The lodge was huge; Jacques lived in one wing and the other was for his students. He taught at a university that offered degrees in tourism, and the lodge was the campus for the wildlife module. Students would arrive for a nine-week course in wildlife management and conservation taught by Jacques and his assistant Bongani, and they would be looked after by three large and warm-hearted ladies, Helezin, Patricia and Valencia, who cleaned and cooked, while the gardener, Michael, looked after the grounds.
When there were no students it was just Jacques rattling around in the lodge, but he didn’t mind as he loved the peace and the company of the wildlife in the neighbouring reserve prowling past the garden. It wasn’t unusual to see cheetahs or elephants wandering past the fence, only yards from the lodge.
Jacques and I had been together for almost four years and we’d known each other for five – ever since I went to South Africa in my gap year. I’d been nineteen, and after six months working in a livery yard to earn some money I’d booked the cheapest gap year trip I could find – three weeks doing conservation work on a game reserve in South Africa.
It was April 2009 and I spent an incredibly happy three weeks as part of a group putting up fences, cutting down trees and clearing patches of bush. Jacques, who was twenty-three, was one of the staff at the reserve who helped manage the volunteers. His job was to make us feel welcome and, when we weren’t working, to take us on game drives and into town and teach us a bit about wildlife. I had lots to learn; I had no idea what an impala was (it’s a species of antelope) or a sable (another species of antelope) or indeed even a springbok (yes, yet another species of antelope) and I soaked up all the new information.
Jacques and I got on from the start. He’s broad, muscular and, with his height, he can appear intimidating, but he’s actually a big softie and very easy to talk to. We became good friends and along with the other volunteers, who were a really nice bunch, we had a lot of fun.
When I got back home I missed South Africa, so when Jacques got in touch a couple of weeks later to say that he and his friend Daniel were taking a trip up to Kruger National Park and would I like to come along, I didn’t hesitate. I blew my savings on a ticket and six weeks later I returned. One of the other volunteers, an American girl called Abby, had been travelling round Europe and Jacques invited her, too.
South Africa is enormous, many times bigger than the UK, and people there drive huge distances without even thinking about it. Johannesburg is a fifteen-hour drive from the reserve where Jacques was living. He and Daniel drove up to meet us at the airport and then we drove for another four or five hours up to Kruger National Park in the north east. One of the largest game reserves in Africa, Kruger covers over 7,500 square miles. Abby and I had the perfect companions as Jacques and Daniel were both qualified guides, and we spent two weeks watching the game and the extraordinary landscape. We ate rusks and drank coffee for breakfast, drove all day and set up camp at night, sitting round the fire barbecuing steak and drinking shots of Jägermeister that Jacques kept in a freezer in the back of his car.
One night we heard something banging about among our pots and pans. Jacques unzipped the tent, saw a hyena a few feet away, rapidly zipped it back up and told us what was going on. I was so glad we all slept in one big tent – on my own I’d have been terrified. As it was I was still pretty nervous. Hyenas are large, carnivorous and have incredibly powerful jaws that could chew your arm off without much trouble.
‘I’m going to stay here in the middle of the tent away from the sides, OK?’ I said nervously, looking at Jacques who was reaching for the zip again. ‘Maybe you should come away from the door.’
Jacques laughed. ‘Don’t be a wimp. It’s not going to get in the tent. I’ll scare it off.’
‘What?! No, don’t …’ but it was too late. Jacques had stuck his head out of the tent and was shouting and waving at the hyena, which after turning to snarl at him, ran off across the campsite.
‘You’re crazy!’
‘That hyena knew it couldn’t take me on,’ he said with a wink. I shook my head and went back to bed. Jacques really was a man of the bush and completely fearless.
After the camping trip I stayed in Jacques’ staff house back at the game reserve. He went back to working with volunteers and I got a voluntary job with a local company breeding horses and running horse trails. I helped with breaking in some of the sturdy young Arab horses and led groups of tourists on trails along the stunning sand dunes and wide, sandy beaches of the Eastern Cape.
One afternoon I was asked to ride one of the newer horses, a stallion, to help one of the trail leaders take a group of people out. The horse I was on kept acting strangely, shaking its head and hesitating. As we went to descend a large sand dune the horse lost its footing and fell, trapping my leg under it. We slid down the sandy bank until we hit a tree, at which point my left leg was trapped between the horse and the tree. I tried to get the horse to move, but it was unresponsive. I had to wait until the group leader, Jono, came back to find me and got the horse to its feet, freeing my leg.
By the next day my leg was black and I couldn’t feel much below my knee. I saw a doctor, but there wasn’t a lot to be done. I had severe soft-tissue bruising and nerve damage, and it would take time to recover. I would just have to wait and see if the sensation in my leg returned.
After a few days the bruising was healing and some of the feeling had returned, though my leg never completely recovered. Bored with being stuck in the house, I went back to work, where I discovered that the horse I had been riding was going blind. No one had realised until our accident.
A couple of weeks later I began to feel feverish and nauseous, and I ached all over. Another trip to the doctor confirmed that I had tick bite fever, caused by a bite from the tiny pepper tick. They’re so small that you don’t even realise you have one on you. The bite looks like a mosquito bite, and that’s what I thought the innocent-looking mark on my hip was, until after a few days it had developed a brownish-black ulcerated scab that looked anything but innocent.
I felt so ill I thought I was dying but Jacques was relaxed about it. He’d had it several times and he knew the drill – antibiotics, lots of rest, fluids and time do the trick. He looked after me and reassured me that the first time you get it is the worst.
I looked at him in horror. I couldn’t imagine having to go through it all over again.
I stayed for two months, working, lazing in the sun and spending time with Jacques. He was an Afrikaner and Afrikaans was his first language, though he spoke perfect English. He was into hiking and camping, cricket and rugby, and he cooked up a mean braai (Afrikaans for barbecue). But he was also thoughtful, concerned about animals and conservation, and bright; he was about to start a Masters degree in Environmental Management. Like me, he loved books, but while I enjoyed a good novel, Jacques preferred to spend hours poring over books on geology, the environment and wildlife. He had a thirst for knowledge and a passion for animals, and I really liked that about him.
I knew I couldn’t possibly get involved with someone so far from home, especially not when I was just about to go to vet college and start a whole new phase of my life. So we became great friends and spent our evenings talking under the stars. Romance didn’t happen until a year later, when I went back to do a work placement with Jono’s horse trails company at the end of my first year of college. We were expected to get in some work experience every summer, so it was the perfect excuse to head back to South Africa.
Jacques invited me to stay with him again and one weekend, when he took the gap-year volunteers camping, I went along. We camped by a river and swam under the full moon. It was wonderfully romantic until Jacques insisted I stopped being a wimp about cold water, and picked me up and threw me into the deeper water. As I came up from under the water I glared at him, but he was just laughing, and I couldn’t