Australian author and Africa aficionado Tony Park defends his camping territory in the Kruger National Park from European space invaders.
I was camped at Satara, in Kruger National Park, in a nice spot on the fence, enjoying a sundowner when the car pulled up.
It was small and white and rented, and if it had stopped any close to me it would have run over my foot.
“Hello,” said the attractive young woman who got out of the passenger seat, “it is OK to camp here, yes?”
Her accent was Dutch and she was smiling as she spoke.
“No.”
“Thank you,” she said, exhibiting the same level of comprehension as she would have if I’d addressed in Mandarin. Her significant other got out of the driver’s side and the pair of them dragged a tent out of the back of the car and started unrolling it.
“I said, ‘no’,” I said to them, again.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, ‘no’ it is not OK for you to camp here. This is a demarcated spot, and I’m camping here. You can please go and find somewhere else to camp!” I said, or words to that effect. (I may have actually summed it up rather more succinctly, in two words, the second one being “off”).
The woman looked quite upset, but she and her still silent partner got back into their car and drove off.
I am not a rude man. I am not a bad man. I am not (yet) even a cranky old man. However, if there is one thing I cannot stand, it is a space invader.
Camping in Kruger, particularly in the holiday season, can be a bit cheek-to-jowlish, but still I cannot abide people who intrude too closely into my personal space. In some of the park’s busier camps, such as Satara and Lower Sabie, camping stands are bounded by bricks set in the ground to stop this kind of thing happening. This made the Dutch couple’s invasion of our stand all the more infuriating.
I am, in fact, a friendly man. Just ask Mrs P. She has been known to roll her eyeballs many a time as I’ve struck up conversations with perfect strangers in the park, and invited them over for a drink and/or a braai. Sometimes I’ve invited people to share our stand, so that we can all socialise some more. However, the key word there is ‘invited’.
I hate to sink to the depths of racial stereotyping, but it has been my experience in many years of travel, and not just in Africa, that it is people from continental European countries who are most likely to invade someone else’s sovereign patch of ground.
I remember being on a long, empty beach on a tiny Greek Island years ago. The beach must have been a kilometre long and Mrs P were the only people on it until a family of Italians arrived.
They trudged several hundred metres up the beach to us, and lay down their towels two metres away from us. To make matters worse the entire family – mum, dad and two kids, proceeded to get naked before our outraged eyes. Bad enough to be invaded, but worse still when insult is added to injury in the form of various unsightly appendages flapping in your face.
(Although I do admit to experiencing a moment of morbid fascination when the father of the troupe stood in front of me, stark naked, trying to load his spear gun. Please God, please God, please God…. I prayed silently).
In Mozambique last year a similar thing happened to us in a campsite at Bilene. Again, Mrs P and I were the only campers, but we soon found ourselves surrounded by a laager of rented 4x4s being driven by an invading army of geriatric Germans. Once more, not content to simply claim some new territory, they also felt compelled to strip to their underwear and prance about in a kind of wrinkly, wobbly victory dance.
Animals have what is known as a fight or flight zone. If you approach, say, a lion or an elephant on foot there is a certain point, the “flight” zone, at which the animal will usually turn and flee. If you get closer, either intentionally or by mistake, you may enter the “fight” zone, where the animal feels it has no choice but to turn on you and kill you.
Attention, residents of certain colder climes: if you see a middle aged Australian man with an old Land Rover in Kruger, please be advised that I do not have a flight zone.
See more from Tony Park at www.tonypark.net
How about you? Had any too-close encounters of the European kind? Tell us in the comment box below.
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