Zimbabwe – 2018 (12th – 15th April 2018)

During the day on the 12th I went with the President of Gweru Rotary Club and Assam another Rotarian to look at their water project which is nearing completion. A school and a clinic will soon benefit from clean water thanks to the hard work put in by the club here in collaboration with 4 clubs in Europe. ( see pics)

In December last year I flew to Denmark to give a presentation to Skals boarding school on the work that gets done at Antelope Park in terms of Lions and working in the community. The school has trips here every year to Zimbabwe and I, as an Ambassador for Alert ( African Lion Research Trust), spent a couple of days there.
Twenty students and two staff arrived here on 12th April and got involved in a number of activities in the park. They also went to MCHC (Midlands Children Hope Centre) Boy’s House. They really enjoyed interacting with the children and gave a great choreographed dance performance for them ( see pic) and learning a bit about what goes on there. I spent most of my time with them. We got stuck in with lion feeding (see pics), horse riding and of course walking with the lions and interacting ( not riding) with our elephants. There must have been literally thousands of pictures taken. Liam the Leopard (see pics) our mascot of course had to get in on the act as well!. We stopped at a market and I was besieged with excited children wanting to cuddle Liam. He has turned out to be quite a star ( see pics).

The Danes loved him and were sorry to leave on Sunday. After the Danes left at 9am I went with Dean Tendai Madanzi to his church. It was packed out. I was asked to sing again. We came back to Antelope Park and had lunch and then it was straight down to business and putting together a document outlining a skills training programme. More on that later as there will be a few more meetings before things are finalised.

Another large python was found this morning at Antelope Park. It was about 2.5 metres long ! It got taken away from the main camp and released into the bush. It had vomited out a huge chicken which it had just killed and swallowed. Snakes do that if they are disturbed soon after feeding.