Showering “al fresco”

As days passed the temperature at Mana Pools continued to rise. The morning of the 19th of September it was already oven hot at 06.00hs so the decision on what to do was easy as the moving car seemed to be the coolest option available. We planned a longish route as we wanted to re-visit a rather remote dry river bed close to the Rukomechi area. When the hot wind started to blow dust on us we knew that it was time to leave the camp!

We skipped breakfast but took all necessities with us to stop and enjoy it on route near the Zambezi as the drive offered a few nice shady spots. We drove until a place known as Vundu[1] point and stopped there to break our fast after a couple of hours of slow driving and enjoying the wilderness.

A gaggle of Spur-wing geese (parents and five young adults) were at the riverbank and slowly walked away as soon as we left the car.

Some of the Spur-wing geese.

One of the adults.

The heat could be felt despite the thick shade provided by the gigantic sausage trees of the riverine forest but this did not seem to bother a lone and open-mouthed crocodile basking on one of the riverbanks nearby.

Breakfast over, we moved on reaching the dry Nyakasanga river an hour later. We crossed its sandy bed and drove a while thinking that we would get back to the Zambezi but, as it is often the case, we had misread the map and in fact we were moving away from it! So, after searching for cell signal up a tree (my wife) and taking a few pictures of a baobab tree, it was time to get back to camp for lunch at an oven-like Gwaya camp.

In search of that elusive cellphone signal!

The baobab tree.

The heat and dust were still waiting for us when we made it back by 13.00hs as we got further delayed examining a rather large fungus we found on a tree trunk!

Fungus close-up. The bluish circle above is Nature’s work.

After a very light lunch it was a question of surviving the heat and dust (mainly for my wife!). She decided to have a cold shower at the small toilet/shower cabin and to remain there, away from the heat and dust for the rest of the afternoon, until the temperature dropped. She did not mind sharing the place with its tree frogs occupants. There were at least three of them and one insisted in staying under the WC plastic seat. We removed it everyday for fear of crushing it and placed it on a tree outside but it was back the next day!

My wife’s vantage point!

As usual, it was siesta time for me, despite the heat and dust. It was quite a feat but I managed a few minutes! The siesta over and feeling heat-hit, I hanged my sun-heated shower (I do not like cold showers!) from a tree behind our tent, open the tap and started to enjoy the refreshing feeling of water being poured over you in the open air.

I had showered for a couple of minutes and I was busy soaping myself when I heard my wife calling me, pointing towards the back of the camp. An elephant was walking, apparently, in my direction! As elephants do that all the time at Gwaya, I continued with my shower as I still needed some cleaning to do!

The elephant coming (I forgot to leave my hat on…).

After a minute I looked again and the pachyderm was much closer! It left me in no doubt that I was the object of its curiosity! “I cannot believe this” I thought and, thinking that the soap smell was the lure, I started removing the foam and placed the soap back in its box. “#$@&%*!” I thought, seeing no change in attitude, “the blipping elephant is coming for the shower water having the whole Zambezi behind me!” I closed the tap and remained immobile and soapy[2].

The elephant came very close. Luckily it stopped a couple of metres away and it had a long look at me. As it was also naked, I did not feel any embarrassment, only moderate panic and an immense wish to survive in order to remove the soap from my body and continue living.

Although I am sure that “the look” it gave me was brief, it felt long. Eventually the elephant slowly moved off as it clearly decided that my “manhood” was -naturally- no challenge to his “elephanthood”! I even thought I heard a jeering noise coming from the curious pachyderm as it walked away! My relief at its withdrawal was short-lived. The water got finished and I had to remove the remaining lather with what I wanted to avoid: cold water!

Needless to say that my wife watched all this and forgot about the heat and dust. So did I!

Gwaya camp, Mana Pools, Zimbabwe, September 2015.

[1] A Vundu (Heterobranchus longifilis) is a catfish reaching up to 150 cm in length and 50 kg of weight.

[2] Although the elephant is shown naked, pictures of the bushsnob “al fresco” are omitted to keep this blog PG.

Elephant overhead (and it was not Dumbo…)

During one of our game drives we came across a couple of cars parked in the woods and we noticed two elephants nearby, a large bull and a younger companion, also known as an “askari”[1]. From close quarters we immediately recognized the large one as “Big V”, a well known and placid bull that a game ranger first pointed it out to us on another visit to the park. His name derives from a large notch shaped as an inverted “V” on the lower edge of its left ear.

We approached the animals, parked the car and got out to join the elephant-watching crowd (two people in one car!). Big V was busy chewing through an acacia branch the size of my forearm! “This is ridiculous”, I thought while I watched it in amazement as it crunched it loudly and started to swallow the splinters. While this was taking place, a game-viewing car with only one passenger came and Big V got somehow separated from the askari while we kept watching, trying to make the best of this photo opportunity.

Equipment comparison!

The sole occupant of the newly arrived vehicle clearly thought that this was a good sight and proceeded to offload a humongous filming camera on a tripod. “This is not fair”, I thought as I tried to make do with my comparatively modest Nikon Coolpix! After spending quite a while assembling the equipment, he filmed for about one minute and they were off!

While we continued watching the elephants in awe, another two cars with South African plates arrived, full of people with spectacularly long lenses. They took hundreds of pictures at the elephants and, as soon as they arrived, they also left. I speculated for a while on a better game viewing opportunity and failed to understand where were they rushing! I still need to learn a lot about my fellow humans…

Finally we were alone. We waited as we knew that at this time of the year elephants in Mana Pools feed on the pods of the Apple ring acacia (Acacia albida) and we estimated that this was the intention of Big V as we were in acacia woodland. After a while, with calm restored, he obliged and started stretching to get at the pods, offering us some photo opportunities that are the heart of this post.

I have some difficulties taking pictures looking at the camera screen so I use its viewfinder, a hang up from my SLR’s days! On this occasion I was so engrossed taking pictures of Big V at full stretch nearby that when I heard “the other one is coming” from my wife, the askari was almost stepping on my toes!

I was caught “between a car and an elephant” and, although I made myself as thin as possible by contracting my stomach, I could feel its body heat while busy watching his feet to avoid being maimed for life! Luckily the elephant was so focused on feeding that did not even look at me!

Before my pulse went back to normal I saw Big V coming the same way. I am not good at mathematics (in fact that is one of the reasons I became a vet!) but it was not too difficult to calculate that I have just had a near miss with a smallish bull in that spot and there was a much larger animal coming… I jumped in the car, relieved to be a coward!

The view through the mirror was a warning.

Watching events from the relative security of the car!

My wife meantime had cleverly placed herself on the other side of the car and was watching and taking pictures of my predicament while chuckling seeing me being squeezed…! Once inside the car I felt more secure and continued to shoot as the situation was amazing to miss even in fear!

Big V passed a metre from me and, once by my side its head moved towards me and I could see that he had dry skin as well as every detail of its tusks ivory quality.

My view suddenly got blocked by Big V’s dry skin!

“This is ridiculous” I thought, “what is it doing?” I thought in a kind of resigned panic as I was totally at its mercy! Before I could find an answer his head disappeared from my sight as it stretched over the car to get at a particularly attractive pod!

I prepared for the bang (and how to explain the damage to the insurance company) thinking on the branch or branches that it was going to break and bring over the car! Luckily, it only got small twigs and I only had a “leaf-rain”.

I am afraid that my fingers did not respond to my mental commands for a while so perhaps my pictures do not reflect proximity too well! It was fortunate that my wife managed to capture the moment, even if between chuckles.

(A brief video taken by my wife showing the situation)

The elephant munched the result of its effort fast and moved on leaving me with the incredible feeling of having been under its shadow and survived, showing how tolerant of people the elephants in Mana Pools are!

Survived! A more relaxed bushsnob, posing after the event with the askari in the background.

Gwaya camp, Mana Pools, Zimbabwe, September 2015.

[1] One or more younger males often accompany older bull elephants staying away from herds and these are referred to as “askari” a word from Arabic meaning “soldier”.

The three bills

Mana Pools has several oxbow lagoons that occupy the old course the Zambezi carved in the valley a very long time ago. There are four larger pools that give the name Mana (four) in the Shona language. Of the four I can name only name two: Long and Chini. I am still trying to name the others!

Long pool and hippos.

Long Pool is perhaps the better known of the four. It is a sizeable body of water where several animals are resident, including a large number of hippos and crocodiles, some of the latter really humongous, often spotted basking on its edge. With the exception of a grey heron that enjoys “hippo surfing”, most water birds are found in the shallows. The species and numbers present clearly depend on the season but Goliath and Grey herons, Hammerkop, and Stilts are normally present.

Obviously the bills of the birds are suited to different feeding strategies. On this occasion we found three different ones that actually give the names to the birds: the African Open-billed and Yellow-billed storks and the African spoonbill. They were sharing the same feeding ground at Long pool so we stopped and watched.

The three bills.

The Spoonbill, the less common of the three, waded through shallow water sweeping from side-to-side with bill open and inside the water. Occasionally it dashed around, chasing fish(?) like an egret does. When something edible was found, the bill snapped shut and the victim was swallowed.

A rare pause in the wadding.

The Yellow-billed stork fed walking slowly with half-submerged and slightly open bill. As the later is very sensitive to contact with potential prey, it also snapped closed when that happened.

Typical African yellow billed stork feeding pose.

While the two bills from the birds above are odd, they make sense from the feeding technique point of view.

It caught something small and muddy!

Feeding with your bill open and shut it when catching prey is one thing, feeding with your bill open and keep it open when shutting it is another! “A priori” it seems to be pushing nature’s ingenuity to extremes! However, the African open-bill stork was also wading and catching prey, though a bit muddy!

Further reading indicated that its bill is a highly specialized tool to perform an almost surgical intervention on its main prey: snails. It has several uses, depending on the size and type of snail: it either cracks it (large ones), removes its body by shaking its head or it cuts the snail’s columellar muscle[1] with its sharp tip.

Feeding together.

Although the three birds feeding paths often crisscrossed, they were respectful of each other as if benefiting from each other’s presence. The say “when the river is dirty the fisherman benefits” is likely to apply here!

Mana Pools, Zimbabwe, September 2015.

[1] The columellar (shell) muscles of gastropods join the foot and other parts of the body with the shell. (Basically, keeping the animal together!)

Upset jumbo

After finding buffalo and lions close to camp, that night we heard lots of loud nocturnal noises, including lions roaring but also other unidentified nocturnal sounds that we allocated to hippo and/or elephants. In the early hours of the morning hyenas also called so our hopes were up and an early morning exploration of the surrounds was in order.

We followed the Zambezi down river, past the buffalo that were now moving towards the river, but we found no trace of predators. After a while we decided to try to contact the world again and went for the cellphone signal spot following our GPS (we had entered the coordinates on a previous visit). We searched fruitlessly for a while until we decided that probably the hot wind was blowing it away! We decided to get back to camp before the heat became more intense.

As usual we got delayed. First it was a pool where a very photogenic saddle-bill stork was wadding and then we watched the antics of a slender mongoose looking rather cunning!

We got back to Gwaya camp by lunchtime and it was already quite hot. As usual our elephant bull askari[1] was in attendance, waiting for us while browsing and picking up elephantine delicacies: the acacia pods from the Apple-ring acacias![2] Aware of our noisy arrival it gently moved off while we spent time putting together the mess the baboons make when you leave your camp alone.

The elephant decided to cross the river in search of fresh grass, its usual move. It decided to cross from our camp so I left the baboon-recovery exercise for a while to take a few pictures of the jumbo crossing.

Unfortunately the shots were not what I thought so I only took a couple and then filmed its arrival to the opposite bank. For some reason it chose the steepest place. It showered and beat the water to get some mud before it climbed on the bank with some degree of difficulty. I stopped filming and went back to set right the baboon damage.

After crossing the narrow channel the elephants, usually, spend the afternoon on a wide grassy plain that exists between the canal and the main body of the river, perhaps 500 m away. I forgot about the elephant as it would only return later at night and be there tomorrow again. However, after about ten minutes from the crossing I herd it trumpeting and running back towards our camp, trunk up and shaking its head rather violently. It crushed back into the canal and started re-crossing it!

The jumbo returning.

I saw it coming so grabbed the camera and placed myself at a good spot to film it coming back across the water. I videoed it while coming but, in my enthusiasm, I forgot that I was quite close from its exit and unexpectedly; he climbed the bank and charged me!

As you can imagine -at my age- I am not too keen to find out if an elephant is charging or mock-charging! Therefore my finger pressed the stop recording button and I withdrew.

The fact that I am writing these lines comfortably seated at home means that it was –luckily- a mock-charge and he stopped after a couple of more steps!

The reasons for its return and bad temper will remain a mystery and a matter of speculation. It could have been an encounter with a bee swarm, common at this time of the year, as elephants do not like them. There was also a bull buffalo nearby that could have irritated the pachyderm? We will never know but I did got my adrenalin rush!

After our interaction the cheeky elephant did not wander off but remain at camp, clearly as a demonstration of his unquestionable dominance over me! During that time we kept an eye on each other and I was careful to avoid having my siesta under his favored acacia, just in case!

A while later -after re-gaining its compusure- I saw it crossing back towards the Zambezi. This time he chose another spot about fifty metres up river and, this time, it did not come back until the following morning.

Gwaya camp, Mana Pools, Zimbabwe, September 2015.

[1] Guard in KiSwahili.

[2] Acacia albida

Camera recovered

As mentioned in the “Besieged” post of 5 October 2015, I had some difficulties retrieving the camera from its strategic location by the Zambezi as walking to do so offered some animal-related challenges!

Eventually, through a flash commando operation -with my wife watching my back!- I managed to get it and below are the results.

A hippo coming out of the river to feed at night.

Another one returning.

Leaving the river in early morning.

Waterbucks returning from drinking.

Besieged

While staying at Gwaya camp I explored its surroundings on foot to find a spot where I could place a camera to record what took place when we were not at camp and also to know which animals moved about at night. This camera is my latest gadget and an excellent source of entertainment!

I chose a spot, about two hundred metres upriver, where two game paths led to the Zambezi.river. The path seemed well trodden and I believed that animals would come down to drink there as, after negotiating a couple of dried mud steps (carved by wild users!), the river could be accessed in relative safety for a drink.

The following morning I got a few videos that confirmed that animals did use the paths. However, I had placed the camera too close to the passers by and the results did not convince me. I decided to move the camera to another place from where a wider view of the spot could be obtained. I returned to camp very satisfied but cautious as I needed to walk round a group of elephants to get back! These elephants are always there so it was no great deal to avoid them as they are tolerant of humans.

The camera in position.

The view from the camera towards the Zambezi.

The plan was to return to the camera the following morning to download the information from the memory card and then decide what to do next.

Early next day we spotted a very large herd of buffalo moving towards the Zambezi about one thousand metres from our camp (as the bird flies). “Mmmm, retrieving the camera will be tricky!” I thought and it was not difficult to reach the decision of leaving it where it was for the time being!

The buffalo marching towards the Zambezi, a few hundred metres from us.

It was a hot day so, after lunch a siesta was a must! I am not sure if I slept or passed out because of the heat but the result was good as I felt rested and, when the temperature started to decrease, we moved off for a drive, towards the buffalo. We spotted them immediately as soon as we came close to the main road. They were spread out, still in the same area.

We watched them for a while while making comments like : “if it is true that lions prey on buffalo, now is the time to find large cats”. We then noted a car parked under a tree, watching the buffalo like us. Or so we thought… When, after a while, we overtook them they pointed out to the side of the road. We had just missed a lioness lying one metre from the track! It was an elderly animal -probably sick- and it was panting heavily. We came back to apologize for having driven between the lioness and the other car, and were told that there were more lionesses and cubs in the thicket, about two hundred metres from us! So much for our game spotting skills!!!

After looking intensively at all possible bushes from different angles we did spot the group. They were four lionesses and three cubs. They had clearly fed recently as, particularly the cubs, had greatly dilated bellies! So we now had elephants, buffalo and lions (three of the big five!) around our camp!

Lioness moving back to the thicket after drinking.

Lion spoor around our camp.

As elephants are very tolerant and the lions had fed, my main concern were the buffalo. The latter had now spread all over the surrounding bush. Clearly the camera would remain in its current location until the animal siege to our camp was finally lifted!

I did eventually managed to retrieve the camera and got some interesting takes that I will present to you in a separate post.

Gwaya Camp, Mana Pools, Zimbabwe. September 2015.

Talking ants

Our first stop during our afternoon game drive from Gwaya after setting up camp came quite soon. In fact, we stopped while we were still in the campsite grounds. I did a kind of emergency stop to the surprise of my companions that were still settling down for the drive. Startled, they looked around but could not see nothing so, I am sure, they waited for one of my jokes as I do have a reputation! After a while I heard “This is one of your jokes right?” coming from Tom, but I was (quite) serious.

The only picture of the ants, taken by my wife.

I had spotted a column of Matabele ants[1] crossing the track. We had seen these ants in action earlier in Zimbabwe while entering termite nests and, after a while, emerging with bundles of termites in their jaws, both workers and soldiers! These are specialized ants as they feed exclusively on termites, leaving their colony “en masse” to search for termite nests where they will all enter and attack the nest carrying their victims back to their colony. They normally raid at dawn and dusk so we were probably seeing an evening raid returning home empty-jawed.

When disturbed these ants emit a high pitch squeaking sound that we have not heard from others such as the safari ants or siafu (Dorylus sp.) of East Africa or the leaf cutting ants we have in South America. For this reason, when the ex President of Uruguay Pepe Mujica mentioned that ants whispered in his ear while spending two years at the bottom of a well during his prison sentence, I had no difficulty in believing his words!

The ones we found were carrying their eggs and young and there were not more than three hundred individuals, organized in a thick column. They were moving like an army and entering a hollow dead tree trunk, probably their nest. At the time of the observation I was reading Conn Iggulden’s Genghis Khan series and their behaviour reminded me to the Mongol raiding tactics!

When we were about to leave them to spend the night in their nest we noticed about twenty ants bringing the rear. At first we thought that these were the old and injured, struggling to keep up. But their behaviour seemed odd! They were not moving slowly or lacked any legs! They were performing an activity that was part of their moving strategy. They were clearly following the trail of the group but they were picking up sticks, leaves and other debris and moving them slightly as if trying to “restore” the path they group had trodden to its original condition!

As this seems far-fetched, perhaps they were just either erasing their earlier pheromone trail or releasing new ones to indicate their presence to other creatures?

Once these “strugglers” reached the hollow trunk, they also got inside to join the others. They were in for a hungry night.

September 2015, Mana Pools, Zimbabwe

[1] Megaponera analis, one of the world’s largest ants are named after the fierce Matabele warriors.

Sand lovers[1]

As Tom and Chizuki were departing in mid-morning we left for an early drive to be able to return to camp in time for them to pack up. Lions had roared from the direction of Mana mouth so that was our destination.

The tracks in the area are reasonable with the occasional dry river crossing that normally do not offer any real challenge to a 4WD vehicle. The exception being some that actually have water, sometimes quite a lot of it making for fun driving (for me and daughter) and unnecessary risk-taking for my wife and son! Yes, the family is clearly split between wise and unwise (according to the wise) or boring and fun, according to us!

Because of his work, my father travelled daily to the rural areas of the Colonia Department in Uruguay from the 1940’s until his retirement in the 80’s. He did ford many watercourses during his time and he stated that “where there is water there is no mud underneath” so he would venture into the water without hesitation. He will drive forwards in his Willys Jeep when the water was reasonably low or plunged backwards when it was very deep. In this way he would open the water with the back of the car and the engine (petrol at the time!) would not get wet!

A river crossing with water at Mana Pools in July 2015.

Going back to our game drive towards Mana mouth, after a km or so of the river crossing we found a Land Cruiser pickup, probably the best bush vehicle there is. So good that in Mozambique they call them AKM in reference to the indestructible AK47 assault rifle (in Mozambique they know about this!). The pickup was not moving and there was someone standing next to it. We soon realized that they had just got stuck in the sand.

There is nothing wrong with getting stuck in the bush. However, they somehow had managed to do so in a patch of sand about two metres long! We waited for a few minutes, convinced that the car would move as soon as 4WD was engaged. Despite this, nothing happened and it only got deeper into trouble. Aware of the worsening situation we got out of our car and introduced ourselves to the lady standing and watching. She looked cool -with a Coke in hand- and clearly quite amused with what was taking place!

The driver was somewhere under the car frantically digging sand from under the wheels. “If you have a rope handy, I can pull you out”, I offered getting a smile from the lady and a grunted “no thanks” from somewhere below the car while sand continued flying out from under the car. After a couple of minutes we spotted him and realized that he was wearing the uniform of a tourist guide. His face was red showing an “I am upset and worried but do not want to show it” expression!

In view of the negative, we stood and watched the driver excavate more until he was satisfied and jumped on the car, clearly not enjoying being observed by some amateur tourists! He managed to get some action. The car jerked forward giving us some hope but it got lower into the sand. When this happened, the driver -wearing a very red face by now- jumped out again, still ignoring us, and proceeded to get under the car again to move more sand and enlarge the hole that, by now, had acquired an unnecessary large size!

We looked at the lady and she shrugged her shoulders so we quietly got back in our car and, aware that our time was short, drove around the “obstacle” and continued on our way. While passing by the pickup we said adios to the lady who shouted, “look, they are leaving”, and quickly added, “they are really going!” in the direction of a bottom wearing kaki shorts! The latter remained indifferent while the digging continued, probably for quite a while.

[1] Zimbabwe 2015, Mana Pools.

Harvesting from the effort[1]

The following is a concise account of my working life. More details can be found in the “Pages” section of this blog. The intention of this short account is to set the seen for the next historical posts that will deal only with episodes that took place during these years and that I consider to offer some interesting aspect worth mentioning.

A Boran young bull at Mutara ranch, Kenya.

Boran young bulls at Mutara ranch, Kenya.

The work at Muguga and Intona described earlier (give link) yielded fruit and I was able to publish the results in good scientific journals, together with my co-workers, Matt, Alan and Robin included. My research added some knowledge to a large regional programme on ticks and tickborne diseases that FAO had initiated at the time of my arrival in Kenya and that covered several countries in East, Central and Southern Africa.

Mutara tick selection work.

Once my fellowship ended, although I had a lot to learn yet, I had somehow found a niche for my work at ICIPE and, with Matt’s blessing, I joined the Tick Programme as a scientist. My work on tick impact had ended and now my work would have to fall within the Tick Programme’s goals and funding. The main target was to control ticks using the cattle resistance to them. I had come across this fact while doing my research as some animals showed resistance while others not.

At that time I also decided to start my PhD studies as an external student with my former Department of Applied Zoology at the University of Wales. Four years of hard work were in front of me, as I needed to work and study, not an easy feat! I was lucky to be surrounded by knowledgeable colleagues and to find a great supervisor, the late Ian Herbert from the Department.

While working on my PhD I got involved with the work on ticks and tickborne diseases on-going at Muguga and I also continued with field work at Intona. Later on we started more work at Mutara Ranch, then the Boran cattle stud for Kenya, where we started work on selection of cattle for tick resistance that sadly needed to be abandoned for lack of resources. The initial study got published and this added to my growing reputation in the tick world. I completed the PhD in 1986 while still in Kenya.

The laboratory at Bedele, Ethiopia.

In 1988 FAO offered me a position as a Leader of the Ethiopian component of their regional tick and tickborne disease programme I mentioned above. I accepted the offer as it had very favourable conditions but left ICIPE and Kenya with a heavy heart after so many years of enjoying life and work there.

Villagers at Gambela, West Ethiopia.

Ethiopia was a big change as we arrived in a country at war with Eritrea and under a comunist regime led by Mengistu Haile Mariam, a ruthless leader. My duty station was Bedele in West Ethiopia, still green and wooded with a rainfall of about two thousand mm per year! It was a remote place where FAO has assisted the Government in building a Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. Bedele’s main claim to worldwide fame is ob being the place where coffee originated from.

The work was more routine than challenging and it required the collection of ticks from cattle at different locations both to get to know the species and to understand their population dynamics. My assignment there lasted under two years as I was replacing another tick officer that needed to be evacuated with a severe heart condition. Despite the political and economical difficulties the country was going through, the work was completed and, as the possibilities of continuing the work were not there, it was tie to move on.

The project site at Lutale, Central Province of Zambia.

I was transferred to Zambia where I was to continue a long-term trial on the effects of ticks on traditional cattle productivity both of milk and beef under different tick control regimes: no control, intensive control and “strategic” control. The latter meant to treat only to prevent tick numbers from building up. The trial run for three years and it was completed successfully. It was during this time that our children were born and our lives changed!

Cattle work in Southern Province, Zambia.

After three busy and productive years in Zambia the regional programme was going through important changes. Its coordinator based at FAO HQs in Rome was about to retire and more funding was coming in to continue the work for another phase of four years. Somehow I landed the coordinator’s job and moved to Rome in a move that removed me from scientific work and converted me into an international bureaucrat!

FAO in the 90s. Please note the Axum stele that was returned in 2005.

After a few months in Rome, once the “glamour” of the job waned, I realized that I needed to get back to the field as the work I was doing did not appeal to me.

Moving again! This time to Zimbabwe.

The opportunity to move to the field -again to Africa- presented itself in 1997 and I did not hesitate! We moved to Harare, Zimbabwe where I took up the role of sub-regional animal production and health officer, an even broader professional role as it also involved animal production. As compensation, however, the job was restricted to Southern and Eastern Africa. Although it was not “hands on” scientific work, it was closer to the action than what I was doing from Rome!

Great Zimbabwe ruins, Zimbabwe, 1998.

After four years in Harare I realized with regret that I needed to move to get a career improvement. At the end of 2000 I put my name for a FAO Representative job and succeeded getting designated FAOR in Bolivia so in mid 2001 we left for La Paz, Bolivia. This would be my first assignment in a Spanish-speaking country and it also meant becoming the head of an office with a large multi-sectorial programme and several employees both in the office and in the field. In addition, as the representative of the organization in the country I also carried a political role having to develop strong links with the host government.

Sewing in Bolivia.

Market street of La Paz, Bolivia.

I worked in Bolivia for five incredible years and, in 2005 I returned to Rome, again as a technical expert to continue working on animal diseases, in particular I returned to ticks and TBD. Again I did not find this assignment enjoyable and, after four years I had had enough of desk work and it was either another field post or retirement!

The Appia Antica road, Rome.

Rome, 2009!

Fortunately I was selected for the position of FAO Representative in Mozambique where I worked until my retirement, from mid 2010 to the end of June 2013 when I reached 62 years, the mandatory retirement age of the United Nations.

Time to move to Mozambique.

Speaking on World Food Day in Mozambique.

Being interviewed by the press.

Maputo’s beach.

Needless to say that I write in first person but my life has been shared with my wife and later my children. She has been a main support throughout and the kids added their part!

I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say.

[1] This post follows “Life and work in Kenya: Intona”.

Zambezi sentinels

All baobabs are special but there are a number of “famous” ones. Clive Walker[1] highlights a number of them, some well known, some less but all interesting. I am sure most people keen in Africa and its nature have read or heard about Baines’, Green’s and Chapman’s baobabs in Botswana, the Pioneer’s baobab and the “Big tree” in Zimbabwe, the Sagole and Sunland giants in South Africa and the Toilet tree of Namibia to name some. We were lucky to visit Katima Mulilo in Namibia at a time that the toilet was still there and it was one of the unforgettable sights of our travelling life.

The “toilet baobab” at Katima Mulilo, Namibia.

A close up of the “toilet baobab” at Katima Mulilo, Namibia.

However, all baobabs that you see are special in their own way and have their own special features. I recall the sorrow felt by Carlo, an Italian friend that came for a safari to Gonarezhou, when he saw the damage elephants do to these wonderful trees. There was also a large baobab at Lochinvar National Park in Zambia that had its own cave!

The Lochinvar baobab and my daughter.

The Lonchinvar baobab with a young bushsnob and Bruno in attendance.

The Lonchinvar baobab with a younger (and sillier) bushsnob and my friend Bruno.

Apart from the group of baobabs named after Baines, probably the better known, there are other groups such as the Prison trees in Botswana and the Baobab hill in South Africa. We discovered another one. Well, perhaps we just found it after many before us…

A fine baobab.

Signs of elephant damage are clear at the base of the trunk.

In my post “Chitake” I mentioned that on the morning of the second day we went for a drive and found a hill with baobabs. This was the location of Chitake 2 campsite[2] and -I believe- the place where Mr. Evergreen was killed by the lions. This windswept hill, apart from the trees, offers stunning views of the middle Zambezi valley, all the way to the escarpment.

The trees stand like sentries to the valley below and I would be surprised if it did not have some religious connotation to the early inhabitants of the area. It may be that the pottery fragments we found among them may have something to do with this but it is difficult to say, as we were not able to estimate their age or origin. A least to be there at sunset was a wonderful moment.

Some of the broken pottery found.

Searching the Internet I learnt that these baobabs, that are not in Walker’s book, are known as the “Twelve Apostles” but I was not able to find out more information about them. What I can say, though, it is that we counted thirteen! Was Mary Magdalene not counted?

Clearly this gives us an excellent excuse to revisit the place to do a proper baobab census!

[1] Walker, C. (2013). Baobab Trails. An artist’s journey of wilderness and wanderings. Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd. South Africa. 287p.

[2] The campsite is now at another place with more protection from the wind.

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(A brief video taken by my wife showing the situation)

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