Safari in Botswana

I've been putting off blogging about Botswana, mainly because of what happened to Chris and I in Chobe National Park (well, in Kasane just outside the park gates really). Our rental car was broken into one night, not 10 feet from where we were sleeping in our tent. We are fine and the only thing taken was my computer bag. But of course, it was what was in the bag that matters - my passport, a plane ticket to Pt. Elizabeth for a conference, my laptop, data, some books and electronic equipment, some rands and metacais, pictures I had downloaded from the trip so far, and my Wookiee.

I can't believe someone stole my Wookiee. I'd love to have seen the look on their face when they pulled Chewbacca out of my bag. I brought my Chewbacca and Obi-Wan Kenobi figures along to take pictures in the Kalahari Desert for kicks. Silly, but hey, I was on a vacation.

The part that really had me worried was my passport. Everything else was pretty easy to replace (well except the pictures and market data) albeit expensive, and Chris and I are safe. It could have been much worse. But having your car broken into like that is still nerve wrecking.

I am still working on replacing my Mozambican visa. The temporary one I got in Pretoria runs out 20 August. I am blogging from a new laptop (an Acer 3680). I'll wait to replace the book I lost. South African Airways was really helpful in replacing my ticket - even if a paper ticket system is antiquated. My conference presentation went well and I managed to put together and deliver a presentation on the role of anthropology in conservation in less than a day. That also seemed to go well.

The Kasane Police were very nice, but I don't expect to see any of what I lost ever again. And we never made it to Victoria Falls. :(

Here are some pictures of our safari in Botswana post-theft. BTW I would still recommend visiting Botswana. Tracking rhinos and elephants on foot, poling the Okavanga Delta, and birding in the Kalahari is pretty amazing.

Getting fingerprinted at the Kasane Police Station. The Kasane CSI unit dusted our car for prints so we needed to have ours on file for the investigation.

Getting my new passport photo taken in Gabarone, Botswana. The US Embassy issued me a emergency passport within 4 hours. They had to run a background check and apparently I haven't done anything too horrible.

Many rural Botswanans use burros to get around. There are even cowboys (sorry, that picture got lost) who herd cattle on horseback in flipflops.

Botswanan road blocks - cattle are one of the most important thing to a Botswanan family.

Let's hope when the road is finished there is some money for a new sign.

Tenho saudade

Sometimes being apart from people and places puts things into better perspective. Over the past month, I've been on the road in Botswana and South Africa with my husband Chris. It was fantastic to see him and just be with him. I hadn't realized just how deeply I missed him until I saw him walk through the doors at Johannesburg's airport. We had many an adventure on our road trip through Botswana and I will post more pictures and text over the few days.

After he left for home in the States, via a brief stopover in northern Spain, I traveled down to Port Elizabeth, South Africa for the 2007 Society for Conservation Biology meetings. I gave 2 presentations, both of which seemed well received. Again, I will post more about that in the days to come. There is a small, but interesting, development regarding my talk about the historic wildlife trade in this region, but that is all I want to say for now. I'm not gonna count my chickens yet...

When the conference finished, I headed back to Maputo. I had to pick up a new set of keys, which then proceeded not to work. My keys were stolen in Botswana (more to come on that particular adventure). So, I called my building supervisor, Sr. Zimba (cool name, huh?). He got a locksmith out to drill out the padlock that closes the rebar door. All houses seem to have 2 doors here. The wooden one and the rebar door with a padlock. Double the protection, but a pain if you don't have the right keys. Anyway, for $6 he drilled out my lock using a hand drill that matches the one I inherited from my Grandpa Shaffer. Now I have another use for the drill. Woohoo!

After that, I walked over to my favorite neighborhood grocer, stopping to greet people along the way. My apartment guards, the shoe repair/shine man that sits under the tree by the cafe, the young man who sells phone calls on a little table outside my door, the little kids that play in the parking lot behind my apartment, the ladies that sell vegetables and fruits to me from the sidewalk... even the grocer asked where I'd been and how I was doing. Just today, I dropped into the archives to get a paper and the archivists not only remembered me after a 3 month absence, we had a really interesting conversation about why I was replacing that particular paper and the economic conditions in southern Africa in general.

Then there was just the comfort of a familiar setting too. My things, my bed, no living out of a bag or the back of a small car, the warm temperatures, the sound of Portuguese and Rhonga/Changaan, the constant stream of greetings and well wishing, the bumpty-bump of a chapa ride accompanied by loud music (Ridin' Dirty is a great chapa song), my hot shower, the rolling electrical blackouts... Okay, so I wasn't so nostalgic for the electricity thing.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that some part of me really missed Mozambique - the place, the people, the atmosphere. I have to say that I was more than a bit surprised. I still miss my husband, Chris, lots, and certainly miss my parents, my brother, my in-laws, and my friends because I love them all. I don't know if I would go as far to say I missed my family and Mozambique for the same reasons. But I think that there is a certain element of longing in each of the cases.

Perhaps this is what the Portuguese speakers mean when they talk about Tenho saudade. Lusophones say that saudade is not definable in the English language. From what I can gather, it includes ideas of longing, love, nostalgia, pining, missing, and some indefinable aspect that I'm told you know it when you experience it. At any rate, I'm going to use it to cover both my feelings for my family and Mozambique - even if the feelings are slightly different.

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

What is up with the news?

The New York Times has just gotten around to publishing a piece about Maputo's munitions dump explosion in March that killed 103 people, left more than 400 injured, and 80 children orphaned.

Fear Lingers in Mozambique Over Unexploded Ordinance

Three months? Yet daily, US residents turn on the news to hear about Hollywood starlets arrested over drugs, people tempting Darwin's ghost, and feel good fluff. The news we get about Iraq is filtered heavily. I saw an historic piece on the British liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the end of WWII which I doubt would have made US news in the current climate. When people here ask me why Americans don't care about suffering in other parts of the world, I tell them that Americans do care. However, when you don't know about things (and it isn't easy to find out) you can't care.

When I see stuff like this I have multiple, simultaneous reactions.

1. Stories that make US news are a modern version of Roman "Bread and Circuses" designed to pacify the public. If one is entertained, one could care less about the shady maneuverings behind closed doors. I also think this is pretty valid, given the crap that makes headlines back home. I've been getting my news online for a few years now. I love being able to browse BBC, Al-Jazeera, AllAfrica, etc. Most big city newspapers are ridiculous (the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is a huge peeve of mine), and forget about FOX or other TV channels for the news.

2. People are tired of hearing bad news. My response to that is, if you're tired of bad news, do something already. People do act, their actions just aren't always big things or considered "newsworthy."

3. People care immensely, but don't know what to do. They turn off the bad images and stories to feel less guilty. I think this one is pretty valid. When offered potential ways to help, Americans do respond - tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, even just everyday stuff. Our government may not always have its act together, but as individuals citizens we are willing to help.

4. People really are stupid enough to care more about some Hollywood star's train wreck of a life, than the general suffering of their own lives and those of the rest of the world's population. Sadly, this is also valid. Rubbernecking is an art form in the US. Seeing someone else suffer worse makes a person feel better about themselves.

Does the news media catering to what people want to see? Is it supression of certain types or sources of news? Is it lack of journalists on the ground? Or something in the middle? To be fair, regular news out of Africa isn't the only hole in US mainstream media. News from news from Asia, Oceania, and South America is also thin. Much of what does get published from outside the West is negative. Good things happen outside North America and Europe too.

The Price of Bread - Part 2

"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise."
- Aldo Leopold, Round River

I’ve had 2 comments in the past couple of days over my bread blog. Both my friends brought up ethanol and biofuels. Originally, I had another paragraph in my blog about the affects of bread increases on local biofuel use, but I confess I had not thought the commodity chain through to the other end.

Here is the original article that appeared in AIM online:

Bakers Put Up Price Of Bread

Damien, an Australian living in rural Indonesia, commented on how people are expressing similar fears where he is living. Food prices will rise as farmers switch from food crops to crops that can be used for food, animal feed, and most importantly, biofuels like ethanol. My friend James, back home in Athens, wrote me a couple of long, darkly humorous emails on ethanol and the price of bread. He never posts this stuff as a comment (hint hint) so I cut and paste his emails here.

“Sadly, the price of bread and most other foods made from grain is going to increase sharply over the next few years now that cars are competing with people for food. Stupid ethanol. Unfortunately, the whole corn ethanol situation isn't very funny.... it just seems like a big scam to me. The positive energy balance for corn ethanol isn't very high, and some scientists say that under certain conditions it's actually negative. Ethanol from sugarcane is a lot more efficient but it's hardly problem free and it still removes valuable agricultural lands from production. As governments increase ethanol subsidies and as the demand for ethanol grows we are going to see major changes in the global food economy..... farmers are going to switch from wheat to corn when possible..... animal feed is going to become more expensive so milk and meat prices will also rise... the US might even get to the point where we stops exporting corn because we can sell it internally at higher profits for use as ethanol. Of course, once the oceans start dying we can turn them into giant algae farms and get our ethanol that way. :)”

One of the points I left out of my bread blog concerns local effects on the environment from bread price increases. Bakeries make bread at a central location for a lot of people (economy of scale). When people start cooking more at home because they can't afford bread, they need energy to do so. Here in Mozambique, that means firewood and charcoal. More people will need to harvest wood, more trees will be cut, and more biodiversity (species, habitat, ecosystem services, etc.) will be damaged. Additionally, since most of the people that will switch to wood/charcoal live in the city, they don’t see the daily affects of their actions which makes it all the easier to live with.

To me, this argues for an increased focus on agroforestry (sustainable biofuel and food production), local production of foods and services (cut down on fuel use, provide work, and ensure some sort of stable food supply adapted to local conditions), and vegetarianism (eliminate animal consumption of crops, this isn’t going to happen but I can dream). Food security, in Mozambique and elsewhere, is not going to get easier under our current and predicted environmental problems. We know the many problems associated with oil consumption, and it seems that ethanol has its own set of accompanying issues. Electricity, while cleaner, also creates problems as the electricity has to come from somewhere. Lots of electricity in the US comes from coal-fired power plants, diesel, hydroelectric dams, and nuclear. Solar, wind, and tidal may be good alternatives - but the scale of their use needs to be increased. Biofuels from crop waste (stalks) or poop could be useful. So where do we go from here? How soon do we get it? And how do we transfer these new technologies quicker to places like Mozambique?

The Price of Bread

Nine days ago, a small article appeared in AIM online about changes to bread prices in Mozambique. I read it, but didn't really think about the affects of a 43% increase in the price of a loaf of bread until today.

I've stopped eating most bread in the US because it sucks. It tastes like sawdust, has no consistency, and lasts longer than a food of that type should (in my humble opinion). However, Mozambicanos can make bread. They learned from the Portuguese who also make good bread. Chewy crust on the outside and decent chewy consistency on the inside. You can get white, whole wheat, and 7 grain, but you have to eat it fast. There are no preservatives so it only lasts a day or so. The smell of freshly baked bread wakes me up more than the smell of hot coffee. It is absolute heaven to pass a bakery early in the morning in Maputo.

Bread is a staple food in Mozambique. People eat a lot of rice and tschima (corn mash/pap/grits) with various meat and vegetable stews, but every day I pass pão vendedores on the street corners selling warm loaves slathered in butter or a groundnut paste (unsweetened) for breakfast and lunch. For some, the only meal they can depend on daily is a piece of bread (sometimes with butter or nut paste) and a cup of tea from the HIV clinic or church kitchen at the orphanage.

Today I stopped in at a small bakery next door to my neighborhood grocer's. The electricity was out in my apartment so my stove wasn't working. In times like these, peanut butter and strawberry jam always comes to my rescue. The price of pãozinhos (rolls) went up in the past week from 1 metical each to 1.5 meticais. The current exchange rate is 25.8 metacais = $1 US, so a roll costs approximately 4 cents US. That is not a lot for me, but for someone living on the streets it is a lot.

Mozambique grows only a very small amount of wheat in Tete province. Corn (milho) and rice are major grain crops here. Pretty much all of the wheat consumed in-country is imported. At the end of April a 50 kg sack of wheat flour cost 550 MTN ($22 USD). In two weeks, that price rose to 595 MTN (about $24 USD).

The bakers blame the millers, and the millers blame the international markets. A 250 gm loaf now costs 5 metacais (20 cents), and there is some fear that people will just stop buying bread. Other people are concerned about selling loaves that are smaller for the same price. It probably seems silly to anyone paying $1.50 or more for a loaf of bread in the US, but back in the States people have other food options. And now that winter has set in, that extra meal provides the energy to ward off shivering on a cold tropical morning. Many rural residents will continue to subsist on what they always have - foods like tschima and rice cooked over a fire. It is the urban and suburban residents who will feel the pinch.

Winter in Africa - Part 1

For some reason, I haven't been able to log in for any good length of time on my blog to post for the past couple of days. I'm not the only one who's had issues with the internet here, but I'm happy to say it is working tonight.

Winter has finally arrived. We've been flirting with it on and off during the past few weeks, but this week it finally stuck. Mornings are cold (40-45F/4.5-7.2C), and in the daytime the temperatures climb into the high 70s (25C) and low 80s (28C). That sounds pleasant, but when you are used to 90F (32C) at 6:30 AM it is freezing. I vaguely recall wearing shorts and a sweater to school in northern NY on spring days when the temperature climbed to 40F and melted the remaining 2 feet of snow on the ground. I don't think I could do that anymore.

I started wearing a sweater this week, and have stopped rolling up my pant legs to catch a cool breeze. No more tank tops, or skirts, or even shorts. Three nights ago, I broke out the blankets. I've been sleeping much better now that I don't spend half the night shivering.


People here look funny all bundled up in snowy weather gear in the early morning. Big puffy jackets and hats with fur trim. But that's mainly for people who can afford it. Sometimes I do a double-take because men wear coats or sweaters that are obviously made for woman. The colors (lavender, baby blue, mint green) and flower embroidery are a dead giveaway. At the same time, many women wear men's woolen suit jackets - brown, grey, tweed. Roupa usada. Africa is full of castoffs and hand-me-downs.

Most people wear several layers of thin clothing and a sweater. A lot of the women wrap themselves and the babies on their backs in multiple capulanas. In the early mornings they might also wrap themselves in a blanket. Wool touks are very popular. All the babies wear them, most men, and quite a few women. More traditionally dressed women wear cotton head scarfs.


Homes here don't have insulation. Sometimes they don't even have walls - just thin reed matting. Women charcoal sellers hawk a day's worth of fuel for cooking all year round, but as winter sets in this fuel source becomes more important for household heating.

A lot of the charcoal sold in Maputo comes from the forests and woodlands at my field site, and from other communities in that region. A big bag costs about 100 MTN ($4 USD) and can be stretched to last a month (sometimes a little longer). The driver and botanists that accompany me and other researchers from the university, regularly buy big sacks of charcoal offered for sale along the road to the reserve to use at home. I always feel a bit strange riding in the biology department car when the roof is loaded up with charcoal. It doesn't feel kosher.