Last Chance to See

such a long time that they have evolved a range of ecological and behavioural differences. More importantly, the genetic differences are so great that scientists consider them to be separate subspecies and, consequently, believe they have lived apart for more than two million years. Nowadays, they are permanently separated by a thousand miles of African rain forest, woodland, and savannah.
    Without experience, the two animals are virtually impossible to tell apart, though the northern generally holds its head higher than its southern counterpart and their body proportions are also rather different.
    At the time of its discovery, the northern white was by far the commoner of the two. The southern white had been discovered nearly a century earlier, but by 1882 it was considered to be extinct. Then, at the turn of the century, a small population of about eleven animals was discovered in Umfolozi, Zululand. All the stops were pulled out to save them from extinction and, by the mid-Sixties, their number had increased to about five hundred. It was enough to begin translocating individuals to other parks and reserves and to other countries. There are now more than five thousand southern white rhinos throughout southern Africa, and they are out of immediate danger.
    The point is that we are not too late to save the northern white rhino from extinction.
    As the sun began to go down, we went and sat by the local hippos. At a wide bend in the river the water formed a deep,slow-moving pool, and lying in the pool, grunting and bellowing, were about two hundred hippopotamuses. The opposite bank was very high, so that the pool formed a sort of natural amphitheatre for the hippos to sing in, and the sound reverberated around us with such startling clarity that I don’t suppose there can be a better place in the whole of Africa for hearing a hippo grunt. The light was becoming magically warm and long, and we sat watching them for an hour, aglow with amazement. The hippos nearest to us watched with a kind of uncomprehending belligerence such as we had become used to at the airports in Zaïre, but most of them simply lay there with their heads up on their neighbours’ rumps, wearing huge grins of oafish contentment. I expect I was wearing something similar myself.
    Mark said that he had never seen anything like it in all his travels in Africa. Garamba, he said, was unique for the freedom it allowed you to get close to the animals and away from other people. There is, of course, another side to this. We heard recently that, a few weeks later, someone sitting in the exact same spot where we were sitting had been attacked and killed by a lion.
    That night, as I turned in, I discovered something very interesting. When I had first checked into my hut the day before, I had noticed that the mosquito net above the bed was tied up into a huge knot. I say “noticed” in the loosest possible sense of the word. It was tied up in a knot, and when I went to bed that night, I had to untie it to drape it over the bed. Further than that, I had paid no attention to it whatsoever.
    Tonight, I discovered why it is that mosquito nets get tied up into knots. The reason is embarrassingly simple, and I can hardly bear to admit what it is. It’s to stop the mosquitoes from getting into it.
    I climbed into bed and gradually realised that there were almost as many mosquitoes inside the net as outside. The action of draping the net over myself was almost as muchuse as the magnificent fence that the Australians built across the whole of their continent to keep the rabbits out when there were already rabbits on both sides of the fence. Nervously I shone my torch up into the dome of the net. It was black with mozzies.
    I tried to brush them out, and lost a few of them. I unhooked the net from the ceiling and flapped it vigorously around the room. That woke them up and got them interested. I turned the thing completely inside out, took it outside and flapped it about a lot more till it seemed that I had got rid of most of them, took it back into the room, hung it up, and climbed into bed. Almost immediately I was being bitten crazy. I shone my torch up into the dome. It was still black with mozzies. I took the net down again, laid it out on the floor, and tried to scrape the mosquitoes off with the edge of my portable computer, which the batteries had fallen out of, thus making it useful for little else. Didn’t work. I tried it again with the edge of my