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Bad Rabbit Studio

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Joanna Craig

Writer and Producer

 

+263 776 638 790
jo@badrabbitstudio.co.zw

Buck O’Donoghue

Film-maker and Photographer

 

+263 776 638 790
buck@badrabbitstudio.co.zw

 

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buck@badrabbitstudio.co.zw

+263 772 573 151

jo@badrabbitstudio.co.zw

+263 776 638 790

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badrabbitstudio
It’s good to be back in the Mother City! It’s good to be back in the Mother City!
Call again? Oh we will. It may have been the dry Call again? Oh we will. It may have been the dry dusted wind, it may have been the rising up of the waves and waves of memories we have made since October 2019 and likely a combination of both, with windows drawn down and eyes swimming Buck and I drove out of Gonarezhou’s northern entrance gate. It won’t be the last time. But it is the end of this particular chapter of our lives. Thank you to Gonarezhou Conservation Trust for giving us the opportunity. We will forever look at the world slightly differently than we did before. Thank you to the entire staff. Buck and I have learned a lot about how to approach life, what is worth waking up for and about friendship. May there forever be these wild places for all of us to take a deep breath in and for a fleeting moment, experience the purity of the unpeopled space in the wilderness that was once a long time ago the whole. Where next? We don’t yet know. But I do know it will be an adventure. For now, it’s heads down for Buck and I. It’s time to get the book done.
Chivalila (Tsonga) meaning the sound made by water Chivalila (Tsonga) meaning the sound made by water falling, tumbling, washing over, into and out of rock. This symphony of waterfalls slows and widens before sinking into sands that mark the lowest point in Zimbabwe some 20kms or so downstream where the Save is joined by the Runde. Together, onward out of Zimbabwe they flow. Chivalila Falls, Jamanda Conservancy, South-East Lowveld, Zimbabwe.
Pit stop of carrots and peppermint tea in the sand Pit stop of carrots and peppermint tea in the sandveld forests of the south of Gonarezhou. It’s our last hurrah in the Park (for now at least). It’s been an absolutely incredible close on two years. We’ve been forever changed.
Picnics and magic trees at Manjinji Pan. Manjinji Picnics and magic trees at Manjinji Pan. Manjinji is a community operated sanctuary and campsite and well worth a visit if you find yourself south of Zimbabwe’s Mwenezi River. It really is magic.
Old and tired, wearing the marks of long decades l Old and tired, wearing the marks of long decades lived, this last month we’ve sat across tables in remote homesteads, bustling towns and sleepy cities, listening to those who lived Gonarezhou’s first rhino reintroduction. Some we found with injuries soured by age, some with eyesight failing, some with thoughts that trail off into pauses mid sentence, some with youthful energy and zeal fighting against creaking, ageing bones. Despite how each person wore their years and despite how little or much materially they had to show for those years, in their reliving and telling of those times the old faces, friends and fiends hung close, the rhinos, elephants and suni long gone peered from behind the mists of time, the thickets of trees that shaded them on long, heavy, hot lowveld days were our canopy, the cool, clear riverbeds that slacked their thirsts for all those years seeped below our feet. These men and women brought that time, their youth, into our present and for that, Buck and I will be forever indebted. The graciousness, the willingness to share and help, the readiness to contribute in whatever way possible humbled Buck and I. If we do not talk about the past, circle the triumphs and travesties, sit with the ghosts of what once was but is no longer, we will loose our link with time and if that happens we loose a vital part of the human experience, our shared story, our history, the lessons for the future. It’s important for all of us to do it now, before its too late. NB. For those interested in the history of National Parks, Mike Bromwich has written a valuable anecdotal and factual account of the department from 1928 to 1990. The book, densely packed and carefully laid out is certainly a labour of love and makes for a very special gift. If you are in Bulawayo or Harare you can pick up a copy in person (drop us a line and we will put you in touch), or order a copy online using the link below. http://www.bromwich.uk.com/
Those that grew up in the 90s in Zimbabwe will rem Those that grew up in the 90s in Zimbabwe will remember the Toughies school shoe advert; a boy and a rhino calf meet each other as the boy gets home from school; the boy throws down his leather satchel on the dusty ground, hugs his childish arms around the calf and with that the pair run off into the end of the advert playing tag with one another, the boy laughing, the calf we anthropomorphise is smiling contentedly as the two lie down together under a tree. This is my first memory of a rhino. My next memory of rhino is from the puttering of an idling house boat bobbing on Kariba’s gently lapping waters. On the shore a few hundred meters away is a rhino cow and her calf, browsing nonchalantly, ignoring our hushed whispers and the boat’s idling diesel engine and their armed guard of two National Park’s rangers that keep a safe but eternally watchful distance. I must have been 6 or 7. This pair, brought to heel by the scourge of human whim and want had lost what made them truly wild. Fast forward 26/27 years and Buck and I watch as Black rhino are re-introduced into the wilds of Gonarezhou National Park, first through a short stay in a boma and then, finally, through the opened boma doors into the bush. A number of individuals of the founder population can be directly traced to the last remaining rhino of the Zambezi Valley, with the ghosts of their mothers and grandmothers lingering in their bloodlines - bloodlines that against a number of challenges, incursions and odds, have been kept flowing in the Lowveld’s three remaining private concessions, Malilangwe, Save and Bubye. Perhaps, hopefully, possibly, with ZBC publicly announcing the release last week, Zimbabwe’s children of the 2020s will have their first memories of rhino not as animals commodified, domesticized and reduced to exhibits of shortsighted greed, but of free roaming, wild rhino, unhindered, respected, revered and just one thriving species amongst a host of conservation success stories still unfolding in the revival of Zimbabwe’s biodiverse, Gonarezhou National Park. The first page in the new chapter has been turned.
Life. The why, the why now, the what for; these ar Life. The why, the why now, the what for; these are things that as much as you try to wrap your head around, you simply can’t. There are unknowns to which perhaps there are no answers. I certainly don’t have them. Life is full of surprises and sadness, and it’s full of rich encounters, opportunities that take you that inch closer to the glimpsing the purpose of it all, sometimes and for just a while. And these are the moments, the fleeting shared experiences that you begin to cherish, the beacons that anchor some meaning in the great, tossing, churning, unpredictable sea of life. This week we’ve had three such moments that leave you both questioning of life why? and equally, knowing it could not have been any other way. Where Mozambique and Zimbabwe meet together with the sky we were given tales of Ghana and farming mushrooms at the table of a couple whose love for one another and life were as tangible as the zing of the freshly picked radishes on our plates (thank you); in front of a warm glow of a fire in the the home of a woman (who for the last 10 years has farmed alone in the smoke wisped hills of Chipinge on parcels and folds of partitioned lands after the death of her husband) we were given gentle anecdotes of her acceptance and her love for this land, her family and her life (thank you); and the last, a dinner with a dear elderly friend who puffed on his cigar, drank whiskey and listened to the swing of The King Louis with Buck and I as his wife of 6 decades took her last breaths in a hospital 20 kms down the road (thank you). Life. I don’t know? And probably never will. But, we do it anyway. Here’s to those who ‘don’t tip-toe through it to arrive safely at death’. Here’s to the ones brave enough to love it, picking themselves up and dusting themselves off time and time again; here’s to those who are brave/ mad/ true enough to really, fully live it. Here’s to them 🥃
Explore more. Appreciate more. Explore more. Appreciate more.

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