Sundowner Magazine: Spring/Summer 2020

and community of San people. Jack’s Camp is located in the
exact spot that Jack first pitched up, in an area he described as
embodying the “savage beauty of a forgotten Africa”.
Jack’s Camp is known to all Africa aficionados for its
1940s-esque glamour and oasis-like comforts. This year, it will
reopen following a revitalisation. It will boast a refreshed look,
but its appeal won’t have changed – and nor will the camp’s
official museum accreditation. In the mess tent and library,
on display in cabinets, are enthralling artefacts, curios, and
tchotchke collected by the Bousfield family over the generations.
Ralph’s pioneering family first arrived on the continent in
the 1670s, a mere two decades after the first ‘European city’,
Cape Town, was founded by the Dutch East India Company.
Scion of this line of adventurers, explorers and, yes, hunters, his
father Jack is famous – or as viewed through a prism of more
modern sensibilities, notorious – for
a Guinness World Record for the
number of crocodiles shot. He supplied
famous European fashion houses with
the raw materials needed for crocodile
skin bags, belts, and shoes. Times
and tastes have changed, and Ralph is
proud that his father was one of the
first ‘great white hunters’ to see the
change coming and turn his back on
his profession.
Living a Boys’ Own adventure in
the desert at his “exceptional” father’s
side, capturing animals for zoos or to
restock areas in which those animals
had disappeared, Ralph experienced
the “full beam” of his father’s attention.
“Dad had a different attitude to education than Mum’s. He
believed I could learn more from him and from immersion in
the bushmen’s traditions.” Before going to boarding school at age
10 – and during every holiday thereafter – he learnt the types of
skills, such as tracking, that make other men envious (even the
little ones). Telling my six-year-old son about Ralph and his life,
his eyes grew round with amazement and he instantly wanted to
know if “his daddy taught him how to wrestle a crocodile”.
“He did,” Ralph chuckles when I relay the question.
He recounts the time he was asked to catch a crocodile
wreaking havoc near a village. “It turned out to be a LOT bigger
than I had been told – 12 feet long – but I had committed to
capturing it, so just had to jump on this leviathan’s back.” Levi,
as the crocodile was quickly nicknamed, was moved to the
wildlife orphanage that Bousfield helped to establish. “He’s still
there – 14 feet long, as broad as a bus, and quite the character.”
Though passionate about animals and a trained biologist,
Ralph is undoubtedly also a people person. He announced
to his siblings at age three that he would be taking over the
then-seasonal family business of showing tourists the wonders
of Botswana’s deserts. “I think it was a relief for them. There
have been times I’ve been overseas, but the Kalahari is my soul’s
spot,” Ralph says. One of those stints abroad was postgraduate
research in natural conservation at the International Crane
Foundation in Wisconsin, studying under conservation
legend George Archibald. “It’s very cold in Wisconsin,
especially when coming from a hot summer in the Kalahari –
but it was a fantastic experience.”
And then there is Ralph’s involvement in various
JACK’S CAMP IS LOCATED
IN THE EXACT SPOT THAT
JACK FIRST PITCHED UP.
AN AREA HE DESCRIBED
AS EMBODYING THE
‘SAVAGE BEAUTY OF A
FORGOTTEN AFRICA’
philanthropic projects. His three camps support the
Makgadikgadi-Nxai Pans Conservation Initiative, which is
working to create the optimal conditions for Africa’s best-kept
secret: the Makgadikgadi-Nxai Pans zebra migration. Every
year, 25,000 zebra cross the Chobe River and move due south
to the Nxai Pan National Park before returning, less directly,
to their dry season habitat, but Ralph remembers hundreds
of thousands, millions of these animals on the move in the
1960s and 1970s. All great animal migrations are under threat
from anthropogenic pressures and land-use transformations,
and Ralph wants to see the numbers of zebra undertaking
this annual trek return to those he saw in his childhood. He
believes it can benefit more than just the animals. “It’s really
quite hard for Botswanans to find work,” he says, “and one often
needs an economic driver for animal conservation projects to
be successful. Imagine what it could do
for tourism in Botswana if the Kalahari’s
migration was equivalent to the Serengeti’s.”
For the Kalahari bushmen, tourism is a
much-needed source of income. Travellers
who venture to this remote corner of
Botswana value this endangered culture –
their language, ability to track, their songs,
dances, and trances. The San people have
lived in the Kalahari – Earth’s fifth largest
desert – for at least 35,000 years, maybe as
long as 75,000. It was from this area that
our human ancestors may have emerged.
Talk about travellers going back to their
roots. Ralph, who has known these people
for practically all of his life, is an advocate
and facilitator of these meetings. “There’s
huge potential for future generations,” he believes.
The next generation of the Bousfields is also growing up
among the Zu’/hoasi. Ralph and partner Caroline Hickman’s
seven-year-old son Jack has just begun to learn to track. “In
traditional culture the onus is on the individual to want to do
something. Stepping forward when you feel the calling. He came
forward recently and said, ‘I’m ready. I want to.’ So off he went in
his flip-flops and shorts with a legendary tracker called Cobra.
The extraordinary thing is that I was learning the same thing at
around the same age from the same man.”
Fitting in all the demands on his time – father, guide, hotelier,
businessman, biologist – must require a good deal of multitasking,
so how does he find the energy and passion to keep it
all going? “I want people to come to the Kalahari, meet the San
people and enter a new dimension with the knowledge that we
are more similar than different, that we are all wonderfully the
same. It’s extraordinary and so profound.”
previous page: Ralph in his element, crossing the desert on his quad bike
opposite page, clockwise from top: San bushmen; dining at Jack’s Camp;
Ralph hangs out with the locals
CONTACT ABERCROMBIE & KENT
A&K offers three nights at Jack’s Camp starting at £5,895 per person
(based on two sharing), includes domestic flights, all meals & beverages,
laundry, expert guiding, park entry fees, and VAT. Excludes international
flights. All three-night stays at Jack’s Camp also include a 45-minute spa
treatment and two-hour horse-riding activity. For more information,
call our Africa travel specialists on 01242 547 702.
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