SAFARI - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 163

camps. The Bushcamp Company employs 170 staff members as well as seasonal workers.
The wages are the best in the area and the benefits are unusually generous. For the loc-
al staff at the lodge, Hogg pays $500 in education fees for one child in each family. Next
year he will pay the fees for two children per family. “In a remote area like this, it's hard to
make ends meet,” said Hogg.
The lodge also promotes the native fabric industry near the park, which in turn employs
dozens of locals. To prevent deforestation they underwrite a solar cooker project and a
large tree-planting program. “We started off paying the men to replace the trees. When
they didn't show up, the women came and said they would plant them for free. Now, the
kids at schools are volunteering to plant trees. Last year, they planted 7,000 trees.”
The company helps two local schools by renovating their buildings, sponsoring
orphans, buying school uniforms and supplies, paying teachers' salaries and, most import-
ant, sponsoring wildlife clubs for the kids. “The children learn about the wildlife as their
heritage. They come to the parks to see and get to know the animals. They draw them.
They bring their parents.”
The company has invested in local vegetable gardens and a beekeeping business, buy-
ing back the produce and the honey for the kitchens at the lodge and bush camps. These
programs are typical of high-end resorts in parks whose owners realized that the local com-
munity has to be part of any conservation program. “All of our investments in the company
and the community come to ten million dollars total over the years,” said Hogg.
Manda, the company's senior guide, drove me back to the lodge from the Kapamba
bush camp. He talked about his experience at South Luangwa, of his apprenticeship and
studies for the guide certificate, even the perils of his profession. “In one year—2002—a
hippo threw himself on top of three tourists. I got him off and they all survived. On another
walking tour a male elephant pushed some Americans into a dry riverbed. He trumpeted,
then ran away. Later that year an aging buffalo threatened a tourist. It was my worst year.”
That danger in the wild, which the human species has yet to conquer with its machines
and weapons, is as inspiring as the sunsets.
Beyond the park, Manda said he and the other guides are ambassadors of sorts to the
villages surrounding South Luangwa, bringing the children into the wild savannahs on
Land Rover tours. “The first time I brought the schoolchildren to the park, I nearly cried
that they had never seen a zebra ever even though they lived just outside the park.” We
slowed as, if on cue, two zebras trotted across the road.
“People see that as a guide I have earned enough money to build a house just outside
the park, with a borehole well, electricity and plumbing. People understand from this the
importance of tourism, of caring for the park,” he said.
All of this was brought into sharp perspective on my last morning tour in the park.
My fellow passengers in the Land Rover were three young Americans who served in the
Peace Corps in other parts of Zambia. Renee was from San Francisco, Adam from Read-