The scene was the N1 highway in South Africa, the almost 2 000-km long road that links the Mother City of Cape Town with the Beit Bridge border post near Musina, giving access to Zimbabwe (or South Africa, depending on your direction of travel).
I was travelling with the late Barry Style, a professional hunter from Zimbabwe, and we were on our way back to Pretoria before Barry had to catch a flight back to Bulawayo the next morning to resume a busy hunting season. We’d enjoyed a long-overdue hunt together in the Northern Cape with another friend, and as the road was long and rather boring, we passed the time chatting about whatever came to mind.
After a few moments of silence, Barry looked at me and said: “Did you know that my grandfather knew old Bvenkenya Barnard pretty well?” Well, after I managed not to crash my bakkie after hearing that, I admitted to Barry that no, I certainly didn’t know that.
