Grey Foam-nest Treefrog (Chiromantis xerampelina)
African Buffalo (Syncerus caffer)
What are you looking at?
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge – Black and White
Are You Looking at Me?
Month: August 2014
The Croc Whisperer
If this wasn’t a true story it should have been
About forty kilometers north of Seshekeke there used to be a rustic fishing camp on the edge of the Zambezi River, run by an Afrikaans-speaking man from Namibia called Danie (not his real name). During his time in Zambia he became something of a legend among the people of Sesheke.
‘Croc Danie’
Attacks on humans by crocodiles are common along all African river banks, the Zambezi River being no exception, and if an unfortunate villager is taken or attacked by a crocodile in Zambia national parks rangers are called to hunt and destroy the perpetrator.
Nile Crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) – sunning itself on the banks of the Zambezi River
Danie was an honorary ranger and often he would be the person to respond to these calls. After shooting the crocodile, national parks take the skin – the Nile Crocodile being a protected species – and Danie would take the meat as payment. According to Danie some local people believe that crocodile meat has magical powers, rendering the consumer immune to attacks by crocodiles – some even believe that eating crocodile fat can protect you from AIDS.
While the local people avoid going into the water – most do not have the means to obtain crocodile meat to eat for protection – Danie often used to swim in the river as it gets very hot in that part of the World. To the local villagers, the fact that a crocodile had never attacked him meant that he had indeed acquired supernatural powers by eating crocodile meat.
Danie was a wonderful story-teller, his broken English, peppered with the odd Afrikaans word when he couldn’t find the correct term added spice and humour to every tale. He was also quite fond of Brandy and if his stories were told late at night there was often more Afrikaans than English spoken, but I could always get the gist.
The first time we stayed with him at his camp we were all settled on the deck in front of a crackling fire one evening, relaxing after a day’s fishing in the boat. The sun was setting, the beer was cold and the aroma of meat cooking on the braai was mouth-watering.
“Did I ever tell you about the time the bus drove into the Zambezi?” Danie was partly deaf, so shouted most of the time but now he had to shout even louder, the constant roar of the Zambezi rushing over the rapids drowned out most other sounds.
None of us had heard the story then (although it was to be repeated many times after that – and it never got old), so we settled down to listen.
“Ag, it must have been three years ago when I got a call from the police station at Sesheke. The guy told me that a bus had parked next to the river while the passengers all got off to go and do some shopping. Even the driver got out but he forgot to put on the hand brake. Jeez! Can you believe it?
“So of course the bus rolled down the hill and into the river. The whole thing was under the water and, because they think I have super-powers that protect me from crocodiles, they wanted me to come and help them pull the bus out.” Danie paused to take a long pull on his brandy.
“I tried to get out of it. There are lots of crocs in that river, I tell you! And those crocs haven’t been told about my magic powers. But the guy went on and on and begged and pleaded and eventually I had to go and have a look. When I arrived there must have been two hundred people, come from the villages near by, all standing around with their goats and their mombies (cattle) and their children, waiting for me. When I got out of my bakkie (pickup truck) I heard them all saying muzungu! muzungu! (white man! white man!).
“Still trying to get out of this job, I made a phone call to my son. I spoke in English so that the people could hear what I was saying; I hoped they might take pity on this old muzungu and make another plan to get the bus out. I told him about the bus in the water, that there are lots of crocodiles and so I was phoning him to say ‘goodbye’, in case one of the crocs got me and I died.” He shook his head, and took another long sip.
Is it a log? Or is it a crocodile?
“But this plan didn’t work and the policeman handed me a long piece of chain. He wanted me to swim down to the bus and attach the chain to the axle so that the bus could be pulled out with a tractor. I put on my goggles and flippers, said a small prayer and dived into the water. It’s dark and muddy down there but I found the bus and saw that it was suspended in the water with it’s nose down and that there was some air trapped inside at the back of the bus. I opened a window but before I could get into the air pocket I ran out of breath and had to return to the surface.
“By that time my son had arrived; he was worried about his old-man. I saw him standing on the bank and shouted across the water to him in Afrikaans, telling him about the air pocket and not to worry if I didn’t come up for a long time, before diving back down again.
“I was down there a long time attaching that bliksemse chain. Maybe half an hour. Of course all the other people watching from the bank hadn’t understood what I had said to my son and he later told me that they became more and more worried. They all shuffled closer and closer to the water, muttering about crocodiles and how were they going to get the bus out now that the bwana (boss) was dead.
“While I was working on that chain, swimming backwards and forwards through the window for air, I thought about what those people would be thinking and an idea came to me.” Danie was chuckling now as he got up to pour himself another brandy and Coke.
“Once I had attached the chain, I grabbed the other end, took one last big gulp of air and swam under water right up to the edge of the shore, where I could see the shapes of the people all staring out at the water. They couldn’t see me coming because the water is so dirty and when I got really close I burst out of the water, holding the chain high above my head and shouted ‘daar’s hy!’ (‘there it is!’)”. By now Danie was laughing so hard it was difficult to understand what he was saying. Between deep belly laughs he continued:
“Man! You should have seen the chaos. They thought I was a ghost! The people yelled. Women dropped their children and ran. They screamed and they ran, and they kept on running, up to the road at the top of the bank and towards their villages. The goats and the mombies ran. Even the policeman ran!
“The further I walked out of the water the further the people ran, while my son tried to calm everyone down – calling them back and trying to tell them about the pocket of air. No-one would listen and if they did listen they didn’t believe him. It took me a very long time to persuade the policeman to come and take the chain from me, which he did very carefully and reluctantly and with a very long arm, quickly stepping away from me once he had the chain. I think they all still believe I’m a ghost.”
Mosi-oa-Tunya
This is our last week of the Five Elements/Seasons series and today our topic is Water or the Season of Winter.
The World’s largest sheet of falling water, the Victoria Falls (or Mosi-oa-Tunya, meaning The Smoke that Thunders in Tokaleya-Tonga) is listed as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World – and it falls almost in my front garden!
“…scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight …” – David Livingstone
Zambia on the North bank, Zimbabwe on the South. The Zambezi River stretching Northwards as far as the eye can see
The Smoke that Thunders
Water water, everywhere
The Mosi-oa-Tunya providing a dramatic backdrop to our irrigation – all water is pumped from the Zambezi River
The Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge – Silhouette
The Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge – Silhouette
Photography is all about experimenting with light, and then positioning yourself (or your subject) in the right spot to achieve a certain effect. One such effect is a silhouette, in which an outline of someone or something appears dark against a lighter background. Silhouettes can be very dramatic and resemble black shapes without any details, but the effect varies from picture to picture.
Yellow-billed Kites feasting on flying ants
Crepuscular Yellow-billed Kites
Midges dancing in the setting sun – Zambezi River
Master of all he surveys
Conversations With Dad
The Name’s the Thing
“Have you ever named an inanimate object? (Your car? Your laptop? The volleyball that kept you company while you were stranded in the ocean?) Share the story of at least one object with which you’re on a first-name basis.”
My children’s father is an engineer. He is also a dreamer, often disappearing into his own thoughts for hours, switching off from the real World while he designs rotary engines, or the perfect irrigation pump, or imagines himself in arguments with a client over unpaid bills. I would chat away to him, often about inanities – the characters in a book I was reading, the dream I had last night – but sometimes about important stuff like school fees and where we were going for our next holiday. After a while I would notice I was getting no response, not even an occasional grunt. I would look over at him, notice the glazed look in his eyes and realise I had been talking to myself. Again. He does this all the time, to everyone, so I shouldn’t have taken it personally – but I often did.
A few years ago when my youngest son was about 10 years old he and his Dad went on a road trip through Mocambique. It was a very long journey and after about the fifth hour of one-sided conversation Last Born came up with an ingenious plan. He dug around in the suitcases and found a pair of socks. He named the socks ‘Dad’, propped them up on the dashboard and continued talking, happy he now had someone’s undivided attention.
Are we there yet?
The Textures of Africa – Part II
When Piet first arrived here nine years ago the farm now known as Sitikela was bush. Thick, solid, tangled, dry bush. And it was brown. The trees were brown, the grass was brown, the leaves scattered on the sand were brown – even the sand was brown.
African winter bush
As he drove up a sandy, unkempt track he noticed the top of a solitary tree towering above the rest of the forest – and it was green! Although it was mid-winter, the heat of the day was almost unbearable and the shade of this tree looked like a likely spot to set up camp; Piet and Sarel, his business partner, lived in tents under that tree for two years while they set to work developing the farm and today our house nestles comfortably in that same shade.
Home Sweet Home
The rough and the smooth
Guibourtia coleosperma, also known as Rhodesian Copalwood, African Rosewood and Large False Mopane is a beautiful, mostly evergreen tree which occurs almost exclusively on Kalahari sand. The tree is ubiquitous on our farm and we have at least ten growing in our garden. Our offices are also built under the shade of one of these magnificent specimens.
I love the varying textures of the bark, smooth, cracked, knotty.
Pockmarked with borer tunnels
The paired leaves look similar to those of the Mopane tree (Colophospermum mopane) which also occurs in this area and it is easy to understand why this tree is sometimes called the Large False Mopane.
Shining emerald-green in the sunlight
Almost translucent from underneath
The bright red arils, although somewhat tasteless, are edible and the indigenous people pound them into a flour which they cook into a nutritious meal; they do the same with the seeds and I have read somewhere that this has saved many lives in times of famine.
Of course birds love the seeds and arils too, and we are often entertained by the raucous shouting of trumpeter hornbills, sounding uncannily like crying babies as they skirmish and scuffle for the juiciest ones.
Guibourtia coleosperma is a much sought-after hardwood. When first cut the timber has a unique pinkish-brown colour which later changes to a rich, warm, edible-looking dark chocolate-brown.
Our own home-made Rosewood dining-room suite, made from wood salvaged during land clearing
The Textures of Africa – Part I
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Metal
Cee’s Which Way Challenge: 2014 #10
The Mulobezi Express winds its way between Livingstone and Mulobezi – a logging village in the middle of nowhere – and bisects the farm, almost down the middle. We have to cross it many times a day to get to the top fields.
The Mulobezi Express Line
Derailments are a regular occurrence and often it is out of action for weeks. When this happens the passengers all rally together and using logs as levers and a lot of elbow grease and sweat, somehow manage to lift the train back on its tracks.
When it is in operation we hear it come rattling past twice a week, its wheels screaming in protest – sometimes very late at night – loaded to capacity with people, livestock and goods if it is heading towards Mulobezi, and logs for its return journey. It sounds as if it is heading directly towards the house, which is very unnerving and the dogs always go barking crazy, tearing up and down the fence shouting insults.
Maintenance is a very loose term in this part of the world but from time to time a crew of men are sent along the line to check for problems and, if they can, to fix them. They are always a cheerful bunch and we can often hear their laughter and singing echoing through the trees as they make their way deeper into the forest (the dogs don’t like this either!).
The Maintenance Crew
Cee’s Which Way Photo Challenge
The Harvest Season
The end of the peanut season
Africa Sun dried peanuts
I'll Give You a Letter For That 