Game watching - Part 1: Quiçama, Angola

In 1960 my family moved to Angola in Africa, my father having accepted a three-year contract with a British company based in Luanda, the capital. Back then it was quite an adventure travelling to Africa, and we spent almost 4 weeks on a ship from the UK.
It wasn't long after we got there that we made our first trip to a game reserve, called Quiçama (pronounced Kiss-ah-ma), which was around 70 kms (43 miles) from the capital. In those days almost all the roads in Angola were dirt, in very poor condition, and in many places impassable during the rainy season, which left huge potholes where the water had been standing. My Dad had a Ford Anglia as his "company car", and as this was totally inadequate for a trip like this, he borrowed a Land Rover from a work colleague who hunted ...

which was not really the best vehicle to use in a game park, which contained, among other things, Lion, Elephant and many Buffalo! In fact, in the picture to the left of the vehicle is a fresh pile of elephant dung! That first trip we didn't see very much in the way of game - a lot of buffalo, including one that burst out of the undergrowth just in front of us crossing the road, and plenty of antelope, but no elephant or big cats, which was probably just as well seeing as we had no protection in the Land Rover!

The campsite - very basic at the time, with electricity in the process of being installed.

Back in those days my Dad's camera was a 35mm Kodak Retinette with a standard fixed focus lens, which used film that produced slides that at the time had to be sent to the UK for developing - so it would be months before you saw the image you had taken!! Ours were sent from the developers to my grandparents, who would have a look at them through a hand-held viewer, before posting them back out to us. The quality was good, but all of the shots from the game reserve showed just a dot on the horizon, which was the animal we had spotted!

Sable Antelope - or Palanca Preta. One of the few photos where the animal was close!

I was only 7 when we arrived in Angola, but I learnt that to spot wild animals you had to be very quiet, and look really carefully - and mean "look", not just scan the area. A spot of colour out of place, a bush moving in no wind, unusual sounds, slightest bits of movement - and smell! Sometimes you could smell that something was close by!