Free No Stopping for Lions by Joanne Glynn Page A

we’ve borrowed the intellectual rights to children of good friends and rattle off their academic achievements and marital status. So whether it’s the gin and tonics or the fact that Neels seems to have a motive for asking, Neily and I decide to explain our decision.
    It was right at the time — we were in our late twenties in the early years of our marriage, both independent and selfishly maintaining the lifestyle we’d enjoyed while single. On the few occasions that we did talk about it, Neil could see the travel constraints a family would bring, while I could see a lifetime as a mother, not the me Neil married. Who I was would be lost in a talcum mist of midnight demands and constant daily needs. While my friends were desperate for children to make their family whole, I didn’t want to share Neil with anyone. It seemed that the maternal instinct had passed me by. But more than this, I understood that this partnership was hard enough as it was and any more than the two of us would topple the balance and make it unworkable.
    Neels seems excited by our story then explains that he himself isn’t interested in having a family but has trouble articulating his feelings to friends and family, particularly his girlfriend. We try to back-pedal, to qualify our situation by saying another place another time — something accepted in Australia in the seventies might not translate to present-day South Africa. But Neels is buoyant and intent on presenting his girlfriend with this new ammunition.
    We are taken on a visit to a Himba village by a young educated Himba, complete with wrap-around mirrored sunglasses and gold watch. After he asks and is given permission for us to enter the village, we meet the chief’s second wife and her female family. They are very regal and reserved at first, but when I show Mother her photograph on the LCD screen she squeals with delight and shakes her hand saying arh-arh-arh and something else which translates to ‘Oh, I am so beautiful!’ Our guide explains that the women spend many hours on beauty care and when they’re not rubbing their bodies with their ochre moisturiser they’re giving themselves herbal steam baths.
    We go to a Himba cemetery on the way back and this is also an experience. Many generations are buried here. Hundreds of years ago they were buried upright and to do this their legs and arms had to be broken (after death, that is). The resulting graves are, of course, very small and marked only with a couple of upright stones. Interestingly, the later graves look more conventional to us, but each is marked with sets of bullock horns, the number and size indicative of the wealth of the interred. We’re told that there’s a big feast of the bullocks’ meat after the funeral, and if it’s an important person and there are many bullocks, there’s meat hanging around for days. Eventually, when it’s pretty ripe, it’s hung out to dry or thrown into a horrible smelly vat to pickle.
    We leave Epupa with Neels in tow. He’s quit, and is on his way south to take up a job in South Africa. Even if he gets back-toback lifts it will take him several days to get there. Our destination tonight is a private concession bordering the world-renowned Etosha National Park. We’ve turned off onto their road when Neels and Neily both spot lion tracks in the dust and, whoa, we round a corner and there’s a lioness ambling down the middle. She looks thin and young, and later we’re told that she’s a recent mother who’s left the pride to give birth and has stashed her cubs up in the rocks while she goes out for food.
    Neil and I are still experiencing the effects of the poisoned water, and cramps now accompany the diarrhoea. It has occurred to me that the symptoms are very like giardia and this is confirmed when I read through a dog-eared copy of Disease and Home Treatment left in the lodge’s bar.
    Neels has