Cultivating loyalty at Sabi Sabi

Posted on 8 March 2012

Day five: I’m sitting at a table in Jos Max’s Pub, overlooking the bridge by the entrance to the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. Something large-ish is rustling in the reeds, a chainsaw is whirring somewhere, clearing flood jetsam no doubt (every river crossing in the Timbavati is alive with Caterpillars and water bowsers at the moment, and there seems to be an insurance assessor in every lodge, one of whom told me, ‘Santam isn’t too worried, because January’s storm was a once in 60 years event.’)

Since I last posted I’ve been to graceful Motswari Private Game Reserve, and today arrived at rugged Umlani Bushcamp in Timbavati —I’m horribly behind my delivery schedule, in other words. It’s not for want of trying — Motswari’s wireless was on and off, something to do with elephants apparently, and Umlani’s entire office, including the wireless router, perished in a recent fire. Dave the Umlani manager kindly let me use his home laptop but we were disturbed by a terrified cry from outside the kitchen, signalling the appearance of a large vine snake, which we spent an hour photographing. It was time for Dave to work after that so I decamped for the afternoon only to come up against fresh connectivity enigmas at Jos Max’s … sigh.

Technology isn’t totally to blame, however. I’ve admittedly been dribbling around my obligation to write about the FTTSA credentials of the lodges I’ve been visiting. Why? Well, as a colleague who has been reading the blog pointed out, ‘sartorial camp’ is the ideal tone for bushveld missives, but it’s a decidedly odd and probably inappropriate to effect when discussing employment conditions. I’ve drafted a few bits and pieces describing a certain lodge’s ecological sensitivity, the developmental ethics of another, but what stares back at me when I’m finished is, ‘See the Oompah Loompahs, see how happy they are, going about their merry work’.

There are also matters of approach to get right: how, for example, to interrupt a trackers’ disquisition on the mating techniques of the giraffe with questions about job satisfaction? The easiest FTTSA principles to tick off, as it were, are the environmental injunctions: reduce consumption of water and energy. Reduce, reuse and recycle waste. Conservation of biodiversity and natural resources.

I felt certain that Sabi Sabi had these nailed the moment I saw the bits of straw protruding from the room walls. Of course ‘environmentally sensitive’ and ‘environmentally friendly’ are potentially two very different things (an environmentally sensitive lodge need only blend into the environment, whereas an environmentally friendly one might aspire to, say, off-grid self-sustainability). Sabi Sabi Earth Lodge seems a better fit for the former category, but suffice it to say: they reuse and recycle. With regard to veld custodianship our game ranger, Jaap, was a paragon of modern environmental sensibilities, guarding against erosion by avoiding roads that had been built across seep lines (areas where non-porous shelves of rock connect with the soil surface, causing the sand to weep non-stop).

Sabi Sands Private Game Reserve is not a particularly big reserve but it’s a busy one, and rangers have to be in constant communication to avoid turning a lion pride sighting into a camera carnival. As far as I can make out this has given rise to an entirely new language, a sort of bare bones funigalore (the language of the mines in colonial times), except here the objective is not so much to enable all comers to participate in the same conversation as it is to shut non-south africans out of conversations concerning the Big Five.

The reason is simple: if a leopard is spotted too far away for it to be of interest to the ranger, and that news reaches the ears of a leopard-hungry group of tourists via the radio, the ranger could have a mutiny on his hands (try telling the property developer from Jersey, now living with a view of central park, that he can’t have the leopard he’s paying 10’000 bucks a day to see.)
The language, or code, which is actually called ‘Game Ranger’, seems partially informed by the vernacular of the military patrol. It’s part Shangaan, part sports-jock English. So, a male elephant drinking at a certain water hole becomes ‘madoda ndlovu sipping high tea at mvovo.’ A leopard on the move through heavy bush becomes ‘ingwe famba-ing west through makhulu shateen’, whereas a leopard up a tree near the boundary fence, being viewed by one Land Rover, a near perfect sighting photographically speaking, becomes ‘ingwe static in cut line tambotie thicket, one in the lock, easily four out of five.’ Being fair to humans is vastly more complicated than being fair to the environment, however, and the game viewing industry is hobbled by a history that saw human communities unfairly replaced with animals. Addressing this is a critical national challenge but quite how the riddle will eventually be solved, and what constitutes the proper degree of responsibility that individual agricultural and tourism businesses should be taking of their own volition, is not yet clear to me, or to anyone.

In the meantime giving staff a fair deal and encouraging and assisting them to better themselves is the progressive standard, and it’s one Sabi Sabi is clearly serious about meeting. While I was there I met rangers who started as gardeners, managers who started as gardeners, barmen who started as gardeners. ‘It’s my home, there are no closed doors here’ says Ellon, a barman, whereas George, a waiter with almost 40 years experience says he has never worked for a better company. And here’s an interesting detail: the white rangers and managers, most of whom hail from Johannesburg and Pretoria, work for Sabi Sabi for one and half to two years on average, and then move on to other lodges or return to city life. Sabi Sabi’s black rangers and managers, on the other hand, are in it for the gold watch. Fairness aside, cultivating that kind of loyalty is just good business sense, so hats off to the businesses that are doing it.

 

To read more about FTTSA and see a list of all certified businesses go to www.fairtourismsa.org.za or join FTTSA on Facebook. 

To receive a quote or book a vehicle with Avis go to www.avis.co.za






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