A Pride of One’s Own
When the truck finally freed itself from the mud about an hour later, it drove towards us, coming down the nearest road. When he heard the sound of the engine, Thor got up and led us to it. He didn’t need to be ordered or bribed with meat, he just knew it was time to go home.
“How’s your wife and child, Rod?” I asked as we walked along in the darkness behind Thor’s guiding white coat.
“Fine, Kev. And you? Are you coping okay with all the hassles about the film?”
We chatted like that as we followed Thor. When he reached the vehicle, Thor climbed up of his own volition, got in, and we all drove home. To this day when Rodney and I have our business meetings it is often in the company of Thor on a long walk through the bush. Other people discuss the day’s agenda around a table with their laptop computers open in front of them, but Rod and I walk with our lion.
I live and work at a different park these days, the Kingdom of the White Lion. Rodney Fuhr was concerned that the Johannesburg Lion Park was too close to the city. In fact, human development has overtaken it so that instead of being in the countryside, as it was when I was a boy, it is now virtually part of suburbia.
I was involved in Rodney’s search for a new piece of land and there was an extensive list of criteria that had to be met. It had to be farther out of Johannesburg, but still close enough for people to drive to for a day trip, with enough bush to provide shade and a natural habitat for the lions, but open enough to be accessible.
We eventually found the right property. It’s beautiful country, a mix of open grasslands and rocky hills and valleys on the banks of the Crocodile River. We decided to film part of White Lion on the property, so I was able to design and build large enclosures which are ideal for filming. I had learned from my experience at the Lion Park about what works and what doesn’t, and it was good to be starting from scratch.
At the Kingdom, we rotate our animals through the different enclosures, which helps keep them interested and engaged. When the lions move into an area formerly occupied by hyenas, they get busy sniffing and scent-marking and the same goes for the hyenas. We have retained as much of the natural bush as possible, and the enclosure where the hyenas now live has a natural stream running through it. They love bathing in it and they are always assured of fresh water.
It was tough for me, moving from my work at the Johannesburg Lion Park. While I was able to bring many of my animal friends with me, there was no way I could bring all of them. Although the process was expensive, at least I now have control over their destiny.
Rodney Nombekana and Helga moved to the new park with me. Volunteers from the Lion Park come to the Kingdom of the White Lion to spend time with me and to meet the animals many of them have seen on television. I will have school groups coming to visit, now that the film is finished, which I think is incredibly important in order to educate the next generation about predators, and explode some of the myths and misconceptions about African wildlife. I hope one day to open the Kingdom to the general public.
Looking to the future, I am in the process of setting up a not-for profit company to ensure the future well-being of the animals in my care. I have been contacted by many people who have seen Dangerous Companions, Growing Up Hyena, and Black Leopard who want to donate money to support predators and predator research. I would like to be able to help raise money to ensure the valuable work the researchers do at Rodney Fuhr’s research camp in Botswana can continue. I also want to ensure that if anything happens to me, my lions and other friends would be cared for.
There are more documentaries in the cards, though whether or not I venture into the world of feature filmmaking again will depend on the success or otherwise of White Lion.
I don’t want to continue with animals in feature films in the way that I did on White Lion. I don’t know if White Lion will be successful or not. If the movie is a huge success and we had, for example, an opportunity to make White Lion II, I would love to be involved, but I would wear only one cap. I do not want to be put in a position again where I am responsible for the welfare and performance of my lions on one hand, and under pressure as a producer to call on them to do take after take, until the animals are exhausted, in order to get a “perfect” shot. I don’t want to put myself or my animals through that again. In fact, I would have to think twice about using my own animals in a feature film of that length again.
There were some things I did on the film simply because I knew that if I didn’t do them, then they wouldn’t get done. For example, I recorded sound effects up close with the lions that were later added to the film. I can go up to Napoleon and hold a small digital recorder next to his mouth when he roars, but a sound effects guy with a big microphone on a boom pole covered in a fluffy noise baffle can’t do that, mainly because the lion will either try and eat the microphone or the sound guy. Rodney Fuhr had way more confidence in my own abilities than I did, which was how I ended up getting involved in everything from the script to the music score. I don’t want to be in that position again.
I lost relationships during the making of White Lion, but others became stronger. I have a stronger relationship with Tau, Napoleon, and Thor because of the time we all spent together on the set, and because of the way I worked with them in the light of my experience with Letsatsi. Mandy and I always had a strong partnership, but she stood by me through the tough times and our love grew even stronger during the years I worked on the film.
Mandy was a martyr, putting up with all the crap I unloaded on her at the end of each day. We got married during the last season of filming, and no, there were no lions present at the ceremony or the reception.
I stopped working at the Lion Park once filming on White Lion began, and although I had a lot on my plate I had to work hard to keep up my relationships with the animals there—and with my wife. We would start filming early in the morning, before dawn, in order to be ready to film in the golden hours, and then spend hours packing up after the sun had set. The opposite held true for night shoots. I was spreading myself too thin, and it is only because of the good grace of Mandy and the animals I love that I retained my sanity and the love and friendship of those most dear to me.
Even though the film is finished now, my life is still busy, but I still take time to sit on my stoop, gaze out over the Crocodile River, and reflect on how lucky and blessed I have been in my life so far.
My relationships with the lions and other animals have changed and grown over the years. There have been hiccups, but we’ve become closer and we’ve learned from each other. It’s the same, in many respects, as my relationship with Mandy. First there was the wow factor, the infatuation of meeting and being with someone new. Then came learning about each other, what we liked, what we didn’t, what pleased us, what upset us. It continues, of course, as relationships are never stagnant.
Of course, sometimes with lions the adrenaline resurfaces, such as with Maditau’s series of threatening charges at me when I rescued Tabby’s cub from her. That may have had something to do with how her perceptions of me have changed. As I’ve said, I believe Tau and Napoleon treat me as a brother but know I am not a lion, so they hold back a little when we play. Meg and Ami think I am a lion and they treat me every bit as rough as they do each other. Perhaps Maditau, having been the first of the lionesses to welcome me into the pride, now thinks she can treat me like any other lion that wants to take possession of something she has claimed as her own. Being part of the pride means respecting and abiding by its rules, I suppose.
There are still plenty of people in South Africa, and now, thanks to the Internet and the documentaries and the film, around the world, who will look at the way I interact with the lions and shake their head. They will either choose to believe there is some form of trickery at play, or that there is no relationship between the animals and me. These are the people who tell me that one day one of my animals will “snap” and kill me.
As I said before, if I died in such an attack and the good Lord said he would give me a second chance—rewind the last ten years and do something different with my life—I wouldn’t. Animals have always been a strong part of my life, since my dad rescued that first tiny stray kitten from the rubbish dump. They have helped me mature as a person and taught me so much about life and the way it should be lived. I like to think I have enriched their lives as they have mine.
Having raised so many lion and hyena cubs, and experienced the joys of watching Maditau and Tabby and Pelo bring their babies into the world, and of seeing Tau, Napoleon, Meg, and Ami and the many other animals in my care grow and mature, I am quite keen to start a pride of my own one day soon. So is Mandy.