LOVE LIONS ALIVE by Andi Rive

I live in a tent on the side of a mountain. I built a sanctuary for lions in a place where there is no house for me. I have been up here for 29 months now. When I first came up here, Mela was only 6 months old. She, my dog and I lived up here on our own.  Odin the young lion about to get up to mischief   I borrowed Leon's caravan thinking I would use it for 3 months at most, but I ended up living in the caravan for 13 months until moving into a tent. I was already familiar with camping and very attached to the caravan as Leon and I often went away to beautiful places, dragging it behind us every where that we went. Many times when I had to work on the weekends we would only set off on a Sunday afternoon and we would pitch camp a few kilometers away from home on the Wilge River or at Sterkfontein dam for the night, only to pack up  the canoe and the caravan at 6am the next morning  so we could both get back in time for Mo...

PART 1 of CUBS THROUGH MY LIFE On the 10th day of December 2011 Five stars fell into my life and my life was changed forever. I had never looked after lions before that time. I had not dreamed of caring for lions, not harboured a desire to do so nor ever planned to try to do so. The birth of the STAR Pride was an unheralded but totally fortuitous event. Nursing Tindra Sienna as a newborn The first 2 STARS where born on the morning of the 10th December to a mother called Shanti. She had been in a fight and was flat on her side, bleeding profusely when she gave birth prematurely to a tiny female cub. The first one had already been birthed when Taiga and I got to Shanti. I had been walking out on the land. I had risen at sunrise with a nagging question eating away at me. Should I stay at the lion farm or should I go home to the Cape as planned? We had only come to the farm to help for 2 weeks and were due to leave the following morning. I would be leaving the farm with...

A Time When I Was So Alone & Now A Time In Which I Have Found Help (Bridging the gap) In my loneliness, I have investigated why the term Heartbroken became a term. What I have discovered is that one's heart physically feels pain as if broken. The term could quite equally have been heartcracked. Heartshattered. Heartcrumpled. Heartsquashed. Heartconstricted. Heartsmothered. The other words I have physically explored are Panic, Desperation, Anxiety, Fear, Trust, Betrayal, Love, Responsibility. I can quite assuredly say that they are all words which can be felt through the human body. Knowing that one's failure affects the lives of innocent beings is almost too painful a situation to bear. There was a time in which I cried out, "Are there no other people out there who care to see these lions remain alive?" This sounds like a Greek tragedy and for that I feel embarrassed. I stepped bravely into this world of lions, the reason being, I believe, was that I had ...

Putting my actions in line with my beliefs? Taai and Mela look out from atop a boulder at LLA My heart was torn between the two courses of action. My own lion loves, Taai and Mela could have cubs. In nature these lions would be free to mate and breed. My mission statement is to give them the most natural living conditions lions can have in captivity. Where do I draw the line, how do I decide who gets to live here, how is it that I get to decide, Playing God? To sterilise or to allow nature to fulfill Mela's need to nurture. Everyday I walk in the veld under the condemning sun. My legs ache with weakness my chest constricts in breathless quakes. Yet the joy I feel at seeing Natacha rolling and rubbing against Moya, the relief I feel on observing Shannon gazing across the valleys as Reign bounds up to lie on the boulder alongside of him; the deep sigh I emit when Taai and Mela touch foreheads, makes it all worthwhile  Love fills my unfit soul. These lions have come fro...

By bullet? By petting? By poisonous words? Working for the lions There are those who have passed through here. They gave real days or weeks (or Jann who gave 2 months). They sweated, toiled and worked. Cutting through the bull Building water pools I sit here tonight and I wonder about those who have not tried, not left their keyboards but somehow have the power to deconstruct this sanctuary.  Quite unbelievably there are those who can actually undo what we've done. Living without a house, The constant penetrating cold; my mind races through all the things we live without...bathrooms, kitchens, walls... but living in the cold is the one that resounds the loudest. There are two other humans who are willing to live as I do. Tale and Line. They have joined me in this life lived for lions. The thing that bewilders me is how someone sitting on the end of a computer in Florida USA or a cosy suburb in JHB, or any other warm, walled, plumbed room can have an influ...

Did I grow up knowing I would live with lions? Shy but proud of being in The Lions Group Well actually I had never really thought about lions. But on thinking about it now, it comes to mind that at Nursery school I was in the Lion Group and I was pleased about that. At temple Emmanuel Nursery school, when my wild haired teacher Sheila called for the Lions to please come into the classroom with the lion logo on the door I felt that I belonged. I'd look over at the Elephants and feel quietly sorry for them.  In addition, it turns out that my star sign is Leo (and apparently moon, sun and planets). Yet for many years of my life I tried to become a Cancerian as I felt that being a Leo was to 'obvious', to overtly the 'sign to be'. For my 10th birthday I got my mother to take me to a circus because I had seen that I could hold a lion cub there. Ironic isn't it? I live for them and against this. The drive, standing in queues and the show itself were all ...