We had been on the road for two solid days, travelling from Pretoria and Windhoek. Heiko Schmidt had made the journey all the way from Berlin, Germany, his sixth attempt with Carsten Möhle to find the Lost Battlefield of the Kalahari.

With Carsten and Heiko in their Landcruiser were Chief Hanse and Benno Hanse, representatives of the Namibia KharaKhoen Namas and descendants of the very people who had fled to this area early in 1908. This time the Germans and the Namas shared a common goal, and vehicle I might add.

With their Hilux Double Cab laden like an African taxi, Ben and Xander van Wyk made it it through the thick sand that separated Sesatswe from Hukuntsi the nearest village, some 160 kilometres away. At Lokgwabe I had picked up Nichodimas Cooper and another of his tribesmen, Patrick, in my brand new Landcruiser. In the sponsored Mitsubishi Triton Jan Harm Robbertse, renowned film maker and his assistant Mauritz Pienaar had also arrived.

(Along the way from Pretoria I had realised that due to some last minute withdrawals from the team we were in trouble as far as supplies and transport had been concerned and I made a few frantic calls. Eventually one of the strongest women I know, Helene Buckley came to my rescue. She would arrive two days later in my 20 year old “Kameel’ also a Hilux Double Cab.)

Finally we were at our destination, our base camp at Sesatswe on the Polentswa Wilderness trail. We were going to spend the next week in that vicinity conducting searches. We were going to do visual searches on foot as well as using special metal detectors brought by the Van Wyks.

After setting up camp it was time to move to the edge of the Sesatswe pan for Old Brown Sherry sundowners, a real Carsten Möhle tradition.

This blog is about my book with the title The Scourge of the Kaiserbird and starts with Day 1, posted on 1 April 2018. That followed on “Dag 91: Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland“,  my 91 blog posts about the original Afrikaans version. In October I will be taking an expedition to locate the battlefield described in Chapter 37 of the book. My blogs are currently focusing on this great battle.

“The Scourge of the Kaiserbird,” originally published in Afrikaans as “Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland,” is available from all leading bookstores in Namibia, through Namibian Book Market, and in South Africa from Upper Case, formerly Graffiti, in Menlyn Maine. Copies can also be ordered from kosiemarais@gmail.com  It is available on Kindle and worldwide in paperback from Amazon. Visit my Amazon author’s site by clicking on https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07HFTTQ2B where you can also place orders.