Eco-Tourism: Investing in Paradise

Eco-Tourism: Investing in Paradise

A Tale Of Two Safaris

by Linda Shah

Luangwa Valley, Zambia

The bush camp lies camouflaged in the tawny winter grasslands that whisper and bend across the Southern Africa veld. Like everything else in Zambia's remote Luangwa Valley, the four grass structures that serve as rooms at the Chinzombo bush camp, are an integral part of a delicately balanced eco-system which even the most casual visitor cannot fail to perceive. It is a place where tamarind tree and thorn bush, lion pride and buffalo herd, tribal village and Safari lodge, national government and ancient system of chiefs and kings, are bound together in a dance of conservation and survival. I arrived on my first African safari at the small cluster of grass huts after a day of walking through shoulder high grass and thorny bush. Zambia is known to have created the walking Safari. Edson Tembo, Director of the Zambia Tourist Office in New York is a tireless advocate of the benefits of this kind of Safari, not merely for the preservation of wildlife. That goes without saying. He is also a fierce advocate of the economic benefits to Southern Africa of tourism - and wildlife is Southern Africa’s greatest touristic resource.

Before leaving New York, Tembo suggested that, in addition to enjoying myself, I explore the opportunities for investing in his beloved country. "As soon as I retire," he told me. "I’m going to go in with a group of small investors I know to build a beautiful new Safari lodge."

According to the US Tourism and Travel Agency of the Department of Commerce, Tourism is the second largest industry in the world after oil. Countries that have recently become successful in tourism, like Turkey and Jamaica, attribute a large share of their gross domestic product to foreign visitors.

Africa, particularly Southern Africa, is like America at the turn of the Century where there are government land grants just so long as the purchaser agrees to develop it.

Tembo, who studied tourism marketing in London and has lived in New York for six years, is dreaming of developing a tract of land he has obtained under a government program that grants land to people who will build and operate lodges in this still unspoiled wilderness.

The walking safari had taken our group of six, from the Chinzombo Safari Lodge at the edge of Zambia's Luangwa National Park, to this outpost where we were to spend the night. We were accompanied only by our guide, Daot, and an armed tracker, Simon. Together they enabled us to examine even the smallest details of daily life in the wild: families of warthogs scurrying into the brush at the sound of our footsteps, groups of young impalas who dueled playfully with their antlers, vultures sailing over a distant kill. At one point, we came face to face with the huge hulk and anxious eyes of a 4 ton buffalo, at the tail end of a great migrating herd.

The bush-camp, though hardly more substantial than a clump of reeds, was a welcoming sight in the African twilight, as night birds began to scream and a blood-red sun lingered in the branches of a baobab tree. Since the Zambian government prohibits any permanent structures in Tourism is the second largest industry in the world, after oil, the game parks, the entire camp can be razed in a few hours...including the roofless bath suite where the shower water was heated over a charcoal fire. Though it was made entirely of grass, my room was full of hand painted rugs, wall hangings, and hand crafted amenities. The kitchen was beside the huts in a traditional fenced-in Boma, and we exclaimed in amazement over the filet mignon and venison casserole that emerged from the charcoal fire accompanied by a selection of wine and champagne.

That night, as we dawdled over cognac and listened to Daot's repertoire of personal "Just-So" stories, a pair of elephants sauntered across the clearing, and later as we slept a pride of lions audibly chanted their presence near our huts.

I had come to Africa find learn more about Eco-Tourism, a much misunderstood word of conservationists and tour operators alike - neither of whom seem to mean quite the same thing. Each day on my walking safari, with stories of Rwanda as a chilling backdrop, I became more conscious of the opportunity for tourism to become a part of Africa's rural economy, not only for the sake of endangered rhinos and elephants, but for the most endangered species of all - humankind.

Chinzombo is located along a stretch of the Luangwa River that borders one of the handful of Zambia’s 19 national parks that is used for tourism.

Zambia is trying to re-stake its claim as a desirable place to invest. For my personal but unscientific case study, I selected three vastly different locations: wild and dramatic Luangwa Valley Game Park in Zambia at one end of the spectrum, the elegant Phinda Nature Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, at the other end of the spectrum, and the soul-inspiring Masai Mara in Kenya as the third.

My Chinzombo hosts insisted that I meet their 87 year old neighbor, Norman Carr, author of four books on Africa and the first game warden of Zambia's parks when it was still Northern Rhodesia. As we sipped tea over the deep ravine of the Luangwa river, Norman drew a stark contrast with earlier breeds of conservationists, like Diane Fossey whose war against Rwandan game poachers was often brutal and pitted the value of man against that of wildlife. "People come here and get quite emotional about wildlife, and they're surprised that some people see it otherwise," Norman told me. "Game is a great tourism resource. For the people who have lived here for centuries, game was something to eat - something that provides protein - something that harms crops and raids cattle - and more recently an export item. I realized early on, when I first managed the country's parks that game was fast being obliterated, and the only course to follow was to make sure that the profit from conserving wildlife was greater than hunting and killing it. That is the intention of Eco-tourism." Many of Zambia's current policies - a cap on development, the unique walking safari, incorporating tribal authorities into the tourism sector - can be attributed to Norman Carr's personal lobbying of former President, Kenneth Kaunda, or K.K. as most Zambians call him. In fact, several of these policies have helped shape the thinking of parks even in the more developed South Africa, where the legacies of apartheid have left a 3rd world society locked in the embrace of an industrialized one. Few if any African Americans have invested in tourism, but it is a dream of Byron Lewis, chairman of Uniworld.

As we moved in single file through the grasslands, I discovered a place so silent that I still hear the sound the grass made as it closed about our legs, and I can sense its vivid perfume at nightfall. The tourists who arrived for average stays of about 3 or 4 days during the week I was there, came from all over the world. I went walking, or on game drives in the 9-seater Land Cruisers, with groups from Japan, India, England and the US.

Babette, co-manager of Chinzombo and a native New Yorker took me on a long three hour walk together with Simon who casually carried his gun slung over his shoulder, since we all hoped we might run into the prized experience of a walking safari, a pride of lions. We were skirting the shoals of the Luangwa river where hippos and crocodiles were as bathed all day and thrashed about in the brush throughout the cooler hours when they forage and hunted for food. As we walked, Babette described the tourism business.

Twice a year she visits Europe and the United States, where she maintains her home in Arizona, to market their property to tour operators. Otherwise, she remains in Luangwa Valley where she co-manages the Lodge’s operations from buying food at roadside markets to accompanying groups to one of the Bush Camps on a walking safari. "I was a tour operator and accompanied American groups to Africa. I fell in love with Zambia the very first time I visited and gradually devoted myself full time to Chinzombo. It is like investing in paradise," she said.

Of course, Zambia is still in a period of economic structural adjustment since it abandoned the Soviet Union style command economy it adopted when it won independence from Britain in 1964. Nevertheless, it has come far in the short period since its first democratic elections in 1991. To date, no major African American companies have invested in tourism.

The Africa Travel Association, among others, has been trying to change that by organizing conferences on tourism in Africa targeted at the African American market. It is a dream of Byron Lewis, chairman of Uniworld, which is # 4 on the BE 100 most successful Black companies to invest in South African tourism. Revlon has been a regular sponsor of the ATA’s events, utilizing that platform to establish distributor relations for their Afro-American product lines. The top hotel group from India, the Taj Group which runs such prize properties as the Lake Palace Hotel in India and their flagship, The Taj, in Bombay has taken the management contract for a hotel in Lusaka, as the government continues to seek investors to privatize their holdings - over 80% of Zambian industry.

With gorgeous Victoria Falls on Zambia’s border with Zimbabwe, Zambia lives up to its tourism marketing slogan: "The Real Africa". To understand how remote and picturesque this corner of Africa really is, one should remember that the archetypal discovery of Africa by the west - as in "Dr. Livingston, I presume" - occurred on the borders of the Zambezi River where the small city of Livingstone is the gateway to the Falls.

The talk of the Luangwa Valley when I was last there in 1995 was the recent arrival of a South African conservationist, John Varty, President of Conservation Corporation who owns and operates the Phinda Reserve, the site of my second safari (which MBN will cover next week.)

John arrived in the Valley in the company of a 1 year old lion cub named Xingala, which means "Little Hunter" in KwaZulu. Xingala, had been orphaned and found by John a few days after its birth, then raised as a pet. "When the day came to reintroduce Xingala into the wild," John said. "I chose the Luangwa Valley because it is one of the most remote and unspoiled game areas in all of Africa."

As tourism increases from its current level of 30,000 arrivals a year (vs. almost 1 million arrivals to Zimbabwe in 1995), Zambia is a market that can still offer incredible values, according to Edson Tembo. Taking a two-week vacation trip there, is a very enjoyable way to find out.