3 days in liuwa plain, back in kalabo village for a night

November 9, 2010

Hey folks,
An unscheduled trip out of the bush and back into the village of Kalabo tonight. A few days in the park so far, and I've been blown away. Sure,we've seen lions and a lion's share of hyaenas. No wild dogs yet, as they're proving to be difficult to find (huge home ranges). But the most impressive thing so far has been the copious amounts of large birds. Storks, cranes, vultures, eagles, and more. Hundreds of them. Everywhere. This place is a birder's paradise!

Anyway, this is only a quick email to jot down a couple noteworthy events, and then I have to hand the computer off.

1. My first night in Liuwa Plain. A massive lightning and thunder storm, along with heavy rains. Lightning illuminating our camp, tent-shaking thunder. And lions calling eachother/roaring throughout the night, within earshot of my bunk. I can't express the sensation in such a quick email, but you could say the feeling was electrifying lying under that huge lightning with lions roaring nearby! I layed awake for hours listening to the show...

2. Two nights ago, one of the wildlife scouts (a Zambian from a nearby village who knows the area very well and can search for some of the animals being studied) took one of our vehicles to go visit his wife near the Angolan border. We expected him back by about 6 pm. He didn't show. We went so sleep. Woke up the next morning (today), and he still wasn't at camp. We called around on the radio and couldn't find him. Then a few hours later, we received a report that he had broken down at his wife's village, and we needed to go to his location to fix the flat tire and drive teh vehicle back to camp. (Don't worry. This part of the Angolan border is completely safe and filled with Barotse fishermen who don't really have any issues with the political border between the two countries. They are all very friendly and all smiles; no spooky Angolan interactions, but we weren't even in the country anyway). We arrived at his wife's village, which was entirely remote, all reed huts with maize fields and robust gardens, no electricity or plumbing, and about 50 residents. We found the vehicle and realized that the tire was irreprable, so we improvised a way to get another vehicle out to it tomorrow to fix/tow it back to Kalabo for proper repairs. Keep in mind this is perhaps the most remote place I've ever been, with no roads other than dirt tracks that lead into the flat plains (easy to navigate with a GPS, but not exactly an accessible location for a repair). And the whole while, us four white faces were discussing this plan amongst a village of Barotse, who all congregated around us and stared at us the entire time. I wish I could write more about how surreal and otherworldly the whole situation felt, but I'm running out of time for this email. Just know that although we had a bad situation with a vehicle that seriously disrupts the research being done, I couldn't help but laugh at the situation and wonder how the hell I found myself in a remote Barotse fishing village 2 miles from Angola... As we left, everyone smiled and waved and gave us thumbs ups.... The vehicle is still there, so we have to go retrieve it eventually...

Alright. I have tons more to dispatch, but there just isn't any more time tonight. I'll write again soon, but know that things are well, I'm seeing some incredible wildlife and birdlife, experiencing things I never imagined and having to problem solve in the most surreal locations... I'm having a great time! But I wish I could chat with you all, as well... I'll be able to in no time...

Hope everyone is well. Talk to you soon!

Daven

And please pass this along to anyone who I forgot on the email list. I'm in a rush and I just jotted down the names that came to mind the quickest... Thanks!

A flock of crowned cranes prancing around the grass in the early morning.

Two saddle-billed storks stretching their legs out near a wildbeest bull. These storks were almost as tall as the wildebeest, which were no small ungulates themselves...

Perhaps one of the most remote places I've ever been. This Lozi village is the home of our scout's wife, where our vehicle broke down. We were a few stones' throws from the Angolan border, and I'm pretty sure I can guess how many white faces, let alone strange looking four wheel drive golf carts they've seen in their lives. Lozi is the most commonly spoken language of the Barotse people, who inhabit much of Western Province, Zambia and some of eastern Angola. I have to admit, I felt somewhat uncomfortable and perhaps a little nervous taking a couple photos of this village...

Kalabo town. This dirt road led to African Parks housing, where I could send text messages and emails back to the States. Kalabo used to have a fair amount of money, as it was formerly a sizeable tradepost in the Angolan diamond trade.

Later in the fall I flew over Liuwa Plain with the BBC film crew, hoping to track a certain pack of wild dogs (which we eventually did). This shot was taken as we flew over the bustling Kalabo en route to the park.

Day two, Feelin' groovy

November 5, 2010

G'day mates! Sorry for such an immediate second email. I generally won't send this many mass emails so quickly, as I know they can be a bit annoying in the ol' inbox for those who aren't so interested. However, I'm leaving for the bush early tomorrow morning, and I only have an hour on the internet today. So I thought I'd maximize the situation and send out another big one...

Anyhow. Day number two. Quite an improvement from my mixed emotions from yesterday! I think two hearty meals, 12 hours of sleep in a bungalow, and two cups of delicious coffee black really helped the situation... I spent the afternoon last night and this morning running errands with my field supervisor (Jassiel) and my top dog supervisor (Matt). Both are overflowing with humor and smiles. Robust senses of humor, you could say. It felt good to be around folks with easy laughter, and I'm happy to know I'll be working with such jolly chaps...

We spent today racing around town trying to check off a list of to-do's. We got about half of them done, and Matt was ecstatic. Matt wareed me that things move incredibly slowly in Zambia, especially when it comes to shipping, receiving, or financial transactions. After participating in a one-hour long propane bottle purchasing transaction today, and after paying for a phone yesterday afternoon, only to have the salesman tell me the phone wouldn't be ready until today (which it wasn't), I suppose I am not in a position to discomfirm Matt's warning. Things do move slowly here (except for the traffic). But it's all good. We got plenty of things done today, and the only ramification of things moving slowly was that I had to drop Matt off at the airport this afternoon (he's heading into a different part of the country for two days to meet with a funder from Europe), and then I got to drive back into downtown Lusaka in a local truck. I wasn't sure what to expect of myself, though. In Zambia, the driving rules are the same as England. Steering wheel on the right, cars moving forward on the left. Seems easy enough, until you factor in the amount of roundabouts in Lusaka (which are rather confusing when they're turning the opposite way)! Yet it was perfectly easy. Not a bad second day in Zambia...

Tomorrow I get on an 8 hour bus for Mongu where I'll meet Egil, a Zambian Carnivore Programme ecologist from the Netherlands. From his email he's sent me, he, too, sounds like a humorous soul.

We talked about what a typical work day will look like for the coming months. And here it is: wake up at 3 am to start tracking collared hyenas and wild dogs. Track animals until we get a strong signal from the individuals we'd like to track that morning, find them, see if they're currently eating or hunting, document what we see. Take a break in late morning to nap, read, eat, and most importantly: enter data. Then it's off again at about 5 pm to do the same thing, returning to camp by about 7 or 8. In the process, we'll be seeing mostly wildebeest, zebra, numerous species of antelope, hyena, wild dog, and perhaps a few cheetah. There are only three lions near where we'll be, one female and two males. They're seen almost on a daily basis, but they have not expressed any aggressive behavior toward humans, vehicles, or camp. Oh, and 450 species of birds... Exciting, eh?

National Geographic will be right behind me, arriving in Liuwa Plain only a couple days after I do. They'll be camped with us for two weeks, filming hyenas, lions, wildebeest, and the staff of the Zambian Carnivore Programme. After seeing the Alaska Bears and Beyond program on National Geographic and how they spun Pack Creek, I can safely admit that I'm expecting some amount of cheesiness as a result...

We'll also be sharing our camp with Robin Pope Safaris. I know nothing about this guy Robin, but apparently he's a world renowned safari guide. He'll be next door to us for a month...

To accommodate all of our neighbors, our camp apparently has two toilets and two showers. Talk about living plushly in the bush! I was expecting one to two showers a month and a latrine-digging event every few days. Perhaps this is too luxurious...

Anyway, I'm off to organize my stuff and better prepare myself for tomorrow morning. Hope everyone's enjoying old man winter!

Until next time,
Daven

Jassiel M'Soka, ecology staff for the Zambian Carnivore Programme. Jassiel told me late one evening that his goal in life is to have a modest but sturdy house on about ten acres of land with a garden. Sounds familiar to me...

Matt Becker, CEO of the Zambian Carnivore Programme. Among the most refined senses of sarcasm I've come across in the 21st century..

Two of the three National Geographic film crew out on the finest road in Liuwa Plain National Park.

Mongu, Western Province with a storm brewing beyond. Mongu was a very quiet, mostly peaceful town at the end of the paved road in western Zambia. It sits on a high bluff overlooking a massive flood plain that is dry, Kalahari-style grassland in the dry season, and soupy flooded swamp in the wet season. I arrived at the tail end of the dry season, when the days were hot and transportation was a relative breeze...

Folks in Mongu meandering on a Sunday evening. While in Zambia, there was some civil unrest in Mongu. In the 1960's, the Barotse people of Western Zambia struck a deal with the Zambian government (shortly after independence from England) to eventually form an independent Barotseland (similar to a situation like Swaziland, an independent nation within the borders of South Africa). This indenpendence has never been granted, and in January, 2011, some Mongu and surrounding area residents took it upon themselves to again demand independence. It turned somewhat violent, and two residents of Mongu died in the altercation. I was not in Mongu at the time, but I arrived two weeks later, complete with police check points, curfews, and a fair amount of sad and meloncholy Zambians I had come to know over the course of my time there...

Safe, sound, and a bit sleepy here in Lusaka City!

November 4, 2010

Hello folks!

I have to preface: this likely won't be the most coherent of emails I've crafted in my day. The past two days have included sizeable flights and extended layovers in large airports. I didn't find the ways to obtain the zzz's that I craved, and now I am a young lad in need of a certain midday siesta here in Lusaka, Zambia.

There aren't many impressions to write quite yet, as I've only been in the city for about two hours. I will say that in no way do I feel unsafe. The people I've spoken with so far have been all smiles and very friendly, except one Zambian who assumed I was Australian and kept saying "g'day, mate" as I walked past him half an hour ago. The majority of the streets I've seen have been clean and free of litter (with the exception of a few alleys; not unlike anytown USA, I'm sure). Customs was a breeze, the airport was tiny but organized, the sky is blue, the weather is warm, and the place I'm staying at in Lusaka is cozy and welcoming. I'm meeting up with the project director for whom I'll be working this afternoon, which will be nice to chat with him face to face and hash out a few nuances I'll likely encounter while I'm here. But Lusaka seems good. I wouldn't say that I'm in love with the city by any stretch, but it sure has been an easy, stress free day thus far.
Last night, on the other hand, was a different story. I was reading a book about "conservation refugees." The term conservation refugee is new to me, and I now understand it to mean the millions of people who have been displaced by conservation groups who lock up and preserve big tracts of land in developing countries and/or rural and remote areas of developed countries that still have indigenous populations. You see this a lot in big national parks or game preserve in which thousands of locals once lived, hunted, cultivated, gathered, and collected. Once the boundaries of the parks were defined, the people were displaced off of their original land, ultimately winding up in soil-poor land foreign to them or unemployed and in the city, and most often under poverty. The chapters I read last night discussed Canada, Alaska, the American West, Latin America, SE Asia, Iran, but predominantly sub saharan Africa. I felt a growing guilt washing over me last night as I read further and further into the book, knowing that I was heading for sub saharan Africa to contribue to a conservation organization... Thankfully the group I'm working for seems to understand this situation and is working toward conservation goals while simultaneously striving to keep locals on their land, even if that land is within designated game reserves and/or national parks.

Anyhow, I somehow couldn't rationalize that last night. I just kept feeling the feelings of guilt and let them build. I was doing alright last night, for a while, though. I was bouncing back and forth between being calm and being excited. And sometimes a bit nervous or afraid. It really struck me though as I monitored our flight path and we passed over Libya. Then over Chad and into the Sudan and the Darfur Mountains. I have to admit that as I saw myself passing over those places, looking out the window and wondering what the hell was happening immediately underneath me, I allowed myself to become genuinely frightened. I was afraid for about two hours, but eventually got over it by dumbing down my senses and watching the movie Almost Famous on my little tv screen in front of me. A rather trivial, and unlikely remedy to a quick bout of fear, but it did the trick somehow, and I'm glad it did.

After I started feeling a little better, I noticed an enormous lightning storm off the right side of the plane. Looking at our flight path, I deduced that I was watching a thunderstorm over the Congo Basin. Talk about surreality!

Since landing in Lusaka, however, I've realized that those fears are unjustifed. At least for where I am, in Zambia (I'm sure those fears are indeed justified elsewhere). This country so far has had far better drivers than Panama or Bulgaria or New York. Much less litter and sidewalk trash than Chile or even Chicago. And seemingly friendly people who don't go out of their way to give you a crooked look or a hard time. Again, it's only been a couple of hours, but I feel good about it. I'm at an internet cafe about a half mile down the road from my little cabana I have rented here, and the walk here was sufficiently uneventful and unspooky. The people in the other cabanas and tents at our little travelers compound were relaxing in the sun, reading books with their cameras strewn about the area. It didn't have the feeling at all that you needed to watch all of your belongings at all times. I overheard one conversation near my cabana involving a couple of Australians here to help build an educational operating room in a local hospital (one with facilities and infrastructure ammenable to teaching local medics and doctors the ins and outs of surgery). Pretty good crowd to be hanging out with so far...

Alright, it's time for me to return to my casita to obtain a large quantity of zzz's. I hope to hear from you folks, and just know that everything thus far has started off smoothly!

Daven

Copper River Valley

Well, it comes as no great surprise that I hadn't the time to post the final photos from our October road trip through the interior. Gathering my field gear for Zambia and saying bye to family down South were the priorities last fall, and I'm just now getting around to those final few days on the road with Scott. Included this time around are a couple scenes from the shores of the mighty Copper River, along with some higher elevation taiga and tundra landscapes from the Matanuska rainshadow. Juneau and Southeast Alaska are about as beautiful as it gets, but the interior definitely packs its own beautiful punch. Sometimes I wonder if I should move into the interior to collect a few more sun rays and blue skies. Who knows. It's cheaper, anyway...

Scott sitting atop the Safari Rack, consuming a Matanuska-sized landscape for lunch. This, of course, occurred after we consumed perhaps the biggest lunch the town of Glennallen has to offer.


Snowy and blowy ridges somewhere along the road to the Matanuska Valley.

And two boneheads picking an akward fight with the camera alongside the salmon-stuffed waters of the Copper River.