2025 is the 10th anniversary of the refurbishment of one of our lodges in the Kafue National Park.
The Kafue River Lodge is situated on the banks of its namesake river, in the North East section of this world famous park.
At twenty two and a half thousand square kilometers, the park is the second largest in Africa, large enough to encompass a whole unique eco-system, the wide open grassy Busanga plains. But this huge protected area is not all, there are further game management areas surrounding the park to give a combined protected area of sixty six thousand square klicks, the size of Belgium.
In 2014 following a reorganization, we entered into a partnership with Paul Barnes, an adventurous young Englishman who had come out to Africa a decade before, right after high school and has stayed ever since.
Initially Paul took over Pioneer lodge, a stop-over destination on the edge of Lusaaka. Later he formed a mobile safari operation, ‘The Zambia Safari Company’, and has become one of the most knowledgeable, best known and respected operators in the country. Thus he was a perfect fit to take over and start managing the combined operations. Today, with Paul’s knowledge and the facilities at hand, our combined safaris reach almost every corner of the country and even beyond.
In 2014 we decided to build a more substantial lodge infrastructure. This is because the rains arrive in the summer in this part of Africa and as such the roads and dirt game viewing tracks in much of the National Park become impossible due to the mud and almost certainty of getting stuck, hence most of the camps shut down for the rainy season from the end of November through to the beginning of March. As such many of the parks lodges comprise of tented camps and grass built structures, which are set up, or rebuilt every season.
However in the 2010’s a main artery joining the two regional centers of Mumbwa and Kasempa was significantly upgraded, makeign it possible to easily reach our Kafue River Lodge in the wet season.
We decided to refurbish our Kafue River Lodge with chalets and communal structures that would provide comfort to visitors in the wetter offseason, having a brick and mortar permanence and a much larger footprint for comfort,. This would be available to both low and regular season visitors. The result was a multi month project building 4 new chalets
To appreciate the difficulty of such a project, one must remember that the lodge is approximately 120 kilometres from the nearest shop offering groceries, let alone building supplies. For those, we had to reach further afield by factors of tens, or even hundreds of kilometers. Thatching straw from Choma, Poles from Monzi or Lusaka, sand from Kasempa, Banboo struts from closer to Solwezi.
It was also more efficient to bring machinery and tools to the site which could make some of the items used in the construction; Lathes, grinders, sanders, saws, forms, generators.
Paul look for a candidate who could and would take on such a challenge. He found the perfect person in Andrew MacKay, the son of a Zimbabwe farmer. He had attended and studied art at Falcon College, one of Central Africa’s most prestigious schools, and later continued those studies under Andrew Bone, the wold famous wildlife artist.
Our Andrew wanted to build a special lodge. And he did.
Andrew was newly married with an out going young German wife and a two year old baby
They committed to moving out to the kafui for several months, to live in the single room office with its lack of comforts while the work commenced and progressed.
Andrew recruited a work force of several tens of hardy individuals. They had to cut down big ant-hills, and flatten the ground for the foundations next to big trees,so that the future chalets would shelter in their shade.
The concrete had to be hand mixed and poured, the bricks set in forms and dried, septic pits dug, logs barked and cured, planks cut and planed, door frames and windows shaped and nailed or screwed together.
Slowly all the ingredients started to come together to fashion one of the most picturesque camps on the Kafui River and in the park in general
The building activity of course raised the curiosity of those in the vicinity, not so much human, rather than of the animals. It wasn’t unusual for the folks working to wake up to see the tracks of line which had wandered through the building site during the night, or those of the hippo as they left the river to graze in the bushland beside the river.
Now, after 10 years of operations, the lodge hasn’t changed much from those early days after its construction. All its charm is waiting to be rediscovered by curious visitors interested in discovering this unique and special part of Africa.
David Maritz 