South Africa – Moving On

I spent another very long hour in there, my bruises swelling, the pain in my throat enhancing and my guilt and shame quadrupling.  Eventually Kirsty came out, still fuming with her boss, and we sto…

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Into the Jungle – Heading to the Border

It was a long drive to Sanya, and I noted that the road itself was of poorer quality once we left Sumata.  The rain had also started to fall.  With the steam on the inside and the drops on the wind…

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Into the Jungle – Beekeeping

On the edge of the village we were taken on a diversion to see some curious white boxes on legs under big trees.  One of STEWARD’s older activities  had been to establish beekeeping.  The ric…

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South Africa – Guilt, Shame and Anger

I reached out for my glasses.  They were scratched but still together.  I raised myself cautiously and looked around.  I was so amazed at being caught out.  I almost praised my thieves for a job we…

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South Africa – On the streets of Jo’burg

I wandered towards where I knew was the centre of the city, the massive stone city hall, which still gives Jo’burg the air of civic grandeur of any European, American, Asian or many African cities.…

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Into the Jungle – Down with the kids

There was no time for more as we had to set off for the fields.  The children, now enchanted by the visitors with their high tech gizmos followed like the children of Hamlin.  We saw the …

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Into the Jungle – On to Sumata

Next morning we had another early start.  We had to pack the vehicles with all our kit, pay our bills to the warden – nice that the project would pay for accommodation in spite of being big a…

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South Africa – “Is everything still all right?”

“Is everything still all right?”  Asked the girl again.  She’d already been out about four times, bringing something each time, salt and pepper, ketchup, a fork, a stray napkin.  And each time she …

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First Time in Binga – Soaking up Africa

Go to the First post in First Time in Binga Starting from the Livingstone statue who boringly named them Victoria Falls instead of keeping the much more evocative local Smoke that Thunders name, we…

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Into the Jungle – Gray

The row back was pleasant enough, although now we were heading against the current, I could appreciate how much there was and I felt that I had had a good workout by the time we reached the camp.  …

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Into the Jungle – Ambushed!

We had come to a halt, still in open water but only a few yards from the right bank.  We could observe the hippo activity completely now and we watched them yawn, those huge gaping jaws showing off…

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First Time in Binga – Heading to the smoke that thunders

We had two days off in three weeks.  It is something I try hard to avoid now.  In the heat, the difficulty of the terrain and the heavy workload and responsibility you have when working abroad, I t…

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First Time in Binga – Stuck in the bundu

The little sandy tracks we drove down each day took us to the remotest.  Even in the centre of the communal lands could be large tracts of continuous bushland or Bundu, as many colonists called it.…

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Into the Jungle – Meeting the herd

As we progressed further away from the camp (and from the road from which most interlopers are likely to have travelled) the vegetation became wilder.  We journeyed through a still pool of water fo…

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Into the Jungle – An afternoon paddle

We’d arrived back at the camp earlier than expected because we had missed the final village stop.  The sun had broken out and the air was lighter than it had been all day, a slight breeze tak…

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First Time in Binga – Bushmeat

Despite the hassly baboons, this was a perfect spot.  Waking up every morning to the fabulous view, breakfast sitting on the step watching the locals go back and forth along the road.  School girls…

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First Time in Binga – String, Knife and Paper

We dropped Bob off at Hwange airport and travelled back to Mlibizi for a further night at the Rest Camp.  The following day we had to pick up some supplies from the supermarket as we were to self c…

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Into the Jungle – Land use in the scrub (2)

Although the dryland rice covered huge areas, and occasionally we would see sorghum or maize in fields, more intensive cultivation would happen in the valley bottoms.  In these lowlands all kinds o…

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Into the Jungle – Land use in the scrub (1)

The drive back to the camp went through a mixture of woody savanna and open fields and I saw for the first time the dynamics of the shifting agriculture or swidden as it is sometimes known – …

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First Time in Binga – Mlibizi

A big disappointment was not to see any rhino, but I suppose that would have been a miracle in Chizarira.  While elephants had thrived in Zimbabwe, the rhinos had been all but exterminated.  Chiris…

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First Time in Binga – Up to the magic garden

Trying to put our animosities aside, we were thrown into surveying for a number of days in the bush.  The first day we gave Willy the day off and went in Martin’s Defender to Chizarira National Pa…

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First Time in Binga – trouble with the work

Bob was dischuffed not only with Martin, but was quite sceptical of our whole approach to the project.  Judith and I were substitutes on the project half way through its duration and were trying t…

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Into the Jungle – Fintonia and its water

Straight after lunch we took a very enjoyable walk that kept us awake.  During the meeting, the elders were interrupted by an interesting man.  He had returned to Fintonia after living in Ealing in…

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Into the Jungle – Fintonia for the first time

We returned to the vehicles and thanked our hosts before heading off to the next village, Fintonia.  This was to become a very familiar place to me later in the project, and was where the acting pa…

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First Time in Binga – Bob, Martin and Reg

Our team was supplemented after a few days by a visit from a UK officer working on secondment to Tsetse Control, Martin Warnes, and Bob Drummond, the retired head of the National Herbarium in Hara…

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First time in Binga – the work

The second kind of vegetation complex was more common throughout the rest of Zimbabwe and indeed in many other parts of Africa.  It was a combination of two main families, the Julbernardia species…

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Into the Jungle- A tour of the projects

Which was to tour the STEWARD project activities in the village.  For me it was exceptionally useful to understand what had been done so far, and Kortor, probably because it was closest to the best…

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In the Jungle – Meeting in Kortor.

In Kortor we started with a meeting with the elders, extension workers and selected individuals from the community.  The vehicles were parked under some trees and we were guided through the houses …

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First Time in Binga – The town and the mopane

The struggle of the Tongan people in their dry plateaus away from the lake tarnished my wilderness ideals about this harshly beautiful region, and the town of Binga itself took on a role of oppress…

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First Time in Binga – The Tongans

For the first few days I found it hard to take in the way the Tongan’s lived.  There was the appreciation that they lived in simple huts or rondavels, and had small cleared areas within which much…

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