Archive for September, 2008
Caprivi Wildlife
Saturday, September 20th, 2008
Birds here are as colorful as I’ve ever seen. Carmine bee-eaters sunbathe on low branches, and I capture them in all their magnificence as they let me get surprisingly close. At the beginning of dusk, when the light is still good, hippos and crocs peek out of the river, looking like they were chiseled out of fine black granite.
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Caprivi People
Friday, September 19th, 2008
Namibia differs from Botswana like day from night, except for Namibia’s Caprivi Strip. It looks on a map like a handle of an electrical guitar, and stretches for over three hundred kilometers west to east, although it’s only thirty to seventy kilometers wide. Along its seldom used roads are scattered tiny mud-huts and skinny livestock. Most of the structures are round with a frame of thick branches and walls made of sand-cow dung mix. Once I asked villagers if they’d ever attempted building walls of elephant dung (just seems like an obvious choice – it’s everywhere), but they said they hadn’t tried that yet. As we drive by, people are friendly and always wave. If you stop, ten times out of ten children would ask you for something, no matter what. The assumption is, if you’ve stopped, you have something to give.
Seeking for more culturally rich experiences like that with the Himba, we stopped at a “traditional village”, but that experience felt a bit fake when the villagers put on bamboo skirts on top of their modern shorts, and performed a song and dance led by a little green plastic whistle. Nevertheless, though a bit orchestrated, it was a sneak peek into how things must have been like not too long ago. Maybe not the grass skirts, but the basket weaving and the forging process looked authentic enough. One thing I was simply ecstatic about was getting my own hippo caller. We were shown a few musical/sound making instruments, and that one was by far the coolest one. It’s a drum with a bamboo stick attached to the inside of the animal skin. When you rub the stick with a wet hand, it makes a sound just like the ones hippos make at night. It’s supposed to attract hippos, and we’ve been trying every night since, but to no avail.
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Budget Choice Botswana
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Given Botswana’s tourist attraction prices, we’ve been watching our budget closer than usual, though I still didn’t think it would have come to dumpster-diving. Well, I was wrong – we did end up at the city dump. Contemplating alternative access options to our next and last of Botswana’s overpriced national parks, we were driving through the outskirts of Kasane, when a large flock of marabou storks on a hill caught our attention. It was getting late, and good light was escaping with the setting sun, so without much deliberation I and Vova jumped out, leaving Shurik with the car, and all but ran towards the hill which we soon realized was a mountain of trash. Fixed on the didn’t help eatmission to get an up-close shot of the marabou, we pressed on until a loud trumpet sound stopped us in our tracks – a huge male elephant was flailing its ears, charging at us tusks first – protecting his dump! Vova was saying something but all I could hear were the clicks of my shutter. I’ve managed to snap a few photos just before Vova dragged me away by the wrist saying something like” When a zoologist tells you to run from an elephant, you run FROM the elephant…”
As much fun as chasing elephants at their dumpsters was, we still needed ( a plan to get into Chobe National Park )
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Central Kalahari
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
Botswana – undiluted by Dutch pioneers in fifth generation from whom we only hear “the white man is the last one go get a job nowadays” and how the “blacks and colored ones” are just dirty-stinky-lazy savages who wouldn’t think twice to have cow blood and milk for breakfast – is Africa for the Africans.
Blending in is now, obviously, harder, and we’ve also noticed how modern-day Botswana resembles the stagnation days of the USSR: empty shelves in the supermarkets, petrol that has been “on its way to the gas station” for the past week, and a dumb thick wall of paper -pushing bureaucrats afraid to make as much as a phone call without a signed and sealed mandate from the minister. For that last reason, my journalist card has little power here. Private operators are still happy to show us around, and their establishments by far exceed government ones both in facilities and general organization (not to speak of their affordable entry fees), but in order for us to enter the obscenely overpriced national parks, we would need to drive a thousand kilometers out of our way, and wait for as much as three months for the sort of permit I’ve been able to obtain in a few hours in other African countries. Nope, nobody is going to send a car with a driver for us in sunny Botswana. ( Yes Stasya, you are definitely not in Namibia anymore. )
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Okavango
Monday, September 15th, 2008
white-fronted bee-eaters
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Mahango
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
Africa is a chameleon. We are only a day’s driving away from Etosha – our most recent never-ending fountain of ample wildlife, and it’s like we’ve landed on a different planet with its own magnificent and diverse population of birds and antelope. Reminding me of my darling jabiru, saddlebill storks rummage through the reeds with their incredibly colorful bills and spread their enormous sail-like wings, getting away from me as I chase them around the swamp knee-deep in mud. In the presence of the saddlebills, reedbucks are of less interest to me. As if feeling it, they let me get much closer to them on foot than any other antelope, and when my camera lens is turned away, they jump up with a loud scream resembling the cries of spoiled children who are not getting their way. I am yet to chase down a hippo. I haven’t decided yet how scared I am of them. We almost never see them during the day. Only in the early morning, when they are still out to graze, we’ve manage to sneak up close enough to take a peek thorough the bushes. As a result, I only have a photo of a hippo running away. At night though, it almost feels like they are about to come and walk on top of our tent, which we set up in the vast shade of a baobab tree. Their roars make me cling tighter to Shurik, but I think he doesn’t mind. In fact, sometimes, I play more scared then I actually am only to be the helpless girl in need of a strong broad-shouldered man to protect her from the hippos and lions of Africa.
( It’s funny, how the traditional man and woman roles apply to our little team. )
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24 Hours at the Waterhole
Saturday, September 13th, 2008
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Five-Hour Photo
Saturday, September 13th, 2008
She lay in wait and so did we. How famished she must have been if only watching her hunt we’ve become so hungry we’ve risked getting out of the car, fetching our gasoline camping stove, and cooking up a hearty meal right there in the back seat of Columbus. What torture it must have been to see the springbok inching towards her hiding place near a waterhole, and keep her tired paws perfectly still and ready to pounce for the prey. She was my prey and I got her – skidding in a sharp turn, tail high up in the air like a flagpole, tense muscles gleaming in the sun. A kill would have made the cover shot, but she missed every time.
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