Kruger National Park, Lower Sabie

We are having a lazy morning after a long game hunting day yesterday, so I have an opportunity to jot down a few musings.
We have camped in a lot of other S.A. National Parks, but never in a Game Park before. I think I may have already commented on this, but it is really being reinforced on the larger, more popular game viewing locations. The camping is really only about somewhere to sleep while out looking for game. It is 09.45 now and the site is almost deserted, a good time to catch up on some sleep! The day started at 04.00 this morning as people got up just before dawn, to maybe make some coffee, fill a flask and be at the campsite gates as they were opened at 04.30. It seems to the general assumption that everyone is only here for the game so there is no attempt to be quiet. Searchlights and head torches are on, where there are groups of people lots of chatting, car doors opened and slammed. Large SUVs and even bigger 4 X 4 trucks abound, as South Africans tend to take a deep freezer, and a full oven camping with them in their adapted vehicles and trailers, and they all have powerful and noisy diesel engines. The enthusiasm of these South Africans for getting into the bush to see the same animals time and time again puts any British twitchers I have pet to shame. We have met people, South Africans, who come into Kruger Park for their holiday every year, sometimes twice a year, to do the same thing, and at weekends they flood in for a couple of nights. They often stay for the full day on a Sunday, then pack up and leave at 04.30 in the morning so that they can drive back to go straight into work, and kids to school.
I am really annoyed that we haven't been able to buy a simple guide to the birds in the Park in English. We even made a detour into Skukuza yesterday, the largest Camp in the Park, more like a small town, but we couldn't get one their either. All the simple guides were only in Afrikaans, any in English were weighty tombs, far more information than we need, or could find our way around. The birds are beautiful, and they are supposed to be even better further north. Common birds like the Starling, which are not so attractive in the U.K. are glorious here with iridescent turquoise feathers and bright orange rings round their eyes.
On our last night at Crocodile Bridge we spent some time talking with a couple camping nearby, retired but maybe just a bit younger than us. Her father was English so she has a British passport, they lived in Huntingdon for 10 years until 2010 as he was a pilot flying out of Stanstead. They have 2 daughters, both married to other South Africans and with families, but neither of them living in S.A. One daughter lives in the U.K., and the other one in Qatar, where her husband is also a pilot. Neither family will ever return to S.A., in fact they have both taken up their British citizenship for themselves and their children through their mother. We were told that there would be no jobs for them here, as I understood it without becoming too interrogative, jobs are allocated according to a percentage of the population and of course whites are in the minority. They didn't come over as being at all racist, originally supporters of the ANC government, looking forward to a fairer future for everyone in the country. It seems that since the Zuma government it has all gone a bit pear-shaped, there is so much corruption going on at government level and it all filters down, everyone taking their cut, until it affects all aspects of life. In fact, we were told, the current government is no better than the old National Government before the 'so-called' abolition of Apartheid. A section of black Africans is getting richer and richer and doing nothing to address the poverty of most of their fellow blacks, and is also actively discriminating against other racial groups like the Coloureds. I hope that we will have other opportunities during the trip to learn more about how different people feel about their lives and livelihood here at the present.