Be Eaten

So this is it: my last weekend here, another three-day break to enjoy the south-african funfair. It didn’t take me long to decide what I should do to close this memorable chapter of my life: one trip with the beautiful freaks, a tour in real life for a taste of how bad things can get. Kruger here I am; Wam Bam!

So I look for a nice lodge and book a big room for a spoiled boy right next to the park. We arrive Saturday, a little after lunch and take our time to slowly immerge ourselves into the deep thick sent of the wild. We sit next to the pool until the sun gets red and that zebras and warthogs come nearby to sip water before the night. We leave the lodge just before sunset for a night-game-drive in the park. We look for beasts hidden in the dark; apart from lions eating a giraffe in the distance and night insects big like your hand we did not see much more than the usual herbivores.

Before sunrise, the following day, we are already driving to the park with our ranger Heinrich, and his 2.7 tones four-wheel drive. We ride around in the clear light and fresh air with tea and much expectation. Our guide knows a lot and sees so far away it feels he could foresee the future. We quickly start to spot all kinds of odd looking animals (wildebeests, rhinos, giraffes…). I have seen them times and times before but this time it is different, this times it is goodbye.

We drove for twelve hours, stopped a few times for breakfast cooked camping-style – hanks Heinrich – on top of a mountain overlooking a flat field as wide as Manhattan, split in half by a large river where hippos rest and kudus come drink fearfully. We have seen many things that day, a lot that I will not remember, but that’s how things go. I will mostly keep in mind an encounter with a huge alpha male elephant walking on the road. Our guide wanted to get him off of it so he parked the 4×4 in the middle of the road. The beast walked around the vehicle at every try, until finally it got fed up, stopped and looked at us. Although we were sitting in that nearly 3 tones jeep, 2m above the road, the animal still looked huge to us. The words of our driver were echoing in the back of my mind: “We weigh 3 tones in this car, an average elephant weighs 7 tones; for him flipping the car his as easy as tossing a water bucket”. This was no average male.

That’s how it is over there: the stronger is always right. We human are little useless things with no natural defence against nature’s most basic threats. Over there we have just a little more resistance than green grass and harmless-insects. It is difficult to feel how powerful nature is until you get next to it, into it. These animals we usually see on TV or at the zoo have powers far beyond what I could have imagined. Any of them running one a half time quicker the fastest human – you cannot understand unless you have seen it in reel; any predator able to cut through bones like us through carrots human – you cannot understand unless you have seen it in reel; Sight, smell, claws, poison, weight, stamina, you name it it’s all very impressive to the point that even in the biggest car with the best gun you still feel powerless. But wait. Why do we want to know about all that? Why do we need to hear stories about people getting killed and what horrible things hyenas and hippos will do to you if they can? Why does humankind need to be in touch with such violence?

For the last day we wanted to do a morning game-walk but unfortunately all of them were canceled as a hippo had attacked a group the previous week. A woman nearly died and several were injured. Instead we stayed at the lodge surrounded by zebras, and monkeys eating bananas.

And that was it, as fast as it came it was gone. I closed this window on life and came back to our reality.

Elephant in Kruger Park from damien.ldp on Vimeo.

Fear facts:

• A hyenas will eat you alive, no time to kill you. With a group of four/five beasts they will just rip your arms legs apart for each of hem to eat in their corner.
• Hippos are the animals inflicting the most casualties upon humans in Africa, even though they do not eat meat. There are just bad tempered animals.
• A buffalo has so much adrenaline that it seems impossible to kill. Lions (200kg) would need to be five or six together to take one down; that is why a old male buffalos have usually faced and survived several lions attack. A bullet would typically not stop a buffalo unless it hits the brain or the spine.

Exhibition by Tany – Video

This is a short video made by Tany on his exhibition currently held at the Alliance Francaise of Johannesburg – South Africa, until the 6th of December 2008. Following a successful launch on the 27th of November, the 16 oil paintings can be purchased (the ones still available) by contacting Tany. Price list available on request.

Tany’s Exhibition.

Exhibition details and poster here.
www.dejavu-production.com

African Party

Say it loud!

So I had friends over from the UK last week-end. Yes, let’s have fun. I had decided to spend an evening at the karaoke, thursday night, in a Korean restaurant. Everybody wanted to come, no one – or just a few – wanted to sing and as soon as we set foot in the private booth we already had a few dozen songs lined up. We sang like there was no tomorrow, we sang as if we knew how to sing.

New hits, old classics, cheesy tunes. We sing and we shout, What, tonight our shame went to bed early. Yes, another glass of Soju please. In the background, behind the lyrics running on the screen, images of tourist videos.

Wheelie, won’t ya? (And the chocolate factory)

So before I leave the country, a friend of mine tells me book your Sunday and don’t forget to bring boots that protect your ankles and a leather jacket. Originaly I thought he was going to invite me to some motorcycle thing, may be go gart, but then he told me it was from 9am to 3pm on an aerodrome.

So yes it was a wheelie school, really fun – No, I’m not a motorcycle adict – and one day was enough. We did manage in the end to do a few runs of 60m or so.

You’ve seen the picture, that’s the video:

Betting on dog racing

Walthamstow dog racing from damien.ldp on Vimeo.

Before my final days in the company – and in London – my colleagues and I wanted to have a night out at ‘the dogs’.