To be fair the morning started quit slow as we all where feeling the excitement wearing off from the amazing Boma dinner we had the night before, were we sat down and ate like kings as the Boma fire told the stories off the days past and the choirs songs filled the night with their harmony and the drums echoed the African heartbeat, we set off for our morning drive. We as the Ranger team of Mhondoro set of with a mission and that is to find the female Cheetah and her 2 beautiful young cubs, a boy and a girl. The young baby girl we named Anashe meaning ‘with God’ in the Shona Language and the boy we named Lebona meaning ‘the one who sees’ in the Besotho language.
As we discovered our route towards Sekgwa plains in the heart of the reserve surrounded by sweetveld and Boekenhout Forests we found a majestic gathering of all sorts of animals. Zebra herds in the hundreds grazing the lushes’ sweet grass and young ones exploring the world, never venturing to far from their mothers. Territorial male Gnu’s calling out in the distance demarcating their territories we stumbled on a little surprise of nature. A Beautiful big female white rhino with the smallest of calf I have ever seen using the stump of what was an old Wild Seringa tree before the bush fire as a scratching post. We settled down and contained our excitement as we decided on the cruiser it would be best to wait were we are not to frighten them of and to radio the other cruiser of our Mhondoro Ranger team that was busy scouring the northern sector of the plains for the female cheetah and the two young ones Anashe and Lebona. As I radioed – Sibu, Sibu for Evan we are in the lock of one female rhino with a very young calf, are you interested in joining he responded with haste and quickly enjoyed the sighting with us as a number of other cars from west to east, north to south called in asking for updated report on the rhino. Some time passed as two other rangers joined our sighting and we decided we were blessed enough and moved on and set out again to our mission to find Anashe and Lebona with their mother.
Me and Sibu could start feeling the pressure of not finding any signs of the family we sat out looking for, not even the slightest hint of a track, we pulled off the road and asked everyone to join us off the cruisers for a well-deserved morning coffee in the bush and for the more well-known Amarula liquor just to spice up the coffee bringing that African bush just a little closer to our hearts. I remember this morning as we had one gentleman that had is hart set out to see the cheetahs standing guard, coffee in one hand and binoculars in the other watching the horizon of the plains for any movement of the cheetah. Suddenly a crack in the bush and the bark of Impalas warning everything and everyone that there is trouble in hand. We jumped in the cruiser coffee spilling all over the place with half eating rusks hitting the floor we raced off the stressed group of Impala hoping to find what we so desperately wanted to see (the cheetah), and there they were relaxing in the morning sun warming up for the day ahead.
Success was in our grasp cheers of joy was in the air, and that’s when we enjoyed the young beautiful smiles of that young boy Lebona and his sister Anashe looking at us with mother not so far totally relaxed with us being there.
