Collected Moments of Survival

The wilderness of Africa is a shrinking concept in the face of an exponentially burgeoning human populace that is encroaching more and more into areas that for millennia have belonged only to the savagely wild and wonderful beasts that roam its plains. Reaching these now isolated pockets of wilderness means travel of thousands of kilometers for those wishing to share in its magic. And so it is that after two days of travel I find myself sitting at the gates of Etosha National Park in Namibia. It is day five of a seven day sojourn that we decide the day will be well spent next to a waterhole for the whole day. We’re there just as soon after sunrise as we can muster and we settle down for the day. The first very curious visitor to our vehicle is a Pied Crow who spends the day hopping from car to car looking for something to eat. Bets are on that he is regularly fed titbits from disobedient tourists! The first visitors to the waterhole in large numbers are some ...

There is a certain quality to the African sun in midsummer that defies description. A thousand needles being punched simultaneously into skin perhaps comes closest to being accurate. Yet, here I am, sitting in the blazing sun, completely oblivious of the discomfort, on the deck of a lodge, watching keenly as a pride of lions stalks an unwitting warthog family. The elevated view of the deck affords a bird’s eye view of the hunt going down. From the right flank two lionesses move surreptitiously through the long grass, they separate and while one lioness moves directly towards the target the other starts flanking the prey by moving further south. Carefully they crawl through the blades of grass stopping every now and then to monitor the movement of the warthogs who are blissfully unaware that they are being keenly watched. North of the warthog group is the rest of the lion pride lazily spread in the cool shade of the acacia trees. The lionesses continue their hunt, stealthily they move i...