The Transvaal, South Africa

In the course of my wanderings around Southern Africa in the late '90s, I met a young man who lived with his family at the foot of the Soutpansberg mountains in the Transvaal in South Africa. Jannie was 21, with long blonde hair, and managed the family farm. Discovering I was from London, he said he wanted to immigrate there for work. He grew up on his uncle's farm. His uncle was an eccentric who liked to hide in the bushes and take pot shots at the black farm workers with a homemade slingshot. The family kept as a pet a tame warthog which they had raised from a piglet. The warthog behaved just like a dog, chewing on an old tire hanging from a tree and swinging from it by its teeth. It also chased cars, the sound of which would cause it to run clickety-clack into the kitchen, its little hooves invariably slipping out from under it as it slid on its back across the smooth wooden floor. It was eventually run over by one of the big 18-wheeler trucks rolling north towards Zimbabwe.