range rehabilitation, star gazing in Moremi and a parrot in my hair

First, thanks to all of you that sent along birthday wishes. I had a nice birthday on the 18th. Paul spoiled me all day beginning with an attempt at coffee in bed (until the parrot in the living room started squawking because she wanted Paul to come out there…she’s quite social…and demanding). At the office I was given a package of assorted “biscuits” (a.k.a. cookies) to eat with my mid-morning tea. At lunch, I announced that I really would like a piece of cake for my birthday to which Paul promptly left the office to retrieve a chocolate mousse cake from his neighbor’s fridge (he had purchased it the day before and was hiding it in there for dinner that night). He said I made a “pre-emptive cake strike” by requesting it for lunch (instead of the plan for dinner). Also received some nice gifts throughout the day including a nice beaded giraffe for the house in Greenville (that we don’t live in yet but are buying things for on a regular basis) and a fuzzy pink bathrobe (very “bush worthy” for my walks to the outdoor shower – although I’m not sure I’ll be using that too much until I recover from the story our friend Mike told me of his sighting of a boom slang in there the other day – that snake has 3 red dots on the snake chart in the living room meaning “super venomous”).

Last weekend we went down to Ghanzi, a big cattle farming area, about a 2-3 hour drive from Maun to visit a friend of Paul’s Kevin and his wife Merle. Paul had worked with Kevin several years ago when he started the range rehabilitation project with funding from Tiso Kalahari. Botswana is a big cattle raising country (hence the cows in the road) and there is a lot of “over grazing” of farm areas, meaning there is no grass left to eat. Paul worked with Kevin on some “controlled burns” in areas to clear out the under-brush that gets so thick there is no room for grass to grow. We spend the weekend bashing around the farm in a giant tank like tractor mapping the farm with the help of Paul’s GPS so that long range comparisons can be made between burn and non-burn areas. We stayed in an elevated reed chalet on a watering hole and heard howling jackal at night and enjoyed the bird life during the day. In addition to cattle, the farm also had plenty of kudu and ostrich roaming around.

This weekend we went up to Moremi Game Reserve to give a star show for a safari. The group was a very nice family of fifteen from grandparents to grandkids from California. We came in on Saturday night just in time to celebrate one of the granddaughter’s 16^th birthdays with a traditional elephant dung cake (a classic of safari companies, there’s always great laughter when they figure out it is filled with poop!). The real cake delivered, champagne poured, and the evening was off to a good start as the sun set over the pan. It was a beautiful sunset.

With pre-dinner sundowners Paul told them a bit about the galaxy, astronomy and bushman folklore regarding the constellations of the southern hemisphere. As he was talking, with the sky only partially illuminated by a quarter moon, we notice movement about 20 feet away as a huge hippo made his way to the pan. With a flash of a torch (a.k.a. flash light) he backed up a bit but eventually worked up the courage to make a mad run to the watering hole sending water flying everywhere like a tank driving full speed into the water. He signaled his triumph with a signature set of grunts as we cautiously looked on.

We continued the evening with a fabulous steak dinner and after the meal Paul entertained them for hours with his telescope viewing Saturn (which at this point is tilted in such a way that it looks like an olive with a tooth pick stuck through it), Jupiter, the moon, and many fascinating stars and nebular clusters. I enjoyed observing the family dynamics of what must have been a very wealthy family. This was just one evening of a two week trip which involved multiple chartered flights from one scenic location to the next. A quick Google search on return to Maun revealed that one of the sons was a TV producer from LA who had directed several episodes of Lost! One of my favorite shows.

One of the advantages of money like that is that you don’t have to endure the actual drive to these unspoiled areas. Since they were jet setting to their next destination there was an extra vehicle that needed to be driven back to Maun so while Paul drove the safari vehicle back, I drove our Mitsubishi through mud, sand and slippery calcrete roads (which felt like driving on corrugated ice, bumpy and slippery at the same time!). There is still a lot of water up in Moremi, unusual for this time of year (which is supposed to be the dry season). On several occasions Paul had to wade into the icy cold mud water to see if it was passable. Better him than me.

Fortunately, no elephant encounters while driving in the bush this time (unlike my first time driving in the bush). We did see some ellies but they were calm. We also saw giraffe, kudu, impala, lechwee, zebra, baboons, vervet monkeys, etc. The coolest sighting of the weekend was a small pack of wild dogs. While I had seen some before in captivity…never in the wild. They were not fussed at all by us and walked right by the car. Two of them were collared for research purposes but the others were not. We were very excited about our good luck in seeing them and I was surprised how much they looked like skinny lanky domestic dogs!

It was a very nice weekend. In a couple of days, we head off to Savute to help cut a new road for the mobile safari companies. It has been very cold at night (close to freezing) so I’ll have to pack everything warm that I own. It was a long cold night in Moremi listening to the hippos, lions and hyenas and freezing my butt off!

PS: Well the parrot finally worked up the courage the other morning to try to land on me again. There I was innocently drinking my morning coffee and the bird launches itself off its cage, flapping erratically, and lands…square on my head. Paul insists it’s because my shoulders are too small to suffice as landing strips. So there I was in my pink fuzzy bathrobe, coffee cup in hand, with a bird in my hair. With nothing to grip on to, his talons are digging into my skull and the more Paul tries to get him off the more he digs in. At some point I start to cry in a complete fizzle as he backs up towards my face. Finally, our friend Mike walks in and the bird calmly walks off my head and onto his arm. It was quite a start to the day. Fortunately, he didn’t poop on my head (especially since we had no water that morning for a shower!).

adjusting to life back in Botswana

It always takes me a bit of time to adjust to life back in Botswana. I’m not sure if it’s watching for snake spores or trying to discern between the different types of black ants to know which are the ones who’s bite hurts like hell (the Matabele ants that bite and make you go numb for hours. They are black and slightly bigger than other ants but otherwise they have no distinguishing features). Today I’m home alone and I’m currently trying to identify the wasp that is circling my head. If it is a mud wasp, he’s fine and is just trying to find a place to build his mud home in a crevice in the house. If it is a red wasp, I need to be worried as his sting hurts like hell, Paul says worse than a scorpion! To me they look the same and so basically I’m leery of both of them. I’ve just managed to let him out the window so…either way I’m covered.

It is the oddness of daily events that throws me off a bit. The other day, for example, we were called over by Happiness, our Zimbabwean neighbor to come see a snake fighting with a chameleon, neither of which is liked by the average African. By the time we got there, the snake had consumed most of the chameleon and only his tail and one of his legs was sticking out of this mouth. Despite the fact that it was simply a harmless mole snake, the Zimbabweans were ready to kill him. Joe informed us that his grandmother had warned him that all snakes were bad. A friend of theirs insisted that, “the Good News Bible even says that all snakes should be killed because there are our enemies.” What kind of church is preaching that? Poor Paul was beside himself trying to educate them about harmful and harmless snakes. I’m not sure how far he got.

As you know we are involuntarily watching our neighbor’s animals who are away for a month. As I mentioned, the parrot met us in the tree outside of our house the day we arrived from the states and the two dogs have basically set up camp on our front stoop. As an animal lover, I like the company although I must admit that the bird worries me a little. The other day, in what must have been a comic scene, he flew from his cage right toward my head. In a panic I covered my head with the news paper I was reading, jumped out of my chair, throwing the red wine in my glass to the wind and ran out of the room. In the chaos the bird flew out the front door off into a tree some distance from the house. Paul, the bird lover that he is, insists that he was simply trying to land on my shoulder. I think he was going for my eyes!

Paul spent the next hour trying to coax him back inside before it got dark and he got eaten by some sort of bird of prey. On his return flight, he thought he’d land for a moment on the roof, which is metal but he slip, slip, slipped until he lost the battle with gravity and landed, phu-whap!, right in the dirt. Poor little thing was winded for quite some time, huffing and puffing for air. We thought he might have cracked a rib or something! He (and I) eventually recovered from the experience but every time I hear wings flapping, I shutter a little. The other day I ducked in to the indentation created in the hall by the side door as he flew from the living room, through the office, down the hall to the kitchen to see what Paul was cooking (he likes snow peas, whole oats and herb crackers).

At times we take the two dogs, Fudge and Taffy, for a walk with us.They love it and run like mad on the dirt roads near our house. Regularly they get thorns stuck in their paws but they continue to run first on only 3 legs, then sometimes on only two. Like athletic amputees competing in the Special Olympics they carry on! Paul will call out, "Taffy has a puncture (which is what they call flat tires here). Front right and back left!" And I'll try to convince him to stop long enough to let me pull the thorns out of his paws.

We had a nice little route for walks around the ostrich farm until the river came up so high there was no path left around the fence. The Thamalakane River is higher than anyone has seen it in years. At night the frogs are so loud, it sounds like we are being invaded!

I’m still struggling with driving. Honestly, I would much rather drive a 25 foot RV through traffic in Atlanta than drive around here. There is too much car to my left and too much road to my right. It just doesn’t feel right. Additionally, taxi drivers are unpredictable…sometimes driving extremely slow, other times only partially pulling off the road to let passengers out, still others making a wide left turn only to cross the road to the right (as if they were driving an 18 wheeler). As if the vehicle traffic isn’t enough to deal with, there are the donkeys, cows, goats and occasional pedestrians to worry about. I’m not sure I’ll ever drive at night as all of those things seem to like to occupy the roads after dark and none of them are easily seen (I have yet to see a pedestrian not wearing black at night).

As I’m continuing to write I hear a crunch, crunch, snap, crunch outside. I can see that a red horn bill has managed to catch a grasshopper about 4 inches long and is trying to eat it. It’s longer than his beak so he’s flipping I up in the air, crunching, flipping again. I don’t know how he’s going to eat that thing. But then again if that snake managed the chameleon, I’m sure he’ll manage too. I think he got it but now he looks like it’s stuck in his throat. Ouch! It’s a tough world out there.

Well, I’d better get back to reading and lecture writing.

duckling rescue

So I’ve been meaning to write up this duckling rescue story for some time but only now have the chance to sit down and do it. Hope you enjoy it. Just goes to show you, you can have an adventure…even in Greenville, South Carolina.
It was a sunny spring day in May in Greenville, South Carolina. I decided to bring Paul and his son, Nikolaj, and daughter-in-law, Trine, visiting from Copenhagen down to the Reedy River to see the town. Walking across the pedestrian suspension bridge we stopped to look at the waterfall of the Reedy that used to power the textile mills that sustained Greenville for decades. Now, the area has turned into a local attraction for tourists and locals alike to come and enjoy the views.

As we’re standing on the bridge looking down at the waterfall Paul notices one, two, three tiny little ducklings at the base of the falls struggling to make their way to safe ground. Initially we thought they might actually live up under the rock they were swimming to for safety but then, when the third one got washed further down and tried to go back up the waterfall, we realized they might not be there on purpose.

Just then a woman approached us and pointed out the mother and six struggling ducklings at the top of the fall. They were being pulled down closer to the top of the falls by the current and then swimming with all their might to safety for a moment of reprieve only to be washed down again to repeat the cycle again and again. She mentioned that this had been going on for well over an hour. Oh no…something must be done!

I get on my cell phone and dial 411 to ask for the animal control but sadly when I call I’m informed that they close at 5:30 pm (it’s now after 6 pm) and I’m instructed to call the State Department of Natural Resources for “after hours wildlife concerns.” Back to 411 but unfortunately when I get the number, no one answers. It just rings and rings. Now I’m desperate. I dial 911 and blurt out, “this is not a human emergency but a duck emergency…there are ducklings being washed over the top of the Reedy River Falls.” To which the 911 operate gasps, “Oh no!” I explain to her who I’ve already tried to call and she struggles to think of another option.

She mentions that she could send some officers but they would be no help and then remembers a volunteer organization for wildlife rescue and rehab. She gives me that number. I dial it and encounter the most bizarre automated phone system that I’ve ever heard. “Please listen carefully to this message as it will direct you to the volunteer who can help you with your particular wild life emergency. If you’ve found a opossum dial 27. If you have a bird emergency, dial 40. If it has a sharp beak, dial 42. For a rounded beak, 47.” OK, those aren’t the real numbers but you get the idea. I finally get to the duck lady and explain the situation and she says she’ll be there in 20 minutes…with nets.

I rush back to the others and explain what has transpired. Paul says, “They’ll never make it that long. They are getting fatigued. Let’s go Nikolaj. We have to do something.” This is just one of the many reasons I love this man. I don’t think I know anyone else who would jump into the Reedy River to save distressed ducklings.

We cross the bridge, jump over the wall leading to the grassy area near the river and wade in. The next thing I know, Paul is at the ducklings. The mom is squawking like mad and Paul is catching ducklings as they scatter to get away from him. He’s downstream from them so as they lose the battle against the current he scoops them up and puts them into a green plastic shopping bag that Nikolaj had. He fills it with the ducklings he’s snatched. Nikolaj is behind him catching those he misses and Trine has scaled the 25 foot rock face to get down to the bottom of the falls in order to get to the ones that have already gone over. I’m standing on the banks…dumbfounded. I’ve re-arranged the contents of my purse for duckling carrying (Paul always laughs at my fascination with bags…I like to think of them as “gear” and this one is perfect for duck rescues as it is lines with some sort of waterproof lining).

Next, I see Paul about mid-stream chasing a stray that is making its way towards the middle of the river. At one point, he slips and falls at the very top of the falls and I think…oh my god, after all he’s been through in his life, he’s going to die in the Reedy River. Feet up, green bag held high so as not to squish the ducklings, and bam! He slams onto his butt and elbow into the rocks to break his fall. Undeterred he drags himself up with the stray duckling safely in the bag and makes his way to the other bank (it should be noted that he somehow hurt his back on our cross-country trip and has been in pain and on medication for it for the last several days).

I rush back across the pedestrian bridge. A stranger helps me get Paul’s attention by whistling and we make the transfer from the green shopping bag to my purse so he can go to the lower level of the falls and see if he can find any others. In the meantime, Trine has managed to rescue one from the bottom of the falls and scale back up the rock face using one hand. Nikolaj is up to his neck in the Reedy River trying to go to the location at the bottom of the falls we originally saw them and Paul is headed back out to help.

By this time, the wild life rescue and rehab people have arrived with a box and two nets. I dump the contents of my purse into the box. 1,2,3,4,5 and a 6th one that doesn’t belong with the others (it’s a different species!). The lower falls retrieval produces 3 more. A total of 7 from the original group with the mom and two of the second species are saved. We load the siblings into the box and head back up to the top of the river. I made sure to take a close look at the mom so I’d be able to return them to her if we caught them. I see her across the river on the other bank. She is squawking at the top of her little duck lungs, I’m sure she is in complete dismay about what has just happened. Her ducklings are peeping like crazy. I’m sure trying to find their mom.

I crouch near the bank of the river, tilt the box in the direction of the river, hoping to angle the sound across the expanse. She is going “squawk, squawk, squawk”…they are going “peep, peep, peep.” This goes on for what seems like an eternity. We are so close to a reunion but yet so far. Finally… she hears them. I see her head turn, she dives in the water and starts to paddle. “Squawk, Squawk, Squawk!” In unison they desperately reply, “Peep, peep, peep.” She paddles like mad. When she gets close to the bank and makes her way up the side, I slowly dump the contents of my box, her family, onto the bank and they waddle their way over to her. Success! I almost cry. OK, maybe I cry a little.

The whole time, as the events are unfolding, we’ve been watched and assisted by a variety of onlookers. Some are pointing out where ducklings are from the bridge. Others are peaking in my purse to see the tiny ducklings all hovered together. One group of teenagers has been here from the beginning. They were actually there before we arrived and saw the first few go over the falls. They’re the type of teens you might turn your nose up at if you saw them walking down the street. Their bangs are a bit too long and eye-liner a bit too thick. They look like trouble or at least like non-contributing members of society that you hope will someday “grow out” of this phase that they’re in. As I retreat from the scene of the duck family reunion one of them says to me a bit choked up, “Man, we were watching it all happen but we didn’t do anything. We just watched. We need more people in the world like you.” Perhaps we did more than just save some ducklings that day.

Paul, there's a parrot in the living room

Well the first week back in Maun has been characteristically interesting. First, as I mentioned earlier, one of our neighbors has left town for a month leaving his 2 dogs and parrot behind. They are to be cared for by some local “kids”, who are to feed the dogs every other day (and I feel guilty leaving my dog behind with a full time pet sitter who lives in my house). You can imagine how well that goes over with the dogs. So they have taken up residency on our porch and the bird, which had flown the coop (literally managed to push the wires apart to get out of his cage) found us perched in a tree near our house. After Paul coaxed him out of the tree, we relocated his cage into our living room and he’s now living with us (hence the title of this e-mail). Since he gets out of the cage anyway we just let him come and go as he wishes. He likes to sit on Paul’s shoulder and nip at his glasses a bit (and sometimes his ear). He looks at me suspiciously cocking his head left to right (and I think, hey buddy…I’m letting you live in my living room…be nice!).

This weekend we went out to Nxai pan for our friends’, Kelley and Thoralf, wedding. You may recall that this is the couple that served as our witnesses at our wedding last July. Kelley is American (teaches at UT, Austin) and Thoralf is German and has been in Maun for years. They met when she came to do some research a couple of years ago. Oddly, she was married when they met to a man with the same last name as Thoralf, which she dropped when they divorced. Wonder if she’s going to take it back again now that she’s married to a new man with the same last name? Life in its natural state is…odd.

We actually only realized it was a wedding a few days before (we were informed of their engagement in January and told they were getting married in Germany in November, so when we got an invitation we thought it was just a party). We also were told it was “casual” only to have the bride show up in an elegant evening gown and most women in dresses (the bride told me “jeans are fine” so I had to make a scarf into a skirt and go with that…I “made a plan” as they say in Africa). The night was beautiful… sun setting in the West while full moon rising in the East over Baines baobabs…absolutely lovely. About 27 of us ate dinner under the full moon in the middle of the pan (a flat surface with a small rise at the edge (like a pan) that fills with rain during the rainy season and crusts up into a crunchy type of surface that sounds like the ice crust of fresh snow when you step on it). An odd mix of dated American music played through the night (the Germans really love that). Paul brought his telescope and we looked at craters of the moon. We retreated to our own campus site later in the night (almost couldn’t find it as it is difficult to find your way in the bush in the dark). We like the peacefulness of camping in the bush without music blaring or people partying.

The next morning we did a short game drive through the pan. We saw quite a bit of wildlife: giraffe, impala, springbok, wildebeest, kori busters (big birds that look like prehistoric creatures), steenbok, a couple of jackals and some bat ear foxes (pretty cool. I hadn’t seen these before. They are slightly larger than raccoons with big ears that squish down to look like Yoda when they do their routine territorial markings – squat, pee, flatten your ears to look like Yoda, move 6 feet, assume position again to mark new area).

Oddly, we got home last night just before it started to rain. It’s odd because this is the dry season and should not be raining. It has been “pissing down with rain” (that means it’s coming down hard) and looks like it will be for the next few days. Silly me…I didn’t even travel with a rain jacket or umbrella…after all it’s the dry season. It never rains.
Signing off a bit soggy,
Kristy

PS: Learned some new phrases at the party…we were instructed to “charge” our classes before toasts were given (I only thought batteries were “charged”).

hunters and missionaries

Greetings from Botswana!
Just a quick note to let you know that we've arrived safely in Maun. We left Sunday...flying internationally for the first time together...certainly makes the 19 hour flight go faster when you have someone to talk to (or sleep on!). Arrived Monday in Johannesburg. Brought Paul to the dentist Tuesday morning to try to deal with what was diagnosed as a "dislocated jaw" in Denver only to be told by his dentist that his jaw muscle is "cramped"!? We'll try to treat with heat and meds and hope that it improves (he has only been able to open his mouth about an inch or so since he had a root canal over a month ago). Today (Wednesday) took a quick, 2 hour, flight up to Maun.

On our flight to South Africa we are often surrounded by hunters and missionaries. An odd mix of people neither of which I quite know what to say to..."hope you fail at killing innocent animals...converting savage souls"?? I usually don't say much to them but instead enjoy the movie selections (watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Revolutionary Road" both of which I would recommend but for different reasons. The first, for its creative plot and the latter for its excellent depiction of what Betty Friedan in "The Feminine Mystique" called "comfortable concentration camps." Depressing but worth seeing.).

Our little layover in Johannesburg afforded us the opportunity to go to our favorite little movie theater where we saw "The Reader" (both of us cried when he started reading books onto tapes for her) and talked all through dinner about the complexity of the characters at our favorite Vietnamese/Thai restaurant "Cranks." Neither of which we'll get (good movies or ethnic foods) for the next 2 1/2 months.

Not much has changed in Maun since I was last here in March. We are in the dry "brown" season and the lush green fields and puddle filled roads are replaced by lots of dry sand, clear blue skies and brown/tan thorn bushes. We were greeted by "Fudge" and "Taffy" the neighbors' dogs who seem to have taken up residence at our place (not an uncommon phenomenon if you recall our previous visitors).

We're headed off for an afternoon walk to look for snake spore (tracks). We've heard rumors of some spiting cobras in the area. Yikes! Just a typical afternoon in Botswana before we head back to work tomorrow morning.

I'm glad to be back "home" (however one defines that... at least back at my "home away from home").
Cheers,
Kristy