It’s been three years since our last Mindful Safari and this is my first visit to Africa since Covid. I am here to check on the lodge where we usually stay, the wildlife we encounter, and to plan fresh adventures for 2023. Those, at least, are the obvious reasons, although there is more to it than only them. I was born and brought up in Zimbabwe and through the recent years of lockdowns and isolation I have yearned to come home.
The moment I wheel my case into the airport lobby Caissias, the lodge manager is waving and shouting my name. Large, ebullient, a broad smile lights his face as we exchange warm African greetings. It has been so long between visits, and so dire the hiatus of the travel industry, he admits that he wondered if we’d ever meet again. In moments he has commandeered my luggage and is guiding me to a vehicle.
We don’t have to wait long before our first animal encounter. We haven’t even left Victoria Falls Airport when we come across a family of warthogs on a stray patch of emerald lawn. This is the dry season and week upon week of cloudless blue skies have scorched the bush to a khaki crackle. The warthogs are making the most of the random patch of lushness. I have always loved these creatures with their curiously earnest little faces, which for some reason remind me of Edwardian businessmen. The quirky way they lower themselves to their front knees to grub for roots. How, when startled, they sprint off, their spindly, tufted tails held aloft like toilet brushes. One of their nicknames here in Africa is “radio-controlled pigs”.
Families of baboons wait on either side of the main road as ramshackle cars and trucks hurtle past at terrifying speeds. Traffic-savvy as the human pedestrians with whom they share this space, their expressions shift from the deeply-sceptical to the grievously offended.
Just before the turn-off to the lodge, we come across the severed chassis of an ancient Cortina. The rear wheels and back seat have been fashioned into a cart connected by wooden shafts to a pair of long-suffering donkeys. On the seat, an ancient woman, dressed as if on her way to a formal tea party, urges the donkeys ever forward across the white, Kalahari sand.
At the lodge, I am greeted with a jubilant outpouring of drumming and dancing. How can I fail to be moved? The Covid years have been harsh. No tourists means no jobs and many people have lost theirs. Those who greet me in their brand-new T-shirts are the fortunate ones. They see me as the rainmaker, someone possessing a magical power to conjure up more of the visitors who will secure their jobs and, if they are lucky, provide much sought-after tips. In a country with 90% unemployment, and those who do work averaging US$100 a month, each, single dollar matters in a way we cannot possibly fathom.
I am reminded of the journalist who asked U2’s Bono how he, as a multi-millionaire, coped meeting such poor people on his philanthropic visits. His reply was both unexpected and correct: to these people we are all incomprehensibly rich, he said. Even journalists. We may recognise the theory of this, but it can take a visit here for us to realise its truth.
