Game Count

I made my second visit to Liwonde National Park a few weekends ago, but this time I was actually doing work, helping with the annual game count. With the help of volunteers, every year all of the large animals including elephants, sable, impala, wharthogs, kudu, etc. are counted and logged in the records of the park service office.

I was glad to help for the weekend and had a really great time hiking and counting animals with some of my Peace Corps friends and armed park scouts. They were of course armed because some of the animals, elephants especially can be very dangerous if provoked.

I didn’t really see much on the hikes, but definitely enjoyed myself. The most exciting part of the trip was when our scouts spotted what they thought was a poacher in the forest. We snuck up on the supposed poacher, caught him and watched the scouts bring him into custody! We found out the next day that he probably wasn’t a real poacher and was likely released as soon as he was brought in. It was exciting nonetheless!