Africa through the eyes of writers
Lament Kalahari
It was a great risk, and we were confronted with it daily. Sometimes we were close to collapse – but we were lucky to survive. We were attacked by terrorists, we were dying of thirst, fought storms and fires. We have survived the fire in veld, stretching hundreds of miles and threatening our camp… We met a good friend, an old hunter and connoisseur of the Kalahari, who has helped that our project survive.
We did not have other ways of knowledge, except for old land-rower and fire light in the camp in a place called the Valley of Ghosts, but the fact that we managed to find out how Kalahari lions and brown hyenas survive in the harsh edge – similar to miracle! How not to die of thirst and hunger, if there is nothing to drink and to eat, and how not to get a sight hunter, how to unite to raise offspring… We saw one of the wonders of nature – the second largest migration of antelope in Africa, and… how fences of farmers lead to imminent death thousands of animals.
We met with Daley at the Georgian University, and very quickly discovered that aspire to the same. By the end of the semester, we already knew that, if go to Africa, only together. During the studing, we often hear from friend-scientists about the threat to wildlife from the African farmers and hunters. Two-thirds of Africa’s animals virtually ousted from their habitats, in the southern regions of the continent thousands of predators catch using traps and trap-line, shoot or destroyed by poison, the habitat of animals inexorably declined …Something should be done with it.
January, 4th, 2004, one year after the wedding, we boarded a plane. Our luggage consisted of two bags, a pair of sleeping bags, canvas tent, a change of clothes and 6000 dollars. That’s the way our journey began.
In this book, we do not keep statistics for our science experiments, we just talk about our life with the lions, brown hyenas, jackals, snakes and lizards, and thousands of other creatures in one of the most remote corners of the world – the Kalahari Desert in the Valley of Ghosts. All names and dialogues are real, taken from our diaries.
