The larger curiosity at. Munda Wanga was the fact that the admission price ($5), was only five times the cost of a ticket to ride the "animal ride" ($0.80), which turned out to be a choice of three dilapidated coin operated machines that move the once brightly painted animal of your choosing in a jerky motion for a set amount of time. I know this from having ridden them in the 70's outside grocery stores in the U.S.
Formerly run by a Dutch couple who devotedly ran Munda Wanga as an animal sanctuary, it is now under local management. The first observation one is bound to make is that the animals appear in great health, with thick, shiny coats and fit, well fed bodies. The second, very odd observation is that there is a sound system located somewhere on the property that thumps out increasingly loud hip hop music as afternoon pushes into night.
The lions are fortunately on the opposite side of the park from the music and we visited them first. Standing in front of the lion exhibit as three adults and three children aged 1 to 6 we were amazed by their beauty. We were awed by their agility, as the male descended from his wooden platform, sauntered over to the female and kicked her off her own perch. We were mesmerized by her paw size as she accepted the displacement, got a drink from the little pond in their area, and wandered directly toward us to canvas the front of their pen growling a menacing low roar while glaring at us threateningly. I'm sorry, did I say mesmerized? Because I meant scared shitless. That's because the lion pen is surrounded by the same chain link fence you'd expect to find around an abandoned inner city lot to half-heartedly keep squatters at bay. At the top is barbed wire, presumably to deter would-be lion petters who climb that far before realizing it was a stupid dare to take.
Appreciative of the lioness' suggestion that we visit the other animals we continued through the park to view an amazing assortment of animals including owls, vultures, monkeys, crocodiles, warthogs, wild dogs, ostriches (including their eggs), camels, deer (of several types of which I'm forgetting all of their names because it's the middle of the night and I can't sleep), and the animal that looks like a warthog but without the crazy fangs. All within reach. Literally. All within reach through flimsy (and in the case of the camels downright broken) chain link fences.
It's worth noting that the monkeys' area had a wire toward the top that looked electric, and presumably was since the monkey who launched himself at the fence looking like he'd rip our hair out for a banana stopped his ascent just short of the wire. There was another fence, however, that was marked as entirely electrified. Though this seemed a little implausible, my intelligent six year old wanted to "check"...and could have had his astute mother not told him that seemed dumb.
Finally, after checking out the white bunny in a pit pen, we got to the porcupine pen. Unfortunately the porcupines has just been ushered into an indoor viewing and nighttime rest area (think the inside of the hen house in a chicken coop, only dark, larger, and with glass on the back for viewing). At the suggestion of the animal tender, we went around to the back of the pen to see the porcupines. They were incredible even in silhouette - larger than I knew any porcupine could be with quills five times the length of a North American porcupine and speckled white and black. The speckling was visible only when the strobe light started. Surely planning to impress us, the fellow had switched on the fluorescent over head viewing lights. At first he cheerfully insisted to our horrified faces that, "Don't worry the light is just getting started and will be on in a minute." Figuring that the porcupines would be easy to see by then as they'd all be on their sides from a seizure we waited it out. After a minute or two passed he flagged down a second animal tender, at this point realizing that a loosely screwed bulb was likely to blame and that perhaps he could convince the newcomer to go into the porcupine pen to screw it in. The thought of how amazing it would be to see a leg stuck by that many long quills almost quieted our calls for shutting off the lights and abandoning the viewing effort, but in the end our conscience won out and we left the pen with apologies to the porcupines for having inadvertently added a strobe light to their hip hop party.
We left the zoo by way of a botanical garden complete with secret garden-esque bridges that was charming and beautiful. I'm having a hard time typing that in this same email because it so completely does not go, but it's the truth. There is a lovely botanical garden attached to the hip hop zoo, and there is a zoo in Lusaka that despite perhaps its best efforts to the contrary manages to keep both it's animals and visitors safe and in good health...at least during the two hours we were there.
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