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Matthew Griffiths
Wildlife Conservation Course
 Wildlife Conservation Course
“You must write a story before you go to tell everyone about your adventures”. These are the famous words that you will hear from Tinus probably the day before you depart. I was no exception - the problem I have is that I had far too many adventures in my six-week stay to put them all down on paper - but I suppose that I should try - I have:
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Animals
- Been chased by elephants on several occasions
- Played with lion cubs
- Been charged by buffalo
- Tracked giraffe, zebra, wildebeest and impala on foot through the bush
- Seen rhino, sable, rhone, eland and many other endangered species
- Slept with a hippopotamus named Jessica
- Watched elephants swimming in the dam at 2am on a moonlit night
- Had the sorest backside after a 3hr horse safari
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Navigation and Driving
- Become lost in the bush, whilst leading a game walk with the other students
- Broken down and carried out running repairs on the pick-up on a midnight game drive
Various
- Demonstrated what an excellent target marksman I am - with both a pistol and a rifle - and then rather unimpressively shot an impala in the backside rather than in the chest
- Seen the most beautiful sunrises, sunsets, moonrises and stars that I think I will ever see
- Been promised the farm by Tinus, if only I could have found a dozing sable antelope to hit on the head with a pebble
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Eating and Drinking
- Eaten a bowl of Mopani worms, several impala, warthog, ostrich and Kudu steaks
- Drunk stream downstream of a rotting wildebeest carcass - in an effort to catch something - so that I wouldn't have to return to the UK
- Involuntarily swallowed several gallons of the Oliphant's river whilst failing to navigate the rapids in a boat just a little bigger than one of my shoes
- Won March 2006 Course Dung Spitting Competition
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Anyway - the one thing that made me think that I had to go back to Africa and opened my eyes to how real and exciting life out there can be, was the night that we had unexpected and uninvited visitors in the camp.
It must have been about 3 o'clock in the morning on a dark moonless night when I was woken by the sound of metal chains crashing against the camp security fence at first I thought that I was dreaming - so rolled over and closed my eyes, but the noise continued and was joined by the sound of people running and shouting. The thought that we were about to be murdered in our beds by a gang of marauding criminals briefly crossed my mind but surely they wouldn't attack an Englishman - so I rolled over and closed my eyes again. Then the drumming started and the shouting intensified and realising that I was not going to be able to sleep through all the noise and commotion, I thought that the very least I could do would be to die bravely whilst trying to save the lives of the other students from whatever horrible fate was about to befall them as they slept in their beds.
I tried the light switch - it didn't work and I remembered that we had no power following a storm, so I grabbed my torch and opened the door to my hut, it was pitch black outside, overcast with no moon, so I tried my torch, which didn't work either, excellent, now I was wandering about without a light trying not to bump into whoever/whatever was making all the noise.
Fortunately, I was rescued by Martina, a very brave Dutch girl, who I bumped into just around the corner for some reason she offered me her torch, which of course I accepted - reasoning that it was far better for me to be able to see - so that I could defend her if necessary, than for her to be able to see; a gentleman to the end! And so we wandered off into the night, towards the sound of the shouting and drumming to see what was going on.
The first clue that all was not quite right was the broken trees and bushes that had been torn up and scattered all over the camp. Well what a relief I thought; we needn't be worried about being murdered by criminals, elephants have clearly caused this. The relief was short lived however as I realised that although we were not going to be stabbed to death we were more than likely going to be trampled to death by a herd of elephants.
Fortunately, as we pondered our next move - we saw Tinus armed with a shotgun and a searchlight making his way purposefully up the track towards us - so we fell in behind him.
As we neared the top of the track we flashed our lights in front of us and spotlighted the biggest, meanest looking bull elephant that I had ever seen - huge tusks, great big flapping ears - just standing about 20 yards away, silently watching us approach. At this point Laetitia's ‘Dangerous Nine' lecture came into my head and I whipped off my shirt - apparently a charging elephant will attack your clothes if you throw them at it before you dodge out of the way. Mind you the thought that Tinus had a shotgun - was rather more of a comfort.
Tinus levelled his shotgun, took careful aim and fired off four or five shots over the elephant's head and with a final look at us it turned and calmly walked into the bush out of our spotlight, but judging by the lack of breaking branches it didn't go far.
So Tinus I asked - “Would a shotgun stop a charging elephant if you really had to kill it?”
“No not a chance” he said, “it just really annoys them but it should scare it off.”
Ah, fantastic - the false sense of security of a shotgun - still what an exciting night I thought -shall we go back to bed now? But Tinus, a professional hunter for 40 odd years had other ideas -
“No, no”, he said, “what we need to do now is walk around the outside perimeter of the fence to make sure that there are not any others around and that this one has gone away, it will be perfectly safe as long as the girls keep banging on that oil drum.”
So off we went with the sound of banging drums in our ears - we hopped over what was left of the main gate - it looked just like you would imagine a gate would look like if an eight ton animal had trodden on it (ask Tinus to show you the pictures if you don't believe me) and wandered off into the bush looking for a very angry elephant, armed only with a dodgy torch, a (useless) shotgun and of course my trusty elephant proof shirt.
After several minutes of bush bashing - who knows how many spiders and snakes we trod on, we were standing just where the elephant had made off into the bush and as is always the case several things happened at once. The girls, who up until this point had been making a devil of a noise banging on the oil drum decided to stop and watch us hunting for elephants. As the drumming stopped and silence fell, I heard the unmistakable rumble of a big (probably very angry) elephant - not more than 10 yards away and shone my torch in the general direction.
Tinus told me to turn the torch off, so as not to provoke a charge and rather than taking aim and letting off a few more shots he just stood quietly with the gun under his arm and had a pee!
I must admit that at this point I began to query his sanity and was looking for an escape route for the inevitable charge but when he had finished attending to his more pressing needs, he calmly asked the girls to start up on the drumming again and fired another couple of shots in the air in the general direction of the elephant.
Satisfied that the elephant had gone we made our way back to camp for a well deserved cup of tea.
For the rest of the night I just lay awake smiling and trying to work out a plan that would let me come back to Africa to experience more of the same adventures.
So many thanks to Tinus, Suegnette and Laetitia (and all of the great friends that I made) for an unforgettable African experience. |
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 Wildlife Conservation Course South Africa
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