E Mulungo

After a long process of setting up meetings and having them canceled, making arrangements for going to the field, buying equipment and supplies, etc. I finally started my interviews and mapping.


Sergio Julane (geography) and Angelo Francisco (ecology/botany) (L to R in photo), 2 undergrads at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, came out to Madladlane with me for a week of meeting with traditional leaders, community mapping, and interviews. Madladlane, is a small farming community, located along the banks of the Rio Futi, adjacent to the Reserva Especial de Maputo. We stayed at REM and walked across a footbridge everyday to meet and talk with community residents.

Community residents were surprised to see a branca (white woman) walking from home to home, field to field, and certainly from the reserve to the community. E mulungo is what the very smallest children shouted when they saw me, adults were far more circumspect. A mulungo is a foreigner, particularly a white person. I usually shouted it back, in a silly voice, causing all sorts of giggling from both children and adults. After all, I am now the official village idiot.

These little girls were giggling just a moment before the picture was taken. Their mom got 2 of the 3 sisters to change into their best dresses for the picture.

These are just a few of the images from my past week in the field.

Sunrise

Elephant feet or patas. They come from 2 older elephants that were harassing the community and had to be killed. The guards at the reserve had tried herding the animals back behind the fence several times, but the elephants kept escaping to eat crops and attack residents.

One of 2 main roads in Madladlane. The other is a hard dirt road that will probably be paved in the next few years.

Local primary school

A pretty barboleta (butterfly) that decided to hitchhike a ride on my arm. The IUCN is working with the local community to get ecotourists to visit to check out the high diversity of birds, butterflies, and plants.

Terminalia sericea, also known as Conono locally, is used for construction and charcoal production. It is a typical wooded savanna tree species.

Abandoned store in Salamanga, a nearby town.

Mamana Amelia was one of several women farmers I interviewed this past week. She got a kick out of me pronouncing local names for plants and learning a little isiZulu from her during our interview - probably because the new words involved clicking and hlth sounds. I also probably made some funny faces trying to twist my tongue around the new words.

Sr. Olesene, me, Sr. Daniel Mathe, Sergio Julane. Sr. Olesene is a reserve guard and farmer, and acted as our translator this past week. Sr. Mathe is a traditional leader in Madladlane and provided a great summary of the history of the community.

Polokwane, South Africa

Once Chris arrived in Pretoria, we headed north to Limpopo Province to the town of Polokwane (formerly Pietersburg). Polokwane has the largest municipal game reserve in South Africa. The guy at the gate said that there were no wild animals, so it was safe to walk around. "Watch out for the rhino, we're not responsible for that." That's debateable. White rhino, giraffe, zebra, impala, lots of birds, hartebeest, etc. all make their home very close to the rugby stadium (that was the big local landmark). The town is preparing (i.e. lots of construction) for the 2010 World Cup as one of the game venues. I expect that the animals here will get lots of viewing.

We also visited an open air museum featuring traditional Sotho culture. The houses are all plastered in smooth cattle dung. It feels like plasterboard. They have just begun excavating the central kraal. They have only found one pot (in many pieces), but I expect there will be other interesting finds. It is the chiefs kraal - there may be human burials, sacrificed cattle, and certainly some everyday trash to help build a better picture of life in that place hundreds of years ago. It has been very cold in South Africa - see your breath in the morning and frost on the grass kind of cold. I asked our guide how people kept warm during the winter since they worn mainly skin clothing. Sitting around the fire was apparently a very popular activity. It still is. :)

Baby Zebra

Hartebeest

eland

Giraffe

White Hair & Other Distractions

I noticed yesterday in the mirror that my patch of white hair is returning. The patch sits a little to the left of center at my hairline. Over the past 10 years it has appeared and disappeared depending on my stress level. It appeared before my comps and then started to fade before returning for my prospectus. Well now it is back. I suppose I should get used to it because I'm not getting any younger. The best I can hope for is that the winter sun will bleach the rest of my hair semi-blonde and it won't be so noticeable. Ha! Ha! Ha! I suppose it could always be worse. I could be going bald.

Whenever I start to freak about something that isn't worth freaking out about, I try to find a good distraction. So here are some photos of Maputo.

Avenida Karl Marx - looking north from the Baixa (waterfront and old town)

Mercado Central - located on Avenida 25 de Setembro in the Baixa. You can buy just about anything here and there is a section just for handicrafts (although the Saturday market is better). I love how the salespeople try to sell me ivory bracelets and entire sea turtle shells. I tell them that I would be arrested if I ever brought it home when they try to play on my sympathy to support a poor country. The fact is that it really grosses me out - dead animals just don't do it for me. No matter how many times and ways I try to tell them that these animals are rare and endangered and therefore illegal to transport across national borders (esp. to the US) they just look at me incredulously. Other buyers from western countries must be either uniformed, uncaring, or both.

This train station was build in 1910 and designed by Alexandre Gustav Eiffel (as in the Eiffel Tower guy). There is also an iron house here that was designed by him. He never set foot in Mozambique though. If he did, he would have known that building an all iron house (walls, roof, etc) was not a good idea for the tropics. Unless, of course, you want to cook the residents in a giant easy-bake oven.

Parasailing on the bay on a windy day.

Jumma Masjid, on Rua da Mesquita, is Maputo's oldest mosque. I think it dates from the late 1700s or early 1800s but I am not 100% sure. The Saudis have put a lot of money into restoring this mosque to its former beauty. I saw it back in 2004 when they started the reconstruction - peeling paint, dirty walls, crumbling. You could see the original beauty and only despair at the state of disrepair it had fallen into. I'd love to see the inside, but I haven't visited when anyone was around and I would hate to be disrespectful by entering uninvited.

I only wish that similar efforts would go into restoring many of the old buildings in the surrounding neighborhood. The Baixa is the original port town of Lourenço Marques that grew into Maputo. The colonial architecture remains in much of this part of the city and it could be a huge tourism draw.



Some of the doors on the front of the Jumma Masjid open into small stores and restaurants. These were locked up, so I'm not sure if they've been rented out or are used by the Jumma community for something else.

This is the sign for one of my favorite shops. It is a capulana shop - stacked floor to ceiling with in a multitude of colors. The shop is located directly across the street from Mercado Central and is in an old building. I haven't had the opportunity yet to ask if the name indicates a past use of the building (ivory sorting and storage) or was named this because the owners are of Indian ancestry.