h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Other things my dad did for my sister and myself - and my mom too, and for himself also! - was taking us to interesting places. No, we were never world travelers! - But there are so many interesting places in South Africa, and even in our home town, Pretoria.

Places like the Transvaal Museum ... the Pretoria Zoo ... the Fountains Valley (a verdant place to picnic and when I was small, there was a miniature train on which kids could ride) ... he took us to the art museum as well though I was a bit small to appreciate it.

We also on occasion went a bit further for holidays. Like the Kruger National Park ... the Lion Park ... the Sudwala Caves ... 'Badplaas' ('Bath Farm') and other resorts based around mineral springs ... we never were rich so we never went on spectacular, expensive holidays ... but, for us, these little excursions were marvelous adventures! And they truly were adventures. My dad had bought us field guides to mammals and birds, and in the wild places, encouraged us to identify what we saw. I didn’t need much encouragement … I always was interested in the names of everything, and even away from the game reserves, I spent ours looking at the pictures in the various wildlife guides … I also copied many of the pictures with pencil, or crayon, or pastel.

My father encouraged me also to look at the little things. I was often as fascinated with watching things like beetles, millipedes, crickets, grasshoppers, snails, praying mantises, as I was with watching things like elephants. Every living thing to me was wonderful … still is. I’m now more into wildlife than my father ever was, but he started me on the path, and encouraged me all the way. He didn’t always want to go to all the places I wanted to … he was not always *that* adventurous, and appreciated his ordinary quiet, settled life … but he did a lot for my sister, my mother and me, to help us experience some of the world. Well, our little part of it!

An adventure he had, that I didn’t get to share: I was perhaps five or six, when my dad went with friends (including Pieter Haasbroek) on a fishing trip to, I believe, Namibia (but it was called South West Africa then, and officially still part of South Africa). Well I was much too young to take along. So, I missed my dad so much while he was away! And then one day I was woken up by this rough character … he had a scraggly stubble-beard … I could smell his breath … it took me just a moment to recognize him – it was my dad! I was so glad he was back! He brought me lots of sea-shells, and those white inner skeletons of cuttlefish. I can’t even remember what *fish* he brought back!

Later he took me fishing, but it was just a small excursion to a local dam. I ‘fished’ as well with a stick and a rod, but didn’t catch anything. I released some of the caught fish back into the water. I can still remember, we used pink porridge as bait.

Nowadays I wouldn’t fish of course …

Not all of this was enjoyable to me … one thing in particular, was when my dad took me *hunting* on my uncle (my mom’s brother) Kerneels’ farm, when I was about five years old. I absolutely hated seeing a young antelope killed. My dad never took me hunting again, and himself only hunted one or two times again after that; and in the end, not at all. This is an Afrikaner thing … so many people here hunt, but I absolutely abhor it.

But with art, my dad really helped, encouraged and inspired me. Getting me art materials … like pencils, crayons, oil pastels, paints (though when very young I didn’t really like paint), and lots – LOTS of paper! My mom’s dad actually helped with that, bringing me sheets of printouts from the bank, on the other side of which I drew and painted.

What I liked much, was when my dad worked with me! He drew and painted things for me a lot, and made me little things like a green dragon out of plasticine. I still remember it … I wished we took a photo of it!

Family was always very important to my father. Not just *our* family – my mom, my sister and me – but also the extended family. He grew up with his two brothers, two sisters, aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces … and in our Pretoria years, many of them were still very close. His brothers and sisters were all living close to Pretoria … Willie, Nick, and I think Lydia in Benoni … Lettie stayed with us much of the time, and lived in Brits (a short distance north of Pretoria) after she got married. We saw each other a LOT. Then there were my father’s uncle Gijs and his cousins … Thinus, Susan, Martie and Johanna … he grew up very much with them and we visited a lot. My great-grandma and some of my father’s aunts were also living close by. My father also had a good relationship with my mother’s parents (grandpa Nick and grandma Marie lived in Pretoria as well) and with her brother and sisters.

Apart from the Haasbroek family my father had other very close friends in Pretoria … Jos Davies, Henk Wijbenga, and others … I remember, there was one friend of ours who was colour-blind, but I can’t remember his name! I will ask my mom … I still have to talk to her as well about much of this so I can get a good bio of my dad.

When I was in Kindergarten and in the school, eventually, I didn’t see my dad for so much of the time. I knew he was, in the final years of our stay in Pretoria, working on another book. In 1980 he got an offer to be a lecturer at the University of the North, in the far North of South Africa. This University catered especially to non-whites. My father mentioned this to us and we spoke about it … he asked us if we would like to live in Pietersburg. Well, my sister and I did not know what Pietersburg was! For my dad it was a great opportunity … from being a librarian, he would now be raised to the position of lecturer. (I’ll ask my mom what, exactly his qualifications was right then. He earned his Masters and Doctors Degrees much later, when we were already in Pietersburg). He would get a better salary and further career opportunities. But the downside was that he would be far away from the rest of the extended family. Nevertheless, my father eventually decided to accept the opportunity, and thus started a new chapter in his – and our – life.

And I’ll start talking about that in the next installment!

Looking forward to finding out how your Mom and Dad's great romance started

You have so many good memories, and a big family too. I have almost no-one now, they've all gone.

Websailor

What a wonderful, rich world you grew up in.

Small family here, too, although I do have two siblings, and they have several children (my sister has three, my brother two children). So if we all meet, we still make a small crowd. However, I don't have so many happy memories of my childhood. I'm glad that you have, Willem.

Hi folks! Thanks for your remarks.

Websailor, I'm going to speak with my mom today about how and when she and my father met! I've heard most of it already but I'd like to verify it again.

Dmitri, and B'Elana, I had a very privileged youth and I only really started realising it much later! These days ... there are so many children whose parents leave them to be raised by the TV ... there are so many children with an 'absent' father ... sometimes even with an absent mother! Here in South Africa we have the horrible situation of 'AIDS orphans' where one or both the parents have died of AIDS, and the kids basically have to fend for themselves, sometimes left in the charge of siblings who are still little kids themselves, because there's no country-wide system that can adequately take care of them all. There are kids whose parents, when they *are around at all*, are almost constantly drunk or on drugs. There are the kids who run away because of intolerable home situations, who become street kids addicted to inhalants, or even child prostitutes. Elsewhere in Africa of course some children are recruited into armies, forced to kill and be killed.

But there's richness in life even in places that seem very poor. I've seen it many times over here, that poor kids manage to have lots of fun ... playing soccer in the rough, wild grass of the 'veld ... splashing around in temporary pools after good rains ... playing with cars and other things they make out of metal wire ... the conclusion, you don't need much in life to be happy. But certainly some bare essentials help, such as having more or less enough good food to grow up healthy on, and having caring parents, and/or a caring community.

One thing I really think is necessary, is that kids should have positive exposure to nature, to the outside world, to feel a connection with everything 'out there'. This is especially what many city kids - even the ones considered privileged - need.

You're right. We all need a connection. I think my childhood was so privileged because I had lots of older relatives, real characters, who enriched my life.

And because most of them lived in the country, we didn't spend all our time in the suburbs. We got out in nature - even if nature somtimes bit back. I remember chiggers (redbugs, to you) and snakes, oh my...but also the pleasure of eating a blackberry right off the vine.

The idea that any child on this planet should have to fend for himself is too sad for words.

Hello again Dmitri! I'm happy you, too, can acknowledge a privileged childhood. I gathered as much from the writings of yours I've read.

A thing I notice in many modern youths who are *materially* privileged, is that they don't recognise how privileged they are; they appear almost constantly bored and blase ... hence one of their favourite expressions, indicating profound disinterest - 'whatever'! Not all of them of course, but too many. This whole thing of 'being bored' I don't get. I could keep myself busy from when I was very young, and I could always find things of interest. Maybe this has to do with the modern idea of 'being entertained' rather than entertaining oneself.

Well, we'll see where this leads! I'm not a father (yet), but I'm a very close uncle to my little nephew Christiaan. I'm trying to do for him some of the stuff my father did for me. His own father loves him, but is very busy, and doesn't have the 'art and nature' knowledge and experience that I have.

Over here, yes, Nature bites back too! And I don't mind much. Not chiggers really ... we have their bigger cousins, the ticks! They start out very small though ... after any excursion during summer or spring when you've been through some tall grass, you must inspect yourself closely for the little blighters. My dad and I did that for each other lots, after our trips.

Other biters (or stingers) that I've experienced include leeches, mosquitoes, a variety of stinging flies, termites, ants (including some really big ones we have here), velvet ants, ground beetles, wasps, bees, carpenter bees, and stinging nettles! (I'm happy to have escaped being bitten by a snake or stung by a scorpion.) I never minded much.

One thing I *did* mind, though, was when I got into a clump of cacti - they have barbs in the spines so it was heck trying to pull them out of my flesh. What made me miffed, apart from the pain and inconvenience, is that these cacti were not our native plants, they were 'alien invaders'! (And hence, I wasn't looking out for them since I wasn't expecting any plant of the sort on the land I was exploring.) Cacti (apart from one small, innocuous species) are not native to South Africa, they come from the Americas. But some of them 'escape' from gardens and collections and establish them in the wild. There they often outcompete our indigenous plants, and form impenetrable thickets that humans and much wildlife can't enter. (We have thorny native plants here, but none of them are as aggressively thorny as those cacti.) I just got into a *small* clump but it was quite painful and I was angry because those plants were not supposed to be there ... they, along with a *large* number of other invasive alien plant species, were 'invading' that patch of land that I was exploring, disfiguring it and impoverishing its ecology.

Eating berries you say! Over here there are many very pleasant wild fruit, the tastiest of which are marulas, medlars, num-nums, and stem-fruit ... but one has to be careful! I've landed myself in trouble a few times due to tasting. (I know which fruits are actually poisonous ... and would strongly discourage any person who doesn't have an extensive knowledge of plants, from doing indiscriminate tasting.) I have tasted some *mildly* poisonous plants just to get an idea what they are like ... left a *very* bad taste in the mouth! One plant which is *not* poisonous have berries with a lovely lemon-like fragrance ... it's a member of the citrus family in fact ... but its berries, when tasted, were not only bitter, but stimulated an absolutely ridiculous and prolonged over-production of saliva! I was bent over a washbasin for almost an hour afterward.

Sigh. I'll have to find some friends to do wildlife stuff with from now on. The thing with my father was, I could share everything with him, speak to him about everything, and he knew what I was speaking of. I have other friends who enjoy the outdoors, but they will not know so much about birds, about plants, and don't have the shared memories. With my father, things had special meaning, because they were connected to specific memories. We'd known certain places for over 30 years. We've built up almost intimate acquaintance with places, animals and even plants. When going to the local wildlife reserve, for instance, we would always stop under a huge wonder-tree fig, and listen for the call of a little honeyguide bird that has been living, and calling, in the area for many years; we'd also stop at some low rocky hills to go and find the colony of flat-lizards that live there; we'd always go and look at a solitary carrot-tree that also grows there, etc. etc. etc. My father had a special place in his heart as well for many of the plants that are very special to me, like the carrion flowers. He was there on so many trips where along with me he trudged and trudged through the dry grass to look for the little carrion flower clumps. And when I'd been out on my own, or with other friends, when I came back, he'd always ask me if I found any carrion flowers.

The thing is, now to find new friends with which to build up a *depth* of shared experience and memories ... not just in Nature, but in so many other things as well.

Wow - what a wonderful world of plants and animals.

I know what you mean about being careful - the adults would tell you what was safe to eat, and what wasn't.

But now I remember my dad 'fooling' a bobwhite (whipporwill to Yankees) with its mating call, so it got closer and closer to us, and of course we don't have cacti in the Southeast, but we have poison oak and poison ivy, the treatment for which is calomine lotion - so you can be sticky and pink, or sticky and green...

Shame on people for bringing you cacti. Here's my cactus story:

My mother was a wonderful gardener. Her flowers grew and grew - in the yard. In the house, everything died. We didn't know why until the day my mother's potted cactus died.

My mother, accusingly: 'You WATERED my cactus.'

My dad, sheepishly: 'It was dry.'

My mother: 'They're SUPPOSED to be dry. Murderer.'

You are spot on about the privilege and boredom of teenagers. Look around you, people - the world is so lovely...

Yeah, over here, I cultivate lots of South African succulent plant species ... have to be very careful not to overwater them!

Dmitri, would it be OK if I put you on my friends list?

Oh, sure. I would be pleased if you did, Willem.