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It is with great sadness that we tell you that our beloved Tabby, as she was affectionately known, died of complications from malaria on Sunday 30th September here in Harare.
Many of you will remember Tabby with great affection, having experienced her wonderful kindness and hospitality whilst on safari with us in Zimbabwe.
Tabby was more than an employee to our family; she was, in fact, an integral part of it and has left a huge gap in all our lives.
Tabby is survived by her three sons, John, Richard and Thomas and our thoughts turn to them, their loss and their future. We have assured them that we will continue to support and nurture them, and that they must consider our home their home for as long as they need to. Our concern is for Thomas, particularly, who is only 12 years old.
To this end, we have set up an educational fund to enable Richard to complete his tertiary education and for Thomas to embark on his secondary schooling. If you would like to contribute to this fund, please let us know and we will send you further details.
Many thanks to all of your who have already responded to this request.
Gabon
During 2007, a wonderful opportunity to travel in Gabon became available, with the introduction of an airline connecting Gabon's National Parks and the islands of Sao Tome and Principe.
Just off the coast of Gabon in the Atlantic Ocean and a few hours by plane from Europe, lie the serenely anchored equatorial tropical islands of Sao Tome and Principe. These islands form one of the smallest independent states in the world, located on an alignment of once-active volcanoes, with rugged landscapes, dense primary tropical forest and beaches of black and white sand. Amidst these lush surroundings, you will find many exotic plants and flowers - new orchid species are discovered here regularly - and birdwatchers can look out for 143 species of birds, of which 26 are endemic. Here you will also take pleasure in a mixture of African, European and South American shows in culture, dance, music, art and food.
Images courtesy Christophe Lepetit/Africa's Eden
West Central Africa has now become accessible to the outside world, yet you will remain one of the privileged few to visit. You are invited to venture into this pristine wilderness. We offer a diverse range of tours and exclusive, comfortable accommodation for the passionate traveller who is looking for unspoilt beauty, raw nature and isolation.
Profits generated by booking with us and our ground coordinators, who are based in Gabon, are directly reinvested into the area to ensure continued and economically sustainable protection of the national parks.
Zimbabwe Today
Despite all the troubles we live with on a daily basis and the highly distressing news that comes in every day on our laptops and televisions, we remain buoyant and cheerful most of the time. Our minds have learnt to become joyous with the smallest things - half a dozen bread rolls, purchased when present at just the right moment in the supermarket; milk, delivered weekly in a nearby car park; eggs, pricey but available and just down the road from a lady who keeps chickens; fuel - a fill-up is only a few web transactions away and, via a coupon, you can drive right in and - fill up! It's a novel experience for Zimbabweans. For a long time, we did without meat and the odd chicken was a rare treat! Some meat seems to be returning to the shelves. For the most part, a visit to the supermarket is fraught with bewilderment and incredulation - at the lack of products and the price of those that have been imported from neighbouring South Africa! We've subsequently learnt to make our own bread, preserves, lemonade and mayonnaise! Many people have installed generators, inverters, solar panels and boreholes for power and water. Or, like us, you cook the evening meal over an open fire! (See the picture of Nicci doing just that under the roof of the carport in the Stevens' garden!)
Nicci cooking in Harare
It must be good for us, this mind-expanding exercise, (our capacities are growing!) but we all know it is time-consuming, unnecessary, complicated, frustrating and downright infuriating! We assure friends and family on a weekly basis that we are safe and managing somehow with power cuts, lack of water, bad telephone and mobile networks and the general deterioration of public services and facilities. Zimbabweans always “make a plan”, after all!
We speak of Zimbabweans, of course, who have the resources to cope and manage. Countless Zimbabweans, as many of you know, live in abject poverty and are suffering beyond comprehension. Health care and education levels are at their lowest, hunger and AIDS are killing millions, lack of access to clean water is rife and inflation renders even the most basic commodities luxuries.
Through intricate networking, the support of our friends, the kindness of strangers and ears pricked all the time for hints, tips and contacts, we are finely tuned to survival - and survive we will! The resilience of Zimbabweans is well known. We've come this far and still live in hope that our beloved country will one day be restored to a stable, secure and happy one.
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A Safari for the Truly Adventurous
Challenge yourself to a true adventure! Walk the route of the great explorer Arthur Henry Neuman and experience the soul of the wilderness. Six or seven days' camping out by night under clear, starry African skies, listening to the sound of wildlife and trekking through remote bush by day are experiences that are difficult to match. You'll walk though places in northern Kenya where neither camel nor four-wheel vehicles can go. Only the Samburu tribesmen and a few dozen like-minded travellers have journeyed here before you. Make no mistake, this is no ordinary safari and definitely not for the faint hearted. This is a trekking expedition and you have to be fit. Some of the ascents and descents are long and steep and the emphasis is on exploration and adventure, not luxury. A minimum staff of eight Samburu and Ndorobo men accompanies each safari, along with a minimum of fifteen donkeys. Camps are completely organised for you; enjoy blazing fires, delicious meals and tents set up with wash basins and showers.
Contact us for more information info@johnstevenssasfaris.com
Click here for our booking enquiry form.
In Memory of Amber, DJ and Sprinter
It's happened. What we've been dreading for years, a rhino attack at Imire (a game ranch situated one and a half hours east of Harare in Zimbabwe).
Rhinos and ellies walking down a bush track
On Wednesday, 14th November, five poachers, armed with AK47s, without reason raided the rhino pens at Imire Game Ranch during the night, intimidated and attacked the guards and proceeded to shoot dead all three adult rhinos, Amber, DJ and Sprinter. Words cannot describe the pain that we all feel - three beautiful rhinos, part of an amazingly successful rhino-breeding programme. In July, they had been dehorned as a precautionary measure against this sort of growing activity. Yet these poachers chopped away at Sprinter's head just for a few centimetres!
Twenty years ago, seven young rhino calves were transferred from the rhino battlefields of the Zambezi Valley to a new, safer home at Imire, a pioneering game ranch. What has followed has been an incredible story of love and devotion from all the Travers family to their extended rhino family. From hand-rearing to sub adulthood, to mating to their first calf, to repatriation to the wilds and, recently, to their fourteenth calf!
Judy feeding Tatenda
This has been one of the wonders of the rhino world! Make no mistake about that. These seven rhinos have made a major contribution to Zimbabwe's rhino conservation efforts of the last twenty years. The dominant male and female were introduced back to the wild in the late 1990s, Noddy went to Botswana to join a breeding programme there, Mvu was killed by a rampaging elephant in 2004, and now Amber, DJ and Sprinter have left us. Such a tragedy! DJ left behind a six-week-old calf called Tatenda and Amber was only two weeks away from delivering a little female calf at the time of her death. It is infuriating and incredibly sad.
All these rhinos had given so much joy to the thousands of tourists who've visited them over the years. Imire has always been our first port of call for all our Zimbabwean tours - such a unique rhino experience. Our two recent groups had the time of their lives there in September, interacting with all three rhinos. How we all loved them. And in May, we filmed part of a documentary there, which premiered to the world at our AGM in July. It is a truly magnificent documentary, now a tribute to Amber, DJ and Sprinter.
To Norman and Gill, John and Judy, all the Travers children, and to Mike and Sheila, we find it hard to adequately express our fury at all of this and we want you to know that you are all in our thoughts and prayers. We thank you for all that you've done in the past twenty years - it hasn't been in vain, their legacy lives on! And we shan't ever forget them.
Little Tatenda
To honour the lives and deaths of Amber, DJ and Sprinter, and in memory of Mvu, we are launching a special Imire Rhino Fund, the proceeds of which will be used in the best possible way - reward money, milk powder and glucose for Tatenda (thank you in Shona), the new little male calf, and increased protection for other captive-bred rhinos.
Donations of Aus$100/US$100/£50 or more will purchase a DVD (if requested).
"That we still have rhinos…", our world-class documentary from the May trip, is the story of some of our projects in Zimbabwe. If you would like your donation to go specifically towards the rhino-breeding programme at Imire, please earmark this as such.
SAVE FOUNDATION DONATION FUND
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Leederville Branch
BSB 066113
Swift Code CTBAAU2S
A/C number 1004 4343
or
Post a Cheque to:
SAVE FOUNDATION
229 Oxford Street
Leederville
Western Australia
6007
or -
email a credit card number to nicholas@savefoundation.org.au
Tel: +6189 444 927
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