The saying that time flies by is not an exaggeration. It has been over three months since I last wrote about the happenings here with the hippos.
It has been three months of further stress and anxiety as we witness a once beautiful country slip into a shoddy, downtrodden, and persecuted land. Most people from overseas are fed up with the saga of yet another African country being exploited, destroyed, so they tire of the tale. When you actually live in such an area, are daily involved in the ongoing demise, it is a very disheartening experience.Our lives these days only involve our immediate surroundings. It is too important to continue the daily removal of the wire snares and the work in the hippos' pool to take even a few days away to see what is happening elsewhere in Zimbabwe. We see enough here and we read the e-mails and receive reports from friends and other people.
One mile from our home, humans are behaving more like locusts than Homo Sapiens. They eat up the land, the bushes, the trees, and the spirits of this wildlife area. A land which is daily burnt out, poached out and ruined in front of our very eyes.
Here at Hippo Haven we continue with the projects for these hippos. I have 22 hippos in the immediate vicinity of our home- 19 living in their pool at the Chichindwi weir part of the Turgwe River. Jean-Roger has once again cleared an area for them to comfortably survive in until the hopeful arrival of the rains.The long-term forecast is for another drought, so perhaps Jean will have to work once more this year in their pool. He has had his fair share of hippo moments as of late.
Like with the previous work in the pool, Jean took along the lightweight chicken mesh fence to put between him and the crocodiles as he worked each morning. This time there were actually more crocodiles than hippos. Twenty crocodiles slowly have moved into the newly opened up pool.
As you can see from the photos the fence is lightweight- it could be pushed over by a puppy boisterously jumping onto it. The idea is that the crocodiles see it as a barrier between them and Jean-Roger. We did not plan that Jean would spend his time in the pool accompanied by one mature female hippo and her two year old calf!One late morning I was watching Jean at work, in between helping him drag the suction pipe from one place to another. My attention was suddenly attracted by movement. Approaching the pool from the bush island was Abe, one of the hippos. I whistled to attract Jean's attention as the noise of the pump makes it difficult to speak or call out. He noticed my anxious waves and from the pool he saw Abe entering the water. He told me later that at that moment he felt the wisest thing to do was to remain where he was, rather than climb out of the five feet hole, which possibly would have disturbed her even more. So hippo and man suddenly were in the same river together, with but a tiny thin fence separating them.
Jean, clad in his wet suit, did not seem to unduly upset Abe's equilibrium. At first she just stared at this strange apparition! Then as Jean made a sudden movement she raised herself up in the water and snorted. Jean continued to operate the pump and she calmed down, staring at Jean in what appeared to be amazement. For the next forty minutes they literally shared the pool. Jean-Roger continued pumping and Abe occasionally pushed herself up in the water looking relatively assertive but never once gaping or showing any aggressive traits. She appeared more curious at this strange turn of events.
Eventually she left the pool, having soaked her body in its cooling waters. Perhaps she decided that the noisy black thing in her water was best left there and maybe on her return it would be gone. I was immensely proud of Jean-Roger, as it is not often that you work twenty or thirty feet from a one and a half ton animal that has the reputation as one of Africa's most dangerous animals. The two of you share forty minutes of your lives together and both of you come away from it unscathed. Jean told me later that he felt pretty small looking up from the pool at this large lady hippo, and Jean is over six feet tall!
Needless to say this was not Abe's end to her curiosity. One week later Jean arrived as always with the two guys, Silos and Tongai, to set up the pump. We have a routine, which we follow.
First of all, I go to the hippos with my camera or video and observe them. Jean then arrives with the guys and the wheelbarrows. The noise of the wheelbarrows coming down the dirt road normally makes the hippos run for the exit points onto the bush island. I do not speak to them as this would calm them down and they would then not leave the water. If I talked to them and they remained it would be impossible for Jean to work alongside 19 hippos. Even if they tolerated his presence, an accident would be imminent as man and animals crowd each other's space.
When they move out of the pool it's always one big rush from water to land. Once they reach the sandbank they will often parade around, staring at Jean and the guys with their heads raised but without undue stress or anger. Bob the bull, Blackface, and Abe are usually the last hippos to move off into the island.
Well, one morning Abe and her youngest daughter Tacha decided they were not leaving. The noise of the wheelbarrows, even Jean openly talking to the two guys, had absolutely no effect. Abe snorted at them but milled about in her pool and would not get out. The first morning she did this she won! We all gave up and left her in glorious isolation in the river while Jean retired for the morning. When she tried this the second day running, Jean in true French/Italian temperament exclaimed "stuff it" or something a bit stronger, deciding he would continue working.
Abe would just have to behave.
Both the employees looked a bit startled that Jean wanted to put up the fence with two hippos literally twenty feet away but if the "boss" was mad enough to do it then they would assist him. So I photographed them all putting up the fence and then once all was ready, Jean remained alone with Abe and Tacha and began his six-hour stint in the pool.
This time she stayed with him for over an hour before his repetitive movements must have bored her, for she took leave of the pool with young Tacha following her. For the next five hours, Jean remained with only the 20 crocodiles as companions.
He informed me on reading this article that 'for the love of hippos' applies to his wife. He is just the husband who tries to help his wife and ends up wondering whether his sanity should be questioned! Whatever, I cannot help but be pretty proud of him.
He worked the pool on and off through the month of July. We did not pump in it each day as I wanted the hippos to have a few days of relative peace and quiet where they could enjoy the opened up pool, then move them out for another couple of morning works. This way they could take advantage of the opened up clean areas and not spend too much time in the bushes where the problems of the poachers and the harm they could do was constantly on my mind.
As of late we have had, on several occasions, the poachers' dogs actually entering our garden, after my cats or the vervet monkeys that visit us each day. Also, we have the only live animals in this area surrounding our property. These days the kudu, bushbuck, impala, waterbuck, and warthogs use the land around our home or cross the river to the other property. Those animals that can move away have actually left the poached lands, but so many of them have been killed. The " war veterans" and their minions have been told by the government that they cannot remain in this Wildlife Conservancy but they laugh at this. They believe they are now the law of Zimbabwe and do not answer to anybody. They have basically refused to leave here. We have heard that the land next to us, called Chigwete, has been taken by one of the ministers. He wants to be involved in the wildlife as he knows that the land cannot be productive for crops or cattle. The actual bonafide owners of the land, who are a large extended family, have been told they can no longer patrol the area with their game scouts. The police have told them that they cannot apprehend any poachers that they catch, as the issue is political.
Jean-Roger and I are the only two people in this entire area who are still patrolling to remove the killing snares. Daily, we hear the dogs barking, hunting some poor animal. When they come to our home we can chase them off, but we are only two people. We have removed, this year alone, over 190 wire snares from the grazing lands of the hippos close to our home. Many of the areas are supposed "no-go" areas and we know they are full of snares. The "war vets" have told the other black people employed by the original owners that the wild animals will never run out, that they can continue to kill them and they will always be there. In the meantime, the reality is that the drive from our home to the main dirt road to Chiredzi, a distance of 6 miles, is now totally barren of any animals. Four months ago, you would see herds of impala, kudu, wildebeest, eland; large family groups of warthogs, basically hundreds of animals. But now, within four months, you do not see one animal. It breaks one's heart.
At home, the animals are still alive- but for how long can just two people keep an area clear of the killing? We are told that things are coming to a head, that something has to happen soon. Like in my previous story, we continue to hope and work helps to keep one sane.
One morning, I heard a lion roar in the early hours. Later, two majestic elephant bulls strolled past our home. I managed to spend two hours sitting with 19 beautiful Turgwe hippos as they contentedly lay on their sandbank enjoying the rays of the sun. Later that evening, on our dusk patrol, a leopard's rasping call was heard. Yet, one walks ten minutes down the road to find herds of cattle, accompanied by men and their skinny hunting dogs. You walk a little bit further and one arrives at their so-called lands: areas totally denuded of all natural vegetation, burnt or hacked out of the ground, opened up for crops that can never grow, due to the area being recognized as totally drought prone and unsuitable for agriculture.
We know that the real reason these "war veterans" were put here was to poach the wildlife. But they pretend otherwise and continue to kill daily. You drive through these lands and your heart cries and your anger mounts, but you try to believe in nature and how it will recover from this onslaught of man. More animals have been killed here in the last two years than in the horrendous drought of 1992. We wonder how long the area can sustain its environment and I wonder daily for how long can the hippos survive man? Last week we found 12 snares on a ten-minute walk from our house, in a dry riverbed right next to the house that the chief " war veteran" Robert Mamungaere has taken over. Three of the snares were set on the hippo paths and they were three strand snares, meaning that they could capture a small hippo.
A week or so ago we caught a youngster of not more than seventeen years with his catapult trying to hurt Tembia. Tembia is a male hippo newly matured, my first-born hippo after I fed these hippos during the drought of 1992. As of late, he has moved into one ofthe cemented pans we built for these hippos. Unfortunately for him, this pan is now part of the thoroughfare where all these so-called "war veterans" and their minions walk when they leave this invaded land to return to their real homes in the neighboring communal land.
The kid was packing his catapult with hard granite stones, trying to hit Tembia. Not only is that an exceedingly stupid thing to do- it is also highly dangerous. Tembia is a male hippo. He is even-tempered and normally a non-assertive male. He has not yet challenged another bull hippo and is still an inexperienced bull. Nevertheless, he weighs about one and a half tons and has lower canines capable of doing considerable damage.
Apart from the fact that this kid could actually blind Tembia if his rock hit Tem in the eye, it's far more likely that Tembia would kill the kid. You can mistreat an animal for so long, but if it has the ability to retaliate, it will in the end. In the case of a wild hippo having some puny human injure it and attack it, it is only sensible that at some stage the hippo will have had enough. Instead of trying to avoid such treatment it will charge.
We managed to be there at that time and removed the kid's catapult, broke it, and explained in no uncertain terms the errors of his ways, then sent him packing. But for how long can one stop this kind of stupidity? Eventually somebody will be killed.
So in between the achievements of creating the pools for these hippos and removing the snares and watching the hippos alive and well, there is the constant fear and apprehension of failure.
Hope and Sabi, the two new calves born this year, are now living with their families in the pool. Both little females, who will one day to bring new life to this Lowveld land. Will they, I wonder, be given the chance?
Karen Paolillo, Hippo Haven, Save Valley Conservancy, Zimbabwe. 25th July 2002NB the Trust's very own hippo video is now available. Including DHLcourier service it costs US$35 or GBP25. It shows the different foster hippos and some very interesting hippo behaviour, as well as the work we are carrying out here at present and some of the problems that we face. It is called 'For the Love of Hippos'.
