As I walked into the gathering, still suffering from a degree of separation-from-Atie anxiety, I was instantly drawn to, and locked eyes with, a beautiful woman standing across the room. Her long curly auburn hair caught the last beams of the setting sun filtering through the window. She was a vision of loveliness.
Trying desperately to regain my composure and not fluff my unrehearsed lines, I made my way across to her and introduced myself. Within seconds, the world and the people surrounding the two of us ceased to exist as we became engrossed in one another’s presence. How long we stood there, oblivious to the outside world, I do not know. Then, at the outer peripherals of both my vision and my hearing, I became vaguely aware that the tour leader had located a microphone and had begun to address the attendees. After welcoming the visitors, he introduced the members of our touring party to the travel agents.
‘Over there,’ he said pointing out the individuals one by one ‘is Deborah, an accountant from Toronto, Canada. And to her left with the red Heidi-hat is Willy, a farmer from Auckland, New Zealand.’
I was drowning in my newfound soul mate’s spectacular eyes, and was still only vaguely aware of the proceedings, when the tour leader said, ‘And there, with that moggy grin on his face is Steve, an Air Force helicopter pilot from Pretoria, South Africa!’
I vividly recall how she jumped back, as if I’d struck her, and stood glaring murderously at me. Then, finding her voice, she screamed, ‘You’re a
All conversation in the room instantly ceased, and before I had the chance to answer, the stunned tour leader stammered, ‘He’s a… a S-S-S… South African Air Force chopper pilot.’
‘Do you know Gary Harper?’{A pseudonym.} screeched my rapidly retreating dream girl at me.
‘What’s he got to do with things?’ was all I could muster, perplexed by her mention of a chopper pilot colleague with whom I had a vague acquaintance.
‘Do you know Gary?’ she spat, snarled and hissed at me, all at the same time.
‘Barely,’ I replied. ‘Our bush tours overlapped for a week or two,’ I said truthfully, confusion etched on my face.
At that moment, I was willing to go to the ends of the earth to describe the gulf of distance between said Gary and me, if it could in any way rescue a situation that was rapidly slipping out of control.
‘YOU… you chopper bastards are all the same!’ she exploded.
Those were the last words she uttered directly to me as her friends and colleagues quickly gathered around her, like a laager of Voortrekker wagons, and escorted her from the venue. Try as I might over the next 24 hours, there was no piercing the impenetrable wall of steel thrown up around her and getting her to hear me out.
A day later she moved on to her next destination and I was left in a small Austrian resort town, devastated. All I was able to determine later on was that she came from Port Elizabeth, had encountered Gary, and didn’t ever send him Christmas cards.
The Netherlands was the final stop on the tour. At Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, after I had made my way through immigration and customs, I became aware of an insistent drumming on the glass partition coming from the side of the arrivals hall. When I looked up to see the source, I looked straight into the eyes of Atie.
Some quick rearrangements with the local tour operator ensued, and before I knew it, Atie whisked me off to her car, a sporty little Mercedes, and we were on the freeway heading for Rotterdam and her home, where I was to stay for the duration of the Dutch leg of my holiday. After meeting Atie’s mother, who lived with her, she and I went to a pub-restaurant to meet with a group of her friends.
Before leaving South Africa, I had been warned by colleagues, friends and even members of my own family to expect extreme hostility from almost everyone I would meet on my foreign travels. The prevailing opinion was that South Africa, and everything that was happening in the country, was completely misrepresented by the foreign media, and that the people I would encounter would almost certainly be aggressive, misinformed, judgemental and possibly even violent.
In fact, I was told, it was incomprehensible that anyone who loved South Africa would subject themselves to this type of punishment. I must be insane to fork out my hard-earned money to travel to these climes, where I would be under constant threat. I think the irony may have escaped them.
