Tuli Wilderness Tour

Outdoor Education at St Stithians College is an incredible opportunity for our students to learn about the environment and their impact on it. Through camp and curriculum activities, we aim to develop globally responsible citizens who give back and make a positive difference in our interconnected world!

During the August Holidays it has become something of a Boys’ College tradition to embark on the Tuli Adventure Tour to Botswana. This area offers a truly wild experience with unfenced camps, breath-taking landscapes and the elemental experiences that come about as a result of being so close to nature.

Mr Hartley and Mr Watson accompanied a group of eleven boys on what was to become a very memorable experience, hosted by Tuli Wilderness. We were blessed when it came to sightings, seeing cats on every game drive, often getting very close to them using the open game vehicles. We also had close encounters with elephants at camp, slept under the stars, walked up the mountainous Eagle’s Rock and enjoyed the varied landscapes from the giant trees lining the Limpopo to the stark mopane semi-desert. Three stand-out sightings were a dusk viewing of a very rare Pel’s Fishing Owl and watching a female leopard languish in the sun for more than an hour. The once-in-a-lifetime experience, however, was watching six sub-adult lions flush a honey badger which resulted in a snarling battle with the badger coming up trumps.

We are blessed to have places like this on our doorstep and the tour will definitely be a highlight in the schooling memories for the group that attended. Tuli is an amazing part of Southern Africa, and the ancient trees that tell its story inspired the following poem, attributed to the Ana Tree that line many of the riverbank of the area:

Ana Tree
By Courtney Watson

The patience of a tree
Growing in seasons
With each twist of bark
And stretching limb
Like a living map:
A history  of a world
That is wrapped up
By her own leaves.

The curl of an elephant trunk
That bendbreaks a branch
Into the artistry
Of a new path,
Making her a river
That is channeled
By the animals
She feeds.

She bears the crusts
Of muddy wallows
Rubbed like paint
Under her fingernails of bark
Coloured like the Limpopo:
Holding with them
The smiling scratch
Of warthog generations.

Her fingerprint patterns
Of aged wrinkles
Tell the history
Of drought and flood,
When she drops
Pods and leaves
To sustain
Impala and baboon.

Fish Eagles throw their
Calls up, up to the sun
From the arms of her canopy
While Fishing Owls
Hide their golden feathers
Like a secret
In the dark shadows
Of her fingers.

The claw marks
Of dappled leopards
Are scratched into her trunk
As the memories of meals
That are dragged
Into the cover
Of her strongest branches:
Food for a feline legacy.

The colours of birds
Find nests and refuge
And family
Among the nests
That she cups in her hands
Or are holed up
In the softer places
Of her skin.

She is a mother
To wild sons and daughters
With feathers and fur and claws.
That suckle from her branches.
She speaks wisdom
Into the wind
With a patience
That grows in seasons.

#HappyFulfilment #MakingAWorldOfDifference #PassionDriven #PurposeInspired