http://www.kepa.fi/uutiset/7101
English translation:
Pest Control in Botswana
A few days ago an elephant was shot in our village. Because the elephant in question was caught in a field raiding crops, it was a perfectly legal way of removing a problem animal. However the elephant didn’t die straight away but managed to run away, badly injured. She had two calves with her, an older and a younger one. The elephant was found in a nearby bush, still breathing, her calves still around. At dusk she was finally shot dead, and her children ran away into the bush. Eventually the elephant will end up in the cast iron pots of the villagers – many of whom see elephant meat as a rare delicacy, why waste perfectly good meat?
I’m in Botswana, in the Eastern Panhandle of the Okavango River, so far away and isolated from the rest of the country that the area is often referred to as “overseas” even by Motswanas. The only way to enter this area is by crossing the river with a somewhat unreliable ferry, as building of the bridge promised by the government a long time ago has once again been deferred. In addition, bringing electricity here is yet to happen, not to mention tarring the main road.
The area of 9800km2 in size is populated by 13000 people and 9000 elephants, and it’s increasing at a faster rate than the human population. Tourism and diamonds have not yet brought employment here to the same extent as in the rest of the country, meaning that majority of the population get their livelihood straight from their fields.
*
Elephants visit these fields during the night and they are not bothered by the bush fences that have been put up in order to stop them. These gentle giants like to feast particularly with watermelons, but also with the rest of the crops found in the fields here: millet, sorghum, maize and pumpkins. What is not deemed edible gets trampled under their enormous weight, and after the elephants have left it’s easy for the cattle, that roam free everywhere, to get in to finish off the destruction.
Even though the elephant is just one of the troubles that the farmers are facing, it is probably the most feared one and also the most significant politically. The hunting of elephants has been banned in this area for years, and contrary to the rest of Africa, the elephant population in Botswana is on the increase. The country’s elephants are officially the property of the government, and the farmers believe that they haven’t done enough to tackle the crop raiding problem. With all this in mind, it’s no wonder that the relationship between elephants and people in the area has gone somewhat sour.
“When both people and elephants have to live in the same area, sharing the same space, there is competition for food and water”, says Anna Songhurst, who is researching human-elephant conflict in the area for her PhD. The locals claim that the damage caused by elephants is getting worse every year, and the problem isn’t going to disappear by itself. New fields are being established all the time, and many of them on ancient elephant pathways.
*
Rra Ndozi is sitting outside his clay hut under a tree. He has lived and farmed the land in this area for all his life (around 90 years), excluding the years spent in the South African mines. The elephants have already raided his field several times this year, and once again his harvest has been poor. But unlike many of the farmers in the area, Rra Ndozi doesn’t think that killing the elephants is the answer to the problem, even though he still recalls the time when selling ivory for the white men was an excellent source of income for the locals. He wouldn’t even touch elephant meat, as it is a totem animal for his tribe. The Bayei believe in people and elephants being one family; the elephants are both our mothers and fathers.
The government pays nominal compensation for crop damages caused by elephants, but the people expect more from them. Even though Rra Ndozi is a very wealthy man with his 100+ cattle herd, he is not willing to invest his own money to build a proper wire fence around his field. He thinks the government should provide money for the farmers to build better fences to protect their fields, or move the elephants away from the area altogether. If the government fails to tackle the problem soon, he thinks that the people in the area will no longer be able to rely on farming as a means of livelihood.
There is no easy solution to the issue, but Anna Songhurst is hoping to utilise her research findings in the search for a possible solution. In the meanwhile, both the elephant and human populations will continue to grow along the Okavango river, the farmers who have lost their harvest will have to come up with other means of providing for their families, and more elephants will be shot in the fields.
Saturday 23 May 2009
Sunday 17 May 2009
Some self-reflection as my time here is nearing its end
A month ago, after my computer had already broken down, I tried writing on a notebook. The topic was ‘Do I love it here?’ This is what I wrote:
***
When we go off on a boat or on a mokoro for a sunset trip in the delta maybe to buy some peppers from a nearby farmer, or just to watch the sun setting over the river, with a little picnic – some beer, maybe wine and a couple of nibbles, tie the boat up to some reeds and just sit there and appreciate the stillness around us, I can’t think of anywhere else in the whole wide world I’d rather be.
Or when I wake up in the morning and open my eyes to be greeted by the sunrise right there in front of me without even having to get out of bed – it’s really something special. Or when I have a day of just reading, like today. Nothing else on the agenda, just a long, lazy Sunday to sit in the sun until it gets too hot, and then move to the shade, keep on reading my book. Get lost in Anna Karenina, savour every word until I decide to have a break and do a slow, unrushed pedicure (more out of the need of having to wash my feet properly at least once a week rather than out of vanity – although the green nail varnishI put on today can’t really be described as a necessity…), followed by another unrushed lunch with Anna Songhurst, followed by more Anna Karenina.
I go through moments, hours, even days when I forget about the time and the real world. I forget that this wasn’t always my life and that this is only a passing phase – that the real world is still out there, very much so, and that soon I’m going to have to return to it and pick up my life again from where I left it. Face the same reality.
I’m trying to hang on to every moment, remember that I’m privileged to be here, that I’ll (probably) never have a chance to re-live these moments again. But sometimes I get tired, lonely, fed up. When it’s another long day just sitting in the car counting the cows and donkeys we come across, or walking to a faraway field in the roasting sun with lots of flies around, or asking the same questions again and again from a uninterested farmer who just wants to kill all the elephants and her children are staring at me like I’ve just landed from outer space – and I just want to disappear, be somewhere else, away from the dust and the flies, clean, somewhere where people don’t beat up their dogs with sticks and children have clothes that are not just mere rags.
There is good and bad everywhere but some days I only see the bad. The hopelessness of it all, kids with no future because there are no jobs here, women of my age who’ve never been to school and who will never know anything else in their life but hard work in the fields and who will probably die of AIDS before they reach 40 (the average life expectancy in Botswana is only 33 because of HIV/AIDS).
***
After another month here, I’m beginning to see much more of the good than bad around me. Those moments when I suddenly fill up with love and appreciation for this place are more and more frequent, and now that I know I only have another month left in this country (officially stamped today with the remaining 30 days) I’m feeling very sad because I’m going to have to leave soon. I guess I’m happier now than in a long, long time, living this life, this adventure. Life is so easy here. My life in London often felt like the title of the Milan Kundera book that I’m reading at the moment: Life is Elsewhere.
Here it’s easier to seize the moment, to stop and look at the lighting in the distance, the fire hugging the wood, the women sitting in their compound pounding the millet, chatting away, laughing, dirty but happy children crawling or running around making toys of anything they can get their hands on. People are happier here - I’m convinced of that. If only there was a way to stay longer, I’d like to stay. I miss a lot of things from London but if nothing else, I think I’ve learned one significant thing about myself here (apart from discovering watermelons and peanut butter and that I taste good): I love to live in the countryside, with lots of space around, lots of quietness. I like simple life.
***
When we go off on a boat or on a mokoro for a sunset trip in the delta maybe to buy some peppers from a nearby farmer, or just to watch the sun setting over the river, with a little picnic – some beer, maybe wine and a couple of nibbles, tie the boat up to some reeds and just sit there and appreciate the stillness around us, I can’t think of anywhere else in the whole wide world I’d rather be.
Or when I wake up in the morning and open my eyes to be greeted by the sunrise right there in front of me without even having to get out of bed – it’s really something special. Or when I have a day of just reading, like today. Nothing else on the agenda, just a long, lazy Sunday to sit in the sun until it gets too hot, and then move to the shade, keep on reading my book. Get lost in Anna Karenina, savour every word until I decide to have a break and do a slow, unrushed pedicure (more out of the need of having to wash my feet properly at least once a week rather than out of vanity – although the green nail varnishI put on today can’t really be described as a necessity…), followed by another unrushed lunch with Anna Songhurst, followed by more Anna Karenina. I go through moments, hours, even days when I forget about the time and the real world. I forget that this wasn’t always my life and that this is only a passing phase – that the real world is still out there, very much so, and that soon I’m going to have to return to it and pick up my life again from where I left it. Face the same reality.
I’m trying to hang on to every moment, remember that I’m privileged to be here, that I’ll (probably) never have a chance to re-live these moments again. But sometimes I get tired, lonely, fed up. When it’s another long day just sitting in the car counting the cows and donkeys we come across, or walking to a faraway field in the roasting sun with lots of flies around, or asking the same questions again and again from a uninterested farmer who just wants to kill all the elephants and her children are staring at me like I’ve just landed from outer space – and I just want to disappear, be somewhere else, away from the dust and the flies, clean, somewhere where people don’t beat up their dogs with sticks and children have clothes that are not just mere rags.
There is good and bad everywhere but some days I only see the bad. The hopelessness of it all, kids with no future because there are no jobs here, women of my age who’ve never been to school and who will never know anything else in their life but hard work in the fields and who will probably die of AIDS before they reach 40 (the average life expectancy in Botswana is only 33 because of HIV/AIDS). ***
After another month here, I’m beginning to see much more of the good than bad around me. Those moments when I suddenly fill up with love and appreciation for this place are more and more frequent, and now that I know I only have another month left in this country (officially stamped today with the remaining 30 days) I’m feeling very sad because I’m going to have to leave soon. I guess I’m happier now than in a long, long time, living this life, this adventure. Life is so easy here. My life in London often felt like the title of the Milan Kundera book that I’m reading at the moment: Life is Elsewhere.
Here it’s easier to seize the moment, to stop and look at the lighting in the distance, the fire hugging the wood, the women sitting in their compound pounding the millet, chatting away, laughing, dirty but happy children crawling or running around making toys of anything they can get their hands on. People are happier here - I’m convinced of that. If only there was a way to stay longer, I’d like to stay. I miss a lot of things from London but if nothing else, I think I’ve learned one significant thing about myself here (apart from discovering watermelons and peanut butter and that I taste good): I love to live in the countryside, with lots of space around, lots of quietness. I like simple life.
The one with more elephants than she can count
After our return from Maun things settled back into the usual routine: six thirty am wake ups, busy days around the Panhandle visiting raided fields and interviewing the farmers, counting elephant footprints on the road, dinners cooked on the campfire, early nights and falling asleep to the sounds of the bush. The week that we’d been away three elephants had been shot in the area, and we had to go and check out the carcasses. It was a sad and a very smelly sight every time. We went to see the mother whose baby we’d tried to rescue, and watched the maggots eating away whatever flesh had been left from the villagers as days went by. A day before the full moon we did a night watch on a road that runs through a major elephant pathway and saw more elephants than I could count. Luckily Anna could count, as that’s the main reason we were there, and got to nearly 300. Finally the number of living elephants I’d seen surpassed the number of dead elephants. 
I saw lots of breeding herds with babies, adolescents and juveniles lead by a matriarch, lots of male herds and big lone bulls crossing to get to the river. Some of them were crossing quite far and could only be seen with binoculars, others walked past not that far from where our car was parked. One bull crossed just behind the car and headed into a bush where’s I’d gone for a pee only a few minutes earlier. Shame my video camera can’t record video in the moonlight, but I got some great audio recordings anyway.
We attempted a bit of socializing a week after coming back from Maun: Simon hosted a full moon party in the Ndovu camp, but as it was the night after the night watch we were literally asleep by ten and had to head home early.
On the following day (Sunday) we had a very special visitor in our camp. It was the afternoon and I was sitting by the kitchen tent, logging tapes with the headphones on, then decided it was time to light the fire and heat up some water for a shower. I got up and headed to the bushes to get some twigs to get the fire started, when I heard some rustling coming from the bush. At first I thought it was the cows again (they can be a real menace and we’ve had to chase them away from the camp numerous times) but just before I was about to begin my scare-the-cows-routine (which involves running towards them clapping my hands and shouting whatever insults come to mind) I stopped and listened again, for it there was something strange about the noise they were making. It sounded an awful lot like elephants breaking off branches with their trunks and munching them – a sound which I now recognized from doing the night watch. So I decided to wait and observe the situation for a bit, and the more I listened the more I got convinced there was an elephant there. I went to get Graham who was nearby and we tiptoed to the washing line, a closest place we could get safely. He confirmed it was definitely an elephant in there, went to get Anna and his camera and I got my video camera ready. We waited hiding behind the sheets on the washing line and after a few minutes a trunk appeared, then the head of an elephant, then the elephant itself. The young bull then must have got a sniff of us as he turned his head towards us, checked us out, then backtracked to the bush. Shame he didn’t stay long enough to sign the guest book – maybe next time.
Last week we went camping on Wednesday as we were visiting villages far from our home camp. On Thursday we got a call from Graham that another elephant had been shot near were we were. He’d seen people carrying huge bags of blood-dripping meat on the road and there was just too much of it for it to be from a cow. We turned around and drove not really knowing where we were going, until sure enough, we spotted a couple of people who’d loaded up a donkey with fresh meat.
A while later we stopped at a compound by the road to ask for directions, and it turned out to be the house of the man who’d shot the elephant. He hopped on to the back and took us to his field, where we witnessed a crowd chopping up the elephant – literally, with their axes, removing any flesh they could. Women, men, children, dogs, everyone going for it. We interviewed the man there and ironically he doesn’t even eat elephant meat (a lot of people don’t due to their religious or other beliefs). I don’t know if Anna will ever forgive me for insisting we go and see it – she said it was one of the hardest things she’s had to do in her life. But it was one of those things I knew I had to film.
On Friday we headed to Namibia as my 60-day visa was about to expire and I had to get it re-stamped. We’d decided to stay across the border for a couple of nights and check out the game reserves there, so we camped in a lovely new lodge called Nunda. The next morning we went to Buffalo game reserve, an old batte field /army base from the civil war and now a forgotten and remote forest on the Caprivi Strip, bordering Botswana.
We must have been the only people there that day. We drove around a saw lots of wildlife; different types of antelopes, warthogs, eagles, observed a monkey colony for an hour, had lunch by the river, drove to the border fence to look for evidence of elephants crossing the border (which we saw) and just as we were about to give up for the day we came across a big herd of buffaloes. In the late afternoon we drove to another game reserve and in the first half and hour there saw not just all of the above again but also zebras, giraffes, ostriches – and had some very close encounters with elephants! Here they are obviously not that bothered by people (even though it’s not a busy game reserve by any means, we didn’t come across any other vehicles there either) and one came straight up to our car. Yeah. Elephants are SOOO cool!
I saw lots of breeding herds with babies, adolescents and juveniles lead by a matriarch, lots of male herds and big lone bulls crossing to get to the river. Some of them were crossing quite far and could only be seen with binoculars, others walked past not that far from where our car was parked. One bull crossed just behind the car and headed into a bush where’s I’d gone for a pee only a few minutes earlier. Shame my video camera can’t record video in the moonlight, but I got some great audio recordings anyway. We attempted a bit of socializing a week after coming back from Maun: Simon hosted a full moon party in the Ndovu camp, but as it was the night after the night watch we were literally asleep by ten and had to head home early.
On the following day (Sunday) we had a very special visitor in our camp. It was the afternoon and I was sitting by the kitchen tent, logging tapes with the headphones on, then decided it was time to light the fire and heat up some water for a shower. I got up and headed to the bushes to get some twigs to get the fire started, when I heard some rustling coming from the bush. At first I thought it was the cows again (they can be a real menace and we’ve had to chase them away from the camp numerous times) but just before I was about to begin my scare-the-cows-routine (which involves running towards them clapping my hands and shouting whatever insults come to mind) I stopped and listened again, for it there was something strange about the noise they were making. It sounded an awful lot like elephants breaking off branches with their trunks and munching them – a sound which I now recognized from doing the night watch. So I decided to wait and observe the situation for a bit, and the more I listened the more I got convinced there was an elephant there. I went to get Graham who was nearby and we tiptoed to the washing line, a closest place we could get safely. He confirmed it was definitely an elephant in there, went to get Anna and his camera and I got my video camera ready. We waited hiding behind the sheets on the washing line and after a few minutes a trunk appeared, then the head of an elephant, then the elephant itself. The young bull then must have got a sniff of us as he turned his head towards us, checked us out, then backtracked to the bush. Shame he didn’t stay long enough to sign the guest book – maybe next time.
Last week we went camping on Wednesday as we were visiting villages far from our home camp. On Thursday we got a call from Graham that another elephant had been shot near were we were. He’d seen people carrying huge bags of blood-dripping meat on the road and there was just too much of it for it to be from a cow. We turned around and drove not really knowing where we were going, until sure enough, we spotted a couple of people who’d loaded up a donkey with fresh meat.
A while later we stopped at a compound by the road to ask for directions, and it turned out to be the house of the man who’d shot the elephant. He hopped on to the back and took us to his field, where we witnessed a crowd chopping up the elephant – literally, with their axes, removing any flesh they could. Women, men, children, dogs, everyone going for it. We interviewed the man there and ironically he doesn’t even eat elephant meat (a lot of people don’t due to their religious or other beliefs). I don’t know if Anna will ever forgive me for insisting we go and see it – she said it was one of the hardest things she’s had to do in her life. But it was one of those things I knew I had to film. On Friday we headed to Namibia as my 60-day visa was about to expire and I had to get it re-stamped. We’d decided to stay across the border for a couple of nights and check out the game reserves there, so we camped in a lovely new lodge called Nunda. The next morning we went to Buffalo game reserve, an old batte field /army base from the civil war and now a forgotten and remote forest on the Caprivi Strip, bordering Botswana.
We must have been the only people there that day. We drove around a saw lots of wildlife; different types of antelopes, warthogs, eagles, observed a monkey colony for an hour, had lunch by the river, drove to the border fence to look for evidence of elephants crossing the border (which we saw) and just as we were about to give up for the day we came across a big herd of buffaloes. In the late afternoon we drove to another game reserve and in the first half and hour there saw not just all of the above again but also zebras, giraffes, ostriches – and had some very close encounters with elephants! Here they are obviously not that bothered by people (even though it’s not a busy game reserve by any means, we didn’t come across any other vehicles there either) and one came straight up to our car. Yeah. Elephants are SOOO cool!
Maun, part 2: Operation Rescue the Orphan Baby Elephant (OROBE)
NB: Many days, even weeks has passed since OROBE took place. Without access to a computer, I was unable to record the operation has it happened, but I will try my best to recount the events as accurately as possible.
Where were we? Oh yes, the morning after the night that was supposed to be the hen do but wasn’t, but still we managed to wake up with sore heads in Maun. Phone call re: a shot elephant in the Ndovu camp, which is on the other side of the lagoon from our camp. Mommy elephant dead, two calves orphaned, one of which is apparently only a tiny baby still suckling. What is a true elephant lover to do after receiving such tragic news? Launch a rescue operation, of course. The baby wouldn’t survive for much longer without milk, so we had to act quickly. We made a quick plan: the guys at the camp would catch the baby and bottle feed it with formula milk – they could put the baby in our vegetable garden which was a small but fenced area (only this would require transporting the baby over to our camp on a boat – but this was a minor problem in the plan which we didn’t want to worry about just yet), we would head back the following day and look after it until we’d found a long-term care home for it. The person who reported the dead mother and the orphaned elephants – let’s call him Steve, who’s an old elephant hunter - said he’d hand-reared a baby elephant before and even knew the formula for the milk it would need. All we’d need to do was to get a permission from the Department of Wildlife to catch the baby as otherwise we might to prosecuted for a kidnapping . (And no, we hadn’t forgotten about the bigger calf, but as a three-year-old it should be big enough to survive in the wild and hopefully find the herd again, so it was less of a worry).
Off we went to the Dept of Wildlife to see the Head of God-knows-what and explained the situation and what we were proposing to do (or Anna did, and I enthusiastically nodded, already picturing myself bottle-feeding the baby in our vegetable garden and patting its little trunk, comforting the poor little orphan – aah). The Head of God-knows-what was very understanding, and Anna being a well-connected and respected elephant researcher he agreed to it, on a few conditions: the baby would have to be released into wild once old enough to survive (that was the plan anyway), we would have to find a place that would be willing to rear it before the permission was granted (hmm…), and that we would have to write a letter (you always have to write a letter about everything in Botswana). Obviously time was of essence and we only had hours to save the baby (at some point news came in from “Steve” that the villagers were already lining up to chop up and cook the mother), so off we went to make some phone calls and to write a letter. There is no official place for orphaned elephants in Botswana, so it had to be a private person with the skills and capacity to bring up elephants – easier said than done. The first place Anna tried refused, but the second place, a safari company that do elephant back safaris sounded more promising. Their MD was flying at that moment, so we arranged to meet him at the airport as he landed. The meeting at the airport was followed by another meeting at his office with a vet, and in the end the answer was a maybe. After he’d ordered a chopper to fly to the scene to assess the situation, a new twist to the story took place: the mother was actually still alive, just badly injured. But they decided to go for it: the baby elephant was going to be rescued! The vet managed to get some formula milk organized, and off he went on a plane to complete OROBE. Their plan was to put down the mother, catch the baby and fly it to the elephant back safari camp that very day, before it got dark (I have to say I was slightly disappointed by the fact that my bottle-feeding the baby elephant fantasy would never happen now, but then again I supposes it was more important to actually save the baby in the first place...). We got the letter together and delivered it to the Head of God-knoes-what, and it was all official. Nothing more we could do now, apart from having the hen night and wait until the morning to hear whether everything went to plan.
So the hen night finally took place that night – the hen made it, we made it (just in time), and everyone else had also been able to re-arrange their plans and made it. We dressed Hattie up as a zebra (for she is a zebra researcher marring another zebra researcher), got our blacks and whites on and went on a river cruise for sundowners. A bottle of sambuca was also involved from early on, which probably was one of our not-so-great-ideas.
The cruise was followed by a lovely dinner in a new lodge, which we enjoyed so much we didn’t actually make it anywhere else that night. We’d thought of some games involving traditional African wife-skills, such as carrying a bucket of water on head (bucket of water was substituted with a can of beer) and strapping a baby on back and carrying it around the table as fast as possible. Thankfully we didn’t use a real baby as it got dropped many a time.
The next morning Anna found out the fate of Dumbo and the outcome of OROBE. After us running around the whole previous day, letters, permissions, negotiations, phone calls, helicopters, flying a vet to the scene and my shattered dreams of bottle-feeding the little elephant, it didn’t happen. Well, it did, sort of. It was just that the suckling baby and a three-year old calf as reported by the renowned elephant hunter “Steve” turned out to be a two-year and a nine-year old calves – both way too old to be reared by humans not alone flown anywhere, and with fairly good chances of surviving in the wild on their own anyway. The mother was put down and the kids run away to the bush, and that was the end of it. “Steve” was oblivious to the rescue operation and the effort that went into organizing it – we declared him senile there and then.
The rest of our time in Maun was filled with the Maun festival, a two-day affair of live music, stalls and films. It was fun, but by the end of the weekend we were more than ready to head back to the safety of our lovely, peaceful camp. ‘Shattered’ just isn’t strong enough a word to describe how we felt.
We didn’t head straight back however, but stopped to visit the mysterious Tsodilo Hills on our way home. We arrived late at night and camped by the “Female” hill. There was a great thunderstorm not far away from us so we watched the lighting doing its magical light show on the rocky walls, under the thousands of stars.
Tsodilo Hills is a sacred place for the San bushmen, believed to be the place where the first creation took place thousands of years ago. There is evidence of human life on the site from some 10,000 years ago with the oldest rock paintings dating back about 4000 years. 
That’s what we went to see on the following day, as we climbed to the top of the Female Hill and down again. A truly amazing place.
Next day, we headed home. It was great to come back. I’d missed the dusty dirt road, the people, the grinning children waving by the road (whether they’re just excited to see a car, white people, or just us, remains a mystery), the little round mud and grass houses in the villages, the goats, the cows, the donkies, the short boat journey to our island, John the camp guard, our little vegetable garden (to think I’d been ready to sacrifice it for the baby elephant!), the snorting hippo (only one still – the rest of the gang haven’t returned after the cruel killing of the young male), everything. That was my home and I loved it: that’s where I was the happiest.
Where were we? Oh yes, the morning after the night that was supposed to be the hen do but wasn’t, but still we managed to wake up with sore heads in Maun. Phone call re: a shot elephant in the Ndovu camp, which is on the other side of the lagoon from our camp. Mommy elephant dead, two calves orphaned, one of which is apparently only a tiny baby still suckling. What is a true elephant lover to do after receiving such tragic news? Launch a rescue operation, of course. The baby wouldn’t survive for much longer without milk, so we had to act quickly. We made a quick plan: the guys at the camp would catch the baby and bottle feed it with formula milk – they could put the baby in our vegetable garden which was a small but fenced area (only this would require transporting the baby over to our camp on a boat – but this was a minor problem in the plan which we didn’t want to worry about just yet), we would head back the following day and look after it until we’d found a long-term care home for it. The person who reported the dead mother and the orphaned elephants – let’s call him Steve, who’s an old elephant hunter - said he’d hand-reared a baby elephant before and even knew the formula for the milk it would need. All we’d need to do was to get a permission from the Department of Wildlife to catch the baby as otherwise we might to prosecuted for a kidnapping . (And no, we hadn’t forgotten about the bigger calf, but as a three-year-old it should be big enough to survive in the wild and hopefully find the herd again, so it was less of a worry).
Off we went to the Dept of Wildlife to see the Head of God-knows-what and explained the situation and what we were proposing to do (or Anna did, and I enthusiastically nodded, already picturing myself bottle-feeding the baby in our vegetable garden and patting its little trunk, comforting the poor little orphan – aah). The Head of God-knows-what was very understanding, and Anna being a well-connected and respected elephant researcher he agreed to it, on a few conditions: the baby would have to be released into wild once old enough to survive (that was the plan anyway), we would have to find a place that would be willing to rear it before the permission was granted (hmm…), and that we would have to write a letter (you always have to write a letter about everything in Botswana). Obviously time was of essence and we only had hours to save the baby (at some point news came in from “Steve” that the villagers were already lining up to chop up and cook the mother), so off we went to make some phone calls and to write a letter. There is no official place for orphaned elephants in Botswana, so it had to be a private person with the skills and capacity to bring up elephants – easier said than done. The first place Anna tried refused, but the second place, a safari company that do elephant back safaris sounded more promising. Their MD was flying at that moment, so we arranged to meet him at the airport as he landed. The meeting at the airport was followed by another meeting at his office with a vet, and in the end the answer was a maybe. After he’d ordered a chopper to fly to the scene to assess the situation, a new twist to the story took place: the mother was actually still alive, just badly injured. But they decided to go for it: the baby elephant was going to be rescued! The vet managed to get some formula milk organized, and off he went on a plane to complete OROBE. Their plan was to put down the mother, catch the baby and fly it to the elephant back safari camp that very day, before it got dark (I have to say I was slightly disappointed by the fact that my bottle-feeding the baby elephant fantasy would never happen now, but then again I supposes it was more important to actually save the baby in the first place...). We got the letter together and delivered it to the Head of God-knoes-what, and it was all official. Nothing more we could do now, apart from having the hen night and wait until the morning to hear whether everything went to plan.
So the hen night finally took place that night – the hen made it, we made it (just in time), and everyone else had also been able to re-arrange their plans and made it. We dressed Hattie up as a zebra (for she is a zebra researcher marring another zebra researcher), got our blacks and whites on and went on a river cruise for sundowners. A bottle of sambuca was also involved from early on, which probably was one of our not-so-great-ideas.
The cruise was followed by a lovely dinner in a new lodge, which we enjoyed so much we didn’t actually make it anywhere else that night. We’d thought of some games involving traditional African wife-skills, such as carrying a bucket of water on head (bucket of water was substituted with a can of beer) and strapping a baby on back and carrying it around the table as fast as possible. Thankfully we didn’t use a real baby as it got dropped many a time. The next morning Anna found out the fate of Dumbo and the outcome of OROBE. After us running around the whole previous day, letters, permissions, negotiations, phone calls, helicopters, flying a vet to the scene and my shattered dreams of bottle-feeding the little elephant, it didn’t happen. Well, it did, sort of. It was just that the suckling baby and a three-year old calf as reported by the renowned elephant hunter “Steve” turned out to be a two-year and a nine-year old calves – both way too old to be reared by humans not alone flown anywhere, and with fairly good chances of surviving in the wild on their own anyway. The mother was put down and the kids run away to the bush, and that was the end of it. “Steve” was oblivious to the rescue operation and the effort that went into organizing it – we declared him senile there and then.
The rest of our time in Maun was filled with the Maun festival, a two-day affair of live music, stalls and films. It was fun, but by the end of the weekend we were more than ready to head back to the safety of our lovely, peaceful camp. ‘Shattered’ just isn’t strong enough a word to describe how we felt.
We didn’t head straight back however, but stopped to visit the mysterious Tsodilo Hills on our way home. We arrived late at night and camped by the “Female” hill. There was a great thunderstorm not far away from us so we watched the lighting doing its magical light show on the rocky walls, under the thousands of stars.
Tsodilo Hills is a sacred place for the San bushmen, believed to be the place where the first creation took place thousands of years ago. There is evidence of human life on the site from some 10,000 years ago with the oldest rock paintings dating back about 4000 years. 
That’s what we went to see on the following day, as we climbed to the top of the Female Hill and down again. A truly amazing place. Next day, we headed home. It was great to come back. I’d missed the dusty dirt road, the people, the grinning children waving by the road (whether they’re just excited to see a car, white people, or just us, remains a mystery), the little round mud and grass houses in the villages, the goats, the cows, the donkies, the short boat journey to our island, John the camp guard, our little vegetable garden (to think I’d been ready to sacrifice it for the baby elephant!), the snorting hippo (only one still – the rest of the gang haven’t returned after the cruel killing of the young male), everything. That was my home and I loved it: that’s where I was the happiest.
Monday 4 May 2009
Maun, part 1
Wow. So much to tell, so little time.
Me and Anna left the camp behind on Monday morning with the boat and mokoro fully packed with our gear, and did a full day's work around Seronga village which involved several interviews with the farmers and a few visits to the fields. It was getting late in the afternoon, and we'd just been to see a field recently raided by elephants. We were just about to turn back into the main road, and checked if there were any cars or donkies or cows coming from the left. None of the usual suspects were there this time, just two young bull elephants. It took me a second or two to process this information. ELEPHANTS!!! FINALLY!!!!!
They'd just crossed the road right next to us and were heading back into the bushes. Anna quickly drove to the road so we could get a better view, I tried to pull my camera out (luckily all set up as I'd just done some filming) with my hands shaking like mad from the excitement, and the elephants stopping to check us out. It was a complete high, unlike anything I've experienced before. They were just beautiful, amazing animals, wondeful to look at. My first elephant sighting which I shall never forget!
That night we stayed in Seronga in Jen's little round house (Jen=American peace corp girl), and early in the morning the three of us, plus Jen's neighbour who wanted to get a lift, hit the road with Maun as our destination. Saw hundreds of elephant footprints on the way - they're really starting to come out and move around now, which'll hopefully means a lot more sightings.
We stopped in a croc farm on the way - I'd seen their leaflet where they advertised to rescue problem animals from the river etc, so I had a rosy image of them in my head as a kind of charity and a haven for crocodiles. Little did I know that a crocodile farm does exacty what it says on the package: they farm crocodiles, for meat and for skin.
Eeewww!!! The babies were so cute, and there were hundreds of them crammed in a small space.
We made it to Maun in the late afternoon, got some groceries and settle's in at Anna's and Graham's Maun residence. I thoroughly enjoyed my lovely, hot, long shower and a cold Windhoek. We resisted the tempation of hitting the bars as we had a big night planned for the following night: Anna's friend's hen night.
Which didn't quite go to plan. We got all sorted the following day, got our zebra-themed outfits ready (for the hen is a zebra reseracher), had a boat, snacks and drinks organised for sundowners, restaurant booked, etc. We were missing just one thing: the actual hen. We'd been unable to get hold of her all day, but didn't get too worried as her husband-to-be had promised to get her back from the bush in time for the party. By five we were all ready to go, with our stripy tops on, when we finally got a phone call: they'd had a car breakdown. She wasn't going to make it back in time.
We considred doing the hen night anyway, maybe dressing Jen up as the hen, me filming it, and Hattie (the bride-to-be) would get the DVD to watch. Or we could try and re-arrange everything for the following night. After some careful consideration and a lot of phone calls, we went with the second option. But we went out anyway just to have a little warm-up, which turned into a big warm-up, which meant we all had very sore heads in the following morning.
So it wasn't the best timing anyway, when Anna got a phone call from Ian, the retired South African hunter who lives near-ish our camp. An elephant had been shot that night in a field in Gunitsoga (our village), she'd run to the place where our boat was docked (i.e. across the lagoon from our camp), and died there. But she'd had two calves with her: one three-year old, one just a tiny baby. Who were waiting there, by the carcass - and they had to be rescued.
To be continued
Me and Anna left the camp behind on Monday morning with the boat and mokoro fully packed with our gear, and did a full day's work around Seronga village which involved several interviews with the farmers and a few visits to the fields. It was getting late in the afternoon, and we'd just been to see a field recently raided by elephants. We were just about to turn back into the main road, and checked if there were any cars or donkies or cows coming from the left. None of the usual suspects were there this time, just two young bull elephants. It took me a second or two to process this information. ELEPHANTS!!! FINALLY!!!!!
They'd just crossed the road right next to us and were heading back into the bushes. Anna quickly drove to the road so we could get a better view, I tried to pull my camera out (luckily all set up as I'd just done some filming) with my hands shaking like mad from the excitement, and the elephants stopping to check us out. It was a complete high, unlike anything I've experienced before. They were just beautiful, amazing animals, wondeful to look at. My first elephant sighting which I shall never forget! That night we stayed in Seronga in Jen's little round house (Jen=American peace corp girl), and early in the morning the three of us, plus Jen's neighbour who wanted to get a lift, hit the road with Maun as our destination. Saw hundreds of elephant footprints on the way - they're really starting to come out and move around now, which'll hopefully means a lot more sightings.
We stopped in a croc farm on the way - I'd seen their leaflet where they advertised to rescue problem animals from the river etc, so I had a rosy image of them in my head as a kind of charity and a haven for crocodiles. Little did I know that a crocodile farm does exacty what it says on the package: they farm crocodiles, for meat and for skin.
Eeewww!!! The babies were so cute, and there were hundreds of them crammed in a small space. We made it to Maun in the late afternoon, got some groceries and settle's in at Anna's and Graham's Maun residence. I thoroughly enjoyed my lovely, hot, long shower and a cold Windhoek. We resisted the tempation of hitting the bars as we had a big night planned for the following night: Anna's friend's hen night.
Which didn't quite go to plan. We got all sorted the following day, got our zebra-themed outfits ready (for the hen is a zebra reseracher), had a boat, snacks and drinks organised for sundowners, restaurant booked, etc. We were missing just one thing: the actual hen. We'd been unable to get hold of her all day, but didn't get too worried as her husband-to-be had promised to get her back from the bush in time for the party. By five we were all ready to go, with our stripy tops on, when we finally got a phone call: they'd had a car breakdown. She wasn't going to make it back in time.
We considred doing the hen night anyway, maybe dressing Jen up as the hen, me filming it, and Hattie (the bride-to-be) would get the DVD to watch. Or we could try and re-arrange everything for the following night. After some careful consideration and a lot of phone calls, we went with the second option. But we went out anyway just to have a little warm-up, which turned into a big warm-up, which meant we all had very sore heads in the following morning. So it wasn't the best timing anyway, when Anna got a phone call from Ian, the retired South African hunter who lives near-ish our camp. An elephant had been shot that night in a field in Gunitsoga (our village), she'd run to the place where our boat was docked (i.e. across the lagoon from our camp), and died there. But she'd had two calves with her: one three-year old, one just a tiny baby. Who were waiting there, by the carcass - and they had to be rescued.
To be continued
Q&A
Sunday 26th April (finished on 2nd of May)
A few weeks ago a friend who I'm not going to name sent me a bunch a questions. I've not been able to give her an answer directly to all of them, so I'm going to take this opportunity to reply in public in case anyone else has wondered the same things.
LIVING ARRANGEMENTS?
I'm living in a tent - quite a large, sturdy one, which is not going to blow away with the wind or anything.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I'm sleeping in a tent, and living outdoors, as I don't really spend a lot of my waking time inside the tent.
PERSONAL HYGIENE?
We have a "bathroom" where there is a bucket shower and sink, unfortunately not yet with running water but I believe that Graham is working on it. The bathroom has got reed walls and the sky as a ceiling. It's beautiful.
PERSONAL HYGIENE PART 2
Yes I’ve been shaving my legs while living here.
COMMUNICATION WITH THE LOCALS?
English is an official language of Botswana, but whether people speak it or not depends on how much (if any) schooling they’ve completed. In the rural area where we are people generally don’t speak English beyond a word or two, unless they’ve been to school. Setswana is more commonly spoken, but there are as many different languages as there are tribes, and then dialects of those languages. In our area Humbukushu, Sayei and Sesarwa (=the clicking bushman language) are most common.
I communicate mainly by smiling and waving. No, I’m lucky as we always have a translator with us when we’re working, and everyone working for the project speaks English, some more, some less. My Setswana is limited to about five words: hello, hippo, elephant, work, goodbye. One can get surprisingly far with that! John doesn’t know much English, so there’s a lot of waving and gesturing involved when we speak.
FOOD?
The food is great, because we cook it ourselves. I cook a lot because I like it, and since my laptop broke I don’t tend to have that much to do in the evenings. We eat really well. One would think that camp food is plain and boring but ours is far from it! We get fresh seasonal veggies (peppers, pumpkins, corn, spinach) from the farmers, and whenever we do a shopping trip (about once a fortnight) we stock up. Our favourites are baked potatoes, as there isn’t anything quite like potatoes cooked in tinfoil on fire. We eat them with chilli made with kidney beans, or lentil bolognese, or curry sauce. We’ve made stuffed pancakes a couple of times, carrot soup, stir fries, stuffed cabbage leaves, stews, even fresh bread (baked in a pot), you name it.
Most of the time we cook on the fire, but there’s also a gas ring in the kitchen tent.
I was keen to try the local delicacies, having the great cuisine of northern Africa in mind and thinking that surely it can’t be that far from it. It was far from it - really, really far. The locals eat sorghum or millet porridge (cold) with sour milk, pap (maize meal) and meat stews and pumpkin leaves, that’s about it. The first option on the menu I’ve been forced to try once and if I ever have to try it again I’ll know better to say I’m allergic. (This was after interviewing a farmer, they brought out a big pot and handed us all spoons. I tried one spoonful, smiled and said it was delicious; unfortunately I’d had a huge breakfast and was still full from it.
The sour milk is just wrong, it’s not only extremely sour but also warm and lumpy, looks like cottage cheese a bit). I’ve had pap once as well, and it was perfectly non-offensive, but quite tasteless and boring. But the local bread is nice, many of the villages have their own bakery and most days we get a fresh loaf of bread for lunch, which we eat with peanut butter. I used to hate peanut butter before I came out here, but I forgot to mention that to Anna, and now it’s too late. It keeps well all day in the hot car. Plus, I’ve kind of got used to it… ok, I actually quite like it now. Some of the bakeries also sell these donut-like things, that are actually just like the Finnish munkki, without the sugar coating. They’re nice.
SPARE TIME?
What do I do on my spare time? Well, during the week there’s not much spare time actually. We leave early in the morning, and often don’t get back until about five or even six, so after the evening is pretty much taken by showers, food preparation and then dinner. I try to read a bit before switching off the light, but often I’m so tired by bedtime I just pass out. I have Sundays off, and the occasional afternoon. I fill up my Sundays with reading books, writing, maybe some yoga, scrubbing my feet (yes they get very dirty in flipflops), baking banana bread, logging my tapes, taking pictures, cleaning my tent, doing some laundry etc, etc – I’m certainly not bored. A recent addition to my list of hobbies is gardening. We’ve now planted our own vegetable garden, and it’s the most exciting thing to check twice a day what has come up and how much it’s grown.
We also go on boat trips a lot. We take sundowners with us – a couple of beers or some wine and snacks, and venture out to the lagoon, past the hippos, park up in the reeds, and watch the sun go down over the delta.
Now. A secret. We have our washing up and laundry done for us by John and Molly, who comes in once a week now to do the laundry. I’m telling you, this is living in luxury! I can’t begin to tell how grateful I am for Molly – hand washing all your clothes all the time is not fun!
TRANSPORT?
We move around by boat, car and foot. Mainly car. No, there’s no escape from the camp on days off, but I wouldn’t actually even want to escape. I thoroughly enjoy not having to go anywhere, as we travel so much during the week.
ANYWHERE TO ESCAPE FROM THE BUSH?
No towns or cities nearby where to spend spare time. Gunitsoga is the nearest village to our camp, walking distance away when there’s no flood, and there’s a “bar” (i.e. a metal shack) there that sells cold beer and soft drinks for emergencies. Seronga is the nearest larger village, about half an hour drive (plus a boat out of the camp first) away. They have a few more metal shacks that sell beer there, that’s about it. Shakawe is a two/three hour drive, and a ferry crossing away, they have a big supermarket there. (We do our supplies stock-up in Swakawe, although the ferry crossing is a nightmare at the moment – last time we went over we couldn’t get back that night anymore because of the huge queue. We got in the queue at 4.30. Last ferry is at 6.30, and we didn’t make it across. Thank God for Jen the American peace corp girl in Seronga knew someone in Shakawe, who kindly let us stay at his place that night). Then finally, there’s Maun, about 7-10 hours away, depending on a lot of things. Maun deserves its own chapter.
COLLEAGUES?
The team consists of Anna, the principal investigator, Nature, the translator, 13 enumerators (one in each village) and me, the assistant investigator and a videographer (I made up that title, sounds much better than just an assistant eh?). So on any day it’s usually four of us going around.
ANIMALS SPOTTED SO FAR?
The animals I’ve seen in the wild so far include: monkey, impala, hippo, elephant (added later), crocodile, snakes (including a cobra), spiders (only fairly harmless ones), toads and countless birds (amazingly beautiful ones) and insects.
TEMPERATURE?
The temperature varies somewhere between 10 and 40 degrees C. It’s hot during the day, usually around 30-35 C and colder at night, probably around 15 C. It’s getting colder now that it’s coming up to winter.
THE HUTS IN TARZAN FILMS?
Yes people live in round mud huts just like those that can be seen in the Tarzan films. In fact (this is going to be particularly interesting to any markets researchers reading this) in our questionnaires we determine the social class (or wealth rank) based on the type of roof and walls that a respondent has – and a number of cows they own. Only white people, or very rich villagers (such like chiefs) live in a house made from bricks and iron.
Most common combo is mud/grass, or mud/reeds. Around the hut there is usually a compound, or a yard which is actually the living room and the kitchen. The compound is fenced with reed wall for privacy.
***
And finally, the GPS cordinates for our camp are:
18º49'57.81"S
22º35'56.26"E
...in case anyone wants to pop round for a cup of tea (I can even manage fresh coffee). The cordinates should work in google earth.
Raj, I'm still to see the elephants showering themselves with their trunks but I remain hopeful! :-)
A few weeks ago a friend who I'm not going to name sent me a bunch a questions. I've not been able to give her an answer directly to all of them, so I'm going to take this opportunity to reply in public in case anyone else has wondered the same things.
LIVING ARRANGEMENTS?
I'm living in a tent - quite a large, sturdy one, which is not going to blow away with the wind or anything.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I'm sleeping in a tent, and living outdoors, as I don't really spend a lot of my waking time inside the tent. PERSONAL HYGIENE?
We have a "bathroom" where there is a bucket shower and sink, unfortunately not yet with running water but I believe that Graham is working on it. The bathroom has got reed walls and the sky as a ceiling. It's beautiful.
PERSONAL HYGIENE PART 2
Yes I’ve been shaving my legs while living here.
COMMUNICATION WITH THE LOCALS?
English is an official language of Botswana, but whether people speak it or not depends on how much (if any) schooling they’ve completed. In the rural area where we are people generally don’t speak English beyond a word or two, unless they’ve been to school. Setswana is more commonly spoken, but there are as many different languages as there are tribes, and then dialects of those languages. In our area Humbukushu, Sayei and Sesarwa (=the clicking bushman language) are most common.
I communicate mainly by smiling and waving. No, I’m lucky as we always have a translator with us when we’re working, and everyone working for the project speaks English, some more, some less. My Setswana is limited to about five words: hello, hippo, elephant, work, goodbye. One can get surprisingly far with that! John doesn’t know much English, so there’s a lot of waving and gesturing involved when we speak.
FOOD?
The food is great, because we cook it ourselves. I cook a lot because I like it, and since my laptop broke I don’t tend to have that much to do in the evenings. We eat really well. One would think that camp food is plain and boring but ours is far from it! We get fresh seasonal veggies (peppers, pumpkins, corn, spinach) from the farmers, and whenever we do a shopping trip (about once a fortnight) we stock up. Our favourites are baked potatoes, as there isn’t anything quite like potatoes cooked in tinfoil on fire. We eat them with chilli made with kidney beans, or lentil bolognese, or curry sauce. We’ve made stuffed pancakes a couple of times, carrot soup, stir fries, stuffed cabbage leaves, stews, even fresh bread (baked in a pot), you name it.
Most of the time we cook on the fire, but there’s also a gas ring in the kitchen tent. I was keen to try the local delicacies, having the great cuisine of northern Africa in mind and thinking that surely it can’t be that far from it. It was far from it - really, really far. The locals eat sorghum or millet porridge (cold) with sour milk, pap (maize meal) and meat stews and pumpkin leaves, that’s about it. The first option on the menu I’ve been forced to try once and if I ever have to try it again I’ll know better to say I’m allergic. (This was after interviewing a farmer, they brought out a big pot and handed us all spoons. I tried one spoonful, smiled and said it was delicious; unfortunately I’d had a huge breakfast and was still full from it.
The sour milk is just wrong, it’s not only extremely sour but also warm and lumpy, looks like cottage cheese a bit). I’ve had pap once as well, and it was perfectly non-offensive, but quite tasteless and boring. But the local bread is nice, many of the villages have their own bakery and most days we get a fresh loaf of bread for lunch, which we eat with peanut butter. I used to hate peanut butter before I came out here, but I forgot to mention that to Anna, and now it’s too late. It keeps well all day in the hot car. Plus, I’ve kind of got used to it… ok, I actually quite like it now. Some of the bakeries also sell these donut-like things, that are actually just like the Finnish munkki, without the sugar coating. They’re nice. SPARE TIME?
What do I do on my spare time? Well, during the week there’s not much spare time actually. We leave early in the morning, and often don’t get back until about five or even six, so after the evening is pretty much taken by showers, food preparation and then dinner. I try to read a bit before switching off the light, but often I’m so tired by bedtime I just pass out. I have Sundays off, and the occasional afternoon. I fill up my Sundays with reading books, writing, maybe some yoga, scrubbing my feet (yes they get very dirty in flipflops), baking banana bread, logging my tapes, taking pictures, cleaning my tent, doing some laundry etc, etc – I’m certainly not bored. A recent addition to my list of hobbies is gardening. We’ve now planted our own vegetable garden, and it’s the most exciting thing to check twice a day what has come up and how much it’s grown.
We also go on boat trips a lot. We take sundowners with us – a couple of beers or some wine and snacks, and venture out to the lagoon, past the hippos, park up in the reeds, and watch the sun go down over the delta.
Now. A secret. We have our washing up and laundry done for us by John and Molly, who comes in once a week now to do the laundry. I’m telling you, this is living in luxury! I can’t begin to tell how grateful I am for Molly – hand washing all your clothes all the time is not fun!
TRANSPORT?
We move around by boat, car and foot. Mainly car. No, there’s no escape from the camp on days off, but I wouldn’t actually even want to escape. I thoroughly enjoy not having to go anywhere, as we travel so much during the week.
ANYWHERE TO ESCAPE FROM THE BUSH?
No towns or cities nearby where to spend spare time. Gunitsoga is the nearest village to our camp, walking distance away when there’s no flood, and there’s a “bar” (i.e. a metal shack) there that sells cold beer and soft drinks for emergencies. Seronga is the nearest larger village, about half an hour drive (plus a boat out of the camp first) away. They have a few more metal shacks that sell beer there, that’s about it. Shakawe is a two/three hour drive, and a ferry crossing away, they have a big supermarket there. (We do our supplies stock-up in Swakawe, although the ferry crossing is a nightmare at the moment – last time we went over we couldn’t get back that night anymore because of the huge queue. We got in the queue at 4.30. Last ferry is at 6.30, and we didn’t make it across. Thank God for Jen the American peace corp girl in Seronga knew someone in Shakawe, who kindly let us stay at his place that night). Then finally, there’s Maun, about 7-10 hours away, depending on a lot of things. Maun deserves its own chapter.
COLLEAGUES?
The team consists of Anna, the principal investigator, Nature, the translator, 13 enumerators (one in each village) and me, the assistant investigator and a videographer (I made up that title, sounds much better than just an assistant eh?). So on any day it’s usually four of us going around.
ANIMALS SPOTTED SO FAR?
The animals I’ve seen in the wild so far include: monkey, impala, hippo, elephant (added later), crocodile, snakes (including a cobra), spiders (only fairly harmless ones), toads and countless birds (amazingly beautiful ones) and insects.
TEMPERATURE?
The temperature varies somewhere between 10 and 40 degrees C. It’s hot during the day, usually around 30-35 C and colder at night, probably around 15 C. It’s getting colder now that it’s coming up to winter.
THE HUTS IN TARZAN FILMS?
Yes people live in round mud huts just like those that can be seen in the Tarzan films. In fact (this is going to be particularly interesting to any markets researchers reading this) in our questionnaires we determine the social class (or wealth rank) based on the type of roof and walls that a respondent has – and a number of cows they own. Only white people, or very rich villagers (such like chiefs) live in a house made from bricks and iron.
Most common combo is mud/grass, or mud/reeds. Around the hut there is usually a compound, or a yard which is actually the living room and the kitchen. The compound is fenced with reed wall for privacy. ***
And finally, the GPS cordinates for our camp are:
18º49'57.81"S
22º35'56.26"E
...in case anyone wants to pop round for a cup of tea (I can even manage fresh coffee). The cordinates should work in google earth.
Raj, I'm still to see the elephants showering themselves with their trunks but I remain hopeful! :-)
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