Francis Doku: Lions, elephants and a trip across South Africa
At a point of the journey, the tour guide told us a very interesting story, though hard to believe, about a Kenyan “prince” who wanted to walk to the lions.
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They dissuaded him from getting off the truck and asked him instead to go and play with the lion cubs. He said if he had to inherit a big kingdom then he had to get close to the big lions and not their cubs. He was not allowed, of course, however, he cut the fence wires in the night to where the lions were.
Ironically, nothing happened to his body. He was just killed by the lionesses and they left his dead body there. His family never came for his remains, according to the guide.
That was the sad end of someone who was going to inherit a big kingdom. I asked if it was true story and got an affirmative answer.
We had done everything there could be done at the famous Lion Park in Johannesburg. By everything, I mean we had watched all the animals available in the park including giraffes, different species of antelopes (including the famous Springbok that is the national symbol of South Africa), zebras, wild dogs, cheetahs, meerkats and lions.
The last part of the trip to the lion park was for us to do the cub walk. This simply means to go into a den that houses a few lion cubs and play with them. Yes touch, hold, feel and do whatever you want with the lion cubs and then take photos with them, if you will.
There were only a few instructions viz. to touch them firmly (because the lions shouldn’t detect fear), spend a maximum of two minutes with a cub and above all don’t hold their head or legs.
Almost everyone in the 25- man team on the trip had their chance at touching the cubs except two people and you are not going to be told if those two comprise the one writing this piece or not.
Needless to say, it was an exciting opportunity for every single member to be so up close and certainly personal with lions – even if they are six months old cubs. All lions be lions!
To say the entire experience at the Lions Park was surreal will be stating the obvious. Sitting in a truck that has welded metals to serve as protection from the wild beasts attacking and killing visitors and yet coming so close to the biggest lions you can ever see was an amazing experience.
Suffice it to say that this was a park with lions and other animals which had been used in some of the biggest Hollywood movies.
So how did I end up in a park, pride and den of lions? I have been to South Africa a few times. Each time that I had travelled, it was for something in relation to a specific assignment such as covering Big Brother or for training or business. I had been to Johannesburg a few times, Cape Town once and Durban once. There was never a time that I went for what you would call tourism purpose.
Thus, when I got the call two weeks ago from Cynthia of Global Media Alliance that their client, South African Tourism wanted to take me to South Africa to go and experience what that country has to offer in tourism, I cancelled another trip I was planning for a conference in Tanzania around the same time so I could take this offer.
The objective was for me to join a team of people in the travel and tourism industry who are graduates of the SA Specialist Online course and they all received their certificates at an awards ceremony held in Accra last February.
If I was going to join the team on the journey then I needed to also go through the online course the other members had gone through as a perquisite for my going. It should take a maximum of 90 days to finish that course but because mine was a crash course, of a sort, I used a day to clear it.
Thus, a major media monitoring conference in Tanzania, an online course, loads of work on my plate and above all, an aching foot would all not prevent me from taking part in this once in a life time experience of some of the interesting and exciting experiences in South Africa. That’s how I ended up here.
There were two teams of SA Specialists from Ghana and Nigeria respectively on this trip to, as it were, discover and enjoy South Africa.
According to the West Africa Trade Relations Manager of South Africa Tourism and the client of GMA, Mr Mohammed Tanko Kwajaffa, the need to organise this for the graduates was “to give them first hand opportunity to experience what they had learnt from the online course” so they would “use the knowledge acquired to contribute immensely to the growth and development of their organisation as they continue to promote South Africa as the preferred tourist destination.”
Anyway, the next destination after the Lion Park was to go to the sanctuary that is home to elephants and monkeys at Hartebeesspoort Dam. But before we would go and see our second big five (the big five are African lion, African elephant, Cape buffalo, African leopard, and White/Black rhinoceros) we made a stop at a restaurant called Windmill at Hartebeesspoort and there I had my best ever meal since I started coming to South Africa.
We ended up at the sanctuary where I did not only see an elephant for the first time, but also touched and felt one, put my fingers in the trunk of one and lead it for about 200 metres and then finally feed one. The one I and the team fed is the famous Amarula, a giant of an elephant that no one but its trainer alone can go close to.
It is worthy of note that before we started to pursue animals, we had paid a visit to the Johannesburg city to look at the wonder of everything Jozi. We saw the abandoned high rise buildings in downtown, the tall office buildings, the affluent area where Nelson Mandela lived and died and then went to SOWETO.
The South West Townships of SOWETO as it famously known is a place of historical relevance to Apartheid for the both its execution and opposition. There is so much to be seen and learned about South Africa’s history – from the Liberty Square, through Vilakazi Street where both Mandela and Desmond Tutu have homes to the famous Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum.
The dinner at the famous Sakhumzi Restaurant located opposite Mandela’s home is something to go back to again and again. I was surprised when the team leader told us that the owner of the restaurant he found out was Ghanaian.
There is still more to be seen and experienced by the team from Ghana and Nigeria including visit to Lesedi Cultural Village, visit to Apartheid Museum and visit to Gold Reef City before leaving Johannesburg on Thursday to Cape Town.
By the time you read this, I will either be on my way or have arrived in Cape Town to ride the open bus to tour the city, experience sunset on Table Mountain, visit Robben Island, and ride sidecarts to Wine Lands, quad biking in Wine Estates, spa and beauty treatment, among other experiences.
What hits you anytime you are in South Africa, even when on a casual visit and not necessary for tourism purpose, you see a deliberate attempt of a people to sell their country.
Even more so it becomes very evidently clear that the guys down south are in for business. They understand how to brand what they have and even what they don’t have, they make efforts to give a good representation.
Tourism is woven into the very fabric of their social interactions and the company responsible for making sure the country is sold, South Africa Tourism is leaving no stone unturned in doing so. Some people need to take some lessons from the South Africans and to some extent the Kenyans.
So I am here to not just go through the mill thanks to GMA and SAT West Africa, but to properly milk this cow dry on your behalf.
You can get a piece of the action if you follow me on Twitter (TheGHMediaGuru), Instagram (dondoku) or Facebook as I share views and photos from this journey.