The Duchess of Edinburgh wakes in her tent at the camp at Lower Zambezi Conservation to find a pile of fresh elephant dung within sniffing distance of her door. Its creator wandered back into the bush or into the current of the Zambezi river without disturbing Sophie, but this was not the case with a more curious wild beast.
Over breakfast at the conservation outpost, where I am the only writer on the Duchess's five-day tour of Zambia, she tells fellow guests about waking in the small hours to find herself face to face with a hippopotamus.
Asked how close it was, she recalls that it would have been no nearer if it had been sitting on the chair outside the front flap of her tent.
Duchess and hippo exchanged looks as she moved her bedsheet, the slight noise drawing the hippo's attention. She reconsidered getting out of bed to take a closer look: they were already close enough.
So began Sophie's fourth day on a visit that has combined bringing a spotlight to serious issues, including the campaign to eradicate sight loss and work to give women a more equal footing in society, with moments of animal magic.
Duchess Sophie's friendliness and enthusiasm
While I am usually following at a distance, there are moments when the Duchess's friendliness and enthusiasm spill over.
During a boat safari on the Zambezi, where she sees how animal behaviour has changed following a successful project to combat poachers, she becomes an impromptu wildlife guide by pointing out elephants on the river bank. She points as she calls over to the press boat following hers. "A herd!" she says excitedly.
When both boats moor to begin a game drive in safari trucks, she exclaims to everyone: "That was the first time I've seen more than one elephant at a time! It's so amazing just how peaceful they are."
It is all the more profound an experience for having missed a safari that the Duke of Edinburgh and their son James, Earl of Wessex, enjoyed several years ago. James tried to spare his mother's feelings by downplaying what he and his father had seen. Asked by his mother what they saw, he replied diffidently: "Some elephants."
Sophie has now seen a herd of her own. "I didn't know that elephants could swim!" she says. "We saw one out on an island and I thought, that was an elephant! How did it get there?"
© PA Images via Getty ImagesObserving Sophie on the international stage
As well as highlighting causes such as the value of sport in education and sexual health, Sophie is here to build British-Zambian relations. On the second day of her visit, we arrive at the newly re-elected president's private house, in the east of the capital city of Lusaka, unsure how much time she will spend with the most powerful man in Zambia. Perhaps ten minutes?
After driving through gates guarded by soldiers with truck-mounted machine guns, we reach a grand house where half a dozen zebras roam the grounds.
Sophie's rapport with President Hakainde Hichilema is immediate. I watch as he welcomes us to his sitting room to see a film-poster sized photograph of himself with King Charles at Dumfries House, the headquarters of the King's Foundation, which he visited in October last year.
The Duchess and the President spend an hour together before emerging onto his verandah to view the zebra in his back garden. "They're good lawnmowers," Sophie says as the herd munch on the grass and drink from the fountain. "Yes," he agrees. "And good fertilizers." I am careful not to stand in the freshly deposited zebra manure.
© PA Images via Getty ImagesSophie exchanges gifts with the president and his wife Mutinta Hichilema, who receives a double-sided scarf made from cashmere woven on the isle of Elgin combined with Zambian chitenge fabric that the President had brought as a gift during his meeting with the King.
Her gifts to the couple also include three jars of honey from beehives at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and her own bees at Bagshot Park. "So, you have three different types of honey from three different types of bee," she tells him.
"Did you raise the bees?" asks the President, who made his fortune from cattle ranching and celebrates the fact with a painting of cows on his verandah. Four busts of longhorn cattle, water spurting from their heads, surround the fountain at the end of his driveway. "Personally!" Sophie replies.
Diplomatic staff think that the meeting was a triumph. As we drive away, the President gives me a wave.
© PA Images via Getty ImagesShining a light on personal passions
Although the Duchess is quick to show excitement, she is calm when things go awry. Her arrival from Britain is so delayed that she must rush to her first engagement in her "aeroplane clothes" while her baggage catches up with her.
She also shows passion for the causes closest to her. Her daughter Louise's experience of overcoming problems with her vision has inspired a commitment to prevent avoidable sight loss.
Speaking at an event hosted by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness and the eye-care charity Orbis, Sophie describes sight loss not merely an avoidable disability, but a mortal risk. "If a child can't see, they drop out of school," the Duchess says. "If they can't see, their life chances are drastically reduced. If somebody can't see in the home, they can't sustain themselves, their families.
"I've met people who live on the streets because they cannot live with their families anymore because they feel that they're a burden. And so they leave and take themselves away. So I place it at a high priority; eye care for all."
It is the first of two engagements about blindness, with a visit on her last day to Mukuni Rural Health Centre. Here, the British charity Sightsavers works with the Zambian health ministry to reduce the burden of trachoma, which left untreated causes a person's eyelashes to turn inwards and leads to blindness. Sophie believes that the disease can be eliminated in Zambia as it was in Tanzania in 2022.
Sophie shows her game side on her second day in Lusaka on a visit to the Jewel of Africa workshop for a crash course in gem polishing. The workshop, which has received British investment, has trained women to turn mined emeralds into finished gems. Sophie is given overalls and a relatively inexpensive piece of quartz to polish. Some self-deprecating remarks later, she produces a stone she is allowed to keep, although it remains unclear whether this is a reward for a job well done or a hint that the stone isn't ready for market.
In a packed day, she follows the workshop with a visit the Imvelo Gallery to meet survivors of gender-based violence, who have addressed their experiences through art that hangs on the walls.
Seeing wildlife and the Victoria Falls
We rise early on the third day to fold ourselves into a 12-seater Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft to fly from Lusaka to a spartan airstrip in the Zambian bush. I am three rows behind the Duchess as I listen to the pilot, who delivers the safety briefing by turning round in her seat. "We'll try to make it as smooth as possible," she says, ominously.
Upon landing, we are taken to the camp operated by Conservation Lower Zambezi, a non-profit organisation that works with the Zambian government to tackle threats to wildlife from poachers, and ease tensions with local residents whose livelihoods are threatened by animals that take their crops and knock down their homes.
© PA Images via Getty ImagesSophie sits in a folding chair as Kalo, a Belgian malinois, shows off the skills of the rangers' canine unit. Kalo is sent to sniff out a bag of pangolin scales, which fetch high prices because of demand for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Hammer, a fellow dog in the rangers' K-9 Unit, is let off the leash to seek an assault rifle hidden in a clump of bushes. Both dogs succeed.
In their kennels hang buckets of items they have been trained to track, labelled bush meat, ammunition, tortoise, ivory and cat skins. Sheleni Phiri, one of the dog unit's handlers, says that he used to catch "three or four" poachers on each of his ten-day patrols, but arrests have dwindled because the dogs are such an effective deterrent.
CLZ also has a classroom and a small museum designed to win over the minds of children to the value of conserving wildlife. Ian Stevenson, the organisation's chief executive, shows Sophie a crude, handmade rifle seized by rangers that poachers used to bring down elephants.
© PA Images via Getty ImagesWe also meet the Kufadza Female Scouts, a women-only ranger unit funded by Wildlife Crime Prevention, who have disabled more than 200 snares set by poachers this year. She is told that women are critical to the fight against wildlife crime at a roundtable discussion, at which rangers tell her that their families discouraged them from taking up a traditionally male career.
Ian later acts as Sophie's guide on the game drive, telling her how success in the battle against ivory poachers has changed animal behaviour. "Thirty years ago, the prides of lions were big," he says when I ask him what he told her. "They were going from one elephant carcass to the next because poaching was so common. Elephants were in big herds, which was a sign of pressure [to defend themselves]. Now they are in smaller groups, which is more natural."
As the sun begins to set, I join Sophie and her aides for a last look at Africa's fourth longest river. Looking back at us are a dozen hippos, grunting in apparent contentment.
After breakfast and Sophie's recollection of her hippo encounter, we return to the airstrip to fly to Livingstone, further upstream on the Zambezi, to see life-changing sporting projects and the spectacle of Mosi-oa-Tunya, the local name for what the explorer David Livingstone named Victoria Falls. The local name means "the smoke that thunders".
Our arrival at the airport begins with a traditional welcome dance at the entrance, which involves a man with elaborate shoulder decorations falling to his hands and knees in front of the Duchess and shimmying like an agitated lion.
Sophie's first stop is a war memorial dedicated to Zambian residents who died in the First World War, while resisting the German East Africa Campaign and on the front lines in Europe. The Last Post blares from a portable speaker, marking the beginning of a two-minute silence before it is broken by Reveille. The Duchess places a posy of flowers at the base of the cenotaph with a handwritten note: "Lest we forget."
Unusually for a royal service of remembrance, monkeys join the occasion, sitting down to groom one another or chew their own feet. One tour guide expresses concern that a monkey will make off with the flowers. "They're likely to," he says. "They take anything they want." When the Duchess departs, the posy remains unstolen.
Among the former soldiers at the ceremony is Peter Jones, a local historian who served in the Falklands with the Royal Engineers before returning to serve with the Black Watch, now part of The Royal Regiment of Scotland, which included being posted to Northern Ireland during the Troubles. After the ceremony, he escorts Sophie to the falls, where she mingles with tourists pleasantly surprised to find themselves chatting to a member of the royal family.
Bonding with local schoolchildren
The Duchess's next visit begins with a rousing performance of drumming and singing as she arrives at Maramba primary school, where pupils are given sporting opportunities by the Zambian non-governmental organisation Sport in Action. The school grounds teem with children as they show their skills at football and netball, which Sophie unexpectedly joins by asking to take some shots on goal. She makes five attempts but achieves only near misses. She also joins young children gathered in a circle to dance and chant with them in an exercise designed to motivate them before a match.
© PA Images via Getty ImagesKelvin Malambo, the school's headmaster, says that the school has been "blessed" to have her as a guest. He hopes that it will bring attention to problems such as water shortages preventing the school from having running water for the past week. "So children have to be sent home halfway [through the day]," he says. "Also, when the children play sport, they cannot wash afterwards, so they go home sweaty." He waves his hand under his nose to mimic the reactions that parents have when their children arrive in need of a wash.
Sport in Action, which was founded in 1998, not only runs sporting projects for 17,000 people in Zambia but helps to run the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme in the country. Some of the children at Maramba are wearing netball skirts with badges from the University of St Andrews, one of five universities to donate new or second-hand kit to Zambian schoolchildren.
Staffsone Phiri, a district coordinator for the NGO, says that he sometimes gets into trouble because the children don't want to stop playing. "The parents all have my number and they call me, saying: 'Where is my child?'"
© PA Images via Getty ImagesSophie completes her visit with a group photograph with all the children crowded around her in a mildly chaotic huddle. "It's only about 10,000 degrees here," she says with a laugh. "Don't worry."
As with all of her Zambia engagements, the Duchess leaves her hosts feeling that the spotlight has been upon them, and with renewed hope.
