08 / book review – all the way home:

ALL THE WAY HOME - Stories from an African wildlife sanctuary
Author: Bookey Peek
Photographs: Richard Peek
Publisher: Penguin Books - ISBN 0 143 02503 3

This soft cover book is a delightful reading experience. The stories of wild animals as told by Bookey Peek with photographs by her husband Richard Peek, are not sentimental nor is the manner of writing anthropomorphic. True the orphaned and injured animals have been given names, but the reader is not left in any doubt that as soon as time allows they will be, if possible, returned to the wild. The impression gained is that Bookey and Richard Peek are genuinely involved in trying to save those creatures living on, or brought to the Stone Hills Wild Life Sanctuary.

Bookey Peek trained as a lawyer but, by her own admission, is happiest living in the bush amongst the animals. The story line revolves around the life of Poombi the warthog. Her mother was killed by dogs and she finds her tiny self in the local trading store. Bookey Peek had come there to fetch an orphan steenbuck and while waiting for it to be brought to her, she finds the tassel on her shoe being attacked by a determined baby warthog! Poombi becomes part of the Peek household: mother, father, son David, head scout Mafira Chanyungunya, Abel Ncube and various other human beings until, as an adult, she returns to the wild and becomes the mother of her own young, Gruntabel and Squeak.

Some interesting actors that pass across the book’s pages are: Lora and Nandi the Labradors, Kingsley the grey headed Kingfisher who hatched out of an egg under Richard Peek’s beard, the owls Claudia, Hedwig and Little Owl, Nyami the bushbuck, Tsessil the Tsessebe.

The city closest to Stone Hills Wild Life Sanctuary, North West Matobo, is Bulawayo. The sanctuary is 150 kilometres from the Botswana border. When the land became the Peeks, they received a certificate stating that the Zimbabwe government had “no present interest” in Stone Hills – for the moment. This has resulted in a certain tension as to their continued tenure. Nevertheless the Peeks built a lodge for visitors and a home for themselves.

As a matter of interest the author is “passionate” about spiders and states that she has no idea how her name Bookey came about. I look forward to reading her recent book Wild Honey.