Een dag het ek 'n lui perd rit langs die pad agter my Cabana, van waar die klank van die perde was op daardie eerste oggend het. Een keer 'n perd mal kind, Ek hadnt gery vir 'n lang tyd. Soos ek verwag dat die swak perde was baie dun en hul ryg was Verwaarloos. Die mense is arm en die perde is swak. Die glimlaggende gids my gevra of id gery voor en ek het vir hom gesê ek het, egter, wil nie 'n begeesterde berg na so 'n lang onderbreking Ek het nie uitbrei. Dit het nie ontwikkel tot 'n gunstige taktiek. As gevolg van hierdie kort oorsig Ek het begin by die rug met net die ekspedisie-leier agter my en daar het ek gebly.

Ek het gehoor die swish van 'n vars, sterk stokkie en voel die wankel my berg 'n paar keer voor ek een of ander manier gedwing om uit van 'n kokon van lafhartigheid en wil nie 'rock die boot hom te vertel om dit te stop. Natuurlik het hy nie daarvan hou nie 'n bietjie, maar immeadiately geslinger die stok in die platteland en sulked, tantrumesque vir die res van die rit. Hy kon nie langer die hele ding aan die gang hou deur klop my berg, Wie sou, toe geslaan, skare die perd voor in dwingende hom te gaan vinniger. He had a strategy in ordering his horses and keeping the whole thing going.

The scenery winding through the valley was spectacular. I had chosen to go at four o clock to avoid the mad dogs and midday sun and the late afternoon had a dreamy sun drenched and shadowed quality and the only sounds were the sounds of the horses hooves and the man behind me occasionally shouting ‘Rosella!’ at a apparently troublesome mare. We meandered through the narrow gullies in the fertile red soil.

I had just about cleared the first (metaphorical) hurdle. My horse was no longer flinching, the man behind me was no longer surreptitiously whipping him and the red soil was blazing spectacularly in the early evening sun. Then the German woman in front of me decided that she was so relaxed that she needed a cigarette. I had been enjoying the fresh fresh air in the valley and felt this tainting of it an affront but rather than create the cinemaesque tension that ensues after telling someone to stop talking I decided simply to overtake. This wasnt simple. Everytime the I egged my switch freed steed forward the German woman’s horse speeded up. I retried this manoeuvre a couple of times before it dawned on me that it wasnt the German woman’s reluctance for me to overtake but her horse’s, she wasnt actually doing anything other than sitting back in an almost post coital way and smoking into the cleanest air I had breathed for years. It dawned on me that the horses always went in this order, her horse was outraged that mine, the obedient one was trying to disrupt the order of things.

So eventually of course her cigarette was finished and my horse continued to plod nose to tail behind hers on the journey he probably made a couple of times a day like a commuter. And my mind wandering away from the marvels of the scenery to dwell on the characters of the horses. Ascribing ‘human’ traits such as the compulsion to keep up one’s place in some sort of social order to beings other than human or to inanimate objects we call anthropormothism. But humans dont have the monopoly on so called human feelings and traits just as they dont have the monopoly on joy, pain and sadness…