Exploring opportunities in Jinka & Mago National Park

Met the tourism head the next day, planned my trip to Mago National Park to meet the park scouts and they gave me one of the staff as a translator. Managed to persuade them to let me use the parks vehicle luckily, left the next day, bought the usual limited food from the market and a cooking pot, travelled to Mago and set up camp in the scout camp with my little yellow mobile home tent. Trying not to think about the total lack of air to breathe in my tent (it was 45 degrees that day) and my sweaty state I was pretty comfortable with my new inflatable mattress which was the best investment ever. Farewell inflatable lilo! 

Next morning, 7am, started with what became a 6 hour meeting with the park scouts. We talked about Mago National Park, it’s issues and all the different tribes surrounding it. Really fascinating. The idea was for me to learn about all the challenges and identify the most problematic tribes and areas impacting the park from a conservation perspective. We got out my map and marked out a few key places. It was concluded that the Hamer tribe are putting the most pressure on this park and they would love someone to start working with them to tackle some of the problems. They just haven’t got the resources to do everything they want within the park let alone outside it. I went for a drive that evening to look around, saw a buffalo and some antelope but that was about it. Was a lovely place though but wildlife has been seriously depleted.