Aminamals!!!

I didn’t get eaten… joy!

Mokolodi Game Reserve is a few hundred acres of fenced scrubland and floodplain just south of Gabs (as Gaborone is known, with the trademark local mix of affection and frustration). Arriving a few minutes late for a booked tour two Sundays ago, Jo, her son and mother, and I, clambered into an immense military style truck, open to the air and packed with tourists both local and foreign.

After rattling past a large monkey habitat filled with a half-dozen tiny howlers, the truck veered into dry but fairly well-vegetated terrain, and the brush and low hills hid any hint of the city I’d just left. Within seconds, spiral-horned antelopes named kudu speckled the brushland. They’re far bigger than I’d expected, nearly the size of horses, and they clustered in wary groups of 6 or so, watchful but fairly unconcerned with our presence. Our helpful guide offered us an elaborate explanation of the kudu’s intricate and meaningful coloration patterns, every single detail of which escaped me within instants. I’m told they cluster with zebra, each eating different veggies and sharing the responsibility of watching for predators, but alas, no zebra did we see that day.

The kudu were accompanied by impala, however, tiny dog-sized antelopes bounding about the bush with an odd leaping gait, and the first of innumerable warthogs. Both the warthogs and the kudu are immune to human efforts at fencing them in, for the kudu easily leap all but the tallest, most fortified fences, and the warthogs cheerfully burrow under them. The squat, neckless warthogs, for their part, are even funnier-looking in person and supposedly dumber than the roots they eat, but there’s something quite interesting in their total indifference to the outside world as they scratch the dustplain with their tusks in search of devourables.

Mokolodi is an educational reserve, tilted towards close-to-the-critters tours, so no predators are allowed. I’ll have to look elsewhere for the hyenas, wild dogs and big cats that fire my imagination, nut I did see four of the most magnificent beasties of all…

Heffalumps! Slightly herded by their trainer (more on that later), three female and one male African elephants ambled thunderously into view, and gradually approached the truck. About 5 meters away they stopped, and spent perhaps fifteen fascinating minutes giving themselves a dust bath, scooping up great trunkfuls of desert floor and tossing the silt over their backs. Supposedly it kills ticks and helps cool the immense critters, and they honestly appeared to be enjoying themselves. They clustered quite close to the truck, and occasionally glanced our way, but they surely see several such tours each day and were pretty indifferent to our presence, offering only the occasional curious (and not unfriendly) glance in our direction.

It’s impossible to pass along the immensity of these animals; perhaps the best I can do is describe their attitude as best I was able to perceive it. Indian elephants have an air of docility and meekness about them, but these Africans strode and murmured to each other and ate prodigiously with an easy confidence that can only come from knowing they dwarf anything else alive.

I’ve seen zoo elephants before, of course, and these animals weren’t exactly wild, but they have a interesting story of their own. Mokolodi has brought in a Sri Lankan elephant trainer to dispel the myth that African mumakil can’t be trained. Though it’s apparently arduous work, he’s having some success in domesticating them, a historic first. They respond to basic commands, and have a note of fealty to their trainer (though only to him).

The African elephant has apparently rebounded quite nicely since the ivory ban, multiplying at least tenfold from their threatened low of ten thousand animals. They’ve become so numerous that farmers despise their immense appetites and even some environmentalists decry the damage their foraging can do to the savannah. I don’t care, though. They’re extraordinary creatures, and I’m thrilled to have seen the first few of (hopefully) many on my trip. Africa survived them in far greater numbers decades ago, so I’m not especially concerned about their impact on the continent

Roaring on from the immense dust cloud crafted by elephant hygiene, we headed deeper into the immensity of Botswana. This is one of a handful of countries more sparsely populated from Canada, on my first glance from a desert hilltop drove that home. The vastness of this place confronted me in the small, inconceivably distant towns and low mountains that added flavor to an otherwise uniform plain of patchy desert grasses and small trees. No doubt those lands, not part of the reserve, hid thousands of new animals, but without the assistance of a guide I lacked the expertise to spot even a one of them. The view itself was enough. I have pictures, of course, but it may take months for me to share them.

Later in the three-hour tour we caught glimpses of Africa’s other fabled creatures. A barely-glimpsed patch of mottled giraffe’s hide may not sound like much, but it sparked great excitement in the few seconds I was able to see it. Likewise the moment’s sight of a rhino’s butt end disappearing quickly into the brush. As the tour descended towards a broad but shallow river and the surrounding wetlands, ostriches appeared at every turn, the guide and several tourists describing them the stupidest animals on earth. They’re still pretty dang cool. There was an unidentifiable (to me, anyways) grey lump in the water that I’m told was a hippo, and the Attorney-General’s glorious private lodge on a hillside overlooking the beauty of the whole marshland and much of the park. I said there was less corruption than in the rest of Africa, I didn’t say there was none.

Amid the omnipresent warthogs, I saw even a large cheetah pen. Two brothers live in there, sleek and spiffy, separate from the other animals. Their mother was killed by a rancher, I heard, who discovered the two young cubs and brought them to the park. Raised by humans and now gorgeous adults, they obliged us our few minutes of gawking and photography and then walked lazily away to nap in privacy.

Yet while all seeing these semi-wild animals in the protection of a reserve was amazing, and my later visits to the unfenced plains to the north will be even more fascinating, there was one thing that was more telling to me. As we drove out to the reserve in the late afternoon light, a baboon crossed the suburban street in front of us, as indifferently as might a Vancouver squirrel, and vanished into roadside brush. The casual interaction of the exotic (and unfriendly-looking) beast with the mundanity of a Sunday car ride was striking to me, a symbol of the vast difference between this place and the one I left behind. A baboon crossed the street in front of me!

Why am I even more amazed by this than by the heffalumps?