Guests only saw one side of the camp. They saw their tents, which marched out in radiating lines like a propeller’s blades, with the decked main area in the centre as a hub. This deck held a well-stocked bar, a pool so small it would barely moisten you (and was occasionally emptied by an elephant in a few gigantic slurps), a dining table with twenty-four seats arrayed around it, and a bookshelf with tomes that grew mouldy every rainy season, the pages sticking together until September.
This is where the tourists were entertained, recounted the stories from their drives, stayed up too late to be fresh for the 5 a.m. start, and it was to here that they staggered, dry-eyed and rough-voiced, every morning. It is where they would believe most of the camp’s activity took place, but they were wrong.
Behind the deck was an administrative office; behind the office was a storeroom made of coal and wire, with water trickling over it to keep the vegetables inside cool; behind the storeroom was the kitchen, then the workshop, then the houses where managers and guides lived. The real pulse of Mombo camp—of any camp—is the back of house, where day-to-day decisions are made, disasters are dealt with or disguised, and more wildlife comes to visit than any tourist would imagine.
The two workshop attendants, Cisco and Advice, had found a place where the ground was hard-packed, and each morning when the vehicles returned from safari they would hose them down over this patch, give them a rub with a gritty cloth and park them under the shade netting next to the workshop. There the mechanic, Santos, would give them a knowing once-over. Each day they did this the divot in the washing area became a little deeper. The very hard-packed, non-mud-forming properties that made the area appealing for washing also meant that it held water, and animals learnt that it was regular source of Africa’s most valuable commodity. During the day there was enough activity around the camp for only the boldest baboons and some indifferent warthogs to utilise it, but everything changed at night. A morning survey of tracks around its perimeter would often reveal that it had been visited by lion, leopard, hyena, and the most unwanted visitor of all—a big old buffalo bull.
This buffalo made the nocturnal journey to bed a risky one. His black hide blended with all but the most moonlit of nights, and if he held his head low his eyes might not reflect the beam of whatever light I carried. On many occasions after I had escorted the last guests back to their tents I would discover that they had taken the last flashlight, so I was left with the weak, non-directed glow from a kerosene lantern with which to make my way home. On a gusty night these sometimes puffed out, leaving me stranded, nervously waiting for my eyes to adjust, more nervously noting every night sound— which would sometimes include an ominous slosh as the buffalo made his way out of the waterhole, leaving me wondering if he was retreating or coming towards me.
On more than one occasion he did charge, not just me but some of the staff who weren’t trained guides and were seriously rattled by the experience. The Botswana Wildlife Department were notified that we had a ‘rogue’ animal, so they dispatched an officer to our camp, accompanied by two sharpshooters from the Botswana Defence Force.
They spent three days waiting in the camp for the buffalo. The rules stated that the soldiers could only shoot while the guests were out on drive, but the buffalo only came into camp as everyone slept in their tents, spending the day lurking deep in some thickets. On the morning the authorities were packing to leave, calling their mission a bust, I saw a buffalo step out in front of the camp and told Chris. Moments later the wildlife officer and the army guys rocketed to the front of the camp in the back of an old Toyota, and the shooters showed that they weren’t so sharp.
The buffalo had merely snorted as they approached, but broke into a tragic canter as the first shot hit him in the left hindquarter. The next was somewhere near his shoulder and he bellowed before more shots hit him again and again throughout his body. It was an incomprehensibly brutal slaughter and I felt like the worst kind of Judas for having given his location away.
Finally, after sixteen shots, he gave one last ‘humph’, and died.
That night as I walked home, a buffalo sloshed out of the waterhole and galloped away. We’d either killed the wrong animal, or, as I now suspected, there were any number of buffalo using our car wash as a mud bath.
I vowed that next time any animal was considered a threat I would do my utmost to protect it, and have no part in its demise.
Not long after the buffalo’s death we agreed that, if anything, having the occasional buffalo at the waterhole discouraged some other equally dangerous animals from visiting. Hyenas in particular— already somewhat of a problem in the camp—now grew bolder, appearing in greater numbers. They would scurry away when approached, out of range of the beam of light, but I was always aware that they might double back and sneak behind me, dipping their heads and licking their lips at the thought of sinking their teeth into my tasty calf muscles. I would pivot regularly and snarl at any hyena that might be there, sometimes snarling even if I couldn’t see one, just in case one was lurking outside my field of vision. My neighbours probably grew weary of my noises as I made my way home, but they never said anything to me.
One night, after safely depositing tourists in their tents, and reassuring them as always that no animal would claw its way through the canvas (if they did do that, I rationalised to them, we might stop using tents), I found that once again there were no flashlights left for me. I wandered around the deck, blowing out lanterns except for one that I reserved for myself. I turned the wick higher for the widest possible circle of light and started trudging my way through the sand past the kitchen, past the workshop, slowing as I approached the waterhole by my house, lifting the lantern high for an even wider beam.
At first I saw nothing, then noticed two glints of light, close to the ground. A buffalo’s eyes would be higher as they lift their head when threatened, and besides, these eyes were close together, and were forward-facing.
Lion.
‘Bugger,’ I thought, and felt my insides writhe, as if trying to escape through my backside before they were gouged out.
Contrary to common sense I stepped closer, not wanting to appear weak and not wanting to give the lion any opportunity to slink out of the light where I couldn’t see it. There was no mane, so it was a female (ruling out through statistical odds it being our one maneless male). The head was grizzled and scarred, and the body also showed marks of a life lived rough. As more of the cat became visible across the four-metre span of the waterhole I relaxed.
‘Hey Stompie,’ I said softly. ‘Where’s your family?’ I wasn’t afraid of this lion, perhaps foolishly, but did want to know where her daughter Tippie was, and even more so her idiot grandson Dopey. He himself wasn’t threatening, but was such a goof that I could imagine him jumping on me out of curiosity and then the whole pride joining in—and even if it started out as fun it could only end with me requiring a hospital or undertaker. So I tried my utmost to keep one eye on Stompie while surveying the dark surrounds for the other pride members.
There was no sign of them. Stompie was not showing interest in me so I backed to my tent, swivelling periodically until I made it into my room. My adrenaline was high, which made it impossible to get to sleep, so I listened to the repeated ‘purrrp’ of a Scops owl, the faraway sound of an elephant breaking branches and the snuffling of a porcupine that might just get itself eaten if it went for a drink. I heard no scuffle though, and finally drifted off.
The next morning I noticed Stompie’s tracks meandering into the rain-tree forest behind the managers’ houses. This was not unusual for her. I imagined she had been left behind by the pride and was now trying to keep up.
Stompie’s pride were the first lions I had seen in Botswana and had impressed me immediately with their strangeness. Chris had driven me up to them with what I thought would be alarming speed, but they hadn’t flinched, even when he parked within inches of one of their tail tips. The only reaction was from a young male who gave the leonine approximation of a smile and sniffed at our tyre before chasing his tail and flopping back down. I’d never seen a lion chase its tail before, but his delight may have been that he was one of the few pride members who had his appendage intact. His mother, Tippie, who led the pride, was missing the tip of her tail. Hyenas had taken it, Chris explained, and even though she wasn’t the eldest lion in the group she was its leader. The eldest lion had an even briefer appendage. Only six inches long, it still flicked irritably at the flies that surrounded her battle-scarred, chipped-tooth visage. This was Stompie, Chris said, a name derived from a South African term for a cigarette butt. The tawny stump protruding from her rear end did indeed resemble a discarded stub. Strangest of all though was Stompie’s inclusion in this family. Lions are unsentimental beasts, and an individual as aged and incapable of hunting as Stompie should have been left behind long ago.
Now it appeared she might finally have been discarded, for the next night, this time armed with a flashlight, I encountered her again. She was on the move, well ahead of me, making her way to the waterhole. Our paths would converge, but I felt no apprehension. I just stopped and watched as she came to the water. She knelt to drink, with a defined care that suggested her knees pained her, and gave quick noisy slurps. As I angled around her she paused, glanced my way and held my gaze for a few moments. It remains the only time in my life that I have stood metres from a wild lion, with nothing to protect me, and felt no fear.
She went back to her drinking, still keeping an eye on me, and I sidled to my doorway, a simple slab of timber in a plain frame, surrounded by nothing but canvas. From the doorway I watched Stompie finish her drink, then settle lower onto her haunches before flopping onto her side, in a position familiar to anyone who has owned a housecat.
She breathed quickly, often a sign that a cat is digesting, but her ribs showed through and I knew she was just exhausted, and maybe ill. ‘Goodnight Stompie,’ I called as I shut my door, ‘hope you make it through the night.’
She did. In the morning I caught her walking again, but even more slowly, and she settled within sight of our houses. Chris, Grant and I spread the word amongst the staff to be careful around the management and guides’ quarters. Nobody mentioned the wildlife department, but we all knew one thing: lions don’t normally attack people unless they are defending their cubs—or because they are old and unable to hunt anything faster and stronger than our feeble species. If she stayed in the camp, we had an unavoidable problem.
The next night she was at the waterhole again, and by now I looked forward to seeing her there. There certainly hadn’t been any buffalo hanging around now that she was here, even though in her condition she would have been as easy to trample as a baby.
Lions called nearby that night, and I listened to hear if Stompie would call back. She would know the voices of her family, and reply if it was them. She stayed silent though, and I wondered if it was another pride or if she was now so weakened that she couldn’t even call. If that was the case, she might not make the morning.
In the middle of the night, not too long after I had fallen asleep, something woke me. This was no easy feat. In Japan I once slept through a sizable earthquake, and in Africa had become so inured to the calls of animals that nothing short of Chinese New Year celebrations inside my tent would wake me until my alarm rang.
I sat up, figuring out what noises were relics from my dream (which was something to do with making a cake out of underpants, maybe because I’d had neither for a while). My tent was dark, the only light coming through a hole in the roof. Then I heard a giggle outside.
It was a sinister sound. An evil yipping followed it, then a whoop. The hyenas were excited about something. They burst into the excited screeches that always made my skin prickle and nerves in my teeth flare. It sounded like a woman being attacked.
They must be going after Stompie. Maybe they’d watched her from a distance for a while, maybe each night that she’d been there, waiting for her weakness to deepen so they could move in and administer the coup de grâce. It was awful to imagine what must be happening to her. The hyenas wouldn’t take her face-on, but some would distract her from the front while others circled behind, nipping at her hindquarters, slowly bleeding her until she died. I wanted to go out and help her, but knew it was likely that the hyenas in their excited state would turn on me and pull me to pieces. Stompie herself could misinterpret my aims and go for the softest target in defending herself, which would certainly be me.
In the grey light of dawn I crept from my room, not sure what might still be around. I expected to find a carcass in the waterhole or beside it, but there was no sign of one. There were hyena tracks in every direction, some paused, some digging in, telling a story of patient waiting followed by short darts of speed. The waterhole itself had no definable edge as liquid had splashed and splattered all around it. I circled it, and saw the occasional lion pug, but no clear trail of where Stompie had gone.
Had she made it through the night, only to walk off to die? What kind of fight had she put up? Had the hyenas killed her outright and dragged her body away? That would have left a mark in the grass, but there was none. I scanned the ground for a few minutes, but needed to get to work so I fired up my Land Rover.
On my drive that morning I found Tippie, her sister, the three cubs and Dopey. They had just killed a warthog, small meat for a family that size. Dopey was far too old to still be with his mother, but our dominant males in the north had been recently driven out, and with no one to replace them Dopey kept living at home. So excited was he by their kill that he decided to climb a palm tree. Halfway up he realised how much he weighed, how long the drop was, and how incapable he was of turning around. With a great howl followed by a dust-disturbing flat splat onto the ground he crashed back. It was the silliest thing I’d seen a lion do, but my amusement was tempered by their location: they were a long way from camp. A long way from Stompie. If she wasn’t already dead, to survive she’d need the pride to make a kill almost right under her nose.
That night I didn’t sit at the dinner table with guests but purloined a flashlight. My vehicle was parked outside my room, ready to ride forth and defend a distressed lion if needed. I read in my room for a while, periodically walking to my open door and shining into the night. It was no surprise that I didn’t hear her arrive, but that Stompie was right outside my house was unnerving. She had her back to me, and didn’t flick an ear at the light playing over her angular hips and the recent cuts and slashes from hyena teeth on her back. Maybe her phantom tail tip did curl, but the rest of her stayed still, resting for the few metres she had to walk to the water.
Many people in Africa have sated hunger temporarily by filling up with water, and I wondered if Stompie might be doing the same. I also wondered at the pain her empty belly must be causing. She finally stood, staggered the last few steps, a pitiful sight, and flopped again by the waterhole.
The next morning she hadn’t moved, and didn’t pay me any attention when I drove past her. As the sun rose she shuffled into shade, but was still within the bounds of the camp, opening her eyes occasionally to watch the staff as they did their daily duties— breathing shallowly, looking desperate and hungry. Maybe, just maybe, there was now real danger in her presence. Nothing is slower than a human, nothing weaker, and nothing has such blunt teeth and claws. We are the easiest meal in the bush, and if it wasn’t for our ancestors striking fear into all species with their weapons there might be far fewer of us.
‘Can’t we just give her some meat?’ the catering manager asked. ‘Not fillet, of course, but bacon, chops, something?’
Another manager named Grant, Chris, and me all shook our heads in unison, knowing that it would simply train Stompie that humans were a source of food. It was a mistake that had been made by many people over many years with many species and it always ended badly.
I didn’t see Stompie the next night, even though I waited as late as I could before exhaustion claimed me. Just before dawn though I heard her. She’d crept back in to camp. ‘How-um . . .’ she moaned, a contact call given by lions that have lost their pride. She called her family again, ‘How-um . . .’ It is a mournful sound at the best of times, but now it pained me to hear it. No answer came. By the time I slapped my alarm clock, pulled on my shirt, shorts and sandals and left my room to find her she was gone.
The next night she didn’t come, and no tracks were around the waterhole.
The night after, I approached the waterhole with some enthusiasm, sure that I would find her there. I was walking briskly and thrilled as the light picked up a gleam. The reflected eye moved at my approach, raised up, too high for a lion.
‘Bugger!’ I backed into a thorn bush as a buffalo charged off, trailing mud and indignation.
Nothing the next night. Or from then on. I saw Nicky the leopard at our waterhole soon after, baboons during the day, furtively flicking their brows in case one of the workshop guys threw a stick at them, warthogs every day, buffalo at night, hyenas, an elephant that loomed from the darkness like a dinosaur come to life, but never Stompie. Never again did she come to the waterhole at the back of Mombo Camp.
‘Waaaaa! All mobiles, I’ve got tau.’ It was Nandi, a guide who had recently joined the camp and started every sentence with the exclamation ‘Waaaaa!’ for no reason that I ever figured out. ‘They’re by Honeymoon Pan, slowly mobile north.’ We had a pattern for calling in sightings. Guides announced what animal they’d found, spoken in Setswana so the tourists wouldn’t understand, where you were, and what the animals were doing.
‘How many you got?’ I asked, wondering which pride it was.
‘Three basadi, one moena, three manyani.’ Females, a male and young.
I was nearby so I went to look for myself. It was Tippie’s pride, and in the time it took me to get there they had brought down a kudu, an unusual kill for them to make in daylight. Dopey was snarling at the rest, even with a mouthful of meat. The only time he ever looked serious was when food was involved. Tippie was also there, as was her younger sister. The unnamed sister had three young, and these clambered over the top of their family, scrapping for the meat they would need to survive. Lions give nothing away, and young lions often starve, but this was a large antelope and would easily feed them all.
They had made the kill right beside one of our tracks, a sweeping curve of road that followed a treeline. Nandi pointed to a fever berry tree, indicating there was one more lion there. The bush rustled and the animal emerged. I couldn’t believe my eyes: ‘Stompie!’ I called out, no doubt startling the tourists. She’d found her family, who knew how or when, and while still thin she was moving far better than when I’d last seen her.
With a wheeze she squeezed her way between her daughters, who both gave a deep rumble at her intrusion. ‘Give an old girl a break!’ I thought, but knew lions had no such niceties. She sank her teeth into the meat and I could almost taste it myself, taste the life she was getting from the one just taken.
Hyenas arrived at the kill that afternoon, bold in the region since the big male lions had left. But Dopey was now an impressive-looking animal, even if his intellect and instincts remained dubious. With a roar and some ill-timed but purposeful swipes of his paw he kept the hyenas at bay, and the pride grew fat over two days of feeding.
This area had always been the core territory of Tippie’s pride, but they were an ageing pride, with only one breeding female, who was having to rebuff the increasing advances of her idiot nephew while hoping for some real males to appear. They were also being pressured by a new pride to the region, called the Matata Pride, far stronger in numbers and youth.
Eventually they just left. Nobody can say where they went, or if some remnant of their pride exists on some other island in the Okavango, perhaps known by a new name, maybe rebuilding in strength. Dopey would have been driven out, and by some miracle may have acquired a territory of his own.
My head tells me that by now Stompie is long dead, Tippie too. Even the youngest female would need a miracle to still be roaming the Delta. Dopey, no matter his strength, is gone also. My heart tells me though that the pride still goes on, descended as they are from a great survivor.