Noember 22, 2010
Aloha!
The sun setting slowly into Angola, with a small herd of wildebeest preparing for another dark night in the plains full of predators...
Sufficiently skeptical of our approach, this wildebeest bull allowed us to approach him within 20 yards or so before he sprinted away in a zig-zag fashion, his genes firing away telling him to juke from side to side to elude our potential predatory chase.
In the wee hours of early morning, these wild dogs take the time to size up a wildebeest bull. After testing him for a few minutes, the dogs ultimately decided that a bull wildebeest wasn't worth their energy, and they moved on to find something more to their liking.
As mentioned above, this pack of wild dogs was snoozing the snooze I had hoped to catch under the midday sun. We'd parked our vehicles and put our feet up, not expecting the dogs to move much in the middle-of-the-day African heat. But hunger can strike at all hours of the day I reckon, and these dogs sprang up like compressed coils and charged after a small herd of approaching wildebeest. They isolated a calf, not more than a month old, chased it down and killed it all within 20 yards of my truck. The chase was so close, I could see the desperation in the calf's eyes... Those eyes embodied the true sense of terror, of desperation, of helplessness. I doubt I will ever forget the look in those eyes for the rest of my days. With wild dogs, the alpha pair and pups eat first. And a wildebeest calf isn't much meat for a pack of 17 hungry animals. As the alpha pair and pups consumed the little calf, the subordinate adult male and the subadult dogs redirected their attention on the mother of the calf, who was standing 30 yards away. She continued to make her alarm call, seemingly calling to the calf in somewhat of a state of shock. The subordinate male and subadults, who hadn't eaten yet, sprinted directly toward her and she didn't budge. When they pounced on her, she gave a tremendous fight, injuring the subordinate male dog with her horns. Yet eventually they wrangled her to the ground, and the pack of dogs finally had enough meat to feed the whole gang. Witnessing this hunt was quite a paradox of feelings. Exciting, yes. The source of happiness, knowing that there are still wild systems at work in our overdeveloped world, yes. But hearing her groans, understanding what it means to be animal, having to take the life of others if you are to sustain your own and your offspring. It all felt tangible, visceral. It was great, but it was awful. Something few people in the world have ever seen that close, and I was happy I was there. Yet it was indeed a horrible scene, complete with the final sounds emitted by a dying animal and the corresponding fleshy noises associated with the tearing apart of a living being. A heavy afternoon to be sure.
The feeling during this hunt was too intense to retrieve my camera and start firing away. I just sat in my truck and watched, amazed and dumbfounded. Humbled. After twenty minutes or so, I finally pulled my camera out and started taking pictures, after the calf had been entirely consumed and the whole pack was on the cow. In retrospect, it would have been interesting to catch the earlier moments of the hunt on camera. But the whole series of events was too powerful to do anything other than sit silently still and watch.
Humbling.
A herd of Burchelli's Zebra grazing in the early morning sun. Although a prey species for many a carnivore, these animals tend to be more spry, flighty, and downright strong for the wild dogs and hyaenas we observed in Liuwa Plain.
Aloha!
Where to even begin... This past week has been a complete pipe bomb of stimuli; an odyssey of events, reactions, and improvisations through which I've somehow managed to navigate and arrive back in Kalabo town on a pleasantly balmy yet fresh November evening in Western Province...
After spending three weeks in Zambia, I'm beginning to generate some moderately informed impressions. At risk of falling into the trap of forging down the road of over simplified generalizations, I take it upon myself to produce the following characterizations of my time in Zambia:
Highs and lows.
Frustrations.
Highs. The highs in Zambia are truly indescribable. It is hard to put into words what it feels like to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of two male lions calling at each other, 200 yards from your tent. It's not necessarily spooky, but it gives you goosebumps. It's chilling. Alluring and intoxicating. You don't want the lions to come snatch you out of your tent (which isn't going to happen, so don't worry), but you don't want them to stop roaring under the Zambian moon. It's nice to know that lions don't scavenge campsites the way bears do, so we don't have to worry about falling into the lion's clutch if we leave a few boxes of porridge strewn about on the kitchen table. (We do, however, keep our camp clean as a whistle. The vervet monkeys are especially advanced thieves, and the hyaenas don't mind a free lunch either)...
Highs. We finally found one of the two known packs of African wild dogs in the park (if you don't know what African wild dogs are, google 'em. They are supremely cool). Since they are elusive little canids with a monstrous home range, we had to stay on them/follow them until we lost them. We managed to keep up with them for about 36 hours before they gave us the ol' slip... Don't wag the finger just yet; it's nearly impossible to follow a pack of small, dark creatures that move a couple of miles at the drop of a hat under the starry night. Anyhow, as we followed them, we witnessed not one, not two, but four successful hunts. Two wildebeest calves, one wildebeest adult, and an oribi (a small, insanely fast plains antelope). Wild dog behavior is also somewhat intoxicating. They have very interesting social structures, and downright cute, playful behavior. After a successful hunt, the dogs wag and shake their tails/entire bodies uncontrollably, wrestling, jumping, and playing with their pack mates. The pups always eat on the carcass first; they're usually the ones with the fullest stomachs and the ones most inclined to play. Considering there are 9 pups in this pack, it made for quality pup watching. At any rate, as we followed the pack to a shallow pan during the midday Zambian sun, we thought we could take a break and relax. Just as soon a s we put our feet up and our caps down over our eyes, a couple dogs leaped up and sprinted at a small herd of approaching wildebeest. The chase was on, and the entire pack was soon racing after an isolated wildebeest cow and her calf. We followed as quickly as we could in our land cruiser, which isn't easy in this unspeakably and unpredictably rough terrain. The chase somehow managed a mid-session 180 degree spin and began sprinting back directly toward us. The calf was taken down literally 20 meters from our cruiser and consumed in about 5 minutes. The cow stood in shock nearby, calling to the calf (which isn't uncommon behavior for an animal to exhibit after it's lost its calf). Unfortunately for the cow, some of the pack took it upon themselves to trap her in the pan and eventually dog-piled her to the ground. The groans, moans, girations, and desperate attempts at escape were vivid beyond description. It was a murderous scene, truly violent and savage. A spectacle. The dogs began consuming her at the pan's edge, and she emitted her last groan about twenty minutes later. Seeing the predator-prey dynamic live and in color, all literally within 50 meters of our truck was extraordinarily rare and quite amazing. In my years in Yellowstone and Alaska, I've never seen anything even close to that. Matt, my supervisor, who has worked in Africa for years and did his PhD work in Yellowstone on wolf-elk-bison dynamics, said he's never seen anything like that, within such close proximity. In that regard, witnessing the natural predator-prey dynamic was unreal. Yet witnessing the entire interaction. The calf sprinting wide-eyed for its life, finally falling in endurance to the pack of hungry dogs, observing the mother's behavior and her eventual downfall, and listening to the gurgles and groans being emitted from two dying wildebeest certainly drew on some less-than-happy emotions. Raw, wild. Exciting, yet saddening. Pleasing to see a healthy and wild system, yet always a tinge of reality when you reflect upon your own life as you see it taken from another creature. An interesting bag of emotions, for sure. Regardless, I obtained some ridiculously great photos from the dog hunt! I wish I could attach some, but I can't upload them to this computer unfortunately... Later this winter, they'll be up online!
Highs. Giving Nicolas Muzembi, a hitch hiker from a nearby village, a ride to Kalabo in our little four wheeler. He was all smiles and told me he was working for the Zambian Census to try to earn enough money to go to university. He wants to become a teacher, like his father, and he was ecstatic about his dream. He wanted to share it with me, and he did. He described how he was very poor, how everyone in his village is very poor. He described his perceptions of white tourists, how they are very good people, very fine. They have everything, and he wished they could train him and his village mates to have everything also. But he also noticed that whenever he hitch hiked, no one with white skin would ever pick him up. Until today, when I picked him up. He smiled and said, "Ah! Yes! You LOVE! Keep th at spirit! Keep the loving spirit!" I dropped him off at his reed hut near the Kalabo market this afternoon with a couple of smiles and a handshake.
Highs. Huuuuuuge sunsets over Angola, which rests only 40 km from our camp. Just the thought of watching big sunsets over Angola is a surreality in itself. Who knew?
Highs. Big moons. On nights without clouds, the big moons light up the plains to the point of driving without headlights. You can see massive herds of wildebeest and zebra grazing frightfully through the night, ever fearful of packs of wild dogs, clans of hyaenas, or the small pride of three lions lurking in the tall grass. There are many other highs, but this email has the potential for Iliad proportion, so I'll jump ahead.
Lows. I could combine this with frustrations. Feelings of ineffectiveness or personal inadequacy. Liuwa Plain is a unique ecosystem in its present stage. Lions were nearly extirpated in the 90's by poaching, leaving only one lioness in the park (if you want, you can go to youtube or hulu.com and download "The Last Lioness." It's a National Geographic documentary about Liuwa Plain). Currently, there are three lions, two packs of wild dogs, hundreds of hyaenas, and thousands of wildebeest and zebra. This is a unique opportunity to study a system basically void of a natural predator (lion), what the impacts are of the lack of that predator (to the populations of wildlife as well as nearby villages and their livestock), and the effects that lion reintroduction will have on the system in coming years. There is a ton of research to be conducted, endless data to collect, and an ever-expanding list of work that needs to be accomplished. Yet we don't ever seem to get to go to work, and I often feel that it's because of some lack of know-how on my part. I was warned by many people that I will have to learn a different brand of patience if I work here. And I am slowly learning that. Something that should take 10 minutes, like filling a vehicle with diesel, usually takes 2 or 3 hours. Something that should take 1 hour, like eating dinner, can sometimes take 4 or 5 hours. Something that should take half a day, like locating a clan of hyaenas, generally takes several days. Something that should take one day, like locating a spare tire, has taken, thus far, 14 days. There are always delays. Always. The diesel was put into petrol jerry jugs, and now we need to find a jug that hasn't been contaminated with petrol to put into our vehicle. We need to be out at the hyaena den by 5 am, but someone from Zambian Wildlife Authority has run out of fuel and we need to locate some and deliver it to him 15 km away. We need to drive to the west boundary of the park, but our leaf spring has collapsed and we don't have any appropriate spare parts to make a fix for the next two days. We need to change the oil in the four wheeler, and somehow get side tracked into greasing 75 miscellaneous nuts and bolts that will never be used, and rolling up ratty rope to put into storage rather than just changing the oil and getting out into the field. Etc, ad infinitum. Or, more often, we just wait. For no real apparent reason. We just wait, standing around. Nothing happens on time, and I'm not quite sure why anybody even gives estimates on what time things will be accomplished. In that regard, I have been beating myself up quite a bit. Initially, I beat myself up thinking the delays are my fault. Then I reflect and feel like a total jackass for coming into someone else's homeland and attempting to transplant a way of knowing and a way of interacting with the world that fits my home but not necessarily everyone else's. It makes me feel like a missionary at times. Almost dirty, yet with an unending desire to still get all the work done. I came here to see amazing things, to build relationships, to meet people and learn their perspectives, definitely. But I also came here with the understanding that populations of wildlife, of fish, and clean water are diminishing at incredible rates worldwide, and with the goal of hoping to contribute to an organization that is making great strides in ecological restoration, social and community inclusion (rather than exclusion) and collaboration, real attempts to solve real problems that have already plagued other places, people, and the wild systems they depend upon. And thus far I've found myself sitting on my hands a lot, wanting to actually get to work, stressing that our work keeps accumulating without any work being accomplished.. It makes me wonder if I'm the right guy for the job...
Despite this, I am genuinely enjoying my time here. Some of the people I've met so far have been incredible, and have, as anticipated, unknowingly generated some serious introspection on my end. Like Frances, the high school kid I've befriended here who wants to see what Alaska looks like, wants to get married and leave Kalabo (perhaps to Canada, he's mentioned), wants to see the "Concrete Jungle" more than anything else, wants corruption and nepotism in Zambia to come to an end so that he and his fellow high school graduates can actually find employment, but ultimately realizes that he will become a subsistence farmer just like his father and will likely never leave Kalabo. And in the face of this, Lee smiles.
Anyway...
There are at least 593 different stories I'd like to share from this past week, but I don't even know how to unwrap all of those experiences and put them into words. It's been a lot of stimuli through which I've had to navigate. Highs and lows. Like Allan said, every day is an adventure. A struggle of sorts, navigating through all of the unanticipated problems du jour. Although I'd like to revise his statement and conclude that every hour is an adventure. Really. If you're looking for a bona fide adventure, come to Western Province in Zambia.
Glad to hear from everyone that responded! I hope all you folks in the Rockies are enjoying that mega-snow load I've seen in a few photos you've sent me! I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving and understands that we sure have a lot to be thankful for! Keep up the emails if you get a chance. It's great hearing from you all!
Enjoy your turkeys,
Daven
The sun setting slowly into Angola, with a small herd of wildebeest preparing for another dark night in the plains full of predators...
Sufficiently skeptical of our approach, this wildebeest bull allowed us to approach him within 20 yards or so before he sprinted away in a zig-zag fashion, his genes firing away telling him to juke from side to side to elude our potential predatory chase.
In the wee hours of early morning, these wild dogs take the time to size up a wildebeest bull. After testing him for a few minutes, the dogs ultimately decided that a bull wildebeest wasn't worth their energy, and they moved on to find something more to their liking.
As mentioned above, this pack of wild dogs was snoozing the snooze I had hoped to catch under the midday sun. We'd parked our vehicles and put our feet up, not expecting the dogs to move much in the middle-of-the-day African heat. But hunger can strike at all hours of the day I reckon, and these dogs sprang up like compressed coils and charged after a small herd of approaching wildebeest. They isolated a calf, not more than a month old, chased it down and killed it all within 20 yards of my truck. The chase was so close, I could see the desperation in the calf's eyes... Those eyes embodied the true sense of terror, of desperation, of helplessness. I doubt I will ever forget the look in those eyes for the rest of my days. With wild dogs, the alpha pair and pups eat first. And a wildebeest calf isn't much meat for a pack of 17 hungry animals. As the alpha pair and pups consumed the little calf, the subordinate adult male and the subadult dogs redirected their attention on the mother of the calf, who was standing 30 yards away. She continued to make her alarm call, seemingly calling to the calf in somewhat of a state of shock. The subordinate male and subadults, who hadn't eaten yet, sprinted directly toward her and she didn't budge. When they pounced on her, she gave a tremendous fight, injuring the subordinate male dog with her horns. Yet eventually they wrangled her to the ground, and the pack of dogs finally had enough meat to feed the whole gang. Witnessing this hunt was quite a paradox of feelings. Exciting, yes. The source of happiness, knowing that there are still wild systems at work in our overdeveloped world, yes. But hearing her groans, understanding what it means to be animal, having to take the life of others if you are to sustain your own and your offspring. It all felt tangible, visceral. It was great, but it was awful. Something few people in the world have ever seen that close, and I was happy I was there. Yet it was indeed a horrible scene, complete with the final sounds emitted by a dying animal and the corresponding fleshy noises associated with the tearing apart of a living being. A heavy afternoon to be sure.The feeling during this hunt was too intense to retrieve my camera and start firing away. I just sat in my truck and watched, amazed and dumbfounded. Humbled. After twenty minutes or so, I finally pulled my camera out and started taking pictures, after the calf had been entirely consumed and the whole pack was on the cow. In retrospect, it would have been interesting to catch the earlier moments of the hunt on camera. But the whole series of events was too powerful to do anything other than sit silently still and watch.
Humbling.
A herd of Burchelli's Zebra grazing in the early morning sun. Although a prey species for many a carnivore, these animals tend to be more spry, flighty, and downright strong for the wild dogs and hyaenas we observed in Liuwa Plain.
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