Saudi Arabia in August is almost unbearable as relentless waves of heat blow across the desert. Although I’ve been here for five years, the summer heat still gets to me, so I decide it’s time to go back to Africa. I’ve always heard that South Luangwa National Park in Zambia is one of Africa’s most pristine wildlife strongholds, teeming with lions, leopards, elephants and hippos. I’d never been to Zambia, so I decide to check it out and see what it’s all about.
I book a flight, reserve a tent at a camp in the park and figure I’ll just wing the rest. I’ve rarely been accused of overthinking my adventures (sounds like a great quote for my obituary) and have a tendency to charge off on these little trips a bit haphazardly.
I fly out of King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and arrive several hours later at Bole Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Bole airport, a cultural transit hub linking Africa to the world, really appeals to the global citizen in me. Brightly dressed West Africans, East African Muslims in thobes, modestly adorned Indian women and droves of Chinese businessmen fill the arrival and departure halls.
I happen to be transiting through Bole during the hajj, the annual pilgrimage undertaken by millions of Muslims worldwide to the holy city of Mecca. Thousands of Africa’s Muslims are here, waiting for flights to Saudi Arabia to undertake this important commandment of their faith. Every color, faith and creed is on display here.
After browsing the duty-free stores and drinking great Ethiopian coffee, I catch my flight to Lusaka, Zambia. I arrive at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport, and wait for an hour for customs officers to arrive and issue visas.
I overhear first-time visitors to the continent grumbling about how disorganized the arrival process is and that it would not be tolerated in Brussels or Frankfurt. I grin and remember TIA — This is Africa. Africa works on its own schedule and hurries for no one — you get used to it.
After clearing customs, I dash to the domestic terminal to catch my bush flight to South Luangwa. I board an immaculately clean ProFlight 12-seat aircraft, and immediately fall asleep as we taxi for take-off. After a flight I don’t remember, my plane arrives at Mfuwe International Airport, a somewhat pretentious title for this small bush airport. A driver greets me in the arrival area, and we jump into his van and set off. I lower the van’s window, and the earthy smells of Africa make me smile. It’s good to be back.
I arrive at the lodge bone-tired and hungry. I find the lodge bar, order a Mosi, the local brew made in Zambia, and settle in for a few drinks. Bars like this are common at African lodges, and this one is no different: young British students on a gap year adventure, a couple of Australian guys who teach at a local school, European families on safari, and deeply tanned white Zambians who work in the safari industry.
I love bars like this, but tonight I just want to get away from the crowd and relax. So, I grab another beer and walk to the river, where the night watchman has started a fire. I strike up a conversation with him, and he tells me about his life as a wildlife tracker and the tragedy of losing his father to a lion attack and his stepfather to a rampaging elephant. We talk for hours, until the embers of the fire begin to fade and my eyelids grow heavy from lack of sleep. I bid goodnight to my new friend and make my way in the inky darkness to my tent.
Storytelling is an art in Africa and I’ve heard some great ones in the bush. I cherish these moments as I get older — just a couple of guys from different cultures sitting around a fire talking about life.
It’s winter, and the night air is chilly as I take a shower, relieved to wash off 20 hours of travel grime and sweat. I climb into bed, pull the mosquito net closed, and listen to hippos bellowing nearby and the synchronized chirping of thousands of insects. I soon fall into a sleep-deprived coma and sleep soundly through the night.
My fervent hope to sleep late is dashed when several elephants arrive at 5 am to feed outside my tent. I love elephants, I really do, but this morning I just wanted to sleep late. Of the 9,050 square kilometers of real estate in South Luangwa National Park, the elephants de – cide my tent was where they would have breakfast.
I step out into the morning air and watch them, just 10 feet away. The adult female slowly turns in my direction, raises her trunk in the air to sniff me out, and slowly shepherds her charges back into the bush. I’ve never felt so much like an intruder as I did at that moment.
I have a few hours to kill before Gavin, the owner of the safari camp where I am booked for the next four nights, picks me up, so I head to breakfast.
In the bush, it’s not that simple. I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, but there are things out here that can hurt or kill you really fast and in fairly dramatic fashion. Discounting such lovely beasties as the black mamba, the unsightly puff adder and the beautiful cobra, elephants and hippos roam freely in the area. (I love snakes, and continually turn over rocks and peer into dark places to get that per – fect photograph of a deadly black mamba or the iconic cobra. The cobra possesses a dignity and regal bearing that I admire — a sentiment not shared by my wife.)
As I walk to breakfast in the early morning darkness, I intently scan the bush for hippos. I respect wildlife, but I’m leery of hippos. Amusing to some because of their size and stumpy legs, hippos kill and injure scores of people in Africa every year. They can be very ill-tempered when someone gets between them and water. Hippos leave their aquatic lairs at night to feed on land, returning to the water early in the morning. I wasn’t keen on being caught on a hippo trail by one of them.
I kill time after breakfast drinking coffee and hanging out with a troop of yellow savannah baboons; smaller and less aggressive than the fearsome olive baboons I am familiar with in East Africa. They are common across Africa, and people have very strong opinions about them. Many hate them and consider them pests who can turn very aggressive when searching for food. One of most intimidating things to see is a large male baboon baring his fangs in a threat display. They are master thieves and mischief-makers, raiding homes and safari tents for goodies and treats.
Although they’re hated by many, I like baboons because I can see myself in them — just ask my wife.
As I check out of the lodge, a large bull elephant walks up to the reception area and casually grazes on the green grass, 5 feet away from me. A sign on the wall reads “Please Remember All Animals Are Wild. Elephants are Dangerous.” The moment is a bit ironic, but it is his world, not mine, and I pay him due respect.
Gavin picks me up in his Land Rover, and we set out for his camp. I like this guy, a South African who left his country years ago and eventually established himself as a safari operator in Zambia. His simple but beautiful camp is situated under a canopy of towering trees along the banks of a dry river bed.
My hooch (an Army term I can’t stop using) is a tent with a bed and toilet/shower area surrounded by a privacy fence made of reeds. The shower is a bucket suspended over a branch and under the stars. It’s perfect — rustic but comfortable.
It might be helpful at this point to discuss what actually happens on safari. The Swahili word safari is derived from the Arabic word safar, meaning to make a journey. Decades ago, professional outfitters organized hunting safaris for clients, and these trips often lasted for weeks.
However, going on safari now generally refers to the act of traveling to Africa to view and photograph wildlife. There are normally two game drives a day — one in the morning, and another in the late afternoon during the peak of wildlife activity in the bush. Like humans, wildlife seek shade during the hottest part of the day.
People frequently ask me how dangerous it is to be in an open-topped vehicle, especially in the presence of lions. Simply put, they get used to humans and trucks. Trevor Carnaby, a professional field guide, explains in his book Beat Around the Bush that “although animals may hear voices and scent humans, they do not and cannot reason that people are inside these vehicles. This scenario changes drastically should someone stand up, dangle arms or legs out the side of the vehicle or alight from it. By doing this, you “break” the friendly outline of the vehicle and make yourself discernable as a human. The animals are suddenly faced with their biggest enemy within their socalled fight zones.”
To cap off a long day of game spotting, clients are treated to a sundowner, a longstanding safari tradition of enjoying drinks, traditionally gin and tonics, out in the bush as the sun sets. One factor that tipped me in favor of visiting Zambia is the prevalence of the “walking safari,” perfected here in South Luangwa. Basically, you walk around for hours in the bush getting up close to the wildlife. It’s a real thrill not knowing what may lie behind the trees or the thick foliage of the bush. Earlier this year in Namibia, my wife and I tracked two rhinos on foot through some very thick brush, aware we could have easily stumbled upon them hidden in the dense foliage. It was thrilling, and I could not wait to do it again. I might add that South Luangwa has a healthy population of lions and leopards.
While nursing a beer at the camp with some Germans, Gavin tells us about some lions and hyenas fighting over a kill the previous night. So we decide to do a walk-about the next morning to see what happened. We set off the following morning with an armed ranger and quickly detect the fresh spoor (tracks) of lions in a dry river bed about a mile from camp. Expecting the lions to have left the area, we follow the tracks across the sandy river bed when about 50 feet from the opposite bank, we hear the unmistakable growl of a lion in the long grass lining the river bank. He was close — real close.
We stop, slowly walk backwards and make our way back to the opposite bank, leaving the lion in peace. (You never run in the bush because it can trigger a hunting response in predators. Peter Allison, a safari guide, wrote a great book about his life as an African guide called Whatever You Do, Don’t Run.)
Later in the day, we return to the site and find the grisly remains of a Greater Kudu. Fly-covered blood spots and dried entrails surround what is left of this once beautiful antelope. We figure out that the lions had ambushed the Kudu from the long grass as he walked in the river bed. It dawns on me that the lions had probably watched our every move as we crossed the river bed. Man, it just doesn’t get any better than this!
Lions are social animals, living in prides of several males, a dozen or so females and their young. I’ve seen a lot of lions on my trips, but it never fails to move me when I see the familial affection shown by pride members to one another. But a lion’s life is violent. Young and aggressive males will violently take over a pride, drive out the pride’s males and kill the pride’s cubs in order to procreate with the pride lionesses. This brutality reveals itself early one morning when we run across a young lioness lying on the road, badly wounded and severely malnourished. She stands up and stares at us with dead, yellow eyes, and slowly walks to the side of the road where she lies down — presumably to die.
Gavin contacts the wildlife authorities and we learn that she had been attacked by a male lion and rejected by her pride. Since then, she had been living a solitary life scraping by on what she could scavenge. I never found out what happened to her, but I don’t think she lived much longer. I really hope she passed away peacefully before being discovered by hyenas or other predators.
We spend our days exploring the park on foot and in vehicles. Thousands of puku antelope, endemic to the area, browse the open flat terrain, along with impala, reedbuck and waterbuck with their distinctive “toilet-seat” white marking on their read ends.
Biologists believe the distinctive marking is a “following” mechanism used to guide other waterbuck through the dense bush — a “follow me” sign. A fable says the waterbuck was the first animal on Noah’s Ark, and the first to use the Ark’s freshly painted toilet, resulting in a permanent imprint of a toilet seat on their butts.
Many animals use “following” mechanisms or markings to guide their young. The ugly and irascible warthog runs with its tail straight up in the air to guide their piglets through high brush. Millions of years of evolutionary adaptation are on constant display in the wild. Nature always finds a way.
The birdlife is incredible, and an especially interesting spot for me is the hammerkop’s nest built high in a tree. The hammerkop is a brown wading bird with a head resembling a hammer; it’s shrouded in legend and myth. The Bushmen of the Kalahari call it the “lightning bird” because they believe lighting strikes those who steal from its nest. The Malagasy people in Madagascar believe leprosy will afflict those who tamper with their nests. Majestic fish eagles, one of Africa’s most iconic birds and distinct with their white heads, perch high in trees above the river, while saddle-billed storks fish the shallow river flats. South Luangwa is a bird watcher’s paradise, with 378 species recorded in the park.
All too soon, it’s an end to another African adventure. It’s our final night in camp, and the staff has prepared a South African braai, or meat grill. We dine under the stars on a table set up in the middle of the dry river bed discussing our next destinations. The German couple is headed to another lodge in Zambia, while the Indian couple is travelling to the beautiful beaches of nearby Mozambique on the Indian Ocean. It is a perfect send-off after an exceptional week spent with the wildlife I love so much in a land that calls me back time and time again.
As the hour grows late, the magnificence of the African nighttime sky once again reveals itself, its clarity and brilliance beyond my ability to describe. Far off in the distance, I hear the sound of an elephant trumpeting loudly in the dark forest, while nearby the chilling “whoopwhooop” of the hyena announces the beginning of another night hunt for this much-maligned predator.
Tomorrow I go back to cars, cell phones, schedules and the modern prisons we create for ourselves. I wish I could stay here forever. I’m a mystery to my friends, who ask why I spend so much time in Africa. It’s a simple question, but I think the American author Jodi Picoult answered it best when she wrote: “Africa — you can see a sunset and believe you have witnessed the hand of God. You watch the slope lope of a lioness and forget to breath. You marvel at the tripod of a giraffe bent to water. In Africa, there are iridescent blues on the wings of birds that you do not see anywhere else in nature. In Africa, in the midday heat, you can see blisters in the atmosphere. When you are in Africa, you feel primordial, rocked in the cradle of the world.”
I sincerely hope that one day you have the opportunity to experience all that Africa has shown me over the years. I guarantee that once you have visited, you will never be the same.
This article was published in Lagniappe Magazine on October 5, 2017.
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