The Buildings of Maliba Burn

It looks like it’s snowing again at Maliba Lodge, but its in the 80s F. Three are constant flurries of ash falling from a huge wildfire that burned on and off for the past week. It’s depressing to look at the mountains that were green and covered with trees are now charred and in some places still smoldering. It’s the end of the dry season, so a small fire quickly caught and spread until entire mountains were on fire. I was not at the lodge for the first couple of days, when the fires were the worst. The staff, with many people helping from my village, fought the fires without sleeping or resting for three days. It burned down three staff houses and got alarmingly close to the lodge. In some places the thatch roof caught fire, but was quickly put out. Some of the patios of the guest houses burned. It was very lucky that the lodge didn’t burn down. They say that the fires are out now, but there are still many spots on the mountains where smoke is still rising, a week after the fires first started. IT burned most of Maliba’s land and a lot of Tsehlanyane national park. It even spread to the mountain beside my village. I was told that the fire was too hard to reach up in the mountain to fight. I was scared and ready to evacuate, but none of the villagers seemed worried though.

The first news I had of the fire was when I was getting back from a grocery trip to the closest town. My host sister came running up to me and said “the buildings of Maliba burn!” I looked in the direction of Maliba Lodge, over 5km away and blocked by several mountains, but I could still see huge clouds of smoke and large flames on one of the further mountains. It was shocking and really sad. In some places the only green things left are the firebreaks that the fire easily leapt over. And in a national park where some of the plants are only found in these mountains, it is especially depressing. But nobody was hurt, and it could have been much, much worse. What we need is some rain, to finally and completely put the fire out, and to help start things regrowing and to turn the mountains green again.