This African Safari Serves Sustainable Meals From Its Own Farm

It was, hands down, the crispiest cucumber I've ever devoured. Fresh, juicy, and with a vibrant green color that stood out atop my salad of lettuce, carrots, and equally verdant peppers. It looked all too perfect, even by grocery store standards. And it was made all the more special by the fact that I bit into it with only a lantern casting a glow over my plate as the shadow of a lumbering giraffe passed by while a monkey howled in the distance.

I barely even registered the animals, as I was too enthralled with the idea that I was eating a fantastic meal without another soul for miles, a plate that came with a nearly non-existent carbon footprint in the middle of the Zambian wilderness. But that's just the kind of service you can expect with The Bushcamp Company, one of Zambia's most beloved safari outfitters, operating in South Luangwa National Park. 

"We've not had to order anything from Lusaka since the beginning of the year," Andy Hogg, the enigmatic founder of the safari company, shared as we toured the operator's more than 50-acre farm on the outskirts of town, which was purchased in 2019 and became fully operational in under two years, delivering all the fresh fruit, vegetables, and herbs used in both its main lodge and throughout its remote bushcamps punctuating the landscape around the park. 

Undoubtedly, it was an expensive endeavor, but one Hogg says was simply the "right thing" to do. 

"We will be able to offer things we wouldn't be able to offer before," Hogg adds, noting he first supplies the business, then anything left over is sold to staff and locals. 

Currently, the farm grows a wide array of produce, including carrots, strawberries, beets, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, peas, cucumbers, oranges, lemons, and some seriously spicy chile peppers. But the most notable product may be one special fruit.

"It started from the mangoes," Hogg explains. 

The Bushcamp Company is rather well-known among its repeat clientele for having a large mango tree in the center of its base camp, Mfuwe Lodge. But it's not just the human guests who enjoy them. Each fall, between late October and early December, a family of elephants returns to feast on the fruit, walking right through the lodge's entrance and past reception. It's a fantastic yearly reminder that this is their home, and we're just visiting. (And also a reminder to get out of their way.) 

"I always thought that dried mangoes were something we should do," Hogg says. So, he did, now serving it alongside breakfast at the lodge. He was so ecstatic about his new enterprise that he happily packed me a baggie of dried mango pieces to take to the camps, which I kept in my bag to snack on each day, including on foot during my walking safari, where we came face-to-face with a massive male elephant that I was sure could smell it in my bag and would become angry knowing I stole his snack. Luckily, he let me walk right on by that day. 

Throughout my entire week-long adventure, I was continuously impressed with every bite, from the warm quiche at the camps to a full-on pizza-making experience set up for us in the bush, along with a savory breakfast bar, featuring omelets made with eggs and vegetables from the farm, set up on a river where two more elephants stood watch nearby, and that ever-delicious salad that I dream about to this day. Though Hogg and his garden team do the work of growing these items, it's head chef Wendy Dunn who does the heavy lifting when it comes to menu creation for the remote camps and main lodge — a daunting task for any chef.

"We have to keep it simple. Elegant but simple," Dunn shares as we sit by the firepit at the company's newest outpost, KuKaya. "You must remember all the chefs in the bush camps are not hotel trained. So they've grown from working in the garden to the kitchen as cleaners, eventually chopping onions, and eventually cooking. They're homegrown, too."

As Dunn explains, every six months or so, she rotates the menus to ensure they're both keeping with seasonality and so that the dishes never feel stagnant. "You've just gotta be on your toes all the time," she says. "We are trying to keep up with the Joneses. We don't want to be known as some 'out in the bush' place. We want to be up there with the Joneses. Even our plated meals in the bush, we keep it elegant, we keep it stylish." 

For Hogg, growing all this food for these high-end meals that could rival any five-star resort is not about saving money but rather about keeping this place a viable destination for generations to come, to appreciate nature at its most pristine, leaving it better than he found it. "We all try," he says while sitting around a small table under a particularly gorgeous lemon tree at the farm. "If we can all do that, we'll all be in a better place."