18. A Terrifying Visit to Wankie Game Reserve

So out he got, as I cried and cried, terror-stricken. My mother was telling me to calm down, because she was sure that my father would do something to get the car going again. That was probably true since I knew that he could fix just about anything. She was right. It didn’t take him long to discover that the fan belt had broken, and that we didn’t have a spare. He must have been so annoyed with himself for not having included an extra fan belt, as was always recommended for road trips.

My ever-inventive father came up with an alternative, though. Using the support stockings that my mother wore on long trips, he fashioned a replacement fan belt, tying a knot in the middle of one “leg” of the stocking, and attaching this band to the fan wheel of the car’s engine.

Better still, to my mind, was the fact that a game warden’s vehicle had just drawn up behind us!  We were in luck, I thought. Maybe he would have a proper fan belt for us. The warden got out of his truck and asked us why we had stopped. My father explained our predicament. Although, much to my disappointment, the warden couldn’t provide us with a new fan belt of the correct size for our vehicle, he gave us permission to drive as fast as we could, to get as much air as possible through our radiator, thus preventing the entire engine from overheating to a calamitous level.

My father drove fast in short bursts on those corrugated roads, to get us as far as we could, before having to stop and check the makeshift fan belt. Each time this meant he had to get out of the car. Thus, exhausted and covered in dust, we made it to the next rest camp. As far as I was concerned, it had been a harrowing journey, one that I never wanted to repeat. 

My dislike of being in the bush has never really changed over the course of time. Years later, newly married, and in Kenya for a month with my husband, I refused to go with him on a safari to Tsavo or Marai Maro Wildlife Park. Even later still, when my husband and I were both in our 60s, recently retired and on holiday in India, I declined an invitation to join a small group of tourists on a daytrip to view tigers in their natural habitat. My husband went on his own, thrilled to be able to snatch a blurry photo of a well camouflaged tiger in its jungle setting. I, meanwhile, stayed happily in my hotel room, where I read a book, instead.

I have long since decided that I am not the type who enjoys the wilds …no, not of anywhere at all!