Sketches from East Africa
Posted on | April 2, 2010 | No Comments
As usual while on my travels I made a few sketches, though not as many as I would have liked. Here’s a few from our recent trip.
This sketch is of the Ngorongoro crater, the largest complete caldera in the world. It is surely the real Eden. We stayed in a lodge on the crater’s rim with views sublime enough to make stones weep.
The wildebeest at Ngorongoro were permanent crater residents and have become habituated to vehicles. So you can park very close to them and they don’t run away. This gave me a chance to make a few scribbles.
The grounds of the lodge we stayed at near Lake Naivasha were one of the few corridors left for wildlife to access to the lake from the surrounding hills. There was a resident population of waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus) here, which if you sat very still indeed, would graze around you. They really are extremely handsome antelopes.
I was impressed with the yellow-barked acacias (Acacia xanthophloea). They’re also known as fever trees, due to their habit of growing in damp, and therefore malarial, places.
The Twiga gift shop on the beach at Mtoni Marine Hotel in Zanzibar was just a flimsy shack, but looked so colourful with all the paintings hanging outside.
The lodge we stayed in at Lake Manyara was incredibly posh! This was the view from our room.
A game drive at Lake Nakuru
Posted on | April 2, 2010 | No Comments
The centrepiece of Kenya’s beautiful Lake Nakuru national park, is the lake itself, a soda lake which attracts thousands of flamingoes which feed off the algae living in the alkaline waters. Surrounding the lake are forests, open grasslands and other habitats, home to a stunning variety of fauna; we saw large herbivores (eland, buffalo, waterbuck, gazelles, giraffe, rhino) and their predators (hyena, lion, leopard) and fabulous birdlife.
In case you’ve ever wondered where all the white storks (Ciconia ciconia) that visit mainland Europe to breed in the summer go in the winter, it seemed to be Nakuru. We saw thousands of them! As I type, they’ll be starting their 5,000 mile migration north.
I’m no Simon King, but I’ve strung together a few film clips that I shot, just to give you a taster of the wonders of Lake Nakuru:
In praise of wildebeest
Posted on | March 29, 2010 | 1 Comment
Some people think they’re ugly and stupid, but I think blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) are marvellous and handsome creatures.
What stripes! Such lovely beards! And crazy tails!
One of the reasons we went to East Africa last month was to see the wildebeest at the time when they were giving birth. A wildebeest calf can be literally up and running alongside its mum within four minutes of being born. And they need to be; hyenas, lions, cheetahs and leopards all have a taste for them.
We had the privilege of witnessing these magnificent bovines in their thousands, as far as the eye can see, in Tanzania’s Serengeti national park, surely the greatest game show of all.
They remind us what it was once like on our planet, actually not so long ago, when huge herds of herbivores still roamed the open grasslands, before humans wiped them out and gobbled up those wild places for themselves.
Long may the wildebeest herds continue their epic journeys through what little of our planet is left for them.
Photos: Moth Clark
Flash floods in the Mara
Posted on | March 28, 2010 | No Comments
After a long period of devastating drought, East Africa was lashed by torrential rain earlier this month. Uganda suffered mudslides which killed scores of people, and a deluge in Kenya’s Samburu national park left acres underwater and washed away valuable conservation research. The storms hit south west Kenya, too, while we were visiting the Masai Mara game reserve. It was very dramatic and at times quite scary. We got stuck behind a stream which had grown into an impassable river before our very eyes and had to be rescued in the dark by brave Maasai drivers in 4Wdrive vehicles after a five-hour wait.
Here’s a little film I made about it:
The next day we had to drive in minibuses through knee-deep mud which as well as needing frequent pushes to get us out when we got bogged, was extremely dangerous. The drivers had to virtually throw the vehicles into the slippery soft ground to have enough momentum to get us through the bogs and channels and out the other side. You can imagine the fishtailing, skidding and rolling! It was pure chance we didn’t hit a tree or rock and turn over.
The locals said they’d never seen rain like it and blamed it fairly and squarely on climate change.
Spotted big cats
Posted on | March 27, 2010 | No Comments
I find it endlessly thrilling to see any wild creature living free and doing its own thing; from the absurdly common but excessively beautiful impala, to the ordinary everyday superb starling, so aptly named. But there is a special thrill reserved for encounters with big predators; the carnivores at the top of the food chain, especially the cats which are often hard to see. On our recent trip to East Africa, we were lucky enough to see lots of cats.
Our first leopard was spotted at Lake Nakuru national park, hanging on a branch very close to the road.
He didn’t do much except hang out in the tree. And why shouldn’t he? When you only have a few moments with an animal, even a simple thing like a stretch or a change of position seems like a big event.
It wasn’t long before he returned to sleeping mode.
We were to see another two leopards, both sleeping in trees, but too far away to get any really good views. Here’s one in the Serengeti.
Leopards have a wide geographical range and thanks to their secretive nature and genetic strength, they are not at risk of extinction.
Cheetahs, however, are another story. These animals are very seriously endangered. They are genetically extremely weak, their range is increasingly limited, with certain populations geographically isolated which contributes more their genetic weakness, and it is virtually impossible to breed them in captivity. And they are habitually shot by farmers protecting their livestock. Thanks to Chinese medicine (grrr! don’t get me started on that quackery) there is no doubt that within my lifetime, the tiger will be extinct in the wild. I fear that the cheetah will go the same way.
I had seen cheetahs before, but Moth had not. Our first cheetah was spotted a very long way off in the Ngorongoro Crater. Not a great view, but a cheetah nonetheless and I was grateful for that.
It wasn’t until we reached south Serengeti that we got the cheetah of our dreams. Isn’t she lovely?
She rolled over and had a dust bath…
…resting a while in the dust before…
… cantering off…
…crossing the road and disappearing off into the grass.
We also saw a caracal which whizzed across the road in front of our van. Sighting of these whippet-sized cats are extremely rare, so I consider myself very lucky. Unfortunately the sighting was so brief, we have no photo. Nevertheless I won’t forget its sandy-coloured coat and pointy black ears in a hurry.
Photos: Moth Clark
Lionesses and cubs in the Mara
Posted on | March 26, 2010 | No Comments
We had some fantastic sightings of lions in the Mara. And not just lions lying about sleeping; lions actually doing stuff. We stumbled across this very healthy looking pride of about 10 females and their eight cubs, resting near the Talek river.
When we first reached them, they were, indeed, lying about sleeping, waking and yawning.
There was a smell of rotting flesh hanging in the air, so there was clearly an old kill nearby. We found it half way down the rivercliffs, a couple of young males chomping away happily at a rib cage.
The cubs were playing quietly and everyone was fed and happy.
Suddenly all the lionesses leapt up …
…and charged at full speed towards a nearby ridge on which they’d spotted a male lion approaching, roaring as they went.
Given the chance he would attack and kill their cubs, so they had to defend their ground and see him off!
The cubs stayed where they were and quickly banded together, all the while watching their mums and aunties dash toward the threat.
They cried out calling for their mums to come back.
It wasn’t long before the lionesses returned, and everyone greeted each other enthusiastically.
We later found the male lion by now lying far enough away from the girls to keep the girls happy. We noticed he’d got a nasty open wound on his nose.
Photos: Moth Clark
Elephants in the Mara
Posted on | March 26, 2010 | 1 Comment
I first visited Kenya’s Masai Mara game reserve ten years ago and I remember being moved to tears when I saw my first wild elephant move slowly out from behind a tree.
I returned to the Mara last month and this time was able to share its breathtaking wonders with my husband Moth who had never been to East Africa before.
We came across this mighty 46-strong herd of elephants, who calmly allowed us to watch them at close range for some time.
They made deep rumbling noises to keep in touch with each other as they grazed the lush valley. (Check out the colour of the sky – that approaching storm later became flash floods!) The only other sound was the click of camera shutters from visitors observing the herd. Here are Jo, Kurt, Cait and Andy enjoying the spectacle:
Elephants of all ages made up the herd…
…but it was the really, really tiny baby who captured our hearts.
Photos: Moth Clark
Crossing the equator
Posted on | March 25, 2010 | 2 Comments
The equator is an imaginary line on the Earth’s surface equidistant from the north and south poles. Last month I crossed this line overland, the first time in all my travels I have ever done this. It’s silly really but I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was!
We stopped at a roadside café, conveniently located just five metres south of the equator. A local man demonstrated to us the gravitational effect of the equator.
Standing a few metres south of the equator, using water draining through a funnel he placed a matchstick on the water and it rotated anti-clockwise. Repeating the experiment ten metres to the north of the equator, the matchstick rotated clockwise. But on the actual line of the equator the water drained straight down, with no rotation of the matchstick at all. That’s yer actual physics, that is! Brilliant!
I stood on the actual equator to drink a mug of tea, knowing that the tea was draining straight into my tum with no rotational drainage.
There was more excitement that day when later we stopped at a viewpoint to see the line of the Great Rift Valley, cutting its mighty swathe through this incredible continent.
Photos: Moth Clark
Kissing a giraffe
Posted on | March 25, 2010 | No Comments
Last month we had a free afternoon in Nairobi, so on my daughter’s recommendation, we visited the Langata giraffe sanctuary.
From a raised platform, you can get up to giraffe height and see these evolutionary marvels very close up indeed.
From such close range you can really appreciate their glamorous eyes.
These wild animals are habituated to people and allow you to touch them and tempt them with food treats.
We were particularly happy to see groups of local schoolchildren visiting the sanctuary to discover their natural heritage for themselves.
And if you put a food treat in your lips, the giraffe will very gently take it from your mouth using its long tongue. The effect is a soft, warm bristly kiss!
The terrible price of Kenyan flowers
Posted on | March 21, 2010 | No Comments
Not so long ago, roses were expensive. Now you can get six blooms for £4 at my local Tescos. The real cost of cheap flowers was revealed to me in all its horror earlier this month when we visited Kenya’s Lake Naivasha, a large freshwater lake in the Rift Valley, formerly home to a thriving eco-system, teeming with fish and birds, and supporting a rich diversity of wildlife in the surrounding hills and bush; from dwarf mongooses to lions and elephants.
Since I was last at Lake Naivasha, it has been systematically raped by the rise of flower farms. When I was here ten years ago I remember seeing a few flower farms, but nothing – nothing – on this monumental scale.
Thousands of acres of prime lakeside bush and smallholdings have been cleared to make way for hundreds and hundreds of huge polytunnels in which the roses are propagated on an industrial scale.
The blooms can be harvested and packed using cheap local labour and flown out of Nairobi, which is just a couple of hours drive away, to reach lucrative European markets within a day.
But the true cost of this profitable enterprise beggars belief.
Flowers are thirsty which is why farmers are using Lake Naivasha’s shores; an easy source of the huge quantities of water they need. The lake level has dropped dramatically, from what we saw by 3 or 4 metres in the past 5 to 10 years judging by the vegetation.
We went out for a boat ride on the lake to see the hippos and were disturbed to see some guys dismantling a wooden jetty which was now left high and dry about 100metres from the current lakeshore.
Now I’m no expert on water quality, but instead of being a nice deep bluey green, the water was yellowy brown. As the water is extracted and level drops, chemicals used in propagation runs off back into the lake. Local fisherman report significantly smaller catches. And for a lake of that size the hippo and bird populations were laughably small.
The polytunnels are not just unsightly, they form an impenetrable barrier for wildlife which must get to the lake to drink. Our guide told us that there are a couple of wildlife corridors which have been left open but that it’s not good enough.
And as we drove to and from our lodge we witnessed the thousands of people who work on the flower farms; queuing up to a get a day’s work; spraying, tending, harvesting and packing the blooms for a few meagre shillings a day – and we saw their cramped and dirty living conditions.
I realised I was looking at precisely the same kind of worker exploitation as Britain experienced in the 19th century, and for the same reasons; population growth, the desperate need for work, greedy company owners (mostly Dutch, Israeli and German as far as we could see) creaming off the profits. Goodness knows what protection, if any, the slaving workers are given for using hazardous chemicals.
The problem of over-extraction of water has been known about for years. But there is so much money to be made from this blooming business that some unscrupulous greedheads will protect their profits at any cost, even resorting to killing anyone trying to protect the lake. Local resident, film-maker and conservationist Joan Root paid with her life in 2006 when she was murdered at her lakeside home of 25 years.
So next time you’re buying flowers, spare a thought for the thousands of exploited workers, the dying fish, the poisoned waters, the dwindling hippo population and all the creatures of the surrounding bush whose lake they can no longer reach, and for Joan Root …and you won’t ever buy cheap Kenyan blooms again.
shopping basket
