“We are very happy to be here,” Mr. Sibanda told our group.
In 2022, Mr Butcher joined with the leaders of NGAMO on a pilot project that introduced a different pair of white rhinos into a shrine that was much less than Mlevo: the shrine of Rhinoa ngamo Rhino 420 hectares. The goal was to prove that the villagers could protect animals and hang out with passengers.
A few years later, the project achieved both, with a total of more than 2500 foreign visitors, each paid up to $ 180 to see and walk with rhinos. So far, these fees have inserted about $ 100,000 into a common fund, which is a huge amount for a village that once relied on growing farming only and there is almost no money in circulation.
Now Ngamo has a medical clinic that serves 90 hosts. The outside market sells local handicrafts: tapestry, baskets and decorations carved with nuts with nosor engraved on their sides. The school now has a roof and the Ngamo Lions football club plays on the field nearby. Mlevo, on the other hand, has none of that – except for the school that deeply need repairs. Still, it may soon, thanks to the new rhinos, will.
“Everyone wants to see a big five is nosoroci, which creates an opportunity to enter the villages,” Mazayi Moyo, head and carpenter in Ngamo told me as we talked in his kitchen. His wife, Siphiwe, sat next to him under the earthen shelves, holding neat ranks of yellow plates and blue cups. “Everyone benefits,” Mr. Moyo said.
Running with cobra
Over the next few days, I did some traditional safari activities from my base near Bomania, and several non -traditional ones.
