Perhaps I should start with the status of the planned road construction. Chinese road construction camps have been established at Sesheke and at Kale about 15 km from here. As far as I know the construction companies have been awarded 2 year’s contract to finalize each 70 km of tarmac road starting from Sesheke and Sioma respectively. A third contractor will start from Senanga and end on the other side of the river close to Maziba Bay where a bridge will be constructed linking up with the road on this side. Everything seems set and ready to go, but apart from a little bit of ‘reinforcing’ on the bad soft sand stretches nothing has happened so far. I am an optimist as you probably know by now (with perhaps a slight bias towards cynicism), but why don’t they get started then? I really hope they are serious this time.
The flooding that seemed to be over by end of March was not really over. The water started rising again around mid April and continued to rise until around end April when it finally receded. So we had to empty two of the chalets twice this year. Great fun! My niece and her boyfriend visited me from end April to early June and in the beginning we ferried them to their chalet in the evening. Sioma Venice Camp. As the water dropped throughout May new pool areas kept on appearing and we were swimming in small ‘lagunes’ almost every day. It was very nice and quite fun to sit in the shallow water and watch Tiger Fish passing by. At times I saw huge groups of Tiger Fish – up to a hundred (small to medium size)! – cruising through the clear water flowing over the sandbanks. Yes, we did keep an eye out for crocs!
Having an extended family visit was – surprisingly - quite nice. Almost every evening we were playing poker or another game of cards. I am afraid that I re-discovered, that I am a bad loser.
We went on a trip to Sinjembela at Kwando River. It was a drive of 115 km. We had to crisscross a bit as some of the dambos were still a bit too wet to cross. The last 50 km was through thorny bush and the canvas of the game drive vehicle and our clothes were torn. We found a nice camp site on the banks of the Kwando River where –according to the local people – it is sometimes possible to watch sitatunga and hippos. There were many birds and the sunset over the Kwando was fantastic. It looks like a mini Okvango. I hope the local community will develop the site into a proper community campsite. I hope to be able to arrange trips for my guests taking them along the Sioma Ngwezi park boundary via my bush camp and down to the Kwando.
We were visited by a Portuguese driving on a mountainbike all the way from Luanda in Angola and hopefully ending up in Maputo in Mozambique. That is quite a ride. While I was in Livingstone the camp was also visited by a crazy elderly South African who stole my cigars (annoying guy!) and was very rude and aggressive towards my staff. He stayed for one night, ate and drank (and smoked my cigars), but left without paying. Luckily this type of guests is rare.
Otherwise, business continued to be slow in April and May. Since beginning of June though I have had a number of guests. It started with Danish company Missionpharma sponsoring an ‘outreach’ program with doctors and surgeons (from University Teaching Hospital and Chainama Hospital in Lusaka visiting the mission clinic in Sioma for 4 days. I was quite impressed with their performance. Some of them made more than 20 operations in a day, sometimes working to after 11 pm. They left a lot of local patients with improved quality of life. They were good company too, so it was a very enjoyable stay for all parties. And it appears they will visit this area again.
We have had several guests from Peace Park, USAID and WWF, all somehow in relation to the development of the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. It seems that Peace Park funds are now available and real implementation activities are about to start. That will be good. The local people are eagerly waiting to see something happening. Since beginning of June a lot of holiday seekers from South Africa have been passing through. Some on the way to Liuwa Plain NP where they – somewhat to my surprise – saw a lot of wildebeests. It was my impression that you would only see wildebeests in huge numbers from October and onwards. In addition they watched 9 wild dogs kill a young wildebeest. A few minutes later 13 hyenas chased the wild dogs away. Yes, there are many hyenas up there. The South African visitors were lucky and twice saw the lioness (princess Liuwa) and her two imported ‘boyfriends’ from Kafue NP.
Please note that in order to get to Liuwa Plains – at least for now – you must take the Western route from Kalongola to Kalabo; not via Mongu to Kalabo. This road is still flooded. The latest organization to pay a visit to this area was Open Africa. They are developing routes in Southern Africa, all with strong links to local communities, and have so far assisted in establishing several routes in Zambia, including the Barotse Trail from Livingstone to Ngonye Falls. This route will be extended to Mongu thereby allowing it to link up with the routes developed for the Kafue NP and surrounding areas. Through their brochures/maps and website they provide comprehensive package tour proposals complete with options for accommodation/restaurants/attractions etc.
I got my Nissan back. On my first trip back to camp the rear brakes clamped about 20 km from Sesheke and I had to return. The brake was disengaged and I resumed my trip back to camp. After 46 km the diff fell off and I was again brought to a standstill. I had to call my driver (first walking 8 km in darkness to find signal) so he could come and tow me back to Sesheke…..in the middle of the cold night. About a week later I could pick up the car again and this time I made it back to camp. Since then I have been going from Sioma to Sesheke twice without brakes. Great fun! I have realized that without too much traffic on the road you actually do not necessarily need brakes. Small trees and soft deep sand can make you slow down and even bring your vehicle to a halt. The only problem is that there are occasionally too many dark cows on the road and sometimes you do not see them in time. As a result of a bit of hazardous driving (bloody cows! What are they doing on the road anyway?) I broke a spring and destroyed a shock on my Nissan.
Following several sightings of lions during the last few months we were visited by Paula White, a lion researcher from the Zambia Lion Project. On the second day on a trip to Ijobwe Pools she and an accompanying professional hunter from Kafue saw two young male lions. Paula managed to dart one of the lions and hopefully the biopsy will provide some insight as to where the Sioma Ngwezi lions fit into the genetic landscape of lions in this region. One of my workers saw a pair of lions close to the ZAWA office in early May. He had also seen two lions a few weeks before close to the airstrip just a few km from here.
A few days ago some of the workers from my bush camp told me that they had seen two huge male lions and two lionesses at the ‘old airstrip’ close to my bush camp. They saw them as they were walking along the road, the lions being less than 25 meters away in the bush…..watching them as they passed by. The week before they had found a dead eland killed by lions close to one of the trails that hopefully will soon serve as bush walk/drive tracks starting from the bush camp.
We have been on several bush drives recently and have seen a number of giraffes (groups of 8 and 7), sables (groups of 8 and 15 and 12 plus several lone bulls) and kudus (3 groups of 5-7). The wild dogs (8) visited my bush camp about a week ago (2 had passed by the camp in mid June). Hyenas and leopards wander through the camp almost every evening/night apparently having fun scaring my staff. Elephants also walk though camp every now and then. On a bush drive today – Sunday 10th July – we saw tracks of wild dogs and several lions. We also saw fresh tracks of poachers. That’s the kind of spoors you do not want to see. About two weeks ago my Bush camp workers had found the remains of a giraffe killed by poachers. With Peace Parks funds now available there is hope that law enforcement can be strengthened. Let me add that funds for anti poaching activities hopefully will be matched with funds for community development activities, otherwise law enforcement efforts on its own will probably not provide sustainable results. Last night we had jackals and hyenas at the river camp. Last week 15 sables had been at the river next to our camp site. Vervet monkeys are getting more accustomed to the camp here at the river. They are fun to watch, although I prefer that they maintain some distance to the kitchen. And now there are 4 hippos from here to the Falls. There used to be only 2, then 3 since December and now 4. We are getting there!
Please remember that you can now also find Sioma Camp on facebook. I have tried to present new photos more frequent than on my website. The problem is that uploading photos takes almost all my MTN-‘airtime’, so I have to be a bit selective.
And it is winter and too cold. I hate it. I did not come to Africa to freeze!
Hans Chr. Aaskov
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