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Jacana Camp, November 2008

The rain brings new life to the African bush. The impala have started having their young and there is an abundance of new grass and leaves for them to eat. The first heavy rain also brings out all the 'flying ants' (fertile winged termites that emerge to breed and form new colonies). This is a feast for all sorts of animals from spiders, lizards and frogs to monkeys, baboons and birds.

Beauty, our resident leopard and her cub, who is now about eight months old, are doing very well. She has been seen a number of times this past month, especially around our airstrip. The cub is growing rapidly and it won't be long before he is as big as his mother.

The highlight of the month was undoubtedly watching our resident lioness, Broken Nose, and her cub stalking and killing a red lechwe calf on the floodplain in front of camp early in the morning. This we do not get to see very often as there is usually too much water in front of the camp. That evening, she killed another red lechwe calf, but dragged it to a nearby island across the shallow water and beyond our view.

Many of the summer migrants have returned, such as the Yellow-billed Kites. We have also had numerous sightings of Broad-billed Rollers, a bird we do not often see. African Skimmers were also seen a number of times in front of camp and from the mekoro. Some of the most amazing sightings have been of the Wattled Cranes, a highly endangered bird. We have seen as many as 24 birds in one group feeding along the waterways next to the floodplains near the camp. They are critically endangered due to the destruction of wetlands, which is where they breed. However, due to the fact that the Okavango Delta is such a large protected area the Wattled Cranes thrive here. Summer is definitely a great time of the year to visit the Delta if you are a keen birder.

November is also a very important month at Jacana Camp because that is when the kids from the Children in the Wilderness (CITW) programme arrive. The programme is run by Wilderness Safaris and every year some of the camps close down for a few weeks to host them. A group of 16 kids from a school in one of the villages surrounding the Okavango Delta spend five nights in camp. They get to go out on all the activities such as game drives and mekoro. Despite living so close to these wilderness areas, most of them have never seen a lion or an elephant before. During the day, the kids were kept busy with different talks and games, all of them fun but with an underlying messages. They were taught about tourism, conservation, environmental awareness, Botswana culture and respect for others. Many of them take the messages and lessons learnt in camp back to their schools and villages. It also gives some of the kids a new outlook and appreciation for these wilderness areas, and they see that by conserving them, it will benefit them in the long run. Some of the kids from programmes in previous years have become guides and found employment in the tourism industry and some have come back as mentors to the new groups of children.