Stories from Marataba: Babe the Bushpig

“Woven into this dream are a host of characters in the Marataba web of life. In the last post, I mentioned a bush pig that had had a run in with Lightning, our “friendly” leopard. It was a male bush pig, silver in colour, who, since the incident, had been a frequent visitor to our ‘garden’ – a loose term as we are in the middle of the bush with only a two-strand elephant wire around us. Much more frequent, to the point of never missing a night, was his female companion, a striking, rich chestnut, black and white bush pig. The male we called Spok and the female, unoriginally, Babe.”