Guest post by Mark Homann, professional safari guide
In the early 1990s I guided out of a National Park known as Chizarira in Northern Zimbabwe. The park is dominated by the Zambezi escarpment that takes up its Northern border. It is by no means a well-known wilderness; not then and certainly not now, but it is very beautiful, unique, and wild. It was with this in mind that I guided a group of clients back here in 2009. I have shared many safaris with this particular group so I knew that they would appreciate this majestic place for what it was.
We had a great safari there. The park was in good shape considering that it has seen less than a handful of tourist in the last decade. The animals were there, but not in the massive numbers as I saw in the early 90s. But we did get to walk up on a large herd of buffalo and two elephant bulls.
Two things make this area so special. One is the people. They are known as the Tonga people. They were moved, after some resistance, from the flood plains of the Zambezi River when Lake Kariba was built, to the foot hills of the escarpment where they live today. We went to visit an old friend and chief of this area who goes by the name of Judas. He showed us great hospitality and showed us around his village and introduced his family (which has grown to 4 wives and a number of kids in the 20 years since I called his valley home). Life is not easy for these people as they live in one of Africa’s harsher environments—the Zambezi valley is very hot and not very fertile (except by the river, which the Tonga people used as their main source of food and income).
They also began struggling with the complete collapse of their tourism-based wildlife economy thanks to the onslaught of bad press Zimbabwe has had since 2000 (it’s worth mentioning that the last time a foreign tourist was hurt in Zimbabwe from politically motivated violence was back in the early 1980s!). Today the Tonga people make a living growing millet (which is regularly eaten by elephant) and some vegetables grown on the sides of the spring lines coming out of the escarpment. They are as proud and tough as ever and it’s easy to feel that the Tonga people could outlive us all.
The other aspect to this area is the Zambezi escarpment itself. As a young guide I spent many hours walking through this wild terrain. Made up of very old sandstone and lifted by tectonic movement, the area is awash with natural spring lines, rugged cliff faces, and deep river gorges that cut deep down into the sandstone, creating a wilderness of valleys and gorges. Elephants have negotiated paths through these steep hills that are thousands of years old (their feet have worn paths into the rock itself). I more than once saw a whole herd of elephant 900 feet above us feeding on the steep sides of river gorges in places where we would not tread without safety harnesses.
So Chizarira may not be the ideal place for a safari for the average person, but it is one of the finest wilderness areas for dedicated wilderness explorers.
Elephant trail in the sandstone.
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Really nice guide. Thanks for sharing.