Life around the waterhole

 

Subject: Life around the waterhole.


It's another world as we zoom into and focus on a system of water holes in various South African game parks. It's certainly a very different world from a world of cosmopolitan concrete and tarmac.
The program, on channel 91 is a simple open feed television program exposing the African bush, not as a Attenborough  style BBC World Planet program with all its marvellous film and human interpretation instead we watch a much more laid back version, the animals, the elephants, the zebra the wild dogs and hyena, the timid deer and birds  raising their chicks with the scene changes dependant on which waterhole is being screened. The folksy knowledgable dialogue from the guides reminds me of a more simplistic rapport amongst of the wildlife loving men and women who devote their lives to living in the bush. There's no slick communicator just a steady unhurried immersion into a way of life far far away from our office routine or the building site.
The program is screened on channel 91 of the ‘free to air’ service here in the Uk.
We watch the pecking order as the animals come down to drink, elephants aloof because of their size and temperament, water buffalo by nature grouchy and unpredictable, the elegant giraffe delicately unstable as it copes with its long neck and long legs having to reach the water, the cheetahs with their spectacular markings that most feline of the cats, the wild dogs and hyena furtively slink into space which numbers ensure is their’s, the hippo suddenly breaking surface of the water with a huge jaw full of teeth to remind all but the most powerful who’s terrain this is. Springbok, antelope and gazelle daintily pick their way around respectful of their place and always conscious of being under a predators gaze.
The summer heat has been higher than normal this year and one is left with the conclusion that as the water level falls and these holes dry up a life and death struggle of a different kind will ensue.