Image: Oliver Keohane
Oliver Keohane reflects on a powerful encounter with legendary explorer and humanitarian, Kingsley Holgate.
Kingsley Holgate has begun crafting his parting story to a small, eager audience. He is a master at it.
“The Cape of Needles, the flash of the lighthouse, where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic at the tip of our magnificent continent…”
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We have spent three days at Qwabi Game Reserve in Limpopo, courtesy of Defender, enthralled by the stories of Holgate and his son Ross, legendary modern-day explorers and Land Rover ambassadors whose humanitarian aid work has taken them through every country in Africa.
The group is gathered tightly around Holgate and I am right beside the mighty beard.
“Come in close, Ollie. I’ve got a Getaway story for you.
“Years ago, my good friend and then-editor of Getaway Magazine, Don Pinnock and I were at Cape Agulhas…”
Image: Jordan Milton/Defender
Holgate’s picture of the southernmost tip of Africa – where he and Ross once started a journey through to the northernmost tip of Europe – takes you right to the shore of the stormy coastline that took so many ships and lives. Forget the early morning sun beating down on the hectares of bush and the bonnets of the new Defenders waiting to take us back to Johannesburg; we are thousands of kilometers away on the stormy coast with Kingsley and his friend.
He pulls seven pebbles from his pocket.
“Let’s pretend that each one of these seven pebbles represents 10 summers. It’s much better to talk about summers rather than years, you know…palm trees bending in the wind in Zanzibar…the summers of life…
The story goes that Pinnock had asked Kingsley, “How long are you going to keep up the life of high adventure?” to which Holgate had shared with him the story that we were about to hear. I reached out to Don, who was kind enough to send me the record of that first conversation. Holgate said:
I had this friend who’d done well in life – owned a business, making pots of money. But he told me he was dissatisfied. All that stress and what for? I asked him how old he was and he said late 50s. We were on a beach and I picked up seven pebbles and put them in a row. I said to him: ‘This is your life.’ Then I took away five and threw them away. I said to him: ‘You’ve lived these. They’re gone. Nothing you can do about that.’
Then I took the last pebble and threw it away as well. I told him: ‘Not much you can do with the last 10 years of your life. Too old.’ He was staring hard at that last pebble, I can tell you. I picked it up and handed it to him. I said: ‘You have 10 good summers left. Put that pebble in your pocket. Finger it till it’s smooth with the sweat of your fingers. Put it next to your bed at night. Think about those summers. […]
You want to know what happened, don’t you? Well he sold up. Everything! He bought a farm in Zululand and he’s the happiest man I know. And when we meet, he says: ‘Kingsley, it’s that pebble that did it.’ You ask me when we’re going to stop travelling? I’m his age. I’ve got 10 good summers left – and by God I’m going to use them.”
Holgate, whose control over the cadence of a story is something to behold, recounts this interaction with Don and then lifts his tone, less serious all of a sudden, casually referencing another epic voyage.
“Anyway, I didn’t think more about it, we took off to circumnavigate Africa, track the outline; 33 countries, 449 days. Do you know, we got to the river, Ravuma river – that river that separates southern Tanzania from northern Mozambique, where all the shit is happening at the moment – and you cross on an old pontoon. We camp there the night. We see the lights of a car arriving and a big bloke gets out of the car, and he walks into the light of the camper. He introduces himself. He says, My name is John Wells.
“I said, ‘What brings you here? Your own vehicle, your own supplies, your own diesel, your own time, your own effort. What brings you here, brother?’ He says, ‘Well, I was reading the Getaway magazine, an article by a fellow called Don Pinnock.”
It was the article containing the story about the seven pebbles.
John Wells told Holgate he’d been following their progress on Facebook. Then he pulled a pebble out of his pocket and, says Holgate, told them: “You see, this pebble of mine is not perfect. I’ve just recovered from a serious stroke. But I’m realising now the value of time and doing good shit in your life.”
ALSO SEE: The Kingsley Holgate Foundation
Holgate lets the weight of the story settle. His style has become familiar over three days of listening. He is an expert.
“So it’s a reminder, isn’t it, that we travel through life – and if you drive an old Defender and you klap enough potholes and Mopane trees as you swerve off the road, the two wing mirrors, they look like spiders’ webs and they shake around, am I right? What do we learn? You learn to look through the windscreen at the road ahead.”
I was affected by the content of Holgate’s message but also by his delivery. Stories and good storytelling are fundamental to our experience of the world, and had Don Pinnock not had a similar belief, perhaps the story of the seven pebbles would have washed away at Cape Agulhas all those years ago.
Image: Jordan Milton/Defender
Thank you, Don. Thank you, Kingsley. The message rings true now more than ever, as the world spends most of its time with eyes cast down, thumbs engaged, and an ambient anxiety attached to the days.
I found it a novel and necessary perspective to look at our life in summers rather than decades, a wonderful reminder to treasure greatly the time we are given but not guaranteed…to look up and through the windscreen.
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