Hooray hooray for Timberland - and the post service

A day of great celebration....after 5 trips to the post office and 3 weeks later our hope had been sapped....with a dragging step we visited the post office again yesterday and there in the corner were our TWO LARGE PARCELS from Timberland.  The excitement was huge - and although opened they seem complete. 

They contain many t-shirts and an array of boots and foot wear from heavy duty workboots to fashion items of note, pointed mock snake, green suede with a white flash (my favourite but sadly in size 12w American).

Here are the boots chosen for the rangers
and the pair at the front for Adamo's daughter Sophie

We are off to Mareja today with a renewed spring in our step with the BEST Christmas presents to distribute.  Feedback and photos to follow...

SHOCK discovery - shopping in Pemba

Last night we were off to meet an interesting old friend of Dominik’s, Rob Primmer, who is setting up a large scale UN timber certification process to facilitate carbon credits and stem the vast illegal trade here.

On the way I decide to begin a spot of Christmas shopping so nip out at a large tourist shop.  There under the shade of the bamboo constructed shop is a Chinese man sitting on a stool surrounded by 5 or so sellers unpacking the contents of their rucksacks...ivory carved into many different artefacts and the buyer is handling a large carved tusk, ironically carved into a herd of elephants pursued by a lion....not a poacher.

My word – I am gobsmacked and feel a cocktail of emotions including anxiety – I must do something?  This is happening in broad day just there next to the road and opposite the beach front, a shocking gauge of normalised behaviour, supply and demand.  I run to find Dominik and get his camera and return, smile and look innocent when I ask ‘what material is that?’...”plastic” they smile back.  At this point the largest tusk has been hidden.  I handle the small tusks just to check and indeed there are the growth marks and nerves of elephant teeth.  I then pose as a buyer and ask to see that beautiful carved piece I saw earlier – he then revels that that is ivory and expensive...’Oh how much?’, say I...  ‘$300 but we can negotiate’.  Ivory is now fetching $850/ kg on the black market (a couple of years ago it was $300/kg) and this tusk would have been at least 3 kg- so it is nothing, so very cheap the market must be flooded.

Here are the photos for you and a slice of reality – as Dominik put it simply ‘when you have any resource in a poor country there will always be a supply.’  A ‘resource’...for someone who is emotionally hard wired to elephants and their conservation this was a very surprising calm response.  He usually has what I term Ivory Tourettes – if he smells illegal trade or encounters a known poacher he cannot stop himself from a loud exclamation – such as ‘he’s a poacher!' 

A sadly resigned and subdued response to a problem that now seems to me huge and heavy -  like a bull elephant’s tusk...and a conservationist’s heart.

WILDLIFE NOTE: Mocking Cliff Chat – new range...new inappropriate behaviour

A bit of background to what has become a very noisy and intrusive permanent resident...

We first noticed the new addition to our familiar ‘courtyard’ wildlife – the Mocking Cliff Chat in the summer.  It arrived in August and became part of the immediate surroundings next to the house, always popping up on the swing or log pile or similar.

It is the size of a large blackbird but distinctive in all manner of other ways - its orange breast with black surrounds, loud call and wagging tail.  It has a bold nature that was initially rather endearing, well until the swallows and swifts appeared to nest in October...

We have a wonderful breeding colony of striped swallows and white rumped swifts (not their correct names - will add later when book is at hand).  Their mud houses are glued all around the guest rooms and reception/our bedroom - it is very much their home as well.  They are so at ease that they use our bedroom as a thoroughfare and on occasion the swifts fly around in formation never landing, an amazing sight (until after hours of ignoring the two large open doors you begin to worry they may never leave.) The beautiful swallows also come in but they just land on the ornate metal ceiling light and look very decorative while chatting away in groups of up to 5 at a time.

But the Cliff Chat was spotted marauding their nests, unbalancing the old mud casing and flinging out any early chicks.  This went on for days, popping in and out of every nest causing much devastation with a cheery ease of spirit.  We quickly looked it up in our thick Bird Book to discover nothing is reported about its normal behaviour.  We could only discover information about its detailed markings, call and range but nothing about habits.  This was a mysterious discovery are birders not interested in behaviour?  Our mammal guides are full of insights into such things.

At this time Malcolm (our visiting bird guide and expert Ringer) arrived and was very  excited by the Cliff Chat presence as it is out of its normal recorded ‘range’.  And even more excited when he caught the male and managed to put a ring on it.  Dominik commented ‘did you ring its neck’?  Perhaps a little strong but it is doing our swallow and swift colony no good at all.  Anyway – we are now building up more insights into the behaviour of this bird that has extended its range...

Can you see the two Cliff Chat chicks....?

It has chosen a swallow’s nest to commander, right outside our door, and wakes up and starts calling even before the cockerels and then...begins its ritual of coming into our room and looking at its self in the mirror.  It clings on to the side of the small square mirror and pears at its reflection and pecks – at least 10 times before 5 am.  It continues this behaviour throughout the day and even when I am sitting at the desk it will land on the stable door look at me and glide over to take another look at itself....what is this about?  Is it new range new behaviour, a vanity associated with different climes, habitats or a new sense of competition with the striped swallows?  Hard to say and unless a Cliff Chatt enthusiast reads my blog I am not sure how to discover?

Also finally – with its shining new ring and a neck in tact it is successfully bringing up two babies who will carry on this behaviour in their new range!

(I have a video too which I will try to upload once free from 'dial up')

BIG rain and hope for Christmas

The rain has come – thank heavens.  The day before yesterday ‘Grande chuva’ – big rain, firstly 44.9 then 10.1, so 55 mm in all, in just two days. The heavens opened and the rain thundered so loudly it reverberated in every bone and I wondered if the roof might collapse!  Now there are rivers of sand in unexpected places and half the kitchen did collapse and was swimming with muddy water and straw. (I discovered all manner of hidden old packets - soup, flour, yeast, chocolate powder that were quite disintegrated.)

We have one light we run from the solar panel in the main all-purpose room, which serves as an office and our bedroom (which is rather misleading and grandly called the Reception). This light now brings in all sorts of insect life which has sprung from nowhere.  And the bit that I find wearing...the background buzzing has begun, a constant hum of unmelodic insect communication.  The noise mainly comes from those cicadas, Christmas beetles, and the hum will now build to an unbelievable and mentally disturbing crescendo as the rainy season really takes hold.

But despite the insect life, the most amazing thing is how quickly things change from dusty orange terrain with skeletal trees and ragged bushes to everything being touched by a verdant green brush – you can almost see the grass growing.

And the other mysterious thing is that the signs of pending rain are quite different here, black clouds are not a sure indication, they can pass quickly and may leave very localised patches of rain or nothing.  But when a ‘big rain’ is going to hit you just feel it, you feel like you have been hit ...over the head, I become so hot and lifeless and wonder what on earth has happened to me and then the large fat drops begin and slowly you are restored - like the dry land.

There had been a prolonged drought here for  6 years with between 700-900mm, a normal year has more like 1200mm of rain.  Last year saw some improvement and everything was much healthier.  And now I am really hoping that the rain continues over the next few weeks.  Dominik can only stop worrying about the animals being poached when the bush closes over from tangled new growth and becomes waterlogged and thoroughly alive.  Then the poachers sit in their houses and find other pursuits, including making their snares in preparation for the slow drying out and dying back in late March.

Anyway – rain is here, all is happier and it may even mean we can come to England for a relaxed (and very cold) Christmas...

City v Bush - life in Pemba on the Indian Ocean

I thought I would try to explain the Pemba side of existence here, I will attempt to paint a picture of the urban counterbalance to Mareja.



Festa and Amigo - guard dogs, off duty!

Our house in Pemba is a bunker behind a high fence.  Dominik has two dogs Amigo a bouncing collie-cross and Festa who I call the ‘Boiled Carpet’ – it is meant as a term of endearment, but she does really look like she has been put accidently through a hot wash.  She has some Alsatian and a manner of other things in her heredity.  She was a rescue dog and carries the scars of maltreatment.  They are quite different – Amigo greets you like a child hyperactive from fizzing drinks and Festa wobbles towards you very slowly and meekly.  They are wonderful guard dogs, playing quite different roles and our companions.  They cheer me hugely.  On high days we all take a trip to the beach and they are washed in the sea (which they don’t greatly like and they particularly hate D’s love of exfoliating using sand, well in my view, but either way they enjoy the attention). 

The house has always been near the hospital but last year they changed the position of the entrance and now the large concrete facade with its sweeping approach for ambulances is bang opposite our door.  We are shielded by a thick fence of bougainvillea – but sadly it is not a defence against the fat malaria ridden mosquitoes that visit and the night wailing. However, our Guards love it, as it has bought the city to our door step.  They now have cigarette sellers, women with pastries and many family members just there – visiting hospital is a long-term commitment you have to be prepared to wait and wait and wait.

Shielding the hospital facade

I used to dislike bougainvillea – too brash and clichéd, of holiday villas in Greece...but now I LOVE it.  As well as lurid pink, it comes in orange, pale pink, deep red and refreshing white - it is so predictably happy and robust despite the surroundings.  In the ramshackle yard around the back of the house, which is mainly a graveyard for Landrovers past, we also have two frangipani trees, one pink and one white.  These are the most wonderful thing, their simple shape and sweet smell spells indulgence (reminds me of sunny Australia) – and they lift the less than indulgent surroundings considerably.

 

Pemba is hard to describe.  The eyes of a new comer see grass rooves, casing mud houses, stretching to a bright blue sea. Colourful people everywhere, vehicles clumsily meandering about until they are parted by a noisy bus - that is so loaded with all of life that its metal bottom in inches from the tarmac and you wonder a lot how it got from there to here.  There are crustacean of small shops ‘baracas’ lining every turn and these shops all sell the same bright packets of cigarettes, stale biscuits, bags of rice and imported sweets  - the only thing that differentiates them is the ‘magic’ they have bought to aid their sales.  And these small bamboo shops are encased by a layer of street sellers sitting on the ground with mangoes or peanuts or beans or baskets. 

Then you go into the ‘centre’ and see more concrete and start learning about the market with its profusion of thin plastic wares imported from China, again being sold in different combinations by every seller, of which there are many...  Of course there are the odd retail giant who imports all sorts and charges hugely to the expats and Mafioso, such as Osman the Indian seller who has a huge glass facade and sells everything within reason – party hats, Baby belling cookers, plastic thermos flasks, bicycles.

 And in the middle of Pemba and along various bits of the huge bay there are also remnants of its crumbled colonial Portuguese past, sudden features of grandeur – a domed leaded window, imposing doorway, ornate column no longer attached, a decorated concrete moulded fence, then a mysterious but beautifully simple art nouveau bus station now behind a barrier of ‘chapa de zino’ – corrugated iron, one of the greatest symbols of progress.  (If you can replace your grass and bamboo roof with a chapa de zino, you may boil but you won’t be damp in the rainy season and mainly you will be seen to be  .)

Taking a stroll into town with baby and umbrella

Once you venture off the main road you stumble across mounds of rotting rubbish, meet street dogs and enormous pot holes.  In between this there are aid agencies such as the Rainbow Church that runs a huge school, the Microbank run by Aga Khan Foundation, Humana for second-hand clothes –  to mention but a few of many.  (At a recent visit to Humana, it was surreal to discover Boden striped shirts, a vintage pair of Beeba shoes and an elegant pashmina scarf, items obviously discarded in Kensington!  I bought the scarf for 100mt, $3, more useful for the frozen north.) 

Then on the outskirts and at the port, there is another world, hidden unless you can read the signs.  Large unmarked temporary buildings obscured by rickety fences with adjoining yards. Cruise liners linger waiting for ‘resources’ to freight to Asia – timber, sea cucumbers, cotton seed, cowry shells...ivory.  It all happens behind high metal gates, so you can only wonder.

My favourite Pemba photo -
all sorts to notice, inc. a wonderful hat

For me Pemba is confined and hectic, either in a hot room or a hot car or a restaurant drenched in mosquito spray and everywhere there is a plastic pace and endless busy humanity...however it does also hold sudden surprise images of humanity and the wonderful glow of human spirit. 

And there are a few other highlights... the pastry shop where I can get Pastel de Nata, an amazing unexpected sugary treat, Starfish a new venture run by a South-African couple who have found a spot slightly outside town with an uninterrupted view of glittering sea where you get proper coffee and can buy mince for Mareja. Then (when I have stopped thinking about food) the hidden layer of sellers behind the market – here the shops are full of materials – and as I have never been allowed to spend hours and hours sifting through the strange, graphic, colourful designs, it has formed a thrilling inner layer in my psyche, like the mysterious smear of cream in a jam roll, (food, even as a metaphor, is hard to escape).  One day I hope to slip away, alone, for excessive Mozambiquian material shopping fun.

 Dominik’s favourite place is Mare Sol which is on the beach front and he has been frequenting it for 15 years  now and gets a very warm welcome.  Unlike much else it has not changed - the service is slow, very slow but they do simple seafood and boiled potatoes with cold beer and while you wait you can watch all sorts of life on the beach.

 The beach front harbours the only real signs of tourism – and in my three years of visiting I have already seen great changes.  The one large hotel built by an Arab still looks enormous and polished and starkly designed for a floundering world tourist.  But now there are more hostels and lately a large Indian restaurant on the beach road to Russell’s Place – the backpackers hang out that attracts all the expats as it has TV and wireless connection, clever Russell (Australian).

So that is it a snap shot of Pemba but I must just add, it is of course surrounded by the Indian Ocean, and sits on apparently the third largest bay in the world.  And the sea is a whole other story...dotted with Dows, occasional home to breading humpback whales, with a steep coral shelf not far from the shore and once a refuge for the adorable and rare seacow, Dugongs, now hunted out...and it is all fished to pieces with mosquito nets. 

And the big news... recently they have found large gas deposits within the marine protection area.  Indeed a whole other story.

There is good and bad everywhere here, in blinding, sun-drenched contrast.











A Pemba day

Today is a day in Pemba, it is quite unlike our life at Mareja.  Perhaps that is obvious, it is not the wild interior but it not quite like other towns (and far from a Cotswold village.)  When here we seem to have two modes, flying around in the Toyota buying all manner of stores, frantically trying to get the dial-up web connection to work in the dark house OR suddenly doing very little to...nothing, because the shops are closed for lunch, the internet down and the heat and humidity weighing so heavily that being stationary is the only way.  And nothing ever goes to plan, not even vaguely and after a while you try to forget you even had a plan.

We were going to be here for one night and a day of restocking – now four days later we are still here (and I am not feeling very well and hoping it will pass).  A flavour of activities... the water pump broke in the house and gave Dominik a 240v shock and I didn’t hear his exclamation as I was buried in the hot office - after lying down and feeling peculiar for a while he thankfully improved.  (Running water was one of the few good things about being here!)

We have tried a lot to track down our TNT parcel, of Timberland sponsored boots, with no joy. We spent 3 hours in the post office in town watching 6 people opened 4 bags (1 person opened, 1 wrote things, 1 picked up the bags, 3 did nothing) and also visited the port depot twice - here we finally found an inventory, and worked hard at remaining level spirited with the highly disinterested man but there was no record of our parcels.  (According to TNT tracking website it is in a storehouse in Zambia, I had thought this an error but perhaps not? And perhaps it will eventually leave the storeroom - am still going to keep hoping, for now.)

We also had an important impromptu meeting with Jemuce (Unilurio), Rebecca and Nelson (Park), which led to two further meetings and we have agreed a final Memorandum of Understanding for research work at Mareja, a great success and worth a dedicated blog entry.  The document is currently in Nampula being signed, finger’s crossed.

 Also stocked up on tinned food, dried fish for the community, rice, stationary, nails and ‘lima’ metal files.  Bought Trisa some boots from a second hand store and some children’s shorts and a ladies dark green waisted top, so he has something reassembling a uniform now – am most pleased.  Satisfaction sapped a bit by returning to car to find an odd array of things stolen...soap, pestle and mortar, mosquito spray and special fizzy drink, the small back window was left ajar.

Anyway...if you would like you would like to know more about Pemba I am going to try to create a picture in my next entry.  Please read on!

Dancing dragonflies...and gold

The butterflies and dragonflies here are spectacular.  They provide shocks of colour suddenly to light up the undergrowth (outer and inner) or hidden camouflaged shapes to find – and unlike other wildlife watching they are totally undemanding, danger-free.   

Whenever there is water hole maintenance or damn creation to do I find a spot in the shade and watch the dragonflies.  They seem to have preferred perches and are quite territorial about their chosen spot.  Then they do quite different things with their wings...see my photos.  Is this part of their display, an alluring dance for me or another?

I would love to attract experts to study them, both dragonflies and butterflies – but they are like gold dust...these specialists.  It is one thing to identify the bright and exotic but the subdued end of the spectrum is demanding. 

I am sure we have a particularly rich and potentially rare collection of dragonflies here.  So these photos are to tantalise you and .... my friend Steve, from the Natural History Museum, one of these gold dust specialist.

With its Portuguese colonial past and troubled recent history Mozambique, and particularly the north, has not had a tradition of collecting and research.  Today we sit within one of the global biodiversity hotspots and an extremely rare habitat, East African coastal forest.

 There is so much to observe, learn, record, disseminate and conserve while ‘development’ creeps on....  I must attract funds and then the right people...gold meets gold.