An Elephant Bull Called Elizabeth and Other Short Stories from Africa

As Close As I Ever Came

It started, as with so many mornings before, with the quiet knock at the door of the kitchen porter bringing me a cup of coffee, with which to jolt me to my senses, in time for the morning game viewing activity.  It was still pitch black outside.  By the time I had dressed and had my coffee then checked my vehicle and gathered my guests from the reception area another African dawn would be minutes away.

The mornings activity was to be a walk which, of course, begs the question as to what I was doing getting a vehicle to drive off with my guests in.  Spurwing Island, Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe was, at that time, attached to the mainland by a narrow causeway, a result of exceptionally low lake levels.  I was planning to drive to the mainland and follow the main track along the thin peninsula that jutted out into the lake and terminating just short of the island itself, if only lake levels were high enough.

The main track followed the watershed of the peninsula for quite a way until it broadened out, becoming the flat lands of Matusadona National Park, it then started cutting across the various river beds of rivers coming down off the escarpment as it continued on towards park headquarters, Tashinga, at the far side of park.  The first of these rivers was the Kemurara and was about as far as any of our standard game viewing activities would take you.

The mornings plan of action was to be a drive along the peninsula looking for the tracks of any interesting wildlife that might have left us a nice set of tracks to follow.  Tracking an elephant or a lion is always a thrill more so, obviously, if you actually manage to catch up with the animal being tracked and have a good look at it without it ever knowing you were there.  The plan didn't always work but that was half the fun.

I don't remember how many guests I had that morning, four perhaps, certainly not a full compliment of six as, if I had had that many guests I would never have made the choices I made in the first place. Six guests and myself would have doomed the project to failure before we began; seven humans are just too noisy and obvious to successfully sneak up for a quiet look at the animal we were, ultimately, to follow that morning.

It was short wait at reception for my guests to arrive.  Most people, even if not normally awake at such an hour, are excited by the prospect of a walk in dangerous game territory and tend to arrive on time.  Leaving the island and entering the bush of the mainland the air was pleasant.  It was that time of year when it was neither hot nor cold early in the morning.  That would change later as the temperatures rose to the high twenties or low thirties.

The light was just right for picking up tracks and I tootled along in third gear, my guests expectant and quiet in the game viewing seats behind me.  Twenty minutes later it was not looking good.  Very little if anything had crossed the road in the middle of the night and, even if it had, the crossing had been much earlier, probably before midnight, and following such old tracks would be pointless given that we did not want to track anything beyond eight o'clock when it would start to get hot.

The Kemurara was a turn point.  Generally if you had found nothing to track before then it was a nice place to stop and go for a bush walk anyway.  Out of the mopane and down into the riverine thicket the river was a mere two hundred meters away.  Just as the crossing came into view I spotted tracks, lion tracks, and they looked fresh.

A momentary pause alongside in the vehicle and my initial impression was confirmed.  It left me a in a bit of quandary.  The lion tracks were fresh, they were made by a big cat but not a male, rather it was lone lioness who had recently passed this spot. 

I knew there was lioness with cubs in the area, very young cubs in-fact.  No-one had actually seen them as yet but that was because mom was cautious.  Lion cubs are born blind and helpless.  Their mother will normally hide them in thick bush, often along a water course, for anything from four to eight weeks during which time there is very little chance of seeing them.