So it has been some time since I last visited the Kruger, and with the money I received from the Matric Exam Marking, I decided to take the kids for a week. It was the most magical experience, and although I will write a more reflective entry later, here are some photographs which maybe provide some of the highlights to our trip:
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One thing that I have always wanted to do is to create a scrapbook with my favorite animals and some interesting facts behind each of them. I would include some of my photographs and then my very amateur watercolor and sketching...maybe with the odd feather pasted in between. And now I have time to do it, so here goes...
When I though of Etosha, my mind went to images of parched desert and waterholes that were overflowing with animals. My experience there was something very different.
After being in Windhoek for the Junior Round Square Conference, we made our way north to Etosha. It had been raining for days, and the Namibians were celebrating the vast deluges from the sky. The drought had been broken and dams that had been empty for years were reaching full capacity. By the time we would leave, the sluice gates were being opened...the first time on fifteen years. So Etosha was wet to say the least. The ground which was meant to be pretty much devoid of plant life, was filled with the yellow flowers of devil thorns. A blanket of green stretched as far as the eye could see. As a result, the waterholes had become superfluous as the animals were drinking from the huge puddles that had formed on the side of roads, or they gained the moisture that had quenched the vegetation. So we spent a lot of time driving, and we saw some great sightings. I was unaccustomed to the fast herds of regal-looking gemsbok, black-faced impala, and rutting springbok. There were dazzling numbers of zebra and lots of bird life. For some reason, thee was something effecting the zebra and at one point we saw seven different dead zebra, each one being feasted upon by gangs of vultures. We also saw two separate lion kills and families of jackal. The vast open spaces were dotted with gargantuan sociable weaver nests that hung from umbrella thorn trees. The earth had a flatness that seemed to draw the landscape into infinity. I could imagine Etosha being a harsh place to exist when there wasn’t rain, but this time, there was an unusual abundance. The springbok seemed to be the most celebratory when it came to the rain, with spirited pronking happening at any opportunity. We spent much of our time at Okaukuejo, the loosest camp, that featured remnants of the German occupation decades earlier. In the center is a lookout tower that looks like it belongs in Europe, built by the white stones from the area. The rondawels were also previously accommodation for Goan officers as they fortified the area. So, Etosha was not the desert that I expected and although we didn’t follow the queues of game that would make their way to the waterholes, I enjoyed the wildness of the place. It feel untamed and with a bit of an imagination, I could imagine this arid eden carving away a special place in my heart. It was a beautiful space, and I would like to visit there again. Tiny whispers of wind are suddenly filled
With the snowflake butterflies and Figure-eight flaps of tissue paper wings Steering through the rapids and eddies of air Somehow always moving northeast. Your distraction arrives in time To remind me of perspective Small things that appreciate small things. Brown-veined white wings Like the spin-drift of cotton Bumping together As a patterned migration. Your journey is a silent whisper flow like Muted music Your visual notes not stopping for breath. Like unseasonal blossoms you Float as daytime stars. What drives your urge to move on So far across rivers and mountains and oceans? Monumental distances. Powdered white swooning and swaying. Mesmerizing. Your butterfly effect makes me pause in wonder Adding grace to the world. It all stared when I decided to plant a tree for Dean and Bella. I have always wanted to plant a tree for my kids, but somehow I never managed to organise myself well enough for the purchase of a tree to coincide with an important event. A birthday would come and on the day it would dawn on me that I should have bought a tree. Next year I would get it right, I told myself. But after I had missed the opportunity on Dean’s first birthday, mum offered me two avo trees which had been planted from seeds by an overseas friend who had visited three years earlier. I jumped at the opportunity, and that afternoon, took Bella and Dean to plant the trees side-by-side in my garden.
Bella was really happy not only because she claimed the larger one, but also because after we had helped Dean plant his, our lab-cross-retriever promptly lifted his leg onto his tree. Bella is really good with Dean, and despite the dog’s intrusion, she lead her younger brother by the hand and helped him water the trees using a plastic, elephant-shaped watering can. She also asked me a whole lot of questions about the trees, including whether they would survive and how big they would get. Her little mind couldn’t wrap itself around the age of the surround trees, and how long it would take to get to that point, so we started talking about how trees grow and whey they need to become gargantuan garden dwellers. That same week, as fate would have it, I had a meeting which finished early, and whilst walking back to work, I noticed a seedling forest of yellow woods that had germinated underneath a single huge tree. I knew that they would be weeded out of the flower bed, so I decided to collect as many of the as I could to plant somewhere else myself. If you don’t know, the yellow wood is our national tree, so relocating them seemed like the patriotic thing to do. After all, they have existed all over our country for the past 100 million years. While I moved the soil away from each fragile stem and gently prised them out of the ground, I was struck by the contrast between this colossal tree towering above me and its minute offspring on the flowerbed floor. It is incredible how something so small can become such a giant. With that, I thought about the wild olive tree that I had planted near the school dam when I must have been about ten. It was still there, but without a clear recollection of planting it, I was not sure which one from the grove of trees was mine. I was sure that the slow growing olive would outlast me and long after I am gone, it would nourish that little space at the edge of the water. Hopefully I would be right about this point because the oldest tree in the world is 5069 years old, rooted in California. 5069 years...can you imagine that! The people and places it has seen are just incredible. That figure is debated on various internet sites, but being in the region of 5000 years is simply breathtaking. The oldest tree in South Africa in the Sunland Baobab that is 1060 years old (seeded around the same time as Great Zimbabwe). It houses a pub in its hollow core and recently the tree broke in half near its base. Baobabs do this, and it will continue grow, leveraging from its new limb. Like most South Africans, I have a soft spot for Baobabs, an am proud to have grown two from seeds which are slowly growing in terra-cotta pots outside my kitchen. I think not enough people plant trees and it should be one of our core ideals as human. Plant trees. That got me thinking about my favorite stained glass windows at the back of the chapel. It is an arching of coloured glass fragments that all emanate from a single, yellow round sphere. It is meant to depict the parable of the mustard seed which goes something like this: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” So, trees are incredible...but what can we learn from them? Thanks to a colleague of mine, I managed to get my hands on a DVD produced by Dame Judi Dench called ‘My Passion for Trees’. It was an exploration of the trees in her garden, especially a prized oak tree, coupled with quotes from Shakespeare. So just up my street. She had a company use lasers and unpronounceable technology to digitally map her oak tree, and as a result found out that over its lifespan, it housed over 25 tonnes of carbon. I knew that trees took in carbon dioxide and released oxygen, but had never given much thought to what happens to the carbon (I am quite simple when it comes to chemistry). Obviously it is stored that by the tree and that is why the tree is made of carbon. Amazing..and this tree having 25 tonnes of it...incredible! Judy’s oak tree also had more than 12km of branches and a staggering amount of leaves...260000...enough to cover three tennis courts. And that is all just coming from one tree. It is simply staggering. So trees are amazing, and as they say, with age comes wisdom, so what wise words could the trees offer us? This question was ultimately where I got to from planting the avo trees with my kids, to now. As Bella and Dean’s trees grow, what could I tell them about the lessons that I have learnt from trees, and maybe the lessons that they could learn about too?
It has been rather fortuitous that shortly after I began reading Dr Ian Player's biography, 'Into the River of Life', I was sent an email by a friend who runs World Challenge, asking if I would be interested in attending a Wilderness Leadership School weekend in the Pilanesberg National Park. I jumped at the opportunity.
The WLS is the brainchild of Dr Player and began in the Umfolozi Wildernesss as a means of reconnecting with nature and in doing so, rediscovering ourselves. The logo for the school features the three lobes of a Coral Tree, each lobe having a different meaning: man's connection with man, man's connection with himself, and man's connection with his environment. This is all just up my street, and the experience that I would have was hopefully going to foreshadow taking school trips through WLS in the future. We gathered with a number of equally enthused teachers from various schools around Johannesburg, and met up in the school's camp in an isolated park of the Pilanesberg Reserve. We set up our sleeping arrangements in the open underneath a sprawling tree that backed onto a hill of sorts. Spread in front of us was a rambling grassland and an open sandy area where we would create our fire circle. This area was crucial as you will see later... There are a number of guidelines that underpin the WLS philosophy. No technology at all, nor any alcohol or cigarettes. So the retreat is a clean one. Also, the only thing left behind would be footprints. Even the fire is made on a steel drip tray as not to bake the sand and when we would l;eave, we would sweep away our footprints from the campsite. There would be little trace of our presence. At night, without fences, we would have a few hour reflection as we completed our sentry duty around the fire blinking our torch into the bush as we kept watch, alone with the stars and our thoughts. It sounded like absolute bliss. During the course of that first afternoon, we gathered around the campfire and swapped stories of our varied responsibilities at school, our adventurous experiences and our aspirations. There is a comfort that resonates within the bushveld darkness and as we revealed glimpses of ourselves whilst sitting on precarious rocks, the glow of the fire softly burning, we became inspired by each other. When the sentry duties started later on and each of us prepared to sleep, the sounds of a distant herd of zebra whooped at each other and some noisy discipline was dished out by the elephants on the other side of the hill. By torchlight, I illuminated the eyes of bushbabies that lept through the trees and a scrub hare came close to the fire to investigate our intrusion. While I was alone with my thoughts, I drank up the beautiful space which surrounded me, and reflected on my life, my future and my past. The next morning, I was up at sunrise and was soon shouldering a backpack which contained our lunch for later on in the day. We would spend all of our time on foot, walking the Pilanesberg with Pat and Ryan leading our group. It is incredible what life exists everywhere and how much of it is missed when travelling by car. Shortly after leaving we watched the disturbed zebras from the night before gallop through the bushes. We stopped to look at the blushing Natal Red Grass and iridescent insects that clung to their storks. We picked out tracks in the muddy wallows of a vlei and tried to guess at the movements of different animals where we were standing. Soon we came upon a rhino midden and the little ecosystem which had developed around the heap of dung was fascinating. Plants germinated from the fertile ground which attracted insects and a variety of small browsers and grazers. There would attract other animals and so the cycle of life would be enriched by this single animal. This is an area which I think we forget to communicate in discussions around conservation. Everyone knows the tragedy of the rhino poaching, but why the animals are important remains a mystery to most people. Seeing the integral space that these threatened animals occupy on the food chain first hand made their devastation that more tragic and that more real. Our walk took us to a small koppie where we had a break for tea and Ryan managed to disturb a brown hyena. I climbed to the rocky summit (which sounds more grandiose than it really is) and saw a car in the distance wind its way through the park. I thought about how much more big game they might see, but just how much they were missing out on all of the little things, and in particular the smells and textures and tactile nature of the whole environment. As we continued to move, the cloud cover provided a cool blanket which made the walking easy. We even had a brief drizzle which made the long grass stick to our thighs as we meandered through the bush. For lunch, we stopped at a rocky outcrop with a commanding view of the valley below. Hornbills flew their dipping path between the trees and a troop of baboons could be heard barking at us from another hill. We were placed on our own to soak up the surroundings a bit more. I found a flat rock shaded by a fig tree and made myself comfortable to be quenched by the view. A pair of cliff chats flitted between large boulders and a squirrel came close by to investigate my intrusion. He eventually played hide and seek with me, chancing a glance and then retreating back to a crevice in the rock. After what seemed like too short a time, we rejoined for lunch, sitting on our haunches and filling ourselves with fruit and sandwiches. Someone found a shard of broken pottery near where we ate, evidence that people before us had enjoyed the same views much, much earlier. We followed a giraffe on the way home, its long neck peering from above the bush as it tracked our progress. We walked in silence and it was clear that a gentle peacefulness had come over the group. Despite being in the environment for just over a day, it had us bewitched and proved that such an experience is good for the soul. The remainder of the weekend was a bit of a blur as I thought back on that one meaningful day of walking through the bush. I thought about the quiet, the stillness and feeling like I was part of this ecology too. It is something that I will hold very dear to me and a program that I feel should be passed on to others. The only way that we will be able to preserve the wild spaces like the one in the Pilanesberg, is to allow peole not to take ownership of it, but rather to feel a part of it. The wilderness is not something that we can have, but rather something that has us. As Dr Ian McCallum says, it is a pattern of soul where every tree, bird and beast is a soul maker. Before I begin my story you probably need some background. I run the environmental program at school and one of our initiatives is nurturing young animals which we then release back onto our campus. The school is located on a large property close to Sandton complete with grasslands, two dams and lots of indigenous trees. It is an ideal habitat for wild animals. The newest creatures to our wildlife centre are thus two recently weaned large-spotted genets.
These cats are beautifully marked and used to be found on our campus. They look like a cross between a mongoose and a domestic cat. They live in trees and are most active at night, when they hunt for insects, rodents and small birds. We would be looking after these two until they had grown up a bit when we would release them and supplement their feeding while they learnt to hunt. In the interim, we called the female Bella and the male Bilbo (which in retrospect was an unfortunate name for the little guy as the teenaged boys that I teach soon changed Bilbo to something a little more inappropriate) So from here to my story... I was chased down by a breathless student shortly after assembly who said that one of the genets had escaped and was cowering in a drainpipe. This happened during a tutor lesson, which enabled me to get away to the genet for a bit. I checked the enclosure to see if both genets had escaped, and was happy to see one face peering at me from inside. So, satisfied that I was looking for only one genet, I was led to the drain pipe where I was met by a very frightened little Bella, hissing at anyone who walked past her. Coaxing her to me with a dead chick achieved nothing, and so we resorted to putting a stick through the other side of the pipe in the hopes that she would run out of the open end be enveloped in a borrowed school blazer so that she could be taken back to the enclosure. This went mostly according to plan, and after dashing through the blazer and past me, I managed to catch Bella again. Amidst much hissing, growling and gnashing teeth, I held the wringing bundle as best as I could and then it was back into her enclosure. Job done... But while I was watching her settle in, I found it strange that the Bilbo hadn't made any attempt to meet her, and upon further investigation discovered that he had escaped whilst I was catching Bella. It took the best part of an hour to find him, by which time he had climbed to the top of the tallest tree near the enclosure. I now had a dilemma. So, I called the Johannesburg Wildlife Vet to ask for some advice. They said that because the genets were so young, and having been raised in captivity, the likelihood of them learning to hunt on their own at this young age was remote. Could I try and catch him. By this time, a substantial crowd of schoolboys had gathered. Climbing the tree was going to be a problem because the first fork which I could climb was some three meters up. One of the boys said he would organise a ladder for me...no problem. And this made me turn cold. At this juncture I must digress, because my recent track record with ladders has been less that ideal. Three months earlier a ladder had slipped out from underneath my whilst I was on top of our hangar roof at the airfield. The result was a broken elbow and three broken ribs. But crowds inspire confidence, and although I am not sure if that is a good thing or not, when the ladder arrived I made my way up until I reached the branch in the tree. I transitioned from ladder to tree (in a suit sans jacket I might add) and climbed upwards. Leather work shoes are not made for climbing trees. Despite these setbacks I managed to move perilously upwards, and looking down at the swelling crowd, I realised that the last time I was this high up a tree I was probably in primary school. Not a good thing. By some miracle of luck Bilbo had not moved, and I suppose he was seeing the humour of what was unfolding beneath him. The reality was that he was a scared little cat up a tree. When I got close enough to him, I was balancing on some branches that I was sure were straining under my weight. He moved to the edge of a thin finger of a branch, just out of reach. Calling and enticing with food got me nowhere. My next option was to shake the tree in the hopes that he would find some more secure footing closer to me and which point I would grab him. I felt awful doing this, and from the ground I am sure I looked like one of those cartoon characters shaking a cat out of a tree whilst the cartoon feline grips stubbornly on extended front claws, shouting in protest as it is jostled up and down with the movement of s branch. After some time, he did decide on the safer option in coming closer to me, and I managed to reach up with my left hand (the right gripping tightly to another branch in the hope of preventing a fall) and grabbed Bilbo just in front of his hips. The next parts I realised at the time I had not thought through. Bilbo turned around and sank his small teeth into the fingers of my left hand, hissing and growling. I managed to get him free of the branch at which point he decided to try and deter my efforts by sending a jet of urine over my crisp white shirt. It smelt as unappetizing as any cat urine, and I was soaked. So, gagging and bleeding, I now came to the conclusion that I would have to descend one handed, without falling, whilst my face turned bright green at the stench, and trying to avoid the hissing biting genet. I could not move my left hand to a safer spot behind Bilbo's neck where I wouldn't get bitten because this would require the use of both hands, a maneuver that would certainly result in a fall. Somehow I managed to reverse down the tree and onto the ladder, unsuccessfully avoiding the genets bites. When I had some sure footing on the ladder I managed to make my way onto a less perilous hold to the back of Bilbo's neck. My left hand was a bloody mess from the many tiny scratches his small teeth had inflicted. The boys parted way for the disheveled, reeking, bloody teacher carrying a furious genet, and I managed to return Bilbo to Bella, his companion in the cage. Some disinfectant, a borrowed shirts (and a well-earned shower two periods later) and I felt back to normal. We found the holes from which the genets had got out, closed them up and hopefully this great escape will be the first and last time. Just another day as a teacher... I would like to create a program that creates an environmental (and perhaps ecological is a better term) culture within our youth, that will be able extend from the private schools to their rural counterparts in a manner that has a profound impact on each and every learner.
I have trialed a number of my ideas over the past few years through our various camps and the outdoor program that runs daily at the College, and I have found (not surprizingly) that students respond to the experiential and the concrete, not the abstract. For instance, showing footage or garbage island or statistics about our carbon footprint have very little impact because the children do not experience it first hand. Unless they wallow in the effects of a non-sustainable lifestyle, picking up litter is just not on their radar. It matters to them, but just not enough to be an ongoing, niggling bugbear. And this is difficult because we tend to compartmentalize things at schools when in fact, they are each connected. Hence my reference to ecology in my opening. The definition of ecology in Dr Ian McCallum's book, Ecological Intelligence is premised on relationships and this is the key to everything. Community service, for instance, has become the "buzz word" over the last ten years, and they foster the human relationship, but what is the ripple effect into other areas: the environment, economics, culture, etc? We cannot focus on the human imperative to the exclusion of everything else, because we are connected to everything else, and our individual and collective decisions have repercussions elsewhere. The problem is drawing awareness to all of this. Aligned with this is the ideal of students actioning conservation, as long as someone lights a fire under them. Students are not yet cynical; they have boundless energy and they feel like they can change the world. So I would like to provide the direction and guidance for them to do so. In this space, there must be a possibility for enabling students to be more involved in research. At the same time, the schooling system tends to be student-centred, instead of empowering students to use their knowledge and enthusiasm in a sphere that is greater than their own lives. Schools also have the privilege of longevity, which means that projects can be a legacy from one student to the next and possibly even one school to the next, with a huge body of awareness (and more importantly action) being built up over time. That could be immensely beneficial. Even if it is only for a brief moment, being able to contribute to our understanding of an ecological picture is humbling, because humanity does not know everything, and it is enriching because students will have a relationship in nurturing the future of their earth. This in itself is hugely impactful. Take something as for granted as the birds in Sandton. When my father grew up here, Grey Louries were unusual, and subsequently in my youth in the same areas, we did not see Cape Glossy Starlings. Now I have noticed an influx of Bronze Mannequins. Why? Is it because of climate change, habitat loss, Sandton alien forest or any number of factors. This example, albeit a very basic one, could answer many questions and create others of which we are unaware, because as long the project focusses on micro, macro, inter and intra relationships, knowledge and insight could be the end product. Imagine students with a culture of ecological awareness that fosters an ingrained and deep-seeded conviction to collaborate with the natural world. Students who tread like butterflies with sore feet because they understand their impact on their relationships with others and the environment. Imaging a space where tolerance is extended from person to person and person to nature. I came across this short documentary last night and I feel that it is something that deserves discussion.
We live in a society that encourages ego and isolation and personally, the environment is sometimes a priority, but one that exists at the back of my mind too often, where it should be foregrounding. I think that as a species, people do not realise the potential and influence of their interconnectedness. We segregate people, politics and the environment where we should be understanding that all of these form a global ecological fabric. Our decisions and indeed the actions of every species on the planet reverberates with repercussions, most of which we are oblivious. The documentary starts with an overview of the state of African Elephants, driven by Mike Chase (who I was lucky enough to meet a few times). In my conversations with him, trying to be devil’s advocate, I asked why we need to preserve these or any species. His response was because we know so little of their true value and the impact that their absence would have on us and on the globe. There are reasons for every creatures existence, and a ‘pay-it-forward’ effect on every other relationship in a universal scale. Examine rain forests, which produce so much moisture that they are responsible for a large portion of the globe’s weather. For them to exist, each species needs to do their part an occupy their own niche and for those species to exist, the ones just outside the rain forests need to occupy their ecological role and so forth. We disrupt these connections. So, enough rambling from me. Please watch this clip. Share it. Perhaps we can begin to foster a sense of relationship between us and our environment. Perhaps we could foster an ecological tolerance. Perhaps we could understand that ecology is not just about plants and animals, but about every single living and non-living thing. Perhaps we could enable our community to understand the repercussions of their actions so that they can tread lightly like butterflies with sore feet: http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2017/01/24/vanishing-sixth-mass-extinction-documentary-orig.cnn
Thanks to BirdLasser, and any avid birders who have been ticking off their sighting on the campus, I have managed to collect quite a comprehensive list of the birds that have been seen at St Stithians from January 2016 until January 2017. It makes for some interesting reading when layered onto GoogleMaps!
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