Another major event that happened in 1986 was Niels and Carey’s wedding. A big society affair, held down in her hometown of Durban. My mom and I took an overnight bus along with Gloria and Bill Barclay—definitely Gloria’s idea. It was an interminable drive, made worse by Bill snoring loudly enough to keep the whole bus awake.
That same year, my uncle Bernard passed away—only 56. We knew he’d been unwell, waiting for a heart transplant, but it still hit like a freight train. He went up for a nap in his London house, and when Auntie Dilys brought him his tea, he was gone. My mom was devastated.
Sometime after that, we moved again. Niels was building the factory down in Lydenburg, and the house in Illovo no longer made sense. So my mom and I relocated to Parkmore, 112 9th Street. Much more modest than Illovo, but I had a decent bedroom, and my mom had the upstairs all to herself—a single en-suite room above the rest of the house. There was even a pool. Functional, if not exactly aspirational.
That’s when Gary Fox reappeared.
He was living in some strange place nearby, and we started hanging out again—him, me, and Pete. Gary came up with a scheme to make money, which should’ve been my first red flag. “You’ve got a Danish passport, right?” he asked. I said yes. He lit up. He needed drivers to take brand-new Toyota Land Cruisers up to Zambia. The catch? Only non–South Africans could cross the border.
His current girlfriend—Astrid was out of the picture by then—was a German diving instructor with a body straight out of a men’s magazine. He’d already recruited her. Now he needed one more. I was in.
We picked up the cars at Pat Hinde Motors in Alberton—brand new, still smelling of showroom—and started the long drive north. The first leg took us through Gaborone, then on to Francistown, where things got predictably... Foxed.
We downed too many beers and took a nap under a tree beside the Land Cruisers. I woke up to a pack of mangy dogs giving us the kind of look normally reserved for dying animals. We got the hell out of there fast. Another 400km took us to Nata, and from there we pushed on through the night toward Kasane—the last settlement on the Botswana side before the Chobe River ferry crossing to Kazangula in Zambia
Somewhere between Nata and Kazungula, a leopard flashed across the road in front of me. I missed it by inches. That image—the streak of colour in the headlights—has never left me.
Kazungula sits where Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia all meet at a single point. We checked into the River Lodge Hotel—this eclectic mix of overlanders, traders, and people like us, trying to look like they belonged. That night was heavy on the drinks. A woman named Prudence stood out—black, South African, tough as hell, and on her way to Lusaka to visit family. We all drank together and traded border stories.
The next morning, the news hit: Samora Machel, president of Mozambique, had died in a plane crash. Rumours were flying that the apartheid government had guided him off course with a false beacon. Whether or not it was true, the region was furious. Borders slammed shut. Even my Danish passport was useless. No-one who´s journey had started in South Africa was getting into Zambia
The Land Cruisers were on a one-way trip. We were supposed to fly home. But now? No movement. Gary, ever resourceful, argued his way across the border. Zambian passport. Said he’d ferry the vehicles over one by one... and come back for us.
He managed to get all three Land Cruisers across but then crickets from him.
So there I was, stranded with Gary’s statuesque German girlfriend and not a lot of options. Prudence—the black woman from the night before—was stuck too. She offered to share petrol if we drove back together. Sounded good. Her car? A Nissan Exa Turbo. One tyre had blown on the way up, and the spare was a different size, so it scraped every time we hit a pothole—which, in Botswana, is roughly every two metres.
I offered to drive. Gentleman that I am. Within 100km, I noticed the car was chewing through fuel. I realised the mismatched wheel was winding up the differential or something equally terrifying. We weren’t going to make it to Nata unless our fuel consumption drastically reduced. So I coasted every downhill, nursed the throttle, prayed for the fuel gods to show mercy.
We made it.
At Nata, Prudence made some calls on a landline. Rumour had it the borders might be reopening. She debated turning back. I told her it was madness. By Francistown, she’d made up her mind. She was going. We had no interest in following.
So the German and I checked into a lodge, Cresta Marang Gardens. We had dinner in the main clubhouse and I drank too much red wine trying to be ever so charming but panicking because we were sharing a room to keep costs down.
Now, dear reader, you’ll be pleased to know I was a gentleman. Nothing happened—except I stumbled out into the darkness and vomited all over the bushes.
The next day, we hitchhiked to Gaborone. At the casino, I finally got through to my mom in Johannesburg. She drove up to fetch us. I was three days late for work at Spargo’s and had never been so relieved to see my mom or the South African border.
That was my first proper foray into Africa. The real Africa—not the sterilised apartheid bubble I’d been living in. It had sun, stress, feral dogs, unreliable tyres, a generous stranger, and the kind of night that ends in vomit and shame.
As for Gary? During their inevitable breakup his girlfriend told him I’d slept with her, why I´ll never know. I hadn’t—I was still a virgin. He was furious, naturally. But I think he eventually believed me.
Still. That was Africa. First taste. Burnt into my memory like a scorch mark.