Christmas in Shaba

Shaba is very special to our family and it was wonderful to keep camp up at Funan for ten days. The plains were thick with dense grass and you could almost feel the bush growing around you. Crickets chirped, birds sang through the day and the moonlit nights. We saw more than a dozen grasses, dozens of flowers, some of which we had never seen before.

Animals were fat. We heard lions and leopard every night. We never actually saw a leopard. We saw our first lion after two solid days of searching. He was sitting by the road. I didn’t know at the time but the lion was on his way to meet up with lionesses near our camp. After a week we caught up with two mating pairs just outside camp. I had never seen these individuals and they were classic NFD lions. The males were big but almost maneless. Grumpy. Snarly. Real lions. We caught glimpses of two cheetah on a couple of occasions. We walked in some of the prettiest places that I know of. Down the river, across big open plains with herds of zebra, up hills with vast views. We were alone. It still had that edgy feeling that has been lost in most places now. Most elephants had moved north west, but we did count about fifty north of Chaffa. So many oryx, zebra, and giraffe. I already miss it terribly.

Happy New Year!

Ninian