South Luangwa National Park: 28 May - 2 June

Writing any semblance of a comprehensive report for our time in South Luangwa National Park would take far longer than the limited internet access will allow. As such, this post can only hit on the highlights: lots of wildlife, good walking safaris, data collection, and excellent visits with conservation partners.

After a modest drive from the village, the students arrived to Wildlife Camp where we had arranged for a housing surprise - rather than setting up our tents, we had arranged for these seven “en suite” (i.e. including toilet/shower/sink) safari tents for everyone (to share in groups of 2 or 3). Deep sighs - and a few whoops and ululations - were the response to this surprise.

After moving in, most everyone put on swimwear and headed down to the pool/bar area and cooled off. Just as the sun was setting, and folks were partaking in their “sundowners,” along came a parade of elephants - what a way to be welcomed to South Luangwa.

The next day we were off for wildlife (aka “game”) drives, which were great. We saw all kinds of wildlife, we got excellent information from our guides (Victor and John), and we really enjoyed ourselves.

The wildlife drives are interrupted after a couple of hours by quick tea in the morning drives 

or a sundowner during the evening drives.

The next two days were spent with the two groups of students going on “walking safaris” in the Game Management Area adjacent to the National Park. Zambia is famed as the “home of the walking safari” and our experiences were terrific. It is a great time to take in a lot finer detail of the African bush (plants, tracks, scat, insects, etc.) with the safety of a trained scout and guide.

The walks brought the students out to “bush camp” where they stayed in safari tents, and enjoyed chef-cooked meals right alongside the hippos. Nights in the tents were marked by hippo song, hyena howls, and lion roars. 

We also visited two local commercial shops of interest. The first is Mulberry Mongoose, which is a jewelry shop owned, staffed, and run by local women. They also specialize in using materials reclaimed from illegal poaching snares to make their jewelry. Five dollars of every purchase goes to fund anti-poaching efforts - to date, over $90,000 has been raised by them, and the NMU Zambassadors certainly added to that total.

Please visit Mulberry Mongoose’s website if you want to look over their stuff.

Tribal Textiles is another local shop that is run with fair labor practices and employs lots of local men and women to make great batik prints that then are fashioned into lots of household items (pillow covers, bedspreads, napkins, etc.). We enjoyed our tour of the open-air outdoor factory, where we got to meet some of the artists.

We also encourage people to look at the products offered from Tribal Textiles.

Between wildlife drives in the park, we also visited Conservation South Luangwa, a remarkable NGO that has led a whole host of efforts to mitigate human wildlife conflicts. Their work ranges from running and funding anti-poaching scout patrols in the park to running detection dogs to helping equip farmers to deal with problem elephants in non-lethal ways. Please visit CSL’s website for more information, or follow them on Facebook to see some of their great work.

Another partner we were lucky enough to work closely with again, is the Zambian Carnivore Programme (just like we hung out with in Kafue NP). On two separate mornings, ZCP staff joined us on our wildlife drives and provided lots of great insight and inspiration to the NMU Zambassadors. If you haven’t seen her work, ZCP ecologist, Thandiwe Mweeta, has become something of a celebrity ever since National Geographic featured her and ZCP in some recent programs. We enjoyed her company with us out in the field.

(That’s Thandi in the front seat with our guide, Victor. Below is her quick National Geographic video.)

And Chase Dart is another ZCP staffer who joined us and was really resourceful in demonstrating how some of ZCP data collection works.

(That is Chase, holding the antenna out to find the radio signal from the collared lioness in the area.)

Finally, I can’t really take any more time here writing this blog, but I did quickly piece together a quick video of some of the mammal encounters we had on our last wildlife drive. Have a look - the video is pretty simple (I just composed it in about 10 minutes on my iPhone) but I think you won’t be disappointed. On the drive we sure weren’t!

One more night wildlife drive tonight, then tomorrow we start our loooooong journey by truck to Lusaka, and then on Tuesday we start our loooooooooooonger journey via four flights all the way back to Marquette, Michigan. Sad to go, but many of us are also anxious to see our family and friends again, and to share our experiences.