Underwater Superhero

2007-11-30T16:38:00.000+02:00

To Have and Have Not – Part 2

I guess this is kind of a follow up post on the one I wrote earlier on the gap in wealth that we see in South Africa.

We hire a group of guys in their mid 20’s to come help us with some of the manual labor on the project as well as some data collection during the field season. Most of them have kids and support their extended families of 6-7 people. They don’t have regular work and our periodic employment is often their only income as the unemployment rate in communities outside the park boundaries often reaches 50% and upwards.

I just returned from taking our work crew back to their houses outside the park in Welverdiend. Welverdiend is a township just outside of the Kruger Park boundary. It is, I imagine, what most of us think of when we think of rural Africa. Cinderblock and stick houses. Log fences for animals. Cattle with their ribs showing. But they do have a school, clinic, soccer field, and some small shops. Wisani, our crew leader who is quite well spoken and intelligent despite what I can imagine is little schooling, was quizzing me on the price of plane tickets to and from America, the cost of renting our truck for our field work, the price of basic staples in America, etc. There was general amazement amongst the crew as to how much money much of the things I take for granted actually cost. For example, a round trip plane ticket from America to South Africa costs approximately $2000 or 14000 South Africa Rand. Wisani can feed his whole family of 6 for about $45 or 300 South African Rand a month. So for the price of my plane ticket to South Africa to chase zebra around the savanna, I could feed three families of 6 in South Africa for a year. Makes you realize that we have the monetary means to end hunger in pretty much every corner of the globe if we only had the motivation.

2007-11-19T15:52:00.000+02:00

Lovin’ the Mud

There is definitely a love-hate relationship with rain. I love the rain because it makes temperatures down right bearable, makes the plants grow, and generally makes me happy. There is nothing like a good storm to cleanse the soul and make you feel like part of the earth. The hate part of the relationship comes with the lack of work that gets done after a good rain. Mud is the enemy here because few of the roads are paved and after a good rain many of the roads are impassable, at least in critical places. As I’ve written about previously, rain and mud lead to adventuresome field work http://underwater-superhero.blogspot.com/2007/04/muddin-south-african-style-when-you-are.html. Being a wetter year so far this year, it seems that we will lose our fair share of field work to rain and the muck it leaves behind. So its no surprise the first mud-vehicle interaction this year was a doozie. Last week we were out for a night survey on some of our plots farthest from camp. We do night surveys so that we can compare the distribution of herbivores on our experimental plots during the day and night – we see quiet a few elephants during the night and few during the day. Plus, we see all sorts of cool creatures like porcupines, civets, genets, and African wild cats.

Anyway, we were down on the Marheya string of plots and I decide try to make it through a section of the fire break that usually gives us problems after the rain. I don’t know why I tried to go through because I almost always avoid it even if it hasn’t rained for weeks. But I did, and predictably, we got stuck. Not just throw-it-in-4-wheel-drive-and-power-out stuck, I mean STUCK. So there we are at night, out of cell phone range, no where near a paved road, and horribly stuck in the mud – without a rifle to guard against the night time critters. My first thought after looking at the tires was “We are sleeping in the bush tonight.” But, determined not to sleep in the bush, three of us pushed while the fourth rocked the truck back and forth. We put down logs, stones, grass, anything to get some traction for the tires. For the first few minutes, it was more like a little bit of pushing and lots of looking around for that leopard that was going to appear out of nowhere. After 15 minutes of no progress in getting unstuck, it was all pushing and no looking. We lost sandals in the mud, got pummeled by thorns, and generally looked like tar babies…but after about 30 minutes the truck spun free (I fell face first into the mud) and we celebrated with a gin and tonic and by using all the drinking water we had to wash Kruger off our bodies. We spent the rest of the night driving around looking for lions, having fun, and staying on paved roads.

2007-11-04T16:03:00.000+02:00

This is the South Africa that I am used to. The temperature is slowly creeping towards 40 today – that’s Celsius or 104 F. Luckily field work wasn’t of the essence today so I have spent the day reading in the shade, sitting in the pool, and now working on my computer in our little office which now has a portable AC unit. Grated that it is still 85 in here with the AC cranking full blast, but at least its not 104. It makes writing possible because my brain just doesn’t function when it gets this hot. And it pretty much has to function now as I’m churning through job application after application. Yes, it is the academic job season now. All the universities are teasing us with descriptions of fantastic biology and ecology jobs with our names on them. Just like the Christmas season except the academic job season leaves you feeling hollow and disappointed. Well, maybe Christmas leaves you feeling like that too, but that’s a different post. So I’ve spent the last several weeks either in the field repairing damage to our fences from that damnable rhino or writing about the many wonderful experiments I would do at University X if they would only give me the chance and hire me. So far its been a hard process as I’m not the best at selling myself. But it has made me slow down and think about what I want to accomplish in science and how I want to accomplish it.

Field work has been rather routine lately. That is except for the day that my fellow post-doc on the project chased after a rhino. No I don’t have that backwards the rhino didn’t chase him, he chased after the rhino. We were walking out to one of our sites which is a 3km walk into the bush off the fire break road when we cross paths with a male white rhino. Now the set of experiments that we were walking to has been terrorized by a rhino of late with the rhino practically flattening some of our fences. I have been close to throwing in the towel on this site as it is a pain to get to and maintenance has been far greater there than at other places, but we have persisted so far. Anyway, the post-doc sees the rhino, chambers a round into his rifle, and proceeds to run at the rhino screaming and clapping his hands. I think the rhino was even more surprised by this than I was and he tucked tail and ran away from this crazy two-legged creature running at him. I stayed behind wondering what I was going to say to this guy’s girlfriend when the rhino decided that he didn’t like being chased by this puny person. Luckily the rhino went his separate way and my friend returned from the chase and concluded that “Maybe that will scare him off.” I think it probably just pissed him off and he went and took it out on our fences. Oh well.

2007-10-15T21:47:00.000+02:00

To Have and Have not

Allison and I spent the weekend in Johannesburg (Jo’burg to the locals) at a wedding of some of our friends. It was a nice break from being in Kruger and good to have a little dose of “civilization”. But a little civilization goes a long way. After a little time out of touch, it is actually kind of annoying to be back around the hustle and bustle of a city. A little bit of traffic is more than a little annoying after being sans traffic for even a little while. However, even if it does make me sound like a yuppie, it is nice being able to get a good double espresso.

But the one thing that always leaves a lasting impression on me when I leave Kruger and drive around the South African countryside is the huge gap between the have’s and have-not’s in this country. Is it wider than in the U.S.? Probably not on average with all the billionaire CEO’s we have in the U.S. inflating their company’s stock prices to pad their portfolios while their minimum wage workers struggle to afford health care. But the number of people in abject poverty in South Africa is huge. Contrast that with the shiny Mercedes zipping through Jo’burg and the skyscrapers that are the telltale signs of the moneyed class and you get a huge chasm between the top and bottom of the economic ladder.

One of the things that started me thinking about South Africa and poverty was a conversation I had with one of the wildlife guides here. Mattwell is a black African that grew up not far outside the park boundaries. While we were sitting around one evening just talking about everyday things a weaver (a small bird the size of a sparrow) flew onto the porch. It got disoriented by the porch lights and bounced off the walls a few times before I shooed it back out into the dark night. I turned to Mattwell and remarked about the beautiful plumage of the weavers and he responded “That’s meat”. I gave him a quizzical look and shook my head not understanding. He continued by saying that to people in the village where he grew up that bird would be meat, a meal. A bird no bigger than a house sparrow would be caught for food - I was incredulous. He then listed a litany of animals that people in his village would eat such as genets which are beautiful house cat-sized creatures with leopard-like coats and long tails. It was just one of those soul-crushing moments to realize how poor people must be to eat a sparrow. How can nature withstand the billions of people in such poverty that they are forced to eat monkeys, genets, and songbirds – the microfauna of our forests – for protein? It is hard for us First World citizens to imagine such desperation and desolation. But how do we get someone who eats a sparrow for food to care about the impact that such desperate behavior has on the surrounding ecosystems when those of us that don’t have nearly this level of worry won’t change our behavior to affect the planet in a positive way?

At every turn humanity tries to separate the pieces of nature that make a balanced system - the “balance of nature”. It happens everywhere you look. Abduction of the worlds primary productivity (people must eat, sure, but must we eat so much beef and send so much never-read junk mail that Amazonia disappears), rampant use of water (habitual washing of cars comes to mind), mixing and matching of the worlds species – removing some from here, taking some from there, adding more from wherever. We are the most destructive species, and we might even be the cause of our own extinction which I’m sure would be a novelty in the history of evolution. Yet, we do little about it. Many of us do nothing because we don’t know. Some do nothing in spite of knowing. And few actually do something because we do know and because we know we have to do it. Unfortunately the few that do something must deal with the many that do nothing. For most people who don’t worry about environmental issues like how much soap we put down the drain or how much water we use in a day, the problems of everyday life are much greater than these issues. I don’t mean problems that we may worry about like the monthly on our SUV or that our gym membership is about to expire. What I mean is the problems that don’t allow many people to think about what we are doing to our world - the problems of living or dying. How do I feed my family? Where is my next paycheck coming from? How do I keep my family from dying from the heat or the cold? How can I possibly support this next child my wife is having? These are the problems that are foremost in billions of people’s minds. How can those of us that worry about the former possibly preach to those worrying about the latter about saving the environment? Would I really care if a salamander was going extinct or if sea level might rise in 50 years if I couldn’t feed my family? Probably not. So how do we get people in that situation to care about the world we live in? We try to make their world better. It seems to me that the environmental crisis begins, in part, with social issues. Many people might care a great deal more about the health of our planet if their own problems were less of a burden. Gandhi said the greatest injustice was poverty. If we can help solve this great injustice, we may go a long way towards saving our planet.

2007-10-08T08:32:00.000+02:00

Here comes the rain again

The thing about this part of South Africa is that Spring and Fall usually last, oh, about a day. There seems to be little lag between the dry coolness of the Dry Season and the crushing heat of the Wet Season. Mother Nature flips the switch and you have brain-baking heat. Last year this time we were already boiling here in Satara with days consistently over 100 degrees and no rain is sight from the supposed Wet Season. In fact it rained all of once between when we got here in early September and the end of November last year.

This year couldn’t be more different. After being here a week, we have had two days of sunshine and only one day where it hit 104. Every other day has been blissfully cool and rainy. I’m even wearing a fleece. While the rain means cool days and nights, it also brings the savanna alive and that means green grass, flowers, and bugs. Lots of bugs. Last night I was awakened by a gigantic moth bouncing pinball-like around our tent. After a short chase around the tent, I chucked it out into the cool night and laid back down to be sung to sleep by the frogs - the other little critters that the rain brings out. Just outside the fence behind our tent is a pan (a depression in the savanna that collects water) where animals, especially elephants, congregate to drink. It’s also where the frogs put on their show. Every night after the rosy sunset fades over the Acacia trees the frogs start their chorus. There must be hundreds of them, and from only a few hundred meters away the chorus is deafening. You could only just barely hear the hyenas calling last night over the frogs. No matter the stress of the day, it is such a soothing, peaceful night to be sung to sleep by frogs.

2007-09-30T20:44:00.000+02:00

Back to Africa

After 32 hours in airplanes and airports, a sleepless night in Johannesburg, and a 7 hour drive to Kruger, we are almost back home – at least the only home we really know right now. Tomorrow we will arrive in Satara after taking care of the last few details at Scientific Services in Skukuza (90km south of our tent in Satara). It feels strange that this national park feels like home. I’ve found myself chomping at the bit to be back in Satara, back to our tent, the animals, the lions roaring at night, and the friends we made here last year.

Jet lag is still with me as every little hurdle and problem that comes up in the first day or two is overly frustrating and brings anger that is disproportionate to the size of the problem. At this point in every long overseas research trip when small problems meet overwhelming jet lag, I ask myself “Why the hell do I really want to do this work? Why don’t I have a desk job somewhere?” But soon jet lag will disappear and the joyful part of being in the field and being around animals will take over – sooner rather than later hopefully. Thankfully, the weather has been kind and it has been blissfully cool with some nice early season rain.

2007-07-22T22:54:00.001+02:00

Back in the U.S. and A.

Well I’ve been back in the U.S. since May 1. Sorry that I didn’t post again before I left South Africa or haven’t posted since. It’s been kind of a whirlwind spending time in Kansas, Connecticut, and Arkansas with little time to settle into one place and develop a routine. Getting used to living in the U.S. again has also been a challenge. Granted I was only away for 8 months, but that is long enough to gradually lose your acclimatization to a place that you’ve lived in for all 30 years of your life.

My first stop back in the States was Memphis International Airport. With my miniscule bits of African contraband safely through customs, I stepped back onto American soil (or tile as it were since I was still in the airport) and headed for the nearest airport bar to grab a beer and ease the jetlag. The first thing I noticed was how LOUD everything was. My God we are a loud country! Not that South Africa is a place of solace and peace. They have crazy shopping malls just like the rest of the industrialized world. But for some reason, this small American airport seemed like the heart of Pandemonium. I don’t know if I had been desensitized to noise by living in a tent away from most of civilization or if I was just tired from traveling for almost two days straight. But I do know that those three hours in the Memphis airport are some of the loudest of my existence.

2007-04-30T15:25:00.000+02:00

Favorite animal interactions

Hyenas have a den near one of our field sites. I first found it back in October when the two cubs were quite small and curious but skittish. I’ve been able to watch them grow up over my time here and have enjoyed watching their markings and mannerisms change. Recently one of the cubs has disappeared leaving only the very curious little chap left behind on his own. When we were on lion capture the other night, things were moving slow so Allison and I decided to go check out the cub since the den was near to where we were calling in lions. When we drove up to the den, the cub was laying on the tar road gathering the last warmth of the day off the pavement. We drive up next to her and Allison takes a picture which gets the cubs attention. She saunters over to the truck and starts sniffing around. Then she starts chewing around. Chews the running boards, the tires, the grass guard, the bumper, everything she can get her mouth around she chews. At one point she was shaking the truck she was gnawing the bumper so hard. At that point I had to give the truck door a firm slap to get her to stop before she did some damage.

Once she decides enough of the chewing she comes up to the driver side to check me out. I have my window down and my head resting on my arm on the windowsill. She walks right up to the door and puts her nose about three feet from my nose and gives me a good sniff. I was just waiting for her to jump up and nip my fingers, but I stayed still and just let her smell me. After she was content that she had figured out what I was she gave the bumper a last bite and moved on. But that was not our last encounter with this very bold little cub.

A week later Dave, another post-doc, and I were driving out to the site and past the hyena den when we see a black BMW SUV stopped in the road ahead of us. I knew they had to be checking out the cub and sure enough she was out sniffing around their tires. As soon as we pull up, the cub makes a bee line for out truck, runs around the back, and starts chewing the wires for the trailer light connection. They must not have tasted good because she quickly moves around to Dave’s side of the truck and stares him down. Then to Dave’s surprise, she puts her paws on the door of the truck and sticks her head in the window. – twice. She got a good look at Dave and Dave let out a little squeak of surprise. She is definitely a bold little one that likes vehicles way too much. Another researcher here told me that some people will feed hyenas from their cars which makes them quite tame. If this little one gets bolder, someone will lose some fingers.

2007-04-06T09:08:00.000+02:00

I posted more pics today on the Flickr website. Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kruger_park/

2007-04-06T09:05:00.000+02:00

Muddin’ – South African style

When you are from the South, you grow up with traditions that people from other areas of the country don’t have. For example, grits, mint juleps, wearing ties to college football games, and muddin’. For those uninitiated few, muddin’ is basically driving your truck around in mud puddles after a good rain storm. Sounds boring and redneck but its really pretty fun…and decidedly redneck. In the spirit of cultural exchange, last week I took some of our South African crew on an impromptu muddin’ adventure.

To give a little background, one of our field sites is basically 2.5km straight out into the bush. No roads, no tracks, nothing. We drive off the road and through the bush to get our field equipment out there. Richard, the other postdoc, usually takes the GPS and walks in front of the truck to make sure we don’t run over thorn bushes that puncture tires as easily as popping a balloon with a sewing needle. In all it usually takes us about 30 minutes to weave our way back and forth over rocks, logs, stumps while avoiding tire poppage.

This past week, we had to go out to this field site to make some fencing repairs. It looked rainy at the start of the day, but it never rains here when it looks rainy to begin with – that’s one sure fire rule I’ve learned here – so we decided to make the trip out with hopes that our rule held firm. Well, as Murphy would have it, we were just to our field site when we heard the first thunder and saw the first lightning and the drizzle started. After a little debate back and forth about whether the rain would come or not, I decided to turn the truck around and whoever didn’t want to get stuck in the mud could come with me and those that did could stay put. With Richard leading the way on foot, we try to follow our tracks through the bush back to the dirt road. We hadn’t gone 200 meters when someone turned on the tap. Rain so hard that I could barely see the guys leading me back to the road. They leaped back in the truck while I leaped out to lock the hubs on the wheels so that we could have 4X4 to give us a chance of making it back to the road. I hop back in and gun it for the road.

Damn the bushes, damn the small trees, damn punctured tires. No swerving, no dodging rocks. Just driving. If we didn’t haul it back to the road, we would be stuck 2km into the bush in a driving rain storm meaning we would have to leave the truck there and retrieve it days later once the soil dried out. Since these soils are heavy on clay content, the smallest rain turns the bush into a quagmire. Unfortunately, our navigator was having trouble reading the GPS and directed me south instead of east before I realized it. So I snatched the GPS out of his hands, made a tough, slow turn and puched it for the road. I could feel us fishtailing as I dodged the trees and large logs that would seriously ruin our day. Meanwhile my directionally-challenged navigator is trying to convince me that he can get out and lead us through the bush because the rain is letting up. My response “You can get out but you’ll have to drop and roll because I’m not stopping”, as the heavens open up again. Our key to getting out was to keep the tires on grass and avoid heavily grazed areas that have little grass cover and also avoid the pans which drain poorly and fill up with water after the rains. If we hit a pan, the truck would sink up to the antenna and we would have a miserable 5km walk back to the nearest tourist road to catch a lift.

After about 7 minutes (the trip usually takes 25-30 minutes) of serious switchbacks to miss pans, Acacia trees, and minefields of sicklebush, I can see the dirt road that we have to get to. A couple more quick dodges of trees and we are there. I fishtail out onto the road which has turned into a rushing torrent, but I lose momentum. Now I’m grinding uphill on the road trying to get the tires out of the main ruts and onto the grass to get traction. Eventually my tires grab hold and we are off again, essentially swimming upstream against the runoff that is draining down the road to the nearest river. Water is spraying over the top of the truck as the tires cut through the ruts in the road. After a tough 10 minute grind on the dirt road, we are finally back on a gravel road with good traction. The muddin’ adventure is over without getting stuck and, amazingly, with no popped tires.

We finally make it back to came, and Richard and I get out to unlock the hubs on the front wheels. I click mine into place and notice that it is now LOCKED as I heard Richard say “Oh I must have forgot to unlock the hubs yesterday after I drove through the riverbed.” So when I leapt out in the bush to LOCK the hubs, I actually UNLOCKED them meaning I did all that muddin’ in 2-wheel drive instead of 4-wheel drive. Must have been all that Mississippi muddin’ experience that helped me through. After getting over the disbelief that I did all that driving through the rain-soaked bush in 2-wheel drive without getting stuck, I have this conversation..

Dave “Did you see the rhino that you almost hit?”

Me “I almost hit a rhino!?!”

Dave “Yep, you missed him by about 5 meters. Glad you took that hard left”

Mississippi muddin’ it ain’t.

2007-03-28T15:04:00.000+02:00

Ordinariness

I recently read this poem by Jaan Kaplinski in Shambala Sun.

Once I got a postcard from the Fiji Islands
with a picture of sugarcane harvest. Then I realized
that nothing at all is exotic in itself.
There is no difference between digging potatoes in our
Mutiku garden
and sugarcane harvest in Viti Levu.
Everything that is is very ordinary
or, rather, neither ordinary nor strange.
Far-off lands and foreign peoples are a dream,
a dreaming with open eyes
somebody does not wake from.
It’s the same with poetry – seen from afar
it’s something special, mysterious, festive.
No, poetry is even less
special than a sugarcane plantation or potato field.
Poetry is like sawdust coming down from under the saw
or soft yellowish shavings from a plane.
Poetry is washing hands in the evening
or a clean handkerchief that my late aunt
never forgot to put in my pocket.

Nothing in and of itself is actually exotic. Its just our relationship to those things that make them seem so. So its amazing how things we think of as extraordinary can actually become quite ordinary. After working in Kruger for some time, eventually, giraffes, elephants, wildebeest, zebra, honeybadgers, etc are no longer attractions but small pieces of your daily life. These animals that were, only a short time ago, almost mythical creatures that inspired awe in me, that I had only seen in nature videos or at the zoo are now just outside my front door, literally. Many days they are pleasant roadblocks that prevent me from getting to work - my fellow commuters. I’m not saying that life here among all these animals is now dull or boring – far from it. But it is now ordinary. Ordinary doesn’t necessarily mean boring. Quite the opposite, ordinary things are often the most exciting and satisfying – the best of all things.

2007-03-19T16:18:00.000+02:00

The Superiority of Marine Science

I enjoy being a ecologist. Not just because I like being outside and am supposedly working towards solving some of the worlds problems. I like being an ecologist because ecologists are fun people. For the most part we get to play outside in the mud, grass, underwater, etc and get paid for it so many of us haven’t really grown up all that much. And, every now and then, we tend to drink a little bit. Its nice after a long day in the field to kick back with a beer, some wine, maybe a mixed drink and relive the day – chased by rhinos, saw cool cheetahs, etc.

Sometimes a sundowner beer to end the day turns into several beers and that makes the next day’s research a little slower. But, a few too many beers one evening after counting plants all day led to my epiphany of why marine ecology is superior to terrestrial ecology.

If you are working with a hangover counting grasses in the middle of the South African savanna, you are miserable. Your head hurts, your back hurts, you are dehydrated and all this while sweltering in 100 degree heat with no shade and no clouds. Not exactly the best hangover cure.

However, if you are a marine ecologist, you get to go SCUBA diving with your hangover, and that, my loyal readers, is a magical hangover cure. First, the cool seawater on your headache is like the best salve you can imagine – it feels like sticking your head in the refrigerator, heavenly. The weightlessness takes all your aches and pains away and after the dive you feel 100% better. (Diving also works if you had a very late night and maybe still have a little alcohol in your system. Just dries you right out. HEALTH WARING: Diving while still a little drunk can be dangerous and should be attempted only by highly trained professionals.) I guess you could just not drink the night before you have to be out in the field, but working hard and playing hard is one of the best ways to enjoy field work.

2007-03-03T12:51:00.000+02:00

Random bits

It's rained more recently than in the past several months combined. The rain is more than welcomed as it’s been very dry the past few weeks and the bush has been looking dry and brown in spots. For the most part, our region of Kruger is still behind on rainfall for the wet season, but we must be catching up fast. Most of this recent storm was spawned by the remnants of a tropical cyclone (hurricane) that rolled through Mozambique earlier. It feels strange now to be rooting for cyclones to bring us rain since for the last several years I would have done anything in my power to prevent hurricanes from reaching my field sites in Florida. During hurricane season, I would powerlessly watch every hurricane track to see if it would come anywhere near the Florida Keys. I would have tried any juju possible to keep hurricanes away from my experiments (I had two hurricanes in two seasons of working on the reefs in Florida). Now, I relish the rain they bring.

Just thought I’d pass along a couple of happenings in the past few weeks.

- In the span of two days I almost stepped on a puff adder and a Mozambique spitting cobra while in the field. Both are beautiful snakes much better appreciated from several feet away.

- While walking to one of our field sites we almost ran into a black rhino. We were about 30m away before the guy in front saw it lying under a tree having a snooze. Black rhinos are very grumpy buggers (very endangered as their horns make great dagger handles and there are only about 350 in the whole of Kruger), and it would have made a bad end to the short day if we would have actually surprised him. Luckily we were downwind of it and it never knew we were there. On the way back to our vehicle, we got to watch it browse plants and it was never the wiser.

- We have started doing surveys at night of the herbivores that are using the different plots in our experiment. The night surveys are great as we are the only ones driving around Kruger then (the tourists have to be in at 6PM), and the bush really changes at night when the predators come out. At the end of the last survey, we followed a big male lion on the tar road for over 2km. He would stop periodically and scent mark a bush then carry on walking, and once he took far too much pleasure in rolling in a pile of buffalo poop. As he rolled he let out these purrs of ecstasy just like a house cat. At one point, we had pulled up to about 10m from him (he honestly couldn’t have cared less that we were there) and he let out a huge roar, calling to his buddies. A lion’s roar is not the MGM lion roar you see on movies. After a couple of loud growls, it builds to a crescendo of huge roars followed by several seconds of low grunting. Its so powerful that it just reverberates through your body. On still nights the roars carry for miles.

2007-02-24T10:12:00.000+02:00

Your South African Dictionary

As I’m sure most of you know, South Africa is quite a melting pot of people. Of course you have the black Africans which are represented by many different nations of people. The dominant black language here is Zulu, and many of the other languages share many things in common with Zulu. The dominant culture here around Kruger (but a small minority in South Africa on a whole) is the Shangaan people who speak a language of the same name. Shangaan doesn’t have any of the clicks in it like many of you probably imagine native African languages to have, and I have learned some basic phrases but not enough to carry on a conversation. There is also a large coloured population in South Africa, which refers to people of mixed racial heritage. Indians are the most populous of the Asian peoples here - Durban has the largest Indian population outside of India.

The white culture here is dominated by people of Dutch descent, the Afrikaners, and English descent. The primary white language in this part of South Africa, or at least most people’s first language, is Afrikaans. It’s derived from the Dutch tongue and was only recognized as a true language and not a dialect of Dutch a couple of decades ago. It is close enough to German that I can pick up words and phrases, but mostly it’s incomprehensible. A small majority of South Africans speak English as their first language, but most people speak English well and most others speak some English. Some of the older black staff members speak only Shangaan and Afrikaans (Afrikaans was compulsory for everyone under Apartheid), but most of the younger blacks speak English as well. Given that the British had a large influence here for a long time, the English spoken here is much more like the Queen’s English than what we hear in the U.S.

So the point of this post is to define some of the commonly used words here. There has been a lot of cross-pollination among the languages so you find many Afrikaans words used in English conversations and vice versa.

General South African words
Lekker – Afrikaans in origin. Literally means “sweets” or “candy”. Used to mean anything good or nice. “The meal was lekker.” Basically anything can be lekker, kind of like using “cool”

Dankie – Afrikaans. Means “thank you”. Probably the funniest story out of this trip so far has revolved around these last two words. Allison asked an older Afrikaans gentleman how he was doing one morning, and he replied “Like my donkey”. Allison wondered for several minutes how it felt to be like a donkey before she realized he said “Lekker, dankie”

Sharp – used by the Shangaan – pronounced “Shop” that means everything is alright, good, cool, whatever

Aish – universal South African term – means “I really screwed up”. Can be used in any context. Dropped the milk “Aish”. Ran off the road into oncoming traffic and caused a ten car pile-up killing a bunch of people “Aish”

Now – This one seems simple - it is not. If I tell you “I’ll do that now” it means that I am basically already physically doing the task. When someone in South Africa tells you “I’ll do that now” it means that they will do it any time in the next several hours. “I’ll meet you just now” means that I’ll see you in a little while, not really now. If someone tells you “I’ll do that now now” you are basically screwed. It will never get done no matter how long you wait.

Cricket – fairly incomprehensible sport that uses a bat and ball like baseball but requires the batter to run after hitting the ball only when he wants to – strange. Players in cricket are called “Slips”, “Points”, “Silly Points”, etc…who comes up with this stuff

Kruger/work related terms
Dam – we call this a reservoir. Here it does not refer to the physical structure that retains water. It refers to the water itself.

Dam wall – the physical structure that retains the dam.

Koppie (sp?)– rocky outcrop

Spruit – stream or small river

Stretcher – a cot used for camping

Cot – a baby’s cradle

Torch – flashlight – I quite like this one.

Ablutions – Toilets – I had never heard this word before coming here.

Panga – machete – likely a Shangaan or Zulu word

Spanner - wrench – very British

Takkies – running shoes – I assume its Afrikaans because don’t understand this one at all.

Driving related terms
Hoot – to honk your car’s horn

Robot – traffic light – no idea where this comes from

Bonnet – hood of your car

Boot – trunk of your car

Windscreen – I call it a windshield

Indicators – turn signals

Petrol – gasoline

Tar road – paved road – When we first got here, Allison spent days looking on the map for this road named “Tar Road”. She couldn’t find it anywhere.

Bakkie – Afrikaans for truck – pronounced “bucky”

Food related terms
Braai – Afrikaans – means to barbecue or grill food – it can be the grill itself, the act of grilling meat, the food, etc. – braaing is an extremely popular thing to do, very South African – a very nice way to end the day. The Afrikaners are very serious about their fires.

Boerewors or wors – farmer’s sausage, pronounced “vurse”– often the most vegetarian thing at your braai – South Africans like meat, lots of meat – A friend here told me “I eat vegetables, you know, chicken and pork”

Biltong – jerky – comes in beef or many game flavors such as kudu, ostrich, gemsbok, impala, etc. quite tasty

Potjiekos – Afrikaans, often shortened to just potjie and pronounced “poykey”– basically a stew – had an oxtail potjie recently that was actually very good, like pot roast

Pap – pronounced “pop or pup” - ground corn dish popular with black Africans - much like grits – consistency varies from thin and runny (porridge) to a very firm dish that is eaten with the fingers – only white corn is popular here and yellow corn is very hard if not impossible to find -quite good with stews and a popular side at braais

Mealies – corn on the cob

Baby marrows – zucchini

Paw paw - papaya

Sosatie – kebab

Sundowners – drinks (beers, ciders, gin and tonics) at the end of the day usually on a koppie to watch the nice sunset

Sunuppers – our version of sundowners but obviously in the morning at sunrise – a little brandy and coke in the morning makes the rest of the day much better

Brandy – very popular liquor with the Afrikaners, very much like rum and not what we think of as brandy

Cool drink – canned soft drinks as in “Do you want cool drink?”

Atchar – pickled fruits and spices that are served on sandwiches, etc. – most popular is mango atchar which is actually made from green mangos – I have no idea why you would ruin a perfectly good mango by picking it green and then pickling it. Gross

Rusks – basically very stale bread cut up into small, almost bite-sized pieces – good with peanut butter but will break teeth if not careful

Marmite – not a fuzzy rodent, that’s marmot – not really South African either but popular on toast, sandwiches, etc– essentially salted yeast extract – absolutely disgusting

Tea – I know all of you know what tea is. Unfortunately, in South Africa, tea is a tasteless, watery drink with lots of milk and sugar - blech. Afrikaners typically like the their hot drinks very weak, and I’m convinced they don’t actually dunk the tea bag in the boiling water but just kind of wave it over the steaming cup of water hoping that as little flavor gets in as possible.

Coffee – See entry for “Tea” – Given that Africa spawned the coffee bean, the coffee here is very disappointing. I tried desperately to convince a woman that I really did want a shot of espresso dumped into a cup of regular coffee – I ended up with espresso diluted with warm water. Honestly, who does that. If you don’t like the taste of coffee, don’t drink it.

You should now be able to successfully navigate your way around South African society when you come to visit.

2007-02-17T21:07:00.000+02:00

Driving in South Africa (or Why I Might Not Make it Back to the U.S.)

Each time I leave Kruger to go shopping for supplies, visit Allison, etc. it is an experiment in suicidal tendencies as I confront my fellow drivers. We all complain about the traffic/drivers in our home towns. Atlanta drivers don’t use turn signals, speed, talk on cell phones, etc. However, the main difference between the US and here, Atlanta drivers don’t pass you around blind curves while going 20mph over the speed limit and playing chicken with a tour bus. That my friend is South African driving.

The road rules are usually mere suggestions. You can stop if you wish but its not really necessary. The no passing lines are really only if you don’t feel like passing…if you do, by all means go ahead and run the guy in front of you off the road as you duck in just before the oncoming traffic smashes you to bits. To top it off, the speed limits here are ridiculous. On a good two-lane road the speed limit is 120kph, that’s 75mph to you and me. Imagine driving 75 on your standard two-lane state highway. Plus, the cops here can’t really give you a ticket unless you are going over 10kph faster than the speed limit, so the functional speed limit is actually 130kph or 81mph. That’s really freakin’ fast and its not uncommon for people to pass you easily going 140 or more. Plus you have to do all this while driving on the wrong side of the vehicle and shifting with the wrong hand. Luckily the pedals aren’t backwards or I wouldn’t have lasted this long.

One of the best ideas here though is that the two-lane roads are really three lanes wide because both sides have very large, paved shoulders. So to pass people, the person in front pulls over slightly into the shoulder while you pull slightly into oncoming traffic. This happens regardless of if there is oncoming traffic or not, and you just hope the guy coming the other way pulls far enough onto his shoulder so that you can pass three-abreast on the road. Its often closer than I’d wish. The peril here is that you could be doing this over a slight rise and there could be a group of people on the should over the rise waiting on the bus, or a cow being a stupid cow, or a herd of goats lazing between eating tin cans, or use your imagination and you will probably see it on the roadsides here (like men peeing, they rarely hide in the bushes but just do their thing right on the side of the road in full view of all passersby).

So if I am to die while here, it won’t be from a lion gnawing my face off or a mauling by a black rhino. Its going to be because I drove my car through a herd of goats while someone passed me going uphill around a blind curve into oncoming traffic during a driving rainstorm.

2007-02-07T14:21:00.000+02:00

The thunder rolls (I’m pretty disappointed that I actually know this is the title of a Garth Brooks song)

Seems like most of my posts recently revolve around rain, or the lack thereof. Well, I was pleasantly awakened at 1:30 this morning by a raging thunderstorm. The rain gods thankfully have stopped their embargo on Satara. We got in the neighborhood of 2 inches overnight which should be more than enough to shift the grasses back into growing mode and fill up the water holes for the animals. I didn’t even have to do a rain dance or sacrifice an impala, but was not far from trying. So now I’m enjoying a pleasant, cool day in my tent working on some manuscripts and letting the roads dry out.

If you have never experienced a thunderstorm from a tent, I highly recommend it. While you can easily sleep through rough weather tucked up in your bed at home, its impossible to ignore a thunderstorm here. The wind billows your tent walls and merrily scatters your dishes around the campground. Streams soon appear where there were none before, like under my porch. The leaks in the tent are strategically placed away from all the important things like my bed, computer, refrigerator, etc. Just a few puddles to clean up in the morning, nothing major. But now the bush is alive. With all the standing water the frogs are having a field day. Sounds like they have all crawled out of their burrows searching for a little love. I can hear at least six different calls as I write. The other animals seem out and about as well. There will surely be a horde of insects out tonight following the rains. I heard a lion call at around 8 this morning which is easily an hour and a half later than they usually stop calling in the morning. Can imagine that thunderstorms are great for hunting.

The thunder is different here from what I’m used to. Here there aren’t as many trees to muffle the crash of thunder like the southeastern forests back home. You understand what rolling thunder really means as it moves in waves across the savanna.

2007-02-02T14:15:00.000+02:00

New Pictures

Hi all I've posted a bunch of new pics on the Flickr website http://www.flickr.com/photos/kruger_park

2007-01-29T08:59:00.000+02:00

Water, water nowhere

We are in the middle of a fairly significant drought here. It hasn’t rained more than a couple of milliliters in almost a month, and this region of Kruger is well below the yearly average for rainfall right now. The bush looks terrible – everything is so brown you would swear it was the dry season not the middle of the rainy season. Fortunately, February is supposed to be the wettest month each year, but Mother Nature has a lot of catch-up to do. Its looking more and more like this field season will be pretty light on good data and that is a little stressful.

At least the experiments are working. For the most part, the different herbivores are staying out of the places they are supposed to stay out of. Although I did see a baby giraffe inside one of the no giraffe exclosures the other day. It was bouncing around like a pinball trying to get out. Eventually it almost closelined itself before flipping underneath the fence. Funny for me, probably not so much for the giraffe.

Its also bloody hot here. If it doesn’t rain, which it doesn’t, then the temp easily gets over 100 degrees. That’s fine. I don’t mind the heat so much. But weeks on end of 100 plus days does get old. When you live in a tent, there is really no escaping it. The fan we have just blows hot air on days like that and it actually makes you feel hotter. The pool here for the tourists is almost like bathwater its so warm so no relief there. The little staff pool is usually pea soup green so you are risking some nasty ear infection there. I usually just stand in the shower to cool off when I can’t stand it any more. I would rather be out in the field during the heat since you can at least take your mind off of it by working, and usually come up with some excuse to go drive around in the air conditioned truck when it tops 106.

It feels strange do be so dependant on the weather. Living in the States, the weather is usually just something we worry about going from the car to our office door. It may impact how we dress for the day or whether or not we grab the umbrella, but I would say the weather’s impact on the average American is fairly minimal each day. We can escape the weather in our air conditioned/centrally-heated houses that don’t leak when it rains and don’t make so much noise when the wind blows that you can’t sleep. There is no luxury like that here. The weather here determines a lot of what you do and when you do it. It gets hot early so we work earlier – starting at 5AM a lot of the time and ending our work day a little after lunch time. My afternoons are free to write or read, but the heat is often so bad that the last thing I can do is string a few coherent sentences together or hold a thought in my head for very long. So productivity here is below average. That said, I rather like being dependant on the weather for the daily routine. It’s a connection with nature that most people don’t get the luxury of having in our modern world. I appreciate that and am trying not to lose sight that perspective when it gets to 111.6 degrees.

2007-01-25T21:38:00.000+02:00

Living Simple(r)

Life here in Kruger is pretty straightforward. Live in a tent, wake up when its light, go to bed when its dark, cook simple meals. The change from living in the middle of 4 million people in Atlanta is very welcome. I wouldn’t exactly call it simple living, but its much simpler than most of what I’m used to, and it will be tough when I have to go back to America later in the year. Tough getting back into more hectic life where any convenience you want is right at your finger tips and its easy to live with much more than you really need.

That said, we obviously have some modern conveniences here in the camp or you wouldn’t be reading my blog and I wouldn’t be emailing people. The internet connection (slow dial-up over the cell phone network) is nice so that I can keep up with family and friends, read about the World Series (GO CARDS!!!), gloat over the mid-term elections (GO DEMS!), and even submit manuscripts for publication. But there are times when it really is an intrusion that I would rather not have. Emailing someone whilst sitting hear listening to lions roar is kind of a strange thing.

Cell phones also are everywhere here as well. Luckily the reception doesn’t go much beyond a 7km radius around the camp, but it is still strange be out in the bush watching zebra or elephant and you get a text message. It definitely detracts from the wildness of this place when you can email home and check your voicemail from your tent. Plus, any time I am feeling short on coffee I can pop by the restaurant next to the shop where we buy food and have an espresso or cappuccino (not that I drink fru-fru coffee) or whatever. While that convenience is nice and really seems to play to the European tourist crowd here, I would really rather not have that. If anything, I would rather be able to get some good Mexican food and a margarita, which, incidentally, is my first meal when I get back to the States. I’ve had that planned for a long time.

So I guess my point is that Kruger is a bundle of contradictions (aren’t we all?). You can get chased by an elephant at 8AM and have your latte while reliving the event at 10AM and then email your family about it at lunch time. Don’t get me wrong, this is definitely African wildness. So says the lion that mock-charged us at the lion capture last night. But there are definitely some rough edges that have been smoothed considerably for the sake of the tourists. I guess its tougher to fund your national park without being able to serve white wine spritzers.

2007-01-23T19:34:00.000+02:00

Why am I here anyway?

I’ve had several people request an explanation of why I am actually in South Africa living in a tent. I probably should have explained this long ago, but better late than never. (For those of you that know why I’m here…talk amongst yourselves…I’ll give you a topic…Barbara Streisand…discuss.)

So my research revolves around how feeding by herbivores (plant eaters) affects the plants that grow in an area (how many, what kind, how big, etc.). But, I’m not just interested in herbivores in general, but how different sized herbivores affect the plant differently. So to test how the different sized herbivores have different effects, I’ve built a ton of fenced in areas that selectively let in herbivores depending on how tall they are. So there are fences that don’t allow in any herbivores (full exclosures), fences that only exclude the largest herbivores such as elephant and giraffe but let in rhino, wildebeest, zebra, impala, warthog, etc, and fences that exclude large and medium sized herbivores such as elephant, rhino, wildebeest, and zebra but let in the smaller herbivores such as impala, warthog, and smaller antelopes.

The reason behind identifying what different sized herbivores do to the plant communities is that when humans start to encroach on natural areas it is usually the biggest animals that are driven (or killed) out of areas first leaving progressively smaller herbivores behind as the human impact increases. What I am trying to learn is how this loss of consumers trickles down to affect the plant communities which can have a large feedback on the health of the ecosystem.

Right now I am spending lots of time counting the plants that are inside the different fences to see if the different sized herbivores are starting to have different effects on the plant communities. It’s hot, muggy, sometimes boring work, but it’s necessary to answer the questions I want to answer. Actually a lot of science is like that - short bursts of fun, exciting work interspersed with long bouts of tedious data collection. That is the nature of the beast however – the price to pay for getting to come to Africa and play around in the wilderness.

2007-01-08T11:23:00.000+02:00

My Lion

Well, I hope my loyal reader(s) had a good Christmas and New Year’s. Sorry I haven’t posted in a while – I’ll try to be a little more consistent in the New Year. It was definitely different being away from family and friends and in 100 degree heat during the holidays. Not having to brace yourself against the cold for a Christmas Day walk is totally new, and I was definitely wishing for a nice cold snap for my Christmas present. But we had fun cooking out, drinking beer and playing Risk (yes we are dorky scientists) over the holidays. On New Year’s eve/morning, we partied with some German tourists that just happened to be camping next to us. We heard them singing German drinking songs just after midnight so we decided to go join in the party. They were an older group so only a few of them spoke English well, but luckily my German is flawless after a couple of beers (or more likely was that my pidgin German/English was at least understandable) so we had a rousing good time. We were already full of beer and wine from our New Year’s feast but the Deutschers insisted upon feeding us whiskey and Amarula cream (a cream liquer) so one member of our group (not me) ended up conversing by just raising their glass and saying “HEY!” I think their hangover ended on January 2nd.

Anyway, I wanted to finish my tales of lion captures. Just before the Christmas we went on a year-end lion capture with Craig (the lion researcher). This capture was different than all the others in that we just staked out a spot, circled the wagons (trucks), and waited for the lions to come to us instead of going after the lions using their radio collar signals. We had a nice cookout and drank beer and brandy while waiting for the lions to come to the bait – nicely dulling the motor skills before you deal with potentially man-eating animals - definitely the way to capture lions. The bait this time was a male zebra that we shot (well Marius the game capture guy shot it). After he killed the zebra, we gutted it and then tied it to the back of the truck and dragged it about 5 kilometers back to the lion capture setup to leave a nicely smelly trail for the lions to follow. We then shackled the zebra to a sturdy fence so that the lions could feed off the zebra close to our site and the vets could dart the lions we needed. Unfortunately the lions would have nothing to do with the free meal. They looked fat and happy like they had fed recently and obviously knew something was up with this too-easy meal.
The next step was to go “fishing” - fishing for lions that is. Once we had hacked of one leg of the zebra and tied it to the back of Craig’s truck, off we drove into the bush to tempt the lions. I was in the truck with the vets ready to dart the first lion that latched onto the zebra leg on Craig’s truck. The willing participant was a huge male lion who held onto the zebra leg so tightly it actually stopped Craig’s truck from moving forward. Once darted the male bounded into the riverine vegetation making him hard to find. Undaunted, we careened through the bush almost driving over the passed-out male before we saw him. It took eight of us to load him into the back of the truck to move him back to the processing station inside the circle of trucks. The vets processed the lion – weight, condition, blood samples, etc. Then I got to collar this big chap. What a great experience being face to face with a 450 pound lion and strapping a collar onto him. Once the collar was secured, the vets gave him the antidote to the drug and the male walked off ignoring the rest of the free zebra. So now I have my very own lion in Africa.

2006-12-15T09:52:00.000+02:00

Lion capture: Part II

I've been meaning to post about the second lion capture we did just before Thanksgiving. Craig (the lion researcher) was after two particular lions so that we could change the GPS collars they were wearing before their batteries went flat which means he would have trouble finding them. The collars themselves are quite cool. They have a GPS unit and cell phone transmitter in them so that when the lions come into cell phone range the collars send the GPS data to Craig's cell phone. Craig then knows where the lions have been since the last time they were in cell phone coverage. Very cool.

Anyway, we started in the late afternoon to try to get the first lion, a lioness, before dark set. Craig knew exactly where she was from the signal from the collar she was wearing so we essentially drove right up to the pride. There were two nice males, about 8 females, and half a dozen cubs in the pride. The vet darted Craig's lioness and then a truck pulled a frozen warthog past the rest of the pride so that they would follow the pig and get away from the lioness that we had to work on. The lions however had different plans and held on as tightly as they could to that warthog. Imagine the image of a landcruiser dragging four cubs and two adults down the road while hanging on to a frozen warthog. When the cruiser got the rest of the pride a safe distance away, the Peter, the vet, told Marius, the head of game capture, that the lioness was plenty asleep. So Marius walks up to the lion to blindfold her and put cotton in her ears to keep stimulation down and keep her calm. Well, when he touched her with the blindfold, she bolt. Not so asleep after all. So we waited for her to be really asleep. Once Marius could drag her around by the tail, he decided that she was asleep enough to blindfold. We did our work - changed the collar, weighed her, took blood samples, etc. Woke her up and she ambled on her sleepy way.

Next up was a separate pride down by the N'wanetsi river that runs close to the Satara camp. There we set up the call in station, the sound of hyenas on a kill that attracts the lions. Then we set up the BBQ and have dinner whilst the lions are being attracted. Sure enough, just after we eat we see and hear a male that had been attracted to the noise. When he fails to get close, Craig and the vets head off into the bush after him - just as it starts to pour rain. They get the male in about 15 minutes and by that time the ground was pure sludge from the rain. Since we were next to a river the water table was high and it took very little rain to make things sloppy. The cruiser with the lion on it pulled up and promptly got stuck. So picture us pushing on the back of the cruiser to get it out of the mud with our faces right next to the maw of a 400 pound male lion. A little disconcerting given that the female ealier had just jumped up and run away when they thought she was asleep. When we get the land cruiser out, the vets decide to move to firmer ground so we move back to one of the gravel roads to process the lion. Craig gets the collar changed, vets take blood samples, etc. When its time to weigh the chap, we have to lift him off of the back of the truck so we can attach the strecther to the block and tackle which is attached to the scale. We lift the lion with Peter, the vet, telling us "Gentle, gentle, easy, be gentle". Well as soon as the first paw hits the ground, the lions eyes pop open and off he bolts right out of our hands as we all scatter. Luckily we have this on film, but its too big to post. The male goes out into the grass and collapses. The vets decide that we'll just weigh him out there. As we are trying to roll him over on the stretcher, the lion is growling at us but can't work up enough strength to do anything about it. After the fifth growl, the vets decide that we didn't really need to weigh him and gave him the antidote to wake him up. Good decision.

After that we were all keyed up and excited and wound down with brandy and coke's back on the tar road under the stars and scraped the mud off our shoes. I think that's the last time the vet's will use the "experimental" drugs.

2006-12-07T12:45:00.000+02:00

I just posted some new pics on the Flikr website. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kruger_park

Here are a few random things from the past couple of weeks. Didn’t have the concentration to try to spin a good yarn, but here you go anyway.

- Came across a cheetah walking down the center of the main tar road the other evening (animals like to use the roads when they can because its less wear on their feet). We were within about a yard or so of it as it walked right next to the truck. It darted ahead of us and then jumped up on a concrete signpost and proceeded to spray it with urine to mark its territory. Then it hopped down and sauntered into the bush.

- I happened across a pair of mated lions the other day. They walked up onto the road in front of me – female in front as she sauntered in front of the male and kind of waggled her hips in his face. The she swizzled her tail around and flapped him with it to entice him. He walked up and bit at her nape then nuzzled and licked her flanks. Unfortunately, the mood wasn’t quite right so they just walked off into the bush before the magic moment happened. I ran into the same couple just two days ago lying in the middle of the road catching some earlier morning sun. When the female got up to walk off, the male quickly got in front of her to block her path and let out a low growl. She promptly laid back down with the male at her side.

- Allison saw a black mamba around our tent while I was out in the field the other day. Mambas are one of the deadliest and most aggressive snakes in Africa. In some parts it is called the “twos-step snake” because you only get two steps before you die once you’ve been bitten. This is of course not true, but bites are very serious, causing paralysis and respiratory failure, and people usually only survive them by being put on respirators for days to weeks. Allison only saw about 2-3 feet of the snake, but this was the 2-3 feet that was raised off the ground trying to catch birds in the low brush. Since mambas can raise about 1/3 of their body off the ground, this snake was probably pushing 9 feet, which is not a big mamba. She was quite stoked – me, not so much. Sharks and lions I can handle being around. Snakes, no thanks. Hopefully it was just passing through.

- Just yesterday, I was taking my crew out to our field site when we run into several cars stopped on the tar road. This usually means lions so I slowed down so we could see what was happening. As I get closer I see a very strangely shaped creature walking down the tar road towards us so I stop to let this strange beast walk past. As it gets closer, I can see that it’s a big, female hyena (probably the matriarch of her clan as she was obviously nursing), but she was carrying the top part of the skull of a zebra that was still attached to about half the vertebral column of the animal. It was almost as long as her and still covered with a bit of meat. Probably breakfast for her cubs or just trying to get away from the other greedy hyenas that were following her down the road.

- Went on two different lion captures recently and got a female and two big males. One of the male capture has a great story that I will post in a couple of days.

2006-11-27T20:57:00.000+02:00

Dancing with Jumbo

Elephants are everywhere here. You can’t help but see them when you go out on drives. We hear them all the time outside the camp fences rustling around and trumpeting to each other. They are always around our field sites. One even snuck up on me the other day. He was about 60 meters away when I looked up and realized he was there. Luckily he didn’t give a rip about me and went on his merry way or the interaction could have been more interesting. You wouldn’t think that something that big could sneak up on anything.

On my trips back and forth to Skukuza, I almost always see elephants, often close to the side of the road as it runs next to several rivers and elephants like foraging around the river beds. On my last trip back to Satara, I was minding my own business watching baby impala out the window (all the animals are having young now that spring has sprung) when I see a big bull elephant walking down the road towards me in the opposite lane. He’s a good kilometer (2/3 mile) away so I stop the truck and pull out my camera thinking I’ll get some great close-up pics as he walks by me. So I’m snapping away until he gets to about 75 feet from the truck when he decides to switch lanes and start walking right towards me. The elephants here have been known to do some nasty damage to the hoods of vehicles so I throw it in reverse and start backing down the road and pull into the opposite lane of oncoming traffic (there was none at the time if you discount Jumbo). Now the big bull is a good 200 feet away and in the opposite lane still moving towards me. Just when I get my camera back out to take pictures he changes lanes again to come straight at me. I quickly shift back into reverse and change lanes again. We do this little dance a couple of more times with the elephant changing lanes to take me head on and me trying my best to get out of his way.

Finally, I’ve had enough and decide to see what happens if Jumbo actually makes it to the front of my truck. So after I reverse into the opposite lane I just stop. Sure enough, the bull changes lanes and walks right up to within 10 feet of my hood. Towering over the truck. He flairs his ears and shakes his head back and forth while letting out a tremendous growl, not a trumpet, but a growl. I do nothing except take his picture. I guess this wasn’t the response he was looking for and decided I could no longer be intimidated so he just politely stepped off the road into the bushes and began eating. Fun time with the tourist was over. When I finally bothered to look down the road in front and behind me, there were tourist cars stopped well back on both sides surely enjoying my little dance.

2006-11-21T11:34:00.000+02:00

When writing my last blog entry, I forgot to mention the darker side of the prevalence of predation here in Kruger – the human side.

First a little background. Poverty in this part of Africa is quite high as I’m sure most of you know. The division between rich and poor is astronomical and the unemployment here often reaches 50% in some of the areas just outside of Kruger. Despite the poverty in this part of the country, there are people from Mozambique that want to come into South Africa to work the fruit harvests. (Mozambique forms the eastern border of the Kruger Park, and our tent is about 25-30 kilometers from the border). When fruit harvest time rolls around, illegal immigrants from Mozambique walk across the Lebombo mountains which form the eastern park border and walk across the Kruger Park from east to west. When they reach the western border of the park, they cut holes in the fence to get outside the park and hopefully find work picking fruit.

While walking across a mountain range (it’s more like really tall hills) sounds like the most challenging part to this story, that’s really only the beginning of their challenge. Once the immigrants get into Kruger, they must run the gauntlet of lions, elephants, buffalo, hippo, and other large, very cross creatures that must turn their walk into a fearful trek. This may be fine and good during the day when they are walking and the animals, especially lions, are at their laziest. But I can’t imagine what their nights must be like. Sleeping in trees to avoid lions. Walking during the night to avoid the heat of the day hoping you don’t run into a leopard out on the hunt. In constant fear of surprising elephants, rhinos, or buffalos which could end your dreams of a job to feed your family in short work.

This story was all kind of abstract to me until I was talking with one of our collaborators here who told me about some of her friends who work in the northern part of the park where a lot of the immigrants cross the Kruger. They say that every year many people walking from Mozambique lose their lives to lions and other predators in the park and that they can tell, on sight, whether or not a lion has killed and eaten a human. Supposedly the lions have a different look, a different air about them, after eating a person. Hearing that definitely spooked me a little and made the whole thing a little more real.

Well reality really set in, when we were working in the field the other day, far away from the camp or any other human habitation - I found a shoe. An old, ragged, tattered shoe, a cheap sneaker, that had been ripped apart at the seams. Just one shoe, nothing else. Maybe someone just lost a shoe while walking through the park to go pick fruit. It got torn up and just wouldn’t stay on anymore. Maybe the lone shoe has a more dramatic story to it. I don’t know. But I haven’t been able to forget the image of that shoe since. Every time the image pops into my head it reminds me of how poverty can drive people to do things that I can only imagine.

2006-11-17T08:45:00.000+02:00

The Killing Fields

It is almost impossible to walk around the bush here without coming across zebra jawbones, wildebeest and buffalo skulls, and giraffe bones. It’s a pretty stark reminder of how prevalent the predators, particularly lions, are around here. As an ecologist I know that predation is an important part of ecosystems that regulates herbivore populations and in turn affects how the composition of the plant community. But, knowing that and actually being around big animals that kill each other are two vastly different things. It’s even different from the marine systems I’ve worked on where fish usually eat each other whole and its rare to find fish bones lying around on the bottom. There are no fish kill sites for instance that you run across and know that a grouper had his meal here this morning. Its much different here in Kruger with bones strewn about everywhere. For example, the nice set of kudu horns we found along the road one morning on a drive down one of the rivers near Satara. And just the other week I saw a hyena running around with a big hunk of warthog in its jaws. But, I’ve yet to actually see a kill happen, and probably won’t, but here’s hoping one day.

The closest I’ve been was last week when I happened across two male lions that had just killed a zebra in an area right next to one of our research plots. The kill was right next to one of the fire break roads in the area we were working so we got to sit in our truck literally 10 feet away from the two lions lazing under the tree with their kill. The two had already eaten their fill that morning so they had huge distended bellies and were just lolling around under the tree not really moving. All they could do was pant in their misery – looked kind of like most of us do after a good Thanksgiving meal. I honestly think you could have run up and smacked them on the bum and made it back to the truck with no problem these guys were so lazy. (And every one here is obsessed with seeing lions, but I’m convinced they are the laziest animals on the planet. They must sleep 90% of the time. If you see them up and moving it’s a real treat.)

Yesterday, my team and I were out at one of our field sites setting up transects to survey herbivore dung abundance (Insert your own joke here). We were walking along through the bush when we flush a big group of vultures off a wildebeest carcass. It was quite fresh, probably killed the morning before, with the head still attached to the ribcage. About twenty feet away was the hide and hooves that had been stripped off the carcass. While we were going about our business setting the transects, the smell of the kill followed us everywhere. There is nothing like the smell of a rotting carcass in the bush. It’s a pungent sickly sweet smell that really lingers in your nose and jumps onto your clothes to last you a little while. Even though we found the carcass early in the morning, the smelled stayed with me until mid-afternoon.

2006-11-17T08:43:00.000+02:00

I posted some new pics on the Flickr website http://www.flickr.com/photos/kruger_park

2006-11-13T14:07:00.000+02:00

"That's Africa Baby!"

This is my new catch phrase. After the fourth time of trying to get money to pay our work crew and failing (this was a couple of weeks ago), the other post-doc on the project looks at me and says "T.A.B". When I give him a quizzical look that says "are you speaking English?", he says "That's Africa Baby - T.A.B." Its the basic explanation of what happens when things go wrong in your day - as they often do when two or more people are involved in a project here. So when things go wrong now, its T.A.B. - just like it comes with the territory (or the continent I guess).

Have to hold the comuter printer drawer in so that it won't shoot paper across the room when you print - T.A.B.

Your work gloves fall apart after one day in the field - T.A.B.

The hardware store give you fencing standards with no holes in them, then acts like you are crazy that such a thing would happen - T.A.B.

Can't finish building your experiments because there is a NATIONAL SHORTAGE OF FENCING STANDARDS - you guessed it T.A.B.

It just kind of somes up working here in some respects. Not that I am not enjoying myself and the field work. The extra challenges just make things a little more interesting and unpredictable.

I'll try to post some more pictures to the Flikr site on Friday when I'm back down in Skukuza.

2006-11-02T20:30:00.000+02:00

Cheers to Rain

On Monday, after it topped 106 degrees, we had the first real rain here in more than a month. It broke a streak of several 100 degree days in a row and dropped the temp 25 degrees in about 3o minutes. In celebration I grabbed a beer from the fridge and stood out in the blissful shower to revel in it. And yes Dad I don't have good enough sense to come in out of the rain.

2006-10-27T11:48:00.000+02:00

Sylvester and Friends

Our tent is nicely situated in a brushy/wooded area of the tourist camp as the picture I posted earlier kind of showed. It’s a lekker (Afrikaans for good or sweet) spot to be sure. The best thing about our spot is the diversity of animal life that hangs around our place. Every day Allison gets a visit from the family of Natal Francolins while I’m out working. Francolins are essentially big quail, and we have a whole family that hops up onto our porch and begs for food. There is also a pair of Crested Francolins that come running for a handout when they hear me pour my granola in the morning. (As I sit on the porch writing this, Zeb the Zebra Mouse just ran through the yard). Harry the Yellowbilled Hornbill likes to catch pieces of banana that I throw at him. Morty the Masked Weaver has built a nice hanging nest in one of the Acacia trees right next to the tent and signs in his raspy, cough-like, somewhat annoying rattle every morning. (Actually, he has built three different nests. The first two were torn down by the females he was courting – inferior craftsmanship to be sure. He seems to have gotten it right this time though.). Hendrick the Honey Badger shows up from time to time and trots through the yard in search of trash cans to knock over. At night we often see Ginny the Genet climbing around the trees looking for reptiles and birds. Allison even found her on the porch one night rifling our trash, and one evening Ginny sat in the tree next to the tent and watched us eat dinner before slinking off into the darkness.

Ned and Nan the Naughty Squirrels are our constant nemesis. Turns out this pair of ground squirrels were hand raised in our tent a while back by some previous researchers. So they think our tent is home. They are quite fond of avocados, peanuts, and pasta with tomato sauce (go figure), and I returned from the field one day to find the avos inside my tent with nice teeth and claw marks in them. The next day Allison wakes from a nap to find Nan inside the tent. She tries to chase Nan out but Nan can’t remember how to get out so the two of them do laps around the tent before Nan hides under some of our gear. Allison decides to wait her out and pulls up a chair to read a book. An hour and a half later, I come home from the field to find Allison waiting on Nan. She tells me how the whole thing unfolded and I think surely the squirrel has escaped the tent unnoticed so I start digging around the equipment pile for Nan. Sure enough right under a sleeping bag is Nan hunkering down for all she’s worth. I make a move to shoo her out and she leaps into the air, lands on Allison’s leg, and bounds out of the tent flap. Thoroughly traumatized, Nan has yet to return to the tent. Ned however finished the leftover pasta primavera from the other night.

Sylvester the Slender Mongoose is the star of the show. Unfortunately, most of the stories about Sylvester are all related to my by Allison as I’m usually in the field when he performs, so I will try to do them justice. Sylvester is quite a character. Our tent is on his daily route through the camp, and he usually comes sauntering up the path, stops, looks at us, and carries on his merry way looking for things to eat. One day, Allison was feeding Terry the Leopard Tortise some cabbage in the yard when Sylvester runs up the path, hops onto Terry’s back, looks around, and trots off. I guess good vantage points are hard to come by, and Terry didn’t even seem to be aware of his status as a lookout post – too busy stuffing his face. The most entertaining moment also happened when I wasn’t around the day that Sylvester walked right up to the front of the tent, sat down, and started licking himself not 10 feet from Allison. After he was properly groomed and feeling frisky, he strolls over to a piece of pipe that’s in our yard and proceeds to hump it from every conceivable direction (so says my wife). While I’m sure he was just scent marking his territory, it could be that female mongoose companionship is just difficult to find.

So life here is just as interesting inside the camp without the lions, wildebeest, and elephants.

2006-10-25T10:25:00.000+02:00

Welcome to Africa my friend

Thought I would take the opportunity of being around fast internet to post a couple fo times.

The last couple of weeks have been rather hectic. We are in the middle of building all of the exclosures that I will be using for my research for the next couple of years. To build all of these animal exclosures (120, 7 meter diameter fences) we have hired a local work crew of guys about 20-25 years old. They are amazingly hard workers and just blast through building the cages in 40 degree C heat (that's 104 degrees F to us metrically-challenged Americans). One of the hardest things for me is that we pay them about $15 a day to work. While this is a good wage for this work in South Africa, its hard to pay them so little when I could easily pay them more. I was asking one of the crew what he does for a job when he doesn’t work for us and he said he didn’t have one. When our building was over, he said he would just be sitting at home but that he desperately wants a job as a game tracker, but can’t afford to get more training or a drivers license. He’s a bright, young guy that really knows the bush and would be excellent as a tracker so it really hurts to see him without the opportunity to follow his dreams that you and I take for granted. It makes me want to drag out the exclosure building for much longer so that they will have jobs, but I won’t because I have to do my job and get the research done.

The work has definitely been frustrating at times. The worst is working at Scientific Services in Skukuza (the main rest camp in Kruger). We’ve had a bugger of a time getting money to pay our work crew to build exclosures, get access to our webmail websites (they actually blocked my Yale email after I had been using it for three weeks), and in general organizing anything. Everything is twice as complicated and half as efficient as I am used to, and it seems that the bureaucracy is denser here than in the US. I spent several minutes complaining to one of my friends in Satara who does game viewing drives for the park about the inefficiency, etc. and his reply was “Welcome to Africa my friend”. So I’ve been trying to cultivate a more detached attitude. Everything will happen in its own time (certainly not on my schedule), all the exclosures will get built (even if our fencing supplier brings us crappy materials), and the data will be collected, but its damn frustrating working here at times. Well, doing the actual work is fun, challenging, and rewarding, but actually getting ourselves in the position to do the work is the frustrating part.

With that rant behind me, we had a brilliant couple of days last week. Made one trip down to Skukuza for supplies and saw lions, elephants, rhinos, buffalo, and leopard all in one drive. On Sunday, we went for sundowners (drinks at the end of the day) on a rocky hill near one of our research sights. As we were climbing the rocks, we noticed a herd of elephant on the other side of the outcrop. We were only about 10 meters away from several of them before they noticed us and loped off. There were in total 40 members of the herd, with lots of young and three big bulls following the mostly female herd. Fantastic. We were lucky we were actually on the outcrop when we saw them as elephants don’t climb rocks well. Otherwise it would have been a rather tense situation being that close to elephants on foot. One of the sayings around here is that no one gets injured by an elephant (meaning if an elephant gets to you it kills you, usually by kneeling on you and crushing you). On our drive back from the outcrop we saw three white rhinos at close range and a leopard up a tree. A magnificent day.

2006-10-25T09:18:00.000+02:00

I got a chance to post a few pictures on Flickr. The website is http://www.flickr.com/photos/kruger_park/

Cheers
Deron

2006-10-21T16:30:00.000+02:00

Sorry that I’m such a lazy blogger. I apologize to all of the both of you that read this.

Got to go help on a lion capture the other night with one of the other researchers in camp who is studying lion predation patterns in the Kruger. He needed to change the radio collars he had on a couple of the lions before they went dead. We went out about an hour before sun down to set up the lion darting station which consisted of a couple of trucks, a big block and tackle to weigh the lions, a cadre of vets and their staff to monitor the lions’ condition, and a huge loudspeaker that played calls of hyenas on a kill and a baby buffalo in distress that is used to attract the lions. The lion guy had a reasonable beat on his pride from the radio collar so he and the game capture team drove out into the bush to dart the lion and haul it back to the darting station where they would change the collar, take blood samples, weigh the lion, etc. They got a nice sized lioness, about 320 pounds. What a beautiful creature. Amazingly muscular. Its difficult to imagine living with the threat of being stalked and eaten by something like that.

They were trying a new drug that theoretically let them bring the lion out from the tranquilizer within about 10 minutes whenever they wanted as opposed to the old way of just letting it wear off over about an hour or more. With the old way they had to keep watch on the lion while it was coming out so that hyenas wouldn’t kill it. So when they wanted to wake it, we hauled it to the edge of the bush and they pushed the antidote. After about six minutes, the lioness stood up, looked around the trotted off to find her mates – none the worse for wear. Very cool.

After they finished changing the collar on that lioness, we tracked a second pride with little luck. So we stopped to play the hyena and buffalo tape to try to draw them in. Well before we got all that set up my wife, Allison, had to go have a wee in the bushes. The vet staff assured her it would be fine since they hadn’t started calling in the animals yet and they even shined a light around in the bushes before she went it. Well as soon as she gets in there to do her business, they start playing the lion attractor. Just a few seconds after that we hear from behind the bushes “hyena”…”Hyena!”… “HYENA!!” Turns out a small male hyena had snuck to within about 10 feet of Allison. She stayed surprisingly calm, stood up and just shooed the hyena away. Hyenas are nervous animals so it just kind of scuttled off but came back to check out her scent. Since hyenas are her favorite animal, she was pretty stoked about the whole encounter especially when the vets decided they wanted to try a new drug on the hyena so they chased it down and darted it.

Hyenas are amazing creatures. Pound for pound it took 50% more drug to take down the hyena than the lion, and the hyena took 23 minutes to go down versus 3 for the lion. The vets did their thing on the hyena, weight, blood samples, etc and Allison got to pet it which pleased her no end. But the hyena had the last laugh. We were all standing within a few feet of the hyena when the vets gave the antidote to the drug. The hyena awoke and just sat there not really knowing what was going on. After several minutes it stands up and squats to take a giant pee on the stretcher the vets had used to weigh it and then runs off. Score one for hyena-kind.

2006-10-07T15:40:00.000+02:00

You can be a vegetarian in South Africa, but only if you eat lamb, steak, and sausage

Although not a vegetarian, I can imagine being one here is tough and I’ve eaten more meat in the last three weeks than I have in the last few years of my life. One of the other researcher’s father has been around the last week and we’ve done quite a bit of braiing (that’s barbecueing to those Americans out there). Typically you get steak and potatoes with cheese wors (a wurst) as the side salad. Or you get a couple of different type of wors as the appetizer and then lamb chops for the main course. It’s as if the South Africans must keep their cholesterol levels from falling below a certain level. The only vegetables on the menu are the ones that the Americans bring to the dinner table. That said all that meat is darn good. South Africans know their way around a grill and the meat here is fantastic. One of my favorite treats so far is biltong and dry wors which are both variations on what we think of as jerky. Very nicely spiced and it comes in every type of animal you could think of, kudu and gemsbok (both types of antelope), beef, ostrich, etc. The kudu is fantastic. Unfortunately, they are also beautiful, majestic animals – think white-tailed deer face with huge curled horns and beautifully striped coat (See the pic with the post). Allison refuses to eat them.

We’ve secured a nice permanent tent here in Satara that belonged to a now defunked program studying tuberculosis in the buffalo here. It’s quite nice with a wooden floor, nice porch and is surrounded by trees and shrubs (See pic). Have a nice gas-fueled triple burner stove and refrigerator. We typically get visits from honey badgers, mongoose, genets, lots of different birds, hares, tortoise, etc. We go to sleep to the sounds of hyenas calling most nights and hear lions from time to time. Makes for a pretty nice home.

Stay tuned. Next post is about a recent lion capture I went on.

2006-09-26T09:51:00.000+02:00

Hakuna Matata means it’s great not being dinner

We’ve been here over two weeks now and have seen some interesting things. African fish eagles courting by latching talons and spiraling towards the ground in a “death spiral”. Teenage elephants mock fighting in a river. A hyena that stalked our hut because it thought we would throw it bones. A herd of 250+ buffalo in the road for a good 20 minutes. But the lions chasing the warthog are hands down the winner.

Day 4 in the park. We are driving to Satara (our base camp) from Skukuza (the main rest camp for the park). It’s evening about 5:30, 30 minutes before the gates close to the camp that will essentially shut us outside for the night, or at least get us a good yelling to as they let us in. We see this warthog come tearing out of the bush and streak down the road as a lioness explodes from the roadside takes a swipe at the warthog, misses and then does a cartwheel onto the road. As the warthog hauls it down the tar road, the rest of the lion pack (seven in all) saunter onto the tar road right in front of us and proceed to lay down completely unconcerned about the cars on either side of them. After 10 minutes or so, something in the bush peaks their interest and six of the seven fan out on one side of the road, crouched and tails twitching. A lone female stayed on the road as a stop gap in case their query decided to make an end run.

I wish I could say this story ended with a nice gory kill from the lions but they eventually strolled off into the bush to find another appetizer – Pumba was spared to hog another day. But, the lioness cartwheel definitely wins for animal entertainment so far, and we even made it back to camp with five minutes to spare.

2006-09-13T09:31:00.000+02:00

Finally in Africa. Have spent the last few days in the main rest camp here in Kruger getting paperwork signed, finding our equipment, etc. Kruger is a pretty wild place. You can sit at a restaurant and have a latte, drink a glass of wine, and have a pizza while watching hippos play in the river. Stark contrast indeed. It really hits your brain on a different level that you are in one of the wildest parks on the planet but can have just about any modern convenience that you want in the rest camps. It's good for blogging but not quite as "wild" as I expected. That said, you drive out the gates and see giraffes, baboons, kudu, impalas, and warthog and you know you're in the bush.

So Allison and I are off to our home for the next several months. We leave the main rest camp (Skukuza) today and head to Satara, the rest camp that we will be living in. Its about a two hour drive north and home to the largest concentration of lions in the park. So that should make for some interesting field work. Looking forward to getting into work. All of the runup and paperwork, etc. has kind of gotten me down and I'm ready to get settled and down to work. Will post again in a couple of weeks when we are back to internet access. Hopefully will have some good pics by then. Cheers!

2006-09-07T02:21:00.000+02:00

Now we're down to the last minute craziness. Packing, re-packing, and having mild panic attacks wondering what in the world I've gotten myself into going half-way across the world to live in a tent and chase animals around the bush. I CAN'T WAIT!

2006-08-15T08:12:00.000+02:00

The adventure starts on September 8 with a flight from Fayetteville, AR to Johannesberg, SA. Stay tuned for updates.