Tea with orangutans

 Musings about my family and other animals

 

Recently I chatted to a British resident of Dubai who wouldn’t be seen dead in any sub-Saharan country because of all the dangerous wild animals, yet she was happy to have tea with an orangutan. 

As she sipped away during this peculiar tourist offering at a Singapore zoo, she became only mildly disconcerted when the primate gripped her wrist tightly (perhaps he wanted more sugar?) 

She shuddered when I told her about our animal interactions last November in Zimbabwe, the wild west of all sub-Saharan Africa apparently.  The animals there are yes, wild - but they are free, and in places like Victoria Falls town residents respect those that nonchalantly wander into their suburbs. 

A local bush telegraph messaging ping one Tuesday morning pre-walkies alerted us to the fact that 12 buffaloes were strolling along Soper’s Crescent. We gingerly set foot down Wood Road instead, encountering only some beady eyed warthogs, three wary kudus, some confused guinea fowls chuntering excitedly and a gang of very busy mongooses. 

On the property where we stayed two baboon thugs tried to pull the thatch off a cottage roof, the tenant irate mostly because they pushed her birdbath over in the process. Over her garden wall she often sees elephants sauntering past. 

I confess it does take some getting used to. My Dubai messaging group pings are all about missing cats, feral cats, lost dogs, escaped tortoises or murderous house crows (these awful Corvus splendens drop pebbles in our garden and chicken bones in my neighbour’s, which their Yorkshire terriers eat then end up in the vet on stomach pumps.)

Way to the south at Garth Farm in dry Matabeleland my cousins also live unusual lives in harmony with different sorts of animals, so when five eccentric relatives from Australia, Harare and Dubai visited for a few days in November last year (2024) they took it in their stride.

A pampered pomeranian

This year the small hard-backed rose beetles (aka rose chafers, Christmas beetles - Hypopholis sommeri) were at full throttle. No rain in sight for months yet they relentlessly dive-bombed our evening meals as we sat around the huge square table. I’ve never seen anything like it. 

I appeared to be most freaked out by the sticky-legged insect invasion (it’s the hair trap scenario), although in between pushing two large, very determined dogs out of the door to make space for his feet, Kevin did throw around 102 beetles into the night rather than have them land in his curry. 

After pudding Aussie Erica took to calmly brushing Pomeranian No 1’s fur with a hairbrush while it sprawled its four little legs comfortably across the dining room table. Quite a few beetles must have embedded themselves in that lot. 

It must be said that we were not a bunch of orangutans. Not at all. Cousin Graham’s wife Doris produced endless supplies of gourmet cuisine (ham, butternut and roast potatoes; roast lamb; chicken curry; bacon, eggs and more every morning) using only an ancient wood fired stove. Wine, water, gin and whisky flowed as did the conversation, and when cousin Fay borrowed just one hearing piece from sister Nicky there was way less shouting all round.

I’m happy to report that the long drop which scared the life (or whatever) out of me as a child is now defunct – no more terrifying ablutions looking for snakes around the toilet seat or dangling from the ivy-covered tin roof above. The farm has had flushing loos for ages actually and is pretty much using only solar power. I saw only live chongololos and dead moths on the bathroom floor; far more acceptable.

In the yard behind the kitchen were sheep whose new-born rejected lambs Boris, the exuberant springador spaniel, tended to with great care along with his gentle labrador mum Coconut. Aptly named after a well-known British buffoon, Boris is tender with lambs and happily retrieves thrown objects but does not do so well on the social spectrum. He loves EVERYONE. 

Bizarrely he has connections with politician Boris but that really is another story… 

Walks at Garth were as adventurous as in suburban Victoria Falls, although there was never a remote chance of spotting wildlife as we were accompanied by a posse of eight dogs including one-eyed Mama Pom and Hansa - the silent, world weary, tough-as-nails blind and deaf male mongrel with a severe limp. Hansa (named after a South African pilsner) has a few stories to tell that’s for sure. A Jock of the Bushveld. 

The five pomeranians always walk behind Doris in single file. It’s quite extraordinary.

Dry river beds and
dams - it's November in
Matabeleland

I don’t recall it being called The Chebs but that’s the dry sand river a short distance from the homestead. It’s a spot the Inyatis (a branch of the Robertson family) remember very fondly.  This year the cicadas screeching from the mopani trees were simply deafening. All around us yet impossible to see the shrilling insects. Luckily no-one had any hearing devices installed then.              

Instructions being dished out left, right & centre

Many of my relatives and friends have fond memories of Garth Farm, mine were too but also mixed with apprehension – snakes, terrorists (during the bush war) and stinging insects, in that order. As a kid I used to dream of being chased by snakes, me running away in slow motion of course.

Hypopholis sommeri
 our nightly dinner time 
entertainment

Ow!!!!

As we meandered back from the dry river to the homestead one evening, we didn’t hear an anticipated revving of motorbike engines. We had left Erica, Graham and Nicky playing with bikes in the garden, Erica for the first time ever. 

Needless to say, one had landed on top of her after a dramatic spurt, also pulling over Graham who was at the back stabilising the machine. He injured his hands again, for the 4th time. (He keeps falling on them. Don’t ask.) 

A shaky Erica retired to her room and didn’t surface until the next morning, cheerful enough albeit black and blue. 

Love paper bark trees
(Commiphora marlothii)

  

In the heat of the day Doris swims with Pom No 1aka Tinkerbell. True love. Once I joined them until a water scorpion with a huge upright sting-tail swam past doing a couple of lengths. Experts were summoned.  The ecologist cousin among us calmly scooped the beast into a jar and deposited it somewhere beyond the tall palm trees.

Later, stomping at the back of the homestead with Fay and silent Hansa, the latter managed to find a baboon skeleton to gnaw on while the former discovered a tranquil view atop a kopje. I tussled the determined dog off the bones using a stick and stern language (forgetting he was deaf) then threw the macabre carcass against a stone wall. Never a dull moment. A far cry from having tea with an orangutan.

We got back to the homestead to find young Erica brandishing a rifle. Slightly disconcerting truth be told, but soon discovered this was not a revenge mission, just target-practice on a plastic bottle stuck in the sand. 

We kept our distance nevertheless. 

Boris’ hunting instinct was so powerful he pulled over handler Doris as soon as the gun went off. The feverishly excited springador retrieved a sausage tree seed (Kigelia Africana), which was something.

The road that leads to Bulawayo

After four action-packed days four relatives left the farm to drive back to Bulawayo then onto Harare, so my hosts and I waved goodbye with misty eyes. Twenty minutes later they, minus driver Kevin, appeared back on the verandah bringing with them Dave, a strapping young hunter with mechanical capabilities. 

Gosh. What on earth had they done with the driver? It was rare to see anything along that dusty corrugated road let alone a presentable AND useful bloke. 

The not-so-trusty pick-up had broken something. While the driver waited securing the vehicle Dave and Graham bashed about in the workshop making a bolt to hold the car together until it reached a garage in Bulawayo, about an hour’s drive away. 

The party finally left for good, and we followed later that afternoon. En route we pulled into Garry Rosenfels homestead to sort out some documents. He is Graham’s 1st cousin on his mother’s side. He turns out to be a 3rd or 4th cousin of mine: his great-grandmother Helena Bissett (nee Jobling) and my grandfather Charles Spearman Jobling were siblings. How bizarre! I knew my mum had a cousin in the district, but I had never met her nor any of her family.

Another interesting discovery was that at the entrance to his home there’s a vintage saddle, a remnant from the movie The Shangani Patrol which was shot in this area around 1970 and in which all his family starred!

On to Bulawayo for some flashbacks from my childhood. Freshly painted Borrow Street Municipal Swimming Bath erected in 1926 had the same entrance turnstiles Netta and I pushed through as kids with our grandmother Mollie Jobling. The pool was sparklingly clear blue, the only things absent were the two huge diving boards. 

At the doctor’s surgery on the opposite side of the road (checking Graham’s hands) I waited, flicking through a 1994 copy of Fairlady magazine. The most recent magazine was an Aviation Week dated March 2011. Strange not to update the reading material!!

We then visited Rannoch at 6 Hill Road Lochview, a memorable Robertson family home and where my family and I lived until I was 11. It was too unrecognisable to get all nostalgic, but I did see there was one Christmas tree where once was a row. The blue painted swimming pool my dad built was still there, obviously empty and now on a separate sub-division set in dry scrubby bush. 

Rannoch, our former family home

The pool my dad built

After a siesta (it’s marvellous how my contemporaries in Africa all religiously take afternoon naps) we drove to the unofficially named Bend Over Boutique, a huge outdoor market where local entrepreneurs make a living selling clothing donated to charity by rich folk from Western countries who have grown too fat or bored with the garments. These arrive in enormous bales which are sometimes sorted, sometimes left in giant piles - hence the term ‘bend over’.

Cousin G and I sifted through the rows and rows of tightly packed clothing, he hopping about on one leg trying on shorts and me hopelessly squeezing dresses over “The Girls” (Doris’ euphemism for bosoms), absolutely sweltering with the exercise in the oppressive afternoon heat.

Then it was farewell to the cousins and Bulawayo – thanks for some epic times and see you soonish I expect!