Torn Trousers: A True Story of Courage and Adventure: How a Couple Sacrificed Everything to Escape to Paradise Read online

  Torn Trousers

  Andrew St.Pierre White

  Gwynn White

  Published by 4xOverland LTD

  Thurlby, Lincolnshire

  England

  +44 (0) 7946 650541

  www.4xoverland.com

  Publishing enquiries: [email protected]

  First published in 2015

  This book is the intellectual property of the copyright owners. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, including duplication, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Copyright © 2015 Andrew St.Pierre and Gwynn E White

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13:978-1506099323

  eBook Formatting by eBookFormatting.Ninja

  To

  Jenny, Tony and Woodie

  Andrew and Gwynn

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Notes

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Epilogue

  About Andrew and Gwynn

  Author’s Notes

  A sub-title for this book could be ‘A Year in Wonderland,’ for as hackneyed as it may sound, it is precisely what the events in Torn Trousers depict. Way back in the nineties, we ditched our frenetic Johannesburg business routine and, travelling light, opted for a life of adventure in one of the most idyllic spots on Earth: the Okavango Delta in Botswana, southern Africa.

  As woefully inexperienced managers of a high-class tourist lodge, our triumphs and defeats were jointly shared — there was no avoiding it — and virtually interchangeable, too. Just like the writing of this book. So, although the story is written in first person, some liberties have been taken. Parts of the book are written from Andrew’s perspective, others from Gwynn’s. We hope this binocular view gives you as much pleasure in reading it as we had in living it, and now, after more years than we care to recall, finally writing it.

  The Botswana we write about is not the Botswana you’d find if you were to land at the new Maun International Airport today. The airbase where bush pilots swaggered is long gone. A string of high-gloss chain stores, selling everything from Beluga caviar to Prada shoes, have replaced the two dusty wholesalers that struggled valiantly — and often failing just as valiantly — to keep us and our guests fed. The Internet and mobile phones now compete with the VHF radios we used to communicate with the world. Yes, things have definitely changed over the years, but we write about the way it was. Still, if you go to the camp we managed you’d find the hospitality and the glory of the Okavango unchanged. We’ve been back, so we know.

  All of the people you’ll meet in this book are real but some names have been changed. If you recognise yourself, then thank you for playing your part in the cast who made our Torn Trousers experience unforgettable.

  This book is written in British English, not American, so some of the spellings may be unfamiliar to American readers.

  Andrew and Gwynn

  Chapter 1

  There was a place so tranquil that angels went there to rest. It was a place of such singular beauty, even the lilies dressed for dinner. Yet the ebb and flow of its life-giving water was determined by a climate a thousand miles away. The water level was high during times of drought and low in times of rain. At its heart ran a river that sought the sea but never found it. Instead, it spilled onto a plateau of sand, spreading like an Eden across the desert until at last it vanished into the dust.

  Animals, great and small, followed the river, each in pursuit of happiness. When they found it, they stayed. Fish swam in quiet eddies. There were birds so varied in hue they confused the rainbows. Vast herds of elephant, buffalo, and antelope made homes here, and behind them carnivores trod. Trees offered shelter to snakes and comfort to travellers.

  This was where my heart lay, in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana.

  But instead, I lived in Johannesburg, a sprawling, crime-ridden city in South Africa, Botswana’s southern neighbour.

  Here, chrome and glass shopping malls selling designer western must-haves jostled side-by-side with shantytowns. Known as squatter camps, the residents of these homes—corrugated iron, plastic bags, and gum poles tacked together with nails—considered themselves lucky if they had one meal a day.

  Back on the asphalt streets in the “real” town, motorists jumped the red traffic lights at night, too scared to stop in case they were hijacked at gunpoint. The police turned a blind eye to such infringements.

  Glue-sniffing children begged at car windows, fighting for elbowroom amongst vendors selling everything from sunglasses to cold Cokes. It was a world where crime and poverty, abundance and luxury coexisted in mutual discomfort.

  All I wanted was to get out.

  But, I was trapped; a slave to my career, my mortgage, my car payments, and my keeping up with the Joneses. I think they’re the folks who lived next door, but who could tell in suburban Johannesburg, hidden behind six-foot walls, razor-wire, and armed response companies? Perhaps life in Johannesburg wasn’t that different to most cities in the developing world, but I’d had enough.

  And one day it came to a head.

  Snarled in the traffic on the lemming-run to work, I allowed my mind to slip away.

  I was a kid again, growing beans between layers of soggy cotton wool. After a week, the upper layer bulged. Soon, thin dark tendrils appeared, pushing their way through the gaps into the daylight. That’s what the city resembled on this smoggy morning. Smoke from thousands of paraffin and wood fires burning in the squatter camps curled into the air, trapped by the winter inversion layer. Like the cotton wool, the smog settled between the buildings, stretching skyward, as if reaching for fresh air.

  I was the bean.

  Except, instead of grasping bravely into a new world, I was slowly dying. Melodr
amatic, perhaps, but that’s how it felt as I edged my way through the traffic toward my office.

  Once there, I’d spend most of my daylight hours in a dark room staring at a moving screen. I worked with images, each stylised in a long, monotonous line of hand-crafted performances, where perfect people live in a perfect world. Where all girls are slim, all men are tall, all cars are shiny, and all food looks too good to eat. I edited television commercials, and nothing I helped create bore any resemblance to the world outside my editing room door.

  I sighed, pulled my eyes away from the traffic, and stroked my car’s steering wheel—caressed it, actually, because it was the only bright star in this otherwise gloomy scene.

  I loved Darien—that was my Land Rover—because she gave me a safari feeling, even in the rush hour. The environment of painted steel, whirring gears, and the occasional sulfurous whiff of gearbox oil triggered thoughts that took me away, back to the Okavango.

  In the end, the day turned out well.

  I was fired.

  It wasn’t as dramatic as it sounds because I fired myself.

  I’d spent eight hours with Jane Michaelino, a short-skirted, short-tempered film producer in her mid-thirties. Her husband, Jack, was a talented director who charged big bucks. With neither talent nor manners, Jane lived off of his energy, and everyone else’s, creating an edgy atmosphere. By four o’clock, my fragile nerves shattered. I asked them to take their film rolls out of my cutting room and never come back. Jane was outraged. In my madness, I was calm and adamant.

  They had to go. Now.

  Once Jane’s expletives and cigarette smoke cleared, I sat in the dark, the only light coming from the screen, absorbing what I’d done. The Michaelinos accounted for two-thirds of my income.

  I wish I could say fear or regret gripped me. They didn’t. My only emotion was relief.

  I refused to be a bean any longer.

  The only trouble was, I had no idea how to replace the Michaelinos. But right then I didn’t care.

  * * *

  Gwynn was already home from work when I pulled into the drive. Tension pulled her usually smiling face taut. She grunted a greeting. Unfortunately, she had the disadvantage of a mere five minutes in her car to get home from her clients. It wasn’t nearly long enough for her to cool down, so it wasn’t unusual for her to vent her day’s frustrations on me.

  But I wasn’t letting her get the jump on me today.

  “Sit,” I said as I walked into our lounge.

  Gwynn moved Woodie, our Siamese cat, off the chair and sat. Both Woodie and Gwynn glared at me.

  “You had a lousy day, yes?” I asked.

  “If I ever have to write another word about air-conditioner compressors, I’ll launch—”

  “I fired Jack and Jane,” I said, ignoring her attempt to grab my stage.

  Gwynn stared at me, her green eyes wide, her mouth gaping in dumbfounded astonishment.

  Expecting an outburst of rage to equal Jane’s, I mustered my courage, and with false bravado, added, “Yup. Told them to go forth and multiply.”

  Gwynn did something very unexpected. She grabbed my shoulders, pulled me toward her, and smacked her lips on mine.

  A bucket load of tension evaporated. “I was scared you’d be miffed.”

  “Not when I fired Grab ‘n Cough today. No more boring copy for me.” Grab ‘n Cough was the name we had given to the supermarket chain for which Gwynn did research and wrote training manuals. They accounted for two-thirds of her income.

  I cracked a smile.

  Gwynn smiled back. “It seems destiny has taken a hand in our affairs. Let’s go live in Botswana.”

  Afraid of the glint in her eye, I cautioned, “Nice idea. But the TV industry’s not very big in Botswana.”

  “Please, no more commercials!” Gwynn wailed, both hands clutching at her unruly hair. “The last thing I want is to live through another one of your bad moods as you edit pointless adverts.”

  “Then what? We have to eat.” Maybe I was being dense, but I just couldn’t see what she was driving at. Work had kept me away from home for a while, and we hadn’t been talking much. It showed.

  “Yes, we need to eat. But how about getting someone else to buy lunch? And breakfast. Dinner, too.”

  I frowned. “Gwynn—”

  “Let’s manage a tourist lodge in Botswana.”

  Now my mouth gaped. I snapped it closed. “Manage a tourist lodge? With what experience?”

  Gwynn brushed my incredulity aside as if I hadn’t spoken. “C’mon, Droon, let’s just sell everything and go.” She quickly added, “Except for Darien, of course. And Woodie. We’re keeping them.” A quick dig in her handbag, and she pulled out our well-worn Botswana travel guide. “I’ve been dreaming about this for weeks now. Plotting actually, to be more precise.”

  She wasn’t kidding—the book fell open onto a page listing the names and contact numbers of twenty tourist camps and lodges in Botswana. I wondered if she’d already selected the agent to sell our house. Probably. I have to admit to being hurt that she hadn’t confided her escape plan to me earlier.

  But then, Gwynn and I were very different when it came to life-changing concepts. She fluttered around, throwing ideas at me, expecting me to catch them, polish them, and chuck them straight back. Instead, I caught them, held them, thought hard and clearly about how to polish them, and only then did I roll them back to her.

  This time was different. I caught her ball, saw only its shiny side, and, without a second thought, tossed it straight back.

  “Come with me,” I said, sprinting to the study.

  Gwynn scooped up Woodie and followed, saying, “I hope these lodges welcome Siamese cats and Land Rovers.”

  “Any other day, that would be a problem,” I declared over my shoulder. “But not today, because the four of us are invincible!”

  Chapter 2

  One press of the keyboard and the Apple Mac went ping! A blank screen stared back at me, cursor flashing expectantly. My stomach knotted, even though I’d planned this moment for weeks.

  “Now what?” I asked Andrew.

  He cracked his knuckles. “Leave it to me.” A minute later, he had a letter that read:

  My name is Andrew, and I’m a film editor with over 13 years experience in the film industry. During this time, I have successfully run my own business. Gwynn, my wife, manages her own company in the marketing and training fields.

  We have both travelled extensively throughout Southern Africa - especially in the more remote parts of the Kalahari. We want to settle in Botswana and work in the tourism industry. We take the liberty of requesting consideration for any available posts at your camp.

  It may appear that neither film editing nor marketing/training are suitable qualifications for running a game lodge; however, both are service industries. We have sound managerial and people skills.

  I think saying we had sound managerial and people skills was a bit of a stretch, but then, job-seeking letters weren’t written under oath, were they? Trembling with hope and excitement, I licked the stamps. Twenty letters went off in the morning post, and I settled down to wait.

  And wait.

  To keep the bills paid, I wrote low-key advertising copy, while Andrew took on a few low-budget corporate videos. How long we would survive with our colossal mortgage and car payments, only the angels knew.

  Like most nineties yuppies, in our stupidity, Andrew and I had amassed three cars (between two people), two houses (one to live in, one for Andrew’s business), an airplane (Andrew flies for a hobby), and a bunch of high-end computers. Just about all of it came with a monthly bill in the post.

  In my weaker moments, I mused that perhaps we should have sent the job begging letters before firing our clients, but it was too late now.

  After a month of suspense, three envelopes dropped into my post box.

  None offered a job. One writer did, however, say that the life was wonderful. With seventeen replies still outstandin
g, my hopes remained high.

  Another month went by with no further missives from Botswana. Andrew’s heart began to fail him, and I heard occasional mutters of, “This is a waste of time.” I ignored him openly, while inwardly my heart quailed, too.

  Then, one bright morning, I trudged down to the gate to check the post box.

  A buff-coloured envelope, nibbled by slugs and snails that prowled my garden, waited for me. I grabbed it, knocked off a disgruntled mollusc, and charged into the garage, where Andrew tinkered on Darien.

  “This is it!” I crowed, waving the letter around.

  The spanner Andrew poked into Darien’s engine bay dropped with a clang. “Fantastic! Which camp is it?”

  “How must I know? I haven’t opened the letter.”

  “Then how do you know it’s the one?”

  “I just do.”

  I started tearing the envelope open but he grabbed it from me. The cheek! He was the one whose heart had failed. And then he had the temerity to dawdle over reading the letter. I reached out to snatch it back when he finally plucked up the courage and read out loud: “Thank you for your letter. I will be in Johannesburg at the end of November and would like to meet with you then. S. Pieters. Tau Camp.”

  I threw my head back and screamed with sheer joy.

  Andrew tugged at his scraggly red beard, a sure sign that he was going to overthink this. “It doesn’t mean he has a job for us.”

  “Of course it does,” I said. “How can you be so negative? He needs someone to manage his lodge. Where’s Tau Camp?” I rushed to a map of southern Africa mounted on the garage wall. Strung with red tape, it highlighted our travels. I had Tau Camp—meaning Lion Camp in Setswana—pinpointed in seconds.

  Andrew gasped and his eyes lit up. “I visited there when I went to the Okavango.”

  “No way!” I slumped down on a pile of Darien’s old tires. “Tell. Everything. Now.”

  “I stayed at her sister camp, an el-cheapo lodge called Scops Camp. Tau was at the other end of the island. It’s called Noga Island, by the way.” He eyeballed me. “That means snake.”

  “You can’t scare me,” I said with a flippancy that was hard to match. “So what’s Tau Camp like?”