The fire by 7pm Friday

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By the time we got to Maun, the fire had been through camp twice and the SKL staff, that had stayed behind, also decided to evacuate. By the time they evacuated, one of their cottages had burnt and two of their buildings were destroyed as fire brought down their roofs and turned the buildings to rubble. Their kitchen and dining room were destroyed - they salvaged the fridge and a gas bottle. Yet, despite all this, and their pending evacuation, they continued to call me with updates and answer the phone when I called. What troopers. By this point I realised just how lucky I was to have evacuated. By Saturday evening, SKL left the Park and so we were left without updates until it was safe to re-enter on Tuesday. It was a tense few days as I waited, unknowing. I swayed between denial (its fine, our camp may have been missed) and trying to make light of the situation (at least the mouse plague should have been dealt with!). But deep down the anxiety was building. While we were safe, and had a small bag of belongings each, the thought of our camp being destroyed played on my mind. Perhaps our safety, and reports that no-one (or at least no human) had been harmed, allowed me to think about more trivial matters - homes, furniture, clothes and a newly replenished stash of food from Australia! But there was nothing to do but wait.

Our drive to camp, not a good sight

The drive back to camp on Tuesday (which was only 2 hours) seemed to be one of the longest drives of my life, excluding the drive out which was full of dire updates about what we had left behind us. The ferry across the Boteti, to get into the Park, seemed to be going backwards. And my stomach was in knots. As I drove from the gate to our camp I saw destruction on either side of the road for kilometres. The silence was palpable. I felt like I was living a news cast of an ‘aftermath’ special. As I entered camp I saw the destroyed buildings of SKL and the blackened earth between our still standing office and where our tents would hopefully be. It wasn’t a great welcome home.

L to R: SKL’s kitchen, the kitchen ‘salvage crew’, the centre of our camp – what was a large tree reduced to piles of ash

First, I saw our store cage that had been burnt- the frame damaged, the rear jump seats from our cars burnt, and spare tyres melted. But the cage was still standing. From there I had to survey the rest of camp: the first stop was our newly renovated shower. Still perfect. Then I came across the supplies for the community and school chilli plots that we were about to build. Unfortunately, we lost a number of gum poles and mopane poles and will need to replace these so that we can continue building chilli plots to promote self-reliance amongst the community. Then I got to the tents. Our research assistant’s tent was perfect, if a little smoky. Then our store tent - half fallen down but only because the ropes that held it up had burned away. The tent itself had no real fire damage. The visitors tent - fine (still mouse ridden, but not fire affected!). But, the next two tents were worse for wear and unfortunately both were only a month old. Their windows, made of a plastic-based gauze had melted. Some had shrunk as though the tent has been through a shrink wrapper, and others had melted away completely. But despite a couple of old mattresses becoming unusable and a smoky aroma clinging to everything, all personal belongings were safe! The next tent was the worst though. The shade net was destroyed, the solar lantern had melted into a non-working mess, one window was gone and the other had shrunk into half its original size, scrunching the whole tent into a twisted mess. And the roof was shredded from falling embers. But still, no damage inside. I went to another tent, and found more missing windows. But still no loss of items inside. The final tent, mine, was untouched by fire, but full of smoke.

The walk from our office to our tents

So, we were down 4 of our 7 accommodation tents. And everything we own has the stench of smoke clinging to it. However, considering we thought we'd lost everything, we were lucky to get away with a damage bill of ~$4500AUD. Mostly because we had recently employed someone to slash the grass around the tents, in what we thought would keep up safe from snakes, more than fire. The slasher finished this job 1hr before we heard about the fire! This gave us enough of a barrier around the tents to largely protect them. Talk about timing.

The scenes around camp

We were all shaken, and we need to find funds to replace four tents and burnt building supplies but I am glad to report that we are all safe and so is our data! And the show must go on - so shortly after checking our home, we piled back into the car to stay in the community side for a week to put on a documentary night for the community and conduct workshops across the cattle posts to teach the farmers about how to use chilli to deter elephants.