The call of the not so wild
While we humans have been grounded, animals have become less wary of us and their behaviour has changed. Mark Eveleigh witnesses the effects of ‘the great pause’ in Zimbabwe and beyond
‘There’s no doubt that, while most of the human population has been locked down, animals have been enjoying a holiday of their own,” said Bread Shambamaropa, as we stood in the deserted bar at Mana Pools and gazed out over a waterhole packed with antelope and elephant. “It’s been terrible for business and for park revenues, but the animals are far less stressed. Leopards come closer to camp than they ever did.”
Since arriving in Zimbabwe, I had heard much about how even urban areas had seen some “rewilding” during the pandemic: elephants had been spotted sauntering through Victoria Falls shopping precincts; zebras had grazed on verges in Kariba town; dozing lions had managed to bring traffic to a halt on the A1 highway. And I had witnessed for myself how the leopards at Mana Pools were embracing the new normal: only the previous evening, Bread and I had both stood transfixed on the bar’s veranda as the biggest leopard that I had ever seen stared back at us out of the darkness from a distance of only about six feet.
For five years, Bread has been the barman and waiter at the luxurious Kanga Camp, and even the most successful guides would admit he probably sees more wildlife during his working day than anyone else in Mana Pools National Park. In a single shift beside the waterhole, Bread will see dozens of kudus, zebras, bushbucks, warthogs and buffalo, more than a thousand impalas and baboons, and a hundred or so elephants. The waterhole at Kanga Camp has always been famous for its leopards but these days they will often
turn up within range of a flying champagne cork.
“Since the park became so quiet, I’ve been seeing leopards almost daily and the record was eight in a single night,” Bread told me, just minutes after that big- cat close encounter in the dark, while he shook up a “Bread Special” cocktail as a nerve settler. “This is the first time I have seen one quite so closeup,” he added. I got the impression that even the unshakable Bread could have done with a shot himself.
I’d arrived in Zimbabwe two weeks earlier at the beginning of November. While the animal encounters had been more dramatic than expected, the logistical stress of travelling in Africa during the Covid- 19 era had been almost entirely absent. South Africa was closed to British tourists at the time but transiting Johannesburg was a breeze and entering Zimbabwe was, in fact, more stress-free than it had been on previous trips. There had been a couple of declarations to fill in on the plane but Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport was almost empty and I waltzed through immigration. After displaying my PCR-test certificate and paying a $55 (£40) visa fee, I was free to travel throughout the country with no need to quarantine.
Most tourists who arrive here on safari access the Zimbabwean wilderness via the vast network of bush airstrips, but an overland transfer from Harare to Bumi Hills Wildlife Area gave me an opportunity to witness – from a respectful distance – how the Zimbabwean public was reacting to a pandemic that seems almost to have bypassed this landlocked and relatively isolated country. I was slightly unnerved by the first of a series of police roadblocks but this was a far cry from the fear and loathing I had experienced during Mugabe-era assignments. My aptly named driver Abel explained that the police were merely checking that distancing and mask protocols were being observed in the minibuses that plied the road to the capital.
“Those roadblocks have had an unexpectedly beneficial spin-off effect in the struggle against poaching,” said conservationist Mark Brightman, when I joined him on patrol with Bumi Hills Anti-poaching Unit (funded by African Bush Camps). “I’d have bet anything that this would have been a terrible time for elephants but we’re seeing a significant drop in ivory poaching, partly because supply chains have been disrupted but more so because those roadblocks have inhibited the movement of weapons.”
Good news is rare for those on the front line of Africa’s anti-poaching war
– and in the Covid era, it’s no different. Any slack provided by a reduction in ivory hunting had been taken up by bushmeat poaching. Snare-lines are more common than ever and Brightman and his team have freed buffalo, lions and elephants from agonising and ignoble deaths in nooses made from telephone wire or 4x4 winch cables.
Lake Kariba – appearing almost as an inland sea, with the hills of Zambia faint on the horizon – contrasted dramatically with my memories from previous trips to arid Hwange National Park and the spellbinding rock garden of Matopos Hills. The Bumi Hills speedboat transfer had puttered out through Kariba town’s little port, past the fleet of houseboats that usually provide accommodation for visitors. Shoreline gameviewing and sport fishing are the selling points here, but there was a time when it was possible to swim in the croc-free centre of the lake. Houseboat crews habitually tipped their organic refuse into the water until the crocs (including a legendary 30ft monster named Bismarck) learned to associate the sound of engines with food. They began to follow the boats closely and, needless to say, swimming was discouraged.
This year, with most of the tourist houseboats out of action, the crocodiles have abandoned the boats as a potential food source and have returned to their lakeside lairs and more natural ways of feeding. There are hopes the houseboat operators will capitalise on this respite and find more effective waste- disposal systems in future.
From my suite’s open-air shower at Bumi Hills Safari Lodge I could look down on the Lake Kariba shoreline where those gigantic reptiles patrolled optimistically alongside hundredstrong herds of buffalo and families of more than 50 elephants. I was the only guest at the 12- room lodge and elephants in the area outnumbered me by a ratio of at least 100:1. Stepping into the corridor from the gym one morning I was stunned to find myself staring into the limpid eyes of a bushbuck doe. Along with her fawn, she had made herself at home around the lodge – and I met the pair several times as they grazed peacefully among the empty sunloungers beside the infinity pool.
Camp host Shephard Mangwande warned me to keep my eyes open because other local inhabitants had inevitably followed in the wake of the bushbuck: “About six weeks ago I was
‘Females with calves can be unpredictable. This year they have had more peace and are relaxed’
walking down the path towards room two,” he told me. “We had a couple of rooms occupied at that time and I noticed that one of the guests seemed to have forgotten a bag. It was lying on the wall outside the room…”
Shephard had been vaguely surprised that anyone would come on safari with leopard-print luggage and was only a few feet away when he realised that the “bag” was nothing of the sort. “They say you must never run from a leopard,” he said, “but in my experience it is an almost unavoidable reaction.”
While bemoaning the damage done to the tourism industry, general manager Simba Nyabereka was enthusiastic about the ways in which animal behaviour had changed during months of enforced tranquillity: “It’s great that the bushbuck are so comfortable here but there is a reverse side to that coin: the troops of cheeky vervet monkeys that associated busy breakfast times with food have mostly returned to their natural diet in the bush, instead of relying on rich pickings from guest tables.”
From Bumi Hills I was transferred by 12-seater Cessna to the celebrated Mana Pools. There, at Nyamatusi Mahogany Camp, I met the only other guests I
would see on my entire trip. African Bush Camps ( owners of Bumi Hills, along with three camps in Mana Pools and a dozen others elsewhere) test all their staff regularly for Covid-19, so I was invited to join a very secure and enjoyable “bubble” with South African film star Thapelo Mokoena, his wife and two friends. “There is so much beauty on our continent,” Mokoena said, “but most of us aren’t exposed to it. We, as Africans born in Africa, have it all under our sun. Let’s hope in the future, all this will be more accessible to the people who have always called Africa home.”
On the first evening, as we sat in driver- guide Love Chiwara’s Land Cruiser, he told us a little bit about the camp. “Nyamatusi is well-named from a local phrase meaning ‘ place of much meat’,” he explained. It certainly seemed apt. Just a few feet from our open-sided vehicle, eight lions gnawed at a buffalo they had killed almost on the camp’s doorstep. Apparently oblivious to our presence, a young cub was so embedded in the buffalo’s stomach cavity that just one leg remained outside.
“It would have been rare in the past to see a lion kill so close to camp – and it’s clear they are incredibly relaxed these days,” said Love, in a whisper. He was still whispering the next morning as we tracked a leopard on foot towards a tangled acacia copse: “It has been very noticeable that supposedly nocturnal or crepuscular hunters, like this leopard, are now venturing out more frequently during the day.”
Love was whispering yet again that afternoon, as we stood within yards of the legendary Boswell, a huge bull elephant famous for standing on his hind legs to rip branches out of the canopy for food. “He is well habituated to humans by now and has no fear of us,” Love’s voice hissed into my ear.
“So why are we whispering?”
“Those females with calves can be unpredictable. This year, they have had more peace and are increasingly relaxed. A year ago we wouldn’t have risked coming so close with guests.”
During the two weeks I spent with African Bush Camps’ guides and trackers, I had closer wildlife interactions than on any previous safari. But my experiences paled to insignificance compared to Love’s blood- curdling tales, featuring near-fatal buffalo gorings and the big male lion that took a chunk out of his right arm.
Fortunately, Love has had a relatively uneventful 2020 – and it appears to have been a good year for the wildlife of Mana Pools, too. “This period of tranquillity has coincided with good rains,” said Steve Chinhoi, head guide at Kanga Camp, on my last day in the park. “It has been a stress-free year for the animals and, in the short term, visitors might see healthier populations than before – and at closer range.”
Kanga Camp is famous for “armchair safaris” that offer visitors respite from the jolting Land Cruisers that Steve calls the “African massage”. In an extreme version, he and I sat beside the waterhole for 14 hours from dawn to dusk, recording a list of no fewer than 1,118 mammals.
It seemed that every elephant herd that turned up had babies. There was a two-week-old which – yet to learn what the unwieldy proboscis on the front of his head was for – fell face-first into the water in an effort to drink. His mother eased him back on to his wobbly legs with a tenderness that seemed at odds with her cumbersome weight. Another monstrous tusker had drinking problems of his own and spent part of the afternoon swilling water from the camp plunge pool.
The resident leopard turned up 40 minutes after Steve and I had closed the books on a spectacular day’s sightings. It breezed past within six feet of us and we were doubly stunned to see another leopard – a highly flirtatious young female – emerge from the shadows of a giant fig tree. As I sipped on my fiery Bread Special nightcap, I could still hear the leopards’ hacksaw coughs nearby.
I lay in my tented suite for the next hour, listening to their primeval mating groans slicing through the thin canvas and wondering what the future held. How would any leopard cubs born from that nocturnal union adapt to life in a busier post-pandemic age, once Zimbabwe had regained its place as one of Africa’s great safari hotspots?