We have a car!

So finally after like two months of being here we have our car and can start having a life! Tis a big scary tank of a thing, a Nissan Patrol, but I won’t pretend to know about engine size and the like. The main thing is that it will go wherever we want it to!

And so on Sunday we took it for its first little mini venture to Lilayi Lodge, a place just outside town with its own little game park. Just on the drive up from the main gate to reception we spotted a family of warthog, a couple of waterbuck and some impala! Having been somewhat animal deprived thus far every moving thing was of great excitement (people that have lived here for some time merely refer to impala etc as DLAs, Deer Like Animals!). As this game park contained nothing dangerous we were allowed to go off on a walk on our own which was just bliss – one doesn’t get much opportunity to just walk here. So armed with our little map of the major routes we set off. The other great thing about walking as oppose to driving is you get to see all the little things you otherwise wouldn’t notice. The first thing we came across were dung beetles complete with rolling balls of dung! I was probably more excited by these than a lot of the other animals we saw that day! They’re just the kind of thing you see on wildlife documentaries but never in real life! We also spotted roan antelope, zebra, wildebeest and young, hartebeest bushbuck and to top it all a giraffe with baby! I love giraffe they’re just the most crazy looking animals.

Though it was fabulous to be able to walk around with these animals, we both agreed it did feel somewhat contrived. It is an artificially stocked game reserve, as with all the game parks belonging to the various lodges, so the animals would have been brought there from other game reserves or national parks for the sole purpose of entertaining the guests at the lodge. But then we were wondering whether any wildlife in Zambia is really ‘wild’ anymore anyway. Even the national parks, though much bigger so allowing the animals more of a natural range, are managed; animals are still moved between them artificially and are at risk of being hunted if they leave the confines of the park. Or maybe it was simply because there were no dangerous animals in this particular game park that made it feel more fake. The whole magic of the African bush is the feeling of danger that comes with it, that very primordial, instinctive fear of one’s life being at risk from natural forces. And then to drive back out of it in to the large open European-looking arable farmland!