As a child, the “staff only” and “no entry” signs in the Kruger National Park fascinated me. I wondered which wonderful things lay beyond them and who the lucky people were that got to live there.

Today, my family and I live behind a “staff only” sign and it truly is as fascinating as my younger self made it out to be. It’s not that our routines are different to anybody else’s normal day. We get up, drink coffee, deal with traffic on our way to work, work, get home after a long day, have dinner, read a bedtime story and go to bed. Pretty ordinary… but with a few twists.

Traffic, for example, comes in different shapes and sizes out here. Some days it’s a rhino roadblock. Others are a magnificent sunrise silhouetted with a giraffe strolling down the sidewalk. Zebra crossings are common, as are herds of elephants commuting from one Marula tree to another. While lionesses taking their kids to school is not an everyday sight, we’ve been late for work on a few occasions, stuck behind them as they use our roads as a catwalk. We often come across herds of buffalo and have, on one or two occasions, been unable to open the gate because they were grazing too close to the house.

Just last week, our house shook when, at about 4:00 am, a mighty roar crashed through the windows. That was followed by a few more and we could tell it was the two Gijima males making their way past the house, surveying their land. At sunrise, just as we were about to start our daily commute, the last roar of the night echoed through the morning mist. And sure enough, not 100 meters down the dusty road we found them, lazily doing their thing.

What a privilege it is to live behind a “staff only” sign. And how strange it must be for Carla, our super adorable 2-year-old, to think that this is normal.

Blog by Conrad Cooke (Bush Lodge Manager)