman van Zijl Wilderness Wanderer

Meat!

I shot a young warthog in the grey light before sunrise. My companions strung it from a pole with strips of bark and we took turns in pairs through the day to carry it. It was hard work. It was a young boar and I had gutted it, but a warthog is a solid animal and the swing of the carcass from the pole gnaws at the shoulders and throws one off balance as one weaves through the bush. But there were no complaints; only smiles. It is a bit sad to kill an animal but as the sojourn...

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Meandering Through The Bush

Ok, all set, but where are the voices telling us to go next?

Once you have liberated yourself from the roads, and finally also from the uncertain little tracks that you might have found meandering through the bush to isolated clusters of huts where a few bush people huddle together for some human fellowship, you are truly like Alice, alone in Wonderland and… “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where—” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “—so long as...

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