The motto of the Eastern Wilderness School survival training centre is Semper Paratus, Latin for "always ready." For founder Shane Engelbrecht, survival is much more than gear and skills, however. It is a mindset that one can apply to the rest of one's life.
The motto of the Eastern Wilderness School survival training centre is Semper Paratus, Latin for "always ready." For founder Shane Engelbrecht, survival is much more than gear and skills, however. It is a mindset that one can apply to the rest of one's life.
Shane Engelbrecht picks me up in town and we drive out to the Thomas Baines Nature Preserve, where he conducts his classes.
Engelbrecht founded the Eastern Wilderness School in 2006, the culmination of a long passion for wilderness survival that began with his early interest in hunter-gatherer and nomadic societies. He was inspired by the way in which they managed to live in balance with the environment around them, largely by necessity.
Engelbrecht studied Anthropology at Rhodes and focused on the San in Botswana and the Ovahimba in Namibia. He has spent time camping out in the bush, near their settlements, to learn from them.
The Eastern Wilderness School offers Basic and Advanced survival courses, and creates specialised programmes for groups, ranging from emergency response personnel to pilots. The culmination of the course is a simulated survival situation, in which the group puts their skills to test in a remote part of the Eastern Cape bush.
Engelbrecht and the other instructors are always nearby, but finding food and shelter is up to the students. While we drive, Engelbrecht talks passionately, urgently even, on a number of topics, from what the government should be doing to protect the rights of hunter-gatherers to the problems with land-reform in post-apartheid South Africa.
One gets the sense that he is constantly chewing on these questions and is eager for the chance to clear his mind. Engelbrecht shows the same enthusiasm when he talks about his work, but he wears an easy grin instead of a furrowed brow.
In a world smitten with technology, the natural environment is for Engelbrecht still the ultimate source of wonder. If there is a theme to everything he says, be it about politics or the wilderness, it is interconnectedness.
All of us are connected to each other and to the environment, and when we fail to protect what is vulnerable in nature, we put ourselves in a dangerous situation. To make people more conscientious about the environment, Engelbrecht says, give them greater exposure to it. "We have to educate people at a younger age and not teach them that this is a dangerous, or a bad, or a scary environment," he says.
Engelbrecht remembers co-facilitating for Xhosa-speaking school groups with Siyabonga Mthathi, who is no longer with the school. He loved working with Mthathi, but the level of enthusiasm among the students was often disappointing.
"Why are you showing us this? We're not interested in this – we want to know how to use Excel on the computer," Engelbrecht imagines them thinking. "We want to get our driver's licence. We don't want to know how to navigate through the bush – we're never going to come back here, we don't want to come back here."
Engelbrecht acknowledges that survival training like that which he offers is often seen as a frivolous luxury, particularly in a bad economy. Costs for the basic weekend course begin at R 1 250, and the advanced course is R 3 500.
Yet, he believes that the experience can reactivate what humankind sometimes seems to lack, which is a basic appreciation for the planet's scarce resources. "What's the importance of water? After you haven't drunk water for six hours, then you'll know: well, I won't pollute the water environment again. It's absolutely essential. No water, no life."
As we approach the gate to the reserve, Engelbrecht waves to the woman at the guard booth and greets her in fluent isiXhosa. Engelbrecht spent a portion of his early life living in the Transkei, back when it was still a homeland. His parents were specialists, working for the Transkeian government. "My life was much less compartmentalised than that of the average white South African," he says.
Engelbrecht shows me a couple areas in the reserve, then parks the bakkie and pulls an assortment of sticks and a large bag of dry grass out of the back. We settle under a tree where an assortment of squat survival huts stand around from his last class.
They don't look exactly comfortable, but on a cold night you'd be happy to have one for shelter. Engelbrecht says that people sometimes ask if he is like Bear Grylls, the British television personality known for his survival-themed programmes, and his response is an emphatic "No!"
"You say survival, and people think Rambo, camouflage, machete on the belt, all that. Nothing like that, nothing at all," he says, shaking his head. "Survival for me is every day, it's a mindset. The things you need in survival are the things you need in everyday life. You need to be able to think on your feet. You need to have self-reliance. You need leadership. All these things are what you use in a survival situation."
Self-challenge is a cornerstone of Engelbrecht's work, as well as his life. He and a friend once spent a week on the beach near Port Alfred in a Robinson Crusoe-style survival challenge – not something most people would do willingly.
As I watch, Engelbrecht demonstrates several methods of making fire, a skill that is essential for survival. "Without fire? You'll freeze to death. It cooks your food, disinfects your water, keeps the nasties away – the big game. I mean, the last thing you need is to be someone's supper."
His demonstration progresses from ancient to modern, from what our ancestors once used in caves to what today's world militaries give to their soldiers. After the lesson, Engelbrecht lets me have a go with the sticks.
The idea is this: as you spin the fire drill in your hands, it rubs against the fire board, and you gradually grind out a small pile of charred wood dust. As the dust accumulates, the temperature rises, and if you can keep it up long enough you'll end up with a little glowing ember which you can use to light your kindling – in our case, dry grass.
Here goes: I lean into it and manage to create some pretty good smoke before I give up, arms worn out and hands cruelly blistered. The ember is elusive for today. Engelbrecht has a good-natured laugh. "You'll get it," he says, and at the end of my visit he leaves me with a set of sticks so I can try again when my hands have recovered.
The UN estimates that just over half of the world's population lives in an urban setting. For South Africa the number is above 60%. Urbanisation is steadily progressing, but Engelbrecht argues that when we spend time in the fast-dwindling natural environment, when we temporarily put aside technology and consumer society, through our bodies and our basic physical needs we can reaffirm our connection to the planet.
The environment is not something we can afford to lose. "If you take away this, you take away the soul of people," Shane says.
