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The day the world laughed

“That woman in the dress and bracelets is my dad!” I heard my six-year-old son protest indignantly on the other side of the supermarket shelves. When I joined him, pushing my loaded trolley, he explained: “Pa, those people are looking at you and talking behind your back!”

My appearance has always drawn a second glance from strangers and has been a thorn in the flesh of my loved ones, since they could not choose me.

It’s difficult to describe myself. My mother likes to say: “He’s not exactly an oil painting.”

I was her first attempt – the other three didn’t turn out too badly.

Mother-in-law says: “If only the man would have a haircut and trim his beard a little!”

The dominee has been heard to say: “It’s not right for a deacon to wear bangles up to his armpits. The members of the congregation are liable to miss the collection plate.”

My wife says: “Why do you have to be so sloppy? Surely you’re not thinking of going shopping barefoot and in a kikoi?”

Babies scream and grab their mothers’ breasts if I coo anywhere near them. Women give me a wide berth and teenagers exclaim in loud voices: “Hey, did you check that oke?”

Perhaps there’s a bit of wilfulness involved, because I have, on occasion, worn a tie or something black for a grand event. On the whole, however, I expect people to accept me the way I feel comfortable.

The only place where no one cares about my appearance is in the bush. Naturally I don’t care either, especially as my only use for water is to dilute whisky. That’s why I’m at my best in the bush.

Besides, there’s no time for frills in the veld.

Covered in six weeks’ dirt, we lay in all-round defence somewhere in Angola. Hiding behind a bush on the Kwando flood plain in the Caprivi, you fervently hope that the bloody elephant, no more than three metres away, won’t smell you. Or it’ll be tickets.

When you wake on the banks of the Zambezi in Zimbabwe to find a lioness peering inquisitively into your face, you suspect it’s your breath and not your scream that sends her scampering off.

In the Mana Pools reserve an elephant once stepped over me without touching me, as I lay on the ground pretending to be a log. I remember the front and rear trunks dangling in front of my face. I was thankful that I hadn’t used a deodorant for days.

Any chance meeting with people, however, is sure to result in open-mouthed astonishment and an undignified hee-hee.

Chipata in Zambia: youngsters crowding around me. “Jambo,” I greet them. Pointing at my bandana and long knife, they retort: “Rambo?”

That earned me a nickname among my fellow travellers – Sylvester Alone.

Nouakchott, Mauritania: Islamic children staring at me, as I sat leaning with my back against the wall of a mud hut, exhausted. Until their mother shooed them away in Arabic and apologised to me in English.

At the hotel in Katmandu we were enjoying a few beers in the garden when the staff began to file past, staring and greeting. It was only when the manager came over to inquire whether the one with the tousled beard happened to be a WWF wrestler – “the Undertaker” or some such person – that I understood what the fuss was about.

Also in Nepal, we were heading for the Himalayan glaciers. Off into the mountains, blissfully removed from grinning onlookers. The only live creatures, apart from our Sherpa guides, would be yaks and isolated Buddhist monks in cliff-hanging monasteries and abbeys.

When we weren’t thickly padded against cold of minus 20 degrees, I was most comfortable in my desert garb – Arab robe, headdress and staff.

Our trip was coming to an end. During the descent to Junbesi, a village on the Everest route, our guide took us to the Thubten Choling abbey and cloister, home to 400 Buddhist monks and nuns.

Here they isolate themselves from the outside world and study philosophy and ethics. They are serious people. They aspire to attain Nirvana. Their daily ritual includes hours of reading page upon page out of prayer books.

We had not bathed for eleven days. We took off our boots. Respectfully our guides led us into the prayer hall. The candlelight was dim. Incense was burning and gold statues of Buddha stood everywhere. It sounded like a beehive as a few hundred monks softly murmured their prayers. Dressed in orange or red togas, they were all sitting in the same position – cross-legged, their bald heads bowed. Occasionally someone turned a page in his rectangular prayer booklet. “Hummmmm-hummmmm.”

Their lives are spent in complete isolation, with no contact with their fellow man. Amazed, we looked at this extraordinary sight.

As he was turning the page, a monk gave me a sidelong glance. What he beheld was a figure from another Bible – a savage with long hair and beard, two kilograms of copper bracelets encircling his arms, a long staff, a white robe and red mountaineering socks.

Between the humming he started to “Hee hee hee,” checked himself and resorted again to “Hummmmm-hummmmm” . . . until, “Hee hee hee,” it came again from the lowered head. Suddenly everybody was looking up and soon the entire hall was going “Hee hee hee” at the sight of John the Baptist standing there in the flesh.

At that very moment – to hell ’n gone at the back of beyond – I realised that my children’s greatest fear had become a reality.

The whole world was laughing.