Thursday, 1 May 2014
1st May
The sun has set on my Kalahari adventure. I didn't see a cheetah, I really didn't expect to. I've been content to see hundreds and hundreds of photos taken at marking trees enough to convince me, not that I needed convincing, that these gorgeous animals need to be protected and cherished if they are not to disappear. The biggest problem by far is what they call human/predator conflict, mainly the issue of cheetahs being shot, trapped or poisoned by farmers who believe or choose to believe that cheetahs are taking their livestock. That's why CCB monitors the numbers of potential prey as well. The more easily available prey, the less predation on livestock and the less threat to cheetahs
I've been privileged to meet and work with this small team of dedicated and hard working individuals who live in this harsh, spartan environment all year round through extremes of heat, cold and flood. Max has lived like this for five years, Jane for four, Phale for three and Rick for one and has just signed for another year. The huts have no cooling and no heating, before I came they'd had no hot water for ten months. Dust and dirt are a constant, in the kitchen add grease and flies, the shower/toilet block is dilapidated (but due to be refurbished soon). And yet they maintain high standards of research and monitoring, they drive long distances to check on marking trees and cameras, they keep detailed records of their findings and Jane has compiled an amazing photo id of every cheetah they've seen on camera.
It's impressive and I admire their dedication and tenacity.
For me this has been the most fantastic experience ever. Having thought about it for so long there were moments bumping along a track or walking through the bush with Murphy when I thought "My God I'm really doing this!" I've coped with the heat, dust and flies, the long days, the solitude, the spartan conditions, the rigours of tracking and bush trekking, the creepy crawlies. I've had no television or radio for a month, I've worn no make up for a month except sun protection, I've worn the same clothes for a week at a time, I've amused myself through the long evenings and quiet weekends, I've had a lot of chocolate. I stepped out of my ordered self indulgent comfort zone and I survived and had an amazing experience. I've always loved wildlife and being this close to nature has been a dream come true.
So, cooking on a calor gas ring, wearing the same clothes for a week, toilet the other side of a field, no hair appliances - I'm ready to try camping!
Thanks to CCB for a wonderful experience, thanks to Harold and Geraldine Hester for their hospitality and for giving me the added pleasures of bird spotting and star gazing, thanks to those of you who kept in touch by email, text or What's App it meant so much to me to hear from you out here. The chirp of my phone when it came in range of wifi was so welcome.
Finally, (sorry this is getting like the Oscars) if you enjoyed my blog please all club together and send me somewhere else... no seriously.
If you enjoyed my blog then it is thanks to my Technical Director and very great friend Nigel Nicholson who spent many many kind and patient hours with this technodunce setting up the blog and email on my phone, showing me how to do posts and upload photos. Thanks Nigel I couldn't have done it without you, dinner's on me.
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
30th April
I'm now arrived at Gaborone with Harold and Geraldine so I can safely tell you a bit about Ghanzi. If it was the wild west of America and not Africa it would be a one horse town, well make that a donkey. Like Gaborone it's a mixture of grandiose new buildings (always Government) and lowly shacks and everything in between. Most houses are built of breeze blocks with a corrugated tin roof and they're generally just square in design. Some have a solar power system and a satellite dish and others have a bowl of water in the yard and cook on a wood fire.
People really only pass through Ghanzi on their way up to the Okavango Delta or down to Gaborone so there are no lingering tourists yet there's a state of the art tourist office with a beautiful thatched roof which has been empty since the day it was built. There's a Spar supermarket which is quite good and two Choppies supermarkets, three hardware shops, three filling stations, a very few clothes shops and one pharmacy. Oh and the Kalahari Arms which is the only place in the whole of Ghanzi you can get a cup of coffee. The nearest book store is 750 kilometres away. I saw no make up on sale anywhere and Nivea toiletries were kept behind a special counter and twice the price.
I took a photo of Reggie house which is fairly typical. There are thirteen living in a three room house and his grandma has a room to herself. This is because elders are always respected here. I had a soft spot for Reggie because we were paired up for my first couple of days and he was unfailingly friendly, polite and respectful (to his elder!) which went a long way with me. He's a bright boy, speaks English, Afrikaans and Setswana and enough San to converse with the bushmen.
Next to the Spar is a shop called Topline which had some quite nice clothes. I bought a jacket there ( oh come on, I haven't gone completely native). Talking of clothes, these lovely ladies are wearing the traditional dress and headgear of the Herero tribe and I'd seen one or two each time I was in Ghanzi. They look like extras in a BBC costume drama and they told me it takes them two hours to get dressed
With my new Kalahari bush routine it's been taking me all of two minutes..
Final blog tomorrow.
Sunday, 27 April 2014
27th April
Typo - ah this naughty phone. I started my walk at 8am, well of course you knew that because I'm tucked up by 7pm most nights soon as it gets dark.
27th April
The mornings have been chilly again but at 5pm yesterday the temperature in my hut was 38 degrees. So I decided to start my Sunday morning walk at 8pm. I found some quite nice bacon in Spar so the promise of a bacon sandwich was my reward. I've promised Murphy for the last two weeks that this Sunday we'd walk all the way to the bush camp. I didn't take my binoculars because I just wanted to enjoy the walk, my last in the African Botswana bush. With my newly trained tracker's eye I could see my footprints from Friday and Saturday, almost synchronised so I must walk always at the same pace although I don't always start from the same point. I could also see small hoof prints, probably warthog, larger ones, probably kudu. I do look at the bush which stretches away to infinity on both sides but I've never seen anything here, although I'm told eyes are undoubtedly watching me. Often there are no birds about so for me it all happens on the ground. Apart from the visible insects like the ubiquitous corn cricket which rears on its hind legs and shakes a fist as I walk past, I find all the little tracks of birds, snakes and geckos fascinating. Yesterday and today I saw fat semicircular tracks of a big snake although apparently they flatten themselves to get traction and aren't as big as all that. The tracks were six to eight inches across so even at half that size I wouldn't want a close encounter.
I enjoy the walks with Murphy, it's the five thousand uninvited flies which tag along that are the problem. These are like small house flies and they're on you all the time and much more annoying than mosquitoes. You don't want to see the kitchen. I was thinking today that of all the useful things I brought, a fly whisk would have been the most useful. Using my new bushman skills I broke a branch off a shrub, being careful of the thorns, and used that. We made it to the bush camp and I looked in the empty swimming pool. Last time I looked, a month ago on my first day here, there was still rainwater in it and it was chock full of frogs. Well you know me and frogs, I took a photo of hundreds piled up on the steps but it's on my camera rather than the phone. Today there was just a few left maybe half a dozen. They are African bull frogs and can get huge and they bite apparently. Fascinating stuff...
On the subject of things that bite and sting, the scorpion I saw in the shower block was a tiddler compared to the one that walked past the office door on Friday. It was left to fearless Jane who squashed it with a can of fly spray. I felt rather sorry for the scorpion but they are dangerous and whilst not fatal to humans it would be to any of the much loved camp pets, there are two cats Tigger and Gizmo as well as the two dogs.
I am leaving here on Wednesday so I will probably leave my final blog until I'm in Gaborone where Harold has Earl Grey tea waiting for me. How very civilised...
Saturday, 26 April 2014
26th April
I've had a nice lazy Saturday so far, really needed it after two weeks solid clearly not used to this work lark. I have however maintained the tradition of the mid morning tea break when in the office. Eight til one is a long stretch without a cuppa and although it may have prompted some wry smiles from my non British colleagues I notice they have now joined in. This doesn't apply to tracking mind you, we would often go from 6 am til 1 pm without a tea break (or a comfort break come to that) but I managed. I found some Earl Grey teabags, Liptons not Twinings so standards are being maintained.
I've done some interesting stuff in the office this week. Firstly I input all Phale's tracking data which I had written on the sheets. How cool was that? Then for Jane I went back over all the camera images for 2011 and 2012 at two particular trees noting down all the animals seen not just cheetahs. It was fascinating and sometimes the first time of seeing an animal or the first time up close. Sometimes really close, just an eye or a rump especially the warthog. Be honest, it's a face only another warthog could love and clearly they do because they were far and away the most numerous. There were lots of cheetahs, all the antelopes, jackals, a brown hyena carrying an expensive camera, wildebeest, a wild cat, porcupines AND my burrow buddy the aardvark. It's quite tricky because if a warthog triggers the camera ten times in thirty minutes that only counts as one sighting. Once it goes beyond thirty minutes that's a new sighting, so I have to carefully watch the date and time. At some trees there are two or three cameras so even trickier to monitor the dates and times to make sure a sighting is only recorded once.
When I went out tracking with Phale although we lost two cameras there were still some photos and I'm sending you some. I also spent time this week identifying cheetahs from those photos. Their spot pattern is unique to each one and it is possible to tell them apart once you find something to focus on like a particular shape or cluster. Jane has a photo database and I was comparing with that, like doing mug shots at the police station. I think I correctly identified them as two brothers she calls The Brothers Grimm or BG2 for short. All the regulars have names. By the end of the afternoon I had spots before my eyes but it'll look good on my CV. Don't ask me to do it when they're going at 75 kph though. Did you know a cheetah can out accelerate any car 0-60 mph?
So office bound this week but interesting stuff.
More later...
Wednesday, 23 April 2014
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)