21/10/2026
The Person Who Made the Night
The storm hit at about nine. One moment we were watching the last of the sunset from our deck with a glass of w**e each, and the next the wind arrived like it had been late for something. The canvas snapped, the lanterns swung, and the sky turned a colour we can only describe as bruised.
Then the power went. Solar camps do not do storms well, and we found ourselves in the dark, in a tent that was breathing in and out, wondering what exactly we had paid for.
That was when we heard a soft cough outside and a voice say, “Madam, sir, I have tea.”
It was Elias, the night guide. He stood in the rain in a yellow poncho with a lantern in one hand and a flask in the other, looking completely unbothered, like a man who had met this storm before and found it a bit dramatic. He walked us to the main lodge, where a few other guests were huddled around a fire he had somehow kept alive in the middle of a downpour.
For the next two hours, the storm roared and Elias talked. He told us the thunder was just the sky clearing its throat. He explained how to tell a hyena’s whoop from a jackal’s yap, and why you should never leave your boots outside, because scorpions love a warm shoe. He even turned up the next morning with a UV torch to prove it. Scorpions glow electric blue under it. We have not stopped telling people.
Around midnight, the rain simply stopped. Elias stood up, switched off every light and said, “Come.”
We followed him out to the edge of camp, and we both forgot how to speak. The clouds had peeled back and the whole Milky Way was overhead, so thick and bright it looked spilled. Elias pointed and told us his grandmother’s version. She said the Milky Way was embers thrown into the dark by a girl who wanted the hunters to find their way home. He said it quietly, the way you tell something you were given and not something you read.
Nobody said a word. A jackal called somewhere out in the wet dark, and the air smelled like rain on hot sand, which might be our favourite smell on earth.
We have been to fancy places. We have eaten dinners with sommeliers and slept on linen that cost more than our first car. But the night we remember most was a storm, a flask of rusk soaked tea and a man in a yellow poncho who made a frightening night feel like the best seat in the house.
Here is what we took from it. A remote camp can give you the stars, the quiet and the food, but what you carry home is a person. Ask your guides for their stories. They are the best thing on the property.
Who made your best night away? Tell us in the comments.
ps Illustration made with AI, inspired by a real night in the bush.
