Camping at Daan Viljoen Game Reserve – December 2006

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Thieving Baboons and Wildebeest Babies

On the 2nd day of Christmas, we went for a long hike to the first of the other two reservoirs in the park. Since I was still slightly ill and wholly unfit and Anita had an aversion to walking uphill anyway, we didn’t walk the road across the hills but along the river bed. The river was still running – a joy for my Namibian heart – and we had to search again and again for places with rocks to cross it dry-footed. We passed a herd of baboons. The sentinel saw us long before we saw them and called out his warning call. We stopped until the whole family had crossed the river and disappeared into the cliffs. We saw another animal: an animal the size of a dassie was sitting in a tree. Dassies do not crawl around in trees, but from the build, it looked very similar to one, except that it had a long tail. Back home we leafed through the books on mammals in southern Africa. We didn’t find what we were looking for. There is a close relative of the dassie living in trees, but these animals are found in KwaZulu-Natal or Mozambique, not here in the west of the continent. Maybe it was just a dassie that had accidentally landed in a tree? But the tail? We could not determine what animal we had seen. On the evening of the second day of Christmas, the Snake Security, who could not be on duty 24 hours a day, instructed his new colleague. At our tent, he said to the new guy: “You must watch well over my two memes. Sit on this wall and make sure, nothing happens to them.” The two memes that needed so much attention were we. Our second-to-last night was restless again and again. The horses were at the campsite, and one was grazing next to my head on the other side of the tent canvas. They knocked over a pole that held our awning upright and left their dung on the road. The caretaker was not amused. But actually, we were woken up by the baboons. They came back to camp this morning – for the first time since the tragedy with the baby baboon. A mother, with a baby clinging to her belly, tossed the trash can lids down, clattering loudly. She got lucky two campsites down the road. There the residents had left all the food in the open and had gone on a game drive. We ran over, shouting “Shuh!” loudly. All animals in sub-Saharan Africa understand this word as ” Away!” She ran away and took a large Tupperware container with her. I kept chasing her. She threw away the pink lid and then sat down under a tree and ate one cookie after another. “Shuh!” didn’t work anymore. She made threatening noises. With a baboon mother, I will be careful and stayed at a proper distance. I looked at her; she looked at me. I was about to give up, because if people are so stupid and leave everything open….. A Bakkie came by with Daan Viljoen staff. Everyone in the car shouted “Shuh!” and the driver honked. The shouts were just too much for the baboon; she left the Tupperware container and fled with her child to the Veld. The workers who already knew us found the stupidity of the tourists incredible. One brought the box back to me. Anita and I had planned a game drive for the day. But we knew that as soon as we would leave the campsite, the baboon mother would be back. So Anita and I put the food of these people in their tent and then closed everything. When we came back from our game drive, I told the people that they had had a baboon visit. “Oh,” said the man. “Bobbejane…” They hadn’t even thought about it. We were almost glad that we had baboons in the camp again after five days of absence.

On the game drive, there were the usual suspects: springboks, oryx, wildebeests, zebras, elands, hartebeest and then, finally, a herd of kudu. Then the giraffes. Then another herd of wildebeests. Some animals were lying on the road and dozing. As we slowly approached, they all stood up and positioned themselves around something, about three meters away from the track. We had never noticed such behaviour before. They usually just walk a few meters into the Veld. We pointed the binoculars at the something. It was a newly born young – still wet and had never stood in the few minutes of its earthly existence. The little one wriggled a little, bobbed back and forth and got up. Immediately it sought the mother, or rather the nipple of the mother.

The other wildebeest babies saw this as a signal and also wanted to drink with their mothers. We no longer wanted to be the source of the agitation and drove on.