The Other Side - A Series

"Just living is not enough," said the caterpillar.
"One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."
Hans Christian Andersen

Gusting over icy oceans, winds gather momentum across vast featureless tracts of scorched wasteland. Their passage sculpts a land of cerise sands and insatiable thirst. The Kalahari Desert, where survival lessons learned hard, carve delicate fortunes of a wily band of wilderness survivors.
As always at dusk, elders of the burrow, the Mfundisi bhuka pompously on hind legs as if in divine respect of their ancestral suricates. A privileged lot, they face west until the uppermost crescent of the sun dips below the horizon. To bhuka is a privilege, a right bestowed upon the Mfundisi as a mark of respect to their wisdom, an acknowledgment of their elevated status within this Meerkat community. The practice, a strutting gait achieved by prancing around on ones hind quarters whilst cocking ones head to peer rakishly down ones nose is a ritual reserved strictly for the elders, an acquired skill passed down through generations. The Abanonke, everyone else privileged to serve the Mfundisi are forbidden to bhuka.
The mood was tense, stifled murmuring and smothered whispers had filled this time for months. Gripped in what seemed an eternal drought, the region and its fickle weather had tested even the most resourceful of its tenants. Days of incessant heat followed nights of numbing cold. The elders were losing control. Need for the basic necessities of water, food and shelter had seen a small group within the Abanonke take on an arrogance of their own. Small signs, eyeballing an elder, bhukaring on the quiet and flicking the tail to both the left and right, another privilege reserved exclusively for the toplofty had been noted by some members of the Mfundisi. This contemptuous behaviour and its perpetrators had been reported to Umkhulu, chief of the burrow.
"Bring the young upstart before us, let me unearth the source of Somandlas’ mutinous attitude" belched the leader, lavishly imbibing in the scarce water offered by doting chambermaids. He had known it would come to this, had even anticipated that it would be Somandla.

Somandla saw them coming across the veld. The smug grin spread across their faces and their cocky gait confirmed his fears. “Go, no matter what happens in the next few hours, go!” whispered Somandla to Mfishani, a short, petite member of the group, tension clear in his voice.
“Just stay calm brother, don’t antagonise them they’ll be looking for any excuse to give you a drubbing” encouraged a nervous voice from the crowd. “Go Mfishani, move away now and whatever happens, look after Ntombi, she must go with you at all cost.”
Then Somandla did the unexpected. He strode forward to meet the sentries at the entrance to the burrow, “Gentlemen, looking for me I suspect?” smiled Somandla, making sure not to expose the slightest hint of his diminutive canines, the height of aggression in Meerkat circles. Defusing the moment with an almost genuine candour he cast his eyes down as a further enactment of respect to the guards. The defeat of the scuffle that the sentries sought to extract from the encounter only heightened their frustration. A hushed silence enveloped a nearby group of Abanonke and spread quickly through the rest of the mob as the air thickened with the anticipation of the conflict.
“No, it aint us who seek your hide” sneered a mangy sentry in what was meant to be an aggressive impersonation of Roger Racoon, the latest folk hero to emerge from that place across the great water. It’s the old man whose gonna peel your hide sonny” scowled the Sergeant as Somandla realised that Roger Racoon aggro impressions must be the flavour of the week amongst the sentries. His coat blotchy and sparse in appearance, the Sergeant had only recently recovered from a serious bout of mange brought on by an explosion of mites that had ravaged the community, thriving in the over crowded burrows. A general lack of nutritious fodder, clean water and hopelessly inadequate lodgings all contributing to a state of poor health with an ever increasing number of newborn kits not making it past their second week of life.
“Well then, I’d better neaten up hadn’t I, can’t keep Umkhulu waiting now can we? No doubt he’s far too busy plotting solutions to our lack of food and water? Speaking of hides, how wonderful to see your mange has healed so nicely Mnugane.” quipped Somandla as he mopped a fine film of silica from his brow, a powdery, mange healing dust that settled on those of the Abanonke forced to the outer circle of the burrow. “Silica must have done your crust the world of good old boy?” quipped Somandla sarcastically to stifled chuckles from the group who knew only too well that the Sergeant had recently been cast to the burrow outers for falling asleep on duty.

The six, known secretly to one another as Istupa had met secretly all season. Somandla had chosen his cohorts carefully and had needed to. The impimpi were out there, whistle blowers afforded minor privileges by the sentry force to maintain a watchful eye and an ear out for insubordinate behaviour within the Abanonke. The group had done well to avoid detection by the sentries, let alone the impimpi. There was Stuhla, Somandla’s absolute confidant. Consistent, courageous and dependable to the very last, Stuhla knew the veld like the back of his hand and was well known within the Abanonke for his uncanny ability to detect and defeat the Egyptian Cobra, Meerkat enemy number one. Nsizwe on the other hand was conservative by nature, cunning and softly spoken, he was calculating in his ways, often pedantic Somandla had thought. Nsizwe would prove vital when situation called for level headed planning and decision making. Imbali, an outspoken and youngest member of Istupa, a kit carer, had been the first to throw in her hat. “I’m coming with you Somandla, like it or not” she had hissed, arriving uninvited to one of their meetings. Her intuition had come as such a shock to Somandla that he immediately suspected her as Impimpi. A picture of ignorance, he had denied all of her pinpoint accurate suspicions, fidgeting tautly from paw to paw, nervously awaiting the arrival of the Masosheni, a crack detail of roving sentries on duty that day. Somandla had not missed the glint in Stuhla’s eye as he had watched the young carer reserving her right to freedom. Constrained initially, Stuhla had been quick to remind the group of Imbali’s speed across the veld and her ability to ferret out food and water in the most difficult of conditions, her shiny well groomed coat testament to Stuhla’s musings. Somandla had also remembered Mfishani once telling him that Mbali was blessed with unnatural powers, an endowment supposedly governed and handed down by the ancestors to a select few Meerkats, a gift that she had needed to keep hidden from the greed and jealousy of the Mfundisi. “She has it Somandla; I see it in her eyes every time she cares for the kits” Mfishani said referring to the way in which Mbali had hurried the kits from the flight path of a swooping Bateleur Eagle.

Mbali’s intuition had served to remind Somandla that vigilance and absolute secrecy amongst the Istupa was the key to their successful escape. Boredom, frustration and the desire within the Abanonke for a future free of the Mfundisi was making them conspicuous as a group. Unsettling murmurings within the burrows told him that they needed to act fast.
Mfishani had been invited to Istupa by both Somandla and Stuhla for his uncanny negotiating skills. Somandla himself was well known amongst the Abanonke for his ability to taunt the Mfundisi and the sentries but Mfishani was in a class of his own. Umkhulu himself had publicly attested to Mfishani’s intelligence and rumour had it that from time to time, members of the elders secretly sought his counsel. Ntombi, the last member of Istupa had grown up with Somandla. The two were joined at the hip and it was fait accompli that the wispy mongoose would be part of the great escape.

Asserting authority the Sergeant kicked Somandla to the ground in a clamour of dust, urging his retaliation. Remembering Mfishani’s words Somandla merely smiled, reached for the hand of a caring member of the Abanonke and pulled himself to his feet. In turn, the entire detail took to Somandla. His flared cheeks, an indication of rage had not gone unnoticed. Not even the combined efforts of the strongest of the Abanonke could save their champion from the wrath of the Sosheni. Umkhulu watched in crazed delight, mesmerized by the flash of fangs and the glint of sharpened claws. Minutes became hours, the brutality raged on. In the vicious frenzy no one saw the circling Bateleur Eagle. The massive raptor, quick to seize on a moments dropped guard descended at first in wide circles. Using high cloud for cover on descent and then towering dunes as low level screens, he homed in on the flurry of hatred that raged on the desert floor below. At low level and with the setting sun on its shoulder the eagle struck with decisive force. Mnugane never stood a chance. "Baleka, Baleka!" the universal Meerkat danger call rang through the burrow as the roar of the raptor’s wing beats drowned the cries of a once proud Sergeant. The eagle had unwittingly saved Somandla's life and, in the disarray following the attack provided the diversion that the breakaways had been looking for.

A New Beginning

A moonless night slowed their passage. Expecting darkness to conceal their escape, windless conditions and a lack of the usual nocturnal desert activity accentuated their every move. Extra care was needed with each foot placement, the group of six forced to step in each others footsteps to conceal their count. "Leave me here and push on" Somandla wheezed at Stuhla, resting heavily on his shoulders. "Without your leadership we are all lost Somandla, we have no choice but to put up with your whining" Stuhla joked as he shifted Somandlas weight. “You look a sight" he chuckled, the prospect of freedom lifting Stuhla’s spirits. "I feel the spring of freedom in your step you old fool, perhaps there is still hope for you yet" the scarred leader quipped, his lip cracking open in a beaming smile.

Eerie canyons casting unsettling shadows lay before the escapees. On the move since dusk, an anxious silence had consumed the band since Nsizwe's demise. Detecting even the lightest of foot falls, the creature had plotted Nsizwe's cautious advance down what was a natural drain to the rivers edge. An alley of entrapment, the dry tributary of fine white sand had been the nemesis of many an unwary visitor. Sugar like in texture, the sand was the corner stone of the beasts trap. Captivated by the translucent, sandy surface of the river bed, the silhouette of those mesmerised always stood starkly against the sun bleached sand. “How strange" Nsizwe had whispered to himself as he dragged his feet delicately through the unusual soil, forgetting why he was at the river, his thirst lost in the fantasy of the moment. Normally fleet of foot, Nsizwe was no match for the predators' cunning plan. Seeing the movement he instinctively leapt for the safety of the deep foliage lining the bank. On most surfaces he would have cleared the distance in one bound but the clutching sands offered no purchase, his powerful hind quarters sinking deeper beneath the surface with each powerful thrust. Even in the unusual silence of the night, no one heard or saw anything to reveal what had unfolded at the river. Nsizwe simply never returned to the group. On the softest of breezes, Somandla had heard the rasping of scales, large scales grating on fine, soft sand. Using his eyes to draw Stuhla away from the group, the two decided not to share with Istupa the fact that Nsizwe had been snatched by Nyoka a very large rock python that had roamed the river for years.

"We should not go through that Mhosheni" Imbali shuddered, pointing in the direction of the canyon. "It doesn't feel right" her eyes flicking strangely from side to side. "Oh please, not this witchery nonsense again, she always goes into Mtagati talk when she wants to get her own way" Ntombi sighed angrily. "We've come this far, we can't stop now. The Sosheni are after us, we'll be back in that hell hole before we know it. What do you mean it doesn't feel right?" Ntombi ranted on, unsettling the others. "Settle down Ntombi, arguing amongst ourselves won’t help." Somandla calmed the group, fatigue burning his eyes, preventing him from thinking clearly. "We rest on the other side of the canyon Imbali, dawn will be upon us by the time we reach there, are you sure?" Somandla knew that to doubt her magic could be disastrous for the group, he also knew that to stop in the open country that sprawled before them was out of the question. They had to find shelter, anything that offered a place to hide out and rest the day through. "The amadala........" She could not finish the sentence before Mfishani tore into her. "Oh forget the ancestors you idiotic fool, I'm with Ntombi." Stuhla stepped forward angrily "Now hang on, don’t you go calling people...." Paying no attention to Stuhla, Mbali and Ntombi marched from the shadows of the cover toward the canyon entrance. "Get back in here now!” Somandla hissed at the two, aware of the dangers to everyone should they be seen in the open. "Oh excuse me, since when were you the boss of us?" Ntombi shot back, winking at Mfishani for support, happy to finally have her moment in charge. "Ntombi, I know you are tired, we all are but we should not doubt Mbali's word. Please, stay with us for together we are strong." Somandla's pleading seemed only to fortify her stubbornness. "We'll call you over when we get to the other side" Mfishani smirked at the leader.

“You won’t be calling anyone if you’re that interested in venturing through that Mhosheni my friend.” The chattery little voice from overhead startled everyone and had Stuhla diving for cover behind a clump of nearby boulders. “Who are you?” demanded Somandla trying as hard as he could to sound domineering and fierce. “Show yourself now” hissed Stuhla, irritated at having possibly lost face in the eyes of the others after his dive for cover.


TO BE CONTINUED