In June1969, on my way to the Etosha Game Reserve as a young teacher with a school tour group, our school principal allowed me to visit my parents’ erstwhile abode in Otjiwarongo. And so, after fourteen years, I stood in front of that vaguely familiar building where I had spent a short period of my childhood days when I was scarcely eight years old. As I allowed my eyes to wander over the adjacent houses, the yard and garden, I was overwhelmed by a strong urge to knock on the door and announce my uninvited presence...

On that very same pavement where I was standing I could vividly recall the day I was riding on my Triang tricycle when, without warning, the handlebar dislodged itself and the front wheel swerved sharply to the right into a rainwater ditch into which I was unceremoniously pitched. I relived the shock and fear, the horrible hollow feeling on the pit of my stomach and the feeling of utter helplessness when tumbling headlong down a perpendicular cliff. But I survived, maybe because that ditch had never been as deep as it had seemed that day to an eight year old.

I moved further down the pavement and peered over the fence. There was the old fishpond that was nearly the cause of my playmate, Flippie Thomas, and me getting a jolly good hiding. We had come across two chameleons and decided to see how well they could swim. They immediately became intertwined in the water and created the impression that they were fighting, so we encouraged them with shouts of glee, but, on the contrary, they were desperately trying to escape a watery grave. As fate would have it, my mother came upon this gruesome spectacle and saved the chameleons’ bacon while ours were very nearly fried…

Then I glanced at the front door and remembered observing a wasps’ nest just above the doorway back in 1954/55. Feeling adventuresome, I’d poked it with a stick. Immediately, a few wasps launched themselves in a full-scale frontal attack. One of them circled and got me from behind.

Before I could organize a face-saving retreat, I felt the impact of its nasty and painful sting just above my left calf. I yelped in pain and made a beeline for the back door, thoroughly winded but a much wiser young boy.

Late one afternoon three of us had ventured into the veld on the outskirts of town when our wanderings suddenly brought us upon a worker on a building site with his upper body halfway in a drum of water, rinsing off cement dust. He abruptly came upright with a thunderous roar in our direction, spraying water all over the place. Fright gave us wings and with hearts pounding, we ran for dear life!

The hooter of the tour bus woke me from my moments of nostalgia. Etosha was still a way off.

Nickey van Zyl