Chipolopolo Boys

The Chipolopolo Boys are Zambia's national soccer team. Their coach and assistant trainer are French. They are also my neighbors. I know the assistant trainer's dogs very well. I helped care for them over Christmas. They love to swim in the pool.

As a result of my relationship with my neighbors I have gotten into football. I can now keep up my end of a football conversation with any Zambian male, all of whom adore football. The Chipolopolo Boys (the name means "Copper Bullets", and comes from Zambia's leading industry of copper mining) have played their best football in 14 years with their admission to the Africa's Cup in Angola this past January. They made it to the quarter-finals, giving the high ranking teams of Nigeria and Cameroon some unexpectedly tough competition. So I packed camera and videocam, and some diehard fans from the neighbourhood, and headed for the airport to help give the team a hero's welcome on their return from Angola. We got there at 10 am which was when the radio announced the time of their arrival on an aircraft belonging to the Zambian Air Force and sent to collect them on the orders of the Zambian President. We screamed ourselves hoarse and then went to sit in the shade when it became clear from the absence of important men in suits that national radio had advised us incorrectly. Africans are good at waiting without complaint. They all say quietly under the only nearby tree. Three hours later, they congregated on the tarmac again as there appeared signs of the plane's imminent arrival - a military band struck up and an air-conditioned bus swept in to disgorge VIPS and a huge basket of flowers, a bouquet for each player as he descended the plane. The Chipolopolo Boys looked very dapper in grey pin-striped suits, white shirts and light green ties but they stood out in the crowd as football players because they all looked fit and famous and several had dreadlock hairdos.

It was a fun day. I was happy to share it with my Zambian friends. Had any of my guests been in town pre-or-post wildlife safari I would have encouraged them to join me at the airport. The event was pure Africa, joyous Africa, and in so many ways the most important memory of Africa to take home with you.

Watch for the video of the Chipolopolo Boys Homecoming on the website.

10-03-2010

Tikondane Cultural Tourism Program, Katete, Zambia

Katete is a town in Eastern Zambia some six/seven hours drive from Lusaka and less than two hours from Chipata on the border with Malawi. First and foremost it is a community center where adult education classes and skills training are offered. During my visit, pig farming classes were being held to a full class of local women. There is also a day care and primary school staffed by young European volunteers, as well as a simple guesthouse and restaurant that might interest any visitor to Zambia looking to stay for a few days and experience a more in depth look at the country.

What also might interest the traveler is Tikondane's cultural tourism program which allows them a trip by ox cart into a Chewa village, the predominant people of Eastern Zambia, where, after an excellent dinner cooked by a local family and eaten by candlelight, they are invited to a performance of Chewa dancing. The only other opportunity to catch Chewa dancing is if you attended the large Chewa festival of Kulamba, typically held the last weekend of August and which attracts Chewa people from three nations, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. The focus of this ceremony is threefold – to give thanks; to pay homage to the Chewa paramount chief, and to showcase Chewa performers. However, rarely are festival dates for any Zambian festival made far enough in advance for tourists to include in their programs. Or they are changed at the very last minute if a VIP can't attend. I can personally attest to the problem of attending the Kulamba. I arrived at last year's event to find that it was postponed by one week to accommodate the Zambian President's schedule. Tikondane therefore has come up with a good solution – performances on demand by the dancers in their own village.

Collectively all the Chewa dances are known as nyau. The Gule Wamkulu or "Big Dance", performed by men, is the most revered. Said to involve witchcraft, the dance is only open to members of a secret society. The costumes and masks disguise the identities of the dancers and the supernatural character that the dancers become can be either good or bad. The Kulamba ceremony also marks the initiation of young Chewa girls into womanhood. What young girls must learn about adulthood and marriage is taught and expressed through special dances. When you visit the Chewa village arranged by Tikondane you are invited into the women's hut to observe and partake in their dances, but only if you are a woman too. Any men visitors must wait by the cooking fires for the Gule Wamkulu which follows.

Watch for the video on Katete's Cutural Tourism Program on the website.

10-03-2010

Book Review - The White Impala

The White Impala: The Story of a Game Ranger: Hardcover, Collins, 1969: Norman Carr, born 1912 in present day Mozambique, was a conservationist who transformed vast stretches of what is today Zambia into two of its best known parks – Luangwa and Kafue. He is also credited for his vision in seeing that community-based conservation is the only conservation that works. Zambia's Norman Carr Safaris grew out of the walking safari company Norman started in the Luangwa Valley and ran after he retired from the wildlife service. It remains in family hands today.

Norman wrote three books about his life with wildlife – Return to the Wild (1962) about two orphaned male lion cubs he raised and returned to the wild; Valley of the Elephants (1972) about the Luangwa Valley and its large elephant population (written before the disastrous 1980s when elephant and rhino populations were decimated); and The White Impala (1969), the story of his early years as an elephant control officer in what was then Northern Rhodesia, his stint in the military, and his career as a game warden. It also chronicles his important evolution as someone who kills a lot of animals to someone who sees animals as more important "than a medium for expressing my prowess." The title of The White Impala's last chapter is called "A Final Reckoning". Norman tallies his "mental balance sheet" between his acts of killing animals (he admits more than was "absolutely necessary") and his acts of saving them. History will be his judge he writes, but meanwhile he hopes good deeds such as setting up national parks, training local people in wildlife conservation and including them in wildlife issues and decisions will result in a credit balance in his favor.

Norman devotes a whole chapter in The White Impala to the "hunting instinct". "Why do people hunt?" he asks, which is my favorite question for hunters willing to talk to me. Norman Carr, a man who killed 50 elephants before he was twenty, thinks that hunting is a predatory instinct inherited from pre-human ancestors as well as the other inherited needs of competition and domination. We wouldn't be where we are today without our competitive natures. However, we are also where we are today because our drive for one-upmanship does find expression in less destructive ways. So why do people hunt looks to be more of a moral question than anything else. But, writes Norman: "However we may try to moralize about it, we must face the fact that instincts can be successfully channelled but not denied. We are as we are and however we try to improve we can only do so by disciplining the basic elements within us, not by pretending they do not exist. We belong to the order of nature, and hunting is of that order." What do you think? The discussion on "why do people hunt?" is an ongoing one and a complicated one as well.

Addendum: let me give you an idea of what an animal's life was worth in Zambia last year for those of us whose urge to dominate couldn't find expression elsewhere.

Lion: 4200 USD Leopard: 2650 USD Cape buffalo: 1600 USD Greater Kudu: 1600 USD Hyena: 250 USD Porcupine: 190 USD (who wants to shoot a porcupine?)

10-03-2010

Music - Samite

by John Nevison

One of my favorite African musicians and song writers is Samite Mulond. Samite was born and raised in Uganda, where his grandfather taught him to play the traditional African flute. In 1982 he fled Uganda as a political refugee after his brother was brutally killed and his own life was threatened. He spent five years in Kenya, including six months in a refugee camp, before coming to the US. Since 1987 he has lived in Ithaca, New York.

Samite writes and performs original and traditional songs in his mother tongue of Luganda. He plays the kalimba (finger-piano), marimba (wooden xylophone), litungu (seven-stringed Kenyan instrument), and various flutes.

In 2002, Samite founded "Musicians for World Harmony" (www.musiciansforworldharmony.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to enabling musicians throughout the world to share their music in order to promote peace, understanding, and harmony among peoples, with a special emphasis on the displaced or distressed who can benefit most from the healing power of music.

Samite writes, “I am convinced that we are all moved by the same desires, needs and emotions, regardless of the language in which those feelings are expressed. Songs are delivered to me by forest birds, or as I photograph mountain gorillas in Bwindi impenetrable Forest in Uganda. Still other songs come to me through stories I hear when I visit orphanages and refugee camps”.

A popular Samite CD is "Kambu Angels". In the album's liner notes, Samite states that he was inspired by an Africa that is renewing itself. In songs such as Buli Muntu, Zenina, Sunrise, Kambu Angels, and Tokido, it is possible to hear this renewal - the laughter of village children; the insect buzz in the forest; the tinny sounds of rumba music on transistor radios; windswept plains and huge, endless skies; flocks of migratory birds in flight; and an elephant family crossing a river.

10-03-2010

Meet Your Guide

Each 2010 MT Times will introduce you to a guide (or two) who ensures that your MTT safaris are the very best they can be. They are all remarkable people. I am starting with Alison Cockerell who I met at Derek and Juliet Shenton's Kaingo Camp in South Luangwa National Park in Zambia. When I stayed at Kaingu Camp, I was amazed and impressed at the many hats Alison wears and how easily she switches between them. She seems tireless. There aren't too many women in the guiding business either, which is another reason I begin with her.

10-03-2010

Alison Cockerell

by Alison

Since I was six years old, I have been fascinated with Africa. I watched programs such as Born Free and dreamed of being Joy Adamson. I studied photography and the combination of travel and photography became my goal. When I was nineteen years old, I took my first trip to Africa – a two week stay in Kenya – and from then on I realised that Africa was for me. Every year after that first safari, I traveled from the UK to a safari destination to get my wildlife ‘fix’. I gained so much experience and knowledge of the bush that I realised that I had to be in Africa full time. I studied Travel and Tourism, obtaining a diploma, and also wildlife management. Six years ago I decided I was ready to make the move to Zambia. I have never looked back and I have no regrets. From the beginning everyone in Zambia was welcoming and supportive.

I first worked for a safari company in the northern sector of South Luangwa National Park where I learned the reservation system. This first year provided me great insight into Africa, its people and wildlife. Then I spent two years working for a business called Tribal Textiles in Mfuwe town, just outside of South Luangwa National Park, where my responsibilities were varied, from accounts to helping to set up a local school building project, to managing and training of local staff. I spent my weekends in the park, with my short wheel base Land Rover that I brought in Lusaka, taking photos and just sitting and watching the wildlife. The great thing about the bush is that amazes you with something different every time you visit.

Three years ago I joined Shenton Safaris. My position is reservations and marketing. I do all the invoicing and office duties; I allocate rooms and advise the kitchen at both camps (Shenton Safaris has a bush camp called Mwamba) of dietary restrictions of arriving guests. I take care of logistics: what clients would like to do each day, and I then check which guides and vehicles are available. I arrange airport runs, and host guests in the evenings.

But I am also qualified as a driving guide in Zambia. During my first off season with Shenton Safaris, between November and May when it rains, I devoted my time to studying for my guide exam. Every day I listened to bird calls and learned to identify them. I drove into the park and then stopped, listened and watched the interaction between animals and between animals and plants. I learned to open my eyes and ears to everything. Our head guide, Patrick Njobvu, took me into the park too, and tested me with every possible question. In April, I sat the guide's exam – one of the toughest in Africa to ensure an outstanding level of guiding for clients. It first consists of a four hour written exam, a first aid test, and basic mechanics, after which, if you pass, you take a practical examination inside the park where three examiners test your knowledge of flora and fauna, your driving skills, as well as your ability to pass on information to your clients and to entertain them.

Elephant dung paper is another of my projects that I do during the off season. I set up some local women to make the paper. They work from their homes so they can take care of their children and work at the same time. I convert the paper the women produce into cards using photographs that I have taken. These are sold in gift shops. I also convert the wire from snares that are found by anti-poaching teams. I spray it gold and several local artists twist it into animals and sell them to tourists. The money then goes back to the South Luangwa Wildlife Conservation Society, which works in anti-poaching among other things.

Lastly, Shenton Safaris supports an orphanage project called Hanada. I help raise money for Hanada through a women's sewing group. I started with two women who were taught to make skirts from the local chitenge material. (Chitenges are the colorful wraps that Zambian women wear.) We now have five women involved in sewing a variety of things. All of our profits go to Hanada and the children. My goal for 2010 is to help wildlife conservation and the community of Mfuwe as much as I can. It is so satisfying to know that I can give back to this amazing place that I call home.

How elephant dung paper is made: the very fibrous dung of elephants is collected, dried, cleaned and sorted for dying. The fibers are then soaked and mixed with used paper from South Luangwa lodges and camps to make a thick sludge from which rough sheets of "paper" can be formed. Spread on mesh trays, the "paper" is dried thoroughly in the sun. That's all there is to the simple process. An environmentally friendly alternative such as Alison's to the millions of paper greeting cards sent annually around the world is an excellent idea.

10-03-2010

Tidbits 7

I have sat in the shade of a magnificent evergreen on the banks of the Luangwa River and watched the impala come down to drink, materialising from the shadows one by one on the far bank as though by spontaneous creation; I have watched a skein of sacred ibis, in perfect arrow formation, flying down a river which the setting sun has turned to a shimmer of molten gold; I have seen a magnificent kudu bull on an anthill, silhouetted against the dawn sky; I have smelt the fragrant scent of the wild shrubs at sundown, when the world hesitates before handing over to the lords of darkness; I have lived with the night noises – the eerie plaintive call of the hyena, crying with the pathos of a lost soul in purgatory, and the music of the King of Beasts proclaiming his undisputed rule over his domain; I have seen a pure white impala.

All these and many other idyllic memories return to me and I cannot help but contrast them with the turmoil of Regent Street in the rush hour.

I know I have no regrets.

Norman Carr, The White Impala

10-03-2010

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