The Laager

Every evening in the savannah, it is the same. The roaming band has to organise for the night. A temporary shelter to protect itself from predators, animals or otherwise. As they move tomorrow, nothing too fancy, and mainly relying greatly on the individuals in the group. That was then, at the dawn of humanity. Millenia later, settler convoys in the Far West and the Far South would circle their covered wagons for the night, dreaming of the new lands at the end of the trail. Dutch speaking settlers simply called that a laager, a camp. The laager is a defence, a society, a community and a way of life.

Humanity has been on the road since the dawn of time. Long before we enjoyed tilling fields and raising cattle, we were a roaming band of mammals, humans or something about to be humans. Here we were, a thin herd trudging towards the horizon. Until we reached our destination, we would settle down every night. That rhythm is coded in our genes. What it means, what we have to do, resonates with us at a core level: trekking has to be our natural state of being. Even before we had to win our bread by the sweat of our brow, the Promised Land could only be reached if we survived the trek.

Maybe one day we will revise human history, and the above will not be the immanent Truth anymore, but, until then, organising a camp for the night is a primary human activity.

The laager. The camp. You start with defining what is “inside” the camp and “outside”. That means first and foremost who. Who is inside, and who is not. No need to know more than that. You share resources, duties and trust to reach your goal. The only rationale is to survive the darkness tonight. We sit it out together. It is that primal. The rest is optional, your construct. Traders have travelled around the world since the dawn of mankind with that very basic understanding.

By the early 20^th century, this had been made into a myth. The plucky pioneers making their way in their wagons was the stuff of legends, from the Far West to the Far South.

For the last part of the 19^th century, humanity had been on the road. Sure, for gold, diamonds and new pastures. The beginning of the 20^th was the romance of cowboys, gauchos and Boers, the romance of the trail. The pioneer spirit that would become a foundation myth in films, novels, even musicals.

When it was retold then, the saga of the Great Trek was never truly told as one of colonisation. It certainly was, with lands and mines and gold and diamonds.

But its idealisation, the Frontier Spirit, the Spirit of the Laager, came to define it. That was an epic worth telling. Plucky farmers toiling for their freedom against the mercantile Federation, sorry, Empire, making their own destiny on the fringe of society. Defending their freedom, through sheer ingenuity, resilience, self-reliance, against the encroaching forces. And winning. China collapsed in 55 days during the Boxer Rebellion. The British Army had to invent concentration camps to crush the Boer militia after 3 years. Star Wars in the plains.

If you just listened to the sub-titles, my family felt they had lived that romance of the Frontier, of the Laager.

It was all subliminal: books on the shelves, a word dropped, a photo of 18 oxen wagons kept incongruously. Books that looked like the Little House in the Prairie, Mafeking edition. Photos of Kafue hunts developed in Bulawayo. Mythical train stops with names such as Broken Hill – next stop Tombstone. My family souls are trekking across the sparkling skies of Gondwana, the rolling hills of viridian green, the primordial waterfalls.

That is the basic truth watermarked in my soul.

Never taught, never explained, never said. Just lived and breathed. Travelling is destiny. Gather a circle of travel companions. Live. Build a self-reliant entity to survive the night that will fall. Circle the wagons so that who’s inside endures. Life is transactional. Love, belief, trust? Your personal choice, your nice to have.

Your chosen duty is to the laager.

But only if it has a point: a destination.

Without that destination, why would there be a convoy at all? The wagons need to move on, else they wither and die. That is their very nature; they were ever meant to be temporary accommodations. Every year, at the end of the long grey year, the sorority would pack the cars with trunks and supplies for the Great Annual Holiday. Except, by then, there was no new horizon, no new tomorrow, just waiting for life to happen, retelling old sagas and rewinding old shaky movies. Until it all collapsed in a puff of dry dust.

The Spirit of the Frontier was still glowing, but dusty embers were dying out.

If it does not move on, it is not a laager, but a resident circus, a shell of what it once was. A dying daydream. A ghost of what it can be. Forget the wagons, it is the people inside that make the laager. It is their hopes and dreams and duty to make it happen.

The Africa trunks are now empty.

The albums have been scanned and shared. The movies digitalised and stored. The chronology is there. The story board is laid out. What was earlier dots now merges into a sharper picture.

The story comes into focus.

Tomorrow morning, we will re-limber the wagons, the yokes will jingle, the cows will low, the wheels will start turning in groans and squeaks. We will roll on. Until the next laager.

Until then, I will take a break for the summer.

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