Whisperers of Trust….

I was really looking to fill one of my empty weekends with some activity for Facebook show-off during my recent work-related trip to South Africa. As someone who had read a bit about apartheid, I asked Terrence Ndaba friend, driver and comrade-in-arm in Joburg, the way to the apartheid museum in downtown Joburg. Terrence, one of the most customer centric professional I had met in my life (who would tune patiently for a Tamil or Hindi FM channel for his Indian friends), suggested safari and game reserves. Though I was born and brought up near Silent Valley national park, nature held very little interest for me.

When the hotel tourist coordinator insisted “if u have not visited a game park here in SA u have not visited SA”, I started glancing thru their brochures most reluctantly. But then Krueger was a 3 -4-day sojourn and got immediately ticked off from the list. He told us about the private game reserves in Africa. And my own googling took me to “the lost world” of Lawrence Anthony and Adamsons.

I did visit the lion park near Joburg with Terrence on a Sunday and on the way back walked into a bookstore (filled with books on Wildlife) in Rose bank.

The first book I could lay my hands on was a gripping, funny and sometimes tragic story of Anthony’s life with huge but empathetic creatures called Elephants. A former businessman who happened to buy some 5000 acres for setting up a private game reserve, ended up as one of the most famous conservationists of recent times (especially after his successful effort in saving Baghdad…