Newsletters

Our year at Mutinondo is ending a bit earlier than normal, hence the uncharacteristic early newsletter. 61mm of rain has brought the transformation of a dry and badly burnt bush to beautiful new green growth, an array of flowers popping up all around us, brilliant morning chorus and fledglings hopping all over the place. The magnificent season of new beginnings!

This has been a short, sweet year punctured with heart ache. "Short" because we spent 3 months of it traveling; "sweet" due to very few problems and issues, great fun trips -and the beginning of a honey project; "heart ache" because of the loss of four of our very special animals.

2013 has been the most peaceful and positive year in our 18 years at Mutinondo. In February we replaced our big old adopted ridgeback Max with fluffy prince charming Chuck from LAWS (Lusaka Animal Welfare). Thank you to Alison McKendrick for rescuing the lovely little chap in Makeni. His passport said he was a two and a half year old rotweiler .... actually still quite a puppy, and a rotweiler with very long soft hair, long nose, fluffy ears and tail ???? A great addition.

We were very fortunate to have an extremely peaceful and positive year. Despite a strangely behaved visitor in January, the year has brought an extremely important milestone for Mutinondo's future and security and thanks to our great camp sitter Guni, staff and our lovely easy going visitors we were spoilt with very special holidays in Zanzibar, Botswana, Rwanda and UK with family and friends.

On the 2nd day of the year Moses the groom cycled at great speed into camp. He had encountered a very cheeky lion on the road near Big Kabasano. We drove out to see if it was still there, couldn't see anything other than foot prints. Mike ignoring an earlier request not to get out of the car, walked about 50m looking for other footprints to see where it had gone off the road he returned to say that something brown had rustled in the bush. We drove back to see what the brown thing was and there was the most handsome young lion sitting about 10m into the bush at the foot of an anthill. Every time I wound the window down to take a photo it threatened to charge the car and when we drove off it chased us. Will Mike listen next time???????? Hahaha!! After a few warning shots later on in the evening the lion moved on up the road and hasn’t been seen again.