Bright and early Friday morning one of the guides took us on a "survival drive." The purpose was for us to have a hands-on lesson about survival in the African bush.
Another beautiful sunrise that morning.
Entering the game reserve.
A human can typically survive without water for only 3 days, so finding water is a top priority. And when you do find water, it needs to be clean (or relatively clean) otherwise it will end up doing more harm than good. Water flowing from a waterfall is usually the cleanest because the water gets filtered as it flows through the rocks. If you aren't lucky enough to find a clean source of water, or any at all, you can try digging into the ground at a dried river bed or lake.
Or, you can use some ingenuity and fashion a water-extraction device by gathering reeds, a cup, a windbreaker, and a few small stones. Dig a hole and place the cup (or a large leaf) into it. Then place the reeds all around the cup. Cover the area with the windbreaker (or a piece of thin plastic) and place a few pebbles in the middle. Sunlight and heat will extract the water from the reeds, which will condense onto the windbreaker. By placing the pebbles in the middle, the condensation droplets will fall into the cup. Easy peasy!
You can also drink your own urine if you are totally desperate, but this will only hydrate you if done no more than two times. After that, the urine will be too concentrated if you still have not found another source for water. Do not drink blood because it has a high salt content, which will only dehydrate you further.
Your next priority is going to be finding shelter. Being out in extreme hot, sun, or cold could kill you sooner than you'd think. If you can't find a natural shelter, like a cave, you will have to make your own. You'll need to find a very long branch, nearly twice as long as your height, to use as the frame of your shelter. One side of the long branch will be on the ground and the other side will be propped up by at least two other branches to create the opening. Then, gather enough branches to lay over the frame to create a roof. Using leafy branches or bunches of leaves will help protect from rain and sun.
Once you have created your shelter, you also need to create a barrier of protection. Gather thorny branches and place them all around your shelter to deter animals from trying to get close to you. Another way to deter them is to urinate on the wall of thorny branches. Your shelter may not smell so good, but at least you will feel safe.
And if all else fails, just climb a tree.
All of that hard work building your new home is going to make you hungry. So now you need to find something to eat. The easiest thing to do is to eat ants, termites, and grasshoppers. Poisonous insects often are dark in color with bright colored-stripes or patches, so avoid any insects like that.
Ant holes are like the fast food restaurants of the wild.
If you want to stick to a vegetarian diet, you can forage for berries or fruit. Many of these are poisonous also, so you need to be careful. First, rip open the fruit and rub a small amount of the juice onto your forearm. Wait 30 minutes and check to see if your skin has reacted to the juice. If not, then rub a little of the juice onto your lip. Again, wait 30 minutes and see if your lips have had any bad reaction to the juice. If not, eat a small amount of the fruit. If you feel alright after letting it digest, then it should be safe to eat.
If you are more of a hunter than a gatherer, then there are a few things you can try. You can attempt to make your own hunting bow. You will need to locate a Sandpaper Raisin bush (grewia flavescens) to make your bow. It has curved, hard branches which are perfect for this. You will also need to find a Snake Plant (sansevieria trifasciata), also known as Mother-in-Law's Tongue and Viper's Bowstring Hemp plant. When pulled apart, the fibrous strings from this plant can be gathered together to make a thin rope.
Sandpaper Raisin bush.
A horrible photo of Mother-in-Law's Tongue, which is the plant on the ground that looks a bit like aloe.
Side note: You may have Mother-in-Law's Tongue in your house right now. It is a popular houseplant and is said to be one of the best at purifying the air. It is low maintenance since it is tolerant of low light and does not require much water.
Another method for hunting is using a snare. To do this, you will already need to have snare wire. Basically, you make a small noose out of the wire, wrap the other end of the wire around a tree, and wait until (hopefully) an animal steps into the noose and becomes caught.
In either hunting method, you need to eat or smoke your meat as soon as possible, otherwise it will become infested with maggots and become worthless. (And people wonder why I am a vegetarian.) To cook the meat, you will obviously need to start a fire. You probably won't have matches, so you can try starting a fire by hitting two sharp pieces of quartz together over some kindling. Once you have sparked the kindling, lightly blow on it to create flames. Firewood should then be placed on top in a pyramid shape.
Side note: Do not build your fire pit too close to your shelter. First of all, you don't want to burn it down. Second of all, scorpions are attracted to fires and no one wants any of those unwelcome visitors in their house.
Elephant dung can also be burned to smoke meat. And, the smoke will have the added bonus of keeping mosquitos away!
If you want to try your hand at fishing, you can first locate a Tamboti tree (spirostachys africana.) This tree contains a poisonous resin. If a branch is placed in water, the resin will stun or kill fish, making fishing a matter of merely picking up the floating fish out of the water. (Somehow, the fish are still safe to eat even though they are poisoned.)
Tamboti tree. This one is a young tree. The more mature trees have dark, scaly bark that looks like crocodile skin.
Side note: If you happen to have a toothache, you can also break apart a leaf and apply a tiny amount of the milky white resin to your tooth to numb the area. Any more than that will be extremely toxic though.
Another warning about this tree: Both the leaves and wood contain the poisonous resin. Thus, using this wood for fires will create toxic smoke, so do not burn it!
Once you've taken care of the necessities, then you can focus on creature comforts, such as practicing good hygiene. Lucky for you, nature provides a toothbrush tree and a toothpaste tree. Break off a small twig from a Magic Guarri tree (euclea divinorum), fray the edges, and like magic you'll have a toothbrush. The wood itself has antiseptic properties making it more than just brushing your teeth with bits of frayed wood. If you would prefer to use some actual toothpaste also, then you can make your own from a Leadwood tree (combretum imberbe), which is high in lime. The ashes from a burned branch can be mixed with water or milk to create toothpaste.
Toothbrush tree.
Toothpaste tree.
Side note: The wood from the toothpaste tree is excellent for fires because it burns for a long time.
When nature calls, you can locate a Weeping Wattle tree (peltophorum africanum) and use a wad of its leaves as toilet paper. The native plants of the African bush do not have broad leaves, and some contain small spines, so that is why this tree is your best bet.
Toilet paper tree.
If you've had enough of wilderness living and just want to get back to civilization, then you'll need to find your way out. By using the location of sunrise and sunset, you can easily determine which direction is east and which is west (which also means you have determined what is north and south.) Hopefully you know which direction you should walk in. Obviously, things like rivers or mountain in the distance can be used to help guide you too.
Side note: In the Southern Hemisphere, the sun rises in the east and goes northward as it heads west.
You can also create a sundial of sorts to help figure out which direction is north, as long as it is a sunny day. Imagine a circle around the stick. Halfway up the circle from the shadow is north. (I'm not really explaining this well, but it's something like that. Hopefully you won't need to use this method.)
A stick in the mud.
Thankfully, nature offers a few other easy ways to figure out which direction is north. In the Southern Hemisphere, termite mounds tend to lean northward and moss/lichen grows on the south side of trees and rocks. (This is the opposite of the Northern Hemisphere.)
You can also use the stars to figure out direction, but the stars here are totally different than in the Northern Hemisphere. So my advice is to not even bother trying to learn how to do this unless you plan to spend a lot of time down here.
Even after surviving in the wild and making it out, you will still have to manage to survive in civilization. Dangers lurk everywhere! Take this volunteer who got blasted by a bug on our drive back, for example.
Good thing he had sunglasses on!
After 2 weeks of communal living and sharing a room that often is dirty and smelly, I may be tempted to leave and try these outdoor survival skills soon.
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