Pringle Bay*
Population 800
Distance from Cape Town: 84km
Arrival date: 1 February 2023
Today’s temp: 18 Deg C
I tried to piece together the seconds of freneticism in bed afterwards.
Sam’s shout.
The baboon.
On the kitchen counter!
With a little baboon-let on her back.
The long seconds of us rooted while she decided between the box of cherry tomatoes and the box of grapes we’d just unpacked from shopping. Her eyes shifting between us and each of her options.
The time was long and frozen and check-mated. She looked ready to bolt. Twitchy. But also unfazed.
The male came in and broke this absurd stand-off. Sam flew at him, making himself big and loud in a way I’ve never seen or heard. When he slid the door shut, all three baboons were magically outside. The male was harassing the female for the grapes she’d nicked. Sam opened the door again and roared at him until he headed – all casual like – away from the female baboon.
Does Sam know baboons in a way I don’t? Can you be a pacifist and a feminist and ‘an indoors-kinda guy’ (as he once described himself to me) and still have strong farm boy inclinations?
Why was he not frightened?
The male came back to where the female was skittishly munching the grapes, stalks and all. She scooted in under the car, where he couldn’t fit, and finished off the last of her loot. Then they all sauntered towards the road beyond which the shore lies.
I watched them go. I didn’t know baboons had such human-like feet. They’re blue-black, and maybe a bit smaller than my size fives. Apart from the toes, they’re shaped underneath like all the footprints I’ve been seeing in the sand on our daily walks on the beach.
As I lay in bed later, remembering how my son’s ‘monster under the bed’ when he was a child was actually ‘the baboon in the ceiling’, I tried to understand why the baboons had made me so jumpy. Okay, look. They’re wild animals. They came into what is ‘home’ (for now) and ‘home’ is supposed to be safe. The males have fearsome fangs.
These are the obvious things.
But I don’t think it’s any of those. It has something to do with the female’s small, quick eyes.
And those familiar feet, retreating so casually.
*Pringle Bay is a small, affluent coastal village in the Overberg region of the Western Cape, in South Africa. It is situated at the foot of Hangklip, on the opposite side of False Bay from Cape Point. (Source: Wikipedia)
Baboons in the cultural psyche
I only realised after my own first close encounter how deeply the image of the baboon is carved into my mind in an archetypal way. I wonder whether it acts as strongly on psyches of people not born in South Africa (or any other place that doesn’t have baboons).
The family GP with his smooth, oval face behind his enormous oak desk, had pictures of baboons playing musical instruments hung in his consulting room. Those, the illustrated Afrikaans children’s bible in his waiting room, and the old-fashioned dial and brass knobs and fitting in the lifts of the building he was in in central Pretoria are what I recall of doctor’s visits. If he ever inflicted pain and suffering on the small-child me, it has been erased by those strong visual memories.
Years later, one of my partner’s contributions to our home gallery was an original picture of the musical baboons, a gift from the artist, Osche Honiball, to his parents. Here’s an overview of the artist and his work.
Two South African texts featuring baboons made an enormous impression on me. I craved to read them again after our relatively damage-free baboon home invasion.
The first was ‘Poor William’, a story by my friend Ken Barris, which appeared in Worm and Other Stories. I don’t have the book with me on my travels, so Ken kindly sent me a copy it. I can highly recommend this collection, which, by the way, won the Herman Charles Bosman prize in 2018. Ken has this wonderfully sceptical, restrained tone and he pokes fun at things in such a subtle and amusing way.
The author might have got his inspiration for ‘Poor William’ — the swaggering, smoking hell-raiser of an alpha male baboon — from the infamous Fred The Baboon, who caused huge rifts in communities in the Southern Peninsula of Cape Town.
The other text was one by the writer Alistair Morgan called Sleeper’s Wake, a tightly wound human drama that had me gripped entirely. A certain scene with baboons has never left my mind. I found out that a movie was made too.
I couldn’t remember the name of this book, so I asked on The Good Book Appreciation Society, where the third person to answer me was the South African author and art critic Sean O’Toole, who is worth following on Instagram. The two commentators before him noted other books about baboons I hadn’t heard of before: Justin Cartwright’s White Lightning and The Reluctant Passenger by Michiel Heyns.
There’s an evocative song by the singer-songwriter (and author, academic and artist) Andries Bezuidenhout, which I first heard played live in Oudtshoorn years ago. It’s called ‘Die Laaste Brandwag’ and is a kind of dirge for baboons (and for all of nature) where humans clash with them (and it). Listen on Spotify or on Apple Music. The song riffs off and incorporates the Afrikaners folk song ‘Bobbejaan klim die berg’. While looking for it, I noticed Andries released another album last year. Andries’s music does not fit into the stereotypes of Afrikaans music. If you like Gert Vlok Nel, you’re likely to like Andries Bezuidenhout too.
And then, while pootling around online about chacma baboons — the kind we had as visitors in Hangklip Road — I came across this oddity:
This story made me laugh out loud in a coffee shop in Pringle Bay, where every shop and restaurant has sliding trellises at the doors to keep Papio ursinus from their raiding expeditions.
Do you find baboons as uncanny as I do? Or are there other mammals that make you edgy? I couldn’t think of any that might make feel so observed. And so judged.
And so ridiculously human.
Lots of love,
Kowski
Wonderful writing. It brought back a long ago memory of spotting a male baboon sauntering down the dark passage of our house. He had a jar of sugar tucked under one armpit. I briefly met his eyes -- it felt clear to me that he knew he didn’t belong there; I think we both felt bewildered. They’re so almost human, it feels odd that they can’t speak.
That must have given you such a huge fright. Like that feeling that your heart is on a yoyo string. You really must try and find Ken's story. I think you will like it.