Skip to content

Notes from an African Diary

There is an innocence which comes with an African dawn. It imparts a soft gentleness which stirs the little known ardour that lies deep within us. After its slow and poetic arousal, there comes a sense of relentless passion which sustains us throughout the day.

It was the absolute quietness that I remember most. There was not a breath of air, and the dusty road was still shrouded by an early morning mist. It would be a little while before the sun was high enough to percolate the chilly screen. High overhead two Bataleur eagles greeted the rising sun, soaring on outstretched wings, displaying an authority over an endless sky. With determined self expression, they swooped into a steep dive, rolling and tumbling with purposeful precision…..I could almost feel their joy.

I wasn’t expecting it………… only a few minutes beforehand, my friend and I had left the safety of the camp. We were driving in the river bed, and as we rounded the bend, our way through was blocked by the carcass of a large Gemsbok. It had been disembowelled. We had no choice but to stop.
The usual starkness of the Kalahari was awash with the golden spread of the sun’s awakening rays, and apart from the intermittent chatter of the African dawn, it was still and silent.

…….Her hot breathe trickled into the cold Kalahari air as she guarded her kill from the bank of the river bed. This was life itself… a lioness in her prime, replete from her first gorging of Gemsbok flesh. Ever watchful, she was etched against the disseminating night sky.

She stood up, and as she walked towards the lifeless Gemsbok, there was sensuality about her movement. This confident and promiscuous stride, conveyed to us, in human terms, a very definite ownership of not only the carcass, but of the inheritance of this rich and ancient land from that of her ancestors. As she straddled the gemsbok, she lifted her head, and glanced at us. Her eyes seemed transfixed for a moment, and as she snarled she emitted a low moan. Gripping the animal’s neck, she tensed every muscle in her lithe body, and then, with an immense effort, she hauled the carcass out of the river bed. She then dragged it through the grass to a broken down tree stump, about a hundred metres from where we had stopped the vehicle.

Now, with the lioness virtually out of sight, we reluctantly switched on the motor and slowly moved off. Smugly, we appreciated the fact that we had been alone with the lioness for some considerable time, and that the next car to round the bend would have no knowledge of the moving scenario which had just taken place.

The harsh world of survival was all around me, and I began to see the hunter and the hunted as an integral necessity for the preservation and continuation of all species. Life and death would come to each and every animal, bird and insect, but in nature’s own time, and without harmful interference from man. It seemed so right.

Throughout the rest of the day, we were endeared by the little creatures of the Kalahari sands, the meerkats and ground squirrels, busily going about their daily activities. During the explosive heat of midday, we watched a cheetah and her two cubs using the river bed as camouflage as they stalked a herd of springbok. Jackals trotted wherever they felt their luck might hold, and sociable weavers frantically made repairs to their nests. Any slight breeze was enough to whip up dust devils, spirals of red sand reaching for the heavens.

As the quickening shadows of late afternoon lengthened we knew it was time to return to base. As we neared camp, we stopped the car to savour the setting sun before it was swallowed up by the yawning horizon. The bush was stained with a golden glow, which becalmed the threat of darkness and the timekeeper for the start of another hunt. A dainty steenbok grazed in solitude, stopping occasionally to cast an eye in our direction. I hoped that she would not be the hunted one tonight.
The stars hung so low that night, I felt I could almost touch them. As we sat around the camp fire, listening to the ticking of the bush, I knew I had broken free. From now on, after my journey of discovery, and whenever I could no longer tolerate the polluted and stifling effects of city life, I would find contentment and spiritual release amongst the living wild, wherever that might be.


.