29 June 2016

I am have received confirmation that we can get enough time off to travel to Cape Macclear  this weekend and sleep over.  I am very excited about this, as on the way we will pass through the Chongoni Rock Art Area.  This is located in the Central Region of Malawi and consists of 127 sites in the forested hills of the Malawi plateau with depictions of rock art and paintings of the farmer community of the Late Stone Age and the Iron Age period.

The rock arts are in granite formations and consist of art depictions attributed to the hunter gatherer community of BaTwa who lived here during the stone age period, and of the farming community of Chewa who are traced to the Iron Age period. In view of this cultural importance, the area was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006 under Criteria III for the rich cultural traditions of rock art and Criteria VI for its continued link to the present society. The rock art symbolizing rituals and ceremonies is mostly the creation of the women folk of Chewa clan, Chechewa is still the language most commonly spoken throughout Malawi.

Cape Macclear is supposed to be exceptionally beautiful, and again there should be an opportunity to snorkel.  Yanni and I both enjoyed this last time, and I can’t wait to be able to do it again.  So roll on the weekend!

27 June 2016

Had another happy morning observing the lions, and an afternoon chopping up vegetables and then taking them around with Malawi staff to feed the animals. One of the main Malawi staff is currently off sick.  It seems to be normal here that a European employer will not just pay a staff member wages, but also cover his/her family for medical treatment.  The Lilongwe Sanctuary also has a scheme whereby they will pay towards education for any children of staff employees who wish to work in the area of conservation. So the employment package for employees is very substantial when compared to normal employment ‘contracts’ here in Malawi.

Chico has a pain in his shoulder and he is being taken to hospital by taxi through LWT. Most treatment is related to malaria, which is frequently a problem with volunteers and staff alike.  Malawi’s are not immune to malaria, and in fact it is a common cause of death.  It’s hard to know why as one might assume someone who have always lived in Malawi and been constantly exposed to the virus might become immune to it, but that doesn’t seem to happen.  In the past month I think we’ve had about 10 staff off with malaria, and sick leave tends to vary according to the individual case.  Many will get a relatively mild dose of malaria and will recover after a 3 day course of medication prescribed through the GP, A&E or 24 hour clinic. The cost of such treatment is usually about 3,000 Malawi kwacha, which is about £3.  This is of course far above the means of many Malawi’s, so most of the treatment is given to other nationals working here for whatever reason.  Ayinka, who is a vet from Jamaica doing work experience here for a few months, had a nasty bout about a month ago and had to be given 2 doses of medication, and recovered much more slowly. The main vet here who is African born and bred has a nasty bout of it recently.  And several volunteers from abroad have had it too. The key to recovery is very swift treatment, the problem with this being that the symptoms are so wide ranging it’s not necessarily easy to spot.  On principal, though, if anyone feels unwell or has a temperature they are automatically taken to the clinic straight away and tested.  It can be a real problem.

Happily for us, Yanni and I are healthy and well, and have avoided any significant tummy problems or anything like malaria.  Fingers crossed this continues!

Friday 24 June 2016

Last night I received a message from my good friend Eddie Small from Dundee Uni to say that Jim Stewart, my old tutor, lecturer and friend died in the early hours of this morning.  While the world seems to be going mad about Brexit, I have a Jexit to fill my mind. Jim came to see Arie in Ward 32 when he was ill, and it seems very odd that Ward 32 is where Jim ended up so soon after Arie’s passing.  Jim was transferred to Roxbrough House, a hospice, in Dundee, and that's where he died this morning.

I'll add a photo of Jim as soon as I can.

Thu 23 June 2016

I had a really enjoyable time with the lions this morning, and have posted some photos below.

This afternoon Yanni and I went to an adult literacy class.  It took us almost an hour to reach a school in a very remote area. A village of sorts has been erected, and the main occupation of the adults is subsistence farming.  It was easy to see that the villagers were extremely poor and lived very hard lives.  There were about 20 adults aged between 30-60, and they were learning basic reading and writing in Chichewa, and basic numbers.  They did exercises on the blackboard, filling in missing numbers in a sequence, then some basic adding, taking away, multiplication and division. The women seemed keen to take part, and would often stand at the board working the sums out on their fingers.  Every single one of them got the right answer, and they were delighted with this too.  At the end of the afternoon they all stood up and sang a thank you to us, which was very touching.  I have added some photos, and will try to attach a video so you can see it for yourself.

Tuesday 21 June

We returned to work after our wonderful weekend safari.  Here we found that there has been a problem over the past week with some turtles.  A man running a Chinese restaurant in Lilongwe was found to be breeding turtles, which is illegal, added to which he was obviously causing the turtles great distress as most of them were dead.  The only one found alive was transported here last week, while the would-be breeder was arrested.  Unfortunately the turtle did not do well - he put on weight overnight the first night when he was placed in a large container with water, and it was assumed this was because he was very dehydrated. But he refused to eat. Of course, it is very difficult to tell what is wrong with a turtle.  Their shell is very protective, so it’s not possible to check for inflamed internal organs, or an internal injury that might be the result of abusive treatment. After consulting marine experts, it was also felt that a failure to eat could be related to trauma, shock, or just fear of us.  It was decided therefore that as he is a Malawi turtle his best chance for survival was to be released back into the wild.  He was taken to Liwange National Park and released in a small pond there where his species of turtle thrive, but was found dead several days later.

We have now received another 3 turtles, from a different source this time, and we are adapting an enclosure for them.  It has a good sized pond, and the larger and middle turtles seem to be able to climb in and out as they wish.  The smallest hasn’t climbed out yet, that could be because he can’t or won’t, again perhaps fear of us.  So today we have been building a slide of natural local stone that he will be able to climb on, and a bed of sand to entice him to rest.  They have a good diet of fish and snails, with access to all sorts of wild insects growing in the plants around their enclosure.  We are considering putting someone on turtle observation, which has to be the most tedious job in the world!  We want to see that the little one can get in and out, and that they are all eating.  And obs would have to be done via a hole in the bamboo fencing so they are not frightened by our presence.  I am happy to say that I am trained for lion obs, so suspect someone else will have the happy task of watching this lot.

Meanwhile, Yanni is continuing to enjoy caring for Bird, who has left his little box several times and hopped around his enclosure.  He is now usually found inside his box or perched on top of it, the lord of all he surveys.  His look is still terrifyingly severe, and as he has grown he has become more able to struggle and fight off the vet who wants to weigh him to check he is putting on weight.  His aggression is of course a very good sign, as if he were to become humanized he may approach a human/humans after release and so be killed or captured for sale on the illegal pet market.  He is due to learn to fly soon, and we think he is possibly gearing up to it - so maybe soon we will see him jump down from the box and give it a go.  Once he can fly and so keep himself reasonably safe, we can look at places he can be released.  I know that with monkeys we gradually introduce them to a troupe of monkeys of the same species, and once their relationships have stabilized within that troupe, and they have learned appropriate social and browsing behavior, they can all be released together.  I doubt that can be done with the eagle, however, as they tend to live either alone or in pairs, so we await with bated breath to hear what can be done.

Bird

Monday 20 June

Up early to head back to the Sanctuary today.  We stopped off at a textile production facility and saw many beautiful fabrics being made, see below:

Here are some of their beautiful designs:

We got through the Zambian boarder without too much difficulty, and arrived back at the Sanctuary for bed time.

Monday 13 June

This morning Yanni and I were down to help with a kids activity. WILD KIDZ is a program that takes place every year about this time.  We had 21 kids between about 5-10 years old. The program was to raise awareness of conservation issues by teaching essential bush skills in an Eco friendly way.  So today we taught the following:

How to collect water in the bush
You will need 3 things:
A medium sized plastic tub
A strip of black plastic bin liner
Half a dozen medium sized stones.

Then you need to take 3 steps:
Dig a hole slightly larger than the tub and put the tub inside
Cover the tub with the black bin liner
Place stones on the plastic to stop it blowing off
We did this, and tomorrow will come back to see how much water we have collected.

How to camouflage yourself in the bush
How to build a shelter in the bush
We were to go into the woods to collect items that could be used to camouflage ourselves; and some items to build a shelter with.  By the way, here are some pictures we showed the kids of animals camouflaging themselves - I loved these, and invite you to see if you can spot the animals.

Then we led 21 small kids into the woods, happy, excited, eager to collect leaves and long branches and sticks, bits of moss and twigs and what not.  While the girls screamed at the sight of any insects and picked only flowers, my boys dived into the woods and fought their way back out with massive branches, bamboo sticks and the like.  I was very happy with this until half way through when a wretched child that was not even in my group wandered aimlessly over to me and then stepped too close to an electric fence and shocked himself.  Shocked me too, screaming like that.  A woman at my time of life should not be given shocks, it could be dangerous, I could have had a heart attack.  Little beast was too busy screaming to think about things from my perspective.  He even set the lions off - which scared the rest of the kids - so they started screaming - just what I needed. Meanwhile all the adults were looking at me as if they expected me to solve the problem.   In the end I picked him up to stop the yelling, and he’s lucky I didn’t obey my instincts and strangle him on the spot.  Stupid boy.  Still, no permanent damage to the child, at least nothing that can be proved and we could be sued for.   Got the rest of kids back in one piece, and  stored our big sticks for tomorrow when we will make a shelter out of them.

The kids had a period of play, and as ever the termite mound was a huge success. It’s ironic that a lot of money has been spent to provide a good children’s play area with a slide, wooden house on stilts, swing set, metal speed boat with steering wheel, old tire climbing frame, and other such delights, and when faced with the whole playground the kids rush as one man to the termite mound and start trying to climb it.  Here are some pictures:

Kids climbing termite hill

Eschewed play house

I noted again that the toilet was in a revolting state.  We have cleaners who come every day so I couldn’t understand why the toilet is in such a filthy mess.  I found out today.  The problem is that we have a western flushing toilet, and many of the kids have never seen one before, so they have been standing on the toilet seat and relieving themselves from this position.  No wonder the place is awash with unmentionables.  Perhaps I can put an electric fence around the toilet and put a ‘how to use the toilet’ poster with step by step instructions, and the threat to electrocute anyone who causes pee or poop to come into being anywhere other than inside the toilet.  I shall give this more thought.

In the afternoon I had lion obs, my favorite activity other than feeding Frank, my little blue monkey.  Frank is such a pretty little monkey, but he is very nervous and fearful.  We had to change the teat on his bottle the other day and he has refused to feed since.  He will sniff the teat, and may even stick out his tongue and lick the milk from the beat, but he wont suckle.  His feeds are taking hours instead of minutes.  But the silver lining is that I get to sit and watch him and his foster mother, Gaia, as they play between short feeding sessions.

Tomorrow Yanni and I are scheduled to work with the Wild Kidz again in the morning.  Which we will look forwards to no end.

Sunday 19 June

We had great excitement when asleep in our tents last night.  I heard something very large moving about, and being curious, took a quick peak outside.  An enormous hippopotamus was browsing for food nearby our tent, and then moved to the side of it.  A very powerful spotlight came on suddenly, and shone on the hippos face, at which it moved away, obviously disliking the light.  The powerful beam stayed in place, however, and the hippo shifted further away again.  Before long, the hippo had moved away from the tents and on out of the facilities.  All good news, because I was longing to wee and did not fancy having to ask him to move out of the way.

I asked the owner of the lodge this morning if such visits by wild animals often happen.  He says it is extremely common, and the reason he has staff on duty 24/7/365.  He told us last week an enormous bull elephant appeared in the grounds, and decided he would browse for food around the bushes by the site’s bar/living room.  I asked how he got rid of it, and he assured me you don’t get rid of an elephant.  Elephants do whatever they want, and you just wait for them to decide to Go Elsewhere.  In the end, this elephant visited with the swimming pool - a shallow one with gently sloping sides, and ended up sleeping for the night on the lawn beside the main entrance to the lodge facilities.  I asked what they did the next morning, and the owner said nothing.  When he was bored, the elephant moved on.  When I asked if they tried shining a light on him, as they did with the hippo, and he explained that elephants don’t like torch light, and if you shine it at them, they charge.  We all then agreed it was best for the beast to head off in his own sweet time.  Apparently the visitors were delighted by the close proximity of the elephant, and were very careful to give it a very wide berth and not antagonize it in any way.  How fun.  Although I must say I have always found cat poop on the lawn an outrage and an offense, and got pretty mad about it.  Pales into insignificance though when you consider how much tonnage of poop a large bull elephant can drop on your lawn in 24 hours.

We had 2 safaris today, and below are some photos of animals sighted.

Yanni and Caroline, our friend from the Sanctuary.  Standing on the bank not far from several families of elephants

I love this tree, you can see lots of nests the birds built during the last season

The zebra were gorgeous

We had families of elephants, they were just gorgeous

Vervet Monkies

Inquisitive giraffe 

Two resting lions

One of many crocodiles

I love the sausage trees, so called because the fruit look like hanging sausages.