Seeds of hope

We saw two sets of elephant footprints today one medium one small and dollops of poo to match in the riverbed near the house - “very pleasing” as D put it.  Small steps to recovery we hope.  Then Dominik took Laurie to further explore the footprints and where the animals are hiding out.  They found a small hole they had dug in the sandy dry river bed to get ground water and Dominik gave Laurie elephant water to drink!

On a fishing expedition with Naquata, our long standing guard and elder, we found huge pits in the now dry mud around  the lake.  A group of small elephants had come to wallow and drink. Laurie marched in their foot prints bare foot like a tiny elephant.

There is no doubt we have two small young family groups back in the heart of Mareja.  This is enough to provide shards of hope after the poaching siege of the last 5 years.  We must galvanise ourselves and find our spirit again.  With the right ranger team in place I feel sure we could be a sanctuary once more for the national park.  There is one truth...nature is resourceful and resilient if you have seeds to plant and nurture.

Clear sight...5 year barometer of change

A pile of goods confiscated at a poachers
camp in the heart of Mareja

Having returned after 5 years the difference is stark.  I can clearly see the holes left by the poachers - far far fewer signs of life and it's not just elephants that have suffered.  I saw no kudo or sable and a huge hot fire last year took out much other smaller life and left many trees charred beyond recovery. 

The subtle symphony of familiar sounds has lost key notes, like my favourite the guinea fools as I call them...the Crested Guinea fowl but a Spotted Hyena has taken residence and provided a rather haunting new call to the forest night...Dominik thinks it has been attracted by the carrion. 

And perhaps the saddest loss the deep cough of the lone male lion that marked night fall. This particular animal lived for many years below the house and has also gone.  There is no doubt all larger elephants have been killed at Mareja but in so doing the poachers have taken their trophies and now left. 

Juma and Dominik on Mareja mountain looking for poachers fires





A 1 hour day trip evolves into a very black night

In this world I sometimes find the conflict between the outer reality and inner imaginings so intense it almost stops my heart in its tracks.

We set out on a "1 hour" trip (Dominik's words) to drop Rangers at the palm forest.  My first off-road drive in the cream Landrover, the loving work of a LR frantic with homemade dashboard full of customised switches and special effects with reinforced steal plates here and there giving it an armadillo factor  - it slightly overheads but that's nothing compared to vehicles of the past. 

As we bump along L on my knee there is an extraordinary sight in this tangled forest, a Landcruiser coming towards us.  (I always register Landcruisers with a green tinge - we once had one and it was the toughest thing on 4 wheels not phased by the most sticky situation.  But the vehicle turned out to be stolen property and we had to give it back to the seller, a large oil company!)


We meet a truck in the middle of nowhere

The Rangers all sit up with wide eyes - fortivo? park? But it is neither - a cattle rancher from Pemba trying to locate the water source for his land with two trackers and the land registry.  They are lost.  D guides them back out of Mareja and in the process much is revealed.  New tracks of a large truck and then new roads, well entries hacked into the forest.  Rangers are sent to investigate and they quickly discover a timber operation. The beautiful blackwood called Zebra wood has been targeted.  They have felled medium sized trees at least 15.  They are prized and as with all big trees anchor the forest and its species composition - holding the soil in place, providing shaded nurseries for other shrubs and a home for may associated birds, insects, small mammals, reptiles.  A tree doesn't quite pull at the heart like a dead elephant but I find the roughly sawn stumps that reveal the beauty of their deep brown core, very moving. The tree was full of vitality and now it is useless and inanimate.



Beautiful zebra wood

This trip becomes very different to its initial purpose, as is often the way with D at the helm.  Heading down slashed paths and investigating on a goose chase.  The forest closes in on me without an end in sight and I begin to feel panic settling on my chest - so reliant on this cream beast.  At one point we are exploring one of these timber tracks and D leans out of the window and lights the dry grass  - part of his controlled fire programme (that on occasions doesn't feel very controlled).  As the fire springs to life and crackles loudly I say "but wont we have to drive back that way"..."What, no, why" he says tetchily "its a circular track.."  I am not sure why he thinks the timber loggers would bother to make a nice circular track for their extraction.  But on this occasion I was right and it was linear.... we had to drive over the fire.  Which he does confidently saying diesel engines don't ignite.  I don't know much about engine combustion but I am sure ignition features somewhere even with a diesel engine.  Nothing blows up and we continue.

We go on and on and suddenly are at the rangers waterhole out of Mareja but still deep in forest.  A ravine and pool of water below, meagre but water.

It has now been 3 hours - L has eaten all the 3 'sharing biscuits' I bought. Anyway another 2 hours later and we arrive back, (L starving and strung out, my legs dead and brain close to desiccation)  The rangers were left in an unplanned location to assess the timber operation.  But word has it that 2 of the rangers have been paid off to keep quiet.  The usual confusing picture.

Strangely the cattle ranching crew appear at Mareja that night.  The rumble of a car always makes me very alert - people only arrive here with great intent.  I offer them a coke as they look hot and its a chance to embrace hospitality and marvel at the old, gas-fired fridge - (an icy cold coke in the bush is a thing of sheer luxury).  D on my instruction gets the number of one of the guys as they live in the town the truck would pass through to access these new timber tracks.

At 9pm D rings the guy to explain he would like him to be a scout and he says in fact the truck has just gone by.  (This is were the inky night and the loss of my black phone collide creating something quite hard to describe - but not pleasant.)

D goes to try to apprehend them with 2 rangers.  In the dead of the night Laurie screams loudly perhaps a dream.  D hasn't returned and like the low chatter of insects outside my mind begins to whir. 'Where is he? What has happened? Will be return? What if he does not? I have NO phone, NO car...' My mouth goes dry.  The black night does something mysterious to me I feel captured by it, as if its made of molasses that makes movement and even breathing much harder.  And there is a sense that it is not my realm anymore it has been claimed by the animals, the stealthy night hunters.  Darkness is their medium not mine.  And I am literally miles from help  3 hours by 4x4 if you can navigate the hidden holes and sunken drainage.

I comfort Laurie and just sit glued to the bed and wait and wait.  Eventually I lie down and fall asleep and then wake with the cockerel's noisy call at 4 am just before dawn.  D has returned and the night it lifting, at last I can breath again.

Like meeting an old friend who has set off on foot over the sahara

Being used to collect water from the local water hole at Mareja

When I first set eyes on the cream Land Rover in the dusty yard in Pemba I wanted to run up to it and hug and kiss it, my long lost brave friend... but sadly they don't lend themselves to such emotion and the hard edges cannot be softened however hard you try.  But it was a great and uplifting moment seeing it again so far from its home. 

The trials and tribulations since this vehicle had been bought in Wiltshire over 8 months before were immense.  Dominik is a not a natural with paperwork and the process of export here and import there had turned into the most onerous and complex set of hurdles.  The last major hiccup involved the shipment arriving at Pemab (3 month late) but the shippers having lost all documentation and the border police threatened to impound the contents or sell them off unless D could produce the whole paper trail for a second time within a week.  He managed with hours to spare and found all his precious cargo on board with a few new dents but nothing more serious.  (The cargo included solar panels, camp beds and chairs, a useful trunk, 3 cars....and my mattress)

Inside Dominik's house and propped against the wall in the gloaming was my old mattress.  This also deserved a hug and unlike the Cream Dream yielded a little.  It began life with Laura Ashley then to my house in London, then it lived under my bed in Oxford for 8 years until it was whisked out, dusted off and transported on top of the Landrover to the packing yard...it came loose on the A40 and fell off somehow missing any vehicles but lay on the damp verge for another day until a rescue operation could be mounted.  It bears new scars - a rusty lattice pattern and a few holes but on my last day in Mareja it found its new home on a handsome chamfuta (type of mahogany) bed....many many miles from where it began life.

(I heard a Dreams advert suggest you should change your mattress every 7 years, if they mean change location I agree.)

Bloody ticks everywhere I go!

I  lay in bed this morning and thought ‘gosh we had 3 ticks each in Germany and so far none in this sub tropical forested world’.  It is drying up fast as the dry season takes hold, ‘perhaps that is why?’ Then in the bathroom I catch sight of something on L’s waist…a blasted, tiny tick nestled deep.  It has obviously been there a while as it has the tell-tale red ring around it.  He hates me doing medical fiddling but I manage to extract and disinfect heavily.  I must add ‘tick check’ to our daily routine (in the dark with torch).

When is it safe to take a child into the bush in Northern Mozambique? At 4 years 2 months...

Yesterday we were in Pemba in the house – that is going through a bad patch and in my view is barely habitable.  It is little things like a sink that looks deceptively functional but isn’t connected so pours water onto the floor.  And damp patches are to be avoided at all costs…this is no 1 malaria hotspot in the north.  Right opposite the hospital.  It has other down sides like mos mesh in the windows that has corroded away and no running water and only my portable fridge that I bought in a reckless moment for car transported picnics but D half inched and put in his shipment.  What a blessing that turned out to be…his devious ways!

Anyway in this house Laurie was unobserved for a moment.  Then went to D and said “Daddy there were lots of sparks?” Really…he takes Dominik by the hand and shows him.  He has cut through 2 live cables my ipad (the last bit of connection I had after my phone being stolen) and Ds lamp.  Unbelievably it had shorted and blown the socket up and not L.  The scissors had insulated handles – he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

While D was removing termite activity the head flies off the hammer...
here my bush nurse nursing skills on show.  Thankfully a manageable wound.

Then today while I was painting there was one of those moments of eerie silence.  I went to look for L and there he was looking guilt ridden with something in his mouth rather like an excited Labrador with a stolen sausage.  And there was a palate of antibiotics, part of Ds extensive malaria treatment, and two large green bombs are missing.  It turns out after police like interrogation he had not eaten them but put them in the water container in the bathroom.

But I have been rigorous about giving him anti-malaria pills and covered all exposed skin in anti-mozzie spray to avoid Dengue fever.  He has lost one toenail and had many many scratches – but given the hammer wielding and interest in Daddy’s catana/razor sharp bush knife, we have come off lightly.  I just feel like an super charged electric eel literally bursting with fight-flight adrenaline!

Laurie finding his feet...as a foal

I watch children here they are taken along by their mothers but generally ignored – swaddled to their body or they work helping to collect grass or firewood.  But they have many playmates and form mini tribes.  Laurie is greatly missing his friends and to some degree structure.  Since we set sail nearly 6 weeks ago most days he asks ‘When are we going back to Oxford?’  Now I think of if he is more attached to ‘nork’ his comfort blanket than usual.  And his thumb sucking looks so out of place in a country where ‘good water’ is very scarce and hands are something to be feared and only shaken tentatively if the occasions demands.

Wild, free living is something most unusual and indeed seems to go against modern parenting where circumstance and our inner world dictates that ‘control’ and ‘order’ are the preferred modes of operation. Dominik describes his preferred style of parenting as having ‘a foal at foot’.  Of course this is a privilege… a foal in the office environment would just be a noise/trip hazard!

I worry that Laurie doesn’t find my foot fall that engaging, though we have wonderful moments such as peeling carrots together or planting a mini herb garden and then one time long water games while I painted in the bathroom or using charcoal to draw an army of ants on the wooden table at the main house.   (Or our  glorious 'off the hook' day in Pemba...mentioned in another blog scribble.) But perhaps that’s the point to share wonderful moments and inbetween to learn to entertain yourself or the art of patience. 

Though being a foal at Daddy’s feet is very diverting…lying under the landrover with a large spanner, jangling around in the back of the landrover with rangers as they head  into deep forest, getting caked in mud while fishing and much else on the dangerous spectrum.

Thieves whip the rug from under my feet but strangely it enabled me to stand firmer

I had my phone stolen on the road into Mareja...my little black, highly potent coping mechanism.  In fact it had its first real test, to give me a sense of safety, let alone....control, access to friends, means to record our experience. 

Stolen on the road at one of our veggie stops were we collected Antonio, I got out and pushed through the encasement of people around our car to greet him.  My closest friend at Mareja if you can define friendship through time spent silently and happy in each others company cooking. He is the serene elderly cook and he makes everything better.

How foolish, so very pleased to see him.  A bit like Jenga it took a fundamental block out of my psyche and the not entirely robustly constructed sanity above was rocked profoundly.  But then it couldn't be, I had to get a grip there was no back up plan....well not the kind I knew.  D rang an elder to find out if they had contacts in that village and we offered a reward.

But do you know what, apart from that one terrifying black night it was probably the best thing that has happened to me in a long time... I had to look outwards and engage more fully. 

It was a very strange process reprogramming myself to a smart-phone-less existence, the phone twitch one develops becomes an unconditional response...a swipe, tap to just check up on the world of techno communication drags ones in to a subculture so engrained that reality is only ever filtered through the screen.  But I am sure you know this.  It has made me want to have phone free hours or even days to prevent the full on addiction taking hold again. 

A few snaps of activities made easier without a phone...not Great art but small art and progress!

 

From 5 star to 0 stars

actually D admitted it may even get minus star rating... His house in Pemba.

Last night we stayed at his friends Isabel and Roco's wonderful house on the beach with air conditioning, a view on to the Indian ocean and breakfast on our terrace of fresh papaya.  Without question a 5 star experience and a moment to take a deep breath.

We were meant to go to Mareja today but D embarked on getting a new driving license which required a medical check in one place, photo in another and so on. I went shopping and discovered the new supermarket with all sorts on dark packed shelves particularly rows of mysterious biscuits but a small meat counter and even a freezer cabinet with chips in.  But then we embarked on buying fresh veg the traditional way were you haggle in the street, with a balance....it took ages, the mosquitoes came out and then the sun began to dip in the sky it sets at 5pm as its winter here. So we sidled to Ds house it was too late for the long bush drive.

His house is situated bang opposite the hospital, with a wall of bourgonvilla separating us visually but not from the particularly fat mosquitoes who have easy access through the many holes in the decaying metal nets on the windows.  There have been moments in its life.when the house had  running water, a fridge, an almost functioning cooker and the odd painting and cupboard of out of place crystal made it feel loved.  But that moment has passed.  Now there is no running water or fridge or cooker and the paintings just hint at better times. 

Water is extracted for a hole below the kitchen, in a cupboard and at a strange angle in the dark.  The homemade bucket doesn't sink so it needs poking with  stick.  The bathroom has a large bucket for the loo water and I use a metal cup to scoop and wash my hands...how was I to know that the little sink was no longer connected so water cascaded onto my feet?  My heart sank to the doldrums of '0' rating but the mosquitoes leapt with joy a new pool of water to attract yet more friends to share our house.

5 years later...with a 6 week detour via malaria, Germany and Kenya

Almost 5 years to the day since I set foot in Mozambique and in that time I have climbed my own inselberg. But the last ascent has had its own nokes and crannies.

Letting my house for two months involved processing piles of life clutter that seemed to replicate like cockroaches just as I had exterminated one another family scurried into view. I held a community fundraising event 3 days before vacating my house. Which at times felt like a self made mountain. But it truly illuminated the value of communities and all my closest friends and neighbours baked, helped, gave in support of mareja. Nick Cope, the fantastic children's singer, was the highlight with little people voting with their feet for him and for elephants. The event over and more piles redistributed and somehow the house cleansed and made less lived in. We leave and say goodbye to our home for 2 months and L leaves school, nursery, friends and his beloved toys (neatly in boxes)....quite a thing for a just 4 year old,

Then we make a QUICK stop in Germany enroute for a lovely family party. The day we actually leave and struggle out of the house with 3 large suitcases, 2 small and 2 backpacks, D started to feel unwell. My refusal to fly from stansted saw us hit the rail network via St pancreas via Brussels via cologne and two taxis. Perhaps this didn't help his condition. He had brought malaria with him from his recent return from Moz. But that was only the tip of that development. The standard medication recommended by my doctor, based on the miracle plant Artemesian, turned out not to work, then a German doctor recommended malarone...a whole 6 weeks later we arrived in Nairobi and a friend very cleverly spotted Ds reduced manner and frame and insisted he see the revered specialist Dr Saio. He uncovered a stubborn and persistent case of the life treathening illness and we learned a lot about the latest recommended treatment. P. Falcipricum is partially resistant to coartem the plant based cure and Ds missing spleen didn't help fight those weasley parasites. He was given a double dose of synthetic Artemesian and malarone and it worked. Big relief. (Though the patient carried on peppering medication with beers, hard to imagine what he was thinking but of course malaria does make you go a bit wacko.)

Anyway the mountain was nearly over having arrived in Kenya. We only had a visa to sort. They have changed the mozambiquain rules and you now have to obtain them outside the country.  This particular mountain, the visa mountain, may make you want to jump... So in brief 3 visits to the embassy, $215 and 13 days later we get the visas. However the delay was filled with extraordinary sights... Zebras at breakfast, Lamu green turtle hatching and its old city coral walls, giraffes against the horizon. And Laurie learned the delights of hotel service and one morning slipped out to order 3 waffles and a hot chocolate!

So yesterday we arrived in Pemba 5 years after my last trip before I became pregnant. And much had kept me away... With my new head and heart as a mother and sensitised perspective on risk....the need for working vehicles, the lack of medical care, the intense Poaching crisis, isolation, new dengue fever out break, hotspot for malaria, Laurie's penicillin allergy...

It's familiarity was very welcoming, the stale sweet smells and bright glare of the Indian ocean. Dust, fumes and familiar faces. All strangely comforting But also the  stark changes of development such as scattering of many windowed concrete facades fuelled by the gas find and nearly all stopped in their tracks by the project being halted. A town hoping for change but rather like a butterfly with only half a wing emerging from the dried crysalis.

But this is only the beginning tomorrow we head to mareja.

Laurie was hit on the nose by a baby elephant

...he really was! We were at David Sheldricks fantastic elephant orphanage in Nairobi for the hour display, when the babies are given their morning bottle and brought into a wallow. Laurie put his hand under the wire to grab a piece of foliage that they were being fed and the little snouted big eared gambling youngsters wandered around with many keepers very calm and tame. When they occasionally came close enough we could stroke their  funny dry leathery skin and L found his moment to offer up his twig to one. In fact this young male was eating a nice Handful of grass but L kept offering him his prize twig. Then the young male suddenly looked at L and swung his small trunk up and bopped him on the nose. The shock was great and L cried loudly. The collective very large audience weren't quite sure what to do. But a young female Ellie did...she marched over and took Laurie's twig from his hand.. He was delighted and encouraged enough to stop crying. And I have chosen her as my adopted elephant!