The Trend For More Comfort

I see more and more extended Landcruisers on safari. It's the business to be in at the moment, stretching and outfitting Landcruisers, as tourism continues to boom in Tanzania. A stretch cruiser, although heavier and more cumbersome a safari vehicle, especially in wet conditions, ensures that up to six people have adequate room and each their own window seat. The new cruiser is therefore a response to increased numbers of visitors, but also to our needs. We have problems with space which didn't exist before when we didn't have a choice but to fit in what vehicles were available. Bigger cars allow us to bring along more luggage as well as bigger camera lenses and mounts. Four people are now definitely more comfortable in an extended Landcruiser. But now I see only two people in extended Landcruisers. I have even seen one person in a stretch car. In a poor country, on a poor continent, where the majority of people don't own cars and never will own cars; where there are fuel shortages; where people still live a day's walk away from a road and decrepit public transport; surely smaller cruisers will suffice for one and two of us? Think of these additional vehicles burning fuel and at a wildlife sighting.

Fridges in extended cruisers are another new thing on the circuit. Cold drinks are a great idea, but one of my tours kept tripping over the cold box or its cord. I eventually asked for it to be removed. Running out of water is a grave concern but not if it isn't cold. The operator and driver/guide resisted taking it away. It's a safari, I eventually decided. We are not supposed to be too comfortable.

27-07-2008

Harassing Leopards and Cheetahs

Perhaps more than any destination in Tanzania's north, Ndutu has undergone the most change in the last few years. With every visit to this wonderful place, I see the increased proliferation of tented camps and numbers of vehicles at sightings. At night I see the lights of new camps and hear their generators when once it was only darkness and insect hum. This past season, I heard stories of harassed cheetahs - such as a vehicle pulling between a cheetah and her cubs so that the occupants could get a photo; the cub was subsequently abandoned and lost. Thankfully, at all my cheetah sightings, every vehicle kept the proper distance. However, this was not the case at two Ndutu leopard sightings. The animals, lying low in the grasses under trees, were trapped by rings of noisy vehicles, fighting each other for the best position. That alone was bad enough, to trap the cats like that, but then, impatient and ill informed, the drivers and their tourists drove forward into the grasses to flush them out. Tourists stood posed with cameras waiting. With the leopards fleeing the scene, the cars in hot and hopeless pursuit, the sighting was lost to everyone. This kind of behaviour is harassment of the animal. And it will take away our right to go off-road in the Ndutu area.

My guests one night at my Ndutu campsite were British wildlife photographers Owen Newman and Amanda Barrett who were in the area for several months working on a film about the migration. They have filmed leopards in Zambia. They are curious animals, they explained. Under the same circumstances, if everyone had been patient and quiet, the cats probably would have shown themselves. On both these occasions in Ndutu, I was relieved that my clients asked if we could leave the sighting rather than condone what was happening. More of us most do the same.

For more about Owen and Amanda, go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/features/331feature2.shtml

Another feline this filmmaker team has filmed is the seldom spotted African Wild Cat. As fate would have it, two tour members who continued on to the Serengeti, after our dinner with Owen and Amanda, saw one of them. It was a first for the driver as well.

27-07-2008

Animal Fact:

Why Lions Roar at the Ground?
Hyenas too are known to use the ground to amplify their calls.

27-07-2008

Hyena with Three Legs

Strangely, I saw two hyenas this past season getting around on three legs. (No, they couldn't possibly have been the same animal.) Chances were good that these old girls lost their legs in fights with another hyena clan rather than fighting lions, the hyena enemy. A lion cuffs its prey and would therefore injure a leg but not tear it off. Only the hyena's jaws can bite through bone.

27-07-2008

Kori Bustard: Threatened on the African Continent

Most people on safari get to see the Kori bustard, the world's heaviest flying birds at 18 kilos. You might see them displaying with puffed out feathers, a warning to other nearby males or an attempt to impress a female. I have always hoped to come by a kori's naturally dropped feathers on one of my hikes. Threatened by habitat loss, and by hunting, the kori's numbers across Africa are decreasing. So the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, DC is helping. When a captive kori female lays an egg it is replaced by a false surrogate and the fertilized egg is hatched in an incubator. The surrogate egg is decidedly high-tech, detecting and compiling data on temperature and motion which is hoped to improve hatching methods and success.

27-07-2008

Congolese Culture: The Sapeurs - Elegantly Dressed People

Recently, in Brazzaville, there was a funeral for a famous musician who was also a member of La SAPE - La Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes - literally the Society of Elegant People. In the chanting funeral procession were men in tapered trousers, suit jackets, dress shirts, suspenders, gloves, brogues, rakishly-tilted fedoras, waving cigars, and looking not unlike they stepped out of the 1930s American Harlem. Saphologie, as the movement is now called, revolves around looking flamboyantly good, preferably in designer labels (apparently retro-designer duds), but into which the hip-hop look has intruded. At one point in the movement's history three color suits were the thing. These Brazzaville sapeurs attending the funeral wore every colour under the rainbow. They also didn't mind being photographed, for in their fancy get-up they were at liberty to put aside the probable reality of their poverty to play make-believe of what they were not—important and wealthy. They strutted with attitude and postured like rappers. Except that La SAPE predates rap culture. Just after its independence from Belgium, first DRC president Mobutu banned anything western, from Christianity to clothing. A famous Kinshasa musician, whose love of fine labels was honed in France which he frequently visited on tour, rebelled against the edict by dressing ever more expensively, in western suits. He soon had followers and the elegance movement was born. Today, Paris remains the home of many Grand Sapeurs. One wears an eye patch as did many Brazzaville sapeurs in the funeral procession in emulation of him. I did see some women sapeurs in the crowd. They were dressed like men.

27-07-2008

Music - Fally Ipupa

Le Droit Chemin (The Right Road) by Fally Ipupa: This is Brazzaville's favourite music at the moment, from a musician known as Fally who hails from Kinshasa across the river. Without paper, inks and printers, advertisements in Congo are painted by hand. Many images of Fally are around town, especially to demarcate tape shops and men's hairdressers. With Congolese pop, it is possible to think that all day long the same song is playing. However, I can differentiate between Fally's tracks and his voice is silky smooth. I brought copies of this tape to Tanzania for all my driver/guides. The CD is available at Amazon and for a better price than in Congo.

27-07-2008

Book Reviews - "Too Close to the Sun" & "Brazza, A Life for Africa"

Too Close to the Sun by Sara Wheeler: Karen Blixon herself set into the motion our obsession with Denys Finch Hatton when she immortalized their relationship in Out of Africa. But each of us knows there is more to the man and to their story than what she has given us, even if we aren't sure we want to know. Beryl Markham's West with the Night gives us only a glimpse of Denys as well, and not the truth that this gutsy female aviator ever shared him with Karen. You get the strong feeling that Too Close to the Sun finally gives us the real Denys. It is a sympathetic and sensitive portrayal without disguising what women will certainly recognize as a man with a fear of commitment. Perhaps it is too sympathetic a portrait: I periodically found myself exasperated with Karen Blixon. Handsome and charismatic as Denys was, another woman may have been the one to give him the heave-ho. Too close to the Sun isn't just about Denys and Karen however, but about the early days of white settlers in Kenya and the First World War, the history of which truly makes it a great read. Too Close to the Sun is colonial East Africa without the rosy tinted glasses.

Brazza, A Life For Africa by Maria Petringa: As the author points out in her preface, newly independent countries were quick to change their names or those of their important cities if they reflected their previous colonial masters. Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, which used to be a French colony, has not. In downtown Brazzaville today there is a museum and memorial to the 19^th century Italian-born de Brazza who is credited with Brazzaville's founding for France as well as establishing French sovereignty over much of west central Africa. His remains as well as those of his wife and children were moved there to commemorate its opening a few years ago. Brazza's competitor, just across the Congo River from Brazzaville, was Henry Morton Stanley, who worked for claiming everything for King Leopold of Belgium, which is why the two Congos today (the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo) have different histories. Stanley and Brazza couldn't have been more different as well. Stanley took by force while Brazza used diplomacy. Ultimately, however, Brazza failed to unite development and prosperity for Africans in French Africa with colonial policy. He was summoned home in disgrace, and not three years after his departure, the abuse of natives on rubber concessions by French businessmen was as bad as it was in King Leopold's Congo colony across the river. (Read King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild for more on this horror.) Returning to French Congo to investigate these accusations may have cost Brazza his life. His wife always contended that he had been poisoned. There is so little written in English about the Republic of Congo's early history (Petringa's is the only biography of de Brazza in English) that I consider this book one of my best finds this year.

27-07-2008

Women to Women International

August 2008 tour member Catherine Sully sent me this. Thank you Catherine!

Hello fellow women travelers: I would like to tell you of a very special sponsorship program I have become involved with this year. It is called women for women. I am now part of a global community of women seeking to bring about sustainable change in the world. This Sponsorship Program has changed the lives of more than 120,000 women, giving them the tools to move from victims of war to survivors to active citizens engaged in the rebuilding of their country. I have been assigned my very own sister to support in the war torn area of Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her name is Rose Nyasa and she was born in 1977. She does not read or write, has 4 children and is separated from her husband. She lives in a shack without running water or electricity and her main source of lighting is a kerosene lamp. For $27/month (80% of this goes to the support of this woman) this allows my sister to obtain basic necessities for her family, such as food, clean water and medicine; pay school-related expenses for her children; or use the funds as seed capital to start an income-generating project. This also provides my sister with a year-long participation in job skills training and rights education provided by Women for Women International. As a sponsor I am encouraged to write to Rose (and with some help I may receive a letter back). I was told the letters or pictures that sponsors provide can be the most important possessions in her life - women in the program carry their tattered letters or picture from their sponsors in their pockets everywhere. I feel like I am making such a difference in Rose's life and the life of her children. It really gets up close and personal and makes the plight of these women real. I encourage everyone to check out their website: www.womenforwomen.org. You too can make a difference in one of these women's lives!

27-07-2008

Tidbit 4

"Conservationists must argue why something must be saved
instead of exploiters explaining why it should be destroyed."

George Schaller
"A Naturalist and Other Beasts"

27-07-2008