FORUM

TRIP OF A LIFETIME

My name is Binoerah Fredericks, but everyone calls me Bee for short. My husband is Taufiq Fredericks, and my daughter is Nuriyah. For the past few years, we have regularly travelled in a convoy from Cape Town to the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape and surroundings; it was only in the middle of last year that we decided to do a trip starting in Cape Town, and work our way up through JHB, Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho, and then work our way down along the coast.

We raised the idea with the crew we normally travel with, but their immediate response was, “No, we need a whole year to plan that.” But my husband said, “Listen, if we don’t do this now, we might never get the opportunity again. Imagine the awesome pictures you’ll be able to take in Mozambique and Swaziland...”

As it was the first time I would be leaving the country, he had the van serviced, we connected with people in Mozambique through Instagram, and we started all the nitty-gritty detailing.

We left Cape Town around noon on Sunday, 17 December 2017. We anxiously followed the GPS to our first stop, Steenbokkie Nature Reserve in Beaufort West. It was late afternoon, and while Taufiq was getting the fire going, my daughter and I took our usual random stroll - until a huge black pig escaped through a fenced gate. We ran, not knowing that it was a pet, with my daughter shouting, “Mommy, why isn’t that