Umzimvubu Source to Sea

Coming of Age on the Mzimvubu

A story of source-to-sea by Joey Monson

The Mzimvubu river source-to-sea expedition took just over a month. Five of us walked up from Bushman’s Neck high into the Drakensberg mountains and filled our water bottles from the source. We camped up there on a bright green hill and the next day followed the rocky stream down steep kloofs. Soon we were hiking beside a swift flowing stream in the lower hills. In our birthday suits we plunged in the deep pools of the infant Mzimvubu. We were served beer in glasses with red flowers around the rim. At 18 years old, it was the first time I entered the home of a person of another colour. We put in the raft off a dirt road that ran between the towns of Swartberg and Matatatiele -- if that means anything to anyone. A grey inflatable, it looked like a fat tick. After a first splashy exhilarating half day on the river, the going got tough. The river had come to flat ground and followed around itself in a series of languid meanders, sometimes just a few meters from becoming an oxbo lake. By our third day, prolific growth of willow trees and other vegetation made it almost impossible to move forward, even hacking about with an axe. It was “heart of darkness” stuff. The infuriating sting of sandflies. Lots of mud. Glimpses of lucidity in the wide sweep of an owl’s wing span. One day 11 portages, another day 9. Heidi’s 24th birthday celebration was a couple of Black Label quarts standing around on damp ground beside a wet fire. We were woken early by the call of a Hadeda for another day of portages and the beginning of diarrhoea that for me lasted the entire trip. At Cedarville there was a bar (in those days it was called a “mens’ bar”) about 20 minutes walk from the bridge. The place was a roar of male voices. A very young, very blonde and very drunk army oke called me an “engletije” more than a hundred times. We were having a beer with our newly arrived team members. So now we were nine: Paul Marais was leading the expedition. Steve Higgins, Dave Evans, Duncan Longmore, and Paul Courtnage. What can I say? They were young and full of fire and fit as fiddles. Also they ate a lot of pasta! Only Paul, by dint of his age (28), had not managed to avoid conscription into the SADF whose raucous ranks surrounded us in the gloomy bar. As for the other girl-women, they were none of them drinkers and still sorting out masses of food back at the campsite (shame!)

There were the sisters, Heidi and Kirsten Klingenberg, Helen Harper and me. While the Explorer’s Club was always coloured by an egalitarian spirit, it could not undo two decades of socialisation. Us female folk were less sure on the river, and not so used to the teasing and corousing and the rough and tumble of outdoor teams. And then Heidi in particular, held that space of “mother”, insisting on the detail of sharing and caring. I was still what I had been raised to be - a protected white girl with few competencies outside of the sheltered enclave of nuclear family. And so I struggled on the river….with the physciality, with tying knots and throwing throw lines, with discerning the right kind of firewood and drinking enough water.

We set out with our new provisions piled so high on the frame in the center of the raft that those of us on the sides could not see each other. All went well for a few days although we were heavy and sluggish on the water. Then the river dropped and suddenly we were in a chute accelerating downhill with the bottom of our boat torn to shreds. Paul popped us out near the top and we camped amidst the smell of glue and burning rubber of the repair efforts.

The next morning we were still very much in this gorge and we had no sooner got in the boat when it started tearing around great boulders and ducking and diving. In moments we had raced onto a huge rock and were all leaping like ants for the “Highside!” I wasn’t quick enough climbing back in (this is what I mean by the physicality) so there I was stranded on a rock in a raging torrent with the boat eddied out at the bottom and Paul C already bailing! It was jump in or wait for a drought. I decided to continue with my life, however uncertain the first few mintues. It sounds trite now, but it’s choices like this, made hourly on a river trip that give that heightened sense of awareness and affirm the choice and joy of life.

The river was gouging out dramatic cliff faces and churning up huge amounts of great rocks. The surrounding bush was low and dense and virtually inpenetrable with all manner of thorns. Long and thick to make a hole through the foot. Small and scratchy. Decorative and dangerous. It was doing well for itself, but all the same Steve gave us a chat on protecting the environment which even in the peopled areas was absolutely pristine.

There were communities of varying sizes living among the hills and few open stretches of the Mzimvubu. From a distance, it looked like peaceful pastoral bliss in a timeless harmony with the river. (Fifteen years later there is still poverty and poor access to services.) Whenever we camped close to a village, there was a crowd of curious friendly onlookers. Often we might paddle past women wading around with heavy armfuls of washing. And dozens of brown children slipping in and out of the river splashing up a storm reminded me of my own childhood spent mostly in and out the swimming pool.

When the villagers living a kilometer or so upriver from a 40 meter waterfall saw us paddling past, they were most concerned and some ran along the banks shouting at us and signalling with their hands. An excited crowd gathered at our put-out point just before the falls. Many people helped us carry our boat and all our kit to where it was lowered down by rope next to the waterfall and into the water. Amazed locals, spectacular photographs, but no one was more in awe than myself! It was my first abseil and I was high as a kite when I was bundled into the boat by Dave, a seasoned rope man. There was no time for excited jabbering, it was getting dark and we needed go through a boulder garden waiting on the other side of the waterfall pool before we could camp.

So followed a rest day. Time to find out a bit more about each other through Helen who was expert at engaging and extracting the essence of a person. Arguing about whether inches or centimeters were more efficient. It was January and the temperature was well into the thirties. Paul M, who seemed incapable of rest, made pizzas inbetween throwing bailing buckets of water over the roof of our tarpaulin to keep us cool. (To protect us from the sun and dew, we often put up a shelter using a tarpaulin, paddles and large rocks to act as counter weights.) Only Kirsten, with her olive skin, offered her body to the sun.

And so we spent days and then weeks on the fully grown Mzimvubu, coming to the stretched out pace of the river itself – a long while paddling along in flat great sweeping arcs, and then with a splash and flutter of activity sliding quickly around the bend: “Paddle hard!” would come the command, around low ridges, and now a new feast for the eyes and another long paddle on the flat so the rubber of the raft became hot and dry again and our life jackets stiffened and chafed and it was time for some juice and a swim.

Duncan was the biggest and the hungriest of us all and he presided over the lunch rations with the fervour of the famished. Typical was13 provitas and three people to a large tin of pilchards in tomato sauce (I didn’t’ eat much). We often ate lunch with the dulling lulling crashing of a rapid we had just done or portaged behind us. I would feel my blood sugar level and my colour return. A delicious drowsiness would come kussing out in the shade.

Time was a pressure and the afternoons could be long, sometimes paddling into the wind and frequently extended in search of the perfect campsite. I am proud to say we did not have one unperfect campsite but we sometimes paddled until after dark. Mostly arriving damp and cold in the twilight. The rattle of red and yellow paddles clattering against each other. Throwing down our rainbow life jackets and rolling out our sleeping mats to dry. Sliding on slip slops and sloping into the bush to search for firewood. Supper (I think I mentioned pasta already). Usually a large fire breathing onto us in the darkness. Why did none of us have a torch? I don’t know. Soft sand for sleeping on. The utter simplicity of rolling into a sleeping bag at the end of the day with only a moment to glance at the bright stars above before blissful oblivion.

After the confluence with the Tina and Tsitsa follows some huge grade 4 style rapids. We would hop and clamber along stretches of hot rocks to recce the rapids and talk about the route. I had enough experience now to be really scared with the strap of the helmet scratching under my chin. I remember amidst the roaring of water and roaring of Paul, finding with surprise that my paddle would not meet the water. I looked down into an abyss with a great roller of churning white water at the bottom.

In the last 20 kilos or so the river flattens out and the landscape becomes softer and greener. It took a long time to paddle on the sea swollen open waters of the old Mzimvubu. Fish jumped in our boat. The river a brown colour that we kind of merged into with our hair long and wild. Our clothes torn and filthy. Our muscles tanned and hard. We looked at each other over the flat frame that had held all our provisions - now reduced to a few packets of dog biscuits and condensed milk. We were in a state of readiness.

To journey a river from source to sea is truly special. To come to know its rhythms, to mosy slowly through the meanders of its childhood, see it through the rough tangled gorges of its adolescence and ride the big waves of its adulthood with a dry mouth and prickling skin. And then to paddle out on its full bulging brown maturity into the vast blue ocean gave me an indescribable feeling of completing a cycle. I had surrendered myself to a great natural current of the earth and understood it and known it and come to feel it in my own body. And somewhere in the Drakensberg, rain was falling.

I was leaving my childhood behind and like the owl’s wing span, I had had glimpses of myself as an adult. I knew that the well had been dug for the great passions in my life. So the trip was a coming of age for me and also I had a clan! Each of the people who I met for the first time on the Umzimvubu river source-to-sea expedition became friends, mentors and companions on many subsequent journeys of all kinds.

We started out high in the Drakensberg mountains on the 9th of January and we dropped just under 3000 meters and paddled 500 kilometers into Port St Johns on the 9th of February. In that time we were isolated from the events of the world. On the 2nd of February FW de Klerk made a speech that precipitated the marvellous changes in our country. By the time we had travelled back to Johannesburg we were at first mystified at all the taxis hooting and celebrating. Then we discovered Nelson Mandela had been released from prison. We had entered the Transkei from one era and we came out into another.