We’ve ridden African elephants and done the evening game drive. In between I’ve had the full-body Swedish massage from a Zulu woman who used the point of her elbow and the side of her knee and was panting slightly throughout. Now we are six of us around a dinner table in a replica Zulu meeting hut. The waiters are Pedi.
With each course a different wine is poured. My neighbour vulgarly asks the cost of the first, a silky red, and is told that it isn’t on the wine list. However, a bottle from the same vineyard, of an inferior vintage, can be had for the equivalent of £400. I’m studiously trying to keep up with these various wines and remember which is which. But I’m reserving my greater seriousness for the succession of Tequila Sunrises being placed in front of me in glasses about a foot tall.
There was a Tequila Sunrise among an imaginative selection of drinks on the welcome-back-to-camp tray after the afternoon game drive. I was attracted by the trippy colours and the ridiculous size of the glass. Later, when we assembled on the decking beside the crocodile pool for pre-dinner drinks, I told the Pedi waiter I’d like another one of those colourful jobs.
These Pedi waiters are stalwart chaps. When I said I was a lifelong admirer of their formidable illegitimate warrior-king Sekhukhune, they couldn’t have been more pleased. Since then they’ve treated me like a brother. I’ve carried my unfinished Tequila Sunrise to the dinner table and moments after I’ve drained it, one of them is bending at my shoulder, whispering respectfully in my ear about having another one. There isn’t a trace of irony or derision in his manner. My unhesitating assent gladdens him, and he keeps them coming all evening.
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