Leo

By Christine Farrington

With the Kalahari in her heart and its dust in her hair, Leonora Baring leaves with the TV crew, bumping south on the long road to Cape Town and then home to London. She knows her heart will ache with worry about the Bushmen she has come to understand and love. The image of a particular friend, Kalai, a beautiful young woman and mother, standing behind the vehicle to say goodbye, makes Leonora’s eyes prickle. Kalai had come back all the way to camp after having been taken deep into the desert to give birth, just to see them one last time.
Making the documentary on the Bushmen for the TV programme, Total Exposure, had been just another exciting assignment. That is, until Leonora had come to know the players; these beautiful nomads who had such deep history and intricate social systems. Kalai, having been largely ostracised by the group, because of her relationship with the Other, had been a fascinating study in itself.
During a stop on the long drive, Leonora hears a noise in the back of the Land Rover and discovers with shock, a tiny new-born baby wrapped in cloths and animal skins – Kalai’s new-born. The Bushmen had left, as they do, to move on to fresh territory and the crew had pressing deadline obligations in London. But these matters are incidental only to Leonora’s resolve to give Kalai’s baby the fighting chance his mother recognised she could give him. She is determined to take him to London, whatever it takes.
Railing in anger and against his better judgement, Jamie – Leonora’s Director, helps her. Falsified documentation and a good deal of palm greasing, and they make it happen. Baby Leo flies home with Leonora and his remarkable story unfolds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christine Farrington
• Release date: Apr 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005174156

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Copyright © 2022 Christine Farrington

First edition 2022

Published by Christine Farrington Publishing at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Christine Farrington using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Symone Hart for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.org

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Part One

To my lovely niece Alison

This one’s for you

With all my love

Chapter One

The day was getting warmer every minute and with it my anxiety was becoming greater. The night had been cold – almost freezing it seemed, thinking of that bitter, penetrating cold so reminiscent of England gripped in winter.

Last evening the sky was a magical dark indigo, encrusted with stars as if a child had thrown up large handfuls of glitter which hung, beautifully suspended, above us. Some nights I felt that if I stretched my arms out far enough, I could pluck the stars out of the sky, they felt so near. Last night they were far away but shone just as brightly in the clear, clean air of the Kalahari Desert.

Kalai left the camp late yesterday afternoon to go and have her baby away from everybody. To go into the deep red sand dunes where, I believe, she will squat in various positions until the child is released from her small body. At the time, when it became obvious that Kalai was in some sort of pain, I tried to persuade Ou Leis and Antas, in the best way that I could, to lie Kalai down, where I thought she would be more comfortable giving birth. Ou Leis and Antas both looked at me and smiled, then arose from their familiar sitting positions in the sand, where they worked away continuously at their ostrich eggs, skins, and seeds of one kind or another, creating them into useful objects or ornaments. Now they quietly escorted Kalai away without a word or a gesture. I watched them go as far as the steep dunes would allow me to see. I was fond of Kalai; her delicate child-woman figure had caught my attention immediately we encountered the Bushman group. From the large swell of her belly, it was obvious that she was pregnant, yet at the same time she looked like a young girl, not yet having reached puberty. I was soon to learn that the Bushmen, male and female, often looked a lot younger than they were before the age of 20 and after the age of 30, looked a good deal older than they were. The harsh conditions of the desert, the nomadic lifestyle and the relentless burning sun turned these delicate people into old men and women before their time.

Indeed, Kalai was around fifteen years old. She had drawn fifteen rows in the sand with the end of a dry stick for me when I tried to ask her how old she was. This was quite some time after our first encounter, when her trust in me was obviously growing. She was not married and had no boyfriend as far as I could see. It was only when Erica Campbell, an ethno-linguist from Stellenbosch University, who was adept at understanding and speaking the Bushman language, came to join us to interpret between the Bushmen and our film crew that some light was thrown onto Kalai’s predicament.

Erica couldn’t be sure, but a young game ranger named Thomas Langer had visited the area where the Bushmen tended to keep camp when they were not on the move hunting for food and searching for water. Thomas was the son of Axel Langer, the German owner of a game farm and reserve on the South West African border of the Kalahari. Axel was well known in the area as a conservationist, hell-bent on preserving his beloved lions. The farm was used for rehabilitating injured, orphaned, and often rescued lions before releasing them into their natural habitat in remoter parts of the African bush. It catered for tourists, conservationists, zoologists, and anyone else interested in the animal rehabilitation programme who could afford the high prices charged for the privilege. Erica couldn’t remember the name of the farm.

She continued the story. Thomas had met up with the Bushmen on several occasions, mostly when in search of an escaped lion from the game reserve or an injured animal reported by rangers in the Kalahari Gemsbok Park. ‘The Bushman has extra sensitive hearing and superb eyesight and can run like the wind,’ she explained. So, whenever possible, the more experienced hunters of the Bushman group helped Thomas to track the animals, in exchange for tobacco, water and the occasional donkey. ‘The donkey,’ Erica told me with some relish, ‘is a delicacy for the Bushmen, a great feast.’ I shuddered at the thought.

Thomas was fond of the Bushmen and treated them with a rough, jovial kindness. He was particularly gentle with Kalai who, with her exquisite heart-shaped face and delicate apricot coloured body, was by far the most attractive of the Bushman women. Thomas himself was tall, lean, and handsome, with sun-kissed blonde hair and a bronze complexion weathered by the harsh African sun. ‘It would only be an assumption,’ Erica explained, ‘Thomas and Kalai might well have got together.’ And that was the end of her story.

My mind ran riot with these revelations; a small, delicate Bushman girl, and a tall handsome German. It could explain the certain distance the rest of the group were keeping from Kalai. The Bushmen were monogamous by nature; would they accept a mixed-race child into their group, if indeed Erica’s assumptions were correct? In a short time, we would know.

Ou Leis and Antas arrived back at the camp alone an hour later. I tried to ask them what was happening to Kalai. Had she had the baby? Was she alright? All this was met by silence and something within told me to keep quiet and drop the subject; that this was a Bushman matter, deep within their culture and nothing to do with me.

Baliep, a young Bushman hunter, told me two nights ago that a leopard was prowling near the camp. He told me again at first light this morning, when his gentle tugging at my jacket sleeve had awakened me. At first, I thought there must be news of Kalai, only to be led beyond the fringes of the camp to a spoor that Baliep assured me, in his serious mime and click language, was from the leopard. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was all about, why he had been so keen to show me the evidence of the cat, but it obviously meant something to him.

The leopard hunts in darkness and with that thought foremost in my mind, I was immediately anxious again for Kalai. There were two lone creatures out on the edges of the Kalahari Desert, one in pain and vulnerable, one hungry and deadly. I could not bear thinking about it and impotence bound me as if I were in a straight-jacket, unable to get information or to act. To defy the Bushman culture and go headlong into the huge, endless sand dunes looking for Kalai would indeed be foolish, that I knew.

Time was running out fast – already we were nearly one week over schedule and my colleagues were anxious to return to England. Some had already left, quite rightly, and four of us remained behind to finish off the remnants of filming, which I selfishly insisted on doing. Usually on assignments I was the first to pack up and head for home, but now suddenly I had no desire whatsoever to leave this small group of Bushmen in the Kalahari who in such a short time had captivated my heart.

Being amongst these charming people and trying to capture on film the last remaining first people of Africa was not always easy. The Bushmen live and move at their own pace and if they do not want to do something, they will not. An anthropologist friend once told me that, ‘No one can sulk like a Bushman.’ I understand that completely now. You don’t have to understand the language to know and feel when someone is sulking. But the best part of the time was full of fun and charm. The younger group of children and teenagers were natural show-offs with no inhibitions, and they were fascinated by us and our equipment and the vehicles, to say nothing of our food which they eyed with great suspicion and examined closely before eating any of it. The older group were more reserved and shy except for their leader, Dawid Kruiper, who was anything but shy. He was a fine man who did all the negotiating and bartering on behalf of the group. I liked him a lot and we got on well, at least I liked to think we did as he was always smiling, his face creased into a thousand weather-beaten wrinkles, showing a set of teeth that would keep my dentist and dental hygienist happy and busy for a month.

We were with the Bushmen to make a documentary for the British television network QuayTV and their current affairs programme, Total Exposure. I was the presenter and together with a very dedicated and experienced film crew, we had won our way into the sitting rooms of England, earning top viewing ratings for our Total Exposure of wrongdoings and injustices happening around the world.

In this case it was the Bushman and their near-extinction coupled with this group being excluded from the Southern Kalahari Gemsbok Park, the Bushman’s rightful home, where he could carry on his hunter-gatherer existence, albeit in a small way. Now the South African National Parks Board did not want the Bushmen anywhere in the park and they had nowhere to go. An Afrikaner farmer from the Western Cape allowed some Bushmen to live on his remote reserve in the Cederberg Mountains and some of them went there, the rest making camp at Mier, an area outside the borders of the Kalahari Gemsbok Park. It was a very difficult situation, and my heart went out to them. Through Erica and !Ou Jon we were able to hear and record how white colonials were granted licences up until the 1920s, to hunt and shoot the Bushmen. Erica told us the story of a well-known Scottish Lady, who had her photograph taken rejoicing over her expertise with a rifle, having managed to shoot and kill no fewer than twelve Bushmen in one day. Hearing this didn’t make me feel proud to be from the same island.

!Ou Jon, the grandson of Dawid Kruiper, continued the story, telling us how his forefathers had lived as hunter-gatherers roaming freely over the Kalahari Desert, from Botswana to Southern Africa, ‘even as far as the Cape!’ he added enthusiastically. Leading their nomadic lives freely, they made their transient homes in the desert or the rock caves in the hills where some of their ancient paintings still exist. Wherever they found food or water they stayed for a while, until gradually they began being hunted themselves or chased away by the encroaching white population and the black Africans. ‘Many were captured and taken away to work on the farms,’ !Ou Jon shook his head in sadness, ‘and we never see them again. Our families are all broken up and there is very few left of us,’ his eyes misted over as he told us this, but he carried on, ‘and now we have no land of our own to go to. The Parks Board don’t want to know, and the government won’t help. It has all been taken away from us.’

So, this is what we had travelled halfway across the world for, to see for ourselves and to hear a first-hand account of what was happening to the Bushmen, or what indeed had happened to them. It was my responsibility to film and record accurately all that we had seen of their present existence and to hear from the Bushman leader about their past and what they now saw as their lawful rights and hopes for the future.

When a television crew is working on a documentary like this one, time and expense is of the essence, and you must work as quickly as you can in the circumstances. For the first time in my career on Total Exposure this was not going to be the case, nor did we want it to be. Jamie, our producer, and the rest of the crew knew from the start that these Bushmen were very special. They are shy and sensitive, still living in a world long forgotten and lost to the past, and they deserved our time and patience if we were to put their story across to a civilisation that might help them to acquire the land they felt was theirs by right.

Chapter Two

The Kalahari is hauntingly beautiful. Largely a semi-desert wasteland, and not so long ago was the exclusive habitat of the resident gemsbok, lion, elephant, giraffe, rhino, wildebeest, and the attendant Bushmen. There is an eerie and haunting silence amongst the large terracotta-coloured sand dunes where very little vegetation appears to grow. There is a feeling of entering a land immensely old, eroded by time and harsh weather conditions, by scorching sun and little rain, but untouched or spoilt by Western civilisation.

And now it was time to leave this newly found land which, only three weeks ago, I had stepped into and at once felt I had truly arrived in my spiritual home. I was born in Devon, England, and worked in London. Both felt a million light years away. Africa, the Kalahari, the Bushmen, the wild animals, the warm sun early in the mornings bringing its vibrant colours, and the little meercats who so enchanted us with their friendliness and showmanship, were all pulling at my heartstrings. We packed up camp for a 4 a.m. start the following morning knowing that it was going to be hard to leave.

Still there was no sign of Kalai. I felt even more strongly that to ask any of the Bushmen would be futile. They themselves were in a kind of quiet silence which we could not begin to understand – was it something to do with our leaving? Was it something to do with Kalai? A determined, sad silence that even Erica could not comprehend. What we did know was that the Bushmen planned to up camp and leave the area tomorrow after our departure – where to would be anyone’s guess.

I awoke at 3 a.m. after a fitful sleep, imagining I had heard every animal in the desert making its nightly sound around the camp. But it was quiet and peaceful, and I snuggled deeper into my sleeping bag against the harsh cold of the early morning and reflected on the work events of the last three weeks. Had we filmed, interviewed, and shown the Bushmen and their situation to their best advantage, and would it make the sort of impact needed to reach the one or many viewers out there who would want to help and campaign to assist the Bushmen? I felt confident that we had.

A gentle shaking of my shoulder brought me out of the slumber I was falling back into. ‘Coffee up,’ said Jamie quietly, putting down the hot mug on the ground where I was lying, ‘and there’s a surprise for you by the Land Rover when you’re ready,’ he whispered.

‘Are the vehicles packed?’ I whispered back hoarsely through mouthfuls of the hot coffee.

‘Yes, just your sleeping bag and the tent.’

We had packed almost everything the previous evening to save time. We gave what little food and rations we had left to the Bushmen, keeping some coffee and powdered milk for the journey to Upington, the nearest large town 265 kilometres away, where we would replenish supplies and petrol before the long drive to Cape Town.

The rest of the crew had departed the previous week by the shorter route to Johannesburg and flying on to London from there. Robb, Glyn and Erica, Jamie and I were to drive to Cape Town in two separate Land Rovers, giving Erica a lift to Stellenbosch before taking the vehicles to the harbour to be shipped back to Southampton – the garage which had supplied us with the vehicles wanted to check them after their exhaustive trip to the Kalahari, featuring them in some glossy magazine as an example of durability, no doubt. The four of us would fly to London from Cape Town.

The wonderful sounds in the silence of the Kalahari are quite remarkable. The stillness during the day, marked occasionally by the sweet trill of a bird and nothing else, is in stark contrast to the silence of the night when the distant roar of a lion echoes hauntingly from far away and I would find myself trying to identify the sounds of other creatures waking up to their night-time business.

Moving with quiet caution, I rolled up my sleeping bag and dismantled the tent. Walking towards our Land Rover, I noticed a small figure crouching by the vehicle and my heart leapt as I got nearer and realised it was Kalai. I was so relieved that I let out a yelp that probably alerted every animal around. My instincts were to put my arms around her, before realising quickly that the Bushmen were unused to this kind of familiar greeting. I held out my hands to her instead, which she grasped and held tightly. In that moment I felt convinced that Kalai’s baby must have died at birth or shortly after, in what way I dared not think.

There was no time left to get Erica to translate what Kalai was trying to tell me. Jamie was impatient for us to get going as the other Land Rover was already moving off in the deep sand and we had to keep together at least until we reached the tarmac road, some 60 or 70 kilometres away.

‘A penny for your thoughts?’ Jamie asked half an hour after we had left the Bushman camp and not a word had passed between us.

‘Lots of things really – all at once – but mainly I was thinking about Kalai and the sadness she must feel at losing her baby.’

‘How do you know she lost it?’

‘Of course she lost it, otherwise she would have had it with her,’ I unnecessarily snapped back.

‘Maybe the baby was asleep when we left, and she gave it to one of the other women to look after whilst Kalai came to say goodbye to you.’

‘Please, Jamie, don’t offend me. A woman has an instinct about these things, believe me. Kalai either lost her baby at birth or something unpleasant happened to it.’

‘I think you’re being a tad melodramatic about it all. We’ve spent the last three weeks in a culture you hardly knew existed before; I think it’s gone to your head a bit. Do you seriously think a lion might have taken it?’

‘Don’t be awful. That sort of remark is cruel even if it might be what I think. All I do know is that something has happened to her baby and now we’ll never know, so let’s leave it at that.’

We drove on in concentrated silence, sliding from side to side in the sand following the red taillights of the others in front. I strongly felt the sadness between us at leaving behind these last indigenous people of Southern Africa, living in the stark, barren, waterless, wild, and wonderful desert that we might perhaps never see again.

The Bushmen had given each of the crew a small gift during our stay with them and I was reflecting on these as the dawn was breaking and we drove towards a sunrise that gave the horizon before us a deep orange-red glow. Each gift was something the Bushmen had made themselves: bows and arrows decorated by burning patterns in the wood with bow-string made of animal gut, taut and strong, and arrow tips that would be dipped in powerful poisons such as snake venom; quivers made out of animal skin; necklaces made out of ostrich egg-shell, bone, reed and horn all threaded onto gut, and pipes for smoking dagga – made from animal bones with the insides scraped out, one end stuffed hard with the silky fibrous substance of a plant to act as a filter and very effective.

I was full of admiration for these small, fine-boned Bushmen whom we had watched, whenever possible, making these artefacts. My treasured gifts were quite numerous, and I planned a nice space to exhibit them in my Putney cottage whilst the Land Rover sped along more easily as we got further away from the Kalahari and closer towards civilisation.

A sudden jolt of the vehicle quickly brought me out of the lulling trance that travelling along the sand road had rocked me into. ‘Are you alright?’ asked Jamie, concerned. ‘I had to swerve suddenly to avoid a rather large tortoise which seemed to appear from nowhere. I think they move faster than we give them credit for.’

‘Yes, I’m fine thanks. It just woke me up as I was drifting off again. Time for a nice mug of coffee, don’t you think? We don’t have to stay behind the others now we’re out of the last bit of sand road. We’ll meet at the specified time in Upington as agreed.’

Jamie looked at his watch. ‘We seem to be doing good time, so I think a coffee and a good leg stretch is an excellent idea.’

We were travelling through what appeared to be giant saltpans on either side of the road at various intervals. I remembered someone telling me that one of the famous land-speed records had taken place on one of these pans and I thought it would be memorable to film a little of the area, along with some of the sculptured, massive nests of the sociable weaver birds, which hung suspended like giant growths from the avenue of Acacia trees lining our journey that brought a wonderful scenic change to an otherwise naked landscape.

The coffee was going to be hot, delicious, and welcome. Jamie boiled the water on our single camping gas cylinder whilst I put a new cassette in the video camera. The professional cameras were with Robb and Glyn in their vehicle, safely out of my reach in case I should want to do one more inch of filming and further delay our departure. I leant up against the back of the Land Rover, savouring the strong coffee, with the early morning warmth on my face, listening to the silence and feeling the peace around me for the last time. Suddenly something made me jump and I thought I heard a sound coming from inside the back of the vehicle. I peered inside tentatively, expecting some small animal to have jumped in, but there was nothing that I could see amongst our luggage.

Jamie came walking towards me. ‘Is everything alright? I was watching you from over there by that absurd-looking tree and something seemed to catch your attention suddenly,’ he asked, sounding concerned.

‘Everything’s fine. I just thought I heard a sound coming from inside the back of the Land Rover. This silence and stillness must be getting to me, making me edgy. Come on, let me rinse these things then we can be on our way.’

‘Nora, it’s so unlike you to imagine something like a noise. Are you sure it wasn’t your camera switching itself off? It makes the most bizarre buzzing sound when it does.’

‘I haven’t used it to take photographs for two days. I told you, I ran out of film.’

‘Well, what a surprise. I thought out of your store of. . . let me see, what was it, 36 cassettes, that you might have mislaid one and quite unexpectedly found it.’

‘Don’t be so sarcastic, Jamie, it doesn’t suit you. I’ll have you know that some of those photographs will be of great historical value and National Geographical material one day.’

‘Of that I have no doubt. Sorry, I was only teasing, not one of us on the team has come across anyone with such a capacity for taking photographs as you have.’

‘That, my dear man, is because I am passionately interested in everything. If you don’t capture people, animals and places that have been memorable in your life, they are gone forever. Memories might be vivid, but photographs are a visual record for all to see and for me to look back on.’

‘Well, all I can say is that you’re going to have an awful lot of looking back to do, so come, let’s get a move on so you can fit it all in!’

Jamie leapt up laughing into the driving seat. I went to pack the coffee-making equipment in the back, all the while thinking how very lucky I was to have such a good friend and work colleague as Jamie. We had worked together for nearly five years now and carried on a mutual admiration camaraderie, which seemed to amuse everyone who knew us.

I was re-packing the coffee gear back into the Land Rover as best I could when I heard the noise again. I felt in between the bags and something warm touched my hand, which made me recoil slightly until I saw the minute face of a child lying swathed in what looked like skins. I froze completely. ‘Jamie,’ I shrieked. ‘There’s something here in the back of the Land Rover.’

‘Heavens, Nora, you’re impossible,’ he shouted. ‘We have to get going if we’re to meet with the others on time.’

‘Jamie, please, there’s a baby in the back here.’

‘Are you totally out of your mind?’ Jamie leapt from the driving seat and rushed round to see what insanity I had produced, and then looked impatiently at what had frozen me into speechlessness.

‘Christ Almighty! What the hell is that?’ Were his only words before he froze in disbelief.

I tried to think of something intelligent or even sensible to say but all I managed to mumble was, ‘Is it alive, Jamie?’

Jamie reached down amongst the bags where the baby lay cradled and supported comfortably by the bags against being rocked about by the movement of the vehicle. ‘It’s very much alive, warm as toast in fact,’ he said, holding the tiny bundle gently close to him, ‘but who the hell put it here in the back of our Land Rover?’

Still feeling rooted to the spot and unable to move, all the memories of the last two days came flashing back and sudden realisation flooded through my whole being. ‘It must be Kalai’s,’ I managed to say. ‘She must have put it there this morning while you were bringing me coffee and before we packed the last things into the vehicle.’

Jamie shot me an incredulous look. ‘Why on earth would she have done that?’

‘Jamie, I have no idea at the moment. It’s the only explanation I can conjure up right now, given the shock and time span.’

I could not take my eyes off the tiny face of the baby as it lay peacefully in Jamie’s now fidgeting hands. ‘Here,’ he said, handing the bundle carefully across to me. ‘I think you should hold it while I think what we should do.’ As he did this, the child’s face suddenly creased up and it burst into convulsive crying. It was obviously hungry, thinking of the time since we left Kalai, and panic seized me as I realised that we had absolutely nothing with which to feed it.

I rummaged around in our supply kit but there was not a thing left as we had given all the edible foodstuffs to the Bushmen. It was at that moment it suddenly hit me what a serious situation we were in. I could not have known how this same moment would change my life forever. Calmness came over me as if someone had poured aromatic soothing oils all over my body, clearing my mind and injecting energy into my very being. This child was a gift, of that I was sure.

Whilst Jamie searched in the Land Rover to see if there was something suitable with which we could sustain the child until we got to Upington, I went to lay a towel and blanket on the front passenger seat where I could unwrap the bundle and at least see what sex the child was. The tiniest, perfect baby boy was nestled in what looked like a small piece of sheepskin with something resembling a rather grubby dishcloth acting as an untied nappy – predictably soiled. My heart went out to him.

‘It’s a boy, Jamie! It’s a boy!’ I heard myself shouting as if I had personally just delivered him. But Jamie was standing right behind me, holding a small gourd. ‘I found this tucked down underneath where the baby was lying,’ he said, handing me the object. ‘It sounds as if it has something liquid inside it when you shake it. And it doesn’t belong to us.’

I took the strange-looking gourd and shook it before removing a neatly coiled plug made from gut that fitted tightly into a hole where the stalk of the plant had once been. I tipped a little of the liquid into the palm of my hand. It looked like thick, curdled milk but didn’t smell like it. ‘Kalai must have left this for us to give the baby. I wonder what it is?’

Jamie came a little closer and bent over my hand. ‘Something from one of the plants the Bushmen are always eating, full of nutrition no doubt,’ he suggested, eyeing the liquid with some suspicion.

‘Maybe she produced it herself,’ I felt myself replying with a strange feeling of protection. ‘It could be poisonous if it came from a plant, or it could have come from an animal, somehow.’

‘Whatever it is, I should give it to him quickly. It won’t be poisonous. I’m sure whoever dumped him in our Land Rover meant him to live. There are plenty of ways to dispose of a new-born baby in the wilderness, believe me. Also, we don’t know if it is Kalai’s baby. It doesn’t look at all like a baby Bushman except for its size and slight colour, but where is its peppercorn hair? Tell me that, Nora, and another thing – we must get going otherwise the others will be wondering where we are, and we need to hand this baby over to the authorities. You’ll have to feed him as we go along, sorry.’

His words felt as if one of the Bushmen’s poisonous arrows had just pierced my heart and left me numb with indignation and no suitable reply. A protective instinct churned up inside me, which I never knew I had in my young, carefree, rather ambitious, and egotistical life.

With a silence born to escape confrontation, I wrapped the now furiously hungry baby in an unused tea towel with a face flannel and plastic bag protecting his lower half. I then folded a warm jersey around him, tucked him into the cradle of my arm and proceeded to feed him from my finger with the concoction out of the gourd. The Land Rover lurched into action taking the tiny new being further away from his natural way of life, with its unshakeable sense of belonging – a hunter-gatherer born of a culture which has hardly changed in thousands of years.

Chapter Three

We travelled along in a quietness that matched the desolate landscape around us. The baby sleeping soundly in my lap looked content at last after our gruelling efforts to get the milky contents of the gourd into his mouth and keep them there long enough for him to swallow – a battle royal between us, but we had succeeded. I now looked tenderly at his beautiful face and minute, perfect hands trying to find some vestige of resemblance to Kalai. Other than the tiny, delicate body with its pale apricot skin, there was nothing that carried her, or indeed any Bushman features. Maybe it was still too early to see if any would appear. There was certainly no sign of the distinctive peppercorn hair yet – a unique characteristic of the Bushmen, tiny rings of hair like black peppercorns dotted over the head. Glancing across at Jamie’s tanned and good-looking face, with its mop of brown curls, streaked blonde by the relentless sun, I felt guilty already about what I was about to tell him. We had worked together over the last three years and steadily built up Total Exposure to become the popular programme it was today. Our professionalism towards each other and our colleagues at the television station had prevented our relationship developing into anything more serious. At times our bodies, I know, had yearned for it to be different; especially on distant and remote locations when being thrust together all the time intensified the situation. In a way, he was my hero and my friend, someone I confided in and trusted, and I knew instinctively how far I could go with him. What I was about to tell him was not going to go far at all.

Gearing myself up, I took the plunge. ‘Jamie!