Night-watch: a short story

One of my favourite trips as a guide will always be one of my formative ones. I was an apprentice trails guide, backing up one of the most experienced walking guides on the continent. We were running a five-night wilderness trail in Makuleke, on the border with South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. We each carried all the food and equipment we needed on our backs, with flocculent and disinfectant to help us safely collect water each day — be it from holes dug in the dry Limpopo River bed, or natural springs muddied by wallowing buffalo. 

We carried no tents, because a deliberate aspect of these trails is the ‘night-watch’. Having found a relatively safe sleeping spot each night, we would build a tiny fire and lay out our sleeping mats and bags in safe proximity to each other. We were a group of eight people and divided the night up into shifts, starting around 9 pm and ending at dawn. The shifts were rotated each night, to ensure you never got the same one. If you sensed a potentially dangerous animal was coming too close, you woke up the group. We carried no technology, including watches and phones, so had to tell the time by the movement of the stars or our body clocks. Amazingly, the shifts always seemed to work, as the last person never had an extra long or short watch. 

One night, I was gently woken up by the person on shift before me. I calculated that it must have been around 11 pm. He whispered his briefing as I boiled water on my camping stove for a cup of coffee. He had heard a leopard chuffing and a few spotted hyena whoops, but nothing too close. I added a twig to the fire to keep it lit, but no larger than a candle flame. My colleague tucked himself into his sleeping bag and I settled down on a nearby rock, torch in hand. 

An important part of the watch was to do it alone. Even if someone else was awake, they were to leave you be, not just to concentrate on the task at hand, but also to allow the most powerful aspect of the trip to sink in — the reflective opportunity.

In the first few minutes I had already heard the leopard again to the north, and some distant lions toward the Luvuvhu River. Then, a bellow of a lone bull buffalo at a natural spring below us. The rumble of an elephant gave the herd away. They had silently walked in to drink and pushed off the buffalo. We had positioned ourselves to sleep on a rocky outcrop, around 50 m above a main path that led to the spring. It was our water source for our dinner and next morning’s walk onwards. It also meant there was likely to be more wildlife to listen out for.

I checked the position of my reference stars against a tree canopy and figured that my hour was nearly up. But then the leopard started calling again. It roared repeatedly every two minutes or so, closer each time. I figured that it was a territorial male on patrol and he was on the path that would take him straight past us. Despite the darkness, I could visualise his progress and sure enough, when he must have been right alongside us, he called again, before descending down to the spring, taking a few minutes to drink and then carrying on with his mission. I have no doubt that he would have sensed us, but saw no threat.

It was past midnight by now and it was my birthday, which I had kept a secret from everyone in the group. I tip-toed over to the person who was due on shift after me. I didn’t need to wake her up though, the leopard had done that for me. She smiled and let me go to bed. There was no need for a debrief.

Photos by Andreas Fox and Shaun Mousley