ZAKOUMA The wild heart of Africa
Vanessa Stephen visits Chad’s oldest national park, where the unspoilt attractions make it feel new and old at the same time
CHAD. Sure, it sounds like the name of an American football player, and it probably is. But it’s also an African country tucked right in the middle of the bulgy bit of the continent — probably as far from the ocean as you can get.
The north contains the immense sand dunes of the Sahara; the south is a largely uninhabited, flat, dry savannah. I was heading off to this relatively unknown place to spend a couple of weeks in Zakouma National Park in the southeast.
Travel advice about Chad isn’t particularly encouraging. In fact, there’s a strong emphasis on “Don’t go.” Certainly, Chad is surrounded by countries in major turmoil, but the country itself currently appears calm and I was reassured by people who had worked there for years. At the airport, I chatted to a man who told me that things used to be bad — people would leave home and “give away their life for free”. But now, Chadians are happy and conflict-free. Long may it remain so, because this is a potential tourist heaven — particularly, I think, for those who enjoy a good bush holiday.
Zakouma lies about two hours by air from the capital N’Djamena. In all that flying time, I saw two roads. Tracks scatter the landscape where nomads and their cattle or camel trains move on an endless quest for food and water and the occasional hamlet can be seen. Dust is in the air but smog doesn’t exist here.
The park is large — 3 054km² — and, although it desiccates in the intense heat, leaving behind vast plains of cracked earth, water remains in parts year round. For this reason, it is one of the remaining great wilderness areas of Africa. A decade ago, it was one of the last places you could see herds of elephants numbering in thousands. Unfortunately, the quest for ivory has taken its toll and seen the elephant population shrink from over 4 000 in 2006 to around 450. The 10% that survived are understandably shy, but renewed anti-poaching methods have had a significant impact and the herd has begun to breed again.
Zakouma celebrated its 50th anniversary in February by burning its entire ivory stockpile; Chad’s President Idriss Déby appears dead-set on ending elephant poaching and maintaining the country’s current state of calm. While the park has not seen many tourists in the past years, African Parks is working with the Chadian government to stop poaching and protect the wildlife there with funding from the European Union.
Does it still sound unappealing? Well, imagine this. Think of Botswana’s Makgadikgadi Pans area, with its teeming herds of antelope, birds galore and vast plains. You get the picture — except, it’s almost like the Makgadikgadi in a parallel universe.
The animals and birds are so familiar — but they’re all slightly different. Defassa waterbuck lack the painted-toilet-seat derrières of their southern counterparts. The giraffes form the largest remaining population of Kordofan giraffes — they’re shorter and paler and, because giraffes aren’t bizarre enough already, they have a third horn growing out of the centre of their forehead.
Chunky olive baboons argue on the riverbanks and elegant patas monkeys can occasionally be seen in the trees. Tantalus monkeys take the place of our vervets. Buffalo are common in massive herds and many of them are reddish-brown, apparently from a long-ago dalliance with some forest buffalo. Tiang antelope, long-faced Lelwel’s hartebeest and cob spread out over floodplains interspersed with thousands upon thousands of black-crowned cranes.
Lions seem to have gained spots while hyenas have dropped many of theirs, and both species have noticeably different accents.
Even the little blue waxbills have red cheeks. Almost nothing is the same.
And it is wild. There have been so few tourists that many of the animals are unsure of cars. Some might run away. Lions, though, might come closer to investigate you. If you go out in the evening, you’re likely to see serval, genets, honey badgers, jackals, civets, greyish eagle owls, long-tailed nightjars … the list is practically endless.
The most impressive and noticeable group has to be the birds. With 373 bird species, Zakouma is a twitcher’s paradise. Sitting for an hour in one spot will likely see a dozen or more new species ticked off your list.
It’s worth visiting one of the villages or nomad settlements just to reinforce how different this country is. The people live incredibly simply, in houses made mostly from grass and poles. Their lives are undoubtedly hard, centred around their livestock, millet and water. No children here have iPods or the latest trainers; in fact, the majority are in rags. But they appear happy and the villagers are very welcoming and likely to offer tea or even food to visitors.
Theirs is a wild world of dust, heat and wells surrounded by thirsty bees, children in charge of camel trains or cattle herds, donkeys carrying great loads of wood, men making clay bricks and women harvesting grass. It is extreme survival in a completely biodegradable village. People and wildlife depend on the land around them to exist — just as they always have.
In all honesty, Chad is one of the least-developed places I’ve visited, so everything was new to me and, at the same time, it felt old.
My time there in the simplicity and untouched wilderness of Zakouma felt like real adventure. I made discoveries every day. How could I not? I had the park almost entirely to myself.
Don’t go to Chad? Well, I certainly didn’t regret it.