Welcome To The Weekend With.... Bruce Brislin

Today we welcome Bruce Brislin the author of You Can’t Drink Diamonds. In his own words he tells us a summary of his life that is just as fascinating as the book he has written. A short excerpt of his book will follow.

Bruce, as a little boy, on the banks of the Zambezi in 1949.

I was born in Bulawayo (then Rhodesia) in February 1946. My Dad was a District commissioner and we moved about the country regularly on routine transfers. In consequence I spent most of my school days in boarding schools. Many of the places my Dad worked were pretty remote - the first time I lived in a house with electricity I was already nine years old and then there was no indoor plumbing. From an early age my only sister and I would accompany my parents when my Dad was involved in a 'patrol' as the routine administrative visits to the outlying areas were known. Before I was five I had been on several 'Zambezi Patrols'. I was schooled in Rhodesia and did Geology at Rhodes University in South Africa but dropped out due to lack of funds after my second year.

Nov 1947 Botswana- ECW, his maternal grandfather about 1/2 hr after being mauled by one of the lions.

My first job was diamond prospecting in the Limpop Valley. It involved walking and collecting samples from stream beds. We averaged around 20 miles a day six days a week and often had to carry up to four sample bags - (at 18lbs weight each when full). I then worked for the Rhodesian Mines Department for a few years. This was interrupted by call-ups to serve in the forces during the Bush War. In 1969 I moved to Botswana and worked for the Geological Survey. I was there for five years and was involved in the National Gravity Survey in which we travelled almost every road and track in the country as well as a lot of off-road travel, gathering gravimetric and magnetic data. At one of my camps I narrowly escaped being taken by a pride of lions. I met my wife in Botswana. She was a teacher out on a UK aid program contract at a school in Lobatse where we lived. We left Botswana with our daughter in 1974 to return to Rhodesia and set up a groundwater survey consultancy. Sadly military commitments meant I was in uniform in the operational areas for more time than I was working at the business and I had to drop the business. I then joined the Rhodesian Geological survey but again spent most of the time in the forces. We left Rhodesia and moved to the UK in late 1976. My son was born in December.

Pictured here are Bruce and his wife, Maggie on a hill above the first school ever built in Botswana.

This is his daughter Rebecca with a cheetah taken in 1997

Within six weeks of arriving I joined the United Geophysical Corp's crew in the Sudan and worked there for five years on a six and two basis. Much of the area we worked in was pristine wilderness and doubtlessly had seldom been visited by Europeans. The project ended when war broke out between the Muslim North and the Christian South in the early 80's. We had three of the crew shot and killed by rebels one night.

An oil painting he did of his camp on the Thamalakane River in Okavango Delta.

After the Sudan I worked at marketing geophysical equipment across Europe and elsewhere for several companies, the last of which I eventually took over. I sold the company after just two years, spent a year or two writing and then bought most of the shares in a groundwater consultancy in Botswana.

A friend wandering on the Makgadikgadi salt Pan in Botswana.

Botswana had changed a lot since the first time I was there and corruption was rife, albeit at a fairly low level. My first job there was to put in water supplies for elephant in a remote area adjacent to the Zimbabwe Border. It was a dream job but sadly I was only awarded one more big Government contract and could not break even on the small private jobs afterwards. The main problem was collecting payments for work done. The largest private job I did broke me. I could not get the money out of the politician who had commissioned the work and coupled to this I had reported a tax collector for trying to bribe me. He lost his job, had a suspended sentence and a heavy fine but his friends in the tax office took umbrage and began to make life a misery for me. We decided to cut our losses and quit Botswana. We had lost just about everything and returned to the UK where, at 54 years of age finding work proved to be all but impossible. My wife did supply teaching and market research for a while while I wrote and eventually we began working in catalogue sales which we are still doing although I still spend more time writing and painting these days.

I have started a new book - my seventh, I think. I will call it Rhodesian Requiem and it is a fascinating project for me. The plan is to present the events that led to the Bush War in Rhodesia and all that has happened since from the point of view af all the major races and sectors of society involved. It is not easy since I was very much involved with the European settler's side of things but I am really enjoying trying to look at the history from the other side objectively. I guess it is like trying to see 9/11 from the bomber's point of view. I'll probably get my hands smacked sharply but, what the Hell! Give it a go.



Best wishes,
Bruce.

You Can’t Drink Diamonds excerpt:

(this excerpt picks up a day into the hunt for a leopard who has been terrorizing local villages, killing livestock and a small boy. The hunting party has set up camp for the night and is enjoying the wild boar they captured for their dinner. I think it is a great example at how astute Bruce is at setting the tone and giving the reader a feel for the environment the character’s are in.)

Dikhela drew a small oilstone from his pouch and stropped the already razor-sharp assegai he carried. Lightning flashed in the distance and the thunder rolled magnificently over the flatland that formed the Okavango Delta. A gentle breeze that had been blowing briefly died as night settled in. The night-sounds took over from the silence of the day. Baboons shrieked and barked in the distance as they squabbled over safe perches in the trees and the francolins called noisily from their cover. Somewhere in the distance a turkey buzzard sounded off its deep, slow drum roll.

“Lehututu You hear him, Harry?” Dikhela asked using the Setswana word for the great birds

“I think he is wishing us goodnight.”

“We will sleep much better when this business is done,” Dikhela replied, “Despite his wishes. I dislike this business with leopards.”

“Ja, it’s a bugger.”

“Pity we didn’t get him earlier. Some more liver?”

“No thanks, I have had enough. What was that?”

Dikhela shrugged. He had also heard the sound but it was too soft and indistinct to identify. He helped himself to some charred tripe, smacking his lips as he consumed it. “Maybe he’s watching us even now.”

Harry involuntarily glanced about, knowing it was futile but incapable of resisting, “Maybe, did you see something?”

“No, but I can feel his eyes, Morena. I think he is watching us.” Harry moved uncomfortably. He had long since stopped ignoring Dikhela’s ‘feelings.’ Brian also sensed the tension.

A jackal yelped in the distance and was answered by several others from different quarters. The turkey buzzard drummed again and somewhere a leopard coughed. Neither of them made a comment but Harry checked his load. It might have been their leopard but from the direction the grunt had come this was unlikely. Besides, that particular leopard had long since learned that silence in the presence of men was almost as good a cover as darkness.

Dikhela drew some dark pigtail tobacco from his pocket and rubbed it in his horny hands before rolling it into patch of brown wrapping paper. If they were hunting antelope he would never have done so. The smell would certainly have spooked them but with the leopard he felt it better to advertise their presence and rely upon its curiosity, anger or fear to either close with them or clear off. He licked the rolled paper, closed the cigarette and placed it between his lips before picking up a live coal between his fingers and lighting the homemade cigarette from it. Idly he flipped the coal back into the fire and drew deeply, sighing with pleasure at the rank smoke. He hissed as he exhaled and spat a tiny bit of the ‘Magaliesberg shag’ from the tip of his tongue. The clouds were gathering in the distance but above them the stars were resplendent in their beauty. Harry yawned and settled down with his back to the fire, not far from where Dikhela was sitting, also facing away. Brian sat on the ground facing the fire.

“Do you remember what I once told you about leopards, Morena?” Dikhela asked while his eyes passed over the bush around them. He seemed in a reflective mood. He spoke to Harry in either Setswana or in Afrikaans. Harry was fluent in both languages but Dikhela could speak almost no English. He could not read either but had learned to recognise some place names and understood maps.

“You mean about the fact that before they come at you they move one step sideways?”

“You remember well. The lion of course, comes straight without any step aside but he is not as cunning. A hasty shot before the charge often misses a leopard, a lion less so.”

“What are you getting at, Dikhela?”

“Nothing really. Just that some leopards are left handed and some right handed. It is well to let them come close before shooting.”

“Why do you keep telling me these things?”

“For you to remember, I shall not be here forever It is important that I tell you all I can while I am still living.”

“Ha. The only way you’ll die will be by the hands of a jealous husband.”

Dikhela chuckled at this, “Perhaps He would have to be very quick though. And you, Harry, you have no wife yet.” It seemed as if he meant to ask why.

“I am patient. My time will come.” Harry replied answering the unsaid question.

“Indeed. There is a time for all things Listen, can you hear it?” Dikhela asked suddenly, alarming both Brian and Harry.

“Hear what?”

“Listen, it is the silence,” Dikhela whispered, “Can you hear it?”

“Loudly,” Harry replied grumpily.


Bruce, Thank you so much for sharing with us your history, wonderful photos and an excerpt from your book.  Click this link to purchase his book The Wanderer .