Thursday, April 24, 2008
Skukuza Translated Means... Sunday, January 7, 2007
(Rock outcropping above the Stevenson-Hamilton Memorial near Skukuza Rest Camp, Kruger National Park: two klipspringers were shortly about to make their appearance there)
We all go for an early morning game drive before packing up to go to the Skukuza Rest Camp. This will be our last full day and night in the Park. Skukuza does turn out to be larger and busier than the other rest camps in Kruger, but this is only relative. It has a lot of features that make it really pleasant for us. The library and museum, quiet and old-fashioned, introduce us to the Park's history which is a kind of microcosm for the last 100 or so years of South Africa itself. Later in Cape Town I will discover, purchase and read Harry Wolhuter's Memories of a Game Ranger , a chronicle of his life covering his childhood in South Africa in the late 19th century, the Boer War, and his life's work as the Park's first ranger working for James Stevenson-Hamilton, the Park's first Warden and a Boer War veteran himself.
The museum itself contains a series of exhibits about Stevenson-Hamilton and his wife Hilda (Cholmondeley) including period camping equipment and the knife used by Wolhuter to save himself when he was famously attacked by a lion during the days when the park was patrolled on foot and on horseback. A uniform belonging to a black south African ranger, fatally wounded in another lion attack, is also on display.
Skukuza was the name given to Stevenson-Hamilton by the local, indigenous people and it means "he who scrapes clean" or "turns things upside down" referencing the removal of native peoples from the Park. And so local history and its resemblance to U.S. history becomes more apparent. Frontier stores like Albasini's (now ruins), roads traveled by covered wagons, frontier life, the danger of violent death are all too familiar. Added to this is the haunted narrative of the [Anglo] Boer War, concentration camps and mass death, the Afrikaners' successful tactics against an ostensibly stronger enemy, and the losses suffered by the indigenous peoples confronted by European immigration and western style development.
(The overlook at the Stevenson-Hamilton Memorial, l to r: Carole, Will, Jeff, Greg -- Kruger National Park)
We were able to do a lot of game driving and ended up visiting the overlook where the Stevenson-Hamilton Memorial is located and where their ashes were scattered. It is inappropriate for me, an American tourist, to sentimentally interpret their lives as aristocrats -- but it seems that the creation of the park was a fortuitous way to spend the balance of this empire builder's days (and for his wife as well). What a legacy and certainly far greater than anything I will accomplish. And what a romantic and beautiful spot the overlook is -- and just as we prepare to leave, a pair of klipspringers appear on the face of the rocky koppie rising above us. This was a favorite spot near their home for the couple to visit (they met in London while he was recovering from malaria). The museum exhibits and this site left me with many questions about their personal histories and the paths followed by their two surviving children. Skukuza was born in 1867 and died in 1957, Hilda was thirty-four years his junior and died in 1979. An artist (and plant collector), a drawing she made graces Wolhuter's book.
(Two baboons foraging for food near Skukuza Rest Camp, Kruger National Park)
¶ 9:38 AM
(Rock outcropping above the Stevenson-Hamilton Memorial near Skukuza Rest Camp, Kruger National Park: two klipspringers were shortly about to make their appearance there)
We all go for an early morning game drive before packing up to go to the Skukuza Rest Camp. This will be our last full day and night in the Park. Skukuza does turn out to be larger and busier than the other rest camps in Kruger, but this is only relative. It has a lot of features that make it really pleasant for us. The library and museum, quiet and old-fashioned, introduce us to the Park's history which is a kind of microcosm for the last 100 or so years of South Africa itself. Later in Cape Town I will discover, purchase and read Harry Wolhuter's Memories of a Game Ranger , a chronicle of his life covering his childhood in South Africa in the late 19th century, the Boer War, and his life's work as the Park's first ranger working for James Stevenson-Hamilton, the Park's first Warden and a Boer War veteran himself.
The museum itself contains a series of exhibits about Stevenson-Hamilton and his wife Hilda (Cholmondeley) including period camping equipment and the knife used by Wolhuter to save himself when he was famously attacked by a lion during the days when the park was patrolled on foot and on horseback. A uniform belonging to a black south African ranger, fatally wounded in another lion attack, is also on display.
Skukuza was the name given to Stevenson-Hamilton by the local, indigenous people and it means "he who scrapes clean" or "turns things upside down" referencing the removal of native peoples from the Park. And so local history and its resemblance to U.S. history becomes more apparent. Frontier stores like Albasini's (now ruins), roads traveled by covered wagons, frontier life, the danger of violent death are all too familiar. Added to this is the haunted narrative of the [Anglo] Boer War, concentration camps and mass death, the Afrikaners' successful tactics against an ostensibly stronger enemy, and the losses suffered by the indigenous peoples confronted by European immigration and western style development.
(The overlook at the Stevenson-Hamilton Memorial, l to r: Carole, Will, Jeff, Greg -- Kruger National Park)
We were able to do a lot of game driving and ended up visiting the overlook where the Stevenson-Hamilton Memorial is located and where their ashes were scattered. It is inappropriate for me, an American tourist, to sentimentally interpret their lives as aristocrats -- but it seems that the creation of the park was a fortuitous way to spend the balance of this empire builder's days (and for his wife as well). What a legacy and certainly far greater than anything I will accomplish. And what a romantic and beautiful spot the overlook is -- and just as we prepare to leave, a pair of klipspringers appear on the face of the rocky koppie rising above us. This was a favorite spot near their home for the couple to visit (they met in London while he was recovering from malaria). The museum exhibits and this site left me with many questions about their personal histories and the paths followed by their two surviving children. Skukuza was born in 1867 and died in 1957, Hilda was thirty-four years his junior and died in 1979. An artist (and plant collector), a drawing she made graces Wolhuter's book.
(Two baboons foraging for food near Skukuza Rest Camp, Kruger National Park)
¶ 9:38 AM
