Where Baboons Steal Bread and Stories are Born

One of the most inspirational places we have been to is South Luangwe National Park in Zambia. Not only is the park absolutely spectacular in terms of both landscape and wildlife, but we were fortunate enough to stumble upon a marvellous camp called Wildlife Camp. On the Luangwe River, literally across from the National Park, it gave us weeks of being able to sit in front of a fire, looking across the river while elephant, baboons and warthogs roamed around us. That’s not even mentioning the hippos and crocs and the local leopard who snuck nightly visits to see if we were dumb enough to maybe leave our door open? Large herds of various antelope attracted packs of wild (painted) dogs, and many a night welcomed the incessant and thrilling roar of the mighty lion.

There is no sunset like an African sunset

 I wrote two of our books there, and honestly, if it didn’t get so hot I would still be there, writing another. There are both baboons and vervet monkeys who hang out all day long – which means hours and hours of entertainment, and also lock up your veggies/fruit/cups/absolutely everything including a potato wrapped in foil which they dug out of the fire the minute we had our backs turned.  I know they annoy a lot of campers, but honestly, I absolutely love them all, even when they steal my last loaf of bread. And eat it right in front of you with a bit of a glint in their eye.

I wrote Book 4: The Baboons because of that camp and the troop that lives there. The game that Henry (dad baboon) plays with his twins was inspired by watching how adept even the youngest baboon was at jumping onto their parent’s back, even on the go. Evelyn, the young one-armed baboon was inspired by a young baboon that had only arm in the troop at Wildlife Camp, and although it didn’t seem to hold her back any, she did seem to be alone more often than some of the other baboons. I wondered often if she was lonely, or felt isolated and ‘different’ like us humans would feel, and, well, I kinda think she probably did. I couldn’t do anything for her, but I could for my one-armed baboon, Evelyn, who sang to a baby leopard and was instrumental in bringing peace between the two species. That’s the joy of the Casperverse – a place where baboons and leopards can be friends, and I get to pretend I know what I’m doing.

I guess I wasn't the only one watching this little acrobatic baby baboon