WHEN I WOKE UP, IT WAS BLACK INSIDE
THE TENT. It felt like I’d been asleep for hours.
At first, I didn’t know whether I had heard a noise
or caught the end of a dream. Before long, the sharp
crack of breaking wood punctured the silence, as if
something was walking over the fallen branches outside.
I had every reason to believe that something was a lion.
My husband West and I had flown into Botswana’s
Okavango Delta, where the Okavango River empties
into the flat sands of the Kalahari Desert. When our
plane touched down on the dirt airstrip, a ranger
named Phinley greeted us and drove us to our safari
camp. It was a fairly primitive place with five tents
sitting on uneven earth.
Kenny, the camp manager, was waiting for us,
and, while he went over our schedule for the next few
days, Phinley walked along a decked platform.
Peering across a sea of golden grass, he turned back
and waved an arm wildly. “Lions,” he called. About 50
metres away, three female lions were walking on the
other side of a small waterhole. A cub wandered behind
them, barely visible in the knee-high grass.
Our home for the next few days sat away from the
other tents. A large sausage tree shaded one corner of it.
Beneath the tree, a termite mound rose two metres into
the air. Showing us around, Kenny said, “The animals
really like this camp. It’s probably because we don’t have
the raised walkways that other camps have, so it’s easier
for them to walk around. They come into camp all
the time.” Then he picked up a metal canister that sat on
a shelf between the bed and the toilet. Kenny explained
that if we had an emergency in the middle of the night,
we should sound the air horn, adding, “An emergency
is not a lion rubbing up against your tent. An emergency
is a lion trying to get into your tent.”
That night, as I lay in the dark listening to the snapping
branches outside, it occurred to me that I should have
asked Kenny what a lion trying to get into a tent would
sound like. And what did he mean by ‘trying’?
And then, I realised that I had to go to the toilet.
I looked towards the flaps on the front of the tent.
They were nothing more than mesh screens. I could see
the shadows of tree limbs outside blowing in the breeze.
I knew that whatever was out there could surely see
us inside the tent.
“West,” I whispered, “I have to pee.”
“Then go,” he said.
“I’m not getting out of bed. What if it sees me moving?”
As we whispered, the cracking of wood outside grew
louder, until finally it sounded as if the animal was right
behind our bed. West and I were silent, and suddenly
there was a dry whoosh as the animal brushed against
the canvas. I began to shake uncontrollably. I reached
through the mosquito net and slowly moved my hand
until I felt the cold metal of the air horn. I grabbed it,
pulled it through the netting and hugged it to my chest.
“Don’t you dare,” said West. “What do you think it’s going
to do if you blow that horn? Put it down.”
I tried to summon the courage to get up, but each time
I imagined I could see a lion lying in the pale moonlight,
gnawing on a bloody bone. If it saw my shadowy figure
moving inside the tent, it would surely burst through
the canvas. My pyjama pants would dangle around
my ankles as it dragged me off the toilet and my husband
finally decided it was time to sound the horn.
As I imagined all the ways a lion could kill us,
the animal began to make a deep, guttural noise that
sounded vaguely like a purr. Or maybe it was a growl.
I began to pray. I knew we’d tempted fate on this trip:
first a cage dive with great white sharks, thenGOING FURTHER
Sleeping with Lions
Botswana’s Okavango Delta is a wonderful place to watch wildlife in the day,
but, after nightfall, the world beyond the tent flaps is rife with unseen dangers
Words KELLY WAT TO N
Illustration KAILEY WHITMAN @kaileywhitman