Archive for July 2001
Show summaries onlyLeopards
Okonjima is a guest farm that takes care of cats: leopard, cheetah, lions, caracal (lynx).
Late each afternoon, guests are taken to a hide from where they can see leopard. Meat is set out for them. The setting is perfect. The western sun lights up the rock face making for good photographic opportunity.
Okonjima rescues cats when farmers cannot cope with stock losses, when guest farms get tired of looking after cats, or when mothers get injured and cubs are unable to cope alone.
Those cats that are able to live on their own are given any necessary medical care and released into the wild in appropriate surroundings.
Cats who are habituated to humans, or cubs who had no mother to teach them how to hunt are retained at Okonjima where they live as stars.
Okonjima, Namibia. 3 July 2001.
Lion at Okonjima, NamibiaLions at Okonjima
Each morning, at dawn, guests at Okonjima meet up at the Lion Lapa to see Okonjima’s lions. The Lion Lapa is a kind of viewing platform, about 2m high, combined with a buffet of a light breakfast.
There is a fine view of the lions as they habitually arrive each morning to talk to their handlers, members of the Hanssen family.
One of the silliest things I’ve ever done was drop the lens hood of my new Sigma 500mm lens over the edge of the viewing platform, and on to the top of this lion! He sniffed it then played around with it in the dust. He seemed gentle and curious, and pawed it just as a kitten would play with a ball of wool. But his paws were bigger than my hands. He eventually tired of his new toy and wandered away.
The lions’ handler retrieved the lens hood for me. I was embarrassed, but the lens hood was only dusty and very lightly scratched.
From a month’s holiday, this is probably the best photograph. Apparently the Kodak shop thought so too. They borrowed the negatives to make up a set of enlargements to display on the board in their shop!
And to give a plug to the people who developed and printed all my photos, and scanned them onto CDs, I recommend Eye2Eye Photographics of Australia on Collins in Melbourne.
Okonjima Lodge, Namibia. 4 July 2001.
Getting to Okonjima Lodge
Okonjima is in northern Namibia, about 200km north of Windhoek. An excellent sealed road takes you to this sign. After that, there is about 20k of difficult dirt road to reach the Lodge.
I’ve seen lots of road signs warning of animals, but never one sporting a cheetah.
Okonjima Lodge, Namibia. July 2001
Cheetah at Okonjima
Isn’t it cute. But it’s a cheetah, the fastest animal on earth. I saw this one at Okonjima, Namibia.
Okonjima is a luxury lodge several hours north of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. It is the home of Africat, a foundation that takes care of deserted and injured cats: leopards, cheetah, lions and caracal (lynx).
Okonjima, Namibia. 4 July 2001.
Okonjima lodge
The Lodge itself is like an oasis. A central green lawn is surrounded by guests’ rooms discreetly hidden by trees.
The main lodge building houses the dining room and an outside sitting area where a fire greets guests returning from evening visiting the cheetah or leopard.
Okonjima provides serious luxury with seriously good food.
Darrell, one of the rangers at Okonjima. Darrell is from South Africa and worked in Botswana before coming to Okonjima.
Grant, one of the rangers at Okonjima. Grant is from South Africa and formerly worked at Addo Elephant Park.
Tristan, one of the guides at Okonjima. Tristan is a Namibian from the Caprivi.
Allen and Viv were tourists from the UK, travelling with Sidney and Pat (below).
The two couples, and their South African guide, were coming to the end of a tour through Namibia. Their holiday had included sleeping in the open in the Namib desert, travelling on rough roads, and now visiting the luxury of Okonjima.
I met up with Allen and Viv, Sidney and Pat, their guide and Dana, a tourist from California, for dinner one evening. This became an hilarious time recounting our seeing the cheetah and leopard and telling silly stories. They had acquired a bottle of Namibian wine, which they generously shared after dinner as we sat around the fire.
This warthog lives wild, but pops in to the dining room at Okonjima for vegetable scraps for breakfast. I was told that he had been doing this for many years.
He was quite tame, and tolerated several children petting him, feeding him pieces of apple and taking photos. Nevertheless, rangers kept an eye on proceedings to ensure that the tusks and children did not collide.
After dinner, everyone troops off to a hide about 5 minutes’ walk from the Okonjima Lodge. These porcupine are nocturnal, and are encouraged to the hide by kitchen scraps. The rangers explained that this is not enough for the animals to live on, but is sufficient to ensure they turn up nightly for visitors.
Northern Namibia is covered with termite mounds like this one. Sometimes the termite mound is built around a tree. At other times, a seed can germinate in the hot interior of a mound and grow out of the termite mound.
They are regularly about 1.5m or 2m high. This one was photographed at Okonjima.
Okonjima Lodge, Namibia. July 2001
What’s the difference between a leopard and a cheetah?
When I was at Okonjima Lodge, I learned about some of the differences between leopards and cheetah.
Leopard at Okonjima
Cheetah at Okonjima
- Leopards have rosette-shaped spots. Cheetah have solid round, or oval, spots.
- Leopards have no “tear” line. Cheetah have a black “tear” line running from the inside of the eye to the mouth.
- Leopard are bulkier and stronger. Cheetah are lighter, but taller, than leopard.
- Leopard have a familiar “cat” shape. Cheetah are lankier than the “cat” shape.
- Leopard hunt at night. Cheetah hunt during the day.
- Leopard like to drag prey up trees. Cheetah prefer grassy plains.
- Leopard rely on stealth. Cheetah rely on speed (up to 115km/hr) over short distances. They are the world’s fastest animal.
- Leopard have strong teeth and jaws and can crunch through thick bones. Cheetah have smaller teeth and jaws, leaving a larger nasal cavity for rapid breathing. They cannot crunch large bones.
- Leopard walk using their legs diagonally (left front, back right etc). Cheetah pace: they walk moving two left legs, then two right legs. (I became fascinated identifying which animals walk in which way and at Etosha National Park I observed that giraffe and gemsbok pace, too.)
Okonjima, Namibia. 4 July 2001.
Cheetah
There are maybe 10,000 cheetah left in the world. More than a quarter of those are in Namibia. But cheetah take young calves, so they are at risk from Namibian cattle farmers for whom cheetah are a significant pest.
In 1993, Lise Hanssen founded the Africat foundation, housed at Okonjima. Africat works with farmers to develop ways to prevent stock losses without having to cull cheetah and other cats.
Africat rescues and rehabilitates cheetah, leopard, lion and caracals (lynx). The visitor gets to see some of all these animals.
This cheetah lost its mother in a car accident. He is too much habituated to humans to be able to live and hunt successfully in the wild. So he is kept at Okonjima along with two siblings and another brother-and-sister pair, and fed twice daily.
This is Deke, a cheetah born at Africat in 1994. He lost part of his right ear to a haemotoma when he was four months old. In addition, he was wearing a bandage on one foot after a cut got infected.
Here, the cheetah is on the hood of the jeep, and Grant has a large basin of titbits of meat.
These cheetah are fed fresh meat twice daily. Africat brings up cheetah kittens on meat and, of all things, Iams cat food!
Iams has sponsored Africat by providing food and raising funds.
Grant talks to visitors while the cheetah eyes off the remaining titbits in the bowl.
Okonjima, Namibia. 4 July 2001.
City park, Windhoek
The city park, in Independence Avenue, is a favourite spot of mine. I spent a lot of time before Christmas and on Christmas Day 1999, in this park. At that time it was lit up with quite splendid Christmas decorations.
In July, in mid-winter, it was just as inviting.
Windhoek, Namibia. 5 July 2001.
Tolerance
The Namibians seem to be a remarkably tolerant people. Namibia was colonized by the Germans in the 19th century and by the late 19th century it was a formal protectorate of Germany, known as German South West Africa. The administrators developed the Schutztruppe which fought a bloody war against the local Nama and Herero people in the early 20th century.
This statute, which sits on a high hill overlooking the Windhoek CBD commemorates that German victory over the local peoples. Its formal inscription, in German, remembers those who fought, and died, “für Kaiser und Reich” in the Herero- and Hottentot-wars from 1903 to 1908.
South Africa was granted administration of Namibia after World War I, and took over the country after World War II (in contravention of the UN’s mandate). Only in 1990 did Namibia gain its independence, after the intervention of the UN, the International Court of Justice and finally a guerrilla war between SWAPO (the South West African Peoples’ Organization) and South African forces.
Elsewhere in Namibia I have seen war memorials commemorating German victory over Hottentots (as the Khoi-Khoi or Nama people were then known), British victory over Germans and Afrikaner victory over the British. In some cases it seemed difficult to tell who was commemorating what victory.
And yet 11 years after independence, after a viscious guerilla war and inter-tribal disputes, those war memorials stand.
There are few places I have been where I can imagine such tolerance.
Windhoek, Namibia. 5 July 2001.
Later entries from July 2001
Show full text of these entries.Christuskirche Windhoek, Namibia. 5 July 2001.
This splendid church, the Lutheran Christuskirche, is perhaps the main landmark in Windhoek. It sits at the top of a hill in Peter Müller Strasse, which runs straight down to Independence Avenue....Sunset, Windhoek Windhoek, Namibia. 5 July 2001.
A view of Windhoek city at twilight, from the balcony of my room at the Fürstenhof Hotel. Sunset on the last day of my holiday, looking over Windhoek. ...Elephants at Etosha National Park Etosha National Park, Namibia. July 2001
At the risk of stating the obvious, elephant are big. They command the attention of people, and other animals at a waterhole tend to wander away when elephant come along. This elephant, and the rhino...Antelope at Etosha National Park Etosha National Park, Namibia. 2001
Gemsbok Gemsbok are the most striking animals. They always remind me of sportsmen of some kind, as if they were wearing a distinctive uniform. They are also big, strong and angry. Their horns can kil...