Cheetah in The Mist

To be fair, the morning started quite slow as we all were feeling the excitement wearing off from the amazing Boma dinner we had the night before. We sat down and ate like kings as the Boma fire told the stories of the days past, the choir’s songs filled the night with their harmony, and the drums echoed the African heartbeat. We set off for our morning drive, the Mhondoro Ranger team determined to find the female cheetah and her two 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.

Wildlife Wonders: From Zebra Herds to White Rhinos

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 grazed on the lush, sweet grass, with young ones exploring the world, never venturing too far from their mothers. Territorial male gnus called out in the distance, demarcating their territories when we stumbled upon a little surprise of nature—a beautiful big female white rhino with the smallest calf I had 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, deciding on the cruiser that it would be best to wait where we were, not to frighten them off. We radioed the other cruiser of our Mhondoro Ranger team that was busy scouring the northern sector of the plains for the female cheetah and her two young ones, Anashe and Lebona.

The Thrill of the Chase: Finding Anashe and Lebona

Me and Sibu could start feeling the pressure of not finding any signs of the family we set 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 with his heart set on seeing the cheetahs, standing guard with coffee in one hand and binoculars in the other, watching the horizon of the plains for any movement. Suddenly, a crack in the bush and the bark of impalas warning everything and everyone that there is trouble at hand. We jumped in the cruiser—coffee spilling all over the place, with half-eaten rusks hitting the floor—and raced off to 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 filled 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 their mother not far off, totally relaxed with our presence.