Xugana Island Lodge - From Head Hunter to Lion Hunter

Xugana Island Lodge
Okavango Delta, Botswana
August 25, 2008

It is common to be told there’s no hurry in Africa.

So it was “ga gona mathata” (no problem) that Melinda Japs from California was taking her time today to join her daughter, Melanie Corey-Ferrini of Seattle, for a leisurely breakfast at the lodge. But then a crackling radio call came for their guide, Joel Body, at the breakfast table: Xugana’s other guides and guests were on a walking safari, and they had found the lions.

Lions are a reason to hurry.

Melanie rushed off to roust her mother at the bungalow. Joel rushed off to grab tracker John Dikeledi. I rushed off to change flip-flops for hiking boots. In a flash we were all on the boat and speeding across the lagoon toward Palm Island.

We were there yesterday in search of the lions. We found a herd of buffalo as well as a calf a dangerous distance away from the herd, crying for its mother. We stepped gingerly around steaming piles of buffalo poop and through tall yellow grasses to get closer. We searched for lion tracks and lion droppings.

Body waiting to take us to see the lions on Palm Island.

“Whenever I see buffaloes, I have to see lions close behind,” Body said.

But we had no luck. There was no sign of a lion, which left Body feeling “a little bit out of mood.”

Melinda and Melanie had a 10:15 a.m. flight to catch today. Their plan was to relax at the lodge and putter around in the boat until time to go to the airstrip. But this was their chance. Melinda had longed to see lions on her vacation, but she thought it was not to be.

At 8:39 a.m. we pulled our boat behind the other guides’ boats and stepped onto Palm Island. We walked faster than yesterday, and we had guide Lets’ radio cues to guide us. We walked right up to Lets and the Crookenden family of five from England. Lets was standing on the pinnacle of a termite mound. He showed us exactly where to go.

Lets Waiting to show us where the lions are.

“Good luck,” he told us. He gave me a thumbs-up to assure me he had snapped photos.

At 8:52 a.m. we spotted lion ears. We inched closer. Nearby, a hooded vulture atop a sycamore fig tree hunched forward, inspecting us, perhaps sizing up the competition for scraps. (Don’t worry, buddy, no competition here.)

Suddenly it all came into view. Two female lions sat under the shade of fan palms, while another female was drinking from marsh water a few yards away. The buffalo lay between us and the lions. Was it the calf’s mother? We will never know because we couldn’t get close enough to tell.

How close did we get? Probably 20 metres. Melanie wanted to slide forward a few more metres, but her mother didn’t like that idea. Melinda is a recruiter, what’s known as a head hunter in the United States, but now here she was an unarmed lion hunter smartly dressed and wearing red lipstick – brave, but not THAT brave.

With their stomachs bulging, the lions appeared content to laze around, guarding their meal and awaiting their next feeding frenzy. We hoped they were very full indeed, considering how close we stood.

“My first carnivore,” Melinda would announce later, with satisfaction.

As we watched the lions, Body and John told us about how the lions would stick around, munching on the buffalo for several days. They would have to fend off hyaenas, and in the old days they might have had to fend off people.

John grew up in the Delta and remembers being a part of groups that would form a shouting clump and advance toward the lions to scare them away, so that the people could steal the meat for themselves. Body said his parents told stories of how in his grandparents’ time, fathers would take their sons to the lions and do a little training with the help of a stick applied to the children’s backsides.

“Stand still, my boy!” the father would command. And that’s how the children of Botswana learned never, ever, ever, to run from a lion.

As we turned to leave and moved away, Body told us to stop. One of the lions had crouched a bit, flicked her tail from side to side and bellowed a low guttural growl. Uh-oh. A sign of aggression. We stopped and waited for the lion to relax. Then we took a hard left and marched quickly away from the lions, leaving a wide berth between us and them.

“I’ll be sketching that,” Melanie said back at the boat. She’s an architect who teaches a travel sketching class in Seattle. She had managed to capture the scenes with her camera and would soon be adding her own interpretation in black pen in her sketch book. “We were having a leisurely morning, and poof, we were off!” she said with delight.

The mother and daughter made their flight with time to spare.

“Today I am very happy,” Body said. “Unfortunately, the lions have killed a mom of someone, and it is lone-less (alone). But anyway it is nature.”

-- Maria Henson
Desert and Delta Safaris volunteer