Stories

Marlice van Vuuren - Africa is my family

She runs from the bush as wind. Suddenly she is everywhere. “Sorry, sorrrry,“ a significant Afrikaans “r” rattles in an apology. She is always late; it is something in her way every time. It is always something usual, such as taking baboons off a thatch roof. It is nothing special for Marlice as they were guests to her wedding...I should have anticipated that she would be different. She broke my ideas about a haughty celebrity with behaviour of a star within few moments. I think we know each other for years only after spending few minutes in her presence. I should have known this from the beginning. Animals do not tolerate acting. They see the real you. …and animals are her life… After spending that few days with her I realised how big the heart of this girl from an African farm is. The only thing remained a mystery for me. How many families Marlice van Vuuren has...?

Master of Swamps

It is like diving into cold milk. Morning mist flies in tangled mass against the front of a boat. It changes into a shining golden veil when the first beans of the morning sun shine into it. I do not see any further than to the shining bow of the boat. Navigation to unknown places for me. An experienced hand of scout Ailton Lara on the helm leads us reliably through the river bed.

Under the Arctic Sun

“The silence was born somewhere here!“ comes to my mind when standing on the front deck of the ship Plancius. I am trying to see through a thick fog. It is three o’clock in the morning and the sun looks like a fuzzy light in the middle of big grey NOTHING. An ice block rubs the side of the boat and the wind draws aside the curtain of the fog. A fulmar flies just above the level of the sea. An Arctic day is just at its end. Or is it beginning?

Bear King Island

Fog - rain - wind - „Welcome to Kodiak,“ locals laugh after you ask them when is the weather going to be little bit better. I am sitting on a bank of a nameless river full of salmons dying in an ancient fight for the kind survival in this weather. I am watching raindrops pouring on a waterproof objective cover. Flocks of gulls are flying around fighting for what was left from the fish. The silence of the wild is disturbed only by their scream.

Wings of the Sunshine State

Lights of cars driving in the opposite direction are making one fire line in my tired eyes. It's just before the midnight and I am crossing the Sunshine Skyway Bridge on the way from Tampa to Bradenton. In my mind I see pictures of rich American retirees during their morning jogging, luxurious hotels on the shore or the face of the thoroughgoing ginger-haired detective driving a black Hammer. Florida. The state of the dazzling luxury and also the state of mysterious swamps fullof alligators and water fowl.

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