LOVE LIONS ALIVE by Andi Rive

LIONS SHOULD BE WILD I feel that many of my blogs examine the questions I ask about life, or the dilemmas I face over decisions regarding the moral and ethical nature of lions in captivity. So as not to disappoint my reader, I am going to stick to this anguished genre. Topic - Lions in captivity and the money spent on rescuing them. Divided into 3 parts. 1) When I first realised that my life was to be dedicated to creating a lion sanctuary, I questioned the rightness of such a task. I shook my moral compass about in case it was jammed. Not believing what the compass was showing me, I positioned myself up on a tall rock and extended my hand up high in case the compass had misread when I stood on the ground. I struggled to accept that what I knew in my head was not reflected in my heart. It is not right to have big cats in fenced enclosures. It is not right to spend hundreds of thousands of rands to build these fenced in enclosures. Lions (and all big cats), should be free. Big cats shou...

  Two things… 1)     1)   Is it not truly amazing that one can think: “oh... let me write down this thought”, and one reaches for a flat metallic item, opens it and begins typing to the world? 2)     2)    I am busy watching a cooking programme. In fact I watch every cooking programme that I can find. Yet I do not really cook. I do not have more than a camp kitchen and even before living in a tent, as my children will attest, I only cooked because I had to keep them and my animals alive. Except on special occasions when I would apply myself. The program I am busy watching is about chefs from different countries and styles of cooking. Every expression is celebrated. From cookie milk to crème Brulé. Granita, brioche, and springbok potjie. My mind wonders to my world (this being the world of lions and sanctuaries). I think about the respect shown between various chefs and styles of cooking. Pastry chefs nodding to sushi chefs. Sugar arti...

  If you have lived a life, you have secrets to tell and secrets to keep. I have been involved with the world of lions for nearly 10 years. In this time, I have come across every type, shape, and shade of secret. Most of them struck me numb. In the beginning, I was naïve. I had no idea that people bred lions at all. When I first went to a lion farm, back when I was not even aware that lions were part of my destiny, I watched my friend (she was the lion lover not I), pay to go into the cub section to ‘play’ with the lions. I watched almost with disinterest. I was in the Port Elizabeth area because my eldest daughter was at Woodridge college, but we were at the seaside lion park because my friend Kathy loved lions. My total lack of understanding continued right into the very midst of the lion breeding world when in 2011 I started helping another friend, this time not a lion lover but the reluctant daughter of a lion farmer, to handle her father’s affairs. It took a little while...