Our dusty, well-travelled safari truck rattled to a halt at the head of a valley somewhere in the wilds of Zambia. It was late afternoon and down below us we could see herds of wildebeest, antelopes, zebra and other creatures slowly making their way up to the waterhole. I’d been on safari in East Africa for the last three weeks and I was pretty excited because finally we were getting to see some real live African wildlife. Up till then I’d only spotted a few dead snakes on the road and dealt with some rather pernicious monkeys who inhabited our campground in Mombasa (they kept stealing my fruit).
To date the trip hadn’t exactly been the wildlife odyessy that I had been imagining when I booked from London. Our truck driver/tour guide turned out to be a good kiwi bloke from Rotorua and in general he seemed to be of the opinion that you’re wasting your time looking at animals when you can be drinking the very reasonably priced local beer in various bars along the way. Unfortunately, the majority of the rest of the occupants of the truck were young English kids doing a bit of travelling in between School and University and they seemed to be of the same opinion so we ended up bypassing the gameparks of Tanzania for the bars of Malawi.
But anyway, here we were now in an actual gamepark, although as usual my co-travellers seemed to be more interested in cracking open a few beers and throwing a frisbee around so I left them to it and went for a walk in the bush. I leisurely strolled along the ridge up the valley following what appeared to be quite a well defined path – must be a village round here somewhere I thought. There was a herd of Kudu moving steadily along the valley floor about 100m away from me and I kept track with them. What beautiful animals. Ever since I was a child I had wanted to come to Africa and see the wildlife on the savannah where they belonged, not behind zoo bars. And here I was - just the antelopes and myself. Those beer-drinking, frisbee throwers back there didn’t know what they were missing.
Suddenly one of the Kudu appeared about 50m ahead of me on the track. It was the dominant male – he was quite splendid. About 1.5 metres tall, he had two twisting horns, a shaggy mane and white stripes on his body. It occured to me then that I was actually on a game trail and I couldn’t help but noticing how large and pointy the horns were on his head. Hmmm – I wonder if these things ever attack people. I stood stock still - there was a slight breeze on my face so I could tell that I was downwind from him. He didn’t seem to have noticed me yet. For now it appeared that the Kudu was more interested in something else. He appeared very alert and was looking intently away to my right - nose and ears twitching – a picture of concentration. I followed his gaze and there in the long grass I could see a pair of ears and the swishing tail of what appeared to be a large cat.
Suddenly it dawned on me – here I am in the African bush alone and defenceless and over there is quite possibly a large hungry lion. At least the Kudu is drawing its attention for now. No sooner had I thought that then with a flick of its tail and a curious barking noise the Kudu was gone. Ok, well here I am in the African bush - just a lion and myself. Hmmm. It’s not like in New Zealand where you can wander in the bush as much as you like and never encounter anything remotely dangerous. It probably didn’t help that I was also quite magnificently stoned as we had just been sampling some of the extremely potent Malawi Gold on our drive through the gamepark. Well here I am stoned alone in the bush with a lion just over there. Damn AA Budget Safaris – this probably wouldn’t have happened on one of the more expensive trips.
I tried to remember what to do if you encounter a lion in the wild. I vaguely recalled reading something about how you should charge towards it shouting and waving your arms thus making it think that you are the dominant creature (or was that if you met a bear?). Anyway the idea didn’t seem particularly attractive at this point. Or I could climb a tree I thought eyeing up the fairly scrawny acacias around me but - hang on - lions can climb trees too can’t they? Or, I could do what every nerve in my body was telling me to do - run like hell. I’m a fairly good runner – in my younger days I’d represented my school in short and middle distance events and I’m still reasonably fit. Plus I was currently downwind – the lion hadn’t noticed me yet. But don’t lions usually hunt in groups? I glanced around - I could be surrounded by them… I flicked through the options again in my head: charge the lion, climb a tree, just stand still and hope it goes away or run. Oh fuck it, I’m out of here. I turned on my heels and ran the fastest that I had ever run in my life half expecting at any moment to hear a roar and fell claws in my back and teeth in my neck. It was probably about 1500 metres back to the truck and I’m sure I covered it in about three minutes although at the time it seemed to take a lot longer.
Finally I arrived back at the camp – no one had even noticed my absence.
Feeling rather foolish, I decided not to reveal my misadventure to my travel companions, whom I was suddenly very glad to see, so I grabbed a beer and shouted, “Hey pass me that Frisbee!”
