I’ve been sitting on this tale for a while, perhaps in a subconscious attempt to forget it. There are some stories that are both comically hilarious and horrifying, the type that can only be told from a distance and with time, the type that need some water under the bridge to clear out the muck. This is one of those.
It was the second to last day of my ride from Cape Town up to Botswana. I’d been at it for eleven weeks and had racked up 3500km in the saddle. I could practically see the finish line as I rode into the tiny South African town that would be my last stop before the border.
It was the “blink and you’ll miss it” type of place that populates the scrub land of the Limpopo province: a gas station, a few houses, a bar. There was one hotel, a place to stay for the game hunters and safari “adventurers” who come to this part of the world looking to shoot something.
Had I known that a friend of a friend knew the owners of the hotel, I could have enjoyed a quiet, peaceful night at the end of the road, but that wouldn't have made a great story, now would it? Instead, I met Dick. In this case, the names have been changed to protect the innocent, namely me in case this psychopath ever comes across the blog of a cyclist he once met on a lonely stretch of road. I needed a place to stay, was willing to camp, and he was more than accommodating. Told me to follow him back to his camp, a hunting resort a bit faded and past its prime.
Turns out looks can be deceiving. Dick owned 16,000 acres of land, scrubby lowveld pushed up against the Limpopo River and the border with Botswana. It was a massive game reserve, cut out of the bush for the enjoyment of wealthy patrons looking to bag one of the big five. I say wealthy, but Dick assured me that he had clients from every walk of life, including the type of blue-collar Americans who have always dreamed of a big game hunt, to follow in the footsteps of Hemingway. A policeman, a firefighter, the type of guy who saves his entire life for one trip, a chance to wake up with the African sun and shoot an elephant in his pajamas.
How it got in his pajamas, I will never know.
As I settled in and found an out of the way spot to sleep, I was greeted by a massive dog, more horse than canine, who bounded over and nearly tackled me in its good-natured stupidity. It was an Irish Wolf Hound, honest to God as big as my mountain bike.
“What’s his name?” I asked, ruffling the dog’s ears and trying my best to stay on my feet.
“Kaffir.” It dropped like a lead weight.
“What?” Dick had just let loose one of the no-no words in South Africa. Kaffir was what the most racist whites used to call blacks in the apartheid era. It’s equivalent, if not worse, to hearing your hillbilly cousin Cletus drop the word nigger. I thought he was joking. He had to be joking. He was just trying to get a rise out of me, right?
“There’s another one around here, a Great Dane named Gorra Ou. See, we called the blacks kaffir, and they called us that.”
Alright, well at least he was an equal opportunity racist, right? Maybe he was just trying to take the sting out of those words, maybe he was opening up a critical dialogue in a small town about the pernicious, lingering effects of racism in rural South Africa.
Or maybe he was just a massive, unapologetic, whack job racist. I have got to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt in these scenarios.
I can say that now. Benefit of hindsight, I guess. At the time, I had no idea what I was dealing with. It was my last night on the bike. My trip was nearing its end, and I was just grateful for a place to camp.
I had dinner in the bar. Dick was drinking. Heavily. As I cut through kudu and pap, he told me a bit about himself. He’d been a hunter all his life. Back in the 80s, he used to travel to Europe quite often, building a rolodex of clients for high-end safaris. He had a diplomatic passport back then, you see.
I thought that strange. Why did a hunter have a diplomatic passport during the most sanctioned years of apartheid? His own countrymen couldn't travel to Europe due to the travel restrictions, but here he was cruising around the continent looking to expand his business.
“I've worked for Kofi Annan. He had a game park in CAR (the Central African Republic). I've run a conservancy for Bill Gates. MUAMMAR QADDAFI SAT RIGHT HERE AT THIS BAR.” He was drunk now. He’d had several gin and tonics while I sat nursing my beer and eating my dinner. He bought me another beer, then another. Chastised me that I couldn't keep up.
“Yes, Colonel Qaddafi. It was a sad day when I learned that that man had died.”
Maybe for you, I thought, but not to the thousands of people who suffered through decades of autocratic rule.
Dick was in with the apartheid government. He had the diplomatic passport, and, I suspect, he had a military background that went far deeper than the average South African man of his generation.
Every man of a certain age in South Africa has a military background, and one of the most interesting conversations you can have with anyone forty or older is to ask them about their military service. Under the apartheid government, South Africa had one of the most elite military fighting forces in the world. A universal draft forced every adult male into one of the world’s most severe training regimens. The sanctions imposed by Western governments forced the South Africans to develop their own home-grown military industries. The government pursued a strategy of near-total war in the region, supporting guerrillas in Angola and Mozambique, keeping a firm grip on Namibia as a buffer against hostile black governments in the region, hunting down ANC activists operating as far afield as Zambia. I later heard that Dick was a sniper. It wouldn't surprise me if, with his professional experience, he hadn't spent time hunting people instead of animals.
Over the course of several hours, while Dick continued to drink and continued to berate me for not keeping up by drinking myself into unconsciousness, I heard the most vile, disgusting trash ever to come out of one man’s mouth.
"With all your traveling, you haven't forgotten your heritage have you?" He said it with a sneer that I knew would get me in trouble.
"Umm...I'm not sure what you mean by that."
"Have you ever dated a black woman?"
"I have."
His disgust was more than evident.
I heard how the blacks had ruined everything. How the niggers and the kaffirs fucked everything up. How they were lazy, and stupid, and violent. He had examples. to support his case from nearly every country on the continent, and unfortunately, there was no way for me to get out of this one-sided conversation.
Then my parents called.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. You will never believe where I am. This guy is crazy. He’s fucking crazy. Like wow. Like I can’t even describe the crazy that’s coming out of his mouth. He’s racist. He’s vile. I don’t want to talk too loud, because I’m afraid that if he hears me, I might not make it out of here alive. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.”
I was gone an hour. When I came back, Dick was nowhere to be seen. I could relax. I tried to speak to his ex-wife, who hung around and helped him with the business. They had a daughter, but their marriage hadn't worked out. They were “differences” between him and her.
Dick called me. He had made me take his number earlier and beep his phone. He knew people all over the continent, and could be a great help if I ever needed it. Still, I hesitated to answer.
“Finish your beer and come to my room.”
What?
“Finish your beer and come to my room.” It was all he said before hanging up.
Well there’s no way I’m doing that. I texted my friend Jade, who has quite a bit of personal experience with vehemently racist South Africans: “If you are genuinely concerned, either don’t sleep, or wake up before dawn and get the fuck out. Make sure he drinks heavily or is tired enough to pass out bigtime. The dog, too. Whatever you do, don’t disagree. Just humour him. You don’t necessarily havet o agree but they feel threatened when you come across as a ‘kaffir lover.’ Or even sympathiser. Make sure your shit is packed and ready to pick up and fuck off. Otherwise, just swallow the nausea, smile, and be a dumb American tourist.”
I sat milking the beer for all that it was worth. Ten minutes went by. My phone rang again.
“Finish your beer and come to my room.” He was more insistent this time. “It’s in the main house. The bartender sleeps outside my room, just pass him by and knock on my door. But come now.”
There are times in your life when red flags are flying high and bright, when alarm bells are going off in your head, when you can’t see for the flashing of warning lights. And yet…you ignore it. You explain it away as temporary insanity, you're being unreasonable. He can’t be that bad, right? This is all in my head. I’m being paranoid.
In times like this, listen to that paranoia.
I finished my beer. The main house had a green light above the door. This was not my Gatsby moment. There was nothing beyond that door that represented anything for me. It was not my "orgiastic future receding year by year before [me]."
I entered the house. The bed outside Dick’s room was empty. The bartender wasn't there. He wasn't asleep. I had no one to witness the full-on crazy about to hit the fan.
I knocked on the door. “Come in,” Dick called. I turned the handle, the door swung open, and there was Dick, naked as his name day. “Ohp, sorry, I was just in the toilet,” he giggled, as he tip-toed like a cartoon character to the bed and covered himself with a sheet.
This is the most uncomfortable I have ever been in my life.
He lit a cigarette, took a long drag, lying on his back with an arm behind his head.
Correction: THIS is the most uncomfortable I have ever been in my life.
“So tomorrow, I’ll take you out hunting. We have to go find a certain buffalo. Then we’ll go fishing in the afternoon.” He was taking long drags from the cigarette. I was very conscious of the creepy, naked man fully three feet away, covered only by a satin sheet. How much time do you have to spend in a room with a naked man before you can make an excuse to leave? I don’t want to be rude after all.
Wait...why is appearing rude my greatest concern?! I’M UP FOR A BUGGERING, AND APPEARING RUDE IS MY GREATEST CONCERN?!
“You don’t have to sleep outside tonight. There’s a bed here in the house. It’ll be cold out there.”
There is no way in fuck that I am sleeping under this roof. No way in fuck. NO WAY IN FUCK. This whole experience has gone from racist creepy to fucking disturbing in nearly every way possible. “I don’t mind the cold. I like the fresh air.”
“Well, you can suit yourself, but if you get cold in the middle of the night, you’ll have to come sleep inside.”
NO WAY IN FUCK. I excused myself and nearly ran for the safety of an open-walled canvas tent. There was no way I was being caught without an escape route.
I was gone by dawn. The mosquitoes tore me apart that night, but there was no way I was staying even an extra hour longer than I had to. My biggest fear was that he would get in his truck and hunt me down on some lonely dirt road, my screams for help unheard in the wide, open savanna.
It turns out that my fears were justified. Some conservationists, who knew Dick personally, told me that he was a character best avoided. He’d offered on several drunken occasions to sell them his bar for one night with one of their male volunteers. People had been drugged in that bar. One of their friends had died in a car accident after leaving Dick’s place. The sheriff never investigated. Dick owned that town.
That night was my worst experience in South Africa. Everyone always asked me, “Aren't you afraid of the crime? Don’t you know that there are people who would slit your throat for a phone, let alone a shiny bike like yours? Haven’t you had any close calls?” I can honestly say that my last night in South Africa was the closest I’d ever come to being a victim, and it wasn't at the hands of a murderous thug in a crime-ridden township. It was more Deliverance than Do the Right Thing.
There’s still a lot of prejudice and tension in South Africa. People would often open up the topic of race with, “I’m not a racist, but…” Usually, these conversations were based around ignorance or generalizations more than any personal hatred. “You have to realize that there are good blacks and there are bad blacks.” That was a common one that I heard, especially in the old Boer/Afrikaaner heartland.
Everyone’s a little bit racist sometimes, myself included. We all have ingrained prejudice. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Dick was on another level though. He took racism and distilled it down to its most hateful and vile.
I've met a lot of people on my travels. Most are good. They’re positive and kind. They open up their homes and welcome me as one of their own. In his own way, Dick did absolutely that, but he also represented a darker side of humanity, one that’s full of pain, anger, and hatred.
In a way, Dick is the other side of the coin to Chris, who I've written about in the past. Both men who had to respond when confronted with the reality of apartheid and institutionalized racism. They were offered a chance to accept or reject the reality of their time. Chris rejected apartheid and all that it stood for. Dick accepted it and even became its standard-bearer, with his diplomatic passport and his high-rolling clients. Times changed. Chris enjoys a quiet retirement with his wife and his art. He’s happy, one of the most positive people I've ever met. Dick still has his business, but I can’t say that he’s happy, and he’s definitely one of the angriest people I ever met.
I don’t know if I can draw any firm conclusions from that. Easy come, easy go. You reap what you sow. These trite colloquialisms get us through the day, help us to make sense of life. Maybe they’re true. I’m not sure. I’m just happy that this is a story I can tell as a distant memory, an experience that, for better or worse, I will never forget.
