Zambia: Birds and bugs

African Wood-Owl chick

During my stay in Mkushi, I had a super time with my camera, one of these special occasions was finding a African Wood-Owl nest with chick in the Dobson's farmyard.

The nest site, about a meter off the ground

As I walked past this tree and peered into the hole, Mum African Wood-Owl flew out, leaving behind the most precious
little bundle of white fluff

There is a rat's tail just to the right of the chick,
Lucky farmers having African Wood-Owl in the farm yard to
eat the rats.

Mum Owl peering at me from a safe distance

Miombo Scrub-Robin

Black Chested Snake-Eagle

Black Backed Barbet

Lizard Buzzard

Plain Backed Pipit

Golden Weaver

Funky Critter found in the kitchen

A BIG fly

Zambia: Dobson Mutts, my companions for three days

I have often wondered where my love for the ‘bush’ came from, going back to my childhood I realised that this love developed at a young age in the Mkushi area. Whilst staying with Paul and Rea I spent three days wondering through pristine brachystegia woodlands also known as Miombo Forests, my companions, three lovely Boxer mutts.  This was a very special time for me, I’m very grateful to Sharon, Paul and Rea for helping make my dreams come true.  The greatest thing that one could find during a walk with these mutts was water and dragonflies!! Diesel is seen here chasing dragonflies.

Honey, Diesel's Mom joins in the dragonfly fun

Just leave me alone, you big Mutts, I need to sleep
and pretend that I don't enjoy your company!!

I'll sit here in the shade whilst you crazy birder walks
about in the hot sun trying to work out which bird is calling.

Honey, hanging tongue after hot walk in the bush

 Mum, Dad and Son run around like crazy
critters, a stick keeping them focused on
being at one with the task of moving forward.

Ok you guys, lets just stop and look at the camera!! Lovely Mutts, lovely photos, special times.

Zambia here I come 2nd September 2012

For a while now I’ve yearned to go back to visit 'our' Farm and home in Zambia, Mkuzi farming block would be my destination.  Sharon and I set off on 30^th September from Durban international airport, a direct flight to Lusaka where Sharon would hire a car to take us to Mkushi.  Sharon was going on business, I was also going on a different business, one that would bring tears and joy to me.  Just before we went through the ‘border’ at the airport, which happened to be about 20m we both purchased two bottles of water, just to be told we could not take water across the ‘border’.  Can you believe this!!! So we dumped our water, walked through the ‘border’ and had to purchase two more bottles of water, then we found out that we got free water on the plane!!  Our plane was a small 54 seater. 

We had an interesting start to our travels, just as the plane was about to take off the smoke alarm in the toilet went off, what a racket it made, don't ever smoke in an airplane toilet, you will be found out very quickly.  The pilot dropped the nose of the plane and jammed on brakes, we spent the next hour watching a very tall mechanic with a little black box and a screw driver ‘fix’ something in the loo. 

Our trip to Lusaka was about three hours, lovely food was served and there was time to catch up with Sharon and brush up on Birds of Africa, South of the Sahara.  

In Lusaka we were given the tiniest little car, sort of half a car!!!

Our  half car went very well and got us through the Lusaka town where I took my first photo this was of a statue in a traffic circle, a kombi going round the circle had these words written in large red letters on the back window

  


GOD IS ABLE

The rest of this trip is called God is able:  I say this because I had no idea what to expect when I saw ‘our farm and our home’ Leaving Zambia was very traumatic for our family, none of us had been back during the past forty four years. I had no clue who I was staying with, what I was going to experience and how I was going to react!!

Paul and Rea invited me into their home, made me very welcome and took me around helped me re-visit my youth.   My stay in Mkushi was a very precious time, Paul took me to meet the new owners of Bagend (the name of our farm) but locally the farm is known as Kwa Tyson (our surname)!!! Andy and Anne Anderson, the new owners were delighted to meet me, we had drinks in the garden of ‘our home’.  The house is still being lived in, other than a few internal alterations it is the same.  The pool developed a large crack so had to be covered in and the tobacco barns have been taken down for safety reasons, they were falling down.  But the workshop and diesel room are all still standing. 

                                           Some of the photos that I took of  'our house'

The workshop with fuel room on the left

The first house that we lived in was demolished, here the bricks
are carefully stacked. I'd love one of those bricks, just for old time sake

Our home side view from drive way, note the lovely big trees in the garden

Front view of our home

The wall

Bouganvilla that Mum planted way back in the 60ies

View from the house

The garage and drive way

Imfolozi August 2012

Bone chewing Giraffe

Its birthday time for Mum and Dad, well not really birthday time, but birthday pressie time!!
This time of the year is very precious for me, I take my parents for a birthday treat to Imfolozi.

Mum, Dad, Gwen and I set off early on 17th August for Imfolozi, our first stop is Umvoti Plaza where dad treats us to breakfast. After we have all refueled we set off for the park.  Our next stop is the Umbondwe Picnic site where we have another snack and coffee, we go to the edge of the site and scan the valley below for critters large and small.  Hyena scats are around the picnic site so we know they have visited the area.  We also know that Ellie and lion have been through this site.  After our snack we set off again for Mpila Camp, as we cross the Black Imfolozi we stop and wonder what is in store for us.

For a change this year we decided to try the Safari Tents, Gwen and I shared a tent, Mum and Dad have another tent which is just up the hill from ours. Monkeys are on hand to help us off load the vehicle when we arrive.  Mum is nominated as a car guard.  She does a good job as we take load after load of food into the kitchen which is then locked and secured. The Safari tents are fun and very comfortable, Mum finds it a little chilly to shower in the open. 

 Our trip was such fun, we shared breakfast and supper together in one tent, lunch was packed and eaten on the trot.  We had some lovely sightings of God's amazing creation, The drive around Sontuli loop brings back memories of being charged by an unfriendly Ellie about three years ago.  I find it interesting how good Dad's 81 year old memory is, as we drive around he  chats about what we saw on which bend two years ago!!! I wish I could say the same about my memory.

The park was very different this year to what it was in 2011, firstly Peter and Mo were not with us, and secondly much of the park had been burnt, these were not controlled burns but runaway fires from outside the park area. I'm not sure how the game manage to escape this type of fire, do they run like crazy, or succumb to the flames!!

Mum, Dad and Gwen

Most of the park looked like this burnt from runaway fires

More burnt area

Some of the creatures that we saw during our stay

Mother and Child

This Lioness walked across the road behind us, called her 'kids' and disappeared into the bush

The big ones

The small ones

The ugly ones

The sun baking ones                                         

The huge ones

Caleb's 5th Birthday July 2012

During July I flew down to Cape Town to be with our family and celebrate Caleb's 5th birthday with him.  Caleb is VERY  'into' firemen, fire gear, fire everything, On the day that Caleb went to school, Karen and I went to the 'Dog shelter' to look at a puppy that Mike had found for Caleb's birthday pressie.  This was a fairly traumatic occasion for me, being the softie that I am when it comes to dogs, because animals in shelters just make me cry!!! Ok so I cried!! and we found two puppies which Mike had not seen, these two puppies were born in the shelter, they had not experienced life out of the concrete jungle that they were born into.  I took photos of the pups sent them to Mike and the rest is history,

Caleb meets Cameron for the first time.

  Mike collected a pup for Caleb on 26th July.  Caleb named his new dog Cameron!!!

 Cameron and Caleb enjoyed the fireman birthday party together.

Sack race fun at the party

Fireman has fire ice cream cake

You see Mum this is how it works
 

Mike and Caleb watching seals

Caleb and Cameron on the beach

Cameron very comfortable on Mike's lap after a very

 exciting

 day

More action

Action Packed little  boy

Karen and Caleb in Tokai forest

Asleep on the stoep after a hectic day