from ivory to ebony...and a change in approach

Since D returned I have received a very different type of communication.  He has not dashed to Mareja but instead seems to be resident in Pemba gathering intelligence from Augusto the administrator at Mareja, and various other trusted sources.  It seems the timber operation we uncovered in the summer has gathered momentum and is much larger than first imagined.

But the surprising bit of Ds approach, is rather than going out with his rangers as an environmental foot soldier, he is knocking on doors, uncovering all the NGOs he can and meeting community leaders to gather support to tackle these illegal operators together.  He doesn't enjoy the politics and has rarely found comrade in the past...but these times seem to have changed he is lining supporters up shoulder to shoulder.

It seems extraordinary after years of battling the illegal timber operators just as ivory is waning...as the large elephants have all been killed... ebony should be back on the poaching menu.  Those gnarled slow growing trees that pepper miombo forest have weathered all storms, and particularly fires, only to be singled out and severed at the base.

Dominik possibly feels most passionately about the need to keep the trees standing.  They are like majestic knitting needles and once fallen all the biodiversity, like intricate stiches, are unpicked beneath their canopy.

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I have designed these Tshirts to support Mareja and our elephant conservation work.

The slogan on the back reads 'worth more alive than dead.  Stop the ivory trade' and for children 'keep elephants marching. Stop the ivory trade'.

Cost £18 adult (£20 with postage and packing), £12 children (£14 with postage and packing). 

Two designs and various colours to choose from:

• Unisex in M, L, XL and sand, green, white or bright red
• Womens (more fitted) in grey, S and M
• Childrens in 3-4 yrs, 4-5yrs, 6-7yrs, 7-8yrs in bright green, bright red or white 

You can pay at www.protectmareja.com by following the 'donate' button and ALL funds go directly towards our work, with no overheads or admin.

If you would like to place an order or find out more please email me Sophie: skrscott@gmail.com

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).