No more monkeys jumping on the bed! Human-Wildlife Interactions

I’m innocently washing dishing in the bush after supper. We’re keeping an eye on two honey badgers not too far off in the distance who are trotting around the staff village at South Gate of Moremi Game Reserve searching for some dinner. All of a sudden, BAM! A bug flies straight into my left ear. It is flapping seemingly on a mission to reach my cerebral cortex. It sounds like it is the size of a pterodactyl! “Help, Paul! Help!”

 

He tries shining a light near my ear to woo it out but it keeps flapping and going deeper. I’m starting to lose it! I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy! I’m surprised it is not used as a torture tactic like waterboarding to get prisoners to give up secrets! I would say anything to make it stop. Unable to entice it out, Paul suggest pouring vegetable oil in my ear to smother it (how can this be my best option?). I shout and cry, “DO SOMETHING!”

 

We scurry to the front seat of the Land Cruiser with oil and drown the damn thing! Finally…relief. No more flapping. But now what? I’ve got an ear full of vegetable oil and a dead bug in my head. We move to the tent…headlamp, toothpick, tweezers in hand. “GET IT OUT!”, I cry. The thought of a dead bug in my ear is FREAKING ME OUT!  (I’ll be honest, this was not my proudest moment in the bush!). Paul thinks he sees a leg and starts to pick and poke until he hits something and I cry out in pain (we learn later it was my ear drum and he accidently perforated it!). We then try flushing it out. More oil. More water. But no carcass is produced.

 

When we emerge from the tent, we see destruction – washing basins over turned, forks in the dirt, dishes everywhere, Paul says, “You must have done this when you were flailing around trying to get the bug out of your ear.”  Then we remember the honey badgers…they must have raided camp while we were distracted! Cheeky bastards!! They even licked the dirty bowls clean. Gross!

 

We have come to Moremi to “cut” some roads for DWNP (Department of Wildlife and National Parks) and the HATAB (Hotel and Tourism Association of Botswana) mobile operators. Paul has managed to get DWNP to agree to let the connector roads be “cut” and HATAB has raised the funds. Paul is adding his GIS expertise and advice for free. While we originally thought this was a two to three-day job with a chainsaw (which was highly delusional thinking), a giant front-end loader has been “hired” to bull-doze through the thick mophane forest like a scene out of Avatar…for a week!

Me, Ishmael, Paul

You might wonder…How does one “cut” a road? It is quite arduous and potentially risky as Paul with his GPS in one hand and a rifle in the other sets out into the bush followed by Ishmael and a fist full of red and white tape strips to tie on branches leading the way for the giant front-end loader. They walk and tie ribbons and the front-end loader followers with its path of destruction. Pearl, the park manager, myself, and Thomas, a DWNP employee, follow in the back up vehicles.

 

It sounds simple but it is not. Sometimes they have the good fortune of following an elephant trail, but the days I walk with them and carry the ribbon roll, I’m quickly reminded how thick elephant skin is and how much more easily they can withstand the whacking of branches against their bodies. Branches whip back smacking us in the face, arms, legs…I feel like I’ve been beaten by they time we return to the vehicle. And if there’s no elephant trail, you have to force your way through thick mophane groves. There is often barely enough room to even squeeze a full-size adult’s body through.

 

Pearl and I

We also learn quickly that those clear areas we saw on google earth we thought would make a nice route for a road are actually populated with Kalahari Apple Leaf trees and with those trees come deep sand. A potential hazard for future supply trucks, mobile operators and tourists alike. So, we must pick our way through from point A to point B being battered by branches all the way.

 

Paul, Thomas, Pearl and Ishmael 

And the branches aren’t the biggest risk, as traveling on foot in the bush away from the safety of the vehicle has its own set of risks. Paul recounts stories of coming across an agitated bull elephant that caused them to “back up quickly”.  “Did you have to run?”, I ask. To which he replies, “We backed up very quickly because he was not happy to see us.” I suspect this is what they describe in Southern Africa as “not feeding them the whole chicken” (or not telling the whole truth). I try not to think about it, day after day as the love of my life walks miles in the bush to “cut” a road with all types of potentially lethal encounters awaiting him. Another late afternoon as evening is approaching (most of these days were 10-hour work days), the follow up vehicles spot a lone buffalo not far off in the bush. Known to be a serious risk, this one really catches my attention. “He will be fine. He will be fine.” I repeat to myself in a not so reassuring mantra.

 

The red and white ribbons for marking the trail

And let’s not forget the lions stealthily sitting behind the bush that we didn’t see as we jumped out of the vehicle to tie ribbons for the front-end loader to follow as we moved from one road site to the next. Ishmael was ahead speaking to some tourist asking if we’ve seen anything when we spot them. I shout, “TAU!” (which means lion in Setswana) and Ishmael hurries back to the vehicle. The tourist we came upon felt lucky to see them (a small pride of one healthy looking female and two scrawny males), but my heart was racing given we didn’t notice them until after we jumped back into the vehicle. We are the ones who were lucky! Yikes!

 

Stealthy Lion

Over the week, the crew manages to cut about 26 KM (~16 miles) of road in the Game Reserve. The routes are designed to avoid rising flood waters and bridges in need of repair so that mobile safari operators and self-drive tourists can continue to use the park. Paul suspects that these roads are the most significant changes made to Moremi in the last 25 years and they will save hours of driving as they connect previously unconnected areas of the park.

 

Paul at the end of the new road

Setting up our camp on the edge of the staff village really made me think about human-wildlife interactions. A leaky water system creates a makeshift “watering hole” nestled between the staff housing that brings in elephants, impala, zebra and basically any living creature in need of a drink during this incredibly dry time. Each morning we are awoken by a crescendo of lion calls. There is a pride of four that hang around near the camp and their calls to each other get louder and louder as they approach and quieter as they move away. The loudest one sounds absolutely HUGE and every time he calls for his mates, somewhere deep in my brain a survival instinct makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. All night long we hear the crack snap of elephants finding things to eat. Things are so dry the crack snap is followed by a loud THUD as what sounds like a very large tree is pushed down as the food supply dwindles.

 

Elephant coming to water in the staff village

Uninvited visitors to camp are not only coming for water, they are coming for whatever they can steal to eat. There is a large troop of marauding baboons who have figured out how to open doors (staff must lock their houses when they leave or the baboons will come in and eat everything) and zippers. After the second long day of road cutting, we come back to find a pile of ripped up items in front of our tent. As we get closer, I realize it looks like the contents of my first aid kit…rehydration salt packs, punctured Neosporin tube, and torn up MiraLAX packets. The baboons not only unzipped our tent to get in, but they unzipped my bag to get to the first aid kit and then bit their way into the kit and several items. The good news is…the childproof cap on Pepto Bismal is also “baboon proof”. They also did not poop or pee in our bed! I’m relieved but I feel violated! I always felt that inside our zipped tent was a safe haven when in the bush, but not anymore! Given the MiraLAX packets consumed, I hope they had a really crappy night! On the following days after the “tent-invasion” we secure the zippers together with a piece of wire and tie the tent flaps off with rope. Fortunately, we had “no more monkeys jumping on the bed!”

 

PS: Bug in my ear update – I lived with a bug in my ear for an additional day and a half so Paul could finish the road mapping (for anyone who has benefitted by traveling on these connector roads in Moremi, you are welcome!). When we get back to Maun we go to the clinic. They take a look in my ear and see no bug but lots of redness, inflammation, and a perforation of the ear drum (PS: never put anything sharp in your ear!). I assure them that it did not come out, so it has to be in there. They flush, and flush, and flush. Wax and blood and yuck, but not bug. They keep flushing and finally catch a glimpse of something WAY in there! They flush more and it gushes out (see picture below). Three days of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and ear drops every two hours and I’m mostly better (except for the perforation which could take weeks to months to heal itself!)

 

The bug that was in my ear