South Luangwa!

The drive to South Luangwa was thankfully uneventful and relatively short (5 hours from the village). As we had all gone the last four days without showers, everyone was justifiably relieved to find that rather than having to pitch their tents, the great folks at Wildlife Camp had six double "en-suite" (has an attached bathroom with shower!) safari tents ready for us on the shores of the Luangwa River.

We unloaded our gear and everyone quickly headed for their showers and got changed. We had enough time to all collect at the riverside bar at sundown, where we enjoyed our first true "sundowner" drinks in the African bush. 

The other surprise - along with the safari tents - for the students is that while at Wildlife Camp, we no longer had to make our own meals. The staff at Wildlife Camp are fantastic and we sat down that night, clean and refreshed, to a fantastic meal along the river - hippos and baboons serenading us with grunts and barks, respectively. 

The next morning we were up before dawn to start our game drives in te national park. After a good breakfast at 0530, we loaded onto our safari vehicles with our knowledgable guides and headed off into the bush!

The wildlife in the park is amazing, and neither this game drive nor any of the other ones has disappointed anyone. I was particularly impressed that despite all the amazing thugs to see, everyone still stayed focused on collecting their data while on the drives. (Emily and Katy are diligently recording observations.)

Here is a small sample of some of the amazing plants and animals we saw just on the first drive:

Elephant

Kudu

Warthog

Zebra

Puku

Giraffe!

Lions, three males still hanging around a carcass of a young hippo they had killed the day before. 

Vultures at the hippo carcass

Nyanje Village - Part 1

The last four days "off the grid" are attributable to our stay with the Banda family in Nyanje village. This was technically "off the clock" as far as biology was concerned, but as most everyone agreed, it was perhaps the most meaningful cultural experience yet in this class. Hopefully these two posts will make clear why.

This year's Nyanje experience started by picking up Alice, second-born of Levenia Banda, from her current residence in Chongwe, just a half-an-hour outside of Lusaka. As Mary (co-leader) observed, "Alice Banda is a force of nature," and a good force, to be sure. Alice rode the next 6 hours on the bus with us, talking about her role as a nurse and as a health care trainer (she trains midwives at over twenty regional health care centers). She also took over my tour guide duties by finding roadside hot springs, by pointing out a major health concerns for rural Zambians, and by demonstrating the subtle differences between bananas purchased in Luangwa compared to those purchased in Nyimba. She knows her stuff. 

At the hot springs.

At the roadside fish market in Luangwa. 

After a long drive - with a particularly grueling final half-hour washboard track rivaled only by some of the back roads in the Ottawa National Forest - we finally pulled into Mama (Levenia) Banda's compound in the village, where we were immediately treated to a Welcome Dinner of nshima, greens, beans and and pumpkin. Although many things were absolutely foreign to these Zambassadors (eating with fingers, speaking Nyanja, trying cornmeal paste, etc.) everyone just rolled the experience and had a blast. Here you can see fourth-born Nelia and us as we enjoy our unplanned welcoming dinner. 

Some of the gang and Nelia in the sitting room Mama Banda's house. 

Here is Mama Banda herself, happily greeting us all and treating all 14 of us to a large, welcome and unexpected meal.

Although we were greeted by many children when we arrived, our immediate whisking away into the sitting room for dinner meant a lot of locals still had yet to shake our hands. And so a stream of Banda relatives and friends began to snake through the tight quarters, shaking everyone's hands and asking, "Bwanji?" To which the Zambassadors replied, "bwino, muli bwanji?"

The stream of greeters continued throughout the next four days. Children were the most curious about us (many had never seen white skin before), but villagers from all walks came to shake our hands and greet us. At almost any moment over those days, someone might appear just to shake our hands and exchange bwanjis. It was gracious, touching and genuine. 

Emily (Bertucci) greets a woman who came by during our breakfast of the third day in the village. 

After our dinner we made our way back out into the dark night to get our tents set up in the yard of our hostesses, Nelia and Levenia. Children were everywhere, and they were wired with the excitement of our arrival. Within minutes (seconds, really) of having their tent set up, Angela and Emily (Anna) had a welcome-wagonload of at least a dozen children in their tent, and soon Holly, Brian and Andrea (I think - hard to keep track after a while) joined the party tent. 

Eventually all but Angela and Emily were shooed out of the tent (it took help from the ever-commanding Alice) and we all got a good night's sleep, readying ourselves for the coming Sunday morning church service. 

The next morning before church we had two important visits to take care of - one to the village headman and one to the Chieftaness. Nyanje village is one of the few in Zambia that have a matrilineal chiefdom, which was a slight change from the meeting we had with Chief Chitambo near Kasanka. At any rate, the Headman and the Chieftaness were both quite gracious. 

We gave her a T-shirt from NMU, and she honored us by putting it on before heading to church with us. The gentleman in the picture is her husband - the headman had to go back to his house before we got this photo snapped. The chieftaness  graciously invited us all into her house, where she showed us pictures from her life as chieftaness. Then she loaded onto our Zambus (temporarily The Royal Zambus) with us and caught a ride to church. 

Church (Dutch Reformed Church of Zambia) was a cultural phenomenon unlike anything any of us had experienced. In the two hours of service, we heard probably an hour of singing by five different church choirs. The singing (and dancing) was energetic, to say the least:

We were twice made a part of the service as honored guests. Once as participants in a greeting/snowball dance-song (video above), and once when we were asked to contribute a song of our own before the 300+ person congregation! We tried to beg off the request, stating we were not really a "singing culture," but in the end we pulled off two stanzas of "Amazing Grace." Although I think we were passable (not electric, like their choirs were), we are all thankful to have no video of that to post. 

After the service we went back to drop off the chieftaness and have some lunch. We arrived back to our little tent city and found that Nelia made all of us another traditional village meal - nshima, greens, sauce and chicken. 

Mary almost brushed this "leaf" off her tent before realizing it was a giant katydid, pictured here with its namesake, Katy!

Later that day, Alice led us on an enlightening tour of the village hospital. 

And we capped off the day's activities with a hike up one of the smaller hills that surrounds the village. 

The next day's programme was to hike up Nyanje Mountain, help the Bandas around their compound if we could, and hike to the dam. The next post will cover that. 

Nyanje Village - Part 2

After a moving introduction to the village, we all awoke and made our breakfast of cold cereal and tea. We tried to help put with morning chores, which included going to the borehole for water. Some even had modest success carrying the water in the traditional African manner. 

We packed our day packs with cameras, binoculars and water and set off to climb Nyanje mountain. In the group picture below, you can see Nyanje mountain in the background of the Banda compound. The entire village really sits at the foot of the mountain. 

Our original intent was to be guided up the mountain by the resourceful Peter Banda (pictured below helping Holly up and over the boulder section), a nephew of Alice and Nelia. 

Apparently word had spread around the village that the muzungu ("white people") were going to hike the mountain, so as we ascended we slowly collected more and more village children in our party. The day before, at the church, Reverend Andrew Banda gave a sermon in both English and Chinyanja, that had three fundamental messages about requirements for success: 1) Planning, 2) Motivation, and 3) Teamwork. The Zambassadors kept recalling those words on the hike up! 

Once we reached the top we not only had a breathtaking view of Eastern Province and Mozambique, we also could accurately judge the size of our entourage. It was much larger than we anticipated. The more the merrier. 

We lingered over those views for a while, then started our descent. 

Always adventurous, we opted for a new route for descent than we took for our climb, and although it may look treacherous, it really wasn't that bad...and it was not at all a new route to our Zambian guides. 

We all made it down with only minor scrapes and bruises. Upon returning to the Banda compound, we again went to carry water back to the compound (our group was largely responsible for continually emptying their cistern). Everyone (especially the villagers) were entertained by our attempts to carry water on our heads. 

And we then helped Nelia a bit with husking a small portion of her maize crop. Watching us do that was again great fun for the locals. Judging from the blisters we all quickly worked up on our hands, we clearly had a lot to learn. 

The staple food for Zambians is nshima, a thick cornflour-based paste that nearly all Zambians eat twice every day. Historically, nshima was made from cassava and other native root crops, but now most families in villages like Nyanje have small farm plots outside of town where they grow their own maize for nshima. Planted, tended and harvested by hand, this can amount to a lot of work. We helped husk a few bushels of maize, which will now go to the mill for grinding into flour. The local kids helped gather the kernels and dump them into bags. These children were always laughing and having fun, so maybe it wasn't always at our expense.

[Children corn video]

After milling, it gets made into nshima, usually over an open fire.  Nelia demonstrates below. 

Finally we closed the day with our (less-strenuous) hike to the dam just outside of town. A bad photo of the gentle path we hiked, but you can see how all the children wanted to hold hands with all of us. 

Perhaps the highlight of the hike was finding this chameleon on the walk back - we don't know the species, but we are working on it. 

The lake made from the dam on the Kangele river is quite picturesque, and we all had fun doing a bit of botanizing and checking out insects and birds along the shore. 

Our stay in the village came to an end the next morning, as we packed up and said our farewells. Several of the students - and co-leader, Mary - said they just wanted to stay in the village, but not to worry, I got them all onto the bus and on the road to South Luangwa. 

All is well...

Hi folks,

A quick and limited update for everyone. Turns out we had a great time at the village and landed safely in South Luangwa at Wildlife Camp. There are many, many stories to tell, with loads of cool pictures, but unfortunately the WiFi router here at Wildlife Camp has some settings that prevent Apple product from connecting to the internet (sounds like a googly conspiracy to me). And so blog posts from me will have to wait until I convince them to change their settings. And if your favorite Zambassador uses an iPhone, those messages too will have to wait.

But rest assured, all is well.

Kasanka!

While the lack of posts over the last several days may have been a bit anxious for the families back home, the lack of connectivity while at Kasanka was a welcome respite for all of us. We are all safe, relatively unsunburned and still having a terrific time.

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So yes, the last five days we have been traveling to and enjoying the environs north of Serenje, up the Great North Road from Lusaka. The drive was happily uneventful, and we made the 400km+ journey in about 8 hours – not bad. Sleeping on the bus has become something of an artform.

The long drives during our travels can get a bit cramped, but amazingly everyone still reports enjoying the Zambus. In large part this is because there is so much to see of the country when traveling by road. To give you an idea of some of the interesting stuff we see, this video was taken from part of a travel within Lusaka, just before we left for Kasanka.

Kasanka is something of an unusual park in that although being designated a National Park – and having all the protections therein – it is entirely funded and run through the work of a private non-profit trust, Kasanka Trust.

Although there was a bit of a mixup with our reservation, the staff at Kasanka quickly adjusted and made our stay terrific. We spent two days camping in the remote “pontoon” site, where we got to do a bit of local exploration on our own. But we also took two guided walks while at pontoon – one in the morning to Fibwe hide, the other around sunset along the Kasanka River.

Fibwe Hide is a landmark at Kasanka, as it is a giant treefort that is about 40 feet up in a giant red mahogany tree, requiring a fun climb up a custom ladder system.

Everyone made the trip up (only three people allowed at the top at any one time) and got great views of the marshlands of Kasanka.

For the walk that took us to Fibwe, as well as the evening walk, we just had a scout with us, without a naturalist “guide.” These scouts are great at spotting game, they often have good tracking and natural history knowledge, and they are adept with protection from big game should the need ever arise. Walking through the African savanna was inspiring - authentic and raw.

There was a bit more data collection by students while at Kasanka, but on one day we made the 50km jaunt (with our bus) to the site whereSir David Livingstone died in 1873. On the way to that remote site, we stopped to visit the local chief. He accepted our gifts, greeted us and allowed the students to ask questions about his role as regional chief. He was magnanimous and friendly, and everyone enjoyed the visit.

This is the site where Livingstone died in 1873. Once he died, his heart (and other innards) were buried here under a chupundu tree, while his salted body was taken back to England for burial in Westminster Abbey.

  

Then back into Kasanka, where we moved our camp from Pontoon site to the main Lake Wasa site. They don’t usually allow camping at Lake Wasa, but because of a mixup with their bookings, they put us there, which was phenomenal. Below you can see a picture of the fire-ring at Lake Wasa, where we cooked most of our meals, and below that a picture of our little Zamtent city.

We again took guided walks around the lake, and out into the dambos, this time with scouts and guides. We learned a great deal about the subtle differences between signs from different animals – like how to tell male genets from female genets simply from their footprints. (The tracks below are actually from mongoose.)

  

And we also got to see more obvious signs of animals – like when we surprised this female hippo from her grazing site and she charged away from us into the lake.

Along with the hippo we saw lots of other great animals and plants that are more typical of the miombo woodlands – including blue monkeys (rare...no photos!) and...

Vervet monkeys.

Woodland kingfisher.

Army ants coming back from a raid.

Miombo blue-eared starlings.

Puku, Puku, Puku!

Along with the blue monkeys, Kasanka is well-known for being one of the most reliable places to see the secretive sitatunga – we were not disappointed. Here is a buck, cow and their feisty offspring out for a dewey dawn breakfast.

Capping off our visit, we had a fantastic braai (barbeque) prepared for us by the Kasanka staff over the open fire.

Our meal consisted of boervors, chicken, potato salad, lettuce salad, cole slaw, and bread baked over the fire on a stick!

We all got stuffed and had a fantastic time relaxing with the Kasanka staff around the fire under the stunning southern sky - Saturn, Southern Cross and the milky way.