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Magazine
TIME OUT
In a wild place
MEENA MENON
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If you are a wildlife enthusiast, the Madikwe game reserve in South Africa is the place to be.
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PHOTO: MEENA MENON
Welcome to the bush: A wildebeest in Madikwe.
It’s pitch dark when we set out into the bush for a “game drive”. Our guide/host, Pogiso John Ditsela, or John D, manoeuvres the four wheel drive jeep on the red road, while our tracker, “Doctor”, who is perched in a tin
y seat on the bonnet, uses a large bright light to search the surroundings. For a while, all we can hear is the whirring of the engine and the shrubs are occasionally lit by the sweeping light. Suddenly John D stops and we know he has seen something. To our right, barely distinguishable in the darkness, some shapes emerge. Slowly, sharp horns can be seen, faintly lit by the early rays of the sun and yes, it is a large herd of wild buffaloes. The buffaloes are as much curious about us as we are about them and soon they keep shuffling about looking at us all the time. There are many of them and luckily, as light breaks, they are still there — some huge males with white foreheads and smaller calves as well. John D explains that the older males tend to get isolated and they often group together in smaller herds.
The Madikwe game reserve, set up in 1991, is spread over 75,000 hectares in South Africa’s North West Province. The project was initiated to reduce poverty in what was mainly a cattle farming region. Now, over a 1,000 jobs have been generated in the area and there are two lodges owned by the community as well, according to John D. Most of the rangers and trackers are local and John D himself was among the eight selected by a programme supported by the British Council to be trained as a field guide within the reserve. A matric pass, he is a qualified ranger and has appeared for the second level examinations of The Field Guides Association of Southern Africa (FGASA).
Model reserve
The game reserve has become a model over the years with its public, private and community partnership and for 31-year-old John D, working here is more of a hobby. He likes nothing better than sharing his immense knowledge with his guests and is not unsettled by the occasional encounter with an angry lioness or even a spitting cobra. He keeps up a running commentary as we drive through the maze in the bush, with animals popping up at regular intervals. We gaped as much as we could at giraffes, rhinos (two of them came really close but did not seem to mind us), herds of impala and springbok, wildebeest, a few zebra, warthogs and the kudu with its spiral horns, hyenas and foxes.
You chance upon elephants and giant giraffes feeding on the thorny bush and some of them come pretty close to the jeep. It was on the last day that we saw the mating lions, sprawled on the middle of the road. The star-struck male had eyes only for the lioness and did not even look up as three jeeploads of excited people watched them. After a while the lions went into the nearby bush and their camouflage is so good that only the keenest eye can spot them. John D tried in vain to show us where the lions were hiding. Now I can understand why people are discouraged from walking around; the bush is horribly deceptive. Once, while tracking a lioness, John D found her 10 metres from him, her yellow eyes boring “through his soul”. Someone in the bush is always watching you, he adds.
Safe in the jeep, we watched the lions for a long time and they were so close you could even see the scratches on the male’s face. We left them at peace with each other, the big male cuddling the lioness with the golden sunlight streaking their bodies. The only time we got off from the jeep was to have our sundowners one evening and the wildebeest and zebra grazed quite close to us, unperturbed.
One more prize awaited us just when we were leaving. A small herd of elephants came before our jeep trumpeting and swinging their trunks. The smaller ones frolicked in the mud on the side of the road and the male with white pointed tusks looked almost gleeful to see us. Finally they walked away and let us pass, giving us a farewell of sorts. Madikwe comes from the word Madikwena in Tswana language which means mother of crocodiles — the Madikwe River which flows through the reserve once had a bounty of crocs. The Afrikaner settlers could not say the whole word and it was shortened to Madikwe, explains John D.
Thousands of animals were translocated into this reserve as part of Operation Phoenix and today there are 400 elephants, 30 leopards and 60 lions among 66 species of large mammals. There is also an impressive list of over 300 species of birds in the reserve and the most breathtaking ones we saw were the lilac breasted roller, grey lourie, namaqua dove, hornbill, kestrel, pale chanting goshawk, shaft tailed wydah, the blacksmith, the red billed oxpecker, bee eaters and francolins.
The big and the small
While people want to see what is called the big five, we had fun observing crickets, specially the king cricket, the millipede which is fat and long with its myriad red feet, small tortoises, bush hares and small snakes. We also saw the footprints of lions and elephants and had a taste of how the trackers worked in the bush, a job fraught with anxiety as Doctor will testify. A former employee with the South African Revenue Service, Doctor or Hilary Maikano, looks on tracking as just a job. He has no formal training and has learnt by experience. He hopes to become a ranger and has appeared for his level one examination .
Both Doctor and John D work with the Etali lodge, one of the 30 in the Madikwe game reserve, which really pampers its guests no end. You have Josef and Renate waiting with cold towels when you return from the game drive and Moses organises a brai or a barbecue for you in the evening. The rooms open out into the bush and you have your own Jacuzzi and open shower. At night, armed guards escort you back to your room, reminding you that this is the bush, a wild place. And what a place to be it is.
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