9. demolishing demon d6 dozer

I was born in an era when we were destined to save the world. We applauded those who tied themselves to trees to save the forests or chained themselves to dozers to prevent them from demolishing the forests. Saturday afternoons were spent writing obscene remarks in cruelty-free lipstick on furrier’s shop windows.

The preservation of life was ultimate. We did not eat meat, never wore leather and our chants of ‘om’ haunted our parents. We listened to suicidal songs by Leonard Cohen, but Bob Dylan was the ultimate.

OK, so that was decades ago, but the imprint is there.

I’m totally convinced that Ken bought Milimani so that he could do his ‘boys and their toys’ thing. The first purchase, for a tidy sum that tilted the budget, was a Demolishing Demon D6 Dozer. You know the type – yellow, big feet, and lots of voomah. I was not around when the creature arrived and I certainly wasn’t privy to its future movements. 

(The picture on the left is the DDD6D in one of his more uselful moments. Pulling our tractor out of the Mkuze River. We never quite established how the tractor got there in the first place.......quite unbelievable!)

Dense bush surrounded the front of the restaurant, obscuring the view of the dam where animals come to drink. Within hours of the yellow peril arriving, it had cleared the area and the dam was suddenly visible. Nice, I’m sure but no-one warned me. I went down to the area to be confronted with what I called Armageddon. Tears welled in my eyes and were soothed with comforting remarks of, “You’ll see, the animals will love it. It’s going to be great.” Well, they did, and it is. Sadly, ‘1’ to the yellow peril.

Keeping such creatures is not cheap. Every time ‘he’ – couldn’t possibly be a ‘she’ – broke down, I rejoiced, but then the budget went for a song. Mechanics were called in and hours were spent discussing the innards of the great beast. Phone calls were made all over the country to source spare parts, none of which I was the least bit cooperative about.

Having been a city slicker beforehand, the concept of bush management was alien to me. It grows, so leave it. This caused trailer-loads of friction – with the DDD6 in the middle of it. Coo-ing remarks of how valuable ‘he’ is and how we could not survive without ‘him’ repeat themselves in my nightmares.

The ultimate insult to my ‘destined to save the world’ philosophy came with Shayamoya, meaning ‘catch the wind’ in Zulu.

In order for Milimani to become an internationally recognised lodge, we needed an airstrip. Dad was a pilot and his guidance was sought. A site on top of the ridge was chosen, but again I was unaware of this.

All I knew was Ken took guests for game drives and their ventures were recalled in hushed tones. Questions of ‘Where did you go? What did you see?’ were met with conspiratorial looks, but claims of ‘tons’ of impala, wildebeest, nyala and giraffe were blurted out. I personally had never seen so much game gathered in one place. Where was this paradise? The secret was almost given away when a friend returned saying: 

“Are you planning to land a Jumbo jet, or is this the Masaai Mara?”

I was cautiously escorted to Shayamoya, champagne in car to soften the blow. Ken had made his airstrip with the help of the DDD6D – and the animals love it.

Even so I have to confess that threats of burning the demon and chaining myself to ‘him’ still come chanting out the ‘70’s child in me.

Published in Country Life, September 2002

Other blogs by Lois Kuhle:

SMOKE RINGS IN CUBA. A TWO WEEK JOURNEY FILLED WITH SALSA, SUNSHINE AND SILLY PEOPLE:
http://smokeringsincuba.blogspot.com/2013/10/smoke-rings-in-cuba-journey-filled-with.html

COOL THOUGHTS. MUSINGS AND OTHER MAD MOMENTS:
http://loiskuhlethoughts.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-impatient-gardener.html

3. a rhino, a donkey and a sexual muddle

When Ken and I bought Milimani last year, we recognised that one of the priorities would be investing in wildlife. Having come from Kenya, it was quite a novelty for us to go to a game auction and buy animals. In Kenya all the wildlife belongs to the government, giving the eco-tourism industry little control over one of its essential assets.

Our first purchase was at the Hluhluwe Private Game Auction, where we bought 20 blesbok. We were attracted to these animals by their rather ungainly manner and lopsided structure. We took delivery at the end of May and the whole exercise was painless. Having gained some confidence in this new venture, we approached the annual Hluhluwe 
KZN Wildlife Auction with gusto.

By now we had decided to go for the big stuff. A rhino would do. We’d also decided to name it Peggy, after Ken’s late mother. Our first choice was a 16-month-old male that was still being weaned. Ken has a history of dealing with orphaned animals and this young animal seemed destined to join us. Except that someone outbid us. It went for an unbelievable R120,000. Disappointed, I left the floor to speak to Dr David Cooper. I hadn’t turned my back for more than 30 seconds when Ken, in his willingness to wave his auction card about, bought the next rhino, a five-year-old male. Well, we couldn’t call him Peggy for fear that his friends would laugh at him, and thus he became Rafiki, which means ‘friend’ in Swahili.

As we’d bought a single rhino, Ken decided we should get a donkey to keep him company. Mildly confused and amused by this idea, we went through the motions of ‘interviewing’ the local donkeys on the banks of the Mkuze River. This proved to be a difficult task, and up to the day that Rafiki was due to arrive we still hadn’t found a suitable candidate. We’d built an electric fence around a three-hectare area in front of the restaurant to serve as a boma in which to keep Rafiki for three weeks so that he could become accustomed to us and the grazing in the area. Minutes before Rafiki arrived we managed to find our perfect donkey and it was rushed into the boma. We’d been told it was a female and so we promptly christened her ‘Peggy’.

Peggy stood absolutely unemotional in her new home, as donkeys are inclined to do, and I was sure someone had put her ears on back to front. Rafiki arrived and was literally tipped out of his crate. As he was still mildly drugged he explored the boma with no fuss, but Peggy took one look at him and legged it out of there through the electric fence. Two metres outside the fence she regained her unemotional composure. Fortunately for her, we accepted that this relationship was not going to work and she was taken to live with the horses.

Pleased that Rafiki seemed at ease and had already started to graze, we left him to settle down. The next morning at dawn Ken was up appreciating his new addition. Sensing an audience, Rafiki took one lunge at the fence and bolted his way out. The three days of hard work and great expense in building the boma hadn’t impressed him at all. Even the 5,000 volt electric fence wasn’t enough to keep him inside.


Shortly after our mismatched blind date between Rafiki and Peggy, I was putting the horses to bed. There was Peggy proudly displaying the fact that ‘she’ definitely wasn’t a female. Devastated that we’d got into such a sexual muddle, I prayed that Ken’s mum would at least see the humorous side!

Published in Country Life, March 2002


Other blogs by Lois Kuhle:

SMOKE RINGS IN CUBA. A TWO WEEK JOURNEY FILLED WITH SALSA, SUNSHINE AND SILLY PEOPLE: http://smokeringsincuba.blogspot.com/2013/10/smoke-rings-in-cuba-journey-filled-with.html

COOL THOUGHTS. MUSINGS AND OTHER MAD MOMENTS:  http://loiskuhlethoughts.blogspot.com/2013/12/we-have-pending-nuptials.html

MILIMANI GAME SANCTUARY

In 2002 I was lucky enough to be given a column on the back page of the South African 'Country Life'. 

I submitted 12 articles about the life and times at MILIMANI GAME SANCTUARY, and the adventures we had the privilege of experiencing upon our arrival in South Africa in 2000. 

Sadly, the new life we chose was short lived, as in 2005 Milimani Game Sanctuary was bought by the government under a land claim and handed to the Gumbi community. It was the same year that Ken died of a heart attack.

As a tribute to Ken Kuhle and the amazing animals we lived with in the heart of the Zululand bush, I am re-publishing these stories.

ACCIDENT WITH A CHEQUE BOOK

Being catapulted into a whole new life in the KZN Bushveld calls for an ability to keep one’s cool – and a sense of humour! 

 A friend of my mother’s once said to me, ‘Better to be an old man’s sweetheart, than a young man’s slave'. Following this sound advice, I married a man 22 years older than myself. For his part, Ken had this philosophy that a man should marry a woman half his age plus seven. I was in my late 30s and he was nearly 60 when we married just over four years ago, so I slotted right in.

Ken is Kenyan born and bred. I was raised in Kenya and went back in 1995 on a two year contract. After falling in love with Ken, I was quite content to make Kenya my home again.

We had a good life. Ken was supposed to be retired but he’d spent many years committed to wildlife and conservation projects and became totally involved in a wildlife charitable trust. I was the managing director of a media broking agency. Then Ken had an accident with a cheque book. A piece of land came up for sale in South Africa and, to our total surprise, his offer was accepted. We now sat with 10,000 acres (3,000 hectares) of land in a country we did not live in. My parents are in South Africa and naturally had something to do with ‘the accident’.

So there I was, forty something, having survived the traumatic twenties, fought my way through my thirties, finally reached middle age, established a career, considered myself an adult who was taking life seriously, only to find my sixty-something husband prepared to abandon everything he’d lived for, leave the country he’d been totally committed to for his whole life, and settle in a country he knew absolutely nothing about.

Ken’s impression of South Africa had been sugar cane, shopping malls and white people, but he’d bought a gem of a place just north of Mkuze in KwaZulu-Natal and, without looking back, shifted his whole being to what he now considers the centre of the universe. In the 18 months that we’ve been on the farm, which we’ve named Milimani Game Sanctuary, he’s gone into town less than six times. His old haunt in Nairobi, The Muthaiga Club, never even gets a mention any more.

I was sent back to Kenya to pack up 62 years of someone else’s life. I had always sworn that if we had to move house we would sell it lock stock and barrel, as there was so much clutter in our home that I couldn’t bear the thought of going through it all. But somehow my threats went unheard. This was to Ken’s disadvantage, as my mother and I went from room to room going, “don’t like, can’t like, won’t like’, and many items mysteriously disappeared to be replaced by more acceptable recent purchases. Naturally, without fail, all the things that were ‘forgotten’, or ‘left behind’ happen to be the things that are constantly asked for. Blank stares and confused looks are wearing thin. I didn’t even know we had a cupboard in the kitchen, never mind a floor polisher that was at least 100 years old.

Back in South Africa, with an enormous amount of energy, we set out to develop a tourist lodge. In our enthusiasm to get going we adopted a ‘design by chaos’ approach. This is not recommended if you want to sustain sanity or maintain a peaceful marriage. We’ve had to deal with language problems, learning to understand different cultures, living in the bush whilst trying to develop a business, and many other mind altering experiences.

But the biggest challenge of all has been trying to survive a husband who has down-aged about 40 years, found a new lease on life and has this abundance of energy that leaves us all standing. For my part, I’ve aged about 20 years in the past 12 months – and so have completely destroyed his theory of ‘half his age plus seven.’

Published in South African Country Life, January 2002.

Other blogs by Lois Kuhle:


SMOKE RINGS IN CUBA. A TWO WEEK JOURNEY FILLED WITH SALSA, SUNSHINE AND SILLY PEOPLE: http://smokeringsincuba.blogspot.com/2013/10/smoke-rings-in-cuba-journey-filled-with.html

COOL THOUGHTS. MUSINGS AND OTHER MAD MOMENTS:  http://loiskuhlethoughts.blogspot.com/2013/12/we-have-pending-nuptials.html