Got in to Zambia late
Friday night after a typical African trip – flying from Harare to Johannesburg in South Africa before coming up here to Lusaka. Easier just to fly through Johannesburg than it is to fly direct in many of these countries. And man, Johannesburg is gearing up for the World Cup next year. The whole airport has been redone – sparkling clean.
Spent the weekend here with a doctor who does work for the group InterPlast – they do reconstructive surgeries for people across Africa. Dr. Goran is one of only two plastic surgeons in the whole country. He does hundreds of surgeries a year from cleft pallet surgeries to burns and snake bites. This weekend he saw some patients post-op, then went to a vet clinic and did an operation on a dog that had some tumors on its head. I went back Sunday and saw him do a surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from the foot of a yellow lab. Interesting stuff. I’m meeting him again in a bit as he has a surgery scheduled for this afternoon on the thumb of a little girl who was badly burned awhile back. Should be interesting.
July 27th, 2009 | by David in Travel
Three weeks now in Zimbabwe – 10 days of it in the bush down south, and the rest working for IOM and Caritas Internationalis else ware in the country. I’ve been here to Zimbabwe several times before, but I have to say I’m seeing it with new eyes this time. When I was last here – in July 2007 – it was a different place. Tensions were high then as Mugabe’s government clashed with MDC rivals, and the hapless Zim dollar spiraled into absurd rates of inflation. Supermarket shelves were literally empty – harkening back to the television images I remember from my childhood of the shelves of the Soviet Union of the 1970’s and 80s, where women waited in endless lines on the off chance something, anything, might be available that day.
But Zimbabwe today is different. With the end of price controls earlier this year, and the break from the Zim dollar to a range of stable international currencies, things have improved dramatically. Almost overnight, the shelves were again stocked as merchants could finally make a profit on what they sold. With supply increasing, prices fell, and you’re starting to hear the first signs of what was so noticeably missing the last time I was here twox years ago: optimism.
That said, the rural poor are still struggling mightily. I spent the day today way down south on the border with Botswana, and families there are still facing the full brunt of the economic collapse. Being so close to the border, many in the village of Mbade had left in years past to find any work they could across the border. Many of them left their families behind, abandoned completely to the hope of a new life in a new country. They will not return. That probably more than anything I have seen here is most indicative of the real impact of the crisis the people here have faced in recent years.
But I am struck by one thing about the people of Zimbabwe, above everything else – their unshakable kindness, even amid such hardships. I have seen many countries in Africa, but I honestly believe Zimbabweans are the friendliest of any I have met. It is a lesson for us all perhaps, amid the monumental hardships these people have suffered in years past. I hope, finally, the corner has been turned, but I, unlike the people of Zimbabwe, am not an optimist.
July 21st, 2009 | by David in Travel
Poaching is not a new problem in Africa, but when you see it first hand, on the scale I saw it last week, you cannot help but face the full scale of the crisis facing Africa’s wildlife. Using wire cut, ironically, from the fencing used by landowners to protect areas of their farms from wild game, or to protect game itself. After cutting the wire, poachers make simple loops, securing one end of the wire to a nearby tree or log and suspending the other over a likely game trail. Animals can be caught in several ways – around the neck as they walk into the snare, or even around the midsection if both front feet pass through the loop. Others may be caught around horns, or around one or both feet. As soon as they put pressure on the loop it tightens, and when the animal panics, they are all but trapped.
In the space of the 8 days we were in the bush we easily recovered over 100 snares. In that same time we saw 5 different poachers, and were nearly stampeded by a herd of young buffalo being chased by a pack of dogs, another tactics used by poachers to wear down their game, which they then spear when it’s too exhausted to run farther.
One day we came across a kudu bull – a large spiral horned antelope, the adult bulls of which might weight in the range of 800 pounds. This bull had been caught in a snare, which gripped him around the mid section, and against which he was struggling violently when we came upon him. As I distracted the bull from the front, a game ranger approached from the rear and cut the wire that held him, freeing him back into the bush.
Others we came across were not so luck. On the first day we found another young kudu that had been killed in a snare, his bones and a set of hors all that remained of where the poachers had found him, killed him, and butchered him.
Snares also cause grievous injuries – a hazard to both game and people. Large animals like elephants and Africa’s dangerous Cape buffalo can often break free of snares set for smaller game, but not before pulling the wire tight on their legs of necks in an effort to escape. The wounds that wire causes can become infected, posing serious risks to locals as the animals suffer with pain and often lash out at anyone who stumbles upon them, often with fatal results. One member of our group came across an elephant bull with a badly injured leg, a snare still visible wrapped around his low leg - which escaped he and his guide before a game ranger could come to dart the animal. The same anger said that 6 of the 7 Cape buffalo shot by hunters on the property last year had evidence of snare wounds.
Whatever your position on hunting, remember this: it is only when Africa’s wildlife is valued that it can be saved. Wealthy hunters, many of them American and European, are willing and eager to pay huge amounts of money to hunt Africa’s species, all of which are carefully counted by each country’s game departments to determine exactly how many of each species, if any, can be take out of the population each year to sustain a healthy herd. Elephant hunts can costs upwards of $40,000 – $50,000 in many countries in Africa – even more in others – money that supports a huge range of local industry, and in turn ensures that all involved do all they can to preserve the species for the future. Poachers have no such goals. So weather you belong to PETA, or the NRA, you need to be thinking about how to stop the poaching that is slaughtering Africa’s wildlife before there is none left for either side to argue over.
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
