One day picking up my mail in the Peace Corps Office, I saw a posted notice inviting volunteers to a camping weekend at the Hlane Game Preserve, the biggest Game Preserve in Swaziland. That was how it was in Peace Corps. Somebody would just stick up a note, “Hey! Come out to my school on this date!” And people would if they wanted to. The campout was coming up in a couple weeks, and I made a note to be sure and go. 

On the Friday of the camping weekend, I got out my backpack, and put my tent, sleeping bag, and thermarest in and on it. Mostly my pack stayed packed with the basics: toothbrush and toothpaste, bar of soap, towel, my little one-burner gas stove, pots and pans, coffee pot and a bottle of instant coffee, a couple changes of undies, and a light jacket. I would travel at the drop of a hat, and it was always good to have the basic survival items ready to go, even when just traveling in-country. I threw in what staples that I had in my pantry, and a large pile of tests that needed grading from my woodworking classes. And put my current paperback book in my back pocket. I set out for Manzini, where I would hit a store for some soy mince and whatever fresh veggies I could find, or a can of beans, so I would have food to eat, and then head north toward Simunye, where the game preserve was.

I made good time getting to Manzini, with only 4 different rides and almost no waiting on the side of the road for the next one. The store had some fresh chicken, so I bought a bag of drumsticks and thighs for roasting on the fire. I also bought a package of Monkey Gland sauce mix. There were no monkey glands in it. It was a tomato sauce mix, which went well on pasta. I don’t know why it was called that, but I loved the name, and had sent half a dozen packets back stateside to my friends with kids, so they could have fun with it. Eeeewwww. And a six pack of Lion beer. Which I buried in test papers to try and keep it coolish.

It was always a crap shoot buying chicken. Raw chicken pieces look like raw chicken pieces, and you couldn’t tell by looking, if it had come from a chicken who grew up in a coop, being fed grain, or from a “free range” chicken who was old, and had lived by scrounging for bugs and stuff to stay alive. In the latter case, the chicken would be as tough as leather and less flavorful than the coop chicken.

Off I set for Hlane preserve. My second ride was in the back of a flatbed stake truck with a cow. Swazi cows are docile, and I was feeling docile as well, so we got along just fine. As we got near to the preserve, I was standing in the bed looking around, and I saw the biggest dragonfly I had ever seen off in the distance, although it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. I was puzzling about how that could be when I heard loud buzzing, and I realized that I was looking at an ultralight airplane. It was at least a couple miles away, zipping here and there, making it look like a dragonfly.

I saw Hlane coming up, so I reached over and whapped the roof of the truck, and the driver pulled over to let me off. I bid adieu to the cow, and tossed my pack down and jumped down myself, and thanked the driver. I walked back the entrance drive to the preserve, and around a curve, and there was the entrance gate. 

The gate always fascinated me. The fence panel beside the gate was about 20 feet tall, and maybe 75 feet long, and made completely of various kinds of snares found by the rangers as they patrolled the preserve. Hlane had some Black Rhinos, and some elephants, and poachers were a constant danger to the animals. The various snares were sharp and ugly looking, and it always made me angry and sad that poachers would snare a rhino or an elephant, and shoot it in the head, saw off the rhino horn or elephant’s tusks, and leave the animal to rot.

 
The park was supposed to be for people in cars or trucks, because you were supposed to be in a vehicle while cruising it, so that you were safe from the animals. There were also hippos in the park, in the small lake, and they were actually the most dangerous animals in the park. There were no lions or big cats in it. But the park rangers were accustomed to Peace Corps volunteers because we went there often, and we had no cars, but they let us walk the 1/4 mile to the campground.

 I chatted up the bored guard at the gate, and found out that like always in the greetings lately, it was hot, there had been no rain, the crops were dying, the cattle had nothing to eat, the vegetables in the market were expensive. His family were ok, my family was ok, at my school the conditions were about the same as here in Simunye, my students were lazy. That is how greetings were done in Swaziland. Taking each other’s measure so that you could be friends. When I first got here, greetings seemed tedious, but now that I had been here for a while, I understood the point, and actually wished that American greetings were as honest and informative. Having done the greetings with Nhlanhla (his name means Lucky), I gave him 20 Emalangeni, thanked him for guarding the animals, and told him to buy himself a beer on the way home.

I knew Nhlanhla from the other times I had been here. He was an extremely polite and humble guy. I knew he was married and had 5 kids, and I knew that he didn’t drink beer. I knew that they didn’t pay him much to be a guard. Less than a pittance, but it was a job, and meant income for the family. The 20 emalangeni was probably equal to a quarter of his weekly pay. I was glad that he was there, guarding the gate, so that I could come and enjoy a completely different environment from where my school was. We shook hands and said Go Well, and Stay Well, and he let me through the chain link gate into the preserve.

I immediately carefully looked around. There were two rhinos that frequently hung out near the gate. I wasn’t afraid of them, they were accustomed to people, and though dangerous animals, weren’t aggressive at all. But, as Nhlanhla had told me, they were “playful.” They liked to chase people on foot, and small cars. Nhlanhla assured me that they never actually caught anybody, but just liked chasing things. Once you were in the campground, they would angle off and go back to grazing. I had never had that pleasure, but I took Nhlanhla seriously.
I found that astounding, because the campground was just a large area in the middle of that part of the park, and though it was fenced in, there was an open 20 foot farm gate on either end, and I had never seen anybody close them. But none of the animals came walking in either. So far.

The rhinos, who I had seen at a distance before, and thought of them as The Bobbsey Twins, were way off toward the north, so I figured on a leisurely stroll to the campground. Which I had, walking along the dirt road in the afternoon sun. The preserve had more green growing things than out at my school. More rain up here. It was a pleasant stroll.

There were half a dozen volunteers already camped in a clump on the far end of the campground. I went over and howdy’ed everybody, and set up my tent. There was a big palapa at the other end of the campground, with a large fire ring in the center, and seats and benches, and the rangers always kept a nice fire going in it, so we eventually moseyed up there, sat around the fire drinking coolish beer, and doing what most Peace Corps teachers do, talking about school and life in Swaziland. And about the various places they had traveled in southern Africa.

As the evening wore on, several other volunteers arrived, and we sat around cooking stuff on the fire and having a kind of pot luck dinner. The chicken turned out to be tender. About midnight we all called it a day and went back to our tents.
As I walked up to my tent, Christine was standing there with a small daypack and a sleeping bag. Smiling.

Me: Hey Christine. Where is your tent?

Christine: Oh, I didn’t bring one. This is all I brought. I am camping in your tent with you. You always have a tent, and you cook good food, and I just wasn’t in the mood to drag a bunch of stuff with me, so when I heard from Rich that you would be here, I grabbed my day pack, and here I am. I know you are a kind soul and will take in a wayfaring stranger.

She smiled, I smiled. 

Me: Um, ok.
We got our stuff set up, and climbed into my tent, and went to sleep. 
In the middle of a moonlit night, Christine grabbed my arm and was shaking it. She was whispering “Oh my God, Oh my God Oh my God.” I opened my eyes, and saw a large animal shaped shadow on the front of my tent, and heard a whooshing sound. Christine was latched on to me like a barnacle. Her whispering was about to go up into the range where only dogs can hear.

WHOOSH! WHOOSH! It was right outside my tent door.

Me: (Also whispering, but calmly.) Shhh, Christine. Don’t scream. Calm down. 

I hugged her, and then pried her off, and she started whispering “Oh my God, we’re gonna die. We’re gonna die.”

I skootched up to the door of my tent, and slowly zipped open the zipper about 10 inches, and scrunched down and looked out. A big black hole was right there, whooshing out fetid hay breath. It was one of the Bobbsey Twins, more specifically, her large nostril.

Ulp. Three steps forward and Sam and Christine were going to be mushed. Ms Bobbsey Twin seemed upset. She was much larger than my tent. I could see by her shadow that she was making the moves with her head that happen before a rhino charges. I skootched back down and took Christine in my arms. If I was gonna die, at least I had a beautiful woman in my arms at the last second. The rhino was standing towards the right side of my tent door, so I rolled Christine and myself over to the left side of my tent.

Whatever it was that was bothering Ms Bobbsey, she was obviously upset. The rhino started scraping her foot on the ground like they do to start charging.

Rhinos weigh a lot. They don’t just jump right up to top speed. They take a bunch of short steps to get moving before they can start running. She wouldn’t even notice my tent. She lifted her foot, and I thought, Well, here it comes.

She actually sort of twisted to her left, and started coming, Her first step came down on the bare edge of the seam of the side of my tent, and she was off, passing the tent, getting up to speed without mushing us. Yay! As she rumbled by, I heard Lonnie from his tent behind me yell, “Hey! Ow! You fucking bird!” I unzipped my tent and crawled quickly out.

Me: That wasn’t a bird Lonnie, it was a rhino! Are you ok?

Lonnie: I saw the whole thing. The rhino was by your tent, and this ostrich was coming by too closely, and the rhino charged it. I thought you were a goner. So the ostrich took off running, and stepped right through the side of my tent and on my leg. I’m ok.They are gone but look at this rip in my tent!

And they were gone, on out through the gate and into the preserve. Everybody calmed down and we went back to sleep.

The next day we were sitting around making breakfast under the palapa, and seeing who wanted to go up the road a couple miles to Simunye, and get some beer for after dinner. Rich and I volunteered.

Later Rich and I walked out to the gate, and hitched to Simunye, with both of our backpacks empty. We loaded up on bottles of beer, and found a watermelon at the market, and hitched back to the preserve loaded down. Both packs full of bottles of beer, Rich had a 12 pack in his arms, and I had the watermelon in mine. We were heavy, and walking slowly. We got through the gate, and found that the Bobbsey Twins were not very far away, grazing innocently.

Rich: Let’s make a plan. If we split up, they can only chase one of us. You head to the right, around those trees, and I will head left by that boulder and try to circle back to the gate.

We walked slowly in our directions, trying to not be of notice to the Bobbsey Twins. Of course it didn’t work, because the beer bottles were clanking together in our packs, and the Twins took immediate notice. Rich started trotting, well, sort of staggering with his heavy load, and that was the wrong thing to do. The Twins zeroed on him, and started heading for him. 

Me: Run Rich! They are coming your way!

Rich: Shiiiitttt!

And he took off running as fast as he could with 100 pounds of beer on him. I took off running too, looping around the trees and towards the gate of the campground. I almost dropped the watermelon. I was leaping over bushes and going as fast as I could. One of the Twins saw me, and wheeled around ponderously, and headed for me. I had a good head start so I knew I would make it, and I zoomed into the gate of the campground, and whirled, looking for Rich.

He was running all out, with a death grip on the 12 pack, and the Twin was about 10 feet behind him when he staggered gasping through the gate. The Bobbsey Twins had coasted to a stop and were grazing like nothing had happened.

Not one bottle of beer had broken. And the watermelon was also undamaged. So we had a fun party that night, and in the morning, everybody packed up and headed for our schools.

They don’t call them wild animals for nothing. <3