Meeting the Elephants


Meeting the Elephants


Much of what has happened in the past year we've blocked out or put aside in our heads in order to get through. I know I did - but the time will come to remember those we've lost - all 152,000 of them.
This is the second half of my story about my adventurous trip to South Africa in January 2020.  I returned to the UK at the end of January, to be met with cold wet weather initially and then within a few weeks, stories emerging from China, in particular Wuhan, about a new deadly disease sweeping that country. And you know the rest.  By the end of March, we were all in lockdown, which seemed likely to be for a few months and we could barely leave our homes. My food shopping was now to be done online and gradually I was limited to talking to my neighbours in their front gardens in the small cul-de-sac in which I live. 
Before I went to South Africa, I had been taking care of my grandson for one day a week, then aged 15 months. Many people felt their only option was to isolate and not see even their grandchildren.  I refused this option point-blank.  Firstly my daughter was still working full days in her demanding job, organising guests for an online media discussion programme - but now she was working from home and needed the support. Secondly, I adored my grandson and was not going to be separated from him at this crucial point in his life.  Absolutely no way. 
The rain stopped sometime in March and an intensive dry heatwave followed - endless sun and blue skies, but we were in lockdown. Freddie played in the garden, we walked in the parks, I pushed the pram to playgrounds where everyone wore masks and all the play equipment was taped off. 


    Before Covid, I used to take him to cafes with playrooms, children's entertainers, drink coffee and chat with other parents/grandparents Now all closed. Now I had to play with him myself ALL the time.  Quite a challenge!


  The hot days of summer passed and in October I wrote up the first part of this South African Adventure and ended the story halfway -  where I was just about to go on my first trip to meet the elephants.  I decided to save this for a 'Part Two'. 
    By then we were back into the 2nd lockdown ... It was like a horror story, I'd got organised for the first lockdown and it had been sunny and warm.  For the second lockdown, the long hot summer had ended and the cold dark short days of winter were rapidly approaching.  Motivation plummetted. But hey, I was looking forward to a nice Xmas with my daughters and grandson - until Boris cancelled Xmas on Dec 19th (could you not have given us more notice Boris?) because of the sharp rise in deaths and hospital admissions. It took the wind out of my sales and killed all the anticipated fun. 

In the new year, I was concentrating on finishing my second memoir - Beyond the Bounds - finally (with the help of my friend and mentor Angela Newmarch) I wrote the difficult last few chapters and the magic words - The End (as I talked about in my last blog). That was a few weeks ago.

    Now we're nearly in July 2021 - I HAVE to finish this second part of the story. A great deal of sadness has delayed me, about the awful things happening not just to the people but also to the elephants and rhinos and all the wildlife in Africa.  This has been made a thousand times worse by the global pandemic and the terrible events of the last year, as many wildlife sanctuaries are funded by tourism. It's all mounted up in my head. I have to put myself back into that happy time in January 2020. Here goes - 
   Here's the last thing I wrote in Part 1 - 

It was now 2.30 p.m. and I decided to go back to my lodge for a siesta before the game drive at 4 pm. It had clouded over and had become cooler (about 22C), I would need to change from shorts to jeans and take a long-sleeved cardigan, I thought.  I climbed onto the huge bed, threw a shawl over myself, set my alarm and fell asleep. 


My luxury lodge

After my snooze on the giant four-poster bed, I changed clothes, sprayed myself with anti mozzy stuff, put a denim shirt in my bag and made my way across the lawns to the wooden platform/pickup point.
Soon our Zulu guide, Msizi appeared in an open-sided truck, this time with 10 or so others in the back seats.  I (the only solo) sat in the front next to the guide.  Great, I thought - front row seat. I do like a touch of danger, it's quite exciting.  Soon Msizi and I were engaged in back and forth banter. I asked about his wife and kids and the village where he lived. Zulu culture is very male-oriented and has a strict hierarchy amongst the men - women come pretty low down the pecking order, although Zulu women are NOT quiet and retiring.  Rural Zulus in this part of the world adhere to cultural rules more strongly. Msizi was used to Western women though and we got along fine. 
Msizi our Zulu guide

I turned to say hello to everyone as I got in - several elderly couples, two couples in their thirties, an Indian family - with two older children. I wondered what they were all like and how we'd get on.  It's the great part of solo traveling - all the people you meet. Normally I meet people in backpack hostels, travelling cheap.  These people must all be able to afford the luxury end of the market I thought. 

    Suddenly we were veering off the track and down a side slope towards a small river.  Our guide was giving a running commentary about the wildlife and then started talking about the elephants which got my full attention.

 'Yis, so ah, now when we see the elephants, Ah want you to remember, these are waald elephants, not those tame one's you git in the zoo back home, we may not be able to git tooo close, eh?' 

    We were all nodding vigorously - I guess most people had read The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony, about how he'd put together his wild herd here and calmed them down. But there'd also been that one time with the elephant with bad toothache ... Lawrence had nearly been killed...

    'Not sure we'll see the herd tonaht folks, as they've not been sahted today, eh? Elephants can dus-appear in the bush, nah? But there's plenty other game, eh?  End if we don't see them today, we'll see them tomorrow, OK?'

    We all nodded again as the truck which had been pulled over by the riverside suddenly lurched forward and to my horror, headed straight for the river bank quite fast.  I clung to the bars at my side as it nose-dived down the bank and into the river.  I fully expected to be submerged, but the guide knew what he was doing.  The watercourse was quite shallow there and we churned forward, with water nearly topping the wheels, straight through and up the steep muddy bank on the other side and out onto a long straight track.  This track stretched away and then up a long hill in the distance.  The running commentary continued, he clearly knew a great deal about the birds and animals on the reserve and how to track them.



  Suddenly the truck stopped and he pointed to a tall shrub on the trackside - where what looked like an eagle was perched. He chatted about its characteristics. I glanced behind me and everyone had their binoculars out. My eyesight was poor due to what I later found out to be cataracts, so although I wore contact lenses anything further than ten metres was difficult to make out for me.One guy kindly leaned forward with his binoculars and said -
    'Here, do you wanna have a go?'
    'Ooh yes please.' I said. He was with his partner and son. Soon we were chatting away.
    'We won 2 nights in Thula Thula in a local radio quiz show in Durban.  We're camping for the weekend.'  
    'Oh did you bring a tent?'
They laughed.  'No, they have these big tents here with beds and everything.  It's very comfortable.'
    The whole group it seemed were in 'glamping' tents, all with double beds and washing facilities. They were having a braai (barbeque) later and when they found out I was solo -
        'I'm in a lodge but I'm the only person there - one group left yesterday and another's coming next week.  I'm being very well looked after but I feel a bit isolated,' a very nice Indian guy with this wife and two teenagers immediately invited me to come along. But I was quite tired from all the travelling, so I thanked them and said 'Maybe tomorrow'.  
    I found out later he was a consultant surgeon at Groote Schuur hospital.  Little did we all know what was to come - we were two months away from a global pandemic and his working life was about to be turned upside down.


    Meanwhile, our guide was dodging zebras and impalas leaping out of the bushes and crossing the track randomly in front of us.  Suddenly I spotted tall necks sticking out of a clump of bushes to our right - 



End Game



 The first thing I wanted to say, I've now done 2 podcasts on Writing Memoir and the book is selling well in America and Canada, with now over 100 mostly 5-star reviews on Amazon.  Here's the link - Writing Memoir. How to Write a Story from your Life.

Here's a podcast about the beginning process of Writing Memoir

Moving on ....

Why did I call this month's blog 'End Game'?  Because after months of prevaricating - the last 3-6 months of lockdown seemed to result in a kind of stalemate in terms of my writing - I'm a cafe/library writer normally. Finally, last Sunday, sitting in my local cafe/bar outside (at last!), I finished the last chapter of my book and wrote the immortal words - 

The End

 Oh joy! How did I get there?  I hired a mentor who gave me a deadline that's how.  I so write well to deadlines. I so needed her push or should I say boot up the backside.  What was stopping me?  Well, this is memoir writing we're talking about here.  Don't you know the words of Maya Angelou?

'There's no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.'  

Thank you, Maya. Precisely.  She talks frequently about the agony of writing stories from your life.  And when you get to the painful memories, the painful sequence of events and you have to write about them - well, you put it off, and put it off, and put it off. And (as I say in the book 'Writing Memoir'), DON'T EVER tell me writing about trauma is therapeutic. Not for me it's not, it's just plain PTSD, forcing you to relive a painful period or event in your life which you never wanted to think about again and I've got a few of those I can tell you.  Why am I on my second memoir?  And could easily write a third and fourth too. Masochism.  Compulsion...

Anyway - I started to tell you about writing The End - the relief and the joy of it.  Yes, I've done it.  I've finally got there.  4-5 years to get to this point - I started this book in 2015 after the launch and publication of my first memoir - A Hippopotamus at the Table. Please don't think this is the finished product and that any writer who gets to this point can now relax.  Hollow laugh.  Now comes the editing and re-writing of large sections.  My first memoir was re-read about 50+ times, I was so sick of it.  I could still correct and re-edit it, but I was offered an Arise TV interview about it so I had to publish by their deadline ...

Anyway thought I'd give you a little taster - anyone who's interested can be added to my pre-orders list  - email me at anna.meryt@ameryt.com.  I'm hoping to publish around September if I go the Indie route again. This time though, I think it's a story that mainstream media might want to publish.  We shall see.  My previous book, written by a white person about the segregated world under apartheid - no no no. At the time publishers were only interested in black writers (their voices suppressed for so long, needed to be heard) and Nelson Mandela had died 2 years previously. 

 This story starts with a phone message on an answerphone -

BEYOND THE BOUNDS

Chapter 1    A telephone call

4th July 2003

 I closed the front door behind me and walked up the stairs to the door of my flat. I was carrying two shopping bags and my work rucksack. The keys were in my mouth. I swapped the shopping to my left hand, my fingers cramping with the weight, took the key out of my mouth with my right hand, unlocked the door and kicked it open. I walked straight ahead into the kitchen, past the bathroom on my right. The kitchen was a good size for a London apartment, with bay windows overlooking a row of gardens down below. I dumped all the bags on the kitchen table. Phew! I glanced over at the phone in an alcove by the door. The red light was flashing. I remember the moment so well -- that red light signalled the beginning of a series of events that would change my life. I'll come back to that.

* * *

In that here and now, July 2003, I ignored the red flashing light and started emptying the shopping bags and put my rucksack out in the hall on a coat hook. I was thinking about what to cook for supper for me and my two house mates - Tam, my 20 year old party-girl daughter and Patrick, a black Zimbabwean asylum seeker, who had moved in with me, three months after we became lovers. This was mainly because he'd been living in a grimy room at the back end of Streatham and the absentee landlord had decided one day to chuck out all his tenants, for whatever reason. Patrick was given a few days’ notice and came back one day to find the landlord’s ‘maintenance man’ had changed the locks.
      There's laws in this country, I hear you say -- yeah right, if you're a UK citizen with a British passport there’s laws. For immigrants and asylum seekers with no official status? Figure it out! Do they start arguing about their rights? I think not. After phoning me in some distress, he'd come on the bus (the way all refugees and asylum seekers travel -- it's cheaper). By the time he arrived, I’d decided what to do and organised a few things. 


to be continued ...

PS.  The first chapter of the book, of which this is a small section received a 'Highly Commended certificate in the Winchester Writers Festival Memoir competition - that was a few years ago. 





My Podcasts - want to know about writing memoir? Listen up!

Anna Meryt Writings on Facebook 



Hi Everyone

Here we are moving towards the end of March 2021. Easter is next week and I'm moving on with my Podcasts on Writing Memoir. I've also found a sound engineer who will record my first memoir - A Hippopotamus at the Table  for Audible. So anyone who prefers listening to books rather than reading them, anyone with poor eyesight or partially sighted - well watch this space.

If you're interested in writing at all, you may enjoy my podcast series.  I've done 2 podcasts now, 4 to go - they focus on memoir writing initially, but as in my book Writing Memoir. How to Write a Story From Your Life, I will be quickly moving on to topics that apply to any writing-a-book project,  from writing Dialogue, to finding Your Voice, to StoryTelling, to publishing.

Here's the links

Podcast 1 - What is a memoir? 

Podcast 2 - Planning your book



New Year New You? And this time last year ....

Jan 5th 2021 Christmas was coming and we were all getting excited - at last, an opportunity for a social occasion albeit with the 'bubble' limitations.  Then 4 days before, Boris Johnson, reacting to alarming rises in covid numbers basically cancelled Xmas, by putting us all into Tier 4.  I'm not going to say much more about that, because me and my daughters cut back our plans and our time together. We had Xmas lunch and opened presents etc.  But most of the fun of all the anticipation had been doused with a large bucket of ice on our heads. I drank too much Baileys and Bucks Fizz, had a headache by 5 pm (I should have known) and went to bed and fell asleep for 2 hours.  Let's leave it at that. The New Year's eve small social event was basically cancelled - the covid news had got even worse.  

I've kept my spirits up with daily walks in one or other of London's amazing parks - Finsbury Park, Waterlow Park, Alexandra Palace and Park, Downhills Park - all within a 2-mile radius of where I live - lucky me - here's a selection of views and winter trees in different parks. 

and continuing contacts with my Buddhist community, with meditations, devotions(puja) or     interesting talks, as well as occasional meet-ups outdoors for walks with friends.  Plus working on my book sporadically of course - that's my second memoir covering a 6 month period in 2003 when I found myself flying to Indonesia to rescue my ex  who was in a rat and cockroach infested jail,  with 10 grand hidden in the bottom of my suitcase.  It's called Beyond the Bounds - watch this space.  I'm hoping it will be finished by March/April and published soon after in 2021.

Feb 3rd 2021

Well, I started this a month ago.  Now here we are in February.  We've had one day of snow, looked pretty for 24 hours - went sledding with grandson and his Mum (my daughter) and his dad.  That was fun.  Since then it's rained a lot, been cold a lot.  But slowly slowly the daylight hours are getting longer and the bulbs in my garden have put up an inch or two of green shoots.... 

Feb 12th

Well, the big freeze started, - snow, ice and a freezing wind. Brrrrr...  I've been busy  They tell us it's ending on Monday 14th Feb and a warmer week is coming.  Thank goodness - I won't have to sit in my flat with Central Heating on full, plus an oil heater on full, plus 3 T shirts and a jumper.  Plus a fleece over my legs.  my writing is coming along very slowly, with lots of distractions, prevarications and of course the inertia we're all experiencing from lockdown. Last week I went to an online poetry evening with Enfield Poets and performed at last some of my poems.  After no performing for more than a year, it was lovely to read some poems and to hear other peoples.  

On Sunday my poetry group is meeting for some feedback on our new poems.  Only a few of us left still attending on Zoom sporadically.

I'll stop now and next time I'll add a short podcast - about my book on Writing Memoir and give you some tips.  I'm going to do a series of 6 podcasts.  If you're serious about writing a memoir (or any sort of true story or even a novel, there are lots of chapters in the book that you'd find interesting.  Here's a sample:


... and please, if you buy my book - either in print or as an ebook, do write me a review on Amazon - I don't mind how many stars you give me but be nice 😀😀