These days I find myself turning more and more to nature and memories of my times in the African wilderness to feed my anxious soul. This was a trip to the Kalahari.
‘What will you do if you get lost?’ the man at the map shop asked. ‘I don’t even want to think about it,’ I replied. He laughed. We were looking at a 1:250 000 topographical map of the Central Kalahari. ‘There’s nothing there,’ he said.
According to the map, he had a point. It was almost surreal. Most of the Kalahari was shown as a featureless ochre expanse with a grid reference. I wondered what discomfort, what beauty, and what danger that patch of dull brown paper represented.
The truth is, I was somewhat nervous about travelling through the Kalahari. ‘You’ve got to be seriously prepared for the worst,’ a friend who knows the area well told me. ‘You’ve got to take enough food and water, especially water to last you. If you get stuck off the main tracks, it could be weeks before someone comes along. Take a satellite phone with you.’
‘This trip doesn’t sound like much fun,’ my travelling companion said.
hamilton wende
Hamilton Wende is an author, journalist and TV producer. He has worked all over the world, covering historical events and some 17 different wars and conflicts. He is based in Johannesburg and travels from there. He has worked for a number of international networks including BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera. He has also reported on events in South Africa for the last three decades. He has published many articles in newspapers, magazines and websites around the world. He is the author of 9 books. House of War, Only the Dead and The King’s Shilling are thrillers based on his travels around the world as a journalist. His latest book Red Air is based on his experiences filming with the US Marines in Afghanistan. He has a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Wits University.
He is also the author of the popular children’s books: Arabella, the Moon and the Magic Mongongo Nut and Arabella the Secret King and the Amulet from Timbuktu which are set in Johannesburg and Knysna. He is working on the third volume in the series.
