Some people have a born talent for art or making money. My brother Terry had a born talent for dealing with people.

He made friends easily, wherever he happened to be, and kept them.

In Umtata, where we grew up, everybody knew Terry Ryan. If they knew me at all, I was Terry Ryan’s little brother.

Terry played cricket and rugby. I played the piano. Terry was the cadet bugler at Remembrance Day parades.

He played the Last Post and people cried.

Terry was dark-haired, good-looking and gregarious. I was red-haired and shy. Because of the difference in our natures, Terry seemed to believe that he was his brother’s keeper.

That belief may have been fuelled by two events in our early childhood.

When I was four, I was the passenger on Terry’s tricycle. Down our street, he rode into a drain and I broke my arm. Seven years later, I broke my femur badly playing backyard rugby with his friends.

But on my first day of school, I walked into the playground to find that the older boys had arranged a fight for me.

My opponent was my brother. I flailed at him with both arms. Terry just stood there. The boys tried to goad him into retaliating but he wouldn’t.

Terry didn’t mind looking foolish as long as I looked good.

That need to protect me extended way beyond school. In 1961, I met up with Terry and some friends here today for a protracted tour of Europe. My brother and I had been out of touch for some years.

We got to Pamplona in time for the fiesta of San Fermin. On the night before the first bullfight, Terry took me aside.

“I don’t want you to run with the bulls tomorrow,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because, knowing you, you’re bound to get gored.”

“Hang on,” I said. “I ran with the bulls two years ago. Three times!”

During that week, some of us were drawn into a fight in Pamplona’s main bar. The police came. Terry had dozed off in a corner after a long day watching matadors. Somebody woke him to say that his brother was being carted off to jail by the Garda Civilia. Terry ran out and banged on the doors of the Black Maria.

So they picked him up too.

After we both were married, we saw each other sporadically. We would meet if we lived in the same area. But there were years when we had no contact at all, apart from a phone call on birthdays or at Christmas.

Yet, occasionally, Terry would call with news. They were bulletins from a proud father. Brett was playing Benson and Hedges cricket. Dean and Chad were doing well overseas. Morag was turning into a fine athlete. He had another lovely granddaughter.

Two years ago, after Terry’s massive operation, we started calling each other regularly. I really came to look forward to those conversations.

For one thing it was good to be reassured that I was right about certain matters.

Such as: That all French referees were in the pay of the New Zealand Rugby Union.

That T20 cricket was destroying Test batsmanship.

But, above all, to know that my brother’s agile mind was still alive and well.

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Survival is a constant battle in Africa. Many – perhaps most – Africans struggle to survive against one thing or another. Hunger, factional warfare, pestilence like malaria and tuberculosis. And, most recently, AIDS.

Generally, they are perceptible dangers. This is not about those. This is about survival against the elements and the odds and the unknown which, on the Dark Continent, lurks in manifold shadows.

Years ago, in Mozambique, I interviewed a young Portuguese girl who had an astounding tale to tell about survival. So astounding was it that I did not at first believe her. But, after checking her story against unequivocal facts, I had to accept that she was telling the truth.

She was sailing on a yacht with her parents on the edge of the Mozambique Channel, north of the island on Inhaca, when a freak storm struck. The vessel was swamped and sank before the family could secure their lifejackets or inflate the rubber dinghy.

The 13-year-old girl found herself alone in the ocean. She tried to swim but had no idea where the land lay. All she knew was that it was very far.

Exhausted and barely conscious, she suddenly discovered that she was being transported through the water. Several porpoises, bottle-nosed dolphins, had come to her rescue, bearing her weight as they swam.

The porpoises seemed to know precisely where they were headed. They nudged her against a navigational buoy and continued to swim around her while she clung to it. Then they left.

The buoy was in the middle of the main shipping channel east of Lourenco Marques, now Maputo. Not two hours later, the girl was spotted by the crew of a fishing boat and taken aboard.

Port authorities in Lourenco Marques had received a Mayday signal from the yacht before it sank. The skipper, the girl’s father, gave a position ten miles north-east of where she was found on the buoy. There was no way she could have swum that distance, in those seas, unassisted.

From One Man’s Africa