The Legend of the Hippo and the Porcupine - German Style

Canoe Safari in the '90s. Keeping a wary eye on the hippos. Lower Zambezi.

Now, I cannot recall when, or who, told me the Legend of the Hippo and the Porcupine, but one evening, many years ago, I tried to tell it to my German children.

Timon (Timi), would have been about four and David approaching seven. They were sort of semi-bilingual and had been to Zimbabwe several times.

Timi, Mana Pools Nat Park.

David, Mana Pools Nat Park

So the bedtime story went a bit like this –

‘YOUR children are in bed and it is YOUR turn to tell them a gute nacht geschichte.’ Thus spoke the wife.

The two were sitting up in the double bed, a huge illustrated fairy tales book next to them.

‘I am not reading out of that.’

‘Why not?’ says David.

‘Because reading Deutsche out loud is as pleasant as coughing up cigarette phlegm’

‘Flem? Was ist flem?’, Timi asks. ‘Daddy stinks of cigarettes…And beer.’

Knowing that this would be thirsty work, I took a large slug from my ever present brown bottle. ‘Beer makes me big and strong,’ say I, wiping the froth from my mouth.

‘Then why did Mummy say you crawl to bed last night,’ says the eldest one.

‘Something was wrong with my legs.’

‘And your head,’ says David knowingly.

‘Daddy ist ein dumkopf,’ agrees Timi.

‘Okay, that’s enough. Now I am going to tell you a story from Africa’. This immediately brings grins of anticipation.

‘I want the one about the bicycle in a hole and it pulled off your head.’

‘Timi, not that one again.’

David quips up, ‘Daddy, tell us about when you got paid to shoot tourists.’

‘What? I never shot tourists.’

‘Yes you did. When you were a policeman.’

‘Terrorists. I was supposed to shoot terrorists. Not tourists.’

‘Wots a terra-rist?’ says Timi.

‘It’s a tourist who has a gun instead of a camera…Okay! And I didn’t shoot anyone. Now can we get on with the story?’

A porcupine

‘Aha. Okay. ’

David giggles, ‘Alles klar.’

‘Alles Scheisse!’ This is Timi’s latest new proverb.

‘Anyway, one day on the banks of the Zambezi…’

‘Beer, not bank,’ comments David.

‘What you talking about?’ Now I am getting more confused.

‘In Zimbabwe you drank Zambezi.’

‘Castle auch,’ adds Timi. ‘I also drink Castle in Zimbabwe.’

Timi with castle

I finish my bottle whilst contemplating my revenge. I shout out, ‘Wife, bring me another beer. This is going to take a while.’ Ignoring their little mind games, I devise my own.

‘This is the story about the hippopotamus and the porcupine.’

‘Was?’ says Timi.

‘Nilpferd und schweinehund,’ translates David helpfully.

‘Not a schweinehund. It’s... Wife, what’s a porcupine?’ as I am presented with another beer.

‘Stachelschwein.’ She wanders off.

‘Alles Scheisse. Scheisse, Scheisse.’ says Timi.

‘Quiet. Shut up before one of us dies. Anyway, Timi, you will love this story because it is about your favourite word.’

‘Scheisse?’ Timi says hopefully.

‘Ja, scheisse, because did you know that when the hippo has a scheisse, it spins its tail around and around and sprays it everywhere.’

‘Cool,’ is David’s impressed response.

Timi is still a sentence or two behind. ‘Was ist ein stachelschweine?’

‘It’s a small animal with lots of black and white quills.’

‘Kills? Wot he kill?’ asks Timi.

I need to sort this out fast. ‘Look, you boys must remember when we went fishing at Kariba.’ They nod their heads enthusiastically. ‘Now what did I use as a float?’

‘The corks from Mummy’s wine bottles.’ David immediately acknowledges.

‘No man. The long, thin pointy things.’

‘Aah, alles klar,’ says Timi.

‘Anyway, long, long time ago, the hippo ate meat.’

‘People?’ asks David hopefully.

‘Who cares what kind of meat? They just ate meat. Well, one day the hippo got some stuck in his teeth.’

‘People?’ says David craftily.

‘And the people shouted, “This is scheisse”.’ With that shot from Timi, both boys fell over laughing.

‘Very clever, Timi. Now, the hippo can’t get the bit of meat out and it is driving him mad. Then he comes across the porcupine on the way to the market to sell his quills to the fisherman.’

‘How much he get for them?’ asks my materialistic orientated eldest.

‘I don’t know. It’s not the point. Anyway, the hippo asks to borrow a quill so he could poke out the meat. The porcupine agrees but says he wants it back when he returns from the market. When the porcupine is gone, the hippo digs and digs in his mouth and just as he gets the meat out - he swallows the quill!’

‘Scheisse,’ says Timi.

‘Big scheisse,’ I agree, ‘so he hides when the porcupine comes back. The hippo then thinks that if he has a…’

‘Scheisse!’ shouts Timi.

‘Correct, but he thinks that to find the quill better he will spin his tail very fast and scatter his scheisse, making it easier to find it’

‘And does he?’ David asks.

‘Well, that’s the whole point of the story, because he never found it, and to this day, the hippo still hides from the porcupine and he stills spins his tail when he has a sheisse and looks for the quill. And he is frightened to eat meat in case it sticks in his teeth again because he cannot go back to the porcupine for another quill. So since that time the hippo only eats grass.’ With that triumphant note I wrapped the story up. ‘Did you kids like that story?’

Together they replied, ‘Alles SCHEISSE!’

A Scweinehund

Wilbur Smith and the Rhinoceros

Many Africa fans will know the author Wilbur Smith. For people my age, being brought up in Victorian style Rhodesia, his debut book, When The Lion Feeds, was the nearest thing we got to soft porn. I don’t think our school or local library had it, so at 15, I had to stand in the queue as it did the rounds of Class 3b1 in 1973. (The book was written in 1964, but I wasn’t exactly going to get excited by it whilst aged 6!)

Ironically, after a trip to the UK in ‘75, returning to Rhodesia, I smuggled past customs a copy of one of the hottest books of the time – Xaviera Hollander’s The Happy Hooker. As it was cooling a bit after two years of publication, I picked it up ‘dirt’ cheap from – Woolworths! Just behind the shelf for ‘pic –n –mix’.

I lent it out and, by the time it did the school circuit, it came back in bits. Not a lot of them.

Anyway, this is all beside the point. Writing this I looked at Wiki about Wilbur. There were some interesting little facts. He wrote When The Lion Feeds whilst working as an accountant for Salisbury Inland Revenue. Amazing, the guy was looking at my father’s tax returns whilst thinking up saucy stories.

I remember vividly the cover on that paperback, especially the woman with those voluptuous breasts. Sadly I could not find an image of that particular cover. I always believed that the hero in that book, Sean Courtney, was influenced by a real life character by the name of Frederick Courteney Selous. I am sure Wilbur would have popped down to the local archives for some research on Frederick, who was very much the larger than life character. (It doesn’t take much imagination to see the similarity in the names.)

There is a great photo of Selous in the National Archives in Harare. I purchased a copy a while ago and it hangs above my PC screen. The same one on the net has been cropped.

He became a bit of a legend, and had acted as a guide for C.J. Rhodes’s Pioneer column into Mashonoland. During the Bush War the Rhodesian forces created a special anti-terrorist unit in his name – The Selous Scouts. I also recall a special First Day Cover issued in 1971. I had one, but don’t know where I have put it. It is interesting to note that Selous’s heirs were stripped of their property rights in Salisbury, because his marriage to three African women had been done under African traditional laws. This is interesting stuff that does not appear in the Encyclopaedia of Rhodesia, I wonder why?

Rhinos are rather large. This one is in Etosha Nat Park. 2008

Anyway, back to Wilbur Smith. It can be pretty certain that he will never win any literature prizes. He sticks to a rather stereotyped set of characters, but I still admit to reading all his latest books - as fast as they appear in the charity shops.

Now, completely out of Africa’s blue skies, I received a short story purportedly a true life experience written by Smith. My guess it is genuine. The anecdote is very much his style and with his trademark use of imagery.

It is hilarious…

Rhino skulls outside Mana Pools Nat. Park’s office,1993.

About half were poached.

This could be seen by the machete cuts in the skull from removing the horn.

The plight of the Black Rhinoceros is, or course, due mostly to the value of
its horn and the ferocious poaching that this engenders. However, a
contributory factor to the declining rhino population is the animals
disorganized mating habits.

It seems that the female rhino only becomes receptive to the male's
attentions every three years or so, while the male only becomes interested
in her at the same intervals. A condition known quite appropriately as
"Must" The problem is one of synchronization, for their amorous
inclinations do not always coincide.

In the early Sixties, I was invited, along with a host of journalists and
other luminaries, to be present at an attempt by the Rhodesian Game and
Tsetse Department to solve this problem of poor timing.

The idea was to capture a male rhino and induce him to deliver up that which
could be stored until that day in the distant future when his mate's fancy
turned lightly to thoughts of love.

We departed from the Zambezi Valley in an impressive convoy of trucks and
Landrovers, counting in our midst none other than the Director of the game
department in person, together with his minions, a veterinary surgeon, an
electrician and sundry other technicians, all deemed necessary to make the
harvest.

The local game scouts had been sent out to scout the bush for the largest,
most virile rhino they could find. They had done their job to perfection
and led us to a beast at least the size of a small granite koppie with a
horn on his nose considerably longer than my arm.

The trick was to get this monster into a robust mobile pen which had been
constructed to accommodate him.

With the Director of the Game Department shouting frantic orders from the
safety of the largest truck, the pursuit was on. The tumult and the
shouting were apocalyptic. Clouds of dust flew in all directions, trees,
and vegetation were destroyed, game scouts scattered like chaff, but finally
the Rhino had about a litre of narcotics shot into his rump and his mood
became dreamy and benign.

With forty black game guards heaving and shoving, and the Director still
shouting orders from the truck, the rhino was wedged into his cage, and
stood there with a happy grin on his face.

At this stage, the Director deemed it safe to emerge from the cab of his
truck and he came amongst us resplendent in starched and immaculately ironed
bush jacket with a colourful silk scarf at this throat. With an imperial
gesture, he ordered the portable electric generator to be brought forward
and positioned behind the captured animal. This was a machine which was
capable of lighting up a small city, and it was equipped with two wheels
that made it resemble a roman chariot.

The Director climbed up on the generator to better address us. We gathered
around attentively while he explained what was to happen next.

It seemed that the only way to get what we had come for was to introduce an
electrode into the rhino's rear end, and to deliver a mild electric shock,
no more than a few volts, which would be enough to pull his trigger for him.


The Director gave another order and the veterinary surgeon greased something
that looked like an acoustic torpedo and which was attached to the generator
with sturdy insulated wires. He then went up behind the somnolent beast
and thrust it up him to a full arms length, at which the Rhino opened his
eyes very wide indeed.

The veterinary and his two black assistants now moved into position with a
large bucket and assumed expectant expressions. We, the audience, crowded
closer so as not to miss a single detail of the drama. The Director still
mounted on the generator trailer, nodded to the electrician who threw the
switch and chaos reigned. In the subsequent departmental enquiry the blame
was placed squarely on the shoulders of the electrician. It seems that in
the heat of the moment his wits had deserted him and instead of connecting
up his apparatus to deliver a gentle 5 volts, he had crossed his wires and
the Rhino received a full 500 volts up his rear end.

His reaction was spectacular. Four tons of rhinoceros shot six feet straight
up in the air. The cage, made of great timber baulks, exploded into its
separate pieces and the rhinoceros now very much awake, took off at a
gallop.

We, the audience, were no less spritely. We took to the trees with alacrity.
This was the only occasion on which I have ever been passed by two
journalists half way up a Mopane tree.

From the top branches we beheld an amazing sight, for the chariot was still
connected to the Rhinoceros per rectum, and the director of the game
department was still mounted upon it, very much like Ben Hur, the
charioteer.

As they disappeared from view, the rhinoceros was snorting and blowing like
a steam locomotive and the Director was clinging to the front rail of his
chariot and howling like the north wind which only encouraged the beast to
greater speed.

The story has a happy ending for the following day after the director had
returned hurriedly to his office in Salisbury, another male Rhinoceros was
captured and caged and this time the electrician got his wiring right.

I can still see the Rhinoceros's expression of surprised gratification as
the switch was thrown. You could almost hear him think to himself. "Oh
Boy! I didn't think this was going to happen to me for at least another
three years".

This is just not cricket

These series of photos were taken ca 1985 in Botswana. I was with a group staying at a Safari lodge just outside the Chobe National Park.

It was run by a bunch of very prissy South Africans who had thought it amusing to announce on our arrival that the fridge was broken and therefore they could only offer warm beers. I thought this was as funny as someone with kidney failure turning up for dialysis, and being told the machine had been swopped for new iPods for all the staff.

During breakfast we watched as the lodge’s band of mongooses (not mongeese), wandered through looking for scraps. We were told not to feed them as they would become pests and would, just like Trafalgar Squire’s pigeons, be terminated.

I gather mongooses make great pets. However, I would recommend that they are kept out the bedroom. Men would be highly embarrassed turning up at casualty with an excited Mongoose attached just behind the head of their one eyed trouser snake. Or should they go to the vets?

As we were about to climb into the Landcruiser for the ‘tourist go look at the wild animals’ trip, I spotted one of these fellows start frantically digging. The spot was on the front ‘lawn’ which was really a shallow surface of top soil on soft sandy earth. The grass was kept green with constant watering.

The speed of this fellow digging was awesome. He would have made the perfect inmate for any inmate. I started shooting. The furry digger went down almost his body length and then popped up with this.

It was a cricket. Trying to find out exactly what type etc, was extremely difficult. You try and type in Southern African Cricket into Google. Once I found the required information, I discovered some interesting facts.

Now, this hideous thing the mongoose drags out is a Giant African Ground Cricket (Acanthoplus discoidalis). Now there are lots of different looking crickets. The Chinese have little black ones, teach them Kung-Fu and place bets on their favourites in fights. Then there is the one in the film Walli and it’s ort of cute-ish, and then there is most famous one of all – Jiminy Cricket.

But this thing is just disgusting. It must have been almost three inches long. I have seen lions eating a still alive ‘kill’ with no bother, but this! And the sounds that were made as it was crunched up. The legs were still wriggling as mongoose here noshes on a massive fresh breakfast. Taking these pics nearly brought mine up. Yuck. Along with giant locusts, it ranks as one of vilest looking insects. I know that some people consider them a delicacy and full of protein. You put one of those on my plate I will definitely vomit.

Crickets chirp, rather a lot, and very noisily, whilst rubbing their thighs together. Oddly, unlike humans, only the males do it. This fact thus resulted in men uttering the immortal words to their female partner, whom, after several glasses of wine starts babbling incoherently to all and sundry; chirps up – ‘Oh I say, this just isn’t cricket – so shut the fuck-up!’

In the brilliant film Crocodile Dumkopf and the Aussie Cricketers of Doom, a scene takes place where he calculates the temperature by counting a cricket’s chirps. His female companion, some ex-stripper from Poland says

‘Eet iz velly hoot. What hoot you think it eez?’

Crocodile Dumkopf rapidly counts on his fingers and toes each chirp in one minute and adds 40 to the total and announces, ‘78.5 degrees Celsius, Sheila.’

She replies ‘I am Kowlowski with a ‘C’.’ But surly zee cricket would be baked at such hoot?’

Just at that moment the cricket stops chirping and Crocodile Dumkopf grins and announces ‘Dinner is served.’

This business about working out the temperature this way is apparently true.

You can even buy one on Ebay. I think I would rather have my grandmother’s stuffed tits hanging on the wall before one of these things.

This last picture is from the web. If Sir David Attenborough did a film of their sex lives, it would be the most disgusting porn in the animal kingdom.

For camera buffs: I was using a first generation auto-focus Minolta 9000. Expensive kit in those days. The lens would have been either a Sigma or Tokina. My guess a 70-210 mm. Max aperture – about f 5.6. The motor wind would have been a ‘el-cheepo’, two frames a second, emitting as much noise as the crunched cricket. Film would have been my favourite at the time because of its intense colour – Fuji Color (slides) ASA 100.

The slides were scanned recently on a Canon home scanner with a very good psi for the price.

We Were Men of Men - Rhodesian Roulette

Lake McIlwaine Spillway, Rhodesia, ca 1973.

Extract from a piece I am presently writing. Unfortunately I have no pictures.

It was here on Lake Mac (as it was known), that one of the speedboat petrol-heads invented Rhodesian Roulette. In this version, the player also needed to be intoxicated enough to have a death wish, but unlike the Russian version, the weapon of choice was a speedboat.

Inebriated nerves played a small role, but the player’s life hung on the fine tuning of a couple of powerful outboard motors. The game was simple. Let the speedboat drift, with idling engines, as close as possible to the point where the Lake vomits forcefully out of its bonds and down the spillway.

Then just before the boat and driver joins Davey Crocket, ram the throttle open, and prey to the creator that the recently purchased, sanctions breaking, twin 100 horsepower Mercury engines, don’t decide to cough-up on some dirt in the fuel, and that the immense pulling power promised in the manufacturers manual was true.

If not, one instantly sobered idiot and a couple of hundred thousand dollars of big-boys toys, would be converted into blood, guts, fibreglass and ball bearings. These bits would then be brought just down the road to Warren Hills Cemetery, where his weeping widow would proclaim - ‘He died living the Rhodesian way of life.’

A photo of this stunt appeared on the front page of the Rhodesia Herald. I do not know if any clown ever did land up in the Hunyani river.

The South African Presidential Horse Race

Okay, I am starting to get jealous now. I was sent this as an MP 3. After trying to get my head around hosting it as Pod cast or whatever, I found it on YouTube.

The unknown writer of this short sketch (less than three minutes), had an awesome task. The actual commentator (and maybe also the author), certainly didn’t have the years of experience that professional horse race announcers have, but this is compensated with a delightful accent. The technical difficulties in writing such a piece so that it not only flows, but is also completely understandable as one giant innuendo, have been beautifully created. Whilst some of the more obscure names of South African politicians will be ‘foreign’ to a larger audience, the main ‘contestants’ are well known – so are the horses that they ride.

I had to listen several times to catch all of the satire - it is that good! This is unquestionably one of the best contemporary examples of a politically based double entendre.

ZIMBABWE : Last War Vet Dies.‏

Readers send me stuff that they hope will help me with my blog’s content. This is much appreciated. Keep them coming. I just received this from Australia. There is no clue as to who wrote it. I am slightly hacked off because it isn’t me. If I do find the anonymous writer’s name I will post it with their consent. (So get in touch…)

This is a very clever piece of satire. The manipulation of the facts is hilariously done with that talent for pure black humour. The writer knows his subject very well, keeps the pace and the length of the piece just perfect. Brilliant!

Mugabe to appoint new war veterans as real ones are all dead

HARARE. Zimbabwean despot Robert Mugabe will confer official war veteran status on 500,000 teenaged boys this week as part of his 85th birthday celebrations, after it emerged that the last genuine veteran of the guerilla war died of cholera this morning.

The new war veterans will be tasked with "rebuilding Zimbabwe by hitting MDC pigs with half-bricks".

The current life expectancy in Zimbabwe is 38, and given that the country's civil war ended in 1980, the only surviving genuine ZANLA veterans would need to have enlisted at the age of 9.

According to the country's national archives, currently housed in an empty Chibuku skud in a field outside Harare, the youngest recruit was Twinkie Matambanadzo, 13, who was sold to the Zanu armed forces by his parents who wanted their son to see the world and thought the militia was a traveling circus.

Matambanadzo reportedly passed away in 2006 after choking on a mouse he had caught and boiled, his first solid food in more than four months.

However other veterans were luckier. Field Marshall Brooklax Chaturanga, who commanded the Light Mounted Zebras between 1978 and 1980, had just celebrated his 104th birthday last month when a family member stepped on his oxygen tube and he passed away.

In a small ceremony, at which packs of feral dogs were shooed from the gravesite and vultures were kept at bay with parasols, well-wishers remembered a hero and patriot who attributed his long life to clean living, dedication to his country, and having all of his medical expenses since 1994 paid by South African taxpayers.

Chaturanga was believed to have been the last surviving genuine veteran, but new evidence emerged this week that Banjo Hungwe, 48, had once mooned a Rhodesian policeman, making him officially the only veteran still alive.

However two days after the discovery, Hungwe contracted cholera and passed away.

A saddened Mugabe said this morning that his veterans would be sorely missed, especially now that he would have to stop eating truffles long enough to go out and find some more people who could hit his opponents with half-bricks.

"The war is over but the battle continues," said Mugabe, dabbing caviar off his chin. "The British homosexuals are everywhere, but we will prevail."

He said he had tasked his aides with finding 500,000 teenaged boys who would be given official war veteran status and who could be "handed the half-brick of destiny, to totally mash up the heads of the imperialist dogs".

However aides who did not wish to be named confirmed this morning that they are struggling to find 500 000 teenaged boys healthy enough to pick up a half-brick.

"All the ones who are strong enough to walk or crawl are in South Africa," said one.

"It's very disappointing that they can't make an effort for the man who has saved Zimbabwe. We just hope it doesn't spoil Comrade Mugabe's birthday.

"People can be so selfish."