Walking with Elephants

The day seemed so promising when the four of us started off from Lusaka. Within two hours, we had collected two separate police tickets (one for speeding, one for passing illegally) and we started to suspect luck wasn’t exactly with us. At the border of Zimbabwe, we ran into more trouble. Such-and-such form, blah-blah-blah, and 2 ½ hours in a hot customs office later we were allowed through. The day just got better - after pulling out of customs, an officer waived us to the side... there’s a penalty for overtaking a parked semi (seriously?!). Thankfully, we badgered him with logic and indignation, and he let us off. As the sun started to sink, we floored it on to the park entrance, where we barely squeaked past the gate at closing time (with the help of some well placed chocolate chip cookies). We made it just in time for about half of the welcome remarks of the annual Wildlife and Environment Zimbabwe game count at Mana Pools Park, in Chirundu. There was an assembled crowd of about 150 members, most of the retirement age, who were veterans of the count. Most were white Zimbabweans, with jaw dropping camping set-ups – we had multiple offers of food, shelter, and firewood, as we clearly didn’t have our heads on straight to only have pop tents and a little camp stove, while they reveled in multi-room palaces, fold-up camper top trucks, expanding trailers, camp chairs as numerous as weeds, and griddles, pans, and grills as propane powered assembly lines for the meals that seemed more suited to full restaurants than a camp site. After making friends with a group next to us, we ushered into the majestic camp chair circle and dined on dinners of beef stew, salad, and jam tart, and full fry-ups of buttered rolls, sausage, ham, bacon, eggs, tomato stew, and real coffee. It was a pretty stark contrast to camping á là America (especially to contrast with our first nights dinner- kerosene soaked pasta courtesy of a leaky Jerry can).

The game count itself was a twice daily trek through the park. Each team of 4-6 was assigned a ½ x 3 km strip of land with coordinated start times (0700 and 1500). We headed off the first morning with a ranger, but the subsequent treks were on our own, armed with our eyes, ears, and a GPS. The game was astounding – we spotted crocodiles, zebra, hippo, impala, troops of baboons, eland, kudu, waterbuck, bushbuck, nyala, vultures, warthog, hyena, storks, Sharpe’s grysbok, mongoose, buffalo, and elephants. And not just a few; On one walk alone we had 353 impala, 22 buffalo, and 16 elephant (among other species). Thankfully, we never came across a lion, despite Jes’ prayers to the bush gods (maybe balanced by my prayers to the opposite?). Our camp site was equally popular with the fauna. We had nocturnal visits by hippos wandering up from the river, a curious bunch of baboons who disassembled our tents for us while we were out, a sleeping trio of buffalo about 40 yards from our site, and a young elephant who stubbornly hung out between our tents and the bathrooms. At night, the hippos rumbled and there were unnervingly loud lion calls. This was not camping for the faint of heart. Tales had already gone around the WEZ gossip circles of the coordinator who was recovering from a buffalo goring, the group that had been nearly trampled by a herd of buffalo, and the group that had an elephant charge them. Just a small chance of death by wildlife, nothing to worry about. Sure. On Sunday, I thanked my lucky stars that for being physically intact, counted my tsetse fly bites (6), and headed home to the much tamer destination to the north.