18. A Terrifying Visit to Wankie Game Reserve

This is story #18 in the series “Where Exactly is Home?”. The author recommends you read them in order.

Introduction:

“Where Exactly is Home?” follows the story of my parents, my two younger brothers and me, Susan, who emigrated from war-battered Britain, in the mid-late 1950’s, to Southern Rhodesia, Africa.

The effects of this move on our family were huge, as we struggled to adapt to such a different way of life. Only after further upheaval, and more long-distance travelling, did our family eventually settle in the city of Salisbury, Rhodesia.

However, we did not know then that we would not remain there for the rest of our lives, either.

When the family first went to Africa, I, Susan, was 9 years old. My two brothers, John and Peter, were almost 7 and 4, respectively.

Nowadays, as seniors, John and Peter live in England. I live in Canada. Throughout our lives, we have both benefitted from, and suffered because of, our somewhat unusual childhood.

I, for one, still sometimes ask myself which country represents home to me.

This is a series of stories under the title “Where Exactly is Home?” – I recommend you read them in order, starting with story #1.

18. A Terrifying Visit to Wankie Game Reserve

I have never enjoyed being in the wilds of anywhere at all, no matter the place, no matter the country. Even today, in my seventies and living in Ontario, Canada, I have always steadfastly declined invitations to go camping and canoeing in Algonquin Park, Ontario. That is not my idea of fun. I don’t go cross-country skiing on my own, either, for fear of being stranded in some forest or another, although I am somewhat less nervous now that we have cell phones. I find it very frightening to be in the bush or the wilds, with animals, insects, maybe even human predators lurking, ready to waylay me. Like my mother, I prefer urban settings, where there are houses, people, and signs of civilization nearby.

However, in 1957, having recently moved to Southern Rhodesia from England, my parents decided that during our school holidays, our family should visit a Wildlife Game Reserve. This would be a wonderful educational experience, since, apart from the animals we had seen on our one and only visit to Whipsnade Zoo, in England, four out of the five of us had never seen anything larger than a domestic pet, and the horse of the rag-and-bone man who occasionally trundled down our street in east London.

Wankie Game Reserve was a different world, all together, both literally and figuratively speaking. It covered five thousand square miles in the western part of Southern Rhodesia (south of the Zambezi River separating Southern from Northern Rhodesia). It was almost mind-bogglingly enormous. The Reserve was traversed by natural rivers, so the entire place teemed with freely roaming wildlife, including lions, elephants, impala, wildebeest, giraffe, and zebras, to name but a few. It still exists today, these many decades later, but it is now called Hwange National Park. Northern and Southern Rhodesia, no longer Commonwealth countries tied to Britain, have new names, too, reflecting their African heritage. They are Zambia and Zimbabwe, respectively. At that time, we knew nothing of what the future would bring, of course: the fight for independence, political turmoil, guerrilla warfare, all of which were to come years later. We were simply living day to day, surviving as best we could the experience of living in the small village of Darwendale in the African bush.