Camping in Kafue: Wild dogs, Lions, and 19 Hours of Uncertainty and Helplessness

When I think back to our trips to South Luangwa and Victoria Falls, I feel like they were as close to perfect as possible.  Everything ran smoothly and we just had such a wonderful time.  After this recent camping trip to Kafue, I’m not leaving with exactly the same feeling.  We had fun, saw lots of animals, and enjoyed each others’ company, but there was a period of time that was certainly less than perfect.  That period of time lasted nineteen hours.  But before I talk about that, I’ll start from the beginning. 

We left the seminary a little after 6 Thursday morning.  We stopped to pick up Ethel and then were on our way.  We beat traffic in downtown Lusaka and made it to our campsite about four hours later.  We found this perfect spot to camp right on the river and even had Gibson, one of the workers, set up our tents for us.  After a relaxing lunch, we got ready to go out on a game drive.  Because Sue brought the cruiser (a nice big car with bench seats and four wheel drive) we could go on self-drives.  We even had a spotlight for when it got dark.  We brought along our coolers of food so the monkeys wouldn’t get into them while we were gone and a case of water, just to be safe.  Since we wanted to sit up on the roof rack at some point, we threw in a sleeping bag so we could sit on it.  Before entering the park, we stopped at another campsite, Mukombi, to see if their pet hippo was around.  He wasn’t – he lives in the wild part of the time, so he must have been off somewhere.  Sue asked one of the drivers if all the loops were open (meaning not flooded still from the rainy season or ripped up) and he assured us they were. 

We saw some elephants, zebras, various breeds of antelopes, and buffalo.  After doing some river loops that we had done earlier with Dave and Dee, Sue wanted to go on a different loop where she had once seen five cheetahs and a leopard.  We headed out towards it but couldn’t quite find the entrance for it.  A tractor that was grating the roads passed us and directed us on a main road, but then right after that a man in a truck came by and showed us a very narrow, somewhat rough road that we hadn’t noticed.  He happily waved good-bye and told us to have lots of fun.  After driving this road for a while, Rachel and I crawled up to the top of the roof so we could see better.  We saw little crocodile run out from the water and a kudu by the stream, but other than that we didn’t see anything.  The grass was really high and the road was getting rougher and rougher.  We came up to this huge divot in the road.  The rainy season creates these streams that run through the ground and when they dry up, they leave behind these huge divots in the road.  Sue asked us if we should try it, and we encouraged her too – we wanted to get the point where she had seen the cheetahs under the tree.  We lay flat on the roof and hung tight on the railings while Sue managed to just barely get our truck through the small canyon.  I thought we were going to get stuck, but we managed to get through.  A short time after that, we came up to another divot, but this one had a small stream running through it.  This looked much smaller and much less steep compared to the last one, and we all assured Sue to just try it.  She sat and thought about it for a while, but then decided that she didn’t want to turn around because the first divot was terrible and she didn’t think she’d make it through it again.  We all confidently encouraged her to do it – how bad could it be? 

The small stream turned out to be much muddier than we anticipated and the sides were also much sharper than they looked.  We got stuck.  Our two front tires were on the sand and our back two had water halfway up them.  The thing that really got us stuck was the fact that our bumper was pretty much buried in mud.  We couldn’t see anything because we were so low in the ground and there was such tall grass around us.  Sue was really worried about lions and told Rachel and I to get back in the car right away.  We crawled through the front window and were met with Sue grimly saying, “We’re stuck till they find us.” 

This was at 4:30 PM on Thursday afternoon.  Sue was extremely worried about lions hiding in the tall grass, but finally agreed that we had to try to get ourselves out of this situation, so she let us get out one at a time to put things under the tires to try to get traction while the others were on lion watch.  That idea didn’t work – we tried the cooler lid and sticks that were nearby, but we were just way too stuck.  Soon, it got dark and we couldn’t try much else.

We were hoping that someone would take a game drive and find us, but we knew that was a slim chance since this loop was certainly not driveable and it was very far away from our camp.  Our second hope was that Gibson would notice we were gone since we told him we’d back around 7:30.  We thanked God we brought water and food!  Ethel and I played a game of cards, Sue told us about her time in the Peace Corps, and we joked and laughed about all the terrible things that could happen to us, but soon we settled into a quiet, kind of helpless feeling and just laid on the seats and watched the sun set.  Every once in a while, Sue laid on the horn, hoping a game driver would hear us.  We made bets on when we would be discovered (I bet 7:10 that night…such an optimist, Sue bet 11 that night, and Ethel and Rachel said in the morning) and then drifted off to sleep for a few minutes at a time.  Sue pointed out stars to us and we made random conversation here and there before falling asleep again.  I woke up freezing around 11.  I was wearing yoga pants and a sweatshirt, Ethel had jeans and a light sweatshirt, Rachel just had short pants with a T-shirt and a fleece, and Sue was wearing jeans, a long-sleeve shirt, and a fleece.  Rachel was on the floor with the sleeping bag wrapped around and Ethel had both Sue and Rachel’s fleeces.  I was on the bench seat, huddled in a ball, and Sue was in the front seat.  Sue suddenly got really excited and said, “You guys, I see a spotlight!  They found us!”  She honked the horn and flashed the lights and we all started getting really happy until we realized that it was just the moon.  It was unusually bright and it was rising at such a late hour that when you looked at it through the trees, it really did look like a spotlight.  Ethel, Rachel and I drifted back off to sleep while Sue stayed awake.  She refused to sleep or eat pretty much the entire time because she was saving everything for us. 

At 1, I woke up even colder than before.  I can’t remember the last time I was so cold.  We should have thought of this before, but finally we all crawled up into the front seat and huddled together.   Sue and I were next to the doors, which was very cold, but I warmed up enough to drift off to sleep a little more.  Sue couldn’t stand being by the door for very long, so she got up some time after that and moved to the back of the car.  This is where she started to panic – she kept muttering about all the bad things that could happen.  This is the time of year where they burn off the grass and we had driven past some of those areas nearby.  It was possible that elephants would come by and tip us over, or lions could attack us while one of us was going to the bathroom.  She was also getting irritated that the people at the campsite hadn’t found us yet.  There really aren’t that many loops that we could have been on and there aren’t that many spots where we could have gotten stuck.  I was concerned for her – I didn’t want to hear her panic.  We all moved back so she could be under the blanket and tried to get her to fall asleep.  I drifted off again, waking up periodically when I was too cold or in a really uncomfortable position.  We all woke up at 5, knowing that in an hour the sun would be out and it would soon be getting warm.  I was still holding out hope that God would make this worthwhile and show us some really cool animals.  Maybe a cheetah or a leopard would wander right past our car and we could see it up close.  Funny enough, we saw absolutely nothing except a couple birds. 

The sun came up and soon it got really hot.  We decided we had to try something more.  We got out of the car (Sue had relaxed her rule a little bit about only one person being out at a time) and tried to find things we could shove under the tires.  I used a table knife to start sawing off the tall grass and then tried digging out our bumper with a stick.  Rachel and Sue got the spare tires off the top of the truck and put them on our bumper to see if the change of the weight made a difference.  I even pulled off my shirt to give one of the front wheels some added traction and Sue took off a shoe.  Rachel took the table knife and hacked away at some of the dirt that could have been a problem for one of the front wheels.  We tried all this plus pushing and nothing worked.  The tires just could not get enough traction with all the water and mud.   

Tired, hot, sweaty, and resigned to spending more hours in the car, we reluctantly got back in the steaming vehicle and talked about our other options.  I pointed out that we could make a fire from the cigarette lighter, and Sue had learned in a survival class that Q-tips with Vaseline are good fire starters, so she worked on building a small fire that would send up smoke signals.  I tore out pages of the book I had with me and tried to light them, but it didn’t work.  Sue tried it over and over again with the Q-tips, but it just wouldn’t light.  This would have worked in the movies.

Rachel and Ethel fell asleep in the back and I somewhat guiltily started reading my book.  Sue, who still hadn’t slept at all and had eaten hardly anything, sat in the front seat praying.  I was surprisingly calm and not panicky at all.  I was preparing myself to spend the next night in the car but knew that by Saturday at the latest someone would for sure find us.  The only thing I was worried about was the cold – the night before had been just brutal.  I just kept saying to myself that at some point it would all be over – we just had to take it a minute at a time. 

At 11:30, Rachel and Ethel were convinced they heard a car.  I didn’t believe them – I thought it was the wind and I didn’t want to get my hopes up.  But the sound didn’t go away, and it started getting a little louder.  I let myself hope that we could be saved and crawled out the window onto the roof of the car to see what it was.  I heard the car clearly then and started shouting, “It’s a car!  It’s a car!”  Then I saw it, and I gleefully waved my arms and kept shouting.  Rachel and Sue started crying from joy, and we all hopped out of the car to greet our saviors.  It was four workers from our campsite in a pick-up truck and they were not thrilled to see us.  One man even said, “We are so annoyed to see you!”  The scolding continued: “What were you thinking coming here?”  “Why would you try this loop!”  “You should have told us you were coming here!”  I had the feeling we were children who got lost wandering in the woods and were discovered by frantic parents.  Ethel, Rachel, and I were pretty obnoxious – we were so happy we were rescued that after apologizing and thanking the men, we chattered and giggled away while watching the men continue to yell at Sue.  They hooked up the truck to the back of their pick-up truck and managed to pull it out pretty quickly.  We followed them back up the loop, elated to be moving again.  (Later, the men told us that there were lion prints headed towards our vehicle.  We were definitely in lion country and it was good idea that Sue was as vigiliant as she was.)

Suddenly, the men in the truck stopped and pointed frantically over to a tree.  Under the tree were probably ten wild dogs!   If you’re like me before I came to Africa, you won’t know what wild dogs are.  They are similar to hyenas but have rounder ears.  They are extremely rare to see – much rarer than lions.  Seeing a wild dog is like winning the lottery.  And we saw so many of them!  That almost made our nineteen hours of being trapped in the car worth it.

We got back to the camp, showered, ate lunch, and thanked God over and over again that we were out of that terrible place.  We thought that going on a game drive with the actual guide from the campsite was a good idea for the evening, so at 5, we went out on one.  We saw pretty much nothing except for a porcupine and some antelopes, so that was a little disappointing.  But we were so thrilled to get back and crawl into our very warm beds for the evening!

The next morning, we got up at 5:30 to go out on one last self drive.  We went on the nice safe, close loops.  Within a few minutes, we saw two hyenas very close to our car, but they got scared and ran away before we could take a picture.  On our way to the river loop, Rachel yelled at Sue to stop the car.  We were on the main tarmac road and weren’t expecting to see anything, but Rachel told her to back up because she saw a male lion.  Sure enough – way in the distance there was a beautiful male lion.  She saw him because there were impala staring at it.  We were using binoculars and getting a look at it when Sue calmly says, “Oh my, there is a lion right behind us!”  I couldn’t believe it, but there was another male lion walking casually down the tarmac away from our car.  I opened up the back door to get a better picture of it and Sue backed up so we could be a little closer to it.  Then it crossed through the tall grass and joined the other male lion.  It was so incredible!

After that, we saw two female and one male kudu right by our car.  That’s rare – they’re very skiddish.  After that, we came up by a couple doing a game drive and they said that we had just missed seeing a cheetah.  The puku were sending up alarm calls and we knew the cheetah was close by hiding in the grass.  We waited it out, but we couldn’t see it.

We returned to the camp, ate lunch, and packed up.  On the way out of the park, we saw hartebeests – very rare antelope.  We got back to our house a little after 6.  I’m exhausted and definitely ready for bed!  Despite the unwelcome excitement of being stuck in the mud for nearly a day, the weekend was a great time.  I’m so happy I had one last chance to explore the African wilderness!