I took my first trip to Mozambique in 1991, when the civil war was winding down to a close (the peace treaty was signed in Rome in 1992). It was a holiday that involved hitching lifts with friends up the coast to Inhambane and swapping cigarettes for safe passage from child soldiers at roadblocks along the way. It was an education, a fantastic journey of discovery.

But there was an ominous aspect to our adventure, and that was the utter absence of a single bird call during the entire trip. Passing beautiful lagoons as we made our way up the coast, this absence was surreal, eerie…almost spooky. It seemed as if life had taken a temporary leave of its production senses, and cut the audio track from the movie. The years of civil war between the ruling Frelimo and rebel Renamo forces had taken their toll on more than the nation’s people, it had also silenced its animals: any wildlife worth speaking of had been either killed as a by-product of battles and skirmishes, or hunted for meat and ivory to fund the war. Anecdotal evidence suggested that in the power vacuum created by the war, it also wasn’t uncommon for professional hunters to be flown in to take down big tuskers and large-maned trophy lions. It was open season.

I said ‘temporary’ earlier because Africa tends to teach the willing observer that it is usually only a matter of time before the natural balance is restored. In Mozambique’s case, ‘how long?’ was the question.  

Fast forward a decade plus a few years, and walking the corridors of South Africa’s annual Travel Indaba regional trade fair in Durban I came across the Gorongosa Foundation at a tiny table on the Mozambique country stand. The project is apparently dedicated to restoring the 5000-square-kilometre national park to its once wild and magnificent former self, a task that involves protecting what wildlife remains, reintroducing species that have been wiped out, and perhaps most importantly – if the above goals are to be realised – giving a sense of purpose to the lives of the communities around the park. Baldeu Chande, a ranger at the park during the war years and today its chief warden, says the poaching really escalated at the end of the war, in 1992.

Living then on the edge of desperation (without jobs, money or food) the rural communities would almost certainly have been involved in what became a brutal production chain – killing anything that moved and selling it to traders in Beira, Mozambique’s second city.

After coming across the Gorongosa Foundation at the trade fair I pursued the story of the Park’s reincarnation, finally producing a television insert on it for a current affairs magazine programme. That was how I came to sit with Chande, and came across the man behind the whole project, 40-something American IT multi-millionaire philanthropist Greg Carr.

Growing up in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Greg Carr says he learnt early about the benefits of close communities and respect for his fellow man. Having been involved in the invention of telephone voicemail, Carr made his fortune young, and quickly pursued his passions on the northeast coast of the United States. After founding the Centre for Human Rights at Harvard University, he wanted a project where he could make that proverbial difference.

In Mozambique and Gorongosa he found people in need. He realised that he could help them by restoring the beautiful natural environment – once the country’s pre-eminent national park, visited in the 1960s by Hollywood stars like John Wayne and Gregory Peck – which tourists would visit and in the process create local employment.

He gathered around him a team of highly qualified people with experience of the region, among them environmental scientists and tourism industry professionals, and set them to work. Operating from the park headquarters at Chitengo – which also serves as the main rest camp – the team has reintroduced buffalo and wildebeest from the Kruger Park in neighbouring South Africa, has mapped out a canoe trail, and has identified concession sites for what will be upmarket lodges. Chitengo Safari Camp now offers accommodation across the spectrum, from luxurious, thatched rondavels to camping for overlanders.

Vinho village, just outside the park and a ten-minute drive from Chitengo, supplies 500 staff for the camp, and the morning and evening rush hour between the two is a study in rural development. A group of Portuguese tourists I meet tell me that when visiting here a year ago a bicycle was an unusual sight. Today they are commonplace – many of the park’s workers use them to commute each day – evidence of the Carr Foundation’s plan to improve the life styles of the communities around the park. The foundation has built a clinic and school in the village, the latter equipped with wireless internet to give a head start in education to the children in this remote, undeveloped area of Mozambique. Computer centres are planned for other towns in the region too.

And it goes a little further. Professor Richard Beilfuss, director of science at Gorongosa (and with ten years experience in the Zambezi Valley), says the local community is also being trained in conservation and malaria prevention. “They are actually vectors, if you will, into their communities. They spread their new knowledge with their friends, their neighbours, their families.” Beilfuss says one of his aims is help facilitate people from neighbouring communities to follow in his footsteps.

It’s a familiar story to other successful game reserves and national parks in Africa and abroad – when nearby communities start to see the benefits of conserving their natural environment, they will take steps to further protect it.

With the money (an estimated US$40 million) to back his vision, and cooperation from ‘wildlife partners’ like South Africa’s Kruger National Park (from where considerable numbers of buffalo and wildebeest have already been translocated), there is no reason his dream, however clichéd it may sound, shouldn’t become reality. Warden Baldeu Chande, who lived through Gorongosa’s worst times, is aware how productive the landscape can be.

“I have seen herds of more than 5000 buffalos together,” says Chande, hunched forward on a deck chair next to the swimming pool, in the late afternoon sun.
Although those epic days have yet to return, the growing numbers of healthy wildlife in the park have now put Mozambique back on the map as a rewarding safari destination. Flying low over the floodplains surrounding Lake Urema, herds of waterbuck and reedbuck scatter below, hippos bare their teeth before taking refuge in marshy channels and one of the greatest sights for any wildlife enthusiast – a herd of 70 , russet and black sable in the early morning light – veers off to the left. The landscapes that also unfold are equally magnificent: massive tracts of wetland, savannah, montane woodlands and a breath-taking limestone gorge. The good news is that this area is within the 150km existing road network open to tourist vehicles, evidenced from the French self-drive tourists sharing coffee from a flask below the vestiges of the old Hippo House.

Many hours in a Cessna to the north of Gorongosa, on the border with Tanzania, is a tract of Mozambican wilderness that is experiencing a rebirth of a different sort. Proclaimed in the 1950s, the Niassa Reserve is a massive 42,000 square kilometres, making it twice the size of South Africa’s Kruger Park. It is on the edge of this reserve, on the south bank of the Lugenda river, that its first ever photographic safari camp was recently established. Why has it taken more than a half-century to open the first? Simply put, Niassa has for most if its life been the preserve of hunters.

It is one such former hunter, Dubai-based Saudi businessman Adel Aujean, who built this lodge, the decidedly top-end Lugenda Wilderness Camp. One of the finer safari camps on the African continent, it’s situated in 115,000ha of magnificent, otherworldly landscape, dotted with inselbergs the likes of which I had not yet seen in southern Africa. The lodge itself is both luxurious and subtle, a combination that doesn’t always necessarily sit well together.

Although a 2002 survey of large mammals in Niassa confirms rising animal populations, with more than 11,000 elephant, 6000 buffalo and 13,000 sable – a creature so highly regarded that seeing just one in any national park is a massive bonus – Lugenda is not for first-time safari goers interested only in seeing the Big Five. This isn’t just my opinion, it is that of Lugenda management and staff. Niassa is a place for safari cognoscenti who don’t need to see an elephant or a lion to be satisfied, who derive joy from walking the bush and enjoying the little gems invariably thrown up. The type of Africaphiles who understand that because this a reserve, and not a national park, its land must also support remote rural communities.

Here, animal sightings take a back seat to the scents and sounds of the astounding surroundings. It is the landscape of the Niassa Reserve that sets it apart from other destinations. And while on safari in Lugenda, it is also the feeling of exclusivity, knowing that there are no other tourist groups sharing the same experience, that makes it extra special.

It’s a bit like visiting the Serra Cafema mountains on the Namibia-Angola border – no matter how many times you visit, it is truly awe-inspiring. Not surprisingly, trails are a highlight, and to miss out on a walk with Lugenda’s guide, 28-year-old Andrew Linton, is unthinkable. Lose yourself in the Ngolonge mountains behind the camp, marvelling at the manner in which the baboon-tail (or bobbejaan-stert) attaches itself to the mountain’s flaky skin. After five years in South Africa’s Madikwe Game Reserve on the Botswana border, Andrew has taken to this landscape with a passion, working to its strengths.

Ironically it’s the very landscape, chosen for its scenic beauty, that may limit huge-herd encounters. Much like the mopane woodland far to the south, the brachystegia and mixed broadleaf trees that make up miombo woodland do not support high densities of wildlife. The hunting history here, and the continued hunting in separate blocks on the edge of Niassa, have also played a role, with wildlife being more shy and skittish than animals  that haven’t had to live with the human threat.

Researcher Colleen Begg (who, with her husband Keith, has been living and researching carnivores in Niassa since 2003, and inadvertently monitors both movement of wildlife and hunters’ activities) noted that: “While it is often difficult to see large herds of game, we currently have 30 remote camera traps out along the Lugenda river and the diversity of creatures wandering about is amazing.” In mid-November of this year, she’d recorded seven lion in one night, “bringing the total of individual lion identified so far along a 25km stretch of the Lugenda in the last three weeks to 19.”

Contemplating the hunting issue from her privileged position in the Niassa bush, Colleen offers an independent viewpoint: “while not hunters ourselves – and we sometimes have difficulty understanding the business – we recognise the role that hunting is playing in the current development of Niassa and the support it provides to communities living inside the reserve. We do not know of any other area in Africa where sport hunting is as well regulated and transparent”.

As one hunter who operates in a block outside the reserve pointed out, “hunting has prevented poaching from escalating in Niassa.” He explains that his tracking teams often catch poachers as they must cross the hunting blocks before entering the reserve proper.

“Thankfully,” guide Andrew says, “the animals within the 115,000ha safe haven of the Lugenda Wilderness Camp are losing their fear of our safari vehicles.” And as time passes this will increase the quantity and quality of wildlife encounters.

Despite spotting a leopard skulking through the fading light one early nightfall, my favourite sighting during my four wildlife drives through the woodland and shadows of the imposing Ngolonge mountains was of my first ever elephant shrew. But it wasn’t just one elephant shrew, it was two! These delightful creatures hung around long enough in the headlights to offer a zoom-lens acquaintance with their formidable snouts – I was captivated. I likewise became acquainted with the peculiar, bird-like ‘cheep’ of the samango, and studied how scrawny the yellow baboon was in comparison to the chacma and olive varieties to the south and north respectively. Waterbuck and an imapala ram, and his sizable harem, also added to the mix. These animals, along with the telltale dung of elephant and hippo, suggest what is possible in Niassa – given time. And time is what Lugenda must be allowed, because the positives of the location are too numerous to be ignored.

Bar Uganda, the birding is as good as I have seen. The various vegetation types throw up specials like the Narina Trogon, blue-spotted wood-dove, African skimmer and Angola Pitta. There were also no shortages of the Bohms bee-eater and scimitar-billed wood-hoopoe.

Besides birds, wildlife and the monumental surroundings, there is also some history to capture the visitors’ imagination. Up in the hills Andrew showed us pottery shards that potentially could date back a few hundred years. He also tells us of rock art he has found, including geometric, finger-painting designs. According to a paper published by Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa, the art is “many thousands of years” old, and quite different to those of southern African hunter-gatherers, like the San bushmen. It’s believed they have been produced by central African hunter-gatherers known as the Batwa (“the only surviving group of central African Batwa are the so-called forest ‘pygmies’”). So unexplored is this Niassa Reserve that it is difficult not to be caught up in Andrew’s enthusiasm for the area.

With Niassa’s recent introduction of photographic safaris and Gorongosa’s radical rejuvenation, it’s clearly an exciting time for wildlife tourism in Mozambique.