“We are very happy to be here,” Mr Sibanda told our team.
In 2022, Mr Butcher worked with Ngamo’s leaders on a pilot project that introduced a different pair of white rhinoceros in a sanctuary that was much smaller than Mlevu’s: the 420 acres of Ngamo Rhino. The aim was to prove that the villagers could protect the animals and deal with travelers.
A few years later, the project has achieved both, with more than 2,500 foreign visitors reaching overall, each of whom paid up to $ 180 to see and fly with the rhinoceros. So far, these fees have drawn about $ 100,000 in a Community fund, a huge sum for a village once based only on survival agriculture and had no substantial money in circulation.
Now NGAMO has a medical clinic that serves 90 hostels. An outdoor market sells local crafts: wallpapers, baskets and ornaments carved from nuts with rhinos engraved on their sides. The school now has a roof, and the Ngamo Lions Youth Soccer Club plays in a nearby field. Mlevu, on the other hand, has none of them – except a school that deeply needs repairs. But soon, thanks to the new rhinoceros.
“Everyone wants to see the Big Five and the rhinoceros, who creates the opportunity for them to enter the villages,” Mazayi Moyo, leader and carpenter in Ngamo, told me as we talked to his kitchen. His wife, Siphiwe, sat next to him under the clay shelves holding neat rows of yellow plates and blue cups. “Everyone benefits,” Mr Moyo said.
Running with Cobras
In the following days, I did some traditional safari activities from my base near Bomani and some non -traditional.
