When writing my last blog entry, I forgot to mention the darker side of the prevalence of predation here in Kruger – the human side.

First a little background. Poverty in this part of Africa is quite high as I’m sure most of you know. The division between rich and poor is astronomical and the unemployment here often reaches 50% in some of the areas just outside of Kruger. Despite the poverty in this part of the country, there are people from Mozambique that want to come into South Africa to work the fruit harvests. (Mozambique forms the eastern border of the Kruger Park, and our tent is about 25-30 kilometers from the border). When fruit harvest time rolls around, illegal immigrants from Mozambique walk across the Lebombo mountains which form the eastern park border and walk across the Kruger Park from east to west. When they reach the western border of the park, they cut holes in the fence to get outside the park and hopefully find work picking fruit.

While walking across a mountain range (it’s more like really tall hills) sounds like the most challenging part to this story, that’s really only the beginning of their challenge. Once the immigrants get into Kruger, they must run the gauntlet of lions, elephants, buffalo, hippo, and other large, very cross creatures that must turn their walk into a fearful trek. This may be fine and good during the day when they are walking and the animals, especially lions, are at their laziest. But I can’t imagine what their nights must be like. Sleeping in trees to avoid lions. Walking during the night to avoid the heat of the day hoping you don’t run into a leopard out on the hunt. In constant fear of surprising elephants, rhinos, or buffalos which could end your dreams of a job to feed your family in short work.

This story was all kind of abstract to me until I was talking with one of our collaborators here who told me about some of her friends who work in the northern part of the park where a lot of the immigrants cross the Kruger. They say that every year many people walking from Mozambique lose their lives to lions and other predators in the park and that they can tell, on sight, whether or not a lion has killed and eaten a human. Supposedly the lions have a different look, a different air about them, after eating a person. Hearing that definitely spooked me a little and made the whole thing a little more real.

Well reality really set in, when we were working in the field the other day, far away from the camp or any other human habitation - I found a shoe. An old, ragged, tattered shoe, a cheap sneaker, that had been ripped apart at the seams. Just one shoe, nothing else. Maybe someone just lost a shoe while walking through the park to go pick fruit. It got torn up and just wouldn’t stay on anymore. Maybe the lone shoe has a more dramatic story to it. I don’t know. But I haven’t been able to forget the image of that shoe since. Every time the image pops into my head it reminds me of how poverty can drive people to do things that I can only imagine.