OUR TIME SPENT WORKING AT LITTLE MOMBO - SHARON & LEIGH KEMP

We had the amazing opportunity to work at Little Mombo Camp in 2003 and 2004

Here is an excerpt from our August 2003 month in camp

August 2003

As August draws to a close, the air is heavy with the scent of the yellow flowers of the candle pod acacia and the vervet monkeys are enjoying a bonanza of jackalberries – and it is consequently raining skins and seeds down on the Tent roofs!!!


Monkeys and Baboons think the Mombo tents are the best jungle gym!!

The game at Mombo continues to more than live up to this area’s awesome reputation. Guests enjoying sundowners in the Mombo Lounge were startled to see two lionesses reclining at the water’s edge just metres away. We have been kept awake most nights by the tingling roaring of territorial male lions, and the sawing cough of a leopard has regularly cut through the night. The hyaena’s ghostly whooping and the deep chortling of very amused hippos adds to the strangely melodic choir. Most times the fruit bats and Scops owls have to struggle to make themselves heard over all this din!!! A porcupine has been regularly running across the floodplain at sundowner time, to the delight of many of our guests who have never seen one of these wonderful creatures.
And all this game is of course seen without even leaving Mombo Camp – one afternoon two of our guests, about to head into the bush on a game drive, were dissuaded when they saw first a herd of buffalos and then a breeding herd of elephants pass by their deck and they opted for have a ‘game siesta’ instead!!

Out in the bush, another phenomenal month. A testament to the quality of the game viewing here is that we have had not one but two National Geographic film crew in the area during August, one concentrating on leopards, and the other on the re-introduced rhinos.



The Tortillis female leopard, one of the Mombo regulars, is still fully occupied in bringing up her latest cub – Legadema, now approximately three months old. This cub easily wins out on the cuteness stakes and we have seen some wonderful suckling and playing behaviour between the two coolest cats at Mombo! Legadema’s every mood delights all who see her, and her new game of catch mother’s tail provides endless fun, and not just to the cub. The mother has been doing well in hunting to provide milk for her growing offspring, and just recently we have seen the cub take its first tentative mouthfuls of the impala that will form the mainstay of her diet throughout her life at Mombo.

This young life almost came to an abrupt end one day when the mother was surprised and chased by a troop of baboons. She managed to evade them and at the same time lead them away from where Legadema was hiding, wisely lying low until it was safe to emerge again. A few heart-stopping moments when it looked as if the cub might be discovered, but the game of hide and seek resulted in a total victory for the leopards.


We have seen more elephants than usual in this area, drawn to the water sources, and some of these breeding herds have very young calves – one, still not old enough to use his trunk to drink, struggled to kneel down to get his mouth to the water and at the same time keep up as his herd crossed a channel – there is a lot to learn for a young elephant in the bush………
The Mombo lions continue to do well, bringing down zebra and even one tsessebe. Even Africa’s fastest antelope can’t outrun a cleverly sprung trap. The cheetah are in the area in strength at present, with the veteran Steroid Boys showing that they still have what it takes.

A family staying at Mombo this month was desperate to see a kill but after three days their slightly bloodthirsty dream had not come true. As they sat at the airstrip eating their specially prepared kosher sandwiches, a lioness obliging tripped and strangled a warthog right in front of them. Hopefully they weren’t put off their lunch…….



View from our staff house at Little Mombo!







Mombo is truely a paradise in Africa..............