Day 17 – Tuesday
10th July
After an early night I was feeling pretty ready for the lion
walk this morning and it appeared the L’s had recovered too. We had an awesome
walk, with the lions hunting some impala within the first 20 minutes. The best
part came about 40 minutes in when both Laili and Lewa started stalking a group
of 4 zebra. Laili was being very smart and laying down in the grass when the
zebra were looking then running towards them as soon as they looked away. When
she was about 10m from the nearest zebra they bolted and the chase was on! Lewa
unfortunately was a bit too far back to cut them off but 3 more zebra appeared
from the long grass and ran right passed Laili who got within a few feet of the
last one – so cool to watch – we were cheering them on! We had to rush back
from the walk in time to say goodbye to Jo, Andy and Lorna. Did not expect to be
so sad to see them leave but we all got pretty close in the 2 weeks we were
together – there were quite a few tears! Hopefully we’ll reunite again soon.
There were fried potatoes at breakfast though which cheered us up! At 9:30am we
had BPG, so just shovelling shit. One of the big males (either Puma or Casper)
felt it was necessary to spray me so I’m now his territory. I thought I was
well out of the way but it’s surprising how far it goes! Gross! In the
afternoon we made sticks. Yeh I know … but they needs more lion walking sticks
so it was me, Neeru, Turi and Sheran’s job (along with Mackays house) to break
the bark off branches for 1.5hours. it was quite fun actually, though it
would’ve been nice if Mackay had told us the secret to doing it before we spent
90 minutes swearing at twigs.
At 4pm it was time for the fire breaking which awesome. Basically fire breaking is the controlled burning of the grass and bushes around the main camp and Ngamo park areas so that is a real bush fire starts it’ll burn out when it reaches the areas we’ve already burned. Generally there’s not too much to do – just make sure the edge of the fire doesn’t pass the cut off point and if it does we beat it out with branches; mostly its fun just to watch stuff burn! We were out from 4pm ‘til 6pm and some of the fire got pretty big at times! We really stunk of smoke afterwards!
Phoned home this evening too – cost me about £20 but worth it – it’s nice to know everything is good and normal back in England and to hear a familiar voice J I do miss my family but as long as I know I can get in touch whenever it’s all good.
At 4pm it was time for the fire breaking which awesome. Basically fire breaking is the controlled burning of the grass and bushes around the main camp and Ngamo park areas so that is a real bush fire starts it’ll burn out when it reaches the areas we’ve already burned. Generally there’s not too much to do – just make sure the edge of the fire doesn’t pass the cut off point and if it does we beat it out with branches; mostly its fun just to watch stuff burn! We were out from 4pm ‘til 6pm and some of the fire got pretty big at times! We really stunk of smoke afterwards!
Phoned home this evening too – cost me about £20 but worth it – it’s nice to know everything is good and normal back in England and to hear a familiar voice J I do miss my family but as long as I know I can get in touch whenever it’s all good.
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| The big guy Silwane at BPG |
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| FIRE! |
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| Me being a firefighter! |
Fairly bad choice of activities this morning: there were so
many guests that the lion walks are fully booked. A lot of us lion crew got
landed with emptying out all the BPG bags into a truck to be taken to a dump –
these contain week old lion poo, uneaten offal and other varied animal parts i.e. the whole combo absolutely stinks! 3 of
us stood on the truck and were handed up the bags from another 3. The bags were
then cleaned out ready to have new offal put in them for future lion feeds. Not
fun although we did invent a new dance called the “shit shuffle” which
brightened the mood. Everyone showered and/or changed their clothes as soon as
we were back at camp! I didn’t think there’d be anything I’d wanna do less that
that but our morning activity snare sweeping. Our guide (Kailos) took it way too
seriously! We all had to walk 5m apart in silence so that we could listen out
for dangerous animals such as elephants or buffalo, neither of which we have
wild at AP. We also had to look out for hunters that wanted to shoot us … also
highly unlikely. Obviously removing snares is important but it was so dull!
However the afternoon totally made up for it. Several lions were being darted and moved around and all vols were given the chance to go and watch. Basically Swahili is in an enclosure with her sister Sahara and another lioness Soriah, both of whom are pregnant with cubs due in the next few weeks, so she needs moving to another enclosure up at BPG. This then meant that to make space a group of 3 lionesses Paka, Lola and Leelee had to be moved to Gumtree enclosures where they’d be joined by a male Puma who will hopefully mate with them. Keeping up?
Anyway, Leanne the lion manager came to dart the lions with the long pole thing. It was fascinating to watch, I loved it and learnt so much! There were two failed attempts on Leelee and Paka before a meat bribe allowed Leanne to inject Paka who was then driven up to Gumtree. We were stoof around waiting for Paka to wake for about 10minutes and when she did, she was like me after too many ciders! Pretty funny to watch! Once she was a bit more stable we went back to dart the other two. I got a little stroke with Leelee when we returned when she came and brushed herself against the fence and I tickled her neck – as you do with the king of beasts! The second transfer of these two lionesses went smoothly, I actually helped a bit when Leelee’s temperature rose above 40°C so I grabbed a water drum and took it into the enclosure to the handlers – saved! A few of us stayed to watch Lola and Leelee wake up then returned to camp about 6:15pm.
The plan after dinner was to watch films in the vol lounge … this went slightly wrong as me, Sarah and Sunface spotted one of the horses, Prince, chillaxing and eating grass by the vol block. He then ran off to reveal that the rest of the 20 horses were down by the lake. Obviously the job then became a bit too big for us so we called Andy … he seriously needs to keep a better eye of his horses!
However the afternoon totally made up for it. Several lions were being darted and moved around and all vols were given the chance to go and watch. Basically Swahili is in an enclosure with her sister Sahara and another lioness Soriah, both of whom are pregnant with cubs due in the next few weeks, so she needs moving to another enclosure up at BPG. This then meant that to make space a group of 3 lionesses Paka, Lola and Leelee had to be moved to Gumtree enclosures where they’d be joined by a male Puma who will hopefully mate with them. Keeping up?
Anyway, Leanne the lion manager came to dart the lions with the long pole thing. It was fascinating to watch, I loved it and learnt so much! There were two failed attempts on Leelee and Paka before a meat bribe allowed Leanne to inject Paka who was then driven up to Gumtree. We were stoof around waiting for Paka to wake for about 10minutes and when she did, she was like me after too many ciders! Pretty funny to watch! Once she was a bit more stable we went back to dart the other two. I got a little stroke with Leelee when we returned when she came and brushed herself against the fence and I tickled her neck – as you do with the king of beasts! The second transfer of these two lionesses went smoothly, I actually helped a bit when Leelee’s temperature rose above 40°C so I grabbed a water drum and took it into the enclosure to the handlers – saved! A few of us stayed to watch Lola and Leelee wake up then returned to camp about 6:15pm.
The plan after dinner was to watch films in the vol lounge … this went slightly wrong as me, Sarah and Sunface spotted one of the horses, Prince, chillaxing and eating grass by the vol block. He then ran off to reveal that the rest of the 20 horses were down by the lake. Obviously the job then became a bit too big for us so we called Andy … he seriously needs to keep a better eye of his horses!
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| An unconscious Paka |
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| Coming round at Gumtree |
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| Sleepy Lola |
Day 19 - Thursday
12th July
Thanks to the morons at Bulawayo Airport who
only gave me a 20-day visa, I had to go into town today to renew it.
Fortunately, I had a girl called Brenda with me who is local and recognised as
it was pretty intimidating and often in cases like mine they expect some sort
of monetary bribe in exchange for the visa – times like this you remember
you’re not in England anymore!So anyway, I then spent the rest of my day at the drop-in clinic with the community volunteers so I got to see how Sarah, Sunface and the others spend their days. It was pretty good – we were cooking beef stew and sadza for the homeless boys and other people at the clinic and we played some football and volleyball so still a pretty good day – especially as they baked an epic chocolate sponge cake for us vols.
Lack of lions during the day was made up for by the walk in the afternoon with the P’s. It’d been 2 days since their last feed so they were pretty lively. About half hour in we encountered a huge herd of zebra – Paza led the stalk with Penya following for about 10 minutes with the zebra gradually walking away. Eventually Paza began to chase them but she hadn’t banked on the stallion turning around and charging her! It chased her for about 100m and I’m pretty sure it bit her on the bum! We all had to run to keep up – so awesome! Paza wasn’t too keen to continue after that but back-up lion Penya decided to try her luck. She must’ve tried to sneak up on Mr. Zebra about 7 times but every time got chased off – so hilarious to watch!
Absolute treat in the evening too – VEHICLE STALK! The idea of this is we get dropped off in the middle of the bush and Dan drive off in the cruisers. We then have to find our way back to the cruisers without getting spotted by the red spotlight. Me and Neeru had the genius idea of holding onto the back of the truck as it drove off but we chickened out as it drove off but we chickened out as it picked up speed and jumped off! Once the vehicles were gone you could barely see anything; the Moon wasn’t out so the starts were our only source of light! We ran for the first bit and sort of stayed in a group but as we got closer we had to get lower so that we were crawling the bush, trying to avoid thorns which was near impossible! Unfortunately Dan has taken note of what everyone was wearing so I was maybe the 5th person to get out as Dan recognised me in my grey trackies – FAIL! A few people managed to make it though – we played a second game but I fell over a rock and got stuck in 2m high grass (God knows what creepy creatures were there with me) so surrendered pretty early on ! Not sure I was born to be a lion.
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| Matt, me and Sarah ready for vehicle stalk |
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