I spotted this in Namibia…
Erindi:
The following is a quote from Horst Klemm’s book
An African Journal.
“The world without humans is a wonderfully well-ordered place, free from the interference of the self-conscious mind seeking to recreate the system. There is no chaos, no anarchy in the wild – just profusion and variety. Each beast submits to the remorseless truth. In the wild, there is no time outside the immediate moment, no ego to analyze – life is lived with grace and beauty, whilst death is met with dumb divinity.”
As I read that statement, and by the way this book is about Klemm and his wife’s 20 years of full time travel through Africa, I disagreed with the statement. In fact, since this is a public forum that is the best public words I could use to describe how I disagree with it. Now, his travels through Africa give him insight that I may not have and I would not have publicly disagreed with him had it not been for what I saw this evening.
Erindi is a resort wildlife reserve. My room overlooking the waterhole is top notch. Even I spotted that. From my deck, when I first walked out there were two bull elephants across from me as well as some large crocodiles sunning themselves on the opposite bank. Now on my side of the pond there is very strong electrical fence discreetly hidden from view. This kind of looks like the set up for Jurassic Park.
After getting unpacked I collapsed into a chair. I did not realize that driving 150km including through downtown Windhoek in a right-hand drive vehicle would be so stressful. I drive a Toyota Tacoma at home. I noticed that most everything was in the same spot on my Fortrunner except the windshield wiper controls. Every time I went to signal a turn my windshield wipers came on. I had the cleanest windshield in Namibia. When I had recovered from the driving adventure I wondered down to the wildlife viewing deck about 30 minutes before sunset. It was there that I saw chaos in wildlife. I saw anarchy and egos.
I had just stepped onto the deck when a herd of blue wildebeest came jogging up to the waterhole. Movement to my right brought into view a pack of wild dogs. Yes, they really do look like they belong to a 3-year-old boy that has unlimited access to paint. These dogs came running at the wildebeest circled them, charged them, and I thought was going separate one and make a kill. That was not the case. It looked like they just were trying to irritate the wildebeest. They were doing a good job. Then as the dogs engaged in charges and retreats which kept the wildebeest counter attacking and retreating three of the dogs started fighting each other. Dust was flying, dogs were yipping, wildebeest were snorting and pawing the ground. It was all chaos.
Later, after sunset fifteen elephants came to the water hole. They snuffled and gurgled the water. The babies could drink after the adults had chased off the croc’s. When all had their fill, they lazed around the pool. A mother elephants laid down and rolled in the mud and several of the little ones came a pushed against her. The teenagers went to the other end of the pool and had shoving matches. Then the wildebeest came back. I don’t think they had gotten to drink yet. As they came within 25 yards of the mother rolling in the mud, she came out of the mud on a sprint at the wildebeest and chased them off. No ego there, she just did not want any low life wildebeest drinking at her waterhole.
It was an hour later as I was eating supper at the restaurant. It is a very good restaurant by the way. I watched those same wildebeest that had been chased off by the court jesters of wild dogs and then by the lordly elephants finally got a drink. That is anarchy.
The game drives are well done and there are some very interesting animals you can spot.
