02

The sun was setting over Tsala Private Game Reserve in Tanzania. The green, open-top Toyota Land Cruiser bounced through the savannah on roads that were barely warthog tracks. A reserve ranger was behind the wheel, his rifle in its case lodged on the dash. On his seat on the hood the spotter kept both eyes on the surrounding terrain, calling out animals as he saw them, "Springbok!" Bracing themselves in the body of the vehicle, the gaggle of white tourists braced themselves with their feet against the seats in front of them. This left their hands free to wield their cameras and binoculars. The spotter didn't need binos to spy the fauna they had paid to see, "Red hartebeest!"

The tourists dutifully swung their gaze to the left, but no one was terribly impressed. The hartebeest is an African species of grassland antelope, standing just over 1m at the shoulder. They were impressive enough the first time you saw one, with great curving horns and bovine expressions, but there were just lots of them. No one had come on safari to see hartebeest; they all wanted to see the Big Five.

So far their ranger and spotter hadn't disappointed. They'd found lionesses basking in the sun with their nearly grown-up cubs. The male cubs were just starting to sprout manes, giving them a comical rather than regal appearance. They'd seen a small herd of elephant passing through the bush, disappeared easily into the undergrowth despite their massive bulk. Two little ones had been the stars, trotting besides their mothers with trunks in the air and mischief in their beady eyes.

The Cape buffalo had been hard to find, despite the reserve boasting a herd of sixty of the angry cows. They had come across them shortly after dusk one evening, causing a road block on the dirt track back to the luxury lodge. Leopards were even more notorious for being hard to find, with their nocturnal hunting habits and magnificent camouflage. Yet somehow they had managed it, stumbling across a young leopard taking an early evening drink at one of the watering holes. So the tourists had four out of five ticked off on their lists. Now what they really wanted to see was a rhino.

Not just any rhino. They had seen white rhino browsing not far from the lodge. It was the critically endangered and thoroughly bad tempered black rhino they were hoping to see. Standing at around 1.6m high and weighing in the region of 1000kg, the black rhino is smaller than its cousin the white. What it lacked in relative size it made up for in attitude; the ranger had had more than one run-in with pissed off black rhinos over his career. Still it was his job to take these people where they might just see one, and he had an idea where that could be.

They stopped for a breather a short distance away from where the ranger had recently heard a black rhino had been sighted. The ranger and spotter slipped from the vehicle and for the first time the rifle was removed from its case. "Stay here, eh?" the ranger told the tourists with a smile. "We'll scout ahead and then come back for you." The tourists giggled like nervous schoolgirls at the thought of being left in the bush whilst the ranger clearly thought he needed his gun. With a shared wry look the ranger and spotter disappeared into an acacia thicket.

"Dad, do you have to do that now?" drawled an embarrassed American teenage girl. The other tourists looked round to see what the teenager's father was doing.

"Ah, it's my new toy," the father said with a hint of awkwardness. He held up a small electronic device for them all to see. "GPS," he explained. "I figure if it works out here, it'll work anywhere right? I'm trialling them for my company. We want to install them in all our trucks."

"We got them on our wagons back home," a British tourist said with enthusiasm. "Great little gadgets, I recommend them."

"Thanks," grinned the American dad, "I'm sure this will work just fine. Look, signal is great!"

"You're so embarrassing," groaned the teen, drumming her hand on the outside of the vehicle. The adults in the car laughed at her discomfort and the conversation moved on. The ranger and the spotter came back, and took them all over the ridge where a great black rhino bull was grazing placidly in the ruby red sunset. It was a majestic sight that took all their breath away.

And the GPS transmitted the coordinates precisely…

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"Haven't I always taken care of you sister? And especially since your husband died!"

"I remember you coming into my house when I was still dressed in my mourning clothes and telling me that no man would want me now, not since I had another man's four sons to raise!"

"Well I'm sorry for that, but that doesn't change anything, sister. I've raised Vuyani like he is my son, not my nephew. He and my Erevu are practically brothers. Vuyani and I have hunted together since he was old enough to handle a gun. What is so different this time?"

Behind the door in his mother's house in rural Tanzania, fifteen-year-old Vuyani listened to the argument whilst biting his lip. He heard the pause as his mother considered her answer carefully. He was desperate to go with his uncle, and with his seventeen-year-old cousin Erevu, on this expedition. He could hear his three younger brothers shouting as they kicked a football against the wall of the house. Vuyani could almost see his mother wince as she fought the temptation to go and yell at them. Uncle was waiting for an answer, so Vuyani's mother ignored the interruption and replied at last. "It's not the same, this time he won't be putting meat on our table."

"Of course he will. Meat, bread, a little wine. You work hard for your sons, sister. Let them start to take care of you for a change."

Vuyani had heard enough and stepped around the door. Uncle was sitting at the table in the middle of the kitchen holding a glass of water. His mother was stood by the stove, her hands on her hips as she looked over to see her eldest enter the room. Vuyani drew himself up, trying to appear a man in his mother's eyes and not realising it was an impossible task.

"I want to go Mama," he saw Uncle wince at the pleading tone he used. Vuyani steeled himself and tried again. "I am going. I'm old enough and I'm a good shot. Its time you let me be the man of the house, Mama, and look after you and my brothers."

"Alright," Vuyani's mother conceded. "You can go, this one time." She turned to her brother, "But you had better bring him back safely..."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Erevu gave Vuyani a wicked grin as they bounced along the rough road in the back of Uncle's white Ford Ranger pick-up. The sun was setting and they were running out of time to get to the meeting place. Vuyani tried to return the smile- it was too noisy for much conversation- but he couldn't put much feeling into it. Jolting along the road was rattling out his teeth and the dust spat up by the tyres was making his eyes water. Not only that, the gravity of what he was doing had started to sink in, and he felt a little nauseous. Erevu, who had been in Vuyani's shoes only a year or so ago, knew how his cousin was feeling. It will get better, Erevu thought to himself, when we're on our way home and nothing bad has happened.

The rendezvous point was in the middle of open savannah. Vuyani felt uncomfortable. There was nothing to hide the black helicopter as it sat with its rotor blades gently rotating. A couple of other vehicles were scattered in the vicinity, and a group of dangerous looking men waited idly by. Uncle pulled up beside a red Toyota Hilux and the boys jumped from the back as Uncle climbed from the cab. One of the men detached himself from the others and came over to greet Uncle with a firm handshake.

"This him?" The man asked unnecessarily, looking critically at Vuyani. Uncle nodded, wringing his hands. "I'm Mwamba," The man told Vuyani. "If I tell you to do something, you do it. If I tell you not to do something, you don't do it. Above all, you get a shot and you take it. Understood?" Vuyani copied his uncle, nodding. Mwamba turned and started to shout to his other men. The copter pilot started the engines and everyone piled on board. Vuyani saw that as Mwamba climbed in besides the pilot he had a GPS receiver in his left hand.