A residential veld school on 1 400 hectares of Waterberg bushveld, forty minutes out of Vaalwater. Grade 4 to Grade 9, school groups only, March to October.
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The camp is on the Melkrivier road, on a bushveld farm the Steenkamps have run since 1968. There is a boma, a kitchen, four dormitory rooms, a washhouse with cold water and a classroom with no walls. Hannes Steenkamp and Nolwazi Mabaso take every camp themselves. There is never more than one school on the property at a time, and there is no signal past the second gate.
Every learner walks a bearing on day two and finds the beacon without help.
Sixty species grow here. They learn twelve, by leaf and by bark, not off a worksheet.
Then an hour flat on our backs on the airstrip with the star charts.
Three for Grade 4 to 6, five for Grade 7 to 9. Arrivals Monday or Wednesday.
One school, one group, one guide. Teachers sleep in the house and keep their evenings.
Meals, bedding, first aid, indemnity forms. You bring the learners and a class list.
Grade 8 and 9 spend two of their five nights off the property. They carry their own water and food up onto the sandstone ridge, sleep out in bivvy bags, and come down the Doringspruit on the fourth day. Twenty-two kilometres over three days, a guide in front and a guide behind, and no vehicle past the last gate. It is not a hike with a view at the end. It is three days of navigating, cooking and getting on with each other.
Twelve at a time is the whole point. Two of my quiet ones were talking by the second night.
The kit list is one page and it is honest. Not one child arrived in the wrong shoes.
Hannes phoned me a fortnight before to ask about the peanut allergy. Nobody else does that.
Four groups over three years. Same programme, same guides, and they still remember our school.
The five-night walk changed how our Grade 8s speak to one another. Worth the bus on its own.
One invoice, no extras at the gate, and the indemnity forms came back sorted before we left.
Duiker Veldskool Melkrivier road, Vaalwater 0530, Limpopo 014 755 4218 · 082 337 6041 boekings@duiker.co.za We answer early and again after five — the rest of the day we are out with a group.