Written by Thapelo Seleke

East side of Madikwe in the middle of no where, there is life that breaths, eats and sleeps, a home to one of the adorable but yet ugliest wild animals with sloppy build bodies and the most intimidating laughter that they use as mechanism to confuse mostly lions when trying to steal their meal.

Image by Thapelo Seleke

Image by Thapelo Seleke

There is a home with four rooms and outside bathroom, a little bush which tenants are 14 family members of hyenas, with eight adults, four cute little cubs and there used to be three young teenagers but one was sadly attacked and killed by lions during play time while parents were not around to supervise them.

Image by Thapelo Seleke

Image by Thapelo Seleke

Image by Thapelo Seleke

Image by Thapelo Seleke

It was a hot sweating Sunday during a brief visit with guests from jaci’s lodges to Phiri Legae (home of hyenas), peacefully sleeping under the shades of trees surrounding four dug holes which happens to be the home to spotted hyenas, a roar from miles away echoed close to the home, bringing about fear to the ears and eyes of young cubs and their mothers.

Image by Thapelo Seleke

Image by Thapelo Seleke

The hyenas began to stumble with their ears up and nose sniffing in the air searching for clues to where the roaring could possibly be coming from, young cubs scattered into the rooms for safety.

Adults soldiered on determined to finding traces to where the lions may be, to be able to chase them away.

Image by Thapelo Seleke

Image by Thapelo Seleke

Through each hole, there were glimpses of black shinny eyes of scared hyena babies, fearing for their lives and that of their mothers they looked shy from tears and cry.

Image by Thapelo Seleke

Image by Thapelo Seleke

But the roar was echoing from a distance and one hyena alpha female returned safely to check on the babies, all cubs began to come out curiously looking out for each other, other hyenas also joined in and a family continued to enjoy a sunny Sunday carefully laying their heads ready to protect their cubs.

It was that time of the day whereby I realised deep down into my broken conscious that life in the wild is just as life where else, we live to protect one another as a family because every life among us is precious.

Image by Thapelo Seleke

Image by Thapelo Seleke