Lions And Magnetite

Earlier this year, wildlife photographer and publisher HEINRICH VAN DEN BERG packed his family into our long-term Mazda BT50 3.2TDCi LE 4×4, hooked up a Jurgens Safari Xcape, and headed off to Namibia. His mission was two-fold: to introduce his young sons to the stark beauty of Namibia; and to meet up with Dr Philip Stander, who is almost as elusive as the desert lions he looks after.

Two years ago, I began writing a similar article on travelling with toddlers during a month-long project in the Kgalakgadi Transfrontier Park in summer. Our children were not yet human, the temperatures hovered just below 50⁰C and one of them tried to pick up a Parabuthus scorpion with his bare hands, causing my wife Dana to go into a state of neurotoxic shock, which ended the trip.

What started out as a 3 000-word article idea ended up as a three-word summary: ‘Don’t. Do. It.’

But we had to try again. The aim this time was to travel for a month through Namibia, drive for more than 8 000km, meet with Philip Stander and his lions in one of the most remote places in Namibia, and return via the Kgalakgadi Transfrontier Park to make peace with the scorpions. Easy.

For the expedition, we were armed with a well-kitted-out Mazda BT50 bakkie, a Jurgens Safari Xcape caravan, a collection of Netflix animation downloads and a scorpion torch. On our second night we already had our doubts as to whether this was a good idea.

TAKING A TUMBLE

We were camping at Zelda Guest Farm, close to Gobabis just across the border in Namibia. The facility has a few animals in enclosures, including porcupine, caracal and a huge male leopard. As we arrived, the leopard showed interest in a few goats just outside his enclosure, stalking them and crouching next to the fence, his tail tip flipping back and forth like a metronome, counting all the ways in which he would like to kill them.

Now we were on the scene, with our two goat-sized children who immediately started running up and down the leopard’s fence, laughing like tasty meat. The leopard immediately transferred its attention from the goats to our children, staring at them with that unmistakable look of death, its tail tip flipping even more meaningfully.