LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT OUR 4 NEW LIONS Part 1

Part 1 - Going to Ukraine to get them....                  (Lockdown Day 8)

We went to fetch them from Ukraine. I had made a list of what I needed to pack for the trip it sat alongside of lists of what we still needed to do to get the lion enclosures ready to house them. I had a Materials list of hardware and tools. I had, To Do lists, divided into Critical (cannot bring lions if not done), Must be done (but not absolutely vital it be done by us, if we ran out of time, possible to leave to Thokozane and James to do while we are away) and Will need to be done (has to happen but could be attended to once the lions were here). I had lists of who was to do what. I had lists of the what was to happen on the day of arrival and in what order it should happen. I had lists in my big black book and lists which I sent out to everyone concerned and lists printed to be placed in rooms or handed out to those who needed them.

Before we knew it, we were squeezing ourselves into a row of too closely spaced seats on a big bellied airplane readying itself to fly to Istanbul. Line flies often and has flown to countries I had previously suspected didn’t actually exist outside of movies; but I am not a frequent flyer. I am a cat lady who lives on a mountainside with lions and sees shopping in the little town of Harrismith as a once a month ordeal. We were travelling with, but sitting in the row behind, Anton and Jasmine the film makers from Clawed Hat Films who were both our friends and the team documenting the lion relocation. They have followed many rescue teams into even more impossible countries than Line, as an Immigration Police in Norway had deported people to. They were seasoned travelers and had all the long distance airplane trip hacks down pat. I watched and copied them where I could. Line had bought us headphones and travel pillows. We were all set for the second part of a 29-hour journey from the sanctuary to Kherson where we would be meeting the Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization team of Lionel and Anya.

At first I was overcome with claustrophobia as a mild panic set in when I realized that I had only been siting there for 15 minutes and was barely coping with so many people and all their scents and sounds. But then I began playing the mindless game of Hidden Object on the screen embedded in the back of Anton’s seat in front of me. This numbed my mind in a way I had not felt in so long. I was no longer having to raise a huge amount of crucial money to cover construction of the 100% vital to the mission, lion enclosures. I was not re-configuring budgets to still build the enclosures even though we had not raised sufficient funds. I was not bent over the gates Line was welding, wiring on bobbins under the baking hot sun, I was not hand deep in concrete constructing drinking pools while Line plumbed them in, I was not racing to be ready to fly to Ukraine, I was forced to sit still in a seat and entertain myself with external nonsense like games, movies and planning the logistics of navigating the aisle to brush my teeth ahead of the after dinner crowds.

I had had the presence of mind, one midnight in the tent a few days before, to apply for a Turkish visa so that I wouldn’t prevent our group from wandering outside of Istanbul airport during our 8-hour layover if they so desired. Armed with this document, and encouraged by the company of Line (who is highly skilled in self-defense and Andi protection) I motivated that we not waste this once in my lifetime opportunity of being in Turkey but remaining within the airport and so we set off by taxi into the Old city of Istanbul. 

We arrived in the Grand Bizarre just as the men were beginning to open their stalls. Men both old and young were setting up their displays, sweeping their pavements, feeding stray cats and drinking tea. Turkish tea servers past us by this way and that carrying round bronze tea trays atop an upheld hand as they trotted past at a fair pace. Little clear glass tea cups and small metal tea pots sped by. Everyone was drinking morning tea. This was not a tourist show. We were witnessing an everyday Turkish tea fest. We were offered so many kind cups of tea that we were forced to seek a place to wee. This was not so easily done, as facilities for women were scarce. In fact, women were scarce. Surrounded by an array of colours, scents, glass lanterns, spices, tea, Turkish delights, carpets, Tshirts, flags and mosaics we had not noticed the lack of women. Smoking men in black jackets, grouped around low tables chatting over their morning tea, men in hats and scarves played chess, men sent boys running on errands, men ushered us into their stalls enticing us with samples of their wares. We took hundreds of foreign photos and left swiftly by taxi as we had a plane to catch to Ukraine to fetch our lions.

The second plane was different. The passengers wore a different kind of clothes, leather boots and knitted wool or sheep skin hats. The tones of the garments more somber, older, less bright. Line slept all the way from Istanbul to Kherson and so I pushed the airplane food around its container silently on my own and watched an episode of David Letterman whilst we flew over the Black sea which looked the same as all the other seas from this height.

The air hostess  This was not like any place in Africa. No semblance of bush, veld or wild. We both felt a sadness rise up in our souls as the bland, flat, land in which these lions lived rose up to meet us.

woke her to put on her seat belt just as I saw the coast of Eastern Europe come into view from under the airplane wing. At the same time the pilot announced our decent. We watched transfixed as the Ukrainian ground materialized beneath us. Flat countryside divided by small farms patterned the monochromatic scene. As far as the eye could see, we could see nothing that was at all appropriate for lions.

Outside we saw a low, industrial city. Then we saw a low concrete building which we realized must be the airport. A few vehicles from war time Europe stood on the ready in case of emergency. Men in balaclavas holding rifles manned the asphalt across which we had to walk to reach to terminal. It looked icy cold, yet I was still wearing the flip flops I had bought in Johannesburg airport as the heavy winter boots I had set off in had been unbearably hot. The boots were stowed in a shopping bag grasped in my sweaty hand.

I couldn’t see a single smile or hear anybody talking to another person as I walked the right angle route demarcated by airport security soldiers. I went from being internally warm enough to leave the plane in flip flops, to being suffocatingly hot as I entered the terminal. 

Heaters blasted hot air down on the waiting throng of passengers. The room could not properly contain the number of people who had arrived on the flight so we stood 3 to 4 deep in a queue from which I could only see the backs of the thick jackets in front of me. I could not find space to reach down to unpack my socks and shoes as I shuffled forward every few minutes, herded forward by nothing other than a preconditioned response to the shuffling forward of a mass of waiting people. After a long while I read, through the gap in hatted heads, a sign board which indicated that non-Ukrainian passport holders were to proceed to the two windows on the far right as opposed to the two open windows on the left to which the entire thick line of people was going. I gestured to Line and we moved over to that short queue on the left. The line of masked soldiers watching us was longer than our new queue.

Anton and Jasmine reached the front of the queue ahead of us and I watched them disappear from my view as they walked into the area beyond customs. Line approached the immigration policewoman in the booth in front of us and after a short while she too disappeared from my view. The policewoman got up and left the booth just as I was about to approach. I waited until a policeman took her place and gestured for me to approach. I handed him my passport with the Ukrainian visa stamped ornately in it.  Everything was in order. It had not come easily; I had only gotten the visa in time for the trip because of the Ukrainian Ambassador to SA’s support for this lion rescue. My stay in Ukraine was to be for 4 nights only. But the Immigration Policeman would not let me follow Line, Anton and Jasmine into Ukraine. 

I was told to wait over there on that bench to be seen in the Interview Room. I waited along with 4 Turkish men. A soldier and his dog stood next to us. When I was eventually ushered into the interview room, my confidence evaporated. There were 8 uniformed people, 7 of them wearing camouflage with old fashioned batons, handcuffs and revolvers like my father has from the 40s. The 8^th man was dressed all in Black. He sat to the side on a peripheral chair, but he was clearly the superior ranking officer. My face was on every computer screen on every desk. No one spoke to me for quite a while, they spoke to each other in clipped Ukrainian. I sat and waited.

Then one of them asked me how I was going to support myself in Ukraine. I told them my accommodation and travel were already paid for by the TV producers and that Line, my partner, was paying for food with her credit card. But how is it that you cannot afford proper shoes, they asked? I regretted so much that I had not put my good old winter K/ways on. They asked me to prove that I was not coming to live in Ukraine. I told them that I had lions in South Africa. They asked me again, I told them that I live in Africa with lions, I was just nipping into Ukraine to fetch 4 more and I would go straight back home to Africa and my lions. They asked me a third time, how could they be sure I was not going to remain in Ukraine. I just looked blankly at them, I couldn’t understand that they had not heard that I live in Africa with lions. In what universe would I leave that life for this? “I am here for 4 days, then I will be leaving on a plane with 4 lions who I have to look after for the rest of their lives. I will not be staying in Ukraine.”

They questioned me a little longer about the TV programme and then sent me on my way. Line was waiting for me just the other side of customs, we collected my suitcase and together we walked through the doors to Arrivals where Lionel & Anya were waiting for us. We all loaded into Sasha’s modern mini van, the only modern car in the parking lot, and sped off towards Kherson, Lionel and Anya’s home town.

Ready to fetch 4 lions and get back to Africa just as quickly as possible….