We were on our way back from the home of the amazing Anna and Steve Tolan, the great minds and big hearts behind Chipembele Wildlife Education Trust. It was after dinner at about 9:00pm that we were getting ready to head back the lodge.

We piled into the safari cruiser and I took up my common role of spotter. Most important role by far… basically just keeping a torch scanning for wildlife so that we don’t get caught up to close to some less than happy animals.

Nothing unusual so far, just the occasional elephant, tell me about it, how boring… when we caught sight of what we first though was a stump or rock blocking the right side (my side) of the road. As we neared we realised that it was in fact a very large, very comfortable looking male lion, just sitting soaking up the last of the suns heat still radiating from the road.

We stopped. We waited. We vigorously checked the surrounding scrub in case he was just the diversion, and then we waited. He was completely fine with us, he couldn’t have cared less. So we, needing to get back to the lodge, crept along, in eerie silence, myself not really being able to compute the closeness of this animal. Something that did compute rather quickly was just how exposed I was to him. The cruiser had no doors so he wouldn’t have even needed to knock.

As we passed him, our lights trained on his every movement, time began to slow. The wilderness that is Zambia came alive in that instant and I could see every whisker on his muzzle, every hair in the greatest of detail. But it was those eyes, those golden circles pinpricked with black that I’ll never forget. Then, in another instant, he was taken back by the darkness and was gone.

Paul (MATZ Member)