life, the universe, and donna

Zimbabwe Travelogue Index

Sunday, September 9th – Pathfinders

This is the first time I’ve had a chance to write in a week. Monday through Saturday this week, I was on the Bush Awareness course via Pathfinders. Craig of Safari Votre (website is in french, alas) came out to teach us as much about surviving in the bush as he could in a week. I think we did pretty well. I’ve been so busy that I’ve really only had a chance to jot down notes of what I’ve done each day, hoping that they’d jog my memory into being able to write about it all… on the upside, I took lots of pictures, so I’ll let those talk for a lot of my days.

Sept 3rd:

Happy One Month Simon!

Monday morning had us out boundary clearing the border between the Dete Annex and Hwange National Park proper. The park cannot be entered without permission, but we can work on the annex side. While we (and by “we” I mean “the people at Miombo” as I certainly can’t tell the difference between one section of scrubby brush and another) always know which side we’re on, the officials don’t always. So, we’re busy chopping down trees and bushes and anything else in the way to essentially make a new road — by hand.

The work is absolutely backbreaking. We started at 9 and ontinued til 11:30 and cleared about 1km of road — only 12 or so left to go…

On Monday evening, we had 7 new people show up for the Pathfinders bush awareness course. Including me & Bethany, there were 9 of us. Alas, we have left our cushy rooms and are tenting it a few minutes walk away from the main lodge. Luckily, we still have decent toilets, and very excellent outdoor showers.

To celebrate the start of the new program, we had 12 bottles of quite yummy red wine from Mashonaland. Must make a note to ask Drew about how to get it in Vancouver, if it’s even possible.

Sept 4th:

Tuesday morning found us up by 6am and out wandering around getting a bit of an induction to tracking. Bethany and I had been on walks like this before, but it was still quite neat to go with Craig. We went out to a nearby dam and basically hiked through the park for a few hours. Having gotten used to breakfast at 8, we were absolutely starving by the time we got back after 10.

In the afternoon, we learned some ways to collect, purify & distill water. It occurs to me that in Vancouver, this would never be a problem — just open your mouth and look up. Still, the methods of filtering & distilling were pretty interesting.

Unfortunately, this was the day that I decided to get good and sick. I suspect I was dehydrated, from the bush clearing we’d done the day before. Felt absolutely wretched, with my stomach gurgling unpleasantly every ten minutes or so. And every 20, having to go hit up the bathroom again. Just lovely.

Craig suggested that the culprit may be dehydration, so I ended up trying the oral rehydration salts I’d bought — not a bad idea after a run of the runs anyway (It turns out, EVERYBODY has had a bit of tummy trouble like this, so after a while … you get rather comfortable discussing the state of your bowels with a bunch of near strangers. Gak.) I felt infinitely better within an hour. Best purchase I ever made, even if they tasted vile. (Every drank a litre of salt water? It’s not fun.)

Sept 5th:

Wednesday morning, we started learning how to track. This is how we spent the next three mornings, seeking some elusive animal in their natural habitat… Unfortunately, we had to stop at one point as we ran into some park rangers who were laying an ambush for some poachers. Oops. So, we had to leave the tracks we were following and went back to the camp for breakfast.

Wednesday afternoon was cultural day — we went to the nearby homestead of Mr. Moya and his family. It’s a small lot, with a few small thatched roof buildings on it, and 5 or 6 acres of farmable land around it. In total, 28 people currently live there, including Mr. Moya and his wife, their children, their sons wives, and a good number of grandchildren and so on. And that’s not including the countless chickens, goats, donkeys, doves, and a variety of other domestic stock wandering around the homestead.

The Ndebele have a very patriarichal society — enough to make any feminist cringe. Men (with Craig and our guide Kailos, we had four) sit on stools and benches, while women must sit on mats on the floor. Women do all of the cooking and other domestic work, but the only “power” they have is over the distribution of the food — it’s their responsibility to make sure there is enough food to last throughout the dry season. Every other aspect of life is left up to their men. Yehaw.

We learned to make Sadza right from the actual maize kernals. We had a chance to crush them in a giant mortar and pestle, then to sift out the shells by tossing them in a basket — we weren’t particularly good at that one, and the chickens underfoot liked us a whole lot. Then we were shown to the kitchen where we started the actual cooking. A pot of water with a small amount of maize meal was put on the fire, and we were given essentially a whisk with a long handle on it to stir the meal in. More maize meal was added as time went on to thicken it. I took a stir, and made sure someone took a picture as nobody would ever believe that I voluntarily helped cook something otherwise…

While they finished up the sadza, we got a ride in a donkey cart – something reserved usually for the highest ranking family members. The donkeys were Sprite, Mary & Joyce, and I’m darn impressed at how well they responded to our drivers commands — usually a series of whistles & clicks. I ended up going for two rides. It was a hoot.

Then, back to the sadza. The whisk had been replaced with a large paddle to turn the sadza in the pot over and over as by this point, it had thickened considerably. Almost done.

We relocated into one of the huts — the men sitting on the bench along the wall, the women on mats on the floor — and were served a delicious meal of sadza, with sticky okra, stewed pumpkin leaves, and something called “chamalia” (we have no idea how to spell this). Sadza is eaten with your fingers. You pick up a bit (ouch, hot!) and sort of flatten it out, then use it to “pinch” a little of the greens, then eat.

They served us a LOT of sadza. We all looked at it in mild fear, hoping that not finishing it wouldn’t cause offense. As it turns out, just about everybody had some left over. But… Matt (one of the guys in our group) was being a bit cocky about it, so my pride kicked in — I finished the whole damn thing. So there.

It was, of course, delicious… even if I did feel the need to be rolled home afterwards.

After eating, we perused some of the goods they had available for sale — I picked up some absolutely lovely items… a woven bowl ($1 US), a carving of two giraffes ($5 US) and a carved wall decoration of the Big 5 ($5 US).

All in all, it was a really awesome day — one of my favorites.

Thursday, Sept 6th:

We’ve been seeing a lot of sunrises this week, with the “on duty” group getting up at about 5:15, and everyone else up by 5:45, and on the road at 6:15. Yes, even me.

The sun was absolutely beautiful on Thursday morning. Unfortunately, without a telephoto lens, I couldn’t get a great picture of it… but using the digital zoom on my camera, I was able to at least get an approximation of the color. I’ve never seen a sunrise like that.

As with Wednesday morning, we spent the morning tracking buffalo. Still no buffalo to be found, alas. Perhaps tomorrow?

To help with the next days tracking, we tied some brush to the back of the truck so that any new tracks would show up clear as day.

During the afternoon break, I did my Serval research. We’d been warned that on Friday night, we’d be camping out in the bush, and we’d have to give a talk about an animal around the campfire. While most people chose things like giraffe, elephant, etc… I decided to go with a Serval.

One of my coworkers had requested a picture of a Serval before I left. Well, more to the point, he said “Don’t come back until you have a picture of a Serval.” Very funny, Theo. Given that they’re nocturnal, and only found around water (it’s the dry season — the only water available is in artificially pumped water pans) the chances of getting a picture are slim to none.

So, I snapped a picture from one of the books I used to research my talk. Think he’ll know?

Thursday afternoon was ropes. This was actually a pretty fun afternoon for me. You know, among my general group of friends, I’ve never been terribly good at rope work as compared to everyone else. I always forget the names of things, and I often have trouble with them… but evidently I’m better at it than I thought — I was one of the better students in the class, and mastered pretty much every knot effortlessly. Tristan would be proud. Turns out I picked up more along the way than I thought.

We also had an introduction to using a handheld GPS. I LOVE them. I want to get one, they’re a ton of fun. We were also given the coordinates to where our camp on Friday night would be — we had to find it on our own using GPS & a compass. Hmm. Well, theoretically they won’t let us wander around for TOO long…

We also learned how to MAKE rope, out of tree fibre. Neat!

Friday, Sept 7th:

Our third early morning tracking session of the week, and I think most of us were pretty tired of it by that point. I just sort of ambled along, and was towards the back of the group so by the time any potential tracks made it down to me, they were obscured by 8 other sets of footprints.

Sure enough, that was the day we spotted our buffalo. A single old bull hiding in the trees. Very cool.

In the afternoon, we set out for camp. The night before, we’d planned on what we wanted to bring, and had a truck following along with the majority of our gear, but had to carry our individual items in our backpacks.

We split up into two groups, a tracking group and a GPS group. The GPS group had compasses & GPS’s and the coordinates to find the camp, while the tracking group had… well, our tracks. And Kailos, which probably saved them from wandering around in the woods for a week…

I was in the GPS group, and really enjoyed finding a good path through. (Ok, not always the EASIEST path… hey, can’t have everything.) We did a fair amount to hide our tracks — crossing roads by stepping on dried elephant dung, walking along the train tracks as long as possible, and even having Craig and Debbie (who had the most obvious tread on her shoes) laying some false tracks. We found the camp without any trouble, and luckily the tracking group did not catch up to us — yay us!

We setup the camp from scratch, including structures from which we could hang our mosquito nets, a kitchen, a fence/barrier (boma) around the outside of the camp, and even a pretty sophisticated toilet, complete with toilet seat and a toilet paper holder (my contribution).

Craig even had a shower setup powered by his truck that drew water from a bucket and made a pretty nice shower. I hadn’t brought a towel, but at least I got to clean off my (as usual) filthy legs.

I have rarely actually been clean on any of this trip. I’ve showered at least once, and occasionally twice a day… and I’m STILL filthy twenty minutes later.

Alas, I found myself with a migraine on Friday night. That sucked. A lot. What was worse, I woke up with it on Saturday morning, too…

Saturday, Sept 8th:

We got to sleep in, and for the first time in a week, the sun was up before we were. I didn’t sleep particularly well (I hadn’t been sleeping well all week, really) but was happy to just lie around longer than usual. We got up, tore down the camp, and by the time it was done…. well, there were signs that it had been inhabited, but not many.

Going home, the tracking & GPS groups switched, and now the hunters became the hunted. Or something like that. More accurately, we were all tired and just wanted to go home and have a shower. With a towel. Since I was now in the tracking group, we left ten minutes after the GPS groups… and basically didn’t bother trying to track, but just headed straight back home, using the sun to make sure we were going the right direction. Evidently, we were so expedient that we actually beat the GPS group home. Our explanation was that our method of tracking was to simply know where the prey would be heading (like waiting for elephant at a water hole) and wait for them. Hey, works for me.

After arriving home, we had a lovely brunch, and then a few hours of freedom — my migraine still hadn’t gone away, so I went back to my room to nap — first time I’d slept in a bed for a week. Damn, it felt GOOD. When I woke up, the migraine had vanished. This was good, because in the afternoon we had some team building exercises.

We were split up into two groups and run through a variety of tasks. The first one included three pipes, one that could hold 8 units of water, one that could hold 5, and one that could hold 3. The task was to get 4 units into the two larger ones. Math is SO not my strong point, but we got it figured out pretty quick.

The next step started by letting one member of our team into the room to see what the task was. She would then return, describe it to us, and we would be blindfolded and set upon the task. What we ended up with was a series of blocks with a number of pins on them, and a bunch of tubes with a number rings on them. The task was to match up the number of rings with the number of pins in the blocks, and insert the end of the tube into the block. We were thrown off by a dummy block, but other than that, got it figured out pretty quick.

The third task was a bit trickier. Again, we had one member who was sent over to a place we couldn’t see. In this case, hidden behind a canvas curtain. We couldn’t touch the curtain, but we had to retrieve the item using a series of objects — mostly some hooks, rope, poles, etc. When Mandy got to the other side, she let us know the item on the other side was a bucket of water. Hrm.

So, we used our awesome rope skills (muahaha) to make a tripod out of the poles, then used a third pole as a lever with a hook on the end. On our first attempt, the rope was too long and we couldn’t quite get it over the top of the canvas. We shortened the rope, but then it was too short. Curses. On our third attempt, we got it over. Most excellent — especially since the other group couldn’t finish it, and got a 5 minute penalty for that section.

Afterwards, they let us know that the easy method would have been to roll the pole on our first attempt, and we’d have been done in about 8 minutes, rather than 16. Duh. Oh well, at least we got it.

The fourth task was one that I’ve come across before, although never in “real life”. It was three poles, one of them with 5 tires on it in a series of sizes (largest on the bottom, smallest on the top.) We had to move them all over to a different pole, but with a few rules… we could only move one tire at a time, and a larger tire couldn’t go on top of a smaller tire. We’d also get penalties any time the tire touched the pole. We got through that one pretty quickly, although rushing did give us a few penalties.

By the end of this round, we were ahead of the other team by 8 minutes. Yay!

The last task would be the most difficult. They call it the “breakout course”. eep. I won’t go into each section, but rest assured that it was about 40 minutes of a lot of running around and being idiots. Great fun! At one point, we had an “under/over/under” section. Under the first barrier, over the second, then under the third. The first was about 2 feet off the ground, the second about 6 and a half feet. Seeing that the second would have to hold our weight, I assumed that the first would be pretty sturdy as well, so I grabbed the top to swing under. I was quite surprised to find myself flat on my back with a log across my chest, as I’d pulled the whole thing down. Ouch. Funny as hell, though.

In the long run, we didn’t do all that great on the breakout course — the final score between the two groups was 45 seconds apart, with them in the lead. They’d managed to make up the full 8 minutes they were behind and then some. Still, I think it was a pretty good afternoon.

In the evening, we celebrated the end of the bush awareness course by having Ingayama come back to sing for us, and an absolutely fantastic dinner including lemon meringue pie for dinner. Heaven in my mouth.

We had a few bottles of wine. One of them was from the week prior — I uncorked it and took a sip… and oh good god, it had gone WAY off. Afterwards, I realized that it had gone so far off that when held up to a light… I couldn’t see through it at all. Ugh.

Alas, it came back to haunt me… I felt absolutely vile, and headed for the bathroom. I was horrified to find it occupied, and lucky me, fell to my knees to vomit under a tree. Shit. Luckily, a few of my fellow campers came and gave me a hand and buried the mess while I cleaned myself up. Felt pretty awful for that, as well as for the illness. Delightful. Then a few hours later, I made it back to the toilet to dry heave a bit more. Damnit. I think I was most upset at losing my lemon meringue…

Still? A fantastic week. Major thanks to Craig & Kailos for teaching us all this nifty stuff. Woot!