The plan was simple: Participate in the Mana Pools wildlife count and then drive back to Harare via the Zambezi Valley’s escarpment mountains. But, as Zimbabwean Dick Pitman explains, it quickly turned into the hunt for the elusive violet tree.

Hey, there’s one!” The radio in my Cruiser 80 GX sprang into life, not that
it had been quiet for very long. “I’m sure that’s a violet tree!”
“Probably another blue tree, or a purple tree, or a vaguely-mauve-sort-of-a-tree,” I muttered as I brought the whole nine-vehicle convoy to a halt for the umpteenth time.
Sally, my wife, favoured me with the look she reserves for naughty children, morons, and my good self.
She scrambled out of the Cruiser and went off with Patty (Nissan Patrol, about six vehicles back) on yet another trek into the woods.
The saga over the violet tree (Securidaca longipedunculata) had been going on for some days now, ever since we had met the Land Cruiser Club (LCCSA) contingent at Chinhoyi and had set off to Mana Pools National Park on the Zambian border where we were due to take part in the annual game count run by Wildlife and Environment Zimbabwe (WEZ).
The saga had been sparked off by a huge and splendid example on the A1 (the Harare-Chirundu road), halfway down the Zambezi Escarpment.
Patty has an indigenous tree nursery at home and wanted to collect some violet tree seeds, an enterprise in which Sally, herself an avid tree planter, had joined with enthusiasm. 
However, that particular example had decided to grow in a position where it is impossible to get even one vehicle safely off the road, let alone nine.
We’d swept helplessly past it – and then past the wrecks of the articulated trucks that regularly take the unplanned shortcuts to the bottom of the escarpment’s many ravines and gullies – before driving on to Mana itself in the northwest of the country on the Zambezi River. Where there wasn’t a single violet tree to be seen, but a helluva lot of elephants instead.

What’s wrong with a cool box?

We’d stayed at Mana’s main campsite at Nyamepi for four days, and thoroughly lay to rest the myth that all Zimbabwe’s wildlife has been exterminated during the past ten troubled years.
It wasn’t exactly a 4x4 challenge or even a real “wilderness experience”, because the place was packed with around 300 WEZ members.
But it certainly was a new experience for our contingent, because the game count is carried out, not from the illusory safety of a vehicle, but on foot, and therefore on rather less-than-equal terms with the elephants and lions.
During the few spare moments unoccupied by dodging elephant cows and calves in the bush and crusty old buffalo bulls in the campsite, Sally and I had the chance to drool over some of the “must-have” gear sported by the South African vehicles. 
For the past ten years we’d been effectively imprisoned by the worthless Zimbuck, which made it virtually impossible for us bumpkins to source equipment from South Africa.
We’ve had to make do. For instance, we can usually make the ice in our cool box last a week but when it’s gone, it’s gone. That’s it − warm beers and tinned dinners. We eyed the ubiquitous fridges with envy.
Slowly though, I began to realise that, like small and ailing children, they occupied most of our colleagues’ waking hours. You have to keep looking in on them to make sure they are alright. You discuss them with your friends, in the hushed tones of the sickroom.
“How’s your fridge?”
“A little better, I think. Temperature’s down a bit.”
You also have to keep doing new and interesting things with them to keep them happy, preferably involving driving a fairish distance every day.
Unfortunately, the game count involved a great deal of walking and very little driving, and generators are a no-no in a place like Mana. The air thrummed to the soft note of idling engines as the shade temperature climbed past 40 °C.
“Do we really want to have all that schlep?’ I remarked to Sal. “What’s wrong with the good old cool box?”
Sal gave me That Look, already noted. “Any fool,” she quoted, unoriginally, “can be uncomfortable in the bush.”
Okay, o-kay, I know when I (and my wallet) are beat.
More importantly, after ten years of economic chaos the Zimbabwean Parks Authority is as cash-strapped as we are.
There’s little money for essentials such as fuel, which is the lifeblood of field stations like Mana.
Without fuel, it is impossible to undertake such routine tasks as the deployment of field patrols – and there have already been a number of worrying outbreaks of ivory poaching in the Zambezi Valley.
On our final night the LCCSA members presented the Mana warden with vouchers for 600 litres of diesel – twice the station’s official monthly allocation.
It’s generous gestures like this, from concerned visitors and conservationists, that are keeping Mana going.

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Like Noah of old

Organised and run by Wildlife and Environment Zimbabwe (WEZ), the Mana Pools game count has been something of a Zimbabwean institution for the past seventeen years.
As it’s impossible to cover the park’s entire 2 000 km2 in two days, the count focuses mainly on the well-known Mana floodplains (or alluvial terraces) that flank much of Mana’s Zambezi frontage. This is where much of Mana’s wildlife gather in the dry season, as water dries up elsewhere in the park.
The floodplains comprise open woodlands with only occasional patches of thicket. It’s easy and safe to walk in the woodlands, given a few commonsense precautions. And it’s also easy to see and count the animals.
The area is divided into some 50 north-south transect lines, 500 m apart. Each team of 4-6 participants walks four transects during the two days, counting and recording the wildlife they spot within 250 m of their transect line.
Starting times are stipulated so that neighbouring teams keep pace with each other, reducing the likelihood of double counting.
The count provides an extremely useful index of overall population growth trends (whether they are growing, shrinking or static) that becomes increasingly valuable over the years. However, the count neither claims to be comprehensive, nor does it reflect the total number of any species in the park.