Life Away from the Lions
I’m like a lion. If I’m not sleeping, I’m up and doing something active. However, unlike a lion I have more than four hours of waking time per day to occupy, so I am a real busy body.
If I am not interacting with the lions or the hyenas or the other animals, I’m either working on a documentary or other filming project, or in my spare time pursuing one of a number of hobbies. The making of the feature film, White Lion, has consumed much of my time in the last few years, but when I can, I get out and ride my vintage Triumph motorcycle; I fly; I hike; and I ride superbikes on the racetrack.
When people meet me for the first time I think some of them are surprised. I don’t wear khaki safari clothes or veldskoen shoes; I don’t have a big bushy beard and long hair; and my whole life does not revolve around animals only.
I do have a life away from my lions, hyenas, leopards, and other predators. My passion for bikes as an adult was nurtured by my ex-girlfriend Lisa’s brother-in-law, a guy called Clayton, better known as Gopher, who remained a good friend of mine after Lisa and I broke off.
Gopher and I would sit for hours drinking ice cold Windhoek lagers and talking about bikes. When Mandy met him, I’m sure she thought Gopher might have been a bad influence in my life, but I assured her I had matured from my teen years, which I had already told her all about. Nonetheless, I knew she was concerned about what we got up to on Saturday afternoons, when Gopher and I would set off on our motorcycles together.
There is a great chain of outdoors shops in South Africa called Cape Union Mart, and the big store in Sandton Mall has its own indoor climbing wall. Gopher and I used to like going there on a Saturday and competing against each other to see who could reach the top of the wall first.
It was a good place to hang out, literally, and the shop also had a separate “climate room” with the air-conditioning set way down low. The idea was that rich suburbanites could try on some winter clothing for their next ski strip and go into the climate room to see how their gear performed in sub-zero temperatures. Gopher and I saw the possibility for a new competition immediately. We decided to go in dressed in shorts and T-shirts and see who could stand the cold for the longest time before freezing his nuts off. It was such good fun the first time that it became a regular game for us. Sadly for me, Gopher has now emigrated to Australia.
“What do you and Clayton get up to on Saturday afternoons when you disappear together?” Mandy asked suspiciously one evening early on in our relationship, after I’d returned home on the bike.
“We hang out in Cape Union Mart and then see who can last the longest in the cold room,” I told her honestly.
She looked at me and shook her head. “Is that the best story you could come up with?”
People also think that when I go into the bush I’m going to be serious and sonorous like the great BBC commentator David Attenborough. Others think I’d be chasing every dangerous animal I can find, just like Steve Irwin. The truth is a lot more boring: when I get away I mostly just like to have fun. When I get to a national park or game reserve, I don’t go out looking especially for lions or hyenas or other predators. I don’t need to see big cats in the wild or see a predator make a kill to think I’ve had a worthwhile time. I like to simply be in the bush and appreciate everything around me in nature, even the little things—especially the little things.
Rodney Fuhr sponsors a wildlife research base in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, on the edge of the Moremi Game Reserve. I get up there when I can, as I love the bush, and one day, if I get the time, I would like to pursue some research ideas of my own, particularly in relation to wild hyenas.
The camp, called Squacco Heron Projects, is in a beautiful setting, overlooking a permanent waterhole not too far from the Gomoti River. Rodney’s funding provides researchers with accommodation and an office where they can work on their reports. Most of the permanent staff at the camp are from the local community, the traditional owners of the land. Rodney leases the land the research base is on, and the rights to a photographic safari operation nearby, called Moremi Tented Camp (MTC).
The area abounds with game, such as buffalo, elephants, zebra, giraffe, kudu, and impala, and all the major African predators can be found around, and sometimes in the camp. When you visit, the nightly lullaby is usually the whoop of spotted hyenas, and your alarm is the low, mournful call of a lion in the predawn darkness. There are few places in Africa I’ve been to where you can see as many animals in one place as the rich verdant floodplains around the Gomoti at the end of the dry season.
Mandy and I were visiting the camp during a break and went out for a game drive with Guy Lobjoit, the research camp manager, and Rodney Fuhr. We loaded the Land Cruiser with drinks and padkos, which means food for the road.
The delta is beautiful. Moremi’s landscape ranges from forests of tall trees fed by a high water table beneath the Kalahari sandveld, to vast areas of marshes bisected by shallow clear water channels as the Okavango River trickles its way from Angola and Namibia to the north into the dry heart of Botswana.
Guy stopped the vehicle at a nice pan, a waterhole set in an open sandy area where we had good visibility. As we got out of the vehicle and started unloading our food and drinks for sundowners and dinner, Guy spotted movement in the bush at the edge of the pan. Before we knew it we found ourselves among a pack of about a dozen wild dogs.
The African wild dog is the most efficient predator on the continent. These highly organized professional killers bring down a higher percentage of the prey they chase than any other carnivore. They can rip an impala or wildebeest to shreds and devour it in a matter of minutes, yet there has never been a recorded incident of them attacking a human being in the wild. They have also been one of the most endangered mammals in Africa, which makes any sighting of them a rare treat.
“Kevin, get back in the vehicle,” Mandy hissed. She was already perched back inside the Land Cruiser.
Guy and I stayed on the ground. The dogs had seen us, and while they paused for a moment, their big ears rotating towards us and noses sniffing the air, they did not turn and run from us simply because they saw two humans standing by a vehicle. Guy has lived a lot of his life in the bush, and worked as a section ranger in the Umbabat private game reserve on the border of the Kruger National Park. He has a good knowledge of the bush, and we’re both the kind of guys who are sometimes more comfortable around wild animals than people. We held our ground and the dogs started moving slowly towards us.
Wild dogs are also known as painted hunting dogs because of their intricately patterned coats, which are decorated with blotches of yellow, white, brown, and black. They’re the size of a small Alsatian and have overly large ears, which help them sense prey and danger, and long, spindly legs. Like all dogs they’re curious, and this pack was no different.
“Kevin!”
I ignored my wife’s command and stayed put with my friend and my dinner. Rodney was in the vehicle, having his dinner and enjoying the show. One by one the dogs closed the gap between us and them. I’m no different than how I was as a kid. I can’t just look at things. I wanted to see how the dogs would react to me when I was on foot, as opposed to being in the vehicle. I don’t feed wild animals—no one should—but one of the dogs in the pack was curious about what I was eating. It came close enough to me to smell my fingers. Mandy was having a heart attack but I knew the law of averages was on my side. The dogs had made a conscious decision to approach the humans and they satisfied themselves we were no threat to them.
As the dogs sniffed and played around us I realized, once again, how lucky I am to be able to have such an experience and to live on this continent. Like I said, I don’t go looking for close encounters with wildlife in the bush, but sometimes things find me.
I love to fly and I took Rodney Fuhr’s Cessna 182 up to Liuwa Plains in Zambia when he made the decision to close his research camp there and move it to Botswana. I had helped with some of the logistics at Liuwa camp and while I was excited about his new venture in Botswana, it was a little sad to be going back to close things down.
My regular safari tent was still set up in the camp, and I made myself at home again. I helped dismantle the camp during the days and each night, after a couple of beers, I lowered myself onto the camping bed on which I slept.
On the third night I brushed against the canvas wall of the tent and heard a rustling noise, followed by a low, guttural, almost ghostly noise: “Hoaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrr.” Odd sound, I thought, so I deliberately hit the wall again. Up beside me reared a fully grown black cobra. This snake was probably one-and-a-half times my size, and as I don’t have any snake-wrangling experience, I beat it out of that tent in quick time.
It’s interesting how man and nature can live side by side in harmony until something disturbs the balance. That snake had probably made its home in the tent for some time and had been quite happy to tolerate me for two nights until I bumped the canvas. If I hadn’t disturbed or alarmed him, we might never have confronted each other.
I like to look after my machines and I keep all of my cars, my Triumph motorcycle, and a 1957 Series I Land Rover I own in pristine condition.
Rodney’s 182 was being kept at Lanseria Airport, and while that is not far from where I live, I wanted to move the aircraft to the Lion Park’s airstrip so that I could better care for the aircraft.
The park’s airstrip is only four hundred and fifty meters long, which is not huge. At the time I was a relatively novice pilot, but I read the spec sheets for the Cessna and found that it could be landed on an airstrip the length of ours, though there was a note that said only experienced pilots should attempt landing on strips less than a certain length. I had about a hundred hours at the time and I was bold enough to consider myself experienced enough.
I’m not a recluse, but I love flying by myself and having time to myself. The only person I have to talk to in the air is the air traffic controller, and for the rest of the time I can think and just enjoy the freedom of being airborne and as free as a bird. As well as the 182, I fly a Thunderbird fixed-wing microlight, and a Zenair Sky Jeep. We use the aircraft at the research camps and to keep an eye on our game at the Kingdom. Recreationally, I catch up for breakfast with a bunch of other pilots at different airstrips from time to time.
When I took off from Lanseria it was a very short hop across to the Lion Park. As I brought her down it didn’t feel right. The airstrip seemed to rush up at me and it looked impossibly short. The aircraft seemed to have a mind of its own and it didn’t want to come down there. I finally touched the grass, but the aircraft bounced, then bounced again. I was nervous, and some power lines that run through the bush at the far end of the strip seemed to be rushing towards me too fast. I decided to go around, so I pushed the throttle to full power to take off again.
I could feel the speed building, but the electricity cables still seemed to be hurtling towards me rather than the other way around. I pulled back on the stick to try and coax the aircraft up, but I was sacrificing airspeed for altitude. I crossed the power lines by the skin of my teeth, but in doing so stalled the aircraft. The Cessna smacked down on the far side of a road which runs the other side of the cables, onto open ground. By this stage I had lost control completely.
There was a jarring thud as the nose wheel hit the ground and bent forwards, causing it to brush the propeller. The tail bashed into the dirt and she bounced again. The ground started to fall away below me. Amazingly, the jolt allowed the Cessna to gain enough speed and height to unstall the wings and start flying again.
I managed to regain control of the aircraft and my pounding heart and flew around in a low circle. I didn’t know the extent of the damage to the plane, although many of the instruments had fallen out of the cockpit control panel. I pushed them back in as best as I could and found, miraculously, that the radio was still working.
I looked out of my side window and saw that part of the rear tail of the plane was flapping around in the slipstream. I was shitting bricks by this time and wondered when the plane would start to break up. When I looked out the other side window I noticed the tip of the wing was missing. I didn’t even know if I still had a nose wheel.
As a trainee pilot you are taught two distress calls you can make to declare an emergency. It you are in dire straits and about to crash you call, “Mayday, mayday, mayday.” If, however, you need to make an emergency landing you call, “Pan, pan . . . pan, pan . . . pan, pan.”
What should I say, I thought to myself as the aircraft shuddered around me. Do I call pan pan or do I call mayday mayday? As well as stressing about my predicament I was also trying to think through all of the implications if I made the wrong call over the radio!
I took a deep breath and keyed the radio. “Lanseria, this is Foxtrot Uniform Golf.”
“Foxtrot Uniform Golf, this is Lanseria, go ahead,” replied the air traffic controller in a calm voice.
“Um . . . Lanseria, this is Foxtrot Uniform Golf . . . pan, pan, pan . . . I mean, mayday mayday . . . Actually, I have an emergency!”
I babbled on for a bit longer, explaining that I’d balked a landing at the Lion Park. The park is in Lanseria’s airspace and I should have reported to them by now that I was safe on the ground. I told them I didn’t think I had a tail left on my airplane. I was a nervous, gibbering wreck.
The controller was very calm, and I’m sure he knew that my tail hadn’t fallen off—especially as I was still flying.
“Foxtrot Uniform Golf, you are cleared to land two-four right.” They had given me the long runway at Lanseria. “Foxtrot Uniform Golf, are you declaring an emergency?”
“Um, yes, I mean . . . like, yes, I am.” They were so calm and I’d forgotten all my procedures for communicating over the radio. I just wanted to get on the ground. Through my headphones I could hear the controllers diverting all the other air traffic, from small private planes to commercial jets, away from the area while they allowed this idiot—me—to land his plane.
I could have flown past the tower and asked them to check if I still had a nose wheel, or simply put the aircraft down. Without a wheel the prop would hit the runway, curl up, and destroy the engine. I made the decision that with other bits flapping away there was no time for a flypast.
I tightened my safety harness, coaxed the wounded Cessna down, and, as it happened, made one of the best landings of my life. I braced myself as she touched and the nose came down, expecting to hear the agonized shriek of the propeller blades connecting with tarmac.
But I was safe, and the prop was still spinning as I followed the special taxi route off the runway that the controllers had arranged for me. I climbed down out of the aircraft and I started shaking. Taking an unsteady walk around the aircraft, I saw the full extent of the damage for the first time. The nose wheel assembly had been pushed forward into the firewall when I’d first hit the ground, lowering the clearance to the extent that the tips of the propeller’s blades had been spinning less than half an inch from the surface of the runway.
I have been in bike crashes, rolled my sister’s car, been bitten by hyenas, and mauled by Tsavo the lion, but for the first time in my life I really thought I had been about to die. I learned a lot about pushing boundaries, trusting one’s instincts, and the toughness of the Cessna 182 that day.