Doing the numbers!

11/03/09

I slowly open my eyes and squint into a warm Matabeleland night. It takes my still sleeping brain a few elevated heartbeats to remember exactly where I am until I hear the noise that initially woke me. A low, deep reverberating rumblegrumble accompanied by the abrasive whoosh scrape of hide on sand and rock. The mottled glow from the moon silhouettes a large bull elephant against a milky cloudy sky. Each as startled by the other’s sudden appearance I watch the Elephant with elation and a growing sense of empathy, wondering silently what Pachie must be thinking as he regards my large vehicle blocking his well worn route. In the usual manner of startled elephants, Pachie gracefully raises his ears and with a slight disdainful toss of the head wheels silently in the half light and slowly, nonchalantly ambles down to the waterhole.

Without moving off the headrest I roll my head to swap a ruefully euphoric smile with my father while mentally relishing the scene in my now wide-awake imagination. With this incomparably African experience playing on repeat I slowly drift back into a contented slumber.

This would not be the first, or the closest encounter with Africa’s wildlife icon. We were to see over 400 more pachyderms during the course of the night and the following morning as well as a large variety of plains game including, to name a few; 200 Impala, 100 Kudu, 101 Zebra, and 24 Eland. The cheery on the cake came in the form of three Black Rhino’s all seen separately and after midnight. Our somewhat unorthodox viewing platform took the form of my spacious and reliable Landcruiser GX which formed an obvious out of place monolith on the dusty dusky landscape.
We weren’t lost, we hadn’t had a flat on the way home and forgotten the tyre iron, we where taking part in the annual Game Count held in Zimbabwe’s biggest National Park, Hwange. Organised and facilitated by the Wildlife and Environment Society of Zimbabwe (Hwange is organised by the society’s Matabeleland branch) and with the backing of the Zimbabwe National Parks Authority the game count is a permanent fixture in the yearly calendar of Zimbabwean bush and 4x4 fundis alike. This year we were monitoring the relatively obscure and seldom visited Tshakabika spring.

There is no better opportunity to see some of the wildest parts of Hwange and its four legged inhabitants from the (relevant!) comfort of your favourite vehicle. If you are a suit bearing city slicker there is no better opportunity available to do some serious bond-time with Bertha the bakkie as the game count requires mobile participants to spend 24 hours in their vehicle. Instead of rolling over and nudging your wife/girlfriend in the middle of the night you could be flailing at a looming elephant cow. Hopefully this nocturnal activity will be limited to observation and not participation as the aims of the count are to, well, count, essentially which cow is which?!

Although the idea of spending 24 hours encapsulated in a vehicle surrounded by a fair number of wild animals might not appeal to everyone, it should be guaranteed to get anyone vaguely passionate about 4x4’s or wildlife or both frothing at the mouth. However, this is not for the faint hearted, a fair amount of character is required to willing, voluntarily actually, strand yourself in the middle of a dusty nowhere and spend the time, usually at close quarters, counting the legs of wild animals. This is not to say that the counters’ have an inordinate fetish for wild feet but that in a thirst crazed stampede accurately gauging the right number of present elephants is easiest by counting their legs, then dividing by four. Some mathematical skills would thus stand a counter in good stead.

For those who take the risk or just purely love the bush, and 4x4’s of course, and for which just being there is gratification enough the resultant rewards garnered from this experience are enough to sooth a restless soul for a good while as well as provide stories that would keep a rugby team of small children entertained, and quiet, around a camp fire for several weeks.

Participants have to be at their respective locations and taking notes from midday on the designated date until midday of the following. This allows counters to witness all the hours of a 24 hour period and the relevant animal activity within the different timeframes, tea time (14h00-16h00 and 09h00 – 11h00) is usually the slowest while anytime between dinner time (18h30) and should be asleep time (+-04h00) are the most active. It is thus essential that counters should be proficient at either sleeping on and off for two hour intervals or have the stamina of a Chinese air traffic controller. I would suggest the former, as the drive out in some cases is a challenge. Any propensity to snore like an asthmatic wildebeest will not make you a hit with the local crowd (who are usually sporting horns, claws or tusks) and will earn you a swift and well deserved elbowing from your (should be) awake-and-counting comrade.

In addition to the potential proximity to large beasts and the rigorous, almost torturous, sleeping schedules the drive to the location often has the potential to leave petrol heads with that well satisfied post-coitus radiance. Our drive in, although accomplishable with only the slightest use of low range, was nonetheless an entertaining and skills polishing experience. From Sinimatella (the National Parks camp and base for the north section of the park) we were massaged as one can only be by well established corrugations on the main, and I say this as a term of reference only, dirt road out of the camp. Pretty easy going as long as your intentions where not to break the land speed record, albeit I cannot speak for the Cruiser or its shocks and suspension, and it remained this way until we had to turn off the main(ish) road onto a far less used track.

Track was a far more apt definition for the noticeably rougher and unkempt path we where following. Drivers had to start paying attention to ruts and gulleys that could engulf a tyre and stray stumps whose sharp ends would render a tyre in two. A multitude of dry river courses intersected the road, their often steepish banks challenging the entry and exit angles of the vehicles, a challenge that would have been made more difficult if we were hauling a trailer. The thick river sand accumulated in these river crossings meant that loosing your momentum usually resulted in a mad scrabble to engage low range.

The largest river in the region, the Lukosi, offered two reasonably challenging crossings on the way to Tshakabika. At the first the total absence of the original bridge and a steep bank necessitated some angled driving and reliance on the power steering to get into the thick sand, at the second, much longer crossing steep banks and deep tracks in deeper sand kept everyone on their toes.
However, despite the reasonable challenges on offer the two vehicles, my Landcruiser and our friends’ 3 litre Hilux TZE double cab, never once skipped a beat and left you with the positive notion they could handle themselves in far trying circumstances, a tribute to the rough and readiness of Toyota’s construction.
After about two hours of weaving through sand, gulleys and between errant stumps we arrived at our location with but half an hour to spare before we had to begin counting. As we ground up a small hill and over the rise we where greeted with a view of almost total desolation.

A small trickle of water forming a few pools and a lazy curve was the only recognisable form of nourishment in an otherwise bleak landscape. The absence of any grass, or anything green for that matter, meant the smallest puff of wind excited the dust into gyrating nymphs that danced across the landscape until the breath of wind subsided, casting the nymphs back to their earthly slumber. After the initial shock caused by the desolation we noticed that at least 100 elephants where boisterously enjoying their midday refreshments at the spring. A great welcome and not a bad start to our time here we all though!

As there where two teams in our party we where allocated a spot at each end of the 300 metre long trickle so as to effectively count all the animals, no matter which side of the spring they decided to visit. After a quick game of rock, paper, scissors it was left to us to leg it to the far side of the spring. This seemed an innocuous task from where we casually made the decision but proved to be anything but. After a short drive up the road we were required to leave it and make our way to our chosen destination via any negotiable path.

This in practise was far more of a challenge as each new route was successively blocked by steep, impassable gulleys. When we eventually found a navigable route we where not done any favours by the thick and stumpy elephant-damaged mopane trees (more like just trunks actually) that became thicker and thicker as we proceeded. Our relative lack of space to manoeuvre was brought suddenly and voluminously home to us when, with the steering wheel at full lock to the left and stumps hugging us from all directions, we failed to get around a rather large trunk. With the teeth grinding screech that would make a soprano singer proud we effectively used the large mopane bole to make some minor paint adjustments to the left passenger and back doors thinking, as we squinted our eyes from the pain caused by the horrendous noise, how a Landrovers’ frail aluminium doors would crumple and buckle and generally not stand up to this punishment.

After our very audible (the situation extricated a few curses and improved wondrously our intra-family communication skills), but short, trek we arrived rather pumped up from the experience at our designated area which had looked decided more appealing through the binoculars from a distance. Having failed to bring shade cloth or any form of camouflage we settled for the next best plan, we wedged ourselves between the two tallest (not very) mopane trunks we could find. However, this unfortunately did nothing to even vaguely camouflage our presence and rather gave the impression that we had become inextricably wedged in a mopane doorframe. Despite this we surveyed our position, right in front of the spring (now unfortunately acutely lacking any sign of the previous elephants due to our loud approach) with a 180 degree view, with growing satisfaction and exchanged compliments regarding our navigation and concealment skills.

It was from this comedic position and contented mind frame that we spent one of our most enjoyable 24 hours in the bush, an experience we long for all year and I would recommend everyone to try.