Port Elizabeth, South Africa (Part 1)

Rich attended (and presented) at the Society for Conservation Biology meeting, which this year was held in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, along the southeast coast of Africa. While he learned about wildlife and fire management, reintroductions.... Ian and I explored Port Elizabeth!

It is winter in Port Elizabeth in July, and boy could we tell! We were in turtlenecks, fleece, and windbreakers for the whole trip. (Well, we did get down to short sleeves when the sun finally came out from behind clouds in the middle of our stay there).

We stayed at a great little B&B on the edge of town, a 15-minute walk from the beach, complete with a trampoline (much to Ian's delight)!!! We spent a full afternoon at the beach making a great sandcastle, playing frisbee, and having a picnic lunch.

Adeus, Natasha

Sadly we said goodbye to our friend and babysitter Natasha, who needed to return to Portugal. Natasha started caring for Ian while we were in Portugal in March-April, and then came to Chitengo (where her mother, Sofia, works in the Communications Department with me) in May. Ian took to her immediately, and she was a key part in Ian's easy and quick adjustments to the many changes in his life: language, culture, surroundings, people...

We managed without a babysitter for most of July, just starting last week with a new caretaker, Joana. So far, so good. I am excited about this because Joana doesn't speak any English, so Ian will be "forced" to work on his Portuguese now! He is making good progress.

We miss you, Natasha! You better come back and visit soon.

Crocodile!

While out on a drive in the park we found this crocodile carcas -- stinky stinky stinky! But very interesting. We tried to sleuth how this croc had ended up here dead, as it didn't look like a struggle had occurred. Possibly the croc was moving from one water hole to another via this channel, as it looked like it had dragged itself along the channel for some distance, so perhaps it died from dehydration (unlikely) or some disease.

Rich managed to pull out a tooth of this croc -- it was more than an inch long, and hollow!

Weekend in the Vumba

We took our first weekend off after almost two solid months of work in early June, heading up the the mountains that form the Mozambique-Zimbabwe border, on the Zimbabwe side. Things are dicey in Zimbabwe these days -- not so much in terms of violence and personal safety (as many news outlets have reported in recent years) but because of the near utter crash of their economy -- inflation was more than 5000% last time I checked, meaning prices change once or several times per day. Unofficial money exchange is the only way to survive. Extended power cuts are routine, and sometimes water is not available. Zimbabwe is currently not issuing passports to its citizens, allegedly because of a lack of paper and ink with which to print new passports, stranding thousands. It really is amazing to see this country that was the epicenter of southern African tourism descend so far so fast.

But putting all that gloom and doom aside, we did have a terrific long weekend off, staying at a lodge run by our friends and Park colleagues Petra and Bart. Petra is Belgian and Bart is from the Netherlands, but they've both been in Africa for many years. They run our herbarium program at the Park and know a ton about southern African plants. They also run a great lodge, even if tourists are few and far between these days in Zimbabwe.

Ndundu Lodge is confortable and funky, with Bart's fascination with odd metal parts displayed throughout -- old gears embedded into the floors, old farm compactors forming the base of the bar, and other oddities throughout. Great fun. And terrific food!

We spent one afternoon at a nearby lodge that used to be one of the Grand Old Dames of Zimbabwe, and sadly is falling into somewhat of a state of disrepair. But we did enjoy their small game park, which Bart used to manage and is now managed by his friend Wilfred. It was great to be able to walk around to see the animals as no large predators inhabit the reserve -- see the zebras just behind Ian in the photo!

Thankfully we had a firelplace in our room at Ndundu -- we sure needed it! It was definitely winter in the mountains of Zimbabwe, with something approximating frost on the grass in the mornings. brrr!

World Children's Day

Back in early June we celebrated World Children's Day (June 1) during three days of fun at Chitengo with kids from the local communities of Nhambita, Vinho, and Casa Banana, and our own Chitengo Camp. The kids went on a game drive, providing the first opportunity ever for many to see some of Mozambique's native fauna. They also attended a workshop led by a local artist on making beaded bracelets and earings and learned how to plant native trees seedlings for reforestation projects.

And of course we also just played! Kids from Chitengo and Casa Banana performed dances and songs, we had a great blindfold game (sort of like Marco-Polo), had a "balloon festival" with hundreds of balloons inside a huge mosquito net -- as close to a Chuck-E-Cheese plastic ball jumping pit as these kids will get (thankfully, in my opinion!) and played a rousing inter-village football/soccer game.

Our colleague Baldeu Chande, Director of Community Relations, wrote some new lyrics to commonly-known Mozambican songs - here is one of my favorites:

I went to
Gorongosa National Park
Back in the bush
I saw a big elephant
The elephant
Is also Mozambican
The elephant
Also has a right to life



[Shameless self promotion: to read more about this fun event, including more photos and lyrics, visit http://www.gorongosa.net/news/news.php?l=eng.]

Ian's big Gorongosa Park map

Ian's birthday present for Rich was a big map of Gorongosa National Park that he made all by himself (ok, with a little help from mom drawing some of the animals -- but the inspiration and direction was all Ian). I had the Park entrance gate, the wildlife sanctuary, Chitengo Camp, the game drive network, Gorongosa town, and Gorongosa Village. And lots of animals. And, of course, lots of different specialized game drive vehicles. Dad helped a lot with these (this was a many days project) -- the map has an elephant game drive vehicle, a snake game drive vehicle, a frog game drive vehicle, etc. etc -- each vehicle looking like the animal of its name, with chairs on top for viewing. Ian thought these game drive vehicle would be well camoufloge. Ian was also sure to draw in all of the shallow pans (small waterholes) that he remembers from the game drive network.

This piece of art is now residing with Gram in Seattle, but she's promised to keep it in good condition for posterity.

Update from Rich

Katie has done such a great job with the blog I have become a real slacker in writing anything myself, but I guess it is time to finally break the silence. Here are a few highlights from the past couple months:

I had the honor of meeting and shaking hands with President Armando Guebuza on his arrival—his first state visit to Gorongosa National Park. The President arrived with 6 helicopters and a support plane for his 24-hour visit—quite a production. He seemed genuinely pleased with the project and surprised at the rapid recovery of the Park.

I spent an incredible day with a water diviner. We are working in the Great Rift Valley of Africa and professional hydrogeologists have spent years trying to understand the groundwater system and its importance to the Park. Using a guava tree brach, he is able to precisely identify the location of underground aquifers more than 50 meters below the soil surface. OK, I can deal with this—he is picking up changes in magnetism related to deep faults, and I find I can actually get a bit of a response myself when I walk across a fault he has identified. But then he uses a wire and conducting rod to precisely map the depth of each successive confining layer below the soil surface (essentially he is mapping the entire geological formation below the surface)—and the accuracy of his work has been tested many times by drilling teams. OK, this is getting tougher for my science mind to deal with, but I suppose it relates to his extraordinary ability to sense magnetic fields. But then, he loses me completely by giving us an accurate estimate of the yield of the aquifer (i.e. how much water we will get if we drill a bore hole there). He does this by balancing a coke bottle filled with water on the palm of his hand and walking across the deep fault line—depending on how fast the bottle tips over, he estimates the yield (in this case, at 55 m depth). I give up. It works. I can’t explain why.

I am an avid runner and try to run every morning, but I am running out of safe places to run here at camp! For the past two years, I have run along the main road leading to Chitengo from the main gate, and enjoy flushing up baboons, waterbuck, reedbuck, and warthog as I run by. But alas lions have moved in along my running path—a pair were seen a couple hours after I passed by two weeks ago—and we have buffalo moving into the area as well. Now I run from camp to the Pungue River, which mostly involves passing by scores and scores of Mozambicans as they make their way from Vinho village across the river to Chitengo for the work day.

Animal numbers are recovering quickly here, which makes for fun viewing but new challenges we didn’t have in past years. Had my first serious run in with elephants a few weeks back. I had to wait until dark to creep in my vehicle around a big bull elephant feeding next to the road, as the road forward was the only way back to camp (the loop route cut off by high water). He made two full charges at the vehicle (ears out, trunk up bugling) that sent me twice in high speed reverse. It was fully dark by the time I moved past him, so it was really just a guess that he had moved far enough out of the way to let me pass. Not something you want to do everyday, and here we have two months of vegetation sampling starting up this year. The elephants here are still a bit traumatized from the years of war and poaching and it may be a while until they settle down and adjust to being watched.

Rich's Birthday

We are more than a month behind now! will hope to do some catching up this week...

Rich's birthday was June 10. Had a great party at Chitengo with the whole gang, and will use this opportunity to introduce some of the cast of characters of Chitengo:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

(l to r): Chris (son of Cheryl & Grant), Joao Viseu (Dir. Admin/Tourism), Luiz Filipe LeBoeuf (head of Infrastructure), and Vasco Galante (Dir. Communications, and my boss).

.

.

.

.

.

.

(l to r): Nuno Soeiro (finance), Bridget Conneely (Exec Asst to Greg & Prog Mgr in Communications), Cheryl Norvall (landscaping), and Bart Wursten (botanist, Scientific Services).