Water's Song

Monday, October 14, 2019

Zambian Safari at Kafunta Lodge on the South Luangwa River

Lessons from Zambian Safari
September 13-21, 2019
1.Circle of life
Numerous omnivores feed a smaller number of carnivores.

Carnivores can turn on each other if their is a kill on the land.

Carnivore waste feeds the grass that omnivores eat.

2.Water is life
Arriving at the end of the dry season when the river and all its streams were dry or low, wildlife was easier to find. Where there was water, there was life.

Dry season was when the vine jasmine bloomed filling the dusty dusk with a sweet fragrance.

3. Nature recycles naturally— only thing wasted are large bones and skulls

Hyenas eat bones, their poop is white due to the calcium in the bones they eat. Other animals eat their poop to meet their bodies need for calcium.

Elephants do not fully digest their food- they eat anything with leaves or limbs. Baboons and birds pick through elephant dung to eat undigested seeds.

Hippos, who spend their days in the water sleeping and avoiding the burning rays of the sun, disperse their poop with their tail. The smaller bits feed fish. Crocodiles feed on the fish.

Termites can build 100 year old mounts by eating wood and plant matter. Trees and plants grow next to the termite mounts utilizing nutrients from the termites.

4. Why doesn’t man, the most cognitively gifted animal recycle?

My wish for Zambia is:
They can skip the plastic era of human “advancement”, keeping their land and water free of deadly plastic pollution.
They continue to preserve immense areas of their country. Zambia has 30% of its land in preserves. In Africa, Zambia ‘s Kafue National Park is the 5th largest game preserve, 22,400 sq kilometers. The 15th largest preserve in Africa is the S. Luangwa National Park, with 9,050 sq kilometers, which we were fortunate to experience.

I wonder what my friend, Stefano, who studies young economies like Ethiopia would add to my wish list? A convenient source of water? What else?

Unfortunately, climate change is impacting the region. According to our guide, Joseph, temperatures are getting hotter at the end of the dry season and the big rains at the end of October are not as reliable as they were in the past. Less rain is falling during the wet season.
The people of the village of Mfuwe, near the National Park and Safari Lodge, walk or bike. We did not see Lusaka, the capital of this independent country despite flying into its airport. Lusaka has a little over a tenth of the population of the country within its boundaries. I am uncertain how most of the capital population gets around.
Fuel in the villages is primarily the hard mopani wood used for cooking. Women go out and collect it in groups with crude axes. Small water bottles of petrol were for sale but it seems to be a small market.
Overall, it seems unfair to be dealing with harmful climate changes when you didn’t contribute much to the greenhouse gases that caused it.

A few facts.

Zambia is about the size of Texas and is a landlocked country- surrounded by 8 countries (Angola,Namibia,Botswana,Zimbabwe,Mozambique,Malawi,Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo.) It is a nation of 17 million people—8 million less than the population of Texas.

The park is named after the Luangwa River that flows through it. A river with the world’s largest concentration of hippos and a major tributary of the Zambezi River. Luangwa, we were told is a type of basket used to catch fish on the river. Despite the risk of hippos and crocodiles, men still fish at night then bring their catch into town to sell.

The sausage tree is a vital food source at the end of the dry season when grass is dry and lacks nutrients. It produces flowers that fall to the ground or are picked off by baboons. Once on the ground, the flowers feed impala. The actual fruit, a elongated pale squash like tube that vary in size are eaten from the tree by giraffe and once fallen of the tree, zebra and hippo gobble them up.

Friday, October 11, 2019

Road to a friend’s house is never long

Friday, September 6, 2019

We arranged a Lyft at 4:45am for a ride from an Earl’s Court hotel, our base lodging for this Fall’s adventures, to Heathrow for a British Airway flight (before their pilot strike) to Rome. Arriving at the Rome airport, we caught a bus to Avesano, a 2 hour ride east. Our Malta friend, Stefano picked us up in a little red car. After an ATM stop, we drove 20 minutes across the countryside to a little hillside village, Corchumello, where Stefano and Marie have their “ cottage” a courtyard away from Stefano’s mother and stepfather’s “cottage” in this small hillside village.

After dropping our backpacks off at the Agritourismo Le Acacie, owned by friends of Stefano and Marie’s —their Italian wedding celebration was held in this same venue 13 years prior -we headed further across the country side hugging the hills to Tagliacozzo, with Marie and Lilli, their teenage daughter, for a late lunch in the square where we were the only tourists.

The stage was set for a whole weekend full of fun- walking tour of quiet Tagliacozzo, Lilli guiding us on a tour of Corchumello, an outdoor market, an incredible lunch made by Stefano’s mother for 11 of us on their porch overlooking the valley below — including homemade wine and a digestive-aide liquor.

As hoped, we did a little farm work, picking tomatoes— a bit back bending like strawberries. The garden contained black cabbage, which I had never seen before. The leaves are edible so it maybe more kale-like then cabbage-y. It makes for a rich soup.

The 5 of us piled into the little red car for a Sunday picnic and a swim at Lake Scanno with a hike along Lake San Domenico on the way. We had to stop for a wedding procession at the start of the journey, which reminded me just last Sunday we attended our friend Courtney ‘s wedding in Nashville. Andrew and I had put a few miles under us in a week.

Andrew and I took the train into Rome for the day while Stefano and Marie prepared to close up their house for the summer. The Colosseum, Forum, Pallatine Hill, Pantheon and the best gelato (Marie’s recommendation) were all part of the tour scripted by Stefano and guided by Andrew, who had been to Rome a few years before to attend a conference.

Our last night, the 4 of us, as Lilli was in Rome at her grandparent’s house for the night, shared an incredible 4 course vegetarian meal at our agritourisma.

After a quick spin along the countryside on their bikes, the 4 us packed into the little red car and we caught a bus back to the Rome airport to catch a Veilung Airlines flight back to London as our British Airways flight was canceled due to the pilot strike- still trying to get reimbursed for that flight. Stefano and Marie drove on to Rome for one more family night before they flew back to Malta and their teaching jobs at the University of Malta and Lilli’ s transition to middle school.

Marie is so wonderful to be with as she starts conversations with so many people and is so engaging and curious. She is also very bright and quick to understand the complexities of a situation. She is my favorite behavioral economist. Marie is also an environmentalist- rides her bike to work and has co written a book of environmental cartoons called No Man’s Land.

Stefano is a chef and an environmental economist specializing in 3rd world and island economies.

I hope we can share a Michigan weekend with them soon. I am eager to show them Torch Conservation Center’s TRUE BLUE Gallery as both of them are eager to find ways to expand awareness of sustainable living.

I noted a few sustainable living practices worth sharing from the Abruzzo region of Italy. For one, their love of food leads to an intimate interaction with food products. It is not just the gustatory pleasure but their involvement in the whole food process from the foraging, planting, harvesting, drying, seed collection for next year’s plantings, fermenting, canning and finally cooking. It is so much more than “farm to table.” I know it takes more time but it seems like gardening with a purpose.
Another sustainable food approach was the Italian use of pork. Thin slices of pork- more for flavoring-than as an entree may place a smaller demand on pork. Consolidated pork production in the US is an environmental hotspot. I do not know if smaller demand would drive smaller pig farmers back into the market. Probably not. But, if they not only butchered but prepped and cured their own sausages and slices, as we saw in the family run butcher shop, the American appetite for hand crafted foods might be able to carry the economic alteration from big mass production to small hand crafted pork goods.

Not only changes in food but also changes in housing appeared more connected to nature than our American practices. The clustering of housing in their villages not only builds tight communities, it also keeps more land in a natural state- for forest, grazing or farming instead of roads and buildings. While this concentration of hard surfaces may be a problem with increased storm runoff. It seems easier to incorporate buffer or wetland areas around the village than around individual residences. In my eyes, more green scape than hard scape is more efficient use of land. In a way, the condo market is addressing a clustering of housing.

Elephant wake up call

Our tap at the door did not come at 5:15am. A loud sliding thuddy sound was outside our door. It couldn’t be the watchman.No,we had an elephant wake up call. Mother and baby elephant we’re moving across the patio. We watched with mouths open. I realized a bedside light was on and jumped to turn it off so the elephants didn’t want to join us in the bedroom- just a screen door between us. Two gray behemoths in the gray morning light pulled leaves with their trunks and stuffed them into their mouths before heading down the bank to the river holes.

We dressed and opened the door to the equatorial dawn, Andrew said we can make it to the lobby/restaurant/viewing deck.I just clapped for our escort as we were instructed to do, especially after yesterday’s encounter near the hut.

We had only been delivered to the Leopard hut, the last hut on the western edge of the 10 huts,most were built with tree trunk stilts,when the assistant manager Wilson rushed back, Trish, there is an elephant now come look. Oops, he grabbed my arm and pulled me close to the patio of the Lion hut next door.The elephant,a tussles female came around the other side of the Lion hut patio. We quickly withdrew into the front door of our hut with Wilson as the Nagy elephant “mock charged” us.

I was certain I would wait for an escort. He came in his oversized night jacket apologizing for the late wake up call as there was a herd of elephants around the path to our hut. We saw them,we told him.

We walked halfway to the lobby when the escort grabbed my arm and ran towards a hut with stilts. I had no idea was I was running but just raced along,hoping Andrew was behind us. We crouched under the hut, Andrew says he barely made it but I was looking for what we were running from and saw a gray thick leg, elephant!

We came out from under the hut and walked along the bank to the lobby. Heart racing, I calmly sat down to yogurt, fruit and bra flakes.

Sunday, September 1, 2019

I have left the lake earlier this year to go on an adventure with Andrew. Our trip began with a drive to Nashville for a friend's wedding. Drew and Meg are here with us in East Nashville, where the hot streets are lined with adorable craftsman homes. Being together, the 4 of us, is comforting--drawing me back to the days when the kids were in school with their schedules being the rhythm of our lives. This neighboring house expresses the same comfort I feel in my heart. Home is where your heart is.