An eight-year-old boy has been found alive after surviving for five days in a park inhabited by lions and elephants in northern Zimbabwe , the BBC reports.
The ordeal began when the boy got lost 23km from his home in the dangerous Matusadona Game Park , Mashonaland West MP Mutsa Murombedzi told X. The boy spent five days “sleeping on a rock outcrop surrounded by roaring lions, elephants and eating wild fruits,” the MP added. Matusadona Game Park is home to around 40 lions and at one time had one of the highest lion population densities in Africa.
The boy, Murombedzi says, used his knowledge of the wilderness and his survival skills to stay alive and even dug small wells in dry riverbeds with a stick to get clean water, a skill taught in his native drought-prone region.
After the boy went missing, members of the local Nyaminyami community organized a search party and beat drums every day to try to bring him home. Ultimately, it was the park rangers who found the boy: on his fifth day in the wilderness , the boy heard a ranger's car and ran toward it, narrowly missing it. Fortunately, the rangers returned and spotted "small, fresh human footprints." They then searched the area until they found him.
On social media, users celebrated the boy's strength and survival instinct: "He's going to have an amazing story to tell when he goes back to school," one commented.
(Online Union)