America's Settlers & Africa's Pioneers!

Thought last night (I know, I know) how similar America’s Wild West must have been to its Southern Africa counterpart – settlers and pioneers, both heading off into the wilderness with little or no support from any quarter. Gutsy folk, pushing West or North through God-knows-what and all of it done without a single mobile phone!

Wish I could have been there; guess this is my John Wayne delusion stirring again, but seriously, what a life it must have been and I do realise the pitfalls, I’m not naive enough to think their dentistry was done by the tooth fairy. Medically speaking, nope, things weren’t that good, but wow, waking up in the morning with open vistas and clean air must have been fantastic – and not a single politically-correct-pain-in-the-butt person in sight.

Buffalo, elephant, or both as far as the eye could see; womenfolk just as adept as men when it came to loading and firing rifles or gutting and skinning the dinner. Pioneers or Settlers, whatever; they were respectful of each other – respectful of their gods – respectful of the men they fought against and in my book that’s pretty much the way it should be; so where in our history books did it all start going wrong?

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Now; something a little different from my school boy ramblings;

Changing my profile photo to one that I hope is a little less frightening, so you can let the kids back into the room. Started a proper page on Facebook; bit bare-boned but will build on it. And below (vanity powered drum roll), the final cover art for Sons of Africa! I love it. Exactly what I wanted, so a huge thank you to the people at Pentacor, one of the UK’s top design companies. And to you, for reading what I write and through your support, helping me tell a story...

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Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Catherine’s heart raced. A few more days at best and they would forfeit the protection of the column. For a moment her courage faltered. Stories of ill fortune had not taken long in finding her – of blackwater fever, a sickness ten times more vile and virulent than the malarial fever that spawned it – marauding savages who in their hundreds fell upon settler wagons and killed for the sheer joy of it. ‘My husband found the wagon stuck fast to its axles in the bed of the Shashani River,’ a woman had told her – an Afrikaner woman with the heart and strength of two men. ‘All but one of them were dead,’ her fists were balled to meaty hammers, her need for revenge dark and unsated. Hatred spat from her mouth. ‘Four children... in the riverbed with their little throats cut through.’ With her face raised up to the heavens she had beseeched a vengeful God. Her lust was for a deep and terrible fate for those killers of little children. Spent from her cursing, she had slumped into her riempie chair and held out her glass for another filling of Cape Smoke. ‘It will be a fight to the end,’ she had prophesised. ‘But it will come, as sure as God gave me, Anna Magdel Bowker the power to foretell.’

The memory of their conversation still lived – every venomous word – every blow-by-blow description of the wagon in the riverbed. Sometimes, Catherine would sit bolt upright from her sleep, her eyes wide and fixed to that dark night outside her wagon tent. When the men were away from the wagons hunting meat, Catherine would, without compunction take to Magdel’s company and learn from her the ways of surviving the wilderness.

 Magdel showed off old and practiced skills, handed from her mother. The making of candles and soap, remedies for colds and colic, the grinding of native tobaccos for her snuff and with a blade made razor thin by a thousand sharpening, she had, in less than an hour, butchered the carcass of a full grown Impala ram – stripping back hide from flesh and flesh from bone. Venison, sliced to the length of a man’s arm was liberally mopped with salt and coriander, black pepper and a splashing of raw vinegar to ward off the maggot fly. ‘The meat must always be hung in the shade, and only in winter when the rains are finished or it will rot within a day; high enough for the wild dogs and jackals not to be able to reach it.’ The biltong would stay fresh and firm for months on end and was the mainstay of a Boer’s very survival when game was scarce. With a motherly eye, she had watched Catherine stake out the wet Impala hide for the sun and salt to cure, then scour the skin of fat with river stones before immersing it in potent tanniferous juices taken from roots of the kleinsuurkaree and the bark of sweet thorn acacia. With the hide now stained to a deep red, through patient deliberation and over the passage of many days, Catherine worked its softness to that of a woven blanket.

‘It will keep out the cold of winter,’ Magdel had told her and laughed aloud at the sheer delight in Catherine’s eyes. ‘God will always provide, my meisie.’ Though by His other hand, Magdel knew He might just as surely take away and in the blinking of an eye...

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