Sparring partners

The zebra’s name comes from the Portuguese who first described this “wild ass” in Zaire 500 years ago. No two zebra stripes are alike. The colouring is not actually meant to be a camouflage, although it does serve to confuse predators, who find it difficult to single out one animal from the mass of stripes. In the heat of the day a zebra will stand, like a springbok, rump to the sun to reduce exposure. 

Zebras’ habit of remaining close to wildebeests benefits both animals, as the zebras’ sense of smell, sight and hearing is an early warning system against predators, while the carnivores’ preference for wildebeests is an inverted safety valve for the zebra.

Although zebra stallions, patrolling the perimeter of family herds and thus exposing themselves to the greatest danger, are very protective when predators are near, they are capable of spectacular infighting when it comes to dominance, ego and the opposite sex.

Stallions can clash in spectacular displays of flailing hooves as they rear, wrestle, kick and lunge at each other with barred teeth and slashing hind and forelegs. They will even drop to the sand on their forelegs and spar ferociously, raking each other’s neck with slavering jaws.

  

As for the cheetah, bathed in the warm colours of late afternoon, a San Bushman legend tells of a much more dignified characteristic. There was a race the story goes, to discover which was the fastest animal on earth, the cheetah or the tsessebe of the grasslands. As they ran, the speedy antelope was just inching ahead when it tripped and fell. The cheetah stopped to help and as a reward for this kindly gesture, God granted the cheetah the right to be the fastest creature in the desert. 

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Rock of ages with Superb Africa Safaris

By the rivers of ZHOU, the word of the Shona people for elephant, the ramparts of Chilojo have for centuries gazed down at the great Gonarezhou wilderness in the southeastern corner of Zimbabwe. The meeting place of the Runde and Save rivers, it has ever since slaving days, been the free-fire zone of elephant poachers. It has also witnessed the decimation of lofty ironwood trees I an attempt to hold the tsetse fly at bay, the culling of buffalo to protect man’s cattle, gun running, slavery and ivory wars. Every adventurer of the lowveld – Shangaan, Swahili, Portuguese, English and Rhodesian – has had a crack at Gonarezhou.

If you follow the Limpopo River west from Gonarezhou to a point where the Shashi River joins it, then head north, you will soon come to the Matobo hills. Visionary imperialist Cecil John Rhodes chose this sublime eyrie as his burial place. Surrounded by massive natural cannonballs, it overlooks a land that seems to have been pulverized by giant blows into a thousand tumbled hills. Great spaces washed by the rain and wind and sun.

In the summer rains, if Mwari God is bountiful, water courses down these massive granite whalebacks in a hundred glistening streams like the white stripes of kudu as it pauses among dripping msasa trees. 

Seventy per cent of Zimbabwe’s 13 million people still live and work as small farmers and herdsmen, and for nearly a thousand years they have also mastered the art of shaving off or fire cracking the surfaces of dwalas to produce building blocks. This was how the Great Zimbabwe’s huge stone structures were made and the same process has allowed modern day artists in the country to carve exquisite mythological sculptures, recognized as among the most sophisticated in the world.

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Mosi oa Tunya, the smoke that thunders

No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.

The tireless river

The Kafue River, winding across the plains below, flows into the Zambezi and is typical of the whole riverine system; shallow, sluggish meandering that runs for ever past reed and the sand island, forested riverbank, lurking crocodiles, snorting hippo, wading birds, and cobwebs of dew at dawn. The “big river” or Zambezi rises in Zambia and runs along the border which divides that country form Zimbabwe. It is 2,740 kilometers long and produces as much water as all the rivers of South Africa combined.

Vasco da Gama, the great Portuguese explorer, was the first European to see the mouth of the river In the Indian ocean coast, on 22^nd January 1498. He named it the “river of good omens” (Rio dos Bons Signaes) yet history has never reflected his sentiment, neither for Portuguese entrepreneurs trying to muscle in on the Swahili gold ivory and the slave trade of the interior, nor for missionary David Livingstone who 400 hundred years later walked the whole length of the river. His wife Mary born in faraway Kuruman on the edge of the Kalahari, lies buried in an all but forgotten grave not far from the delta where the wind and the salt and the inexorable march of the jungle shore hide her last resting place.

 The Zambezi valley, 50kms wide between the smoky blue massif of pyramids-shaped mountains besides the river on the Zambian side and the baobab and mopane tree covered escarpment in Zimbabwe, is hot and rugged wilderness. On the alluvial flood plains Mana Pools the river can be five kilometers wide, and in the dry season attracts vast quantities of impala, buffalo lion nearly 400 species of birds, and elephants that amble across the river between the two countries.   

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WILDEBEESTS MIGRATION IN MASAI MARA

WILDEBEESTS MIGRATION IN MASAI MARA NATIONAL RESERVE

Revisiting the thirstland with Superb Africa Safaris

Only the Himba, hardy nomads of Kaokoland, and the fleet –footed predators such as the elegant cheetah survive in the lava backed mountains, mighty dunes and ancient pebble plains of southern corner of Africa. Under the searing heat of the sun, the desert of sand and rock does not stir. Waiting like a gecko, motionless. Above, the sky is an eternal blue, sealed by neither horizons nor heavens, and to each turn the arid landscape shows no sign of comfort or hope. 

A few animals, reliant only on scarce and precious water or natures own resourceful confidence; make a home of the desert. The beauty they share is a harsh, severe beauty, a beauty sculpted form light and space and austerity. Their home is a barren wilderness, a land burnt brown by the sun, a land, they say, God made in anger.

                                                            

The dry thirst land that stretches inland from Namibia’s Atlantic shore is a vast, harsh desert that was formed 80 millions years ago. In some areas the sweeping winds have sculpted classic dunes and furrowed fields of red sand; in others the land seems to be  huge and inhospitable, a place where you would not expect to see any  form of life. Nature, however, is enormously resourceful.

In Damaraland, an arid region adjoining the bleak and hostile, skeleton Coast, a number of animals which are commonly associated with the green African bush  have, in one way or another, adapted to life in the harsh ochre sands. These include elephant, rhinoceros, bottom, and giraffe, left, the remnant populations of herds which have been forced into the desert by diminishing habitats and the constant threat of poachers.

For an animal which so revels in water, the desert is hardly an easy place for an elephant, drinking, to exist. Elephant are members of the Proboscides order, those animals with long, flexible, prehensile trunks, which elephants use to suck up water to squirt into their mouths, or to spray over their bodies to cool down.

 The arid region of the southwest has many ironies. As the fog rolls in from the cold South Atlantic Ocean each night into the dips and hollows of the dunes, the parched Namib becomes the world’s most famous humid desert. When the summer rains come, long sand rivers and bone dry canyons transform into raging torrents for a few blessed hours each year. Meanwhile, in the North, the natural springs surround Africa’s largest, driest and saltiest pan, the Etosha.

The springs and woodland scrub of the pan attract thousands of animals. Different animals all have different drinking times in Etosha. Kudu and Eland like a pint or two in the morning, zebra are normally lunchtime imbibers, elephant prefer late afternoon, while giraffe will grace any gathering. Lion drink at night and hyena in small hours after midnight.

Tall, severe – looking secretary bird (Sagittarius serpentarius) take their name form the spring quills they have as head and tail feathers. They feed mainly on insects, but will also eat small mammals, snakes and other reptiles. These they lance with their bill, and then stamp on to soften up before swallowing whole.       

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Listen to the voice of Africa with Superb Africa Safaris part 02

The civilians of Egypt, Kush, Nubia and Axum in North Africa, great Zimbabwe in the south, and the great medieval gold-and bronze smelting cultures of Songhay, old Ghana, Ife, and Benin in West Africa, were all indigenous, but there have been many non African influences down the centuries. The Phoenicians created Carthage (modern Tunis) while Ancient Rome destroyed the power of Egypt, turning North Africa into the grain basket of the empire. In the process they also devastated North Africa’s game in their passion for gory gladiatorial contests between man and animals imported from Africa.

 In the creation of cultures and kingdoms, both Christianity and Islam have been powerful influences in Africa. Soon after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, founder of Islam AD 632, Arab followers of the new religion conquered first Egypt then, within 80 years, much of North Africa and substantial enclaves along the East African coast. Meanwhile the Trans Saharan gold traders on their romantic caravans introduced Islam to the great Africa kingdom of the Sahel.

There are many similarities between medieval Europe and Africa. Around the time William the conqueror invaded England, the king of the Wolof of Senegal had an army of 10,000 horsemen; In Southern Uganda subjects dared not look into the eyes of their Kingsland, in the south, rich cattlemen at Great Zimbabwe were building the magnificent stone structures that were to become the focal point of a city of 40,000 people. By 1450, however, a new wave of invaders, the Portuguese were sailing down the coast of Africa intent on capturing the fabulous spice trade of the East. They were followed by the Dutch 200 years later, then the English and, in the last century, the Germans, Belgians, French and Italians.

For Africa keeping these horse riding, musket-firing Europeans at bay was a tough task and one after the other African nations collapsed under the onslaught. A total of ten million Africans were transported out of Africa by the slave trade, along with the treasures of the Pharaohs, gold, diamonds, ivory, and every manner of living creature.

 “Listen to the song of Africa”, as a Senegalese poet Leopold Sedar Senghor begs us, “Listen to the beating of the dark pulse of Africa in the midst of lost villages”.