In the Bush

I know it's been a while since my last post, but the reason for that should be clear from this entry. Also due to the fact that I can't get free internet anymore (except in rare cases like now, when I'm monopolizing the computer at work to "enter data").

So let me back up. Two weeks ago Saturday, on the tenth, I bade farewell to the wonderful city of Gaborone with all its restaurants and malls and wi-fi, and to my wonderful friends there, and to my wonderful family, and got on the public bus for a ten-hour ride to Maun to begin my Directed Independent Study Project (DISP). Actually, I wasn't alone on the trip up; my sister Banyana from Tlokweng came with me to visit her uncle in Maun for a couple weeks (that will be important later).

It had been arranged that I would stay in Maun with a woman who's a family friend of the Modumedisi family (who hosted me in Tlokweng), Mma Ntshadi Moruti. (I'm not real clear on how to pronounce her first name, but I think it's something like nchah-chee.) She's in her thirties and lives alone, in a nice flat on the edge of town that serves as employee housing for the Maun Technical College, where she works. It's far from town and my work, but otherwise it's a pretty sweet deal; I get my own room with 2 beds and an exercise bike, there's a nice tv, and I can cook for myself (provided I buy food, since her pickings are pretty slim).

On Sunday, the day after I got in, Mma Moruti went on a work-related trip to Gabs for four days, so I quickly found myself living alone in a new town. I wasn't completely isolated though - Mma Moruti had arranged for her neighbor/coworker Mmusi to show me around Maun and take me to work in the mornings, so I was covered ok, and I enjoyed being able to work on my own schedule (and menu) at home.

The next day, Monday, I began my internship with the Maun Department of Wildlife. I first met with the director, who apparently had been sent the original research proposal I'd written for the study abroad app about human-elephant conflict, so he attached me to the Problem Animal Control (PAC) division. Basically what happens in the PAC office is that people (mostly farmers from nearby villages) come in to report damage to their crops, fences, or livestock from wild animals (usually elephants, or lions killing livestock). My first day on the job, I learned how to take these reports - challenging when there's a language barrier involved. I also helped to weigh and measure the entire ivory stockpile (about 40 tusks) held in pretty intense security here.

The next couple days were more of the same, and since reporters come in irregularly the office did start to get boring. My boredom finally evaporated on that Thursday, when a head officer came in to ask me if I'd like to accompany him on a call to investigate a problem hippo, which had been raiding veggie crops. I went with him in the morning to scope out the situation, but since the hippo only came out of the pond at night, we had to come back then to try to shoot it. (I know, it sounds awful, but I've been assured that the officers here use fatal measures only as a last resort. This particular hippo had evidently been reported before, and refused to be scared off.) We went back at 6pm, posted ourselves by the pond in the truck, and waited. And waited. Four hours later, no sign of the hippo, and so, tired and cold, we had to give up for the night and head back.

It was a rather anticlimactic first trip out, but I didn't have to wait long for my next trip - this time a real outing, camping and all. I left that Friday with 2 officers to attend to PAC reports of fence damage caused by elephants. The officers were going into the bush for 3+ weeks, but they kindly allowed me to come for a more reasonable 3-day period. During that time, we camped at two game farms that had been busted up by elephants (though unfortunately we didn't see any game to speak of, elephant or otherwise) and also attended one field farm. The process consisted of measuring the broken length of fence, counting the busted poles, and spray painting them to show we'd already counted them (that was my job). Once all this info is processed, the landowners will be compensated by the Dept. for 50% of the cost of the damage.

For me, the most interesting part of that trip was meeting the owner of one of the game ranches. He was white and in his forties, but had been born in this area of Bots and spoke fluent Setswana. I realized almost instantly that he was not someone to take any BS, and he had views about wildlife conservation that I'd only seen expressed as counterpoints in books. To sum it up, when I said that I really wanted to see the animals on his game ranch, he replied, "Come with me, I'll show you how to fucking kill those animals." Did I mention his ranch is for safari hunting only? Needless to say, I disliked him right off the bat, but I was also curious how he could be so nonchalant about shooting lions, elephants, and wild dogs that came through his fence, so I talked to him (or, rather, listened to him) some more. As it turned out, he did have some valid points - the predators come in and eat the game animals that he's paid richly for, and though the government will compensate for livestock losses, they won't compensate for game. Apparently some species of antelope are more common on game ranches than they are in the wild, so he does a conservation service too. And he does tolerate some predators on his land, just as long as they're in balance with the numbers of prey animals. I was really interested by the dynamics of all of this, and I'm currently trying to figure out how to condense all these political and ecological aspects into a question I can research more for thesis next fall. (Just in case anyone's interested.)

Anywho, I returned from that first trip into the bush last Monday, had one blessed night in my bed at home, and the next day went out again - this time with a team assessing elephant crop damage. We camped in a rural village 30km out of Maun, in the backyard of the Agricultural Demonstrator there, who was working with us to measure the fields for compensation purposes. On this trip we got through 8-10 fields a day, sacrificing lunch to work from 7:30 to around 3. I did get some free food out of it - maize, groundnuts, and sweetreed (kinda like sugarcane, you chew the stalk to get sugary juice out of it, it's all the rage with locals) - but otherwise I was actually pretty bored the whole time, because there was nothing for me to do. Ah, well, it was only another 3-day trip for me. My last night, however, was pretty miserable: the weather changed, bringing ferociuos thunder storms and floods of rain, and rained all night into my tent without a rain fly. It kind of put a damper on my gung-ho-ness for camping anymore.

One more much-needed night at home, and then I left again early Saturday - not for work this time, but on a weekend trip to Ghanzi (a village 4 hrs south in the Kalahari desert) with Banyana and her uncle. It was nice to have some time to chill with Banyana and not be doing work stuff for a change, but the weather, thundering and raining, was distinctly un-desert-like. The uncle took us for a game drive in one of the private game parks there, but not much to see through the rain.

I came back yesterday, and now I'm waiting to see where my internship will take me next. Also meeting with a prof at UB Maun who does conservation research this afternoon, so that should be interesting. Whew... I think that about catches me up to date. To those of you who managed to read this whole thing, bye for now, hope everything is well, and I'll update again (more briefly) as my six-week DISP continues. Go siame!