Volunteering in Livingstone, March 2016

Martigny, April 23rd

Terri and I arrived in Livingstone, Zambia on March 8^th, more than six weeks ago.  It’s funny to think that since I left Leysin last June, I had not spent three weeks in one place at one time until our three-week sojourn in Livingstone, and it seems unlikely that I will spend three weeks in any other place for a long time to come.  It felt as though I had given up my nomadism for a while, but since then we have restarted our peregrinations in South Africa, so it’s normal service resumed.

Terri, Angela and the 15 Kumon students at Victoria Falls

After two enjoyable weeks at my mother’s place in Ottawa and another week in Thunder Bay visiting my father, getting a flavour of the winter that I have missed by being in the southern hemisphere (although Ottawa has had a record-breaking El Nino-fuelled warm winter), I flew to London overnight on March 6^th-7th and had ten hours between flights, so I hopped on the Tube and headed into the city to visit my friend Sean and his girlfriend Shelby.  We had an outrageously good tapas lunch at a restaurant in Katherine’s Wharf, a tiny chic yacht harbour tucked away near the Tower of London.  It was good to see Sean, whom I last saw in Bali 18 months ago.  We have crossed paths all over the world, from France to Egypt to London to Japan to Bali, ever since we met as bicycle tour guides working for Butterfield and Robinson back in 1997.  Sean had to hurry back to work, but I still had a few hours, so I went to the Botticelli Reimagined exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.  The first part of the exhibit was kind of strange:  20^th century uses of Boticelli’s Birth of Venus in all sorts of post-modernist settings.  The second part showed how the Pre-Raphaelites were influenced in the late 19^th century by Botticelli, and was more interesting.  The main part of the exhibit, paintings and drawings by Botticelli himself, was fantastic, even if The Birth of Venus and the Allegory of Spring weren’t there as the Uffizi in Florence wouldn’t let them go.  I really liked the painting of La Bella Simonetta, the young mistress of one of the Medici.  Then it was time to snooze my way back to Heathrow on rhw  and the next leg of my trip, refreshed by a few hours of companionship and culture.

The flight to Johannesburg was uneventful, and once there, I met up with Terri, who had flown in from New Zealand a few hours earlier.  We had a reunion, catching up on the past three weeks, and then got on separate flights back north to Livingstone.  I was stamped into my 123^rd country and emerged to find Terri waiting with Mr. Sakala, the driver/advisor who has worked with Terri on her Zambian trips since 2007.  We drove to YCTC, a youth vocational training centre run by the local Catholic diocese, and settled in for our long stay. 

Terri has been running a humanitarian trip for students from her former school since 2007, bringing in Japanese high school students to do work at a small pre-school that she has been funding for the past 9 years.  Even though she no longer works in Switzerland, the school ran a trip this year and we were on hand to help run it.  In contrast to previous years, we arrived a good 10 days before the students to give Terri a chance to do some time-consuming bureaucratic work and keep an eye on the construction of a new classroom building.  I had never visited Zambia, and had been hearing about this project for years, so when we both left our jobs last June to travel, we decided that it was a perfect chance for me to see the pre-school in action. 

My first impressions of Zambia were of heat, rain and a strange déjà vu.  I lived in Tanzania back in 1981-2, when my father worked for 2 years at a university in Morogoro.  Morogoro is on the train line and road leading to Zambia, and we would see heavily-laden copper trucks roaring along the road whenever we drove out of town.  Looking around Libuyu, the poor neighbourhood of Livingstone in which YCTC is located, I could have been back in Tanzania 35 years ago.  There were a few differences; cell phones have arrived in a big way, and the cars are all Japanese instead of the Peugeots, Volkswagens and Land Rovers I remembered, but the shanty towns, the women walking long distances with heavy loads on their heads, the dirt roads, the huge numbers of children and the Asian-owned shops were all familiar sights.  Although Zambia is held up as an example of Rising Africa (the 15-20 sub-Saharan countries that have shown sustained economic growth since about 2000), in the outskirts it looks more like Stagnant Africa.  Long line-ups at service stations for scarce gasoline, frequent power cuts and complaints of official corruption were drearily similar to my childhood memories.

I had never done voluntary humanitarian work, and I have to confess that my two adolescent years in Tanzania left me a bit skeptical of the entire aid industry, which too often seems to degenerate into empire building and boosting home-country industries, rather than bringing about lasting improvement in the lives of people in the target country.  Terri’s ongoing project in the poor neighbourhood of Ngwenya, though, was quite different.  

Some of the output of the Ngwenya quarries

It’s run on a shoestring, using money raised by students at her former school, the Kumon Leysin Academy in Switzerland (KLAS, or Kumon).  Students, Terri and (this year) her successor Angela raise money by selling snacks at school, running bake sales and a big charity raffle.  This year Angela and some of her enterprising students took fundraising to a whole new level with enthusiasm, persistence and the clever use of online fundraising tools, and raised far more than had ever been raised in a single year before.  That money, of course, goes far further in Zambia than in overpriced Switzerland and has a huge effect on the lives of over 100 pre-school and lower elementary pupils at the newly re-named Olive Tree Learning Centre.  The money goes to pay for half of the salaries of the teachers and staff at the school, as well as for the school lunch program and for occasional capital projects, such as the construction this year of a new building which will double the available classroom space. 

Brenda, the hand-washing monitor at Olive Tree

It might well be asked why a project that has been running for 9 years still needs ongoing funding support; one of the great complaints about aid and humanitarian projects is that they never become self-funding.  I had the task of having a look at the financial books this year and essentially the school funds about half of its ongoing expenses through school fees which, at 130 kwacha (about 12 US dollars) per term, or 36 dollars a year, are very modest but still beyond the very modest means of many parents in what is a very low-income area where huge family sizes are the norm.  If the school were to charge 300 or 400 kwacha a term (some of the schools for better-off students in Livingstone charge more like 600 kwacha a term), it would cover its expenses, but would in the process price out the very students that Terri has always wanted to help the most.  

School lunch line:  same as anywhere in the world

About a quarter of the students who attend the Olive Tree do so free of charge, as the school management feels that their families are too poor to be able to pay any fees at all.  The others pay a low fee that helps fund the school without making it a school just for the better-off.  The additional funding brought in by Kumon students is the difference between having another school for lower-middle-class pupils and having a school that makes a huge difference in the lives of the poorest children in a tough neighbourhood.

Olive Tree students 

The big construction project this year took up a lot of time and organizational effort.  Essentially a three classroom building, with two classrooms for the expansion of the school up to grade four and one multipurpose room that could be used for adult education or for income-generating activities to increase the self-funding capacity of the school, was being built from the ground up.  We watched the building rise from the extra plot of land that had been purchased a couple of years earlier.  One builder, a few permanent staff and some casual labourers methodically moulded construction blocks from sand and cement, laid a big concrete foundation slab and then began laying courses of blocks.  It all happened remarkably quickly, in a matter of perhaps six weeks in total.  What amazed me was the cost.  A fairly sturdy construction, tons of sand and concrete, doors, gates, windows, many man-weeks of labour, and it was all done for under US$10,000.  The same building would have cost 25 times as much in Switzerland, and 10 times as much in Canada.  Of course, the fact that building labourers work for 20 or 30 kwacha a day helps keep costs down.

At any rate, we watched the building foundations being prepared for the big day of concrete laying as we waited for the Kumon students to arrive.  Justin, the contractor, worked harder than any of his labourers laying blocks, mixing mortar and shoveling sand.  He had conferences with Mr. Sakala, our driver, who had been a builder in his day and was a masterful jack of all trades; they discussed the design of the building, the height of the concrete slab, the supply of bricks and sand.  I even got in on the act, trying to estimate the number of blocks we would need to produce, and hence the quantity of sand and cement we would need.

Starting to lay the foundation of the new school building 

The pre-school itself, still called the Little Angels Pre-School (the Olive Tree re-naming would happen while the Kumon students were there) was a hive of activity whenever we visited.  The school consisted of a main building with two classrooms and a tiny office, a cookhouse that had one room being used as a classroom during the construction (which had claimed one classroom as a storeroom for construction materials), a couple of latrines for the students and a chicken coop where the school supplemented its meagre income from school fees by raising chicks to adult size and then selling them for 45 kwacha (US$ 4) each.  It was a mildly profitable business that kept the otherwise chronically underemployed security guard busy. 

It seems as though every humanitarian endeavour in Livingstone has a similar income-generating activity (IGA, in the parlance) going to supplement funds from overseas donors.  Chicken raising is a popular one, along with sewing, vegetable farming and an Italian restaurant (Olga’s) that was founded to help support YCTC, the Catholic diocese’s training centre for underprivileged youth.  It’s a worthwhile idea to help projects become self-sustaining, but these IGAs run the risk either of not making enough money, or of falling into disrepair due to lax oversight.  Olga’s was apparently not making nearly the money that had been forecast, while YCTC’s IGAs (making furniture and selling clothing) were languishing because of cutbacks, lack of motivation and quality-control issues. 

The Olive Tree is attended full-time by two classes of pre-schoolers, and two half-day classes of grades 1 and 2.  The enrolment of almost 120 is about eight times what it was in 2007 when Terri got involved in the project, and the school is thriving.  The three full-time teachers run their classes with lots of energy and enthusiasm while the school lunch program for the pre-school classes has the pupils looking well-fed and healthy.  One day, walking around the Ngwenya neighbourhood around the school, Terri and I saw a number of students with the orange hair and bulging abdomens that are tell-tale signs of protein-poor diets and malnutrition.  I was amazed that the school was able to feed 70 kids four lunches a week on a budget of about US$100 a month.  That’s basically about 10 US cents a meal.  The staple starch of Zambia, maize-flour porridge called nshima (think of polenta) is unbelievably cheap, and it is supplemented by green vegetables, dried fish and beans.  And yet, despite these low prices, many of the parents of the neighbourhood, working piecework for the rock quarries of the area, are unable to provide enough food for their extensive families.  The school lunch is vital for the pupils, almost more important than the educational opportunities that are also on offer.  It amazes me how little money it can take to make a real, tangible difference in the lives of so many children. 

A joyful, tearful reunion between Terri and Miss Bwaliya

When we weren’t visiting the Olive Tree-to-be, we went to town to do grocery shopping, to buy construction materials and paint, and to visit some of the circle of friends and acquaintances that Terri has amassed over the years of coming to Livingstone.  The no-nonsense Irish nuns of the Little Sisters of St. Francis, Sisters Frances and Fidelma, provided interesting conversation and insight into the problems of trying to run charitable programs in Zambia.  Mr. Sakala gave us stories of economic mismanagement and official corruption.  Ms. Bwaliya, a dear friend who used to work at YCTC, told stories of her family and community that were straight out of Dickens or Victor Hugo, full of poverty, disease, untimely death and horrible crime; I was amazed at her ability to keep going and keep smiling in the face of such adversity.  Zambia has a huge number of orphans whose parents have died young of AIDS, and yet seems to have almost no street kids sleeping rough at night; the extended family takes in the orphans, swelling already large families to Biblical proportions. 

Saying hello to students at Luumono Elementary School

The main complaints that Zambians have about their country and their government are those that you might expect:  shortages of running water, electricity and gasoline; official corruption; a lack of jobs for graduates; and misguided economic policies that have hollowed out the small industrial base that once existed.  While economic growth has occurred over the past 15 years, its benefits do not seem to have been very widely spread.  There is still widespread and obvious poverty, and now that copper prices have fallen off a cliff and the copper mines that were once the leading exports are mothballed, and with a drought driving up prices of corn flour, many people are struggling more than before to make ends meet.  The story of decisions made in the 1990s to allow imports of cheap used Japanese cars and cheap second-hand Asian clothing were interesting and a bit depressing.  Livingstone had a Fiat car assembly factory, a Bata shoe factory and a textile mill that made blankets.  

Sister Bridgit, an inspirational young teacher at Luumono

Shortly after the cheaper imports were allowed, these three factories were gone, taking hundreds (perhaps thousands) of relatively well-paid steady industrial jobs with them and casting the former employees back into the more precarious world of informal employment.  It hardly seems the way to develop a modern prosperous economy, and it’s certainly not the route taken by Japan, South Korea, China, Malaysia and other Asian countries to raise the living standards of most of their populations.  With a hotly-contested election coming up later this year, Zambians fear both more economic populism and real electoral violence.

Zebras at the Royal Livingstone Hotel

At the end of the day, Terri and I often went to a couple of riverside restaurants to take in the breathtaking sunsets.  The Royal Livingstone has an air of colonial elegance and an unbeatable location, along with giraffes, zebras and impalas roaming the grounds.  One of the giraffes, a big male named Bob, took a dislike to me and would advance menacingly if he caught sight of me.  By the time we left Livingstone, Bob had been deported from the hotel back to a nearby national park for being aggressive with other hotel guests.  Terri and I would sit watching the sunset, sipping drinks and watching the passing birdlife.   It was Terri’s favourite spot to end the day.  We also went to the Riverside restaurant, just up the river, with an equally lovely view but without the genteel air of the Royal Livingstone.   Olga’s Restaurant, the Italian joint started as an IGA for YCTC (I feel like a proper NGO worker, spouting an alphabet soup of acronyms) and the Zambezi Café, a lively joint popular with the local Zambian middle class, were other frequent supper spots.  Then we would return to YCTC, often in the darkness of a power cut, and sleep under our sagging mosquito nets.

Bob the aggressive male giraffe

Then, suddenly, the day of arrival was at hand and 15 Japanese high school students and Angela, their South African-born supervising teacher, were at the airport (sadly, without their luggage).  The next 9 days passed in a blur, with work trips to the preschool, a cultural exchange with YCTC students, a class trip with one of the pre-school classes to a big cat centre and an amazing safari trip to Chobe National Park (across the Zambezi in Botswana, a trip which I will write about in a separate post).  The trip, honed over the years by Terri, was a good mixture of activities for the students.  Essentially Angela and the students had already done a lot of the hard work over the past 7 months in raising thousands of dollars to fund the project; that was their biggest practical contribution, and without that money Olive Tree wouldn’t be able to keep operating.  At the same time, though, Terri wanted the students to learn through doing and contributing, so we put the students to work making construction blocks, repairing broken windows and repainting the original school building.  They also taught lessons one day to the youngsters at Olive Tree, and escorted two or three pre-schoolers each on the trip to Mukuni Big Five, the cat sanctuary.  

Taro trying his hand at making construction blocks

I think that it was important for the Kumon teenagers to see the results of their fundraising, the smiling, irrepressible youngsters in their neat uniforms lining up for school lunches, eager to show off their poems and songs.  This sort of direct experiential learning leaves a much more lasting impression on teenagers than any number of academic lessons on the developing world.

Kumon students scraping before repainting Olive Tree

Taro discovers breaking rocks is tough

Daiki with three Japanese JICA volunteers

The impression can be so lasting, in fact, that students come back to Zambia on their own initiative to volunteer.  While we were there we spent a lot of time with Daiki, a former Kumon student who was on Terri’s first-ever Zambia trip in 2007.  He is now a graduate student in Switzerland, studying international development, and was on his second internship at YCTC.  He said that it was only a few years after the trip that he realized what a profound effect the trip had had on his conception of the world, and he was keen to try to help the students on this year’s trip get the most out of their experience.  It was great for me to have Daiki around as he was quite a good source of local information on what was going on at YCTC and in the wider community.  He also organized three local Japanese overseas volunteers who were working in the neighbourhood to come have dinner with the Kumon students one night and give insight into the life of an overseas volunteer.

YCTC dancers at the cultural exchange

The cultural exchange program with the students at YCTC got off to a slow start, with the YCTC group very late in arriving from their classes, but once it got going, it was a very worthwhile experience, with the Japanese demonstrating some typical Japanese skills like origami, calligraphy and wearing a kimono, while a group of YCTC students showed off their drumming and dancing skills.  Afterwards, there were throngs of Zambian students clustered around the tables getting their names written in Japanese characters or trying their hand at origami.  I think it was a good chance to bridge the huge gap in affluence, experience and expectation between the two groups. 

Drummers at the YCTC cultural exchange

Kumon students doing origami at the cultural exchange

Cheetah at the Mukuni Big Five centre

A caracal (African lynx) at the Mukuni Big Five

The grand finale of the "service" part of the trip took place on Friday morning.  Every year the youngsters who are finishing the reception class (kindergarten/pre-school) at Olive Tree take a class trip out to the Big 5 conservancy project at Mukuni village, near Livingstone.  The Kumon students are all assigned two or three tiny Olive Tree pupils to look after during the visit, and it's sweet to see the tall Japanese teenagers hand in hand with a pint-sized Zambian tyke on each side walking to the bus, sitting together on the bus, and then escorting their tiny charges into the Big 5.  For many of the Zambian children, it may be the first (or only) time in their lives that they come face to face with the charismatic megafauna that Westerners fly halfway around the world to see.  It was wonderful to see the excitement in their eyes as we walked past the lions, cheetahs and caracals.  The lions in particular took a keen interest in the small humans, sizing them up for a midday snack, and we were glad to have the strong chain-link fence between the felines and the pre-schoolers.  When Terri walked past the enclosure with Terry the lion inside, as soon as she turned her back on the lion, he perked up his ears, tensed his muscles and charged at her retreating back, only prevented from leaping on her by the fence.  It must have been a memorable and somewhat alarming visit for the Olive Tree children, and there were heartfelt goodbyes in the parking lot as they said goodbye to their protectors from Kumon.

After six whirlwind days of activity, hard work and service, it was finally a chance for the students to have a more touristy experience.  We went to Victoria Falls (my first visit after being in Livingstone for two and a half weeks) and experienced the awesome volume of water hurtling over the precipice.  At places the spray returning to the ground from the sky was like a second waterfall, drenching anything not protected by a waterproof rain poncho.  We could only really see one half of the falls, as the Zimbabwean half was completely lost in the dense clouds of spray.  

Victoria Falls, aka Mosi Oa Tunya, "The Smoke That Thunders"

Some of that Victoria Falls "smoke"

The waterfall’s spray is visible from many kilometres away on a clear day and is perhaps the most impressive part of an impressive natural sight.  That evening we had a celebratory dinner at the Royal Livingstone before heading off to the Chobe safari early the next morning.

One final coat of paint for the classroom.

When we came back from astounding Chobe, we had one final trip out to the Olive Tree, distributing some of the suitcases of donated clothing and sports equipment that the Kumon students had brought.  We talked through the figures:  the amazing amounts of money raised, and where that money was going to be spent.  We talked about what their efforts meant in giving youngsters in the poorest part of a poor country a bit of a head start through providing them with a safe space to learn and enough food to eat to be able to learn.  It was a bit heartbreaking seeing the crowds of youngsters from that neighbourhood who don’t go to school running wild in the streets, with little prospect of ever getting an education or a decent opportunity in life.  The educational needs of the community are far greater than one small school can provide for, but it’s better to do what we can than to do nothing. 

Mr. Sakala, his family and the Kumon students

As we waved goodbye to the Kumon group at Livingstone airport, it was a bit of a relief after 9 very intense days involving a lot of organizing and oversight, but it was also satisfying to have been part of providing both a possibly transformative educational experience to the Japanese students and a much-needed leg up to a worthy cause that is making a difference in the lives of a hundred families in Ngwenya township.  My long-held skepticism of a lot of large-scale aid projects is still there, but a small, focused effort like Olive Tree really does seem to be an incredibly efficient use of resources to do the maximum good.  There is still a ton of basic needs unmet in the townships around Livingstone (running water, sewage, electricity, health care, education) and it would be nice if the Zambian government did a better job of meeting these, but until (and if) that happens, projects like the Olive Tree will continue to play a vital role in trying to make a difference.  I am immensely proud of Terri and the program she has built up over the years, and I was glad to play a small part in this year’s trip.

Reunion with Natalie at the Royal Livingstone

And then, once it was all over, it was time for us to handle the last bureaucratic paperwork and have some fun.  On Monday, March 28^th we met up with a former colleague of mine, Nathalie, who is now working at an international school in Lusaka.  It was great to catch up with her and with the group of colleagues with whom we were travelling.  Then on Tuesday Terri and I treated ourselves to a microlight flight over the falls.  It was eye-wateringly expensive at US$ 165 for a 15-minute joyride, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thrill, and provided by far the best overall view of the falls, as well as glimpses of giraffes, buffalo and hippos in the surrounding national parks. 

Terri going for a microlight flight

On Wednesday, March 30^th we packed our bags, said goodbye to YCTC and to Mr. Sakala and caught a flight to Cape Town to start the next phase of our journey:  our overland trip around Africa.  More on that (and on the trip to Chobe) later!

Moe, Terri and Angela and the impressive fund-raising figures

Late afternoon light on the Zambezi

That smile says it all; it's why people volunteer

The Discreet Charm of Kruger National Park

Note:  I first wrote this post back in Mozambique but was never able to upload it on the dodgy data networks there, so I'm posting it now, with a postscript about our second (brief) visit to Kruger a few days ago.

Pomene, May 20, 2016

It’s 9 pm and a nearly full moon is shining through the gaps in the clouds scudding past at speed, blown by a south-easterly wind that has been scouring the shore of Mozambique for four days now.  It’s a beautiful spot here in Pomene Nature Reserve and a good chance to reflect on the first two weeks of our trip around Southern Africa in Stanley (Henry Morton Stanley to give him his full name), our camper.  We spent almost all of this time in Kruger National Park, and so a blog post about Kruger seems like a good way to start recording Stanley’s Travels; you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Southern Ground Hornbill

Saturday, April 30^th was a long day, the first of our new life on the open road.  It started at 5 am in our AirBnB place in funky, gritty Woodstock, a newly-gentrifying inner-city suburb of Cape Town.  It was the third separate time that Terri and I had stayed with Leonie and Shanaaz, and we were starting to feel like family.  We heard about the family intrigues and crises in Muslim Cape Coloured families living along Essex Road that made The Bold and The Beautiful look tame in comparison.  I spent a couple of days waiting for Terri’s arrival while trying to sort out car insurance for Stanley.  It shouldn’t have been complicated, but it was, and we have only just now received confirmation that our bank transfer to pay the bill has gone through so that we can get our insurance certificate that we will need as we drive into new countries in Africa.  I got back to Cape Town from a flying visit to family and friends in Switzerland on Tuesday, April 26^th, but Terri didn’t arrive until 3 days later from her trip to New Zealand.  We had a delicious Cape Malay curry that Shanaaz cooked for us to celebrate Terri’s return, then packed and re-packed until late before a 5 am alarm woke us up.  A taxi carried us off to the airport, where we managed to get our excessively heavy hand luggage past the watchful people at Mango Air without having to pay excess baggage fees.

Glossy starling

We got to Johannesburg Airport by 9:00, but with one thing and another, we didn’t get out of the airport until 10.  We had a deadline to meet of noon to pick up Stanley from the garage as it was a Saturday and they were only open in the morning.  A Gautrain and an expensive taxi ride got us back to the suburb of Linden where Stanley had been undergoing a few repairs (new leaf springs on the rear axle, a change of filters and oil and a few tweaks of the electrical system) during our two weeks away.  We paid our bill, picked up the car registration papers and loaded our luggage into the back.  We walked a block down the street to Linden Cycles where our Giant Express folding bicycles had arrived (they had been out of stock two weeks earlier and had had to order them in specially for us), folded them up and threw them in the camper.  An hour of stocking up on groceries and basic supplies in the local mall and by 3 pm we were headed west out of Linden, crossing the huge sprawl of suburbia that is greater Johannesburg.  Our new GPS had some personality quirks that we had not yet mastered and it took us much longer than it should have to get onto the big toll road heading east across the Highveld, the open plateau that makes up much of South Africa.  We made decent time until it got dark and a dense, cold fog rose up to envelop the road, reducing visibility to twenty metres and progress to a crawl.  Road construction compounded our woes, as did a GPS that missed our campground by twenty kilometres.  We didn’t roll into Elangeni Tourist Lodge until 10 pm, whereupon we had barely enough energy to pop up the roof, have a celebratory beer and fall asleep after 320 hard-won kilometres.

A grey lourie (aka the go-away bird)

The next morning we awoke at 7:40 and spent the next six hours sorting through all our gear and food, trying to figure out where it should be stored.  We had arrived with the camper an indiscriminate jumble of equipment and groceries, but Terri’s organizational gifts came to the fore and we managed to put almost everything away in the places that they occupy to this day.  Our 55 litre refrigerator/freezer was crammed to the gills with meat, cheese, milk, lettuce, beer and wine, while our many hanging zipper pouches held our clothing and dry foodstuffs.  The area under the foot of the bed was crammed with plastic storage boxes that we sorted through methodically, trying to keep the items needed every day near the side for easy access from outside the camper.  Finally by 2 o’clock we were ready to roll again, with the camper interior now an immaculately organized space.  We had a very short day, only 145 km of driving, to Hazyview, on the south-eastern edge of Kruger.  We dropped down off the Highveld into lower, warmer, more heavily populated areas dotted with big commercial citrus and avocado orchards, interspersed with poor-looking black towns.  We stopped at a roadside stand and spent 8 dollars on avocados, tomatoes, macadamia nuts, oranges and pecans; they lasted us almost a week, so they were a great investment.  As we turned off the highway onto secondary roads heading north, the landscape was transformed into a continuous series of settlements along the road, townships that hugged the crests of the hilltops.  It was hard to believe that 15 km east of here was one of the great wilderness areas of Africa.  We camped that night in a small tourist joint that had had its campground close down recently; we parked Stanley under a tree and popped the roof up, ready to camp, but the owner felt guilty about not having a proper campground and let us stay indoors for no extra charge in one of his cottages.  We reveled in the luxury and slept well.

Lilac-breasted roller

On Monday, May 2^nd, we were ready to enter Kruger National Park.  It had been hard getting campground reservations, and we had rescheduled our trip around the availability of camping at Lower Sabie and Satara campgounds.  This was why we hurried past Blyde River Canyon and the Drakensberg as we made a beeline for Kruger and its scarce camping spots.  We drove into the park fairly early in the morning at Numbi Gate and immediately ran into elephants, kudu, impala and giraffes.  The woods and undergrowth looked parched and dry thanks to the El Nino-powered drought afflicting the eastern side of Africa this year.  We drove towards Pretoriuskop and ran into a young male elephant running amok beside the road, charging cars, flapping his ears, trumpeting loudly and generally raising a little hell.  He had dissuaded vehicles in both directions from passing him, and we eventually found ourselves nearest to him as other cars rapidly backed up to escape.  Terri was at the wheel and very nervous, but eventually she nosed past the annoyed pachyderm and off down the road, heart thumping in her chest. 

Yellow billed stork at Sunset Dam

Following the advice of our guidebook, we took a back road to our campsite at Lower Sabie, along the old Voortrekker Road.  The bush was parched and dusty and almost devoid of animals.  Twice we were told by oncoming traffic of rhinoceri beside the road ahead of us, and twice we struck out.  We eventually popped out onto the tarmac at the picnic site of Afsaal, glad for the chance to stretch our legs.  We drove up an equally barren stretch of road to the Sabie River and finally found a strip of green amidst the brown desolation, as the river was still flowing, supporting a riverine strip of trees.  Just outside Lower Sabie, the Sunset Dam provided a plethora of hippos and crocodiles along with birds, including the large, beautiful African spoonbills whose nests filled one of the trees in the pond.

African spoonbill and its huge nest

The campsite at Lower Sabie proved to be the best wildlife viewing spot of the day, located beside a dam on the river.  We just missed seeing a leopard from the café terrace, but a pair of white rhinos came down to drink at the river, while openbill storks, black-winged stilts, egrets, herons and Egyptian geese teemed beside the life-giving water. It was a lovely spot, and we found a great campsite to cook up lamb chops and pumpkin soup.

Elephants at Ntandanyathi

Having spent hours at the wheel the previous day, we did very little driving on May 3^rd, as we were sleeping back at Lower Sabie again.  We got up early and went out to watch animals at dawn beside the river.  When the restaurant staff set to work noisily cleaning and opening up for the morning, we retreated further along the electrified boundary fence, hunting in vain for noisy birds inside thickets of thorny vegetation.  We cooked up flapjacks for breakfast and went back to Sunset Dam to admire the crocs, hippos and spoonbills.  We then drove a few kilometres to the Ntandanyathi bird hide, another chance to get out of the car and admire wildlife, including big elephants, hippos and very pretty yellow-billed storks, wooly-necked storks and a big tawny eagle.  We drove back to camp via a bridge across the Sabie which gave us views of more elephants, buffalo, tortoises and birds.  We took the afternoon off from wildlife and stretched, skipped and did pilates, before returning to the riverside café terrace to watch kudu and waterbuck while sipping sundown beers.  It was an idyllic setting.

Giraffe drinking at Sunset Dam

On the 4^th, we got up early and headed out without eating, trying to catch the early-morning game.  We headed north towards Satara Camp, described in our book as lying in the richest game concentrations in Kruger.  We passed by Sunset Dam one more time (it was quiet this time) and then north to a lovely hilltop lookout and picnic spot at Mlondozi.

Stanley atop Mlondozi Hill

Kruger is full of great picnic spots where you can get out of your car (which sometimes feels like a prison on wheels as you aren’t allowed, for safety reasons, to get out of the vehicle except at specially designated spots), and Mlondozi was a wonderfully scenic place to eat our cereal and toast, looking down on a waterhole that was almost devoid of animals, despite the surroundings of dessicated dust that should have driven thirsty animals to the waterhole by the hundreds.  All the way to Tshokwane there was almost no game except for a few pairs of the large, endangered and very striking southern ground hornbills, impressive with their red facial markings and their sheer size.  At Tshokwane, another picnic spot, we bought a couple of meat pies and some cookies and sat down to enjoy them under the shade of some big trees.  The trees are infested by bands of thieving vervet monkeys, and Terri had a serious tug of war with a bold monkey that jumped right onto her lap to try to grab a bag of cookies.  Terri won, but was amazed by how unafraid the vervets are of humans.  We had great views of a huge male elephant and a tiny duiker, one of the dozen or so species of small antelope that skulk around the park in small groups.  Driving north from Tshokwane to Satara we did see more animals than previously, with a big herd of buffalo, several groups of zebras and brindled wildebeest, plenty of impalas and three impressive brown snake-eagles.  A couple of red-necked spurfowl completed the species seen; compared to parks like Chobe and Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater, this section of Kruger had very few big animals to be seen, although our excellent Kruger guidebook (Exploring Kruger, by Brett Hilton-Barber and Lee Berger) claimed that the area around Satara boasts the densest concentration of game animals in the entire park.

Young zebra

Satara is the largest camp in Kruger and is, sadly, not on a river or dam, so lacks the impressive views of a place like Lower Sabie.  It’s a big enclosed area on a plain, and the most desireable camping spots, along the perimeter electric fence, were already occupied by campers who looked as though they had settled in for a couple of weeks.  In fact Kruger is full of retired South African couples who spend weeks or months at a time camped in the park; there seems to be no restriction on how long you can stay, and so since it’s relatively inexpensive, secure and surrounded by lovely scenery and animals, it’s a good place to be retired.  Unfortunately, although South African campers are generally very considerate by world standards (very little noise, very neat in the common areas like the bathrooms and dishwashing spots), the one area that they do fall short of their high standards is in staking out larger spaces than they really should, using cars, fences and furniture to spread over more than their allotted campsite, and sometimes taking more than one electrical outlet to run their multiple fridges and freezers, their TVs and their air conditioners.  We eventually found the last available electrical outlet and set up camp in the interior.  At dusk, however, we wandered out to the western perimeter fence to watch the sunset and spotted a young hyena who patrols the fence all night, hoping for handouts from campers; sadly, not all campers were obeying the signs not to feed animals, and were tossing food scraps over the fence to him, making him into a problem animal. 

One happy, very pink hippo near Satara

The next day we were lazy; we were staying two nights in Satara and given the lack of big animals around, we took the morning off from driving and did some exercise.  One of the downsides to doing a safari in Kruger is that you end up spending almost all your time imprisoned inside your vehicle and you end up craving physical exertion.  We have a few exercise options in Stanley:  yoga mats, skipping ropes, running shoes, elastic resistance bands and our Giant Express folding bicycles.  Cycling is forbidden in the Kruger campgrounds, and it wasn’t a brilliant place to run, so yoga, skipping, pilates, pushups and arm exercises with the resistance bands had to do.  I also carry my travel guitar (the Martin Backpacker that I have been carrying around for 15 years already) and a set of 5 juggling balls, so I had some other more intellectual diversions.  Finally at 11:30, after a big eggs, toast, avocado and tomato brunch, we put down Stanley’s roof, left our table and chairs in place and power cord plugged in to claim our spot and set out for a game drive.

Two waterbuck

We headed due east to Nwanetsi, a picnic point in the Lebombo hills that mark the Mozambique border.  There was almost no game to be seen in the parched plains:  a few zebra and waterbuck, some kudu and impala.  The picnic site was occupied by a group from Kids in Parks, a program that brings children from the townships of Johannesburg out into Kruger.  It is a great program, trying to bridge the cultural divide that sees 95% of the South African tourists to Kruger being white; there are very few black, Coloured or Indian faces in the vehicles driving around the park.  However, they were a fairly noisy group of 50, so we climbed up to a higher birdwatching point that looks down on the river, which was actually quite full of water.  A hippo and a croc lounged in the water, and a few egrets and herons stood stock-still in the water ready to spear lunch, but there was little game coming down to drink.  It was very pretty, though, with red rock cliffs topped by yellow-leaved trees, and I scanned the horizon, more in hope than in expectation, looking in vain for leopards.  On the drive back to Satara, we saw spurfowl and sandgrouse and stopped to watch them.  After the sandgrouse, Stanley’s engine wouldn’t start and we were forced to ask for help from a passing ranger, who gave us a tow to get us started.  It made us realize that we hadn’t been letting the diesel ignition warm up for a few seconds before turning the key, and that we had to be more conscientious about it.  We had another gorgeous sunset along the fence with gins and tonics and another appearance by the hyena, while Terri was able to spot the silhouette of a distant owl atop a tree from a distance of 100 metres, an impressive piece of spotting.

You lookin' at me?

A dusty herd of buffalo near Letaba

May 6^th, our fifth day in the park, saw us head north to Letaba Camp.  We managed to get rolling by 6:50, fortified by tea and coffee, headed first west and then north along the dirt Timbavati Road.  The grass was tinder-dry and there was little game to be seen, although we did spot quite a few impala, some spurfowl and a big korhaan (a type of bustard, a tall ground bird that kills snakes with its powerful legs and big talons), along with a pair of cute little steenboks, small antelopes with tiny toy-like horns.  We breakfasted on toast, avocado and tomato at Timbavati picnic spot, watching three tiny bushbucks with their delicate, striking leg markings, then continued north through more dry desolation.  We eventually spilled out onto the main north-south asphalt road and continued through a patch of unexpected greenery, full of giraffe, zebra, buffalo, impala and kudu, to the crossing of the Olifants River.  This is the dividing line between the south and the north, and we had been told that north of the Olifants there had been a bit of rain and hence there was more game, but that it was harder to spot.  We stopped on the bridge to look at waterbirds, and then turned off to see the Balule bridge, which was full of birdlife.  Balule is one of the “rustic” campsites (no electricity, no shop, a small number of campers) which book up quickly with Kruger aficionados; we later tried to book in at a couple of them and found them booked solid for weeks.  We turned back to the main road and drove up to lovely Letaba, our favourite campsite yet, situated on the banks of the broad Letaba River.  On the way into the camp, we saw a secretary bird, a very tall, slightly comical-looking ground bird, loping along the ground, half-heartedly trying to fly to get away from cars.  I love secretary birds and was glad to see one; we read later that their numbers in Kruger are in steep decline.

Pretty little bushbuck

We got a perfect spot to camp, at the very end of the campground, against the perimeter fence.  We found time for some late afternoon yoga, and then strolled along the riverfront looking for birds and game.  That night we grilled some steaks on the braai, chatted to our neighbours and watched a huge adult hyena pacing the perimeter fence; his size and power were fearsome to behold at such close range.  We also used our spotlight to pick out distant animal eyeballs in the dark, and spotted some bushbabies (tiny nocturnal arboreal animals that are impossibly cute) in the trees above us. 

Steenbok

We were sad that we had only one night in Letaba, but we were excited to head further north the next morning on the long drive to Shingwedzi.  We set off a bit later than usual (7:15; no rest for the wicked on this safari!).  We stopped for brunch in pretty Mooiplaas (it lived up to its Afrikaans name of Pretty Place).  The drive led through scorched grasslands bereft of greenery and game, although we also spotted some more steenboks and some klipspringers, another species of small antelope, in the rocky hills that the road passed over. The scenery around Red Rocks, a lookout point off the main road just before Shingwedzi, was pleasant enough and the rocks were home to dozens of colourful white-fronted bee-eaters who sallied forth constantly on brief insect-hunting missions before returning to their perches.  I love bee-eaters, and was pleased to see them in such profusion.  In Shingwedzi, we found another prime location along the electric fence and settled in for a late lunch, some exercise and then a wonderful sunset over the river.

Klipspringer

As we were cooking up dinner, we used the spotlight to pick out a genet, a small cat-like nocturnal creature that came for two visits, giving us a great view of him.  There were also a couple of tiny duikers, yet another pint-sized antelope, prowling around in the night.  I was glad to have a guidebook to African mammals (by Chris and TildeStuart) to help identify the various more obscure animals we encountered along the way.  We also saw a Mozambican nightjar, a nocturnal bird that is usually hard to spot, sitting in the picnic area beside the river, and were able to see its pretty feather patterns and watch it doing short insect-hunting runs.

Terri with a Shingwedzi sunset afterglow

Sunday, May 8^th was originally supposed to be our last day in the park, but we had heard good things about the far north of the park (like the fact that there were more animals to see, and lots of bird species) so we booked a couple of extra nights in Punda Maria camp, the most northerly campsite in the park and the only one that always seems to have space available; it’s just too far from Johannesburg for it to be popular with many campers.  We drove along the road through endless flat stretches of mopane forest, almost a monoculture of trees that are beloved by elephants and by tiny caterpillars (mopane worms) as a food source.  Mopane forest is fairly dense, and it’s hard to see anything through the branches, so we didn’t see much game that wasn’t actually on the road.  There were elephant droppings everywhere, and every once in a while we would come across a lone elephant or a small herd crossing the road; by now we knew to give them a very wide berth!  It was by far the most elephants that we had seen since entering the park, and our guidebook said that the majority of the park’s 11,000 elephants live in the north.  Along the road we were lucky to come across a black-backed jackal and followed him for hundreds of metres, waiting for him to get off the road to one side or the other, but he kept trotting along the asphalt; we felt bad for stressing him out and making him run, and were relieved when he finally disappeared into the mopane forest.

Black-backed jackal north of Shingwedzi

We stopped for a big cooked brunch at Babalala picnic areas.  Kruger does a great job with its facilities, and the picnic grounds always have gas barbecues available to rent for 20 rand (just over 1 US dollar).  We had been tormented for days by the smell of cooking bacon when we stopped for our breakfasts, so that morning we cooked up bacon and eggs to go with our avocados (we were still eating the avocados we had bought 8 days earlier, and they were absolutely delicious) and toast.  We turned off the road to drive up Dzundzwini Hill for a lookout over the flat mopane veld, and then drove into Punda Maria through large flocks of birds, mostly turtle doves but also weavers and quelea, with more Natal spurfowl scurrying across the road at regular intervals.

Elephant

Punda Maria camp is significantly smaller than the camps to the south, and was barely half full.  We found a pleasant shaded spot to park Stanley, then walked down to the wildlife hide overlooking a waterhole (bereft of animals) and up along a short birdwatching trail in the forest above the camp, where we caught tantalising glimpses of birds that were too quick and too fond of dense thickets to really identify.  We also saw lots of nyala, another species of large antelope that we hadn’t seen before, with very impressive shaggy males with long horns that look very unlike the females of the species.

Juvenile leopard near Punda Maria

We decided to treat ourselves to a twilight game drive late that afternoon, since that’s the only way to be out in the park after dark, and also gives the best chance of spotting the elusive leopard.  We set off at 4:30 and had a great time.  Our guide, Velly, styles himself the Leopard King, and within minutes of setting off we had spotted a leopard; Velly had seen it on his dawn drive and it was still in the same tree 10 hours later.  We got great views of the leopard, although he was tough to photograph because of the shadows (although Photoshop Lightroom did a great job of improving the exposure later!).

Nyala ram

It turned out he was a 7-month-old cub whose mother was probably out hunting.  After spending quite a lot of time with the leopard, we headed off as the sun set to see what else we could spot with the aid of the three powerful spotlights on board.  We spotted several chameleons (I was amazed at Velly’s ability to spot them in a tree while driving past) and lots of springhares, strange bounding nocturnal animals nicknamed “Africa’s kangaroo”.  We also saw a few Sharpe’s grysbok, the smallest antelope species we had yet seen, and (as a special treat since it was Mother’s Day) we had a pit stop under the stunning southern skies to sip South African red sparkling wine and nibble on biltong and other snacks.  On the way back to Punda Maria, we passed more springhares, chameleons and grysbok and returned to camp very satisfied with the money we had spent (R 350, or about US$ 24) to see so many new animals in the wild.

Chameleon

Monday, May 9^th was spent in camp.  We were both feeling a bit tired of sitting in the car for long stretches, so we took the day off, taking care of bureaucracy over the (very slow) internet, uploading photos, doing laundry, exercising and birdwatching.  Kruger’s campsites are actually pretty good places just to hang out:  they’re reasonably priced (R 250, or US$ 17, a night for 2 people), have pretty decent grocery stores at reasonable prices and have great laundry facilities at very cheap prices indeed.  It’s easy to see why retired South Africans sometimes set up camp here for weeks at a time.

On Tuesday, May 10^th we drove to the northeast extremity of the park, Crooks’ Corner, named for the fact that lawbreakers 100 years ago could escape justice in any of the three countries that meet at the corner (Portuguese, Mozambique, British Rhodesia and independent South Africa) just by crossing over to one of the other countries.

Buffalo near Punda Maria

We left very early (well before 7) and drove first around the Mahonie Loop, a very pretty 30 km loop through dense montane forest that had lots of yellow autumnal leaves that showed up picturesquely against the blue sky.  We hoped to see leopards again, but luck was not on our side, although we met one leopard-obsessed couple who were sitting waiting for a mating couple to emerge from the bushes; they had been there for an hour already, and there was no sign of the leopards, so we pushed on, spotting a few elephants and a few more steenboks.  We returned to camp to cook up another bacon and avocado on toast feast before driving north.  Lots of dusty elephants were to be seen beside the road, along with new bird species.  We turned off the tarmac onto a magical strip of riverine forest, full of big trees and overlooking a river absolutely teeming with crocodiles, hippos and lots of new species of birds.  We saw a juvenile martial eagle in flight, many bee-eaters, a saddle-billed stork, white-backed vultures, lots of nyala and (Terri’s personal favourites for the day) long-tailed paradise whydahs, whose males sport immensely long tail feathers out of all proportion to the rest of the bird.  At Crook’s Corner the mighty Limpopo River was a tiny trickle thanks to the failed rainy season, leaving a wide expanse of sand stretching to the Mozambique border.  We could have crossed the border to Mozambique here, but the road was reputed to be terrible on the Mozambique side, so we had decided to cross further south, at Giriyondo.  The drive back to Punda Maria gave us sightings of huge herds of buffalo and zebra and a wonderful encounter with 4 elephants bathing, playing, mating and fighting in a waterhole; we had to leave in a hurry when one of the male elephants got very aggressive and chased us away.

Helmeted guineafowl

Back in camp, we had to fight off a troop of invading vervet monkeys intent on raiding our food supplies, and saw a new bird species, the crested guineafowl, a colourful alternative to the flocks of helmeted guineafowl we had been seeing for days.  That evening after dinner Terri managed to pick out more bushbabies with the spotlight.  We went to bed highly satisfied with the day’s game viewing.

Wednesday, May 11^th was a travel day.  After withstanding another monkey attack (they made off with the dried mandarin slices that Terri was about to put into our cereal, and then spent a few minutes jumping on a neighbouring popup tent as though it was a trampoline), we drove south for several hours along the main road towards Letaba, where we had managed to secure a last-minute reservation.  We wanted to be close to the Mozambican border crossing at Giriyondo, and our first choice, the “rustic” camp at Tsendze, was booked out.  We had enjoyed Letaba the first time, so it was a reasonable second choice.  We had a good drive in terms of wildlife, with lots of vultures, zebras, elephants and impalas, along with our first three ostriches so far in Kruger.  We got to Letaba by 2:30, getting another nice perimeter fence site, and did some paperwork for the next day’s border crossing as well as visiting the small but excellent elephant museum featuring the life stories and tusks of some of the huge bull elephants of the Letaba area, including the so-called Magnificent Sevan.  That night as we sat eating our steaks, three thick-tailed galagos, a larger relative of the bushbaby, came down out of the tree and walked right under my camp chair.  I wasn’t fast enough on the draw with my camera, but managed to get some shots as they disappeared back into the trees.  It was a wonderful send-off from Kruger!

Thick-tailed galago (larger version of the bushbaby), Letaba

Thursday, May 12^th was D-day, and the hour and a half drive to the border post went smoothly, past a few zebras, impalas, elephants and francolins.  By 8:10 we were crossing the border and (we thought) saying goodbye to Kruger forever.

However, two weeks later, after we turned back from heading to Malawi through the conflict-torn centre of Mozambique, we found ourselves making an unexpected flying visit to the southwest corner of Kruger, the one part of the park we had neglected in our 10-day stay.  We stayed the night of Saturday, May 28^th just south of Kruger in a strange residential development called Marloth Park, where South Africans buy property and build houses inside a fenced game park full of impala, babboons, wildebeest, steenbok and all sorts of game except for elephants, lions and leopards.  We camped in the excellent Marlothi Park campground and saw all sorts of bird species that were new to us.  Since it’s not inside Kruger, we were free to cycle around on our folding bicycles down to the Crocodile River (the southern boundary of Kruger) to peer across the fence at crocodiles, hippos, waterbucks and rich birdlife.  It was nice to be able to move around more freely than inside the park.

Mother and child white rhinos

The next morning we cut across the park, from Malelane Gate to Berg en Dal campground, then onto the main north-south road and finally west to Numbi Gate, where our Kruger journey had started almost 4 weeks earlier.  We had been disappointed that we hadn’t seen more rhinoceri on our first visit to the park, and everyone who had been to Berg en Dal recommended that area for white rhinos.  It did not disappoint!  We drove to Matjulu waterhole, just north of Berg en Dal, and there we saw no fewer than 4 white rhinos at quite close range, including a baby who was still nursing.  We sat for a while mesmerized, trying to take decent photos, and then drove off quite satisfied.  We stopped for hamburgers at Afsaal picnic area, and soon afterwards, right beside the main road, five more white rhinos were grazing.  More photos, more oohing and aahing.  I reflected that the nine white rhinos we saw probably represent close to one percent of this critically endangered species, under such intense poaching pressure.  A couple of days before, a National Parks helicopter had come under fire from heavily armedrhino poachers, and the future of this beautiful, huge animal hangs very much in the balance.  We drove out of Numbi Gate relieved to have seen so many rhinos at last.

Baby white rhino near Berg en Dal

Overall, Kruger National Park was not nearly as impressive as I had hoped, but it was still pretty good.  The huge herds of elephants and diversity of birdlife that we saw acouple of months ago in Chobe just wasn’t there.  Neither did the game viewing compare with what I saw in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro years ago:  no vast herds of wildebeest, zebra and Thompson’s gazelle.  

Kruger has a more discreet charm that rewards a longer stay, a slow exploration of the landscape and (most importantly) having your own wheels and camping gear.  It’s brilliantly set up for self-driving trips (as long as you manage to get reservations in the main campgrounds in the south) and the variety of landscape as we headed north compensated a bit for the lack of adrenaline-pumping “wow” moments.  In the end we did very well on the wildlife-spotting front, with cheetahs, black rhinos, wild dogs and some of the smaller antelope species the only things on our to-see list that we didn’t get to tick off.  Birdlife was excellent, and we loved the campgrounds.  The only real downer to a long Kruger trip is the lack of opportunity to walk (or cycle) around freely; you do spend too long cooped up inside your vehicle, although we learned to take advantage of wildlife hides, picnic spots and other get-out-of-your-car spots.  As the flagship of South Africa’s national parks, SANParks does a great job of maintaining the park.  Perhaps if we had visited in another season, or in another year that wasn’t a drought, it would have been a more impressive place, but it still richly rewarded our visits.

Tawny eagle

One practical thing that is an important tip for visitors is to invest in a Wild Card.  For R3000 (US$ 200) for a foreign couple, we get unlimited day access to the parks (campgrounds are paid for separately).  With day use fees of about R280 per day, within 6 days we had paid off the card entirely just on this one Kruger visit.  Since we want to visit other parks as well over the next year, it’s going to be a great savings.  The SANParks website doesn’t play nicely with non-South-African applications for the Wild Card, but if you perservere through frustrations, it will be worth it in the end.

Baboons at prayer drinking water

The other key thing to do is to get your campsite reservations done early on the SANParks website, or in person at the SANParks headquarters in Pretoria, where you can also get your Wild Card done in person, or pick it up if you ordered it online.

Thanks for wading through this post all the way to the end; hope you enjoyed it and the photos.  Next time:  Mozambique!!

Southern red-billed hornbill

White-fronted bee-eater