CHRISTOPHER'S STORY
From the wrong end of a rhino horn, to pen and paper
I was brought up in a small town on South Africa’s east coast called Mtunzini. Zebra trod along the streets, monkeys frequently played in our front garden and there was only one grocery store. I attended Mtunzini Primary School, the only school in town. But though it was small, the sports teams held their own against the bigger schools. After this, I went to high school at Grantleigh College, where my love for writing was fostered by some key English teachers.
I grew up wanting to become two things: an author and a nature field guide. Now, I’ve had the privilege of becoming both, and my debut novel THE BEASTS OF OLD is the marriage of both these passions.
A nature field guide is a bush expert who shares their knowledge with others. Many of the expert guides I met when I was a child appeared superhuman to me – able to identify any bird from its song, track down an animal from the faintest markings and catch the slightest signs of rare natural events in the act.
But one day changed everything. When I was just fifteen, whilst out on a game trail with an armed field guide, my family and I were ambushed by arguably the most dangerous animal in Africa – a black rhinoceros. We ducked for cover behind some bushes, but the guide stood to face the rampaging creature. Before he could get off a shot, the rhino smacked into him, flinging him into the bushes. His gun clattered uselessly from his grasp. Defenceless, we had no choice but to run for our lives.
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My grandfather, unfortunately, was slower than the rest of us. The rhino crashed into him, the horn spearing deep into his hamstring. He was thrown up, corkscrewing through the air before thumping down in a ditch, where he lay moaning for breath.
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At this point, the guide had somehow got back to his feet, winded but unscathed. He recovered his gun – but the rhino had returned to finish my grandfather off. It took the guide two gunshots, aimed just above the head, to scare the rhino into heading off its charge.
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My grandfather was in a dire state, writhing in agony as we made our way to him. He’d complained in ragged breaths that he was lying on his injured side, but as my dad turned him over, blood gushed out the gaping rhino-horn wound. With the severity of the situation dawning on us, my dad took off his shirt and stuffed the bloody hole. My brother and I could do nothing but pray; and so that’s what we did, hoping some divine intervention could save him.
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The guide radioed for an off-road vehicle to arrive, which eventually came and raced my grandfather off to the nearest hospital. His shoulder was broken, along with eight of his ribs. One of his broken ribs had punctured his lung, which needed to be inflated on the way there so it didn’t collapse entirely.
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The rhino-horn wound, we discovered as my grandfather lay in a hospital bed, was fortunately placed. If the horn had stabbed just an inch to the left, it would’ve severed his femoral artery – and he would’ve bled and died on that very spot. An inch to the right, however, would’ve seen that horn go straight through his spine, killing him even more quickly.
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My grandfather, Tim Tanser, recovering at Netcare The Bay Hospital, October 2016.
It was a miracle that both he and the guide survived that day. Even more miraculously, my grandfather played tennis and golf just one month after coming out of hospital!
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I said this encounter changed things for me – and it did. I was met with a chilling revelation. Although it was heroic of the guide to stand up and make a target of himself to the rhino, it was also his job to stand up. When you’re a guide, if something does go horribly wrong in a lion’s lair or amid an elephant herd, if somebody has to die that day – it’s you. And at fifteen, the weight of that responsibility seemed all too much.
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I no longer wanted to be a trails guide, and for the next few years of my schooling I instead pivoted towards environmental research. However, after I obtained a Bachelor of Science and Honours in Zoology at the University of Lincoln, I couldn’t deny that the African bush was calling me – so I moved to the Greater Kruger, faced my fears and trained to become a field guide.
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After many close shaves and exciting experiences with lions, elephants, buffaloes and even black rhinos, I developed a deeper connection with nature and acquired invaluable knowledge from many master trackers and bushcraft experts that I found myself surrounded by.
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Today, I’m thrilled to create action-packed novels for you to read; many of which are drawn from real bush stories from my years spent in the wilds of Southern Africa.
