Camping at Daan Viljoen Game Reserve – December 2006

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Dosendeckel-Doris

An ancient Land Rover wheezed from the office to the campsite. We were once again sitting with binoculars under our tree in Moon chairs and watched as the car turned into the campground and, looking for the best spot, passed us once back and forth. There were two women inside. The driver was a little elderly. Short, dark hair – one of the group! In the back seat (there was no passenger seat) sat a younger lady. The two built up their camp at the very end of the site. The camp consisted of a small tent (2 x 1.5 m base area, 50 cm high) and an infinite number of plastic bags, which were deposited in the Land Rover or around the tent. That was it. There was no camping table or chairs. Just the tent, the Land Rover and the plastic bags. Anita said: “They must love each other very much if they can live in such a small tent!” Security seemed slightly desperate, for how could he protect this mess from baboons and other thieves? The two stayed ten days – a little eternity for Daan Viljoen. The older lady was normal. In the morning she took a book covered in a newspaper under her arm and walked towards the swimming pool. She came back in the evening. Her partner was weird. Sometimes she would stand, her hands on her hips, at a different campsite and frown at the people there. Of course, she was asked if she could be helped. Then she went away silently. But that wasn’t the strangest thing. Mainly, she did two things: she did the laundry, or she spent the time in the sanitary facilities for ladies, diagonally opposite our site. We couldn’t explain why she had to do laundry every day. After all, there had to be spare clothes in the endless plastic bags. But she washed her clothes with devotion in the small laundry behind our afternoon tree. And she would sing to herself. And otherwise, she was in the toilets. There she usually sat in one of the three toilets (and never locked the door), babbling or singing. If you had to go to the bathroom, she would stop as soon as you entered the facility. You were now standing in front of three doors, and she was sitting behind the door you chose. By the babbling, humming and singing, the place had already become creepy anyway. But when you saw her sitting on the toilet (without her doing what you usually do there – she just sat there), you almost scared yourself to death. We were not at all at ease with the woman. Anita was reading a crime thriller at the time about dismembered corpses. Probably it was under the influence of what she had learned that made her say: “We must be careful where we put the lids of the cans. If we’re not careful, she’ll cut our throats with such a sharp lid!” Since then we called the young woman “Dosendeckel-Doris” which translated means “Can Lid Doris.” At another time Anita went to the toilet. This time Doris wasn’t in the lavatory. She had deposited all kinds of things in a cubicle, but she was standing in front of the three washbasins. She balanced on her right foot. The left one she bathed in one of the three basins. She herself was in front of the second and had foam in front of her mouth: she was brushing her teeth. When Anita wanted to wash her hands after going to the toilet, she noticed that Doris had meanwhile taken her things from the other toilet cubicle and had deposited them in the third washbasin. So Anita had to wash her hands at the tap at the camp.

(No, in the picture Dosendeckel-Doris is not to be seen, but the sanitary facilities, about which this is about) When her friend came home from the swimming pool in the evening, Doris also went back to their campsite. Usually anyway. One evening Anita and I went to shower like we always did. We always followed the same procedure. There were three shower cubicles, two of which worked. One of them was quite big and had, behind a little protective wall, a small bench where one could put one’s things. The other one didn’t. Anita always went into the shower cubicle with the bench. Meanwhile, I went into the largest of the three toilet cabins, which also had its wash basin. There I had sufficient room to get undressed, and dressed and the clothes didn’t get wet there. There I undressed and then went over to the shower cubicle, showered and dried myself and then changed again in the toilet cubicle. I do not want to go into more detail on our shower logistics. One evening we came to the sanitary facilities. It was dark. We were so occupied looking for the light switch that we only noticed that someone was singing when we were already standing in front of the shower cubicles. Doris was sitting in one of the toilets again. In the dark. And sang. Of course in “my” toilet cabin, which I used for changing. Anita was quite shocked to hear Doris so late, took a quick step into her shower cubicle and locked the door with a loud bang. And left me alone with that lunatic! She did not notice that I had turned around and went out again and into another, more distant sanitary facility to take a shower there. There only half as much of the taps functioned, but at least I didn’t have to be afraid of Dosendeckel-Doris there. Anita took a shower. It had become very quiet in the sanitary facilities. She heard nothing but her own shower. My shower didn’t splash, and Doris had also stopped singing. “Schatzi?” she said. “Schatzi, are you there?” Deathly silence. Anita looked at the floor to see if any blood was flowing in under the partition. But it was just water from her own shower. She did not dry herself off at all but put on her pyjamas quickly. She dispensed with oral hygiene for the time being. One can do that in the campsite. There was no one at the campsite. I’d gone to another bathroom. When I returned to our camp freshly showered and with my teeth brushed, Anita was very relieved. She had already thought about how she could find Security in the middle of the night. Since this experience, we also preferred to go to the other sanitary facilities during the day when we knew that Doris was sitting again in the one closest to us. We never exchanged a word with Dosendeckel-Doris.