 | by Claire Pfeiffer
I recommend a trip to South Africa for so many reasons, if you
are looking for a challenging and enriching experience, but the flora of
South Africa is in itself reason enough to go.
At first I thought I'd never get used to the harsh and threatening vegetation of steep Zululand, but after communing with donkeys in the shade of fig trees, and sleeping peacefully in huts made of thick, pliant grasses, I realized how welcoming and forgiving it is beneath all its thorns.
It's no wonder to me that the Zulu people became renowned for being fierce
warriors (regrettably they had to fight to defend their awesome land), as
their environment constantly seems to suggest hostile impassability, and the
flora presents weaponry everywhere you go. However, the pointy, jagged,
army-surplus of eastern South African vegetation is also very usable in
decorative, architectural, and, of course, comestible ways. In a country
where even the elephants roaming the arid forests get stoned off the fallen
Marula fruit, there are funky fruits for every occasion.
Zululand’s thorn trees stand massed like squat armies in the valleys carved
out between enormous hills, every morning enveloped in thick mists. A
thicket of these trees is impenetrable unless you bend down low, dodging and
weaving to avoid bundles of sharp protruberances, and one generally cannot
escape unscathed. If you have a knife, you can slice off a medium-sized thorn
and pierce your ears with it (or anything else, for that matter), producing
an authentic look that has only been copied by the West's "urban
primitives". I wouldn't recommend passing through a small forest of thorn
trees at night; not only will you emerge scratched and bloodied, you might
experience a terrible fright at the myriad of uninterpretable shadows cast
from the branches by the bright moonlight.
On the ground lie a wide variety of brambles, burrs, and thistles, all of which are made sturdier than any North American variety I've ever had the unpleasant occasion to encounter. Most amusing weren't the star-shaped, tiny four-pronged burrs that stick to skin better than a Band-Aid, but the round, hook-covered green
balls that resembled tiny, angry watermelons, or those old-fashioned Velcro
dart balls were okay. Throwing them rec-room style at our pal Ed and watching them cling instantly to his abundant chest hair was a laugh and a half.
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