Walking stick 1:
WALKING INTO A WAR ZONE
Ironwood, acacia, ash tree: that’s what a cane maker always looks for, he knows there is no better wood for a walking stick. “A fine walking stick,” Winston Churchill believed, “is more than simply a stick. It’s a friend.” I suspect my ironwood friend saved my life once.
My grandfather Jan Abraham, in 1902 a prisoner of war on the island of Saint Helena, always called it a walking stick. “Englishmen walk with a cane, we Boers use a walking stick.”
I started collecting sticks without actually realising I was starting a collection. Long ago, in my teens. My grandfather on my mother’s side left me a fine stick of ashwood, my first one. That ashwood stick has its own story. All my walking companions have stories. They are, of course, stories from my life. This is not fiction. Well, I tried not to write fiction, but here and there bad memory can play its tricks.
Be warned: there is love and hate in my stories, sometimes violence, even blood. And at least one ghost.
I’m telling these stories about me and my walking sticks as I recall them. So this won’t be a chronological memoir. When I’m on one of my morning walks with a stick and a memory hits me, that’s the one I’m writing down that day.
Anyway, this is the story of the ironwood stick that saved my life. True story, if memory serves me right!
Late in the spring of 1974 a group of journalists arrive at the office of Hint Hyman. Back then Oom Hint, as everyone called him, was still the boss of a magazine group that included Keur, Ster, Rooi Rose, Your Family and Scope Magazine. Picture it: his top floor office in Mobeni, industrial area of Durban where the mynah birds screech and shit in the dusty bluegum trees outside. Oom Hint sits behind his desk, still a handsome man, always neatly dressed. The journalists stand. He tells us in his quiet voice Scope Magazine is doing a powerful colour supplement on Rhodesia; he wants powerful photographs of the war there, and powerful stories of the people fighting the war. Oom Hint, once a star reporter himself, has a number of favourite words: I’m sure powerful is one of them. He feels we should consider it an honour to bravely go and bring these stories and photographs back from the war zone.
Al J Venter, a noted war correspondent with a number of books on African warfare under his belt and a magician’s way of talking with his hands, assures Oom Hint that we feel honoured and will do our utmost to bring back great stories and photographs. So right then we know Al J will be the leader of this particular pack. We don’t mind; Al J knows Africa and how she bleeds.
Later, away from Oom Hint’s office, Al J reckons we should consider ourselves lucky that the Rhodesian forces will even allow us into the war zone; they have just launched Operation Hurricane and the firefights are already getting hot, the enemy knows it’s fighting for its life, terrorist groups are ambushing the Rhodesian forces all over the northern mountains where the fighting is the hottest. Al J assures us going in with the Rhodies on their Operation Hurricane will allow us the unique opportunity of witnessing the country’s all-out effort to destroy the enemy in its hidden mountain shelters.
I am still young but no longer a complete rookie at this game. It’s going to get hairy in the war zone. An enemy referred to as “It” will be ambushing Rhodie troops and engaging in murderous firefights while someone like myself makes powerful notes and takes powerful photographs…and It won’t aim one of Its AK-47 rifles at someone like myself? I bloody know It will. The list of dead war correspondents is not a short one.
I also know this is a scoop, an exclusive, the Holy Grail of reporting. No-one outside Al J’s group is going to get these powerful stories and powerful photographs. We could get our arses kicked powerfully as well, sure, but when young you’re dumb enough to think you’re the one the bullets won’t hit.
If I remember correctly, this is not how I sold the assignment to my wife Cornelia. I told the lovely mother of my two daughters (five eventually, this is obviously a spoiler alert: I do survive this hard assignment) it will be like other trips to other war zones where I mostly got drunk in fairly safe army bases and played dice with troops while they told me their action-packed war tales. Okay, fair enough, on one occasion enemy rockets were shot in my general direction but fortunately the shooters were probably drunk too, and on another very unfortunate occasion I went for a walk and got lost in enemy territory.
But I am lying to the mother of my beautiful girls and I know it.
Cut to early summer 1975, Salisbury, Rhodesia. Today it is Harare, Zimbabwe. Fortunately, our journalist group’s temporary base is not as rough as temporary bases in the Rhodesian bush will be. We each have a nice, clean room in the Monomotapa Hotel. And spending money, in useless Rhodesian dollars so let’s blow the lot.
The locals don’t seem to know there’s a war going on. Peddlers peddle on the streets, strippers strip in the nightclubs, only taxis are trying to ambush other taxis. What did you do in the war, daddy? My darling daughters, I came back from the war with a gaping ulcer: the local Indian curry was a killer.
I tease our leader we are starting a war assignment with a heavenly weekend pass. Al J solemnly assures me we will be up to our eyeballs in action soon.
Two days later, to be precise.
You know, time passes and bends strangely when you seem to have very little time left on this planet, and you can’t quite remember what year it was when you last had a shower or slept in a real bed.
This is what I do remember.
Rhodie troops and terrs are shooting and leaves rain from the canopy of trees above me and I realise bullets are trimming the trees, but I’m safe, I can’t remember why exactly but I’m safe. I photograph troops pouring petrol on a hill of terr bodies and then setting the hill alight. Fire at first makes a body appear alive and you never forget the smell. Terr means terrorist. Then a hovering chopper from Fireforce picks me up at a Rhodie stick’s temporary base somewhere in the bush and drops me at another stick somewhere in deep, mountainous bush. Fireforce is the Rhodesian helicopter force, a stick is the smallest group of troops on the ground: between four to eight guys who look like Boers but speak better English, their uniform khaki T-shirt, black PT pants, brown sneakers and a floppy khaki hat. Almost exactly like the Boer troops fighting on the border of Angola. A stick is not allowed to wash with soap or use shaving cream, they say the terrs can smell clean stuff two point five kays away, and the terrs don’t do clean stuff themselves so they now know their enemy is two point five kays away, and they just follow the stink. The same thing happens on the border of Angola, nobody uses clean stuff in the bush. Everybody stinks in an African war.
The main differences between Rhodie and Boer troops?
Rhodie weapons are older and seem to work harder than Boer weapons. There are more dents and the paint has been scraped off by the action of diving to the ground. A Rhodie’s backpack radio, water bottle and sleeping bag still work but look as if they haven’t been on a weekend pass in months either. On the whole the Boers seem to have more money for new equipment, and they don’t have as many firefights. I think they suffer deeper boredom as well.
In a Rhodie stick we are not allowed to know each other’s names. The stick leader is Stick One. I am the Beardless Body. Chopper pilots talk about me like this on their radios: “Beardless Body collected oh-seven-hundred hours from Abandoned Farm K, Beardless Body positively identified, about to drop Beardless Body at Abandoned Farm T.”
It sounds as if I’m dead.
A Rhodie stick has no wheels. Choppers bring them in and take them out again. A stick walks and carries all its own equipment as it walks, uphill through the mountainous bush, downhill through the mountainous bush. A stick blows up suspicious caves, interrogates and searches mud villages in the bush. And checks if the villages have food; a village with little or no food has been feeding terrs and could be hiding them somewhere. A stick catches and shoots the terrs if the terrs don’t shoot them first, sets them on fire, keeps their ID documents and shoes. Special Branch trackers collect shoes like a forensic cop collects fingerprints, they say each shoe sole leaves a specific track and sometimes they can trace where these tracks originated from.
Everyone in a stick carries his own rubbish: I carry a backpack with my rolled up sleeping bag and raincoat tied to it, my camera with film rolls in a shoulder bag, a pack of notebooks, pens, three or four slabs of chocolate in the same bag, and always two full water bottles. Water is important to me, I accidentally got lost in the thickets of Caprivi last year and almost died of thirst. I hardly ever eat any of the chocolates myself. They are in my shoulder bag for another reason.
At night, a stick sleeps in a temporary base. It could be anywhere in the bush. I just can’t work out how our stick leader decides, maybe an angel appears to Stick One and commands, “Let them drop their sleeping bags right here on that ball-biter ant’s nest, and the ground is perfect, hard as a rock.” Then everyone pretends to sleep, taking turns to sit guard. No one stands guard, they say a terr can see a silhouette two point five kays away against the night sky. I’m never asked to sit guard. They say the only creature more dangerous than an unarmed civilian is an armed civilian.
They say. I have never been to a war where anyone could tell me who and where they are exactly. They are invisibly present in every war, and they know the weirdest shit for a fact. So they say.
One day on Hint Hyman’s Scope Magazine assignment, I believe it’s Day Eight with a certain Rhodie stick in rough mountain territory – Day Eight, I’m pretty sure, because of the terrible screw-up that day – the stick manages to locate, question and search a small mountain village that ticks all the right boxes: The local pops have more than enough food, the local pops are nervous but friendly, the local pops give all the right answers. It gets boring to watch this, so I wander off and pictures.
I discover a toothless grandfather squatting outside his hut, quietly rubbing a fresh walking stick with a shiny, clear juice. I already know what ironwood looks like. It’s a beautifully carved ironwood stick.
The grandfather can see I’m interested, smiles and shows me four fingers.
“Four dollars?” I ask.
The smile hesitates. I produce a slab of chocolate, a great bartering device I discovered a few years ago. The smile turns into a grin, the grandfather takes the chocolate and nods.
My heart stops. This is a great walking stick. But do I have money on me? I haven’t had any use for money recently. I dig into my pockets, at first finding only a piece of biltong and then a very crumpled ten rand note from South Africa. Surely he won’t be happy with ten lousy rand? The grandfather twinkles and grabs the ten rand note. I grab the ironwood stick before he can figure out who’s winning here.
And that, more or less, is when the rifle shots start. Chunks of dried mud leave the wall of the grandfather’s hut in quick succession. Someone is shooting at me. I hit the deck. No, that’s not true, I don’t do anything so calm and correct, I simply collapse on the rocky ground. More shots ring out. I’m staring at a rock shiny with the movement of many feet over many years, and the knob of my newly purchased stick. The grandfather has simply disappeared. More shots, and someone screams. I crawl, roll, slither into the hut with the walking stick clutched to my chest. It smells hot and sweaty in here. No sign of the grandfather or anyone else. Now a machine-gun opens up, the noise ripping the hot air apart. I’m not lying, I turn that stuffy hut into my very own temporary base and get as close to the foul-smelling mud floor as I possibly can, I swear no bloody terr is going to see my bloody silhouette two point five kays away against the sky.
That’s where Stick One finds me, tells me he thought I was dead. He lost three men in the firefight, took out nine terrs and four villagers. We’ve been led into an ambush. Stick One blames himself, says he should’ve known, everyone was just too damn friendly.
I don’t know when the thought hit me, probably days later: I wanted to buy a walking stick from a terr feeder, could have had my throat cut right there or my head blown off, but then I offered him chocolate and money for the stick and paused whatever action was being considered against me.
A week later, at Durban airport, I find myself forced to play smuggler. Sorry, customs, my beautiful ironwood stick will not be staying on the aircraft. I tape it to my leg in the plane’s toilet, inside a pair of loose sweatpants, and then simply walk through customs as normally as possible.
I survived the terr-feeding village. I believe I would have died there that day, on the slopes of the Mukumbura Mountains, but I bought the stick and that somehow saved me.
No, he’s not for sale. Yes, he’s definitely a male stick. Just look at him, that’s not a lady stick. A solid masterpiece of ironwood carved in war, living peacefully with my other sticks for decades now.Upright in the golden milk can that is their home. Every now and then I take him out for a spin, just for old times’ sake. I can’t remember the terr-feeding grandfather’s face anymore, only his smile.