Nsefu, Day One, Parting Ways
Friday, June 8
The sun rises on our first morning in Nsefu, we eat our porridge, and we head off on a game drive with our old friend Daudi.
Our friends are off to visit Kawazaa village, warning us NOT to find lion without them, and we take off – of course, we are looking for lion! We are always looking for lion! We don’t find lion, but we find lots of raptors, the biggest eagle, cranes and herons, we watch hippos, and once back in camp, we spend hours watching the elephant families crossing the Luangwa.
As you might guess, it feels like we are eating all the time, but when we get back, we haven’t gained an ounce. I think it is because we are doing a lot of active riding; the roads are bumpy and you have to steady yourself, you are climbing in and out of the game vehicles, and there are a lot of crossings where the guide says “Hold on!” Here is Daudi, taking us across one of those river crossings:
As you can see, not every game drive stars lion, or leopard, but there are thrilling moments with birds, elephant, hippo – or crossing the river.
This is a Lillian’s Lovebird, one of my favorite birds in the world. The camps are full of them, but they are fleeting and flitting, and very difficult to capture in photos.
Morning tea at a hippo pond – you know how I love hippo:
Back at camp, it seems to be elephant river crossing day. One group will gather, and cross, while another group waits across the river. They meet and greet, and then head on their way, while another group crosses.
This group has a baby. The baby can actually walk most of the way, but when it is too deep, there is always a barrier of larger elephants on the downstream side of the baby elephant, who is holding on to Mama’s tail, and is supported from behind by another elephant.
At one point, something spooks the elephants crossing close to the dozing hippo, they start running and splashing, maybe an elephant accidentally steps on a hippo, and a loud ruckus breaks out. Elephants trumpet, hippos scold loudly. Fortunately, it is all show and no go, no real fight and no bloodshed, the elephants continue on and the hippos go back to slumber.
Our friends came back just in time for tea, and begged off the afternoon drive, saying the mating lions they had seen on the way to the village would have to be enough. They’ve been to the Kawazaa school, and to the village for lunch, visiting the clinic and even helping kill the chicken for lunch. It’s been so much fun, but also very stimulating, and they want to take a break.
Mating lions?! You saw mating lions? Let’s go see the mating lions!
Jonah found the mating lions in no time, which was a thrill, except that they had mated with such great vigor that now they were lying in sated stupor. We took some photos, but how many photos can you take of exhausted sleeping lions?
Nsefu Sunset:
We started back, but on the river road, saw an unusual sight – lions on the river banks across the river, and a lion climbing up the bank we were on.
He wasn’t wet, but he was calling to the lion damsels across the river, and had clearly made them some promises he intended to keep.
We tracked him for a while at a distance as he gauged his chances for a safe crossing here and there, and finally, we left him with our best wishes for a safe passage to lion nirvana.
At dinner we finalized plans with Jonah for an early departure for another trip to the Chichele hot springs with hopes of finding that dark maned (older) lion Madolyn was able to photograph with her iPhone, with breakfast at the hot springs and back at Nsefu Camp noonish.
A Chat With Daudi En Route to Nsefu
“Happy Anniversary to You! Happy Anniversary to You! I Love You! I love you! Happy Anniversary to you! Happy Anniversary to you!” AdventureMan sings me awake to the tune of the Superman theme. He always knows how to make me laugh, and after 39 years, he can still surprise me. We are so delighted to wake up here, in Tena Tena, on our anniversary. Life is sweet.
Morning at TenaTena Camp:
AdventureMan is walking to the next camp, and I am spending the morning catching up on notes, organization, small things, charging up my iPad, etc.
As I was saying earlier, you’d think this would all be very restful, and everything is done for us, but it all revolves around our game drive schedule, and any necessary re-charging depends on the generator schedule (unless you are in Nkwali, where you can re-charge everything in your own rooms; there are lots of electrical outlets) and at the same time, why on earth are we bringing all these electronic devices to the bush???
I’ve discovered a program on the iPad called Notes, and it allows me to write so much more than I would if I were writing by hand. I forget a lot of the smaller details and some of those small details are what makes camping life here so much fun.
The Robin Pope camps pay a lot of attention to detail. One of the things they provide is an insect repellant that is also lotion; it goes on easily, it smells good, and it really seems to keep the insects away, so I gladly use it instead of the Deet we brought with us which melts plastic if it leaks. How can that be good for our cameras?? How can that be good for us? And it is oily, and it smells so bad, and the tsetse flies just ignore it altogether. The insect repellant lotion, on the other hand, seems to work . . . and it smells like lemons.
We are all discovering new ways to use our cameras. I have discovered a program called Night Scenery, which allows me to take spectacular sunsets, and even photograph the essence of a night drive with some clarity – how cool is that? We are a good group in that we can sit patiently and shoot twenty or thirty shots of the lilac breasted roller, experimenting with various shutter speeds, aperatures, and compare them to the automatic function.
(I love my Lumix. I get great shots, and it takes me close to get the finest detail of a bird feather. It is lightweight, easy to handle, and doesn’t need as much light as many of the longer interchangable lenses on other cameras. I have two batteries, so I can be charging one and using another. I have another, smaller Lumix also with me as a back-up in case the unthinkable happens and something goes wrong with the bigger Lumix. My one gripe – the back-up battery is not a Panasonic battery; it works, but it doesn’t show how much battery is left, so just at the worst moment, my camera can just die if I don’t remember to change the battery out when I think it might be time.)
Our new Scottish friends, Mark and Madolyn, show us photos they took at the salt pan and they saw lion with a big huge bushy dark mane, and she took a photo – are you sitting down? – with her iPhone, that I would have killed to take. It is close, it is detailed, it is every bit as good as a photo taken with a camera. So much for all the control we are trying to develop.
They also ran a rescue mission for all the village men passing on bicycles, telling them of the lion ahead, loading bikes into the Land Cruiser, ferrying them past the lion and dropping them off past the danger zone. Some of the pride of lions have 10 – 20 members. Most avoid humans, but . . . would you want to bet on that, riding by a pride of lion, say . . . hungry lion . . .on a bicycle? (shiver) Not me!
It is approaching deep winter here, so it can be cold, not bitterly cold, but cold enough to make you stupid when you get up in the morning, cold enough that you want a fleece and a scarf for the first few hours of the morning drive. Around mid-morning you start stripping off layers, until around noon when it is very hot and you know the sunscreen won’t be enough; you have to put on some kind of cover against the strong African sun, even approaching mid-winter.
On my way to Nsefu, our last camp in the South Luangwa, I am with our old friend Daoudi, whom we first met twelve years ago, on our first trip to the South Luangwa. We talked of our families, and changes, and I thought to ask him about a conversation I had had the night before, with our Tena Tena guide, Julius. I had asked him how his wife coped with him gone guiding several weeks each month, and he began his response with “She is a well-mannered girl . . . ” going on to discuss how they problem-solve and work with the situation. It’s of interest to me, as a former military wife; military wives also spend time apart from their husbands.
So I pondered this, it was the first thing he said, “she is a well-mannered girl . . . ” and that tells me being well mannered is the most important thing, but well-mannered behavior differs, I have learned, sometimes painfully, from culture to culture.
“Daoudi, when a Zambian girl is said to be well-mannered, what does it mean?” and he explained it meant from her earliest days, her parents had instructed her on proper behavior.
“OK. I understand that. But I might not understand well-mannered the same way you do. Like when we lived in the Middle East, you know I learned to wear clothes that covered me to the elbow and to the knees, and did not have a low necklline . . . ”
“Yes, modest . . .” he said, thoughtfully.
“Yes, exactly,” I affirmed, “but also things very un-American . . . I learned to keep my eyes down, or at least not to look directly at a man and smile – that for us it might be friendly, but there it might seem forward. And I learned to use my quiet voice in public, and not to laugh out loud in the souks. Things like that, things I would not have even known if I had not been told.”
“Ah, yes!” he agreed, “these are also what it is to be a well-mannered Zambian woman. To speak softly with your husband, not to be shouting at him when you disagree, but to talk softly so you can come to agreement. Like that.”
We rode together in a comfortable silence, then I had another question.
“Would it be OK for a Zambian woman to be sitting here in the car with you when she is not your wife or your sister or a closely related woman?” and he laughed and said “Yes, it is helpful! Like you give someone a lift to help her get where she is going, there is nothing improper in that.”
So while some of the manners are like the manners of the Middle East, there are differences, too, and a person could spend a lifetime learning all these little distinctions and still not get it all right. Learning another culture is a never ending task, and it makes you envy those children who are born of two cultures (or more) and can pass fluently from one to another, knowing the subtleties of each.
We have American nieces and nephews who have lived most of their entire lives in a foreign country, and while they are not born of different cultures, they played on the streets, attended social functions, the local culture seeped into them by their daily lives. They are idiomatically fluent and inter-culturally fluent, but it takes a lifetime of bi-cultural living to attain their level without a dual-culture mother and father.
Nsefu Camp, the original Norm Carr camp, has little round plastered bandas set right on the river, where you can watch the elephant families cross the river, entirely lovely.
Everyone arrives hot and tired from the walk, and delighted with all they have learned. We have a lovely lunch, and AdventureMan sleeps soundly for an hour before afternoon tea.
Afternoon tea is a lot of fun; the chef has baked a beautiful chocolate cake for our birthday girl, and seven men enter singing “Happy Birthday” with the birthday cake for tea. 🙂
On the afternoon game drive we spot a civet cat, which we have never seen so clearly before,
and we see a porcupine family. When we first spotted them, it looked like the big porcupine was dragging something, but no, it was a little tiny baby porcupine sticking to Mom’s heelslike glue.
(Sorry, it’s just hard to get good clear sharp shots at night)
Again, a gorgeous night sky and a lot of fun trying to find constellations. Dinner was a Mongolian barbecue, with sparkling wine provided by the Australian honeymooners, who had a true honey moon – the moon rose huge and red in the sky as we were eating our dinner.
Tena Tena, Day Two
We’re all doing a lot better in terms of sleep. We think we are pretty much over jet lag, but it is harder getting up at 0515 in the morning. I straggle to the campfire for breakfast, and all the happy conversation wakes me up. The moon is also just rising:
We have a great morning game drive, stopping wherever we want just to watch – herons and cranes fishing in the lagoons, baboons warming themselves, some with tiny tiny baboon babies. We see greater kudu, so shy, and we feel so blessed to see such amazing creatures. It’s just another great morning in the Luangwa valley.
AdventureMan spotted this, and called it Immature Impala Arrangement:
This elephant, fortunately across the canal, was seriously angry with us and eager to chase us. We left in a hurry:
I loved this quiet hippo, walking up the canal looking for the right spot to soak:
Mama Giraffe told him to stay put, and he did:
Back to camp for another nice lunch, and we think we are going to take a little snooze, but . . .
No napping today, we have visitors! A herd of elephant are breaking down and eating trees outside our tent.
At afternoon tea, where we all gather preceding the afternoon game drive, the elephants came into the camp, down between our tent and the last tent, blocking access to the game vehicles. Once they sauntered off a little ways, we took the path to the other side, got in our cars, only to discover the elephants blocking the drive we take to get out. We waited fifteen minutes or so until they finished with the acacia tree, then moved far enough inside the bush – maybe eight feet – that our drivers felt comfortable passing.
Down the road, we are once again blocked, this time by the (normally) shy giraffe.
We sit patiently, knowing eventually the giraffe will get tired, or scared, or annoyed and move on . . . but that doesn’t happen. After about a half an hour, we leave the road and drive around, giving the giraffe plenty of space. Look at those colors! The sun is setting! Giraffes, be shy! We need to go!
Sunset is spectacular, and we almost miss it because of the giraffe blocking the road.
The hippo are all active tonight, and I want to get one of those classic shots with the wide open jaw, but every time it happens, someone has asked me a question or I am listening to a joke and I miss it! By the time I get focused, the mouth is closed. It’s like a great cosmic joke, on me, so I figure I just need to be happy with what I have.
The sky is so clear, the first night without some cloud cover, and on the way back, we stop in a clear glade and Julius points to constellations we don’t see in our hemisphere. The big dipper is there, but down low, near the horizon, and the north star is not visible at all. We see the southern cross, and the scorpion, and the long length of the milky way, and I am reminded of being a little girl in Alaska, where the stars shone bright and clear in the dark sky. We get so used to the ambient light ever present in our cities, that we have no idea
what the stars look like without it. The moon has not yet risen, so the sky is very very black, and each star is clear and sparkly.
It is such a luxury, just leaning back and seeing this vast expanse of black with the sparkling stars. We also see a shooting star, and we can spot several satelites as they speed across the sky at enormous height and speed.
Dinner, back at the camp, is wonderful, an outdoor barbecue under the trees, steak, chicken, kabobs and nshima, the Zambian staple, like polenta, a corn based starch, accompanied by tomato relish, and it is very similar to comfort food served in the southern USA, grits, and also similar to a family dinner dish served with rice in Kuwait.
We all proceed very cautiously to our tents, and it is a good thing. Shortly after our arrival, we hear the howooooot of the hyena, and we can hear the munch munch of the hippo. Elephant come back, between our tent and the last, and crash and crunch. In spite of it all, we sleep soundly and awake all too soon to the day we will leave Tena Tena.
Tena Tena and a Trip to the Salt Pans
When that wake-up call comes, you really need to have everything ready. It’s cold, and while I like colder weather, I find it slows my thinking, especially early in the morning. By the time you load up in the car, you need to be sure you have drinking water with you, your spare camera battery charged, your camera in the backpack, heavier clothing for early in the drive, lighter cover ups for later, when it gets hot. You need sunscreen with you, and insect repellent, and anything else which makes you comfortable, like kleenex tissues, and lip balm (it gets very dry out on the game drives.)
It’s approaching mid-winter, so it is getting colder. If you could see us first thing in the morning, in all our layers, you would laugh, and you would wonder if we are in Africa or Alaska. We are all wrapped up in T-shirts, sweatshirts, sweaters, hats, scarves wrapped around our faces, blankets . . . it is early in the morning, we are in an open vehicle, and it gets COLD in June!
We are on our way out to the salt pans. The last time we did this, four years ago, one of our passengers got really really sick. It was awful. There was nothing we could do for him, except to pretend we didn’t hear him retching in the back, throwing up over the back of the truck. We all felt so sorry for him. We all knew, there but for the grace of God, it could any one of us.
Dawn coming up on the way to the salt pan:
This trip was totally different. We had an unexpected cloud cover much of the morning, which kept things cool. We kept passing villagers, men on bikes coming from the north with baskets of chickens to sell, to buy necessities to take back to their northern villages. Once, we saw an elephant, and warned some of the men on bikes that there was an elephant ahead. We found one man just mounting his bike; he had seen the elephant and had dropped his bike and run. These elephants are massive and if grumpy – or in ‘must’ – they can be lethal, and mean. If the man runs away, the elephant might stomp his basket full of chickens, or his bike, just out of meanness.
We couldn’t resist shooting this herd of impala, just their heads peeking up over the tall golden grass:
As we near the salt pans, we spot lion on the road ahead of us. We can see a mother and her cub.
Julius knows a way around, so we go around to the other side, where we can see four lion – and then six lions! They are all young males, females and cubs, and are resting.
Julius tells us not to be fooled by their sleepy expressions; the lions are actually taking in everything, the sounds we make, the way we smell, and the way we move. Did you know male lions are “tri lobal?”
Then the lions decide to hunt, they stand, stretch, and walk off into the tall grass – and we love the way they just disappear, their golden color matching nearly the color of the golden grass:
We spend about an hour just enjoying watching the lions, then head for the borehole hotspring for tea. The vista is both bleak and lush – where the water from the borehole has trickled, you can see green. The water is very hot, and you can smell the sulpher.
There is a funny story about the bore hole. A lodge was being built, Chichele, which wanted a borehole. The bore hole drillers asked the locals where was “chichele” (which means salty) and they didn’t know about the lodge; they sent the drillers to the old salt pan, also called “chichele.” They drilled a bore hole – out in the middle of nowhere – only to discover they had drilled in the wrong spot. They capped it, and today there is an oasis of green out in the middle of an otherwise fairly barren plain. It attracts a lot of wildlife – and those who prey on wildlife.
As we leave the hot spring, we spot more lions, maybe ten, a different pride. I say we, but it is really Julius, who sees the vultures circling and thinks there may be a kill in the area. We spot the lions, and then start the long drive back, stopping here and there along the way to take pictures or to learn about a whole lot of things we don’t know much about.
On our way back to Tena Tena, we pass through “The Colony” where the Yellow Billed Storks are nesting, hatching their young and teaching them how to fly. It is noisy, and hilarious; there is a lot going on. We particularly love the ‘flight school’ as young stork hesitate to take off, then practice their take offs and landings. Occasionally, one doesn’t make it, and there are Marabou Storks on the ground, who finish them off quickly.
We are late, and fortunately Claire has had sandwich plates made up for us so we won’t starve (LOL). We eat at the bar, and head for our cabins, but it is not an afternoon for resting – we have a visitor:
Most of the time, these little bushbuck are too shy for us to photograph, but here in the camp, there are a couple who have become used to the smells and noises of us intruders, and is oblivious to our cameras.
The afternoon drive starts off sedately along the Luangwa:
But we find beauty in the small things as we head toward sundown. These are Egyptian Geese settling in the lagoon nearby:
There are also elephant, an entire family, playing in the water:
Sunset is spectacular. I am drinking Campari and Bitter Lemon, and because we are heading back early, I drink the whole drink.
Julius and Davis serve up sundowners:
We had asked for a short night drive, but after ‘sundowners’ by the river, we find a pair of mating leopards, and the drive goes on a a lot longer than we intended. Mating leopards are exciting, they make a lot of noise, and are well worth a late drive, especially with a sky full of stars. NOTE TO SELF: No matter how tempting, limit your liquid intake at sundowners! Once the sky is dark, there is no safe bush to step behind and the roads are bumpy!
Julius helps us find the Southern Cross on the way back to camp, and shows us how to identify the Scorpion. The skies of the southern hemisphere are strange to us, but the stars are so bright and the night is so dark we just lie back and revel in the beauty of the heavens.
A very lively dinner, with the Swiss foursome, a new Scottish couple and us, eating ‘gammon’ which is ham, with pumpkin and mashed potatoes. Dessert is an amarula ice cream, which leads us all to the bar for shots of amarula liquer before he head for bed. It’s a lot harder organizing for the next early morning after a glass of wine and a shot of amarula, but we sleep like babies. We do hear lion roaring, but we just go right back to sleep.
Transfer from Nkwali Camp to Tena Tena Camp
Monday, 3 June transfer to Tena Tena
Fred takes us on a game drive to Tena Tena, and it is a great morning, with a lot of fun. First thing out, we come across another elephant family, and we love stopping to visit with the elephants.
We stopped to take photos of signs for Nkwali, and I really love this one because we are the shadows taking photos in the photo, LOL.
There were baboons out grooming on the bridge going into the park, and I took a photo of the restroom. It was primitive but totally clean – wouldn’t you prefer that to modern, but totally filthy? And . . . it beats going behind a bush. I always think about that lion lying under the tree; he sees me and I don’t see him.
We saw a cooperative waterbuck, with the target circle on his bottom:
And a family of frolicking zebra:
A great hippo – this one is for you, BL:
And another fish eagle, which make a great screech as they hunt:
We had a great stop for a family of giraffe feeding, then crossing the road to the flat plain across the road where they drink and continue on their journey. It’s one of the things we like best about the Robin Pope safaris; the guides respect our delight in spending time just observing the animals. We shoot photos, but we also love just watching, trying to figure out what is going on. The guides know so much, and Fred is good at helping us understand a lot of the smaller things.
We reach the river, where the bags are loaded into a small canoe, and
we are too. We wave goodbye to Fred, are poled across the Luangwa, and
meet our next guide, Julius, on the other side of the river, for a
drive to our next stop, Tena Tena Camp.
Tena Tena is one of our favorite camps ever. It is sort of tented – if
tents are tall enough to walk around in, with a great veranda for
sitting and watching the wildlife passing within feet in the nearby
lagoon, with an outdoor bathroom with separate circular areas for
toilet and shower, all shaded by a tall tree whose branches entirely
cover the bathroom area. Between the two is a large dressing room with
shelves and a luggage rack.
Our tent:
Our washing up area:
Our shower area:
Our dressing area:
View looking out from our tent through our veranda:
Oh, and frogs. I couldn’t get my toilet to flush, so I took the top off to see if it was all hooked up, and FIVE frogs looked up at me, two sitting on that ball that goes up and down, two on the flushing mechanism and one in the little notch at the back of the toilet. I guess they love a cold, damp environment 😦
A short walk away from our tent is the gathering room with its large bar, and down about twenty paces further is the outdoor dining room, where
scrumptious lunches and dinners are served.
As we arrive, we are met by Claire and Nyale with cold “flannels”
to wipe our dusty faces and hands, and then shown to our cabins. We
have a few minutes to organize and then we head for lunch, where we
meet the other six guests in the camp. Tena Tena hosts ten guests
maximum, so it isn’t that hard to meet everyone. The wait staff excel in napkin folding; today we are eating fish 🙂
And “what will you eat in Africa?”
It’s a long, leisurely lunch, and then back to the cabin to unpack a little
and catch a quick snooze before the afternoon game run. We spot a huge elephant, tearing apart a tree, and a lion lazing on the beach, a couple bush babies, a genet and elephant shrew, and search for leopard, but never find him. Back at Tena Tena for late dinner, we can barely keep our eyes open, and excuse ourselves soon after dessert to lay our our clothes for the next day and hit the sack.
And! We see a Scope’s Owl!
To bed, we have a long day tomorrow, going to the Salt Pans!
Nkwali Camp, Day 2
We’ve booked three nights at each camp, so we get at least two full days at each, and additional drives or hikes for the transfer days – there is never a dull moment.
The drums, the drums, and we are ready and out the door in no time. Today, as we are walking down to catch the boat, my toe catches on a root and I almost fall into the river. Even though the Luangwa is shallow, it would still be humiliating, and I would have to go back and change clothes, and then (gulp) there are those crocodiles . . . . The path is rough and I am a little unbalanced by my backpack, and by the grace of God, the guide, Keyala, steels himself, I hit him and he doesn’t fall in the water when I hit. He holds steady. Thanks be to God! (By evening, there was a new set of stairs, and no roots.)
Our day starts with leopard. We are once again at a green lagoon, watching ducks and cranes, when Keyala says “look, there is a leopard!” and about two hundred yards back, he is at a pond, drinking, then quietly, slowly, turns and walks back into the forest. What a great way to start!
Sorry, the leopard is in the distance and you learn to shoot fast. It doesn’t always make for the sharpest shot, but by the time you get all the settings right and the focus set, the leopard is gone and you have a photo of the lagoon where the leopard was, who wants to see that?
We have a lively morning, full of birds and more elephant and giraffe:
These giraffe are young males, and they are fighting with their necks, sort of comical to watch, but they can seriously hurt one another. I think these ones are more playing at fighting:
This hippo has gotten tired of the fighting for a spot in the river and has found a lovely isolated spot in the lagoon. You can tell he is a weathered old soul by the scars on his body.
We also get a chance to photograph that glorious fish eagle in a tree – this is how you usually see them; the one I shot in the previous post on Nkwali was actually catching a fish. You don’t get that shot often:
Many stops later, we are driving along and we smell sausages. Keyala says it must be a nearby lodge, but there is no lodge near by. . . We turn a corner and there is a crew, with a fire, and camp chairs all set up, and we realize we are about to experience one of the infamous Nkwali BBQ cook-outs, oh what fun. We are overlooking another great lagoon, full of hippo, Cape Buffalo, baboons, and all kinds of wildlife. Robert, the stellar camp cook, is there asking us how we like our eggs, and with our eggs are sausage, bacon, corn fritters, fried onion, baked beans and toast from loaves of bread made in camp, big thick slices.
On our way back to camp, we will cross the river again:
And here is one of many of the crocodiles sunning on the river sand:
Just before we get back to camp, we see a Zambian local, fishing in the river. Look closely at the canoe – we used to see canoes like this in Alaska, too, dugouts. Imagine the hours it takes to hollow out a tree so that you can use it as a boat, and imagine that if you have very little, the man who has created for himself a boat can be a man with an enhanced opportunity to feed his family . . .
Once again, we arrive back at camp, and snooze a little until dinner. Bumping around in the Toyota trucks wears us out, and we are still jet lagging, some times we think we’ve beat it, and then when we least expect it, it beats us. I really need to wash my hair, it gets so dusty from the trails, but I really really need a nap and a nap almost always trumps washing hair.
As we head out on our last Nkwali game drive, there is an air of excitement. We find the noble-looking kudu, so shy, and he astonishes us by walking across the road so we can get a clear shot of those amazing curled antlers.
You’d think there would come a time when we might think “Oh, it’s just another elephant family,” but for us, that time never comes. We always watch them with fascination, thinking how very smart they are, how far they range, how they communicate, and how they mourn the deaths of their group. Elephant are huge, and they have their own agenda, they are not there for our entertainment but for their own survival, so we watch them with great respect.
Keyala takes us across the river and we head up to the highest hill for sundowners, half-searching for lion and leopard on the way. The highest hill has a 180 degree view of the land all the way to the escarpment, and the sun sets at just about 90 degrees – right in front of us. Behind us, about the same time, the full moon rises. It is awesome.
This is Keyala and Keyfus. Keyfus (Kay-fus), on the left, is the same as Cephus in Greek, meaning rock – Saint Peter’s name. Keyala is our guide, and recently marketed for Robin Pope Safaris in Seattle. 🙂
On this high hill I spot a tree, Sterculia quinqueloba, a tree I have never seen before, and Keyala tells us the name. It is such an unusual tree:
Sunset from the high hill in the Chongwe Game Park:
Moonrise in the east, magical:
Dinner conversation is fast and furious back at camp, and we excuse ourselves to make sure we are packed up and ready for departure the next day for Tena Tena. We say a sad farewell to Chris, and Tina, and Keyala, who have taken such good care of us and gotten our Zambia safari off to such a great and happy start.
Lusaka, Zambia to Nkwali, South Luangwa Valley, Zambia
Lusaka to Nkwali
“The shuttle will leave promptly at one” the concierge scolded, as if we had been late for any shuttle before.
“We’ll be there!” we responded, and we were. We had our bags packed and ready, and were in the lobby by 12:45. The shuttle, this time a big bus, was just for us, and in spite of Friday afternoon traffic, made good time to the airport.
For all our efforts to be on time, we learned that our flight would be delayed another hour and a half. On one hand, we are always glad when airlines make needed repairs . . . we’d rather have a safe flight. On the other hand, the sun sets early, it is winter in Zambia, and it would be nearly dark when we arrived. It isn’t like the US, or Kuwait, or Qatar, or even Lusaka, where there are strong lights so you can land after dark. If it is dark in Mfuwe, your plane can’t land. We really, really don’t want to stay in Lusaka another night when we really want to be in the bush.
It was very nearly dark when we arrived, but we did arrive in time to land. We missed the sunset, but we got to see the villagers all en route to the nearest markets for Friday evening shopping, and got to camp just in time to set down our bags and have dinner. Earlier campers have left, and for the first night, the four of us have the entire camp to ourselves.
Here is a view that thrills me – the full moon, as seen from our shower:
Nkwali is a Robin Pope Camp, and we have been coming back regularly since our first trip about 12 years ago. We were last there four years ago with out son and his wife.
“What would you like to see?” our hostess Tina and camp manager Chris asked us.
“I’ve always loved giraffe,” one of our group replied, “Can you arrange for a giraffe?”
“Yes, we can arrange that,” he smiled.
Meanwhile, camp wildlife joined us for dinner:
Still jet lagging, we went to bed and AdventureMan was sound asleep quickly, just after hearing the “hahahahahahahaha” of the hippos. Just as I was falling asleep, I heard what I thought were the guards footsteps around our cabin, but they went on and on, and it sounded like he was sitting on our front porch. After about five minutes, I got up and peeked out the curtains. A hippo! A hippo, not ten feet away, munching on greenery just off our patio. It’s amazing how quietly a hippo walks – soundlessly, on those big round feet – but how noisily he munches. It was the munching I had mistaken for footsteps.
There are also monkeys, which are adorable, like tiny kittens, playful and scampering, but they like to come in the cabin. We are told that they don’t bother with anything except food, so not to keep food open in our cabins, but our neighbor had her medications knocked about, and a glass full of soda sent crashing to the floor by monkeys – while she was right there showering!
Morning came too quickly, the drums drumming at 0530 to wake us for a 0545 breakfast and 0600 departure for the bush.
It’s a beautiful day, we eat some hot porridge and load up for a morning in the bush.
Just leaving the camp, we saw hyena ahead of us on the road, and a warthog family, and then giraffe! One, off in the distance! Later in the day we would see more of these Thornicroft giraffe, endemic to this part of Zambia.
We drove up to the river cross barge, a private barge funded by the local camps to help get their guests across to the national park on the other side. The barge trip is an event in itself, hand pulled across the wide, but shallow Luangwa river. Shallow, but full of hippo, and full of crocodiles, too.
The best part of the morning was reaching a huge lagoon, full of exotic birds, and with a constant stream of animals coming to drink, parades of zebra, elephant, a fishing eagle, ibis, Egyptian duck and many others. We are a patient bunch, and we loved just finding a good position and watching the game pass through, getting a good shot when we could. By the time we headed back to the lodge for lunch, we were exhausted.
This isn’t the most crisp photo, but I love the length of that loooonnng trunk reaching out into the lagoon for water. Sometimes you only get one shot:
This is a fish eagle. The next shot, he has a fish in his claws, but it isn’t a very clear shot:
Nkwali Cape Buffalo
Then, just for our companion, we came across giraffe – lots of giraffe, but it’s not easy to get a good clear shot, because you are mostly shooting them against trees, head in the leaves, and you have to shoot fast or all you get are giraffe butts, walking away:
We leave the Land Cruiser on the National Park side of the river, and men from the camp poll us back. The river is so shallow that we almost get stuck on the sand bar.
You’d think we could just walk across, but there are territorial hippo and hungry crocodile, and we don’t want to tangle with either of them.
One of the funniest continuing jokes on the trip are the questions from people who have never traveled in Africa who with great concern ask “But what will you eat?” We took photos often, because we ate often, and well. This is our lunch the first day when we got back:
I always have a list of things I need to do. Like at these camps, women need to wash out their own underwear, it’s a cultural thing, men are doing the laundry but they won’t touch womens underclothes, so I always have some clothespins to hang things to dry. I also wanted to wash my hair, which gets dusty quickly out driving on the game drives. I have to do it in the afternoon, so it will dry (no hair dryers in the bush), and then I need to lay down, because I’m really sleepy, still jet lagging. When I wake up to the “tea-time” drums two hours later. I felt so good! I felt like it was the best sleep I had gotten since leaving Pensacola, and it made me feel good, and full of energy once again.
Here is what our cabin, and Nkwali Camp, look like:
This is our writing desk; there is one in each cabin:
This is where you can unpack while you stay here, and where I lay out my clothes the night before so I don’t have to think when we get up early the next morning. When you are getting up really early, and only have about 15 minutes to get ready, you need to be able to get dressed without thinking too much about it. (It’s kind of like going to kid’s camp, only this is grown-up camp, LOL)
I almost hate to show you too much, it’s all such a wonderful surprise, finding these lovely cabins in the wild, but some people are so afraid to give it a try, I wanted to reassure you that it is quite civilized:
This doesn’t look like a lot, but the screen is enough to keep the wild animals out of your room when the sun goes down:
We love this bathroom:
We really really love this, this huge shower, with dual heads, big enough for both of us to shower at the same time, in the hot afternoon.
This is the Nkwali dining area:
This is the pool area and lagoon adjoining the dining area:
This is the gathering area/bar, and also where the campfire is, and where we eat breakfast around the campfire:
It seems to me that Nkwali is pretty much the intake area, where they help us all understand how things work, then they send us off to the other camps, Nsefu and Tena Tena, or to the fly camps (outdoor camping), or the mobile tented safaris. Before you go, you have to know the protocols, so Nkwali sort of educates you.
Your day goes like this – drums, get up, get dressed, go eat, load up into the car, go look for game. Back to camp for lunch, take care of washing underwear or hair, take a nap, drums, wake up, drink tea and eat cake, go for a game drive, stop for sun-downers, see lions (if you are lucky), back to camp, meet up in the gathering area/bar for drinks, drums for dinner, eat dinner, lay out your clothes, fall into bed (repeat)
After tea, we took a boat, polling back across to the national park, where we left the car. We drive, admiring giraffe (many!) and elephant and hippo. We run into one elephant who seriously, seriously does not like us. He does several mock charges, but he doesn’t walk away, he keeps charging.
We had a beautiful sunset on the river, and then went seriously looking for lion.
At the same time the sun is setting in the west, the full moon is rising in the east, fabulous:
The most exciting part was coming across a group of three young lions, one with a battered and bleeding ear, who tolerated our photo-taking until they didn’t. Then, one got up with a roar, and started walking and roaring.
Have you ever heard a lion roar? It is very very impressive; very loud, very resonant, it shakes your bones with its power. Shortly, one of his brothers joined him. They walked away down the wadi (what we call dry river beds when we live in the Middle East) and we thought we had a great night. Little did we know we were also going to have a leopard walk right next to our vehicle, and each of us was working frantically to figure out night time settings, so totally unexpected that not one of us got a photo. It didn’t matter. The very closeness of the passage and his utter disregard for our presence, his focus, was amazing and memorable.
All this fresh air and fabulous meals – Now I am back on schedule and sleeping through the night. I can hear the hippo outside munching as I am drifting off – but I just smile to myself and go happily straight to sleep.
BERNARD MIZEKI
Not bad, slept the night until 0530, and then found this in The Lectionary readings for today. To think I was so near, so close to the anniversary of his disappearance. . .
CATECHIST AND MARTYR IN AFRICA (18 JUNE 1896)
Bernard Mizeki was born in Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) in about 1861. When he was twelve or a little older, he left his home and went to Capetown, South Africa, where for the next ten years he worked as a laborer, living in the slums of Capetown, but (perceiving the disastrous effects of drunkenness on many workers in the slums) firmly refusing to drink alcohol, and remaining largely uncorrupted by his surroundings. After his day’s work, he attended night classes at an Anglican school.
Under the influence of his teachers, from the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE, an Anglican religious order for men, popularly called the Cowley Fathers), he became a Christian and was baptized on 9 March 1886. Besides the fundamentals of European schooling, he mastered English, French, high Dutch, and at least eight local African languages. In time he would be an invaluable assistant when the Anglican church began translating its sacred texts into African languages.
After graduating from the school, he accompanied Bishop Knight-Bruce to Mashonaland, a tribal area in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), to work there as a lay catechist. In 1891 the bishop assigned him to Nhowe, the village of paramount-chief Mangwende, and there he built a mission-complex. He prayed the Anglican hours each day, tended his subsistence garden, studied the local language (which he mastered better than any other foreigner in his day), and cultivated friendships with the villagers. He eventually opened a school, and won the hearts of many of the Mashona through his love for their children.
He moved his mission complex up onto a nearby plateau, next to a grove of trees sacred to the ancestral spirits of the Mashona. Although he had the chief’s permission, he angered the local religious leaders when he cut some of the trees down and carved crosses into others. Although he opposed some local traditional religious customs, Bernard was very attentive to the nuances of the Shona Spirit religion. He developed an approach that built on people’s already monotheistic faith in one God, Mwari, and on their sensitivity to spirit life, while at the same time he forthrightly proclaimed the Christ. Over the next five years (1891-1896), the mission at Nhowe produced an abundance of converts.
Many black African nationalists regarded all missionaries as working for the European colonial governments. During an uprising in 1896, Bernard was warned to flee. He refused, since he did not regard himself as working for anyone but Christ, and he would not desert his converts or his post. On 18 June 1896, he was fatally speared outside his hut. His wife and a helper went to get food and blankets for him. They later reported that, from a distance, they saw a blinding light on the hillside where he had been lying, and heard a rushing sound, as though of many wings. When they returned to the spot his body had disappeared. The place of his death has become a focus of great devotion for Anglicans and other Christians, and one of the greatest of all Christian festivals in Africa takes place there every year around the feast day that marks the anniversary of his martyrdom, June 18.
by James Kiefer
Lusaka, and the Taj Pamodzi
The first two times we stayed in Lusaka, we stayed at the Holiday Inn, or was it the Hilton? I can’t remember, all I remember is that it was very basic, and I don’t think it is there anymore. The first time we stayed there, it was alright, not great, but alright. It had a free shuttle to and from the airport, and a good dining room. Our first time, we had also arrived without luggage, and needed to pick up some things, quickly, to get us through until our luggage arrived.
The hotel recommended a taxi driver who drove us to two locations, the ShopRite and the Arcades. We found what we needed, basics, pants, socks, sweaters – it was winter, and it was cold. We had read the warnings about Lusaka, the high crime rate, the violent crime, so we didn’t venture far, and returned to our hotel when we were finished. I still have the sweater/sweatshirt I bought then, it was made in Cambodia and I still use it when we go to the bush.
The second time we were there, we were on the same floor with all the soccer teams (football if you are not American) in Zambia, a floor full of 11 – 18 year old males. It was very noisy, and they all hung out in the halls the way traveling kids do, so we had to negotiate through them to get to our room. It wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat.
We had seen the Taj Pamodzi, it was nearby, so when we were meeting up with our son and his wife we reserved there. The hotel is nice enough, the rooms are basic, but the hotel is quiet and clean, and the best we can tell, about as good as it gets in Lusaka. (We can see a new Radisson being built near the shopping center The Arcades, so it might be a good bet to try in the future.)
The room we stayed in this time was almost identical. We had arranged for a transfer; the driver was waiting for us. That’s good. On the way to the hotel, we were NOT stopped this time by armed thugs wanting a donation. That is great. There were still a lot of people on the streets vending, but they were not aggressive.
When we arrived at the hotel, check in was smooth and we arranged to meet up for dinner. I snoozed a little, AdventureMan explored, then he, too, snoozed a little. There was a magnificent sunset.
We met our companions for dinner and had a great time, service was superb and the food was pretty good.
We got a good night’s sleep. The next day we spotted a large mosque nearby, but we couldn’t hear the call to prayer. In the morning’s paper there is a large article about churches in Zambia, and that Zambia has been declared “a Christian nation.” I wonder how well religious tolerance is working out here. When we have visited Zambia before, we have been so impressed with the culture of mutual respect they cultivate, this nation of multiple tribal affiliations and languages. Is that mutual respect and tolerance stretched to include religious respect and tolerance?
Here is the view from our room:
One of the very cool things we noticed is that there has definitely been an upgrade in the electrical system; they now have hairdryers that work AND this great receptacle system so that just about anyone can plug in their electronic device that needs charging:
I don’t know if all the rooms are like this, but one very odd feature is that as you walk into the room, you are a step higher than the rest of the room. The bathroom is on this upper level, and then you step down into the bedroom. We didn’t have a problem with it, but if you are jet lagging, and up in the middle of the night, and disoriented and sleepy, you could forget that step and take a tumble.
The Westcliff, Johannesburg, A Haven
“It’s dark, we might as well have chosen a hotel near the airport,” I thought to myself.
Early in the planning stages for the trip, we discovered, due to airline connections, we would have to spend a night in Johannesburg and a night in Lusaka en route to the bush. We looked at several websites, and narrowed it down to three on TripAdvisor, then we all decided on the Westcliff. It just looked like a nice place, with a view of Johannesburg. But . . . it’s dark. It’s dark, we can’t see a thing, and it’s about a half hour from the airport.
But to be met at the airport after a 15 hour flight is very nice, to have all our bags taken care of, to have people to take us to the hotel . . . and then to arrive, and to discover it is a really, REALLY nice hotel. It used to be townhouses, our concierge tells us, but they turned them into a hotel, so it is a series of buildings, not one. They tell us they have upgraded us and put us at the top of the hill, but we have no idea what that means. They load us up on a golf cart and tell us our bags will follow, and zip us up a winding narrow road to the top, and then up to our rooms.
We are next door to one another, but our rooms are totally different. We have a large bedroom and living room – and a balcony. They have a separate bedroom, and a longer, narrow room, but a bathroom to die for. Well, both bathrooms are heaven. The whole suite is a little bit of heaven. The fifteen hour flight is behind us, and the Westcliff is our reward. It is heaven.
And while it is dark, there IS a lovely view:
We know we need to eat, and we all want to get to bed. We don’t want to go sit in the restaurant, no matter how lovely, and the room service menu sounds so inviting . . . Three of us order the Salmon Nicoise, and AdventureMan orders tomato soup and the Cheese Plate. While we are waiting – a very short time – we open the bottles of complimentary wine left for us. The food arrives, quickly, and still hot, and we enjoy every bite before falling into bed.
We don’t have to get up until seven, but we have another flight to catch, heading up to Lusaka. We can hear the lion roaring, next door in the Johannesburg Zoo, welcoming in the new day. We get up in time to grab some coffee, and watch the sun rise over Johannesburg from the balcony:
This is room 108, at the top of the hill, and one of the loveliest rooms we have ever stayed in. We would really love to stay there again, our next layover in Johannesburg. 🙂
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