Call of the wild
Call of the wild
Bush camping in Botswana can dish up a few interesting surprises, as Kim Kruyshaar and her family recently discovered.
Hours of hot inactivity were forgotten as our vehicle rolled to a stop under a large rain tree in the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, in the south-east of Botswana. We tumbled out, laughing at the perverse ‘Go-whey! Go whey!’ welcome of a grey lourie. The thrill of being in the Botswana bush was heightened by piles of rhino dung on the path to the ablution block. My family scoffed at my calls for caution, while a pair of hornbills shouted ‘What’s up! What’s up!’ and eyed me dismissively.
We were finally on a self-drive safari, heading for the Okavango Delta, Savuti and their legendary wild campsites.
‘Camping with wildlife is not really risky as long as you sleep in your tent,’ done-it-beforefriends informed us.
‘The only creature I know of that actively goes for human blood is a mosquito!’ warned another friend; I suspect she was laughing at my nervousness. But ‘peaceful sleep’ does not describe my first night in the bush. I lay there, bug-eyed, examining the shadowy shapes that the moon projected onto our tent. My hearing switched from its filter-almost-everything setting, for coping with city life, to hear-it-all. The joy of hearing acutely was lost on me as my brain tried to find an unthreatening explanation for each new sound.
During the following nights and days new animals introduced us to the sounds of the bush. The pearlspotted owl was a surprise! We’d passed through a series of campsites before we managed to capture the diminutive screecher in our torchlight and allay my fears that it was a lost soul on its way to hell. Please say that you’d also have been tricked by the clan of mongoose that set me up! While contemplating the sky from an open-air loo at Mankwe, I distinctly heard the sound of a large animal approaching. My first thought was to sit still, but with pants lowered, my options were as restricted as my ankles. Quietly I zipped up and stepped onto the loo to peer over the screen. I could hear something substantial make its confident progress through the leaf litter, and scanned the bush for a large, dark and foreboding creature. There they were, small, dark and cute: an extended family of dwarf mongoose following each other, nose to tail, to their den in the roots of a mopane tree behind the loo. Phew!
Not all big animals are scary At Third Bridge camp we found the ‘hrummpff, hrummpff’ of our hippo neighbours companionable. Their calls let us know where they were coming ashore, which saved us an unexpected encounter between tent and toilet. Instead, hyena eyes shone back at Claire and me as we clung to the female tradition of going to the loo in pairs. As we grew in confidence, we became blasé and quipped that city girls were probably more at risk.
Don’t tempt fate in the bush! Reckoning came in the shape of a woolly mammoth, poorly disguised as a caterpillar, which crawled into Claire’s shoe while she was showering. Evicting it was a two-woman task. As alpha female, I had to remove it while she did the screaming. On the way back, our torch beams honed in on the hyena again. Pumped up after our handling of the woolly mammoth, we shouted something unfriendly and it scrammed.
Nothing can adequately describe the spine-tingling roar of a lion at close quarters. By this stage Chris had opted to sleep with our air mattress semi-deflated. He claimed that the contact with the ground gave him an anchor when I set the mattress in panicked motion. This anchorage meant that we could feel the reverberating complaint of the lion, which called for ages, awakening in all of us primordial memories of life before technology and tents.
An elephant visiting for tea was our turning point from surviving to celebrating wild camping. While setting up camp at the Khwai Development Trust lands, we noticed two large bull elephant browsing their way steadily towards us. Once again my senses were in overdrive as we angled tent, trees and Toyota in a way that would give us a contained space from which to keep watch. At about 50 metres the two bulls became aware of us and, after flapping their ears undecidedly, moved off, the agitated thicket marking their progress past us.
‘Mom!’ I saw the third elephant at 20 paces at the same time as I heard the warning. Claire and Anton were sitting making sandwiches when a small-tusked teenager appeared from nowhere and walked into our clearing. We became statues. So did the elephant. Then slowly it came closer. From its body language, we read that it knew we were there but wanted a closer look. Ten paces from the table the elephant stopped, and as its trunk twitched, I wondered if it was going to indicate a preference for peanut butter or cheese. Claire must’ve gone to fetch the cheese, because suddenly she was sitting on top of the Land Cruiser. The rest of us were still statues. After feigning interest in the grass, the young elephant moved off a few paces to stand behind a tall acacia, from where it appeared to be considering us, or perhaps continuing to ponder the peanut-butter-versuscheese choice.
By now the situation was not just unthreatening, but also becoming comical. The elephant had noticed Chris photographing it and peeped at him from around the screen provided by the tree trunk. Yes, peeped, if that’s possible, with seven-eighths of its bulk clearly visible, but its head hidden behind the tree. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it left. Its memory will remain – a highlight of our Botswana safari.
On one of the ensuing nights, we were playing cards in a small pool of light from a lamp suspended over our table when we heard elephants breaking mopane branches. Again we assumed the postures of statues, though just for a brief moment, before relaxing. Minutes later Claire let out a squeal of laughter as she went out first round, catching us all with full hands of cards. From just outside our circle of light, the deep tummy rumble of an elephant responded in greeting – or warning. Either way, I now trusted the advice: ‘If you’re there first, animals will respect that and move away’. Sadly, humans generally don’t show wildlife the same respect.
