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)

CITES 17

Michael - Thursday

CITES stands for quite a mouthful - Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and the 17^th plenary meeting of the participants is taking place right now in Johannesburg. With a few not very important exceptions, every country in the United Nations is a signatory. The aim is a laudable one: to control trade in species which are in danger of extinction in the wild, or which may become endangered if exploitation is not strictly controlled. Most of the 35,000 species on one of the three CITES appendices are plants, but about 10% are animals and birds. As one would expect, they have the highest profile. And while most of the 35,000 are facing extinction due to the loss of habitat, global warming, and overutilization, again the highest profile species are the victims of baseless beliefs, greed, thoughtlessness, and politics. (Disclaimer: Any similarity between this and the US presidential election is purely coincidental.)

Umm...now what?

Of course it’s the big names that make the running—elephants, tigers, rhinos. But what of the smaller species which are just as valuable and even more vulnerable? Who has a thought for the pangolins—fascinating creatures with chitinous protective scales, who roll up into a solid ball when threatened and make a good living cleaning up ants and termites? Why would anyone persecute these interesting characters? Unfortunately they, and especially their scales, have a reputation for medicinal properties in the East. Estimates suggest that perhaps a million individuals have been illegally killed over the past decade for meat and the use of scales and body parts. Yesterday CITES 17 agreed to move all pangolin species (Asian and African) to Appendix 1, the highest level of protection and banning all international trade. I’d be even more thrilled about that if some of the other occupants of that Appendix were doing better; all species of rhino are on that list, for example.

Another example is the African Grey Parrot, down to perhaps 1% of previous numbers in the wild. Your pet store owner will tell you their specimens are all bred from domestic stock and hopefully that will be true. But many are snared in the wild, wrapped in muslin bags, and smuggled out of Africa with plenty dying along the way. They, too, are to move to the highest endangered level.

The Guardian newspaper has released a series of in depth articles on endangered species and illegal trade to coincide with the CITES meeting. See this article for example.

Then the politics. China is a signatory and appears to take its responsibilities seriously.  But there's ample evidence that tigers are bred for body parts in that country although that is against their own law. China reacted angrily to the accusation, pointing out that CITES is about international trade and so what it does internally is nobody else’s business. What’s more, they point out, the breeding program actually enhances the tiger gene pool so that it helps the species overall.

There are also disagreements about elephants. Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe have the largest populations (in that order of total numbers) and they asked for a process to be initiated to lead to an orderly sale of legally stock-piled ivory, perhaps through a once-off auction as has been done before. The money could then be used for conservation of other species, particularly rhino. This was vehemently opposed by Kenya which has seen their elephant numbers decline significantly due to poaching. Kenya won the day with more than 70% of the delegates rejecting even a discussion of a future process. One delegate is said to have remarked bitterly that if Kenya cleaned up its act—particularly controlling ivory smuggling through Mombasa—then its elephant populations might be growing the way the southern African ones were.

As for the rhinos, the furor carries on. There are many good arguments on all sides, but CITES will certainly continue the ban on the rhino horn trade. Having just lost a pregnant female in our small game reserve in broad daylight despite our anti-poaching team, technology, and the hard work of our people, to say nothing of the efforts of the government and CITES, I’m now convinced there’s no option but to regularly and painlessly remove the horn and destroy it on the spot. The game reserves that have done that have lost essentially no animals since they started the policy. If the day comes when the peoples of China and Vietnam no longer believe that the horn is anything more than solidified animal hair, they can be allowed to grow back. At least we’ll have some rhinos left for the horns to grow back on.

//Kha - The Name of the Lion

Michael - Thursday

It's Wednesday morning and I'm sitting in my hotel room in Reno about to head for the the airport for a flight to Los Angeles and then London, where I'll join Stan tomorrow evening for the Orenda Book event at Waterstones Bookstore in London.  We head off to Crimefest after that.  I'm really looking forward to linking up with Orenda's great group of authors, to say nothing of blogmates, and others.

There's just one problem.  I've just realized that I'll be on a plane when I should be doing a blog.  This confusion may have resulted from the idea of going to London from Johannesburg via Nevada.  I think I was confused about direction. And time. Long story.  

Stan and I are just finishing a short story set in New Xade in the Kalahari in Botswana, and of course that makes me think of the original Xade and the ancient culture of the Bushmen of the past.  And that made me think of stealing a blog from the past...

Wilhelm Bleek

Dorothea Bleek

Between 1870 and 1880, two linguists – Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd recorded the stories and beliefs of five /Xam Bushmen.  By that time, the Bushmen of the southern region – south of the Orange River – were in decline, and it was clear that the /Xam culture would soon be gone.  Bleek had several of the /Xam live with him at his house in Cape Town and learned their language.  This was a remarkable feat for two reasons – firstly at that time there was essentially no written version of the language and its dialects, and secondly its structure involved the frequent use of five clicks each changing the meaning of what followed in the context.  The linguists had to develop a character set to represent these (and other) features of the language.  Thus the five special clicks are written /, //, ≠, ! and Θ.  The names of the five /Xam teachers who shared their customs and beliefs with Bleek and Lloyd in their own language (with the Western names they were given) are /A!kuηta (Klaas Stoffel), //Kabbo (Oud Jantje Tooren), Diä!kwain (David Hoesar), /Haη≠kass’o (Klein Jantje Tooren) and ≠Kasiη (Klaas Katkop).  The material was compiled in extensive notebooks.  Some forty years later one of Wilhelm Bleeks daughters – Dorothea Bleek – first published them.

One of the /Xam teachers

The interest in what is recorded for the ordinary reader is in the picture that it gives of a vanished culture and its beliefs.  The /Xam lived in semi-arid savannah conditions and shared the environment with all the big game for which Africa remains famous.  Of these none was more awesome and terrifying than the lion. Even today sitting in the (relative) safety of an open Land Rover in a game reserve, few things are more awe-inspiring than a lion roaring a few yards away.  And the casual glances they give you with big yellow eyes as they walk past seem to say, “You have the upper hand now, but things may be different later.”

Perhaps it is hardly surprising that the Bushmen attributed powers to lions that went way beyond their daunting physical prowess and co-operative hunting skills.  Lions understood human speech.  Owls and crows spied for them.  Worse still, they had swarms of flies which they could send out to listen to what people said and report back.  Thus, children in particular where warned to be careful not to insult a lion; it was best to euphemistically refer to “hair” (“Hair" was here, see there are "Hair’s" footprints) or to indicate the same with one spread open hand.  Then the flies wouldn’t know.  (Presumably flies don’t have enough intelligence to bring to learning such matters.)  Not only would owls report to the lions on where people where, they could also make the sun set quickly – taking away the light people needed to fight or escape.

It is hard to imagine living not only in nightly danger from these large predators, but also endowing them with demon-like powers.  Yet, with great courage, the /Xam would sometimes steal part of a lion’s kill, maybe even driving off an animal or two to do so.  But there is a do-as-you-would-be-done-by moral to that tale.  It was understood that part must always be left for the lions, otherwise they would track the thieves to their homes and demand a human in compensation.

Diä!kwain told it like this:

            “Our parents used to say that if the lion did not find food at the place of the kill, he would be angry and say to himself, ‘Just you wait a bit; because you seem to have carried off all my food, I will do as you have done to me, I will follow your footprints, I will go and seize one of your men in his sleep and eat him.  For you seem to have forgotten that I, too, am hungry.”

(Customs and Beliefs of the /Xam Bushmen, edited by Jeremy C Hollman, Wits University Press.)

These stories and the many others that Bleek and Lloyd laboured to understand and record, give us an insight into a time and a way of life that is now gone, in South Africa at least.  

I think we owe them a debt.

The Big Five

Visitors to the big game areas of sub-Saharan Africa are often exhorted to spot The Big Five.  And doing so is often a badge of pride.  The name The Big Five came about apparently because the five animals are reputedly the most dangerous to hunt.  

I've just returned from 10 days in the bush, so the idea of spotting The Big Five came up.  Fortunately we succeeded in seeing all five, including the most difficult, the leopard.

Here I am in my bush vehicle, ready to go.

The animals comprising The Big Five are:

The king of the jungle – the lion (incidentally, the lion hardly ever is in a jungle – it prefers bush land or plains)

I've got my eye on you.

Here, take my photo

Time to get out of the sun

Maybe it's time for a nap

Zzzzzz

The leopard – elusive and very difficult to spot (my favorite cat)

It's all mine

The elephant – my favorite animal by far

The rhinoceros – in danger of extinction due to the demand for its horn’s (non-existent) medicinal properties

A white rhino - a grazer

The buffalo – usually placid in a herd, but decidedly cantankerous when solo.

Don't come any closer

Many visitors are surprised by the size of the animals, so I thought I would provide you with some basic facts about each of The Big Five.

The elephant – or ellie as we like to call them

This is the largest terrestrial animal, with African ellies being somewhat larger than their Asian counterparts.

A large male African ellie can stand 4 metres (13 feet) high and weigh 7,000 kgs (15,000 lbs).  With its ears out and trumpeting, it is an awesome and terrifying sight.

Ears out an trumpeting

On one of our bush trips, a group of us were canoeing along the Zambezi from Mana Pools in Zimbabwe to the Mozambique border.  We stopped for lunch on a small island, whose side were small sand cliffs made carved out when the river was in flood.  We were in the midst of setting up our picninc lunch when an ellie walked out from under a tree.  It looked at us curiously, standing about 30 or 40 metres away.  It walked around another tree and peered at us again.  Then it walked back around the tree to take another look at us.  Without any warning, up went the trunk, a soul-chilling trumpet followed, and the ellie charged.

Our options were few.  Staying where we were was obviously not an option.  But jumping over the small cliff into the crocodile-infested, hippo-infested Zambezi didn’t seem very appealing either.  But we really didn’t have a choice, so we moved with some speed towards the top of the cliff – probably 3 to 4 metres high.  Just before we had to launch ourselves over the edge, the game ranger who was accompanying us, jumped in front of the ellie, waved his arms, and shouted.

The ellie skidded to a halt – literally – looked quizzically at the crazy ranger, turned and walked away.

Of course, we were very relieved and asked the ranger why he did what he did.  He replied that when young bull ellies charge like that, it is usually a mock charge – that they are just strutting their stuff.  ‘Usually’ we thought. 

We were very thankful to have someone with us with knowledge and courage, who provided us with a story for years to come.

In the Kalahari - running for a waterhole

As frightening as they can be, ellies are also softies.  I once watched a small herd drinking at a waterhole.  There was a tortoise at the edge of the water in potential danger of being trampled.  One ellie gently moved it out of danger with it foot.  Amazing.

People who spend time around ellies are constantly amazed at their behaviour.  They have a great sense of humour.  The story goes at the game farm where I have a share in a bungalow that a group of young men, highly intoxicated, were watching a herd of ellies.  The men were making a great deal of noise, as intoxicated men are wont to do.  One ellie apparently was so irritated at the intrusive noise in the quiet bush that it wandered over to the Land Rover in which the men were sitting, lifted the front of the vehicle off the ground, and dropped it.  It them repeated this to reinforce its point and walked off.  Needless to say the bush became very quiet.

Ellies, despite their size, are remarkably quiet when they walk.  Most people who spend time in the bush have stories about looking intently at some animal or other only to find an ellie or two are standing a few metres away.  They have walked up in complete silence.  A big ellie has a foot that can reach nearly half a metre across (that’s 18 inches or so). 

This is a small footprint - and I have a big foot

Ellies are vegetarian and go through a huge amount of leaves and grass a day, often up to 150 kgs (330 lbs).  They also consume up to 40 litres of water (11 gallons). 

Elephant teeth are very interesting.  Unlike humans who replace their baby teeth with one additional set, elephants have six sets, the baby teeth followed by five other sets.  Unlike humans, an ellie’s new teeth start at the back and push forward causing the old ones to fall out.  The last set typically comes when an ellie is about 40 years old (they can live to 70) and has to last the rest of its life.  If it doesn’t, the ellie loses the ability to chew and will die of starvation.

Ellie tusks are used for digging, debarking trees, lifting, and fighting.  Tusks are relatively soft and often wear down or break off.  The record length of an African ellie tusk is about 3 metres (10 feet).  Over the past couple of hundred years, elephant tusks have on average become shorter because of natural selection – the long tusked ellies were shot for trophies.  I’m sure Darwin would have had something to say about this.

Enjoying the water

Paddling in the Okavango Delta

The most fascinating aspect of ellies, other than their amazing social structure, is their trunk.  Made up of about 150,000 muscle fascicles, it is a remarkably versatile tool.  It can lift 350 kgs (750 lbs) and can take the shell off a peanut without breaking the nut inside.  It can hold 8 litres of water (about 2 gallons) which is used for drinking and spraying over its own body.  It is also used as a snorkel when the ellie goes swimming underwater – one of the great sights of the bush.  Last week I watched two ellie teenagers cavorting in a river pool, rolling on their backs, going completely under water except for their trunks.  A hippo that had been enjoying the pool, retreated behind some rocks and glared at the ellies’ intrusion into its space.

On the banks of the Chobe River - Botswana

Family portrait - face powdered

I can watch ellies all day (and night).  Normally they are placid, but one always has to be careful when one encounters a breeding herd - mothers and young.  As with all animals, mothers can be very aggressive when their kids are threatened or perceived to be threatened.

Talking of young, a baby elephant must be the cutest thing on four feet.  It is very small, often able to walk underneath its mother's belly.  It doesn't quite know what to do with tis trunk and sometimes trips over it.  And. like other kids, little ellies love to play.  A wonderful sight.

Well that’s enough for today.  Next time I’ll write about some of the other Big Five.

Stan - Thursday