Jean Spear
Bundu bashing in Sandton. Home of the Big Five: BMWs, Nokias, Nikes, Fendi Bags and ridiculously overpriced Thai cuisine.
Not the place you would expect to have an interactive experience with nature, but Gautengers were shown the wild side of the suburbs at a recent demonstration survival day.
The well-manicured lawns of Bush Discoveries SA were dotted with city folk flinging arrows at a herd of hessian buffaloes, baking vegetables in a bush oven and tracking the footprints of an “intruder” who had managed to sneak into the garden over the electric fences for a quick beer and bite to eat.
Much to the guest’s disappointment, everyone was dressed in corporate attire and not in loincloths -we all thought that would have been in the spirit of the day.
Victims of cellphone withdrawal threw themselves into learning how to survive deep in the thick of Sandton with nothing but a penknife and six rough-looking blokes to watch and advise them. “Veldschool for grown-ups, but at least you get to drink wine at the end of it,” mused one guest.
But for all those who never got to be brownies or boy scouts, it was a chance to get down and get dirty all in the name of learning. “I’m sick of sitting in a car in the Kruger Park and looking at game twice a day,” said one Sandton survivor. “I want to learn practical things about the wild and how to experience it first-hand.”
Bored with the usual travel agent’s gold star list -good wine, good food and good game lodge -locals and foreigners are looking for a more rounded experience from their trips to the game reserve.
Bush Discoveries’s Operation Flycamp offers people the chance to interact with nature in an eco-friendly, gritty way. Going primitive, guests leave their luxuries at home and venture into the bush to set up camp on a game reserve of their choice, for a three- to 10-day course.
They are taken “bush shopping”, to find natural alternatives to shampoo, toothbrushes and soap. They are shown traditional medicines like natural anaesthetics, antihistamines and, for the really energetic, bush Viagra.
“It isn’t Rambo, dagger-between-the-teeth kind of survival,” says Chris Green, senior bush operations manager. “We show people that their biggest muscle is between their ears.”
One of the most interesting aspects of the course is taught by Kenny Mbatha, an expert tracker and guide. He spent 18 years in the Zimbabwe military and has been reading the signs of the wild for as long as he can remember. His lessons are logical, but for city folk they open up a whole new world.
Ancient pearls of wisdom drop from his mouth as he shows guests how to use a tree as a compass by looking at its bark, how to read the skies at night and how to track humans and animals.
The guests gather around him in astonishment. “Our intruder is carrying a gun,” he says and points to an unidentifiable set of marks in the soil. And there is a collective shiver through the group.
Mbatha also points out the spoor of a leopard that has been dragging a carcass, and shows people how to identify the Big Five from the bottom of their feet – a unique way of game viewing. These skills are combined with an in-depth look at San culture.
After working with a group of San in Botswana, Nicholas Curtis, managing partner of the company, saw that many of their survival skills could be translated into the modern office environment. With strong team work and well-developed tactics, the San offer companies strategies that can be used in the business of survival.
Based on these skills, Project Flycamp is specially designed to build corporate teams. Each skill that is learned can be adapted to company dynamics.
But more than just the corporate focus, Project Flycamp offers a new approach to tourism desperately needed to attract foreigners to South Africa. “Too many valuable bush and indigenous skills are being left to die in squatter camps,” says Green.
Ethno-tourism is the last chance we may have to ensure that indigenous survival skills survive. Besides, it’s a jungle out there on the streets of Johannesburg, and people could do with a few hints on how to survive.
Contact Bush Discoveries SA at (011) 884- 0848; e-mail: [email protected]