The Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania is of mind-boggling vastness. At 22,000 square miles, it is bigger than Switzerland, by far the largest bush area dedicated to conservation in Africa (four times the size of the Serengeti) and the second-biggest piece of protected wilderness in the world. Looking down, it’s impossible not to feel overwhelmed – by the scale of this great tract of land cut by enormous rivers and wide floodplains; by the virgin forests and grasslands that stretch to the horizon; and by the thrill of being one of the very few visitors here.
The reserve is currently protected by Unesco (although proposed mining in the south might bring that to an end). Nine tenths of it, south of the Rufiji River, are set aside for hunting – with the result that very few people are ever there. In the one tenth set aside for photographic safaris in the north, there are just nine camps, the finest operated by Richard Bonham.
A renowned ornithologist, and crack shot, who looks as though he were born with his Rigby 463 shotgun slung over his shoulder, Bonham is not unlike the great white British hunter after whom the park is named, Frederick Courtney Selous.
Born in Kenya and educated at Gordonstoun (the same school that the Prince of Wales attended), he is a true man of the bush – sunburnt, laconic, but thoroughly entertaining after a couple of G&Ts. He is also a key figure in the fight against the large-scale poaching that is decimating creatures across Africa (more than 340 rhino were killed in South Africa alone in 2011, and an estimated 8 per cent of the continent’s elephants are slaughtered each year for their ivory).
He hasn’t always carried a gun for the protection of tourists: in his youth, he was renowned for being one of the best hunters on the continent. But they were hunts in which man and beast had equal opportunities, he insists: clients were allowed to track and to shoot buffalo with him only if they went on foot (an increasing rarity among hunters intent on bagging the biggest beasts, who often want to be flown in and then transferred by vehicle right up to the GPS-tracked animal). They had to carry everything in and carry everything out. And they had to track the animals themselves.
Having witnessed “horrific wholesale slaughter by poachers” in the Eighties in the Selous, and having been influenced by the park’s former head ranger, Brian Nicholson, who “was like a second father”, Bonham soon realised that, unless he changed sides and fought on behalf of the animals, there would be none left. Today, he is one of the key ground staff in Save the Rhino’s efforts around Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, where he lives and runs Bonham Safaris with his sister, Patricia, and is thoroughly respected for his work with the Maasailand Preservation Trust.
Walking with him in the Selous for three days, it soon becomes clear why tourists will pay up to $1,000 per person per day to join him. Unlike many guides, who regard the bush as a backdrop for chest-thumping, he quietly imparts nuggets of the knowledge he has amassed over 58 years. In his floppy cotton hat, khaki shirt, shorts and scuffed desert boots, and with a gun slung over his shoulder, he strides out into the African sun, stopping only to show my partner and me some brilliantly interesting bit of fauna or flora he’s discovered.
There are plenty of both to see in the Selous – particularly in Bonham’s concession. He first came to the reserve in the 1970s, with a British politician, Tom Arnold, and the American writer Peter Matthiessen to undertake what they (mistakenly) believed would be “the last safari in the last wilderness”. They discovered a spot on the Rufiji that many still think is the most beautiful in the Selous. It was here that, in 1984, that Bonham opened his first luxury camp, Sand Rivers, with his friends Lizzy and Bimb Theobald, and it is from here that our safari starts.
In his camp, an hour’s drive from the bumpy red-dirt airstrip, we soon understand why most travellers want to stay here rather than to go fly-camping, as we are doing. Set on high banks above a wide bend of the Rufiji, Sand Rivers has eight big thatched cottages, each with its front wall removed. You can wake, pull back the mosquito net and, while you’re sipping just-delivered tea, look out over the dawn skies lighting up Africa. Each cottage contains every luxury one might ever need – and none of the unnecessary extras that so-called “five-star camps” often deliver.
As well as acres of space, there’s a huge net-covered bed, a shower in which hot water pours out of a ledge of rock, double-basins with bush views so you can wash while watching monkeys swinging from trees. Outside, there’s a wide deck from which to listen to harrumphing hippos. And in the suites, there is even a plunge pool in which to spend hot afternoons sipping cool juice and tuning into the silence.
My partner and I aren’t here to be indulged, but to walk – and, in particular, to walk with Bonham. Although he’s been leading walking safaris for 25 years in the Selous, he still clearly delights in every minute of it. As the three of us set off from camp, lightly loaded with backpacks, water, binoculars and bird-books, he is constantly on the lookout for things we might appreciate. Things such as the trees: the great seedpod mahogany and ebony (loved by Africans for fires as they last so long), the rain trees (home to spittlebugs, whose spittle drips like rain), the sausage trees (whose long fruit is loved by elephant), the wingpods (whose pods flutter like helicopters) and the dogrose and pangapanga, whose red flowers and ghostly white branches offer little splashes of colour in the dry golden bush. Then there are the birds: the little bright bee-eaters, the black-and-white fish eagles crying from the tops of dead trees, the whistling ducks, and pelicans paddling past giant crocodiles (which don’t like waxy-feathered food, apparently), the brown-hooded kingfisher whose turquoise wing-tips flash as it dives for lunch, the flocks of hundreds of yellowbill storks that soar above us in wide V-formations.
We do see mammals, but this isn’t really a place one visits for the Big Five. Sand Rivers is the last camp before the hunting concessions over the river – so animals are slightly more skittish here than farther north. The last rhino was spotted five years ago. The grass isn’t quite as thick here as the savannah around camps such as Mwanze and Impala, farther north. And, in spite of denials by the under-resourced game rangers we meet, there is widespread poaching in the park – particularly in the south, which apart from a few hunters and rangers, is largely unpatrolled.
Walking up a steep, wooded hill in single file, with no talking (the way Bonham insists on, for safety and to ensure our noise doesn’t drive away animals), we smell the elephant carcass before we see the depleted, leathery, fly-covered hide, its flesh almost totally scavenged by vultures, hyenas and storks.
Bonham can tell immediately that it has been poached rather than died naturally: two rough areas have been hacked in its skull to remove ivory, and there are two distinct bullet holes through its head. “Bastards,” he says, lighting another cigarette. “If only the government would return money into this reserve that it gets from tourism, we wouldn’t have poaching on this scale.” (Rough estimates are that about 40 elephant are poached annually in the touristed north, and hundreds in the south and, because the government controls the budgets, it is key to controlling the poaching.) The poverty of the villagers nearby doesn’t help, he adds. An elephant tusk will earn a poacher $100 a kilogram – and be sold by Chinese for $2,000 a kg. “And that’s a lot of money for a villager without a job,” he says.
Although the carcass is a sharp reminder of the battle that conservationists face throughout Africa, there is plenty here to take delight in, too. The camps, for instance, which are set up each day in different spots within Bonham’s concession: one night by a lake over which a bulbous yellow moon rises as we sip iced cocktails and then tuck into supper; another on the banks of the Rufiji, where we fish after breakfast, hooking two fat catfish. The food: three-course dinners expertly cooked over a camp-fire and served on freshly laundered tablecloths.
The beds: simple mattresses, with crisp linen, blankets and pillows, under a mosquito net – so we could look out at the black shadows, and hear and feel the bush all around: the crashing of the elephants in the undergrowth, the low moan of lions on the hunt nearby, the sparkle of shooting stars. The bathrooms: hot bucket showers set up in a private spot under the stars, long-drop bush WCs with proper seats, and even little green canvas washbasins set up with mirrors and soap, into which hot water was delivered straight from the campfire. And the extraordinary service: smiley and welcoming, from a coterie of men who really care about their guests (even hurriedly covering our netted tent with canvas when, one night, it started to rain).
The greatest treat of all, though, is to be able to walk with a man who has probably walked this area more than anyone else – and who clearly wants you to fall in love with it too. By the time we leave, we have watched a crocodile snapping up a fish in its jaws; looked over the expanse of Africa from the top of a hill, bedazzled by the views; marvelled at the intricate markings of little beetles, at the cracked bark of crocodile trees, at the convoluted nests of social weavers. We have tracked giraffe until we are a few yards from them, sat by elephant bathing in a lake at sunset, been startled by a lone buffalo in the thickets (which Bonham didn’t spot, because, as he bashfully admitted: “I’m as deaf as a post from shooting, so if you do hear anything that worries you, yell – loudly”).
More importantly, we have come away with a greater love for Africa’s wildlife, a greater respect for its conservationists, and a greater resolve to do whatever we can to help to protect beautiful spaces such as this. Which is not a bad effect for one man to have had on two tourists in a couple of days.
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