Drawn from the Plains: Life in the Wilds of Namibia and Mocambique

Lynne Tinley and her husband Ken, who is one of the leading ecologists in Africa, have devoted many years to a race against time. On the Etosha Pan, in the isolated and spectacular wildernesses of Namibia, and later on the other side of the continent at Gorongosa in Mocambique, they set out to gather information which was urgently needed if the natural ecological balances of these and other African parks and reserves were to be preserved. Living in the wilderness they discovered a wealth of wonders. Sketching this far-off world of risk and hardship in words and pictures Lynne conveys images of great beauty, controversial biology, anthropology and veld humour. Moreover she provides a vivid and entertaining account of how to raise a boy and girl in the bush. Together the family survives terrorist raids, charging hippo, elephant and lion, rabid dog bites, baboon spiders, gaboon vipers, acid-shooting beetles, alcoholic snails, dangling camel membranes, and the Fat Mouse. They eat elephant trunk Portuguese-style and termites cooked by bushmen. From Otjovasandu-"The place where the elephants come through"-to the wind-swept desert pan at Okaukuejo, to the Cheringoma Plateau, through burning midday mirage and freezing lion-roaring, baboon-sobbing nights, with great sensitivity and fatalism, and an eye for the peculiarities of those who live to survive in the outer reaches, Lynne Tinley records an incredible, fast-moving period of human and animal history. Peter Beard Long Island, New York (written at the Nahoon River Mouth, South Africa in 1979)