I arrived in Botswana 10 days ago, and I’ll have lots to say about my visit here, which has been full of surprises, in a coming post. But last Wednesday I ventured across the border to the Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa, and it was such an amazing experience it needs its own blog post.

While I’ve lived and traveled fairly extensively in North Africa, and I hold a Certificate in African Studies as part of my Masters degree, this is my first on-the-ground experience south of the Sahara. It’s something I’ve long wanted to do, and finally have made the opportunity (deliberate choice of words there) to do so. Honestly, I’ve been more interested in observing human society here, but of course you can’t come to Africa and not want to see the wildlife.

For some reason I didn’t realize how close Botswana’s capital city, Gaborone, is to the South African border. In fact, it’s well under an hour to the border crossing, and there are historical, ethnic, and linguistic ties that bridge the current political border. My friend here and his wife (on a phone conversation, since she’s in Northern Virginia) convinced me that I simply had to visit Madikwe. And so I took the guidance, made arrangements for an overnight stay in the reserve, set up ground transport since everyone said it might not be safe to leave the rental car at the border, and set off on my new adventure. Little did I know what an adventure it would be.

As I promised in my initial post in this series, this is not intended to be a travelogue. If anyone wants to make this adventure on their own, there are enough breadcrumbs to enable them to figure it out and do it. But really I want to focus on the underlying things I observed, or think I observed, and my own responses to them. Of course, I can’t help but mention the animals, but my observations largely concern them. Starting with the elephants in the featured image.

What I observed, again and again and again, was how each species has its own social and family order, and the extent to which these different orders might mimic our own human orders. Or, in some cases, diverge from them, but always with a certain pattern to them. Beginning with the elephants, I witnessed a strong social structure, a cohesive herd where different members looked after one another, and a distinct differentiation between male and female roles. The latter was something that seemed to cross all species boundaries.

In the photo is a mama elephant and two young elephants. My game ranger, Sifiso, was sure one was the mama elephant’s baby, and the other not hers, since apparently elephants usually have just one young. He thought the two young elephants might be pals and liked to hang out together, while someone else proposed that something might have happened to one of the young elephant’s mother and this mother took her young in as one of her own. Regardless the case, it shows the strong social order and also maternal instincts evidenced in this simple arrangement.

Learning from the lions (and the other animals)

It’s not just the elephants that have a defined social structure. This extends across the range of species. One thing I found interesting was among the human observers. While I was privileged to have my ranger all to myself, people from other lodges were in groups in their lodges’ Toyota Land Cruisers (not your typical street version, but these big high rugged open vehicles made for traversing the African bush). And the biggest of big deals was finding lions. Great effort went into tracking down these beasts, most of whom were still sleeping since they are mostly nocturnal animals. What struck me most was how it was the apex predator that most interested members of my own species. We can talk about peace and love and all that, but it was the beast that stalks, attacks, and devours its prey, not the vegetation eaters, that most interested people.

We did manage to find some sleeping lions, a male and female napping together. And we saw a female awake and on the move, but lost track of her in the tall grass. Later, when the other groups returned to their lodges, my ranger refused to give up — one of his strong qualities — and as the sun set in the west we finally came across that female again. We followed her in the vehicle, which she just ignored, as she made her way through the dark back to her cubs that she had stashed in a hiding place only she knew. And she knew exactly where they were, in this vast wilderness.

It’s impossible to adequately describe the happiness of her four cubs to see their mom, as they cavorted and climbed on her, playing, seeking her attention, drinking milk from her. Nor her happiness in seeing her babies, licking them, letting them climb on top of her, feeding them. If lions can smile, I swear those lions were smiling. Again, we were witnessing this maternal bond, present in the wild as much — and in some cases, far more — than among human mothers and their offspring.

Later we found the papa lion, lying off separately and waking up as we observed him. And at one point, for reasons only he knew, letting out an earthshaking roar, dispelling any doubt who was king of not the jungle, but king of the veldt. This was something I witnessed among a number of species, how the male often would stay apart from the rest of the family grouping, but was always on guard, watching, protecting the females and young. Anyone who doubts gender-based roles might want to take a look at animals.

It was amazing to then see the female (in the other photo above) drinking from a pool of standing water in the road, quenching her thirst and replenishing her milk stores, once more uncaring of the humans and their metal beast just a few meters away. By the way, someone commented how close the animals look in my photos. The reason for this is that they were close. In some cases, very close.

Enjoying the experience

At some point, before the sun went down, Sifiso stopped the Land Cruiser and brought out a veritable bar of liquors and beers, and some snacks such as kudu sausage and dried fruit. That’s him there displaying some of what was available. He did the same thing the next morning, bringing out coffee and tea and morning snacks. That’s when I discovered Amarula, the classic South African liqueur that is reminiscent of Bailey’s Irish Cream, but made from African fruits. Goes well in morning coffee, too, I might add.

I stayed at the Tau Game Lodge in the reserve, and as fate would have it, I was the sole guest in this sprawling 30-unit resort. I felt like the Great White Hunter, like I owned the place, even though the only hunting I was doing was with a camera. People could not have been more friendly and accommodating, and being able to sit on the deck enjoying an amazing meal, or on the deck of my own cottage, and watch a variety of species come down to drink from the water hole on the edge of the property was amazing. I don’t usually give plugs in my posts, but I’d highly recommend Tau. And my timing could not have been better — mid-day on the second and last day of my stay there, a group of 60 arrived from Switzerland. I was glad to be checking out.

But back to the animals. The next morning Sifiso had me up at 5:15 (actually, I had mostly been awake since 4, awaiting his call) to go on our morning game drive. It was still dark, and rather chilly, but we were off to see the awakening of the diurnal species. My big thing is I wanted to see rhinos — which we did — and giraffes. The latter proved elusive, but not one to give up, Sifiso kept at it until we found a whole bunch of giraffes. And there I learned that, like among humans, there is diversity of social and family and sexual structures among animals. Giraffes, it turns out, are not monogamous, but are swinger animals and polygamous. One male giraffe can have several females, and we witnessed two towering males engaged in kind of a low-level fight for dominance, as one female patiently looked on, and a number of others were just around the bend, ostensibly waiting to see who would come out as the winning male.

Along with those two species, toss in zebras, kudus, Cape buffalo, wildebeest, impalas, waterbucks, baboons, monkeys, more kinds of birds than I could count, and a lone jackal, and it was a pretty successful morning game drive.

I’m not in as much pain as it looks like in that photo, though the early morning, the cold, and the bouncing about over the rutted roads and the bush all conspired to make me look like my fingernails were being ripped out. Don’t worry. I survived it all in good form.

I think I’ve said what I needed to say about my Madikwe experience, and writing this has set me back about three hours on getting out of here and heading for a game reserve up-country a few hours in Botswana, so will end this here and move on. Hope you’re enjoying following along with my voyage of rediscovery, and more, maybe it will inspire some readers to set off on their own voyages.

Featured image, elephant mom and young’uns, Madikwe Game Reserve, South Africa

Mama lion having a drink

Papa lion doesn’t look amused

Sifiso breaks out the bar while on an afternoon game drive

Morning me, not in as much pain as it looks

White rhinos!

Zebras!

Male giraffes battle for dominance while a female giraffe stands by . . . now boys . . .

All photos by the author

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