When in Africa, you’ll often hear passing references to Zimbabwe’s famed hospitality, and there’s nowhere that you’d appreciate it more than at the iconic World Heritage Site of Victoria Falls. Everyone smiles warmly and greets you like an old friend, they’re all genuinely delightful. How could they not be, living in such magnificence.

A 15-minute drive in an air-conditioned minibus transported me from Victoria Falls Airport to The Elephant Camp, Zimbabwe’s ultimate luxury canvas lodge. It’s exclusive, peaceful, and very high-end, and located in a private wilderness concession within the Victoria Falls National Park.

Next to Botswana, Zimbabwe has the second-largest population of elephants in the world.

The camp itself is exquisite. There are 16 luxury tented suites, each looking onto the cliffs that plummet to the boiling Zambezi River below. In the distance, the silver-grey spray of Victoria Falls presents an impossibly majestic backdrop to the definitive African adventure.

On arrival I gratefully accepted a refreshing eucalyptus-doused towel and cold welcome drink, then let my eyes take it all in.

The main communal tent holds The Elephant Camp’s sumptuous lounge and dining area. Modern luxury in no way detracts from the true safari experience. The white tented roof, wooden decks and African artefacts mirror that of nature’s paprika-coloured soil, the dark chocolate hues of tree trunks, and crisp white clouds. Think crystal glasses, leather luggage, wooden trunks, canvas, shining brass chandeliers strung from the cathedral ceiling, casting a soft gold light over the Victorian sofas, chairs and detailed finishes – complete with a lofted deck to take in the grandeur of Africa and the waterhole. They’ve surpassed all levels of modern luxury and conjured up an era of Victorian frontier camping.

The Elephant Camp, was nominated as Zimbabwe’s Leading Tented Safari Camp.

Walking into my accommodations (Room 12) I feel the presence of a genuine bygone colonial Africa. A giant four-poster bed with cascades of mosquito netting, a footed and deep-set luxury Victoria & Albert bathtub, a private viewing deck, a stone-floored outdoor shower, a plunge pool, and a bed under the stars on a raised platform! All this with panoramic views of the cliffs of the Zambezi Batoka Gorge, and of the Milky Way. Modern technology is carefully hidden with USB charging ports on either side of the bed, and fibre optic Wi-Fi which runs throughout the camp.

Within easy reach of Victoria Falls, yet secluded on its own game reserve, The Elephant Camp does community and conservation-focused activities including an elephant experience and a visit to the Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust. There are boundless photographic opportunities, plus game drives, at dusk and dawn. But if you really must, adrenaline-fueled adventures are available.

Before sunrise I’m driven to a lookout point where I stood at the edge of a precipice, an enormous, deeply carved crevice torn into the earth’s crust, exposing the raging Zambezi River 120 meters below. I’m mesmerized, witnessing the incredible power of nature so blatantly displayed.

On the way back my guide brings the vehicle to an abrupt halt. He’s seen something in the sand – a large lion footprint. He’s an expert tracker that could spot a fly at a thousand yards. He can look at the ground and see, written in the sand, the history of all the animals that had passed that way, and from the shift in the landscape, where they were heading.

Baobab trees like fat red ballet dancers, bigger than buses, and older than Christ,
clung onto the edge of the ravine.

Following a late afternoon waterhole visit, when the edge of Africa’s heat dissipates and the shadows of the mopane trees lengthen, my guide found a picturesque sundowner spot. I settled into a camping chair and watched the sun slowly sink below the horizon, with stars creeping into the crimson and tangerine sky long before it descended. This was the perfect location for contemplating the majesty of the intuitive and magnificent giants I’d been watching and who’d touched my soul.

Once darkness set in, we returned to camp for a fine-dining Afrocentric taste journey that was both wild and exciting. After dessert, diners gravitated to the sunken firepit and swapped captivating safari stories around a blazing fire.

It’s more than opulence or the linen’s thread count. Here it’s about Zimbabwean hospitality, seclusion and exclusivity, all of which has no measure. When you leave The Elephant Camp, a big piece of your soul will stay behind.

W: The Elephant Camp

Africa’s Medicine Man

The heat is intense. So too are the many faces sitting outside the tiny, thatched hut in Mpisi Village, on the outskirts of Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls. No one appeared to be discouraged by the queue. They’re waiting to seek a cure for their ailments with Melusi Mpisi Ndlovu, a proud Ndebele tribesman, and one of the world’s most distinguished traditional healers.

The ‘Chief’, as Ndlovu is commonly referred to, is surrounded by wooden bowls filled with an assortment of herbs, twisted plant roots, and strips of tree bark. The elderly gentleman in front of me had a cut that wouldn’t heal, someone else had a swollen ankle, and a lethargic child complained of headaches.

For poor Zimbabweans, there’s nowhere else to go. Traditional medicines are their first and last defence against diseases that wreak havoc on their lives. Even though Western medicine is recognised in Africa, it has not substituted but rather supplemented the ethnic health approach. Thus, practitioners like Ndlovu remain central to the lives of many.

Ndlovu is a charismatic and distinguished medicine man known throughout Africa as a traditional healer, and internationally famed in the alternative medicine field. His wisdom has been sought twice by the late Queen of England, and the British House of Lords. He regularly consults with major British and American pharmaceutical companies on cancer cures but also opposes their attempts to patent traditional African herbal medicines.

Prestigious universities send PhD students to learn of his snakebite cures, the Red Cross too called on him to remedy a Cholera epidemic in central Africa, and he regularly hosts specialist doctors and associate professors who stay in the humble village of Mpisi for weeks on end, talking shop about herbal remedies, learning his remedies.

Ndlovu has no formal education, yet he’s sophisticated. He’s sharp-witted but without malice. There’s a gentleness about him that I’d almost forgotten could exist in a man. You’d guess his age to be around 45. Yet, on enquiry, I learned he was born in 1944. “Here, in Mpisi”, he says, “the average villager lives to see the age of 100. Currently, our most senior citizen is 119.”

He explains that before the arrival of modern medicine, traditional treatment once protected and restored the health we all enjoyed. It plays an important role in the developing world, with many cancer patients using old traditional remedies as primary therapy.

“Traditional herbal medicine,” he continues, “is found in naturally occurring plant and animal-based substances, which has minimal to no industrial processing. People consult traditional healers whether or not they can afford modern medicines. It’s a belief system, integral to the lives of most Africans.”

“People forget all the indigenous knowledge we have, and now they’re enslaved to civilisation. The same civilisation that planted these healing roots, yet they don’t extract from them. God will judge me if people are suffering. It is my duty to capacitate them so that they can heal themselves so that they can have a good life, a healthy life, and a long life!”

As is the case with the Ndlovu, knowledge of traditional medicine has been passed down through generations, mainly orally, and mostly without substantive documentation.

For the next hour he speaks of anticancer agents found in plants and some of those he uses: Taxol (bark extract) for the treatment of breast, ovarian and lung cancer; Vincristine (rose periwinkle) for leukaemia, Hodgkin’s disease, lymphoma, rhabdomyosarcoma (soft tissue tumours), neuroblastoma (cancer that forms in nerve tissue) and Wilms’ tumours; Etoposide (mayapple plant) for testicular, prostate, bladder, stomach and lung cancer; Irinotecan (tree stem) for colon and small cell lung cancer; and Topotecan (tree bark) for cervical cancer. Ndlovu went on to explain his preparations and how its administered – depending on the plant and which parts are being used, sometimes it’s an ointment, or taken orally, inhaled, mixed with food, or macerated into a drink.

“There is only one time of absolute silence: halfway between the dark of night and the first light of day. All animals and crickets fall into profound silence as if pressed quietly by the deep blackness of night. This is when unnatural sounds startle you awake. This silence is how I know it is not yet dawn nor is it the middle of the night, but the place of no-time, when all things sleep most deeply and when their guard is dozing. And this is when I collect my plant medicines.”

Ndlovu’s face becomes folded and deep. “There are some things Western medicine cannot fathom. You see, doctors who train in Western sciences, focus only on the biomedical causes of disease. We traditional healers have a holistic approach. Some divine the cause of an illness by throwing bones and listening to the channelled curative advice of dead ancestors. Whilst others, like me, have in-depth knowledge of plant materials and their various healing powers.”

Before daybreak I tiptoed out of my hut and stood quietly for a while, trying to read the mist smudged darkness. In the distance a shape drifted silently out of the bush – it was Ndlovu, returning from his predawn plant gathering, ladened with baskets containing herbs, roots, tree bark, and possibly the cure to someone’s cancer.

We said farewell and shook hands in the traditional African way – first like Westerners do, then switching by grasping hold of each other’s thumbs – two movements instead of one. Ndlovu turned his head to the sky, “Today is a good day to be African.”

Written by Cindy-Lou Dale for Luxury Safari Magazine