Serious research

Stanley - Thursday

The writers I know take their research seriously. Just take a look at the writers on this blog. Annamaria goes to South America and East Africa to ensure she gets her facts right. Jeff heads to Greece, Sujata to Japan or India. Susan went and lived in Japan - that's taking research really seriously! Craig pops up at conferences all over the world, and Kwei is often seen being driven all over West Africa. Caro traipses through the rain all over Scotland. Ovidia takes her research on Singapore so seriously that she insisted on being born there. As for Zoë, we never know where she is.

Michael and I also take our research seriously, which is not surprising since we both had careers as professors. For us, it is important to dig into all aspects of the story we are going to tell: the backstory, the front story, the characters, and the location. Actually, I should have written that list differently. Location should have come first and not last, because it was while we were on location on the Savuti plains of the Great Chobe Game Reserve in Botswana that we had the idea to write a mystery set in Botswana in the first place.

I'm sure you're bored of hearing how that came about, but I'll repeat it anyway. One day, we watched a pack of hyenas hunt and kill a wildebeest (click here to learn about the wildebeest by its other name). Even though they are known as scavengers, hyenas when hungry, are very successful hunters. After a few hours, three or four if I remember correctly, the wildebeest had disappeared, because hyenas eat both the flesh and the bones.

Cleaning up after dinner

'Aha!' we exclaimed. 'If we ever need to get rid of a body.... No body, no crime.'

And that was how it all started. Fifteen years later, with typical academic alacrity, we started to write A Carrion Death, which needless to say opens with an academic and a game ranger stumbling across a hyena that was savouring a human body.

So location, or place as some call it, plays a big role in all of our books. And we've been delighted by the number of times reviewers have commented on the fact that place is itself a character in our stories.

We have visited all the places we've written about in Botswana, as well as other places in neighbouring countries - just to get the feel of the places. And the feel is often the most important, not necessarily the look or topography.

So I would like to share some glimpses into the extent to which and the seriousness with which  Michael and I take our research into place.

Most of our adventures have started in a small plane in Johannesburg, which I then flew to Botswana or Zimbabwe. There have been some adventures related to the flying that I'll relate some other time - contaminated fuel lines, maps being sucked out of the plane over the Kalahari through a door that popped open, and so on.  Nothing too serious. 

I have a very basic philosophy of being a pilot, namely that I want parity - that is, the number of landings should equal the number of take-offs. I'm pleased to report that have always achieved that goal.

As you can imagine, flying in Botswana is very different from flying in South Africa. For example, facilities are less sophisticated. Most airports, actually air strips, we landed at were dirt strips cut out of the bush. That often posed problems not normally experienced in, say, the United States. I would always fly low over the strip to shoo away any elephants or other animals that may have wandered on to it. And when we landed and were ready to head off on our adventure, we would cover the tyres and tail of the plane with thorn bush branches to keep the hyenas from chewing on them.

Protecting the plane from hyenas

Our usual method of operating once we reached our destination was to be met either by friends who lived in Botswana or by an outfitter we'd hired.

Airport pick-up

Bush beer break

These photos were taken in the area where we saw the hyenas devour the wildebeest. Several of our books and short stories have taken place in similar places.

Haze over the Savuti plain

Walking

Dead elephant - disgusting smell

Desert oasis

Others found the oasis

King of the plains

...but who does all the work?

Our latest book, A Deadly Covenant, is set on the banks of the Kavango River in northwest Botswana, just before the river fans out into the Okavango Delta. It's the only place I've been where I suffered bird overload: too many species to really take in, in such numbers that it was difficult to believe. Here are some photos from that area.

African fish eagle on the lookout for food

White-fronted bee eater

Egrets

Fish eagles in tree

Lilac-breasted roller

Maraboe stork

Waiting for dinner

Saddlebill stork. I call it the 3M stork because of the Post-it note on the beak.

White-faced owl

Perhaps a scops owl. Michael?

A couple of times we strayed from Botswana, usually on purpose, but once accidentally, and ended up in Zimbabwe. We had a couple of research trips canoeing down the Zambezi, always on the lookout for hippos and crocs. The strategy for hippos was to bang the side of the canoe. The hippos would surface to see what was going on. Once we saw where they were, we were very careful not to get between them and deeper water. They can be VERY dangerous. Here are some pictures of those research trips.

Wandering down the Zambezi towards Mozambique

Getting together for a chat. Or couldn't they steer?

The men worked while the lady read a book.

It turned out that we had more trouble with the elephants in and around the Zambezi than we did with the hippos and crocs. We saw this one ahead of us.

No problem at this point.

But it had difficulty climbing the bank. Then it charged along the bank, trumpeting, angry

I think it had as big a fright as we did. Fortunately we paddled away and were safe. 

On another occasion, we had stopped on an island, probably a couple of hundred metres long and a hundred metres wide. We were just setting up our lunch table, when a young male elephant appeared from under a tree. It was curious. It wandered over towards us, took a good look, then wandered off around another tree. It appeared from behind that tree, stared again, then went back. Again it re-appeared, took a long look at us and, without warning, trumpeted and charged. The only option for us seemed to be to run and jump off the high bank into the Zambezi. As we turned, our game guide, jumped out in front of the charging elephant, shouted and waved his hands. The elephant skidded to a halt, literally, because we saw the skid marks afterwards.

The elephant looked quizzically at the game ranger, turned, and sauntered off.

When we asked the ranger how he knew the elephant was going to stop, he replied that he didn't. However, he continued, young male elephants like to strut their stuff and usually back off when confronted like that. The word 'usually' has stuck in my mind to this day.

We began our Zambezi trips at Mana Pools at the very north of Botswana. There was a small rustic camp there which was a fine place to prepare for the trip. As you can see below, we weren't the only guests in camp.

Are you in line for the loo?

One day we were delayed in leaving the camp because a temporary denture I had put next to my bed was no longer there when I woke up. We searched and searched but found nothing. I was certain that it was next to my bed when I went to sleep, so I began to suspect my travelling companions of playing a prank on me. It turned out they weren't and we eventually found the denture on top of a cupboard in the room I was staying. A mouse of some sort had been attracted to it during the night and dragged it to the top of the cupboard to inspect it in private. When it realised it wouldn't fit, it abandoned it and wandered off.

To prove this wasn't all fun, here's Michael doing his research.

This was the way to get clean - and cool. We always had to have a lookout for crocs.

I hope this blog clears up any misunderstandings readers may have had about research. It is difficult, time-consuming, and often dangerous. However, someone has to do it.

Ivory

 Stanley - Thursday

Elephants are my favourite animal. I love their sense of family and community, their sensitivity, and their sense of humour. So, the word 'ivory' evokes myriad reactions in me: anger, disappointment, longing, awe.

Anger

Although the threat of extinction of elephants is not as great as of rhinos, as depicted in Michael and my thriller, Shoot the Bastards (Dead of Night outside North America), there is growing concern about the future of these magnificent animals. I have found it difficult to nail down reliable statistics, but it seems as though anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 elephants are killed each year for their tusks. With a total African population of about 350,000, experts fear the current rate of poaching exceeds reproduction, resulting in population decline and eventually extinction.

[With international bans in place on the sale of ivory and declining source and street values of ivory, it appears that elephant poaching has declined from its peak of about 10% in 2011 to around 4%. A year of COVID lockdown has also helped.]

I am also angry at the corruption that exists in some countries and organisations allowing the whole enterprise to continue.

Disappointment

I am disappointed by two things with respect to the illegal trade in ivory. First is that people feel the need to continue to buy ivory products, thus driving the need for poaching. Second, I am disappointed that there are so many people in poverty that some are easily tempted by traders to kill the elephants. Alleviating the poverty will reduce the incentive to get involved in the illegal trade.

Longing

Whenever I see ivory, I long to be in the bush. I am fortunate to share a bungalow in a private game reserve abutting the great Kruger National Park in South Africa. The is nothing that can compare to sitting in an open game vehicle surrounded by a hundred or more elephants. Scary? Yes, because of their immense size. It does make one's heart rate rise to have 5 tonnes of elephant a metre or two from the car. Exhilarating? Yes, because they are so magnificent. They can be amazingly sensitive - I have seen one gently move a little terrapin out of the way of other elephants coming to drink at a water hole. And they can be dangerous, easily capable of flipping a vehicle over if roused. 

I am longing now because I haven't been in the bush for over a year.

Awe

When I started thinking about today's blog, I wanted to talk about a piece of carved ivory that I have that was probably carved at the end of the nineteenth century. I love it just as much for a beauty of the ivory as the remarkable beauty of the ivory itself. As I thought about it, all these emotions flooded into me. I couldn't isolate the piece from the rest. And, of course, I am fully aware of the irony of owning and loving something made from a substance I want to prevent others from owning. I salve my conscience with the hope that the tusk from which my piece was carved came from an elephant that died of natural causes. 

The piece is a bowl from the Ekiti area (Owo kingdom) of the Yoruba in what is now Nigeria. It lies between the two famous centres of art, Ife and Benin. The bowl probably belonged to a person of high status and was used for keeping personal adornments. The carvings include flute players, a prisoner on a rope, crocodiles, hand-held fans, and probably a portrait of the owner.

My plan is to give it to the Museums Commission of Nigeria when I die. 

The big and the small: elephants and mosquitos

Stanley – Thursday

 

Two interesting stories out of Africa this week: one about my favourite animal; and one about my least favourite animal.

My favourite animal, by far, is the elephant. 

What's not to love?

I have always regarded it with great affection because it has traits that I admire and enjoy. For example, it has a sense of humour. I share a bungalow in a game area called Ingwelala (the place where the leopard sleeps), an area of approximately 3000 hectares next to the famed Kruger Park. There is an apocryphal story of a group of inebriated university students who were making a helluva a row while watching a herd of elephants. Eventually one of the elephants, probably irked by the din, walked over to the Land Rover, picked up the front of the vehicle by the bumper, and dropped it. Drunken students noise no more.

Most of us have watched documentaries about how empathetic elephants are, particularly around their family and friends. I once saw a very different but moving example. A group of elephants were at a waterhole drinking. One elephant noticed a terrapin (a type of turtle) wandering precariously close to its back legs – the terrapin probably thought those big, round grey things were trees. The elephant gently pushed the terrapin backwards with one of its hind legs to get it out of range from being crushed. It repeated this several times until the terrapin got the message and retreated to a safe place.

The story out of Africa this week is about an astonishing effort to catalogue elephant behaviour – to create an elephant ethogram. To quote from the website,

“An ethogram is a comprehensive list, inventory, catalogue or description of the behaviors or actions exhibited by a species. It is a library, or master list, of all known behaviors for a species that describes the characteristics and, where possible, the function of each behavior. The word ethogram comes from the words “etho,” meaning the characteristic and distinguishing attitudes, habits, beliefs, etc. of an individual or group, and “gram,” meaning to write down or record.”

It would be a waste of your time for me to describe what the website has to offer. Just go there and absorb all the characteristics of these remarkable animals. What does it mean when elephants rub ears? How far can elephants communicate with each other? How can an elephant produce quiet, gentle sounds as well as terrifying ear-bursting ones? Why do they intertwine trunks?

I suspect any question you have will be answered. Almost more interesting is the fact that the ethogram will answer questions you've never thought of.

Elephant affection

Elephant anger! Time to leave.

Elephant love?

With the population of elephants now less than 500,000 down from 5 million in 1950, the repository of knowledge contained in the ethogram can be used, not only by scientists, but as a tool for raising public awareness to the risk of losing one of the most intelligent and socially complex animals on the planet.

The ethogram is the brainchild of Dr. Joyce Poole and her husband Petter Granli, together with a variety of other experts. It contains data gathered data for over forty years from several African game reserves.

Elephant Voices is a gem.

 

Not only is the mosquito my least favourite African animal, it is also the most dangerous, killing an estimated 370,000 people in Africa in 2019. For children under 5, one dies every 2 minutes from malaria. 

The dreaded anopholes mosquito

Worldwide distribution of malaria

I am not a fan of any mosquito species, largely because I dislike the buzzing when I’m trying to sleep, but also because of the itching that I sometimes experience. It is the malaria-carrying anopheles genus that I dislike the most because of what it is doing to the African continent. Of the 460 anopholes species, only about 30-40 carry the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum which, so far, has resisted effective attacks from the medical community.

So why is it suddenly in the news again?

In a study published this week in The Lancet, promising new data on a potential vaccine was released. In a phase-two trial, based on 450 children, the R21 malaria vaccine candidate, developed in the UK, was 77 percent effective at stopping malaria, when compared against a control group. Children received three shots of the R21 vaccine over a period of two months, followed by a booster a year later.

The R21 is the first vaccine candidate for malaria to cross the 75 percent threshold, a goal the World Health Organization (WHO) first set in 2013. It now moves to Phase three trials. Let’s all hope it continues to be so effective.

Of course, much like the COVID vaccine, there are huge obstacles to overcome even if it is effective - cost and distribution being the biggest. 

If R21 continues to prove effective, and the cost can be kept very low, the impact on Africa will be huge.

The impact of malaria on families is huge.

This article from National Geographic provides much more information about malaria, in general. It is very interesting.

  

Feeding the addiction

Stanley - Thursday

I’m in the bush, recovering from the world.  I am a total addict.  The more I’m here, the more I need to be here.

This time, the contrast with what came before is very stark.  Even though I have internet access (spotty at best), I’ve had no interest in keeping up with what is happening.  I’ve left behind the pervasive anger, intolerance, and deafness that is blanketing the planet.  I don’t know what is happening in the Middle East, Europe, or the USA.  I don’t know what my Facebook friends are up to.  Have the markets spiked because of the US election?  Or tanked?  I don’t really care because there’s little or nothing I can do about it.

Life is basic here.  Wake up early; have a cup of coffee and some fruit.  Occasionally egg and bacon.  Head out in the rickety Land Rover to wander around the three thousand hectares of bush I have traversing rights on.  Hope to see something interesting.

There is always something interesting.  The first blades of grass pushing through the drought-stricken earth fascinate me.  How do they do it?  Where do they get the energy to brave a new year? 

And in the midst of the barren red soil, a gorgeous plant with red flowers stands proudly for all to see.  

And another:

I wonder how long they will last.  Will they be eaten?  Or wither away, more victims of the drought?

Animals are sparse.  Not surprising really, even though the waterholes are full thanks to the floods of four years ago, which replenished the water table.  Unlike the grass, which is virtually non-existent, the trees look good, most with good foliage, also thanks to the good water table.  I guess their roots can reach the water.

He has right of way.

Surprisingly the impala look healthy – must be eating leaves, since there is no grass.  But I see very few youngsters.  Perhaps the impala women took a year off from being pregnant because their offspring would die for lack of food.

The most interesting animals this time have been two mother-child pairs of rhinos.  (Frankly, I can’t tell the difference between a baby boy rhino and a baby girl.  Not at a distance anyway.)  Someone else saw eight rhinos together, something I’ve never seen.  We’re all worried about rhinos – over a thousand killed in South Africa alone this year.  Poached to satisfy irrational desires in Vietnam and China.  It’s impossible to stop the poachers, who have little to lose.  We should be doing more to stop the demand.

Also interesting is seeing the corpse of a hippo.  Starved to death by the drought.  Enough water in the dams to survive the heat.  But nothing to eat.  Sad.  However, the vultures weren’t complaining.

Here's a hippo uncharacteristically out of the water during the day scrabbling in the dust for something to eat.  The vultures are keeping an eye on him too.

There are a few animals about - always delightful to look at.

Elephants are fine - plenty of leaves on the trees

Don't know what the steenbok is living off - luckily it needs little

A warthog praying for rain

The buffalo also look healthy - must have learnt to eat leaves

Sometimes I don’t drive around hoping for an interesting chance encounter.  Sometimes I take a cooler of food and drink to a hide and settle in for a few hours to watch the passing show.  There’s always something going on.  If there are no animals, there are birds – about four hundred species in this area alone.  Except when there is a drought, when many of the seed eaters are smart enough not to arrive.  This too has benefits – I don’t worry about trying to identify each LBJ (little brown job) – there aren’t any.

But I had one spectacular sighting – a pygmy kingfisher – a bird I haven’t seen in years.  It’s about the length of one of my fingers, but much more beautiful.

Yesterday one of the first migrants returned - the woodland kingfisher.  Its call fills the air.  Click here to hear it.  One of the magical sounds of the bush.  And early in the morning I heard to iconic call of the African bush - the African fish eagle.  Didn't see it though.  Click hear to hear its beautiful call.

Photo: Hennie van Heerden from www.beautyofbirds.com

And the rollers have started to return too - one of the stunning birds of the bush.

And early in the morning I heard the iconic call of the African bush - the African fish eagle.  Didn't see it though.  Click hear to hear its beautiful call.

African fish eagle - a cousin to the bald eagle, I would guess

 When the day is over, a gin and tonic awaits – medicinal, of course.  It’s important to take quinine to minimise the chances of contracting malaria.  And a glass of wine or two to prepare the mind for contemplation.

Then early to bed.  And the next day, the cycle repeats.

It is special here.  As I write this blog, I can hear some male lions grumbling about something.  Probably not happy that their female partners haven’t provided enough food, or that they had to exert themselves to get to it.  And when male lions grumble, the whole neighbourhood knows about it.  The decibel level of a lion’s roar must be about equivalent to a jet engine.

I also hear hyenas calling.  I don’t understand hyena talk, but I imagine the message has something to do with food.  Perhaps the food the lions are grumbling about.

And before I finish writing this blog, a miracle happens.  When I started writing, the sky was glowing with millions of stars.  Orion and his belt and sword were over there.  And I’m sure I saw his dog, Canis Major, wag its tale and wink, watched by the seven sisters.

Then a flash or two in the distance.  A bit later a gust of wind.  Another gust.  Then for fifteen or twenty minutes, the wind howls.  Mosquito-repellant cans blow off the table, doors bang, chairs blow over.  The sky is now full of lightning, but surprisingly little thunder.

More wind.  More lightning.

Then the thunder starts.  I love it.  Flash, bang, crash.  Mette hates it and burrows deep under her pillow.

And then I smell it.  Rain is coming.  Nothing nicer than the smell of impending rain in the African bush.

And then it rains.  Much needed rain.  Coming down horizontally.  Sometimes through the screens that comprise our outside walls. 

Even the lions are quiet.  So are the hyenas.  In awe of the storm and thankful for it.

And then it is over.  Just the sound of water dripping from the trees.

I settle down to finish the blog, thankful I had the foresight to cover the Land Rover.  I don’t like driving around sitting on a wet seat.

(Photos: Stan Trollip, Mette Nielsen, Martin Sambrook)