Spending more than a few hours in a camp chair entering data into a laptop calls for a little exercise to get the blood flowing again. Frustrated trips to the ‘wifi tree’ to see if the signal has improved are interspersed by perambulations around camp. With the SA school holidays looming the owners of Mukolo Camp are gearing themselves up for the seasonal rush, but for now the camp has mainly student or research groups coming and going. Still no sign of the river rising but there are reports of good rains in the catchment areas of Angola. Locals still say the water is on its way.
The flood plains outside our camp are an intriguing mix of dry land, peat bogs, rivers and dams. Hatchiko thinks she is in the best doggy play ground there is and runs helter skelter through the grass so long you cannot see her at all; Her bell giving her position away. Occasionally she will either stand on her hind legs to peer over the grass or pronk in exhaustive leaps to progress faster than battling the grass at ground level allows. Clive shared his vision of a crocodile waiting, mouth agape, in one of the ponds – Along comes a flying dog and pronks directly into its mouth! Needless to say it makes for a tense few minutes when we loose sight of her. The easiest paths often turn out to be hippo paths and lead you directly into the water but the topography is flat and the visibility over 100m in any direction so apart from the crocks we feel safe enough to wonder over the changing landscape.
The ‘strip’ is 20 miles wide and was given, along with the most troublesome tribes in the area, to the Germans in 1890 to provide access to the Indian Ocean via the Zambezi river in exchange for Zanzibar. They neglected to inform the German Chancellor Leo von Caprivi of a small blockage downriver called the Victoria Falls. The result is a pretty, 450km strip from Namibia main to the boarder of Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana which until recently was beset by tsetse fly and political wrangling. The constant movement of the river through the flood plains makes borders hard to define and it is possible to inadvertently drive from one country to another while on a game drive! Successful efforts to control the tsetse fly over the last 40 or so years has lead to an increase in human settlements and subsistence farming.
Traveling the 110 km’s along the main road from Kongola to Katima Mulilo for fresh meat and veg allows us to admire the many villages that have sprung up. They are quite picturesque presenting interesting combinations of grass, reeds and white sand. Due to the fires that sweep through the area annually each settlement has a large vegetation free border around it. The schools are clean and neat and well maintained. There are no fences around anything and the big-5 wander through the ever narrowing corridor between Botswana and Zambia with very little impact on the residents.
In all a fascinating part of Africa.
Itchy Feet! 