New Year, New Hope
Story Photos
With the New Year I will try to write with a more positive outlook than previously, telling of the good things that have occurred in the last couple of months and not dwelling on the negative and sad occasions. I sincerely believe that it is best to be honest about the situation in Zimbabwe, but one must always try and find goodness and uplifting things, as then it is easier to carry on and believe in a future.In my previous letter, I told of the death of Eric the baboon. Here are photos of Bella who is a son of Eric, but actually has become very special in his own right.
Two days after losing Eric, Bella suddenly pitched up at our back door. His behavior has been completely different from the rest of the troop of baboons. He literally began to follow me around when I walked in the garden or even as I left the house to go see the hippos. It was as if he was trying to tell me something. He is young, probably not more than three and a half years, but his eyes are filled with wisdom.
Baboons are naturally afraid of man, as around these parts nobody likes them. They have many behavioral traits that do not help them to be liked, as well as being much naughtier than monkeys or other animals. Young baboons can quite easily wreck the thatch roof of a house in a matter of hours. They seem to enjoy being destructive and will hide behind trees and peek at you when they have done something wrong. Most people living in Africa do not have much time for baboons.
From the day he moved into my life, Bella let me know that he is different.You can see from his photos he is a handsome fellow with facial expressions and looks in many ways different from the other baboons. From the day he became "tame", he’s acted as if he has come to replace Eric and has allowed me to not dwell on how poor Eric died. We try to discourage the wild animals from becoming too tame, as they then tend to lose their fear of humans, which is not good these days. In Bella's case, he keeps away from Jean-Roger but has this familiarity with me. So hopefully he will survive any human-related problems from the poachers or
the people who invaded this conservancy.The hippos are all very happy at this moment in time. Up until January 9th we had had very poor rainfall and extreme heat. During the month of November we fed them a supplementary diet as they had hardly any grass. After having the "invaders" burn the grass and bush back in September, with thousands of acres of grazing being totally destroyed, we lost nearly 75% of the hippos' grass.
For that month we fed them maize stalks and game pellets. The maize we picked up from our nearest neighbors 16kms from our home and the game pellets I managed to buy locally. I did not feed the hippos as much as in the 1992 drought; the idea was just to supplement their diet. They had began to lose condition and their backbones were becoming prominent from lack of food, so the idea was just to keep them from losing too much weight. 19 of the 20 hippos took advantage of this food which we put at dusk about two hundred meters from our home between their pool and us. Whether Tembia- a newly matured male- was allowed to come and eat later I am not sure as Bob and his family tended to eat the food in a matter of a couple of hours. Tembia now looks fine so I hope he did manage to sneak
in when Bob and the others had left. He lives in the cemented pan we built back in 1995 but at this moment has moved back into the Turgwe River.We had a little rain in late November and December which allowed the hippos to continue grazing as a new flush of grass grew. Here in the Lowveld, due to the lack of rains and being drought-prone, just the slightest bit of rain brings a flush of new browse and green grass. The grass is called sweet veldt and is far more nutritious than other grasses in the high veldt parts of Zimbabwe. It is incredible to watch the veldt after a small rain. Within a day green shoots pop up and within a couple of days there is a new carpet of luscious green grass everywhere, as well as new browse for the kudu antelope and other animals. The recuperative ability of the land here makes it a very special place to live in.
We were a little bit worried about the hippos' pool as with the extreme heat since the water was evaporating quickly. We put bags filled with sand onto the weir wall, which raised the level of the water within the pool, allowing the hippos to fully submerge.
One female, Wish, and her young son Pavodok left the group. For about two weeks, Storm-one of the males- harassed Wish, actually attacking her and being most unfriendly towards her. I am not sure what brought this about. She does have a male calf but Pavodok is only three years of age so far too young to be competitive with Storm. At all times Storm ignored Pavodok but attacked Wish. He even managed to get Bob to join in at times. Poor Wish ended up with some new slash cuts on her hide and these will scar as they were quite deep and long.
Eventually she had had enough and, taking Pavodok, left the pool and moved upstream. During November and December she survived by staying in reeds adjacent to the river. The water was not deep enough for her and her son to stay in the river. They had areas where they could roll and get wet but nowhere permanently to stay. Like Happy, the other bull, and two other males Fen and Mvura-both youngsters- Wish and Pavodok lived in the reeds.
This made life awkward for me. I cannot enter these thickly reeded areas since it is too dangerous. The hippos would feel cornered and hence probably attack by charging. So I had to just be happy with tracks of the hippos going in and out of the reeds.
Then, on January 9th, we had unexpected rain. We were all convinced that this year was going to be as severe a drought as in 1992. For 24 hours the heavens opened with just over 100mm falling at Hippo Haven with probably more rain upstream, which brought the river into a full flood. For the first time since the cyclone in 2000 we had a real roaring river which brought down much debris but also swept away much of the accumulated sand.
For the first two days after the flood, I went in search of the hippos. As always, when the river is too powerful, they leave the main channels and the pool, moving into tiny estuaries adjacent to the river. As there are a multitude of places they can move to, often I do not see them for a couple of weeks. This time I was lucky.
Within two days I had located 10 of the 20 hippos. These 10 stayed close to our home. 4 moved into the cemented pan for one day then back to a tiny river called the Chichindwi, adjoining the Turgwe. Thanks to the flood, this little river had flowed sufficiently for the adults to totally submerge and hide under overhanging bushes. Another six joined the 4 and these 10 lived happily in the new river for the following four days. The two youngest calves, Hope and Sabi, were amongst the 10.
I was very relieved to see both calves as neither has experienced a flooding river in their lifetimes. They were both born in early 2002 but the river did not flood to this extent last year and they were not aware of the dangers.
Both of their mothers, Cheeky and Surprise, are experienced mothers and obviously knew just what to do and how to keep their calves safe. Hope and Sabi, like all tiny calves, were at first a little nervous but soon settled into areas they could move to, which previously were totally dry.
The noise of a flooded river is quite incredible. This area contains a lot of rocks in the riverbed itself. When the river is in flood they are totally submerged and mini and large rapids form around and on these rocks. The roar of the waters is so loud that one has to shout to let the person next to you know what you are saying! For young hippos all this noise must be somewhat unsettling.
Approximately six kilometers upstream from the hippos' pool is another weir called the Majekwe weir. That weir had been broken in the 2000 cyclone. In early December, the owner of that land had just finished repairing the weir wall. With the river flooding, he once more had a pool upstream of the weir where Happy and his family of hippos had initially lived. The other missing hippos had moved back to that weir. Once the little rivers had stopped flowing and we could drive up there we found them all happily enjoying this new pool.
Bob the bull had initially been with the other 9 hippos close to our home but he left them to join the remaining members of his family at this new pool. For the next week he moved backwards and forwards between the two groups.
By the end of January, only Wish and Abe, another mature female, and their two calves Pavodok and Tacha remained at the Majekwe weir. Bob still moves between them and the others here by our home.
I am not sure if Wish and Abe will stay at that weir. There is going to be further work carried out on the wall. This entails a large workforce of people and noise and disturbance. Perhaps when that happens they will come back to the pool here, although that is one of their permanent areas before the cyclone destroyed the weir. Perhaps even Happy will come back and live with them. Only time will tell. Bob is a much larger bull than Happy, as well as older and more experienced. He obviously likes to keep all of the females together but this he cannot do. This is probably why he spends some time with the group here and then returns to Wish and Abe. He does not want Happy to reclaim any of his females!
The most wonderful thing about that fall of rain is that so much of the sand has actually been washed away. The pool that Jean-Roger has to work with the sand pump is at this moment nearly twice the length of when he worked it last year. The hippos can fully submerge and move approximately twice the distance in the river than before the floods, which is superb. If we do not have more rain the pool will probably only need working much later on in this year. We do not have any idea, though, of what to expect weather-wise as our weather patterns are totally different than usual. We just hope that the present pool remains as open and clean as it is at this
moment in time.Even Blackface, a mature female of advancing years, has been playing like a little calf in the last week or so. People say one should never assign emotions to an animal. I have watched these hippos now for over 12 years, hence I beg to disagree. All animals show emotions, it is just how you interpret their ways. I believe Blackface is happy as she plays and jumps around in the pool just like little Kuchek or one of the babies. Normally she can be very cantankerous and difficult. Of late she is definitely behaving very differently, though she still will charge if you get too close and in her "space".
So animal-wise all is relatively good at this moment. People-wise there is no change.
Poaching was quiet over Christmas as most of the people went back to their real homes in the neighboring Communal Lands. Many of these people who have taken over land near to us have two or three areas in there where they have land and houses; none of them are homeless or landless!
Poaching commenced on the 31st with us finding, much to our sorrow, a freshly killed female waterbuck. She had been snared in the Chichindwi River only one kilometer from our home. The poacher left her head and skin and her unborn calf by the snare, which he had not even removed. We found a further four snares nearby. It breaks my heart when they manage to kill an animal before we find their snares but she had been killed that morning so we were not too far behind the poacher.
That afternoon we went into another tiny river about half a kilometer from where we had found her. As always, whilst patrolling we were split apart. Jean-Roger was above the riverbank in the bushes and I was in the riverbed checking on all the tiny wild animal pathways that enter the dry river.
Suddenly I heard the sound of metal being banged and realized we had man around somewhere, as it was not a natural sound. I looked up for Jean but he had disappeared. He too had heard the sound and quickly moved off in the direction. I hesitated for a minute and then decided to move to the side into the thick bushes, as I was not in anyway armed, and didn't know how many poachers may be around. Within seconds, two men came tearing along and passed me without even seeing me. Jean was in hot pursuit of the one man.
This guy headed up the riverbank and Jean followed him. I called out that I was contacting the game scouts by the handheld radio we carry. We actually knew that there were no game scouts anywhere in the area: it was a bluff, just in case other poachers were around. Jean managed to jump the guy as he ran uphill but the guy attacked Jean. He tried to bite Jean and became extremely feral in his behavior. As we had neither handcuffs nor any weapon to restrain him he was attacking Jean in a most determined manner. Jean eventually sprayed him with the pepper spray he carries as a means of defense and got him in the one eye. This actually made the guy even more aggressive and more determined to bite Jean!
Jean eventually released him and the guy took off stealing Jean's wooden stick as he ran off. However, he did drop the sack he was carrying, which contained six wire snares and a container of water. We went back to the place where Jean had seen them and found one more snare, which had been set. The metal noise we had both heard was the sound of their pinches as they tightened the wire to a tree and banged it. For once we had actually caught the poachers in the act before they put their snares. Whether the other man had snares too, we will never know, as he had got away but he had also been carrying a sack so probably did.
The main thing was that it gave them quite a scare and we managed to get the neighbors' game scouts to patrol the area thoroughly for the next few days. Since that event, the area around there has been very quiet, but the poachers did retaliate.
On the 7th January they cut our phone line once more, removing approximately 200 meters of wire, about enough for 60 new snares. Whether it was a coincidence that the wire should be stolen so soon after meeting the two men is a possibility. Though I am sure it is no coincidence. Having no phone means no communication with e-mails but I can still type letters and post them. The phone company eventually fixed the line over two weeks later, but has warned us that they will not keep fixing it. Since it took us 6 years to get the phone in the first place it is frustrating to say the least. Anyway we will cross that bridge when we come to it. We do not intend to stop patrolling and stop removing these men's snares so if it means no phone but live animals then that will be the case.
Another incident that actually really surprised us happened back in October 2002. Many of these people that have moved around us are poaching meat or fish. Before all of these problems in Zimbabwe, the various owners of the lands in this conservancy have always allowed people to fish in specific areas be it dams or rivers, but not to fish in an unsustainable way. Hand lines were fine but not netting or trapping. Since these people moved here, they have made their fish traps and made nets and literally fished out the rivers and dams. Since the Turgwe has been so shallow, it has been easy for them to catch all the fish with their nets, even the tiny fries- the baby fish.
We cannot be responsible for patrolling the entire Turgwe River, but we have concentrated on keeping the hippo pool and the spillway pool from the weir safe for the animals, fish, birds etc. We used to fish ourselves for our pussycats to have food but when the people started to destroy all, we stopped. It would be hypocritical for us to fish in the pools and to not allow others. Often, we would hear the odd voice and find people hidden in reeds below our home trapping fish. When they saw us they always ran away as they knew they were not supposed to do this. These people are not fishing out of hunger or sport but because the fish are there they reckon they can take them. The fact that netting and trapping destroys all the fish does not matter to them. They believe that if they don't take the fish, some other group of these people will.
Many people within Zimbabwe are starving at this moment, due to not being able to get their staple diet of maize nor any of the normal foods that were available until recently. In this area, that is not the case. The people who have invaded the conservancy are all connected to the so-called war veterans who have access to maize. I know this because the man who works with us, Silos, is related to the chief war veteran in this area. Silos gets 50kg of maize from his uncle each month, and he is only one of over 100 men in the area who buy their maize from Robert- the so-called new chief of this area. He has no problem getting maize because of who he is and to whom he is connected. So the people here not only have access to food, but also poach and make a lot of money from the animals and fish, which they always sell.
On one particular day, we heard voices. Jean crept down the riverbank and literally surprised a family of people netting: mother, father, brothers, sister, uncle and a tiny baby. As Jean appeared out of the reeds the family dropped everything: their nets, their catch of tiny fish and, much to the horror and amazement of
Jean, their baby!They ran off, leaving a nearly eighteen-month-old child screaming its little head off and just deserted it. Never in our experience do mothers leave their children, be it human mothers or, for that matter, any animal species. So this turn of events really surprised us and made us think! Unbeknown to Jean-Roger, four game scouts were on the other riverbank and had also seen the people. As they ran, two of them literally ran straight into the arms of the game scouts. The men brought the one sister and mother back to Jean and the poor little baby was reclaimed by the mother, who in no way whatsoever showed any kind of remorse at deserting her child. There are many crocodiles that live in the Turgwe River and they often hide in the reeds when there is not sufficient water for them to live in. Crocodiles eat people, especially little ones.
The problems we face here are small in comparison to so many others in Zimbabwe. We are just trying to protect the hippos, the other animals and the environment but until some kind of sense returns to the country we will not be able to rest. This year, our plans are to stock-up with any feed that we can find which will help the hippos. We need to have game pellets in stock as they are in such short supply. They have an average shelf life of over six months so we intend to buy as many as we possibly can.
Thanks to Mark, a British guy, we managed to buy quite a lot of game pellets before the end of the year, but we need more. I have managed to find two farmers who are still allowed to farm in Zimbabwe and are growing soya beans, so I can have the hay once the beans are harvested. The cost of transporting this hay will be high so the Trust needs as much support as we can get to bring this hay down here to the Lowveld from the Highveld. I will probably need to send out an appeal later in the year for help with transport costs and other food costs. Again, it will depend on whether we get more rain.
We do not agree with feeding wild animals unless it is absolutely necessary, as in November when-thanks to these terrible people-the grass was all gone because they set fire to the bush, and the hippos were suffering because of humans. In our eyes, it is then okay to intervene. Again, if there is no more rain and the grass is limited, these people will probably burn it again. Then we will need to help the hippos. So any donation, however small, would be most helpful for this next project.
We intend to work the pool when it is necessary. Sadly, at this moment there is no fuel in the country. We have a tiny stockpile of diesel that will do the pool for two weeks of work but we need to get more. If fuel comes back into the garages we all believe the price is going to have gotten extremely high, so again we will need help.
The economy within Zimbabwe has collapsed; we have over 185% inflation. There is no flour, maize, cooking oil, sugar; bread is very, very short and so on. All goods are disappearing off the shelves. Finding food is becoming very difficult and the price is so high. The locally made items needed to help the hippos, like tires for the pump and Landrover, can no longer be found, and the imported cost of tires is far out of the Trust's budget and so it goes on. One American dollar or One British Pound or One Euro goes a long way in Zimbabwe, as that is the only money that is worth anything. Every single dollar we receive in donations for these
hippos helps them to get on with their lives.We thank all of our supporters for their help over the last difficult years: our foster parents, as well as the people who donate and those of you who have purchased our video "For the Love of Hippos".
We especially thank W.S.P.A. USA for their wonderful donation back in 2001, which allowed us to work the hippos' pool during 2002. Thanks to Mr. John Walsh for initiating this help and to Laura Salter for her personal kindness as well as her words of support. Thanks again from my heart to the American lady who prefers to remain anonymous, who has always been there for the hippos in times of need. Thank you to Mark of the UK, who wishes to remain anonymous, for his wonderful donation which helped us buy game pellets back in late 2002.
Our foster parents keep the Trust functioning daily, as without their continual support the hippos would have no regular help and we thank you all, especially our repeat parents, some who have fostered for five and six years. To all of you a big thank you!
To everybody who, over the years as well as now- in the present crazy situation that we live in- have lent their help to us, we thank you. A special thank you to Alice the webmaster of savethehippos.com and to Venise the webmaster of garethpatterson.com/turgwehippos; we couldn't have had most of the recent support without you. Thank you both so much. America should be proud of you.
Karen Paolillo, Hippo Haven, Save Valley Conservancy, Zimbabwe. 25th
January 2003.
The above four photos are of Bella, son of Eric the baboon.
Blackface, mature female hippo.
Abe sniffing one of the crocodiles,
while the others lie on the sandbank.
Bob is in the right corner.
Hope, Bob, Climber, Kubi, and Sabi.
Cheeky and Hope. Hope is just over six months old here.