BETWEEN PORT ELIZABETH AND ALEXANDRIA Nov 30^th

I flew here on the SA equivalent of Squeezyjet, except that the seats were both more comfortable and allocated. I am spending a week at the Hopewell Game Reserve, which Chris Oliver, one of the friendly parents at Wellington had a major share in until recently. This is about 5km inland, 80km east of Port Elizabeth and 30km west of Alexandria. My purpose is not so much to see animals, although that is always a bonus, as to develop a greater understanding of the sort of issues that such enterprises are designed to address.

My hosts are Tania and Francois de Villiers and I am basically shadowing Francois as he works. He is Afrikaans first language but that is not obvious and he has been very generous in allowing me to ride shotgun as he tours the reserve in his 4x4. The reserve has any number of ‘bok’. Bushbok, buntebok, eland, impala, waterbuck, hartebeest and others I have forgotten. It also has zebra, giraffe rhino and elephant.  At the top end is a pair of cheetah. Evidently this part of the world is full of such small concerns but many are game ‘farms’, as distinct from ‘reserves’. Their origins are interesting. Back in the 60s and 70s the game had been shot out of the cattle and sheep ranches which dominated the region. These were low productivity outfits, with some grazing in amongst a whole lot more bush and game animals were viewed as pests. The growth of the international game viewing and trophy hunting market in the 1980s caused a change of approach. Instead of eking a living out of cattle, farmers fenced off areas and stocked them with grazing game animals. The upshot is that there is now far more game in the Eastern Cape than there ever has been. It is not altruism that has caused this so much as pure economics. Tourists pay £2500 for a luxury week at a private reserve. Hunters pay £1000 to shoot a waterbuck bull and will want a different species on each of the 7 days they stay.  If the land yields more cash for keeping threatened animal species ( exempt from the hunter’s bullet, if not the poacher’s ), then that is the pragmatic solution. The farms rear game, provide for the hunters and sell surplus animals. The reserves buy the game and cater for the voyeurs.

Through no particular fault of anyone’s, there is not, actually, that much for me to do. Francois is about to leave the reserve, as a result of the new owner’s views, which differ markedly from Chris Oliver’s. The existing co-owner, Bruce Little, is moving from the house I am staying in to another one on the reserve, which is in the process of being extended. He is living at his main domicile in Grahamstown while all this is happening. There are no paying guests here until 2011 and the future planner suggests there won’t be many of those either. So I am going to take some walks on the land outside the reserve, do some cooking, as I am self-catering and read some books. It will be a slow week but at least it will be a warm one. News of snow and freezing conditions in the UK does much to make me feel I am in the right place.

JOHANNESBURG Nov 28^th

We didn’t do much on Friday other than observe the free wildlife show from Dave’s veranda, or stoep as it is known here. This included a visit from a rhino and two local crocs finishing off a waterbuck that had probably been washed down river by Wednesday’s rain. I cooked quite a decent curry in the evening but all three of us were tired enough to retire not much after 9.00. Maybe the local leopard will put in an appearance when the family are there in January.

Dave dropped me at the airport on his way home. I am staying at the same guest house we will all use in January and it is a real find. It is bed and breakfast but the proprietor has the view that he is personally responsible for the client’s welfare and could not be kinder or more attentive. There is good wi-fi, the rooms are immaculate and all that it lacks is the main satellite sports channel. It is also very handy for the airport, unlike most of the hotels which are either right next door or 20 km away in the city centre.

There is, in addition, a bar/pub a few hundred metres away, in which I spent most of yesterday afternoon watching England being physically battered by the Springboks. That was bad enough but the bar was full of large Afrikaaners and their wives, which made it worse. I am amazed at the total involvement in the game of the women. They know it well and are much more raucous in their support than the blokes. They are also very doll-like in appearance.  All make-up, blouse and hairdo. Maybe that is how their men like them but is all a bit artificial, if you ask me. I would like to say that I got talking interestingly to some locals but the truth is that it is very tricky. Of all the English speaking people of the world ( even if it is their second language ) the Afrikaaner is the one I find most trouble with. There is such limited common ground and where it does occur, i.e. in sport, the unshakeable view is that South Africa is the best at everything, even when the statistics don’t support it. Sentences are short. Adjectives are few. Development of opinion is limited. Opinions are strongly held. Conversation does not flow. The ‘beeah’ or ‘rrrum and coke’ does. And everyone, male and female, seems to chain smoke. It is allowed in bars and most people who go there include fags in their list of personal items. I smelt appalling when I got back and it reminded me of how it was pre 2007 in the UK.

I took the advice of Ronnie, the proprietor, and went to the Sandton Shopping Mall today, via the Gautrain. This is a rapid transit rail link from the airport to the centre and very efficient and inexpensive it is too. There is a 40ft bronze statue of Nelson Mandela at the entrance and the mall itself is bigger than anything I have ever experienced. I was surprised that much of the merchandise is more costly than in the UK. A child’s replica football shirt is £80, for instance, as opposed to £35-40. Another surprise was the quality of service I received from smiling, intelligent and thoughtful black Africans when looking into the options for buying a cheap mobile phone. It paints the average store operative in the UK in a most unfavourable comparative light. I am very taken with the natural mixing of racial types, although the wealth does not appear, as yet, to have been evenly divided.

Having said all that, I would not want to live here at all. Walls and security gates surround every home. Big, hairy, salivating dogs bark from behind them. Nobody walks anywhere and yet, the Gautrain apart, there is no public transport to speak of that is safe for the tourist to use. It is humid at this time of year and can be uncomfortably so. I’m glad to be away tomorrow.

MALELANE CROCODILE RIVER Nov 25^th

I am staying in something as near to perfection as it gets. Dave Carr is Gareth’s father. Gareth is i/c hockey at Wellington and a member of the SA national side. I wrote to Dave, at Gareth’s suggestion, very much on the off chance that he might be up at his house on the Crocodile River when I was around. Not only has he put himself out to be here now, but he is also going to have the family to stay for 3 nights in January before we go home. Gareth said the house overlooked a river and said it had enough room for us. What I hadn’t expected was the reality. The house is very large, with several en suite bedrooms. The river flows, literally, below the garden. The river valley is like the M1 for birdlife. Hippo muck about in it. Buffalo feed in the valley. A small elephant family came down to drink and cool off a few hundred yards away on Tuesday. As we enjoyed a glass of wine in the evening on Monday, two rhino were spotted on the far bank, picked out by the light which illuminates it after dark.

It thundered and rained heavily on Tuesday night and it was still pouring when we left for the Kruger at 4.30 a.m. The gates open at 5.30 and the very best time to see animals is first thing in the morning. Dave had arranged for us to drive into the middle of the park on Wednesday, stay overnight in one of the camps and to drive back via a different route on Thursday. Speed limits, strictly enforced, are 50kph on tarmac and 40 kph on dirt. It means that the distances covered are not huge but the time to drive 300 km, with stops for animal spotting is about 12 hours. We actually saw everything that we would have wanted to see with the exception of cheetah. We came across three wet lions very early in the piece and saw a pride in the far distance at the end of the day but did not see them other than on those occasions. We had to wait until late on Thursday for a leopard sighting, too far away for a camera shot but very good in the binoculars. I was especially pleased to see a few wild dogs for the first time. Elephant and rhino were relatively frequent and, of course so were impala, zebra and wildebeest, about which everyone becomes quite blasé. The rain did stop at mid-morning on Wednesday but it has been wet for a few weeks, which means the water is widespread enough to render the waterholes an optional extra to the animals. The game is not quite so concentrated as a consequence. The best time to come would be at the end of the dry season in September. I have a feeling that the family will see a bit less, given the rains which occur for the next 10 weeks in this area. Bush-time is get up at 4.15, on the road by 4.45 and bed at 8.00. It will present quite a challenge to the kids when they come, as will the longer spells that are necessary between bits of excitement when an animal is in view.

There is a good system in place for lunch. The main camps have tables with places to cook next to them. These are empty rings, into which a gas canister is inserted and above which a tray for cooking can be placed. We enjoyed a good solid brunch at 10.30 on each of the two days and had a braai ( SA for bbq ) in the evening.

What The Kruger isn’t  is the experience I remember from Tanzania/Kenya. The game is spread over a wider area and the numbers are not so great. Sightings are less frequent, partly because the bush is thicker than the Serengeti grassland. There is also an element of luck in seeing things. Ten minutes either side of our arrival at the point we saw the leopard and we would have missed it.

Dave basically drove for 2 days and was also instrumental in spotting game, which was a performance of great stamina. He is hospitable to a fault, generous and anxious to make me feel at home. It is becoming a recurrent theme.

MALELANE, CROCODILE RIVER, Nov 22^nd

My apprehension was justified. Jomo Kenyatta International Airport is not full of clarity with information about departures. I went to what I thought was the waiting area for Gate 14 and was there for an hour. I was sure I was in the right place because it was full of what I assumed were white South Africans. 20 minutes before departure, nothing much seemed to be happening. Thanks to my experience at Dallas in September, I asked someone wearing a uniform what to do. He pointed me to an exit from the lounge I was in, which was also a coffee shop, where a sign, invisible to me from where I had been sitting pointed to Gate 14. Fortunately it all happened in enough time to prevent panic and the remainder of the journey, to Nelspruit, just south-west of The Kruger National Park, was as uneventful as travel ever can be.

I am still reflecting on the Kenyan experience. I don’t really know enough about it to know which of the versions to take with me. The white Kenyans, who say that as long as black people run the country a combination of corruption and incompetence will prevent real development, or the black Kenyans at Starehe, full of optimism and hope for the future and pride in their country. The white people enjoy an immense quality of life. This is principally because staff are employed to clean, cook, wash, drive, protect and, with small children, to nanny. Rob Boyd-Moss has not washed an item of crockery, cutlery or clothing for 30 years. He has a large house, with attached cottage in Karen, the most exclusive location in the country. His children were privately educated in Kenya and then South Africa. He is a member of 2 golf clubs. He and Debs both drive 4x4 vehicles and holiday in ther Masai Mara or Watamu with the family. Debs owns 7 horses and employs the staff to feed, water and tack  them. This makes them sound fantastically wealthy. It isn’t the case. It is , quite simply, that the cost of living is such that these things are accessible to anyone at management level who is prepared to work hard.

The Kenyan people are deeply religious ( well, the womenfolk are, anyway ) and immensely cheerful as their default setting. These are huge qualities. I would love to see the economy growing even faster and for the persistent numbers below the poverty line to become a thing of the past. If only there was less risk of losing everything to a bent politician/businessman I would be investing because the resource base, much of which is untapped, is vast.

Anyhow,it has been a real privilege for me to spend so much time in such close proximity to this part of Africa. I shall be very interested to compare it to the south of the continent, where I am now, watching the sun set over the Crocodile River, beer in hand and with the hippo snorting in the water below.

NAIROBI Nov 21^st

I enjoyed Pembroke. There is a real community feel about it and it has lots of elements of ‘Africanness’ that makes it quite different from its British counterparts. Common Entrance, whilst still the most important end goal, is not quite the overriding focus of attention it can be in the UK. This helps to promote a slightly more old-fashioned emphasis on activity. This helps to foster a spirit of independence which, together with the resilience needed by a child of 7 years old to take on boarding school life, means that the end product has much to offer. It seems slightly strange to have been wearing my prep school hat again but there is a market here, even if small, and it is one that Wellington has never really tapped. As Debs Boyd-Moss says, there is a larger prep school constituency in Kenya on IAPS than there is in Scotland.

I was Rob’s guest in a fourball at Gilgil Golf Club this morning. Our opponents were a magnificent example of old white Kenya, on the one hand, and a more businessy/globally aware example of the current breed on the other. Rick, the older, was politically incorrect, not averse to a quiet word whilst I was addressing the ball and hilariously and expletively critical of his own efforts when it was warranted, which was quite often. It will be interesting meeting the son of Chris Outram, the younger of the opposing pair, when he plays against Adam at rackets for Cheltenham.

The golf course is a nine-hole affair with asphalt ‘browns’ as opposed to greens. I sank a putt of fully 40 feet on the first hole, much to my astonishment and general mirth/expletive. Thereafter I found it impossible to judge the pace and felt as if I was putting through standing water. It was a highly entertaining experience, even so, and, with the obligatory caddies, not the slog it would have been on what was a very warm morning. Gilgil is over 2000m up so there was the added boost of 20 yards extra per shot.

Rob drove me back to Nairobi in the afternoon for my final stop at the Taylors. I have come to like Joss enormously and I hope I can do something to repay the debt of kindness I owe him. He is quite an influential bloke in Kenya, from what others have told me. He and Charlie’s generosity has been greatly appreciated and their advice about the way it is in Kenya has saved me from several otherwise embarrassing moments.

It feels strange to be flying south tomorrow and, as ever, I am full of butterflies about it. A mixture of apprehension, based both on my propensity to forget items and fears regarding incompetent baggage handlers, and excitement..It is a feeling I have all too rarely these days.

GILGIL Nov 20^th

After a useful morning on the internet at Starehe, I was driven over to the Taylors in the afternoon. It took about 2 hours to travel the 15 or so miles to Karen. It was unbelievable. One broken down lorry and two fairly minor sets of roadworks caused successive unavoidable tailbacks. There are some signs of construction of new roads, including an M25 type affair but I suspect it will need a bit more than that to sort it out. Nairobi simply has not been able to maintain the level of infrastructure that is needed to cope with the huge increase in car ownership that has occurred over the last decade.

I had a couple of hours at the Taylors and met Charlotte ( ‘Charlie’ ), Joss’s wife. She turns out to be a very good friend of Debs Boyd-Moss, Robin’s wife and the headmistress of Pembroke House, my next stop. Rob picked me up towards the end of the afternoon. He spends the week on a sisal farm two hours south-east of Nairobi and drives up to Gilgil, virtually past the Taylor’s door, every Friday. The drive is not something he enjoys and he has just bought a light aircraft which will cut down the journey time considerably. We worked out that the last time we met was at the county ground at Northampton in about 1984.

There was a gathering of lots of Pembroke people at Gilgil Club. It is an exeat weekend with a parents morning followed by Sports Day on the Saturday, after which the children will go home with their parents until Sunday evening. The parents all come up on the Friday night and either stay at the club or with friends in the vicinity. Gilgil Club is a legacy of the colonial period, all drinks on chit, lots of well-sunned locals and everyone, seemingly, knowing everyone else. I chatted to a few and enjoyed the company of a couple of them, in particular. Debs had publicized the fact that I was around in their weekly newsletter and there are several parents who are considering Britain for their post 13 education.

I am so grateful to Rob and Debs for having me to stay for two days. It is the way that the ex-pats do it here but, even so, they regard their homes as hotels and it is continues to remind me of my many deficiencies in that area.

NAIROBI Nov 18^th

What an extraordinary day. I was ushered into the office of the Director Emeritus at 8.30a.m., who turned out to be Joseph Gikubu, the only one of the three founders still alive. He gave me his totally undivided attention for 10 minutes and could not have been more welcoming. I then had half an hour with Matthew Kiriyaki, the current Director. What a nice bloke he is. Both of them explained the school’s roots, outlined the fact that the values they began with are still every bit as important now as they were in 1959 and expressed their gratitude to me as a representative of a school that funds three of their boys. They were almost gushing in their welcome but it could not have been more genuine.

I was then driven over to the Girls Centre, about 10 miles north of the city. This is only in its 6^th year. The Director, Margaret Wanjobi proceeded to look after me personally for the next two hours. She is an absolute livewire and has succeeded in pushing projects through that, left to the planners, would still be just drawings. The school runs in exactly the same way as the Boys, with teachers being employed almost exclusively to teach. Extra-curricular activities are run by the girls wherever possible. The school was a farm until 2005 and it is still very productive. It is now the girls who do the farming and the produce forms the basis of their daily food intake. New classrooms, laboratories and accommodation blocks have all been built in the last 4 years. They do not look like they are new, with their unfinished breeze-block and girder exteriors, and by British standards they are fairly raw inside. It is the equivalent of luxury here, however and the girls are immensely proud to be part of it. I spent some time with the three funded by Wellington, which was fascinating. They are all village girls for whom Starehe has given a way out of a life of early marriage, farming and child-bearing. One wants to be a lawyer, one a medic and one an academic. It was impossible not to feel a bit lumpy when they thanked me in turn, in rehearsed speeches, for the opportunity that Wellington is helping them to experience.

I came back to a post lunch meeting with Alphonse. I pumped him with questions. He gets very little discipline that comes as far as him. Most boys don’t break the rules because they are so aware of their privileged position and anxious to live up to it. The House Captains keep everything in check and are as happy to tell one of their peers to do up his shoelaces as one of the first years. Adults only get involved in serious pastoral issues involving non-school issues. The weekly Baraza, or parliament, is a forum where any child of whatever age, can air anything that is troubling them. The absolute rule is that what is said should not influence the way the child is treated once Baraza is over. Baraza is attended by prefects and senior staff, who only answer questions addressed specifically to them. Rooms in the houses are known as ‘cubes’ and house 4 students, once from each of the years in the school. There is an adult attached to each house but their role is almost entirely nominal. The younger boys strive to conform at first and to demonstrate positive initiative once they have settled. It sounds Utopian and it must be as near to it as it gets. The ideals of our public schools are similar but the outsourcing of day-to-day school issues to the students has foundered on the rocks of self-interest, self-indulgence and the knowledge that, if it comes to it, Dad’s bank balance will come to the rescue.

As we were drawing to a close, Matthew asked me if I would like to join him for assembly. This is a daily event at 4.00 and Matthew insisted I sat on the stage next to him. Thursday assembly, so I was informed, is a hymn practice for the weekend chapel service. The regular boy leader has finished his exams and left school, so Alphonse was in charge. He sang a decent solo version of ‘Be thou my guardian and my guide’, which the rest of the school did not know well. We were then encouraged to join in and by verse four it was not too bad. Alphonse was not happy with the 3^rd year, however. He made them stand on their own to sing verse one and when that was still unsatisfactory told them they would be back in the assembly hall, after supper, to sing it until they did so properly. Imagine a Wellington prefect telling all the Lower Sixth to front up for extra Congregational Practice. We then had a second year lead the school in a rendition of ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus’, which was enthusiastically taken up by everyone else. Then, in my honour, the entire school sang the school song, after which Matthew asked me to say a few words. I simply stated that if I am half as welcoming to others as the Kenyan people in general and Starehe in particular have been to me, it would come over as being very generous.

Matthew then asked me to follow him out of the hall to the grass quadrangle outside. The students filed noiselessly out of assembly for roll-call, each year group occupying a different side of the quad. Inspection of appearance followed, carried out by the various captains. Those who did not pass did varying numbers of press-ups, in full view of the entire school, on the grass in front of their line-up spot. Finally, the school flag was lowered to the accompaniment of bugles.

It works here and does so in spades. Interestingly, the view of all the pupils and staff I have talked with is that with a new constitution ratified a year ago, with a leader who is publically anti-corruption and, thus far, clean privately and with the will and support of the people, Kenya is more positively placed now than at any stage since independence. With a future generation influenced by the old girls and boys of Starehe, it must stand a fighting chance.

I am writing this to the background strains of a brass band, without harmonies and sounding tinny, as only colonial bands can, playing Silent Night and Mary’s Boy Child with full oompahs. Totally incongruous.