I was in Zimbabwe a couple of weeks ago taking part in the annual voluntary wildlife census in Hwange National Park and I didn’t count a single animal. Not one.
My wife, Mrs Blog, and I have been doing the game count for 10 years now and we’ve never had such a disastrous result. We were sent to a pan called Manzimbomvu, which means red water, about 30 kilometres south of Robins Camp.
From midday until midday the next day, over the 24 hours covering the last full moon of the dry season we watched and we waited. There was water in the pan and we’d actually counted there once before, a few years ago.
On our last stay at Manzimbombvu I got out of our Land Rover at four in the morning to put on the gas bottle to boil some water for coffee. There had been a skittish herd of elephant at the pan, so I’d waited until they had passed, and all was quiet.
As I lit the gas I heard a sound like a racehorse galloping down a track. When I looked up, my tired eyes saw something running towards me. By the time it passed me, no more than four metres from my bull bar, I realised I was watching a lioness charging.
She was following the elephants, hoping to separate a tiny baby from the herd. The lions in Hwange are big – they eat elephants.
This year, though, there was nothing. Game count is the only time of the year in Hwange when you can stay out in the bush after dark by yourself, or drive off road (only far enough to get to a decent vantage point at your allotted pan). During the night I stay inside the vehicle (unless lighting the gas burner!) but during the day, if you’re sensible, you can move about quietly in the vicinity of your vehicle.
By the morning of the second day of the count I was so desperate to count at least one mammal I went off on foot a short way in search of a squirrel, or perhaps a monkey. Nothing.
But here’s the silver lining in this tale of a dark cloud over Hwange. It was raining.
Like I said, the game census is supposed to be at the end of the dry season, not in the wet season. But this year the climate got things wrong and it rained, from midday on the first day of the count to midday on the second. It started as a steady drizzled and ended up as full-blown thunderstorm.
The full moon was obscured by cloud and the driving rain meant that even if there had been an animal out there in the dark we wouldn’t have seen it.
Also, Hwange was literally awash with water. Last year’s good rains meant that rivers were flowing and man-made waterholes (which struggled to cope during past droughts and shortages of diesel to run their pumps) were mini lakes this year.
The game was spread out all over the park this year, so none of the teams recorded good counts and we weren’t the only nil-return.
There are still animals in Hwange, even though our game census was a wash-out.
On the day before the counting period we saw a lovely herd of 500-plus buffalo near Robins, as well as a splendid family of more than 30 Roan antelope. There were zebra, impala, waterbuck and kudu hanging around the camp and on the day after the 24-hours of rain the sun came out and presented us with a beautifully healthy mating pair of lions.
On the morning we left Robins a cheetah killed an impala just down the road from the camp, and dejected counters leaving Zimbabwe were treated to the sight of a pride of lions in the Matetsi Safari Area, right near the Pandamatenga border post.
So when people tell you there are no animals in Hwange, don’t listen to them. Go see for yourself.
