September 03, 2021 By Anne Marie Gattari For Zawadisha.com In July, Zawadisha did something that no one expected. We opened a retail shop in the available space adjacent to our office in Maungu, located on the main dirt road that is the artery into all of the villages that pepper Taita Taveta County. In a matter of days, the team cleaned, painted and stocked the shelves. Flyers circulated among the surrounding villages, and on the morning of the first day a…
November 16, 2021 By Anne Marie Gattari Zawadisha.com It’s a rare and wonderful thing when a mother in Maungu, Kenya, can send her child to school. It’s even rarer and equally wonderful when she can go herself. As an employee of Zawadisha for the past five years, Margaret Mtuku has had the means to do exactly that. She is continuing her studies in accounting and computer science, and her five-year-old son attends a private elementary school. “In Kenya, education is a must,”…
When I arrived in Africa in mid-January, I wrote to my friend Oliver that I felt a strange familiarity, a sense of calm and gratitude that I hadn’t felt in previous travels, even to the land of my grandparents. “I feel more at home here than I did at times in Sicily,” I wrote. “You are walking on the birthplace of humanity,” Oliver replied. “You are home.“ Every morning and every night, at Siyanfunda Endangered Species Reserve in South Africa,…
My time at Siyafunda Endangered Species Reserve has come to a close. And my final hours were as amazing as my first. On the game drive the night before my departure, we returned to the scene of the dead kudu (a woodland antelope) in a tree discovered earlier that day. A leopard had made the kill, pulled the kudu up a tree and left it dangling over a branch. We knew she’d be back. But when? As the sun began…
There’s a family reunion at Jackelberry Dam. We humans weren’t invited, so we didn’t know. When I decided to skip the afternoon game drive, I knew I was taking a chance of missing something big. Staying behind, as peaceful and relaxing as it is, always comes with risk. And, indeed, I missed the elephant family reunion where three herds came together on a hot afternoon right after the heavy rains to play in the water. However, due to the detailed…
Driving over bush yesterday morning to find the lions, we all catch the exquisite scent in the air. Our new friend from Zurich, Adrian, sweeps the air into his nose. “It’s wild sage,” says Emma, our ranger. She is matter of fact while I’m thinking, ‘Wait, I want some of that for my next pot of spaghetti sauce.’ Don’t know when that will be. But still. Emma stops the jeep. We all get out, grab a handful and nibble. It…
Nyalas are the deer of South Africa. But a bit more exotic, as you’d expect from a spiral-horned antelope native to this wondrous country. Still, they come to our camp, help themselves to our grass, drink from out pool. They don’t care who’s watching. Or do they? Just when we’ve started taking them for granted, they remind us of their specialness. Two brothers (I’m making an assumption here), were practicing yesterday morning how to be tough guys. Then this…
Dedicated to my brother, Dennis Biondo, who would have turned 68 today. We arrived at 6 a.m. just as the pride seemed to be finishing up its meal. Before I go on, perhaps a warning is in order: this blog will be real, which means graphic. As the comedian Michelle Wolf says, this is no time to be cute. Lions kill. They eat what they kill. They eat on the spot. And the biggest ones eat the most and when…
There are few words to describe the warning roar of an adult male lion about to hunt. So I won’t even try. Instead, I will tell you what’s going on in each picture and video below. And if you have words to describe what you hear, please share: Earlier in the day, we found them taking a late afternoon nap. Elandri stopped the jeep and we sat and waited for them to wake up. Eventually they did. After a few…
I saw her. And that makes five. The Big Five. Elephant, rhino, lion, buffalo and, finally, the leopard. On the way back to camp last night, at 7:30 p.m. Felipe scanned the bush with the spotlight when Charlotte spotted her. Much excitement ensued in our jeep. Then I saw her. Just her hind quarter, spotted and muscular. Her head was down, hidden by the scrubby woodland as she moved beside us, going in the opposite direction. Elandri, our field ranger…