24 — IRIS BREEMAN

It sort of felt like 24 the series, with me starring as Jack Bauer. In 40 degrees heat that is. On arrival in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, a driver from African Parks awaits us at the luggage belt. We are rushed to a hotel where carry all our bags up the stairs. Will we ever learn to request a ground floor room?

In daylight, our hotel in N’Djamena is a mixture of Arabic (shape), Greek (blue and white) with the funny name Chez Wou, explaining the large amount of Chinese in the hotel. A 40 metre long swimming pool seems a bit out of place but is nonetheless welcome. After breakfast, on our way to head into town, the phone rings. Who is it? The receptionist mentions a name I don’t recognise; ‘Il a ici pour votre collection’. That’s French for ‘there’s someone here to pick you up’. An hour and a half later we’ve done a meet and greet at the AP office and we’re ready to go. The pilot collects us. ‘No, not that’, referring to our 100kg of luggage, ‘I’ll take that next time. Take only what you need for 24hrs.’. For some reason the only thing we think we really need, are our cameras.

We fly with Nick, an American who - to chip in what he can to save elephants - flies conservation projects a few months a year. Elephant census in DRC, Mozambique... At the moment, he’s the Zakouma Operation relief pilot.

The Cessna 182 he flies he refers to as ‘one happy puppy’ and he’s anxious for us not to get sick. I have bad record and circumstances are far from ideal. It’s the middle of the day, the air gets hot and turbulence is imminent. The flight is 3 hours and I’m not sure motion sickness pills will help. He assures us he can open a window for some fresh are. For him it’s an unusual situation: ‘I usually fly with the doors off!’.

From the air Ndjamena looks like any African small town. Probably a bit bit bigger than Maun, but it does look alike: limited tarmac, square plots. The big lakes of water stand out.

As I get off the plane, chuffed for having survived, a guy who’s name I don’t hear in the noise of the plane introduces himself. I tell him I’m so happy to have arrived after all this time... ‘This isn’t Zakouma, you’ve still got an hour and a half to go. This is the middle of nowhere!’. The middle of nowhere is Siniaka, a huge area to the West of Zakouma that African Parks is exploring. After stashing our 4th passenger (and his luggage) in the plane we take off, ‘critically overweight’ and I spend a good half an hour thinking what I would throw out off the plane in case we need to loose weight. And in which order.

As we continue the incredibly beautiful landscape stands out. It’s much greener and there is a lot more water than I expected. Seeing the first giraffes down below (and perhaps the relief of knowing I’ll be on solid ground soon) has me bursting into tears. As we land Nick opens the plane window, I can smell wild herbs and grasses and the scent of drying mud. Again my eyes get wet. As we pull into the driveway to the hangar of the headquarters of Zakouma I see lion tracks next to the plane. I’m now close to sobbing.

Park Manager (and therefore our boss) Leon welcomes us. After offloading the plane, pushing it into the hangare and refuelling it for the next day we all drive to Tinga, the other (but different camp in Zakouma). The landscape is stunning and the sunset is mindblowing. We meet Tinga’s managers and our predecessor at Camp Nomade, Matthieu, who very kindly came all the way from Paris to hand over to us. Scops Owls and Pearl-Spotted Owlet are all around.

At 2AM I wake up to the sound of distant lion calls. An hour later, and repetitively, closer and closer until it feels like they’re on our porch.

This is going to be good.

Love,

Iris