19 Apr 2016

Nobody knows the day they will slip from this realm into ‘eternity,’ let alone the instrument that will propel their journey into the unknown ‘other side’.

Keoagile Kooitse, 31, and Mompati, his elder brother of Mmapekanyane cattle post near Kanye recently experienced, first hand, what the Setswana expression, dikgoka tsa nare (the aggression of a buffalo), really mean. The duo attest that they were on the brink of meeting their ‘creator’ as a raging buffalo pounced on him. What reversed their fate that appeared a done deal is inexplicable right to this day.

What seemed a relaxed Sunday morning for the brothers, who were out looking for cattle, quickly degenerated into a fiasco. The two had only proceeded three kilometres into the forest when suddenly a strange bellow thundered from the thickets. 

Upon lifting up their countenances and fixing their eyes towards the direction of the sound, a charged buffalo appeared from behind the cliff of a rock. Its intents clear as day - it was out to cause harm. “It just pounced from behind a rock in the midst of the thicket and wasted no time. 

It immediately locked its front legs, fixed its eyes on us and pursued us at a blistering speed. All this happened very fast,” Keoagile said as he recounted his ordeal to BOPA recently.The two, who were at this point in sixes and sevens, retreated in reverse motion before turning their back to run for dear life while reverberating ijoo mma wee! Ijoo mma wee! - A desperate cry for help one can only get from a mother. 

In fact, it was Mompati who cried for help as Keoagile was quickly losing any hope of surviving the ordeal.

Initially, the animal pursued Mompati, who upon seeing the beast closing in on him, threw himself full force on the undergrowth. In the process, the ranging buffalo lost track of Mompati, who just lay prostrate under the thickets for the whole dilemma to diffuse and hopefully come out alive.However, it was clear danger was not yet averted. 

The beast immediately went for Keoagile, who upon realising his legs were becoming heavy and not able to carry him any faster, instinctively employed the brother’s survival strategy, not by throwing his weight under the thickets, but by nose-diving into a motlhakola bush, from which he emerged with scratches all over his body. 

“The two dogs that accompanied us were faithful all this time and followed right behind and did their best to disturb the buffalo,” Keoagile expounds, narrating how the beast missed him by a whisker when it went flying past his body as he lay cocooned by the motlhakola branches. 

As the dogs-turned-heroes battled it out with the beast at a safe distance, Keoagile gathered all the strength he could afford to emerge from the motlhakola tree and searched for his brother.

Upon reunion, the two brothers resolved to proceed uphill where they did the unthinkable once they reached the peak. They literally cried unto their God for mercy and protection.“Ga ke motho a rapela go le motlhofo. Go ne go le maswe. Ke itse nare fela mo ditshwantshong.” (I am not a normally praying person. It was hard. I know a buffalo only from pictures,) explained Keoagile.

As if coming face to face with a raging buffalo was not enough an ordeal, the Kooitse brothers had a hard time convincing both police and wildlife officials about their find when they reported the matter. It is perhaps understandable since Zone 11 has never been a known habitat for animal species such as buffaloes.

Wildlife officers had to draw an assortment of pictures depicting wild animals for the two brothers to identify before they could embark on a journey to Mmapekanyane cattle post, where upon arrival they were dismayed to find tracks resembling those of a buffalo. 

Request to have Keoagile escort Botswana Press Agency team to the scene was met with resistance from the former. The incident remains etched in his mind. He insists he will not relent to the idea of going into the bush at any point in his life, not even if he is promised a handsome cheque.

His grandmother, Keabonye Karima, also clearly reeling from the shock, shunned the idea of having Keoagile return to the bush.“Magaleng ga go boelwe gabedi. Dikgomo tseo di ka mpa tsa jewa ke naga,” she said, meaning, (It is a bad idea to revisit a dangerous place, it is better to lose the herd than to lose a life,) 

How did a buffalo find its way here? This question and many others linger in the minds of many Batswana. Particularly worrying is that buffaloes are known carriers of a virus that causes Foot and Mouth Disease. Zone 11 comprises of, among others; Southern, Kweneng, South East and Kgatleng districts, is vast and boasts of about 700 000 cattle population, according to officials from the Ministry of Agriculture.

From time immemorial, the area has been classified as a green zone and mainstay of Botswana’s meat industry. The presence of buffaloes in this area is therefore rightly a cause for concern to both the farmers and the government alike. Ends