Latest Turgwe Hippo News
The behavior of the Turgwe Hippos is still erratic, with females moving up and downstream in the river between the two new bulls Robin and Tembia. Or, like in the case of Wish, an older female, preferring to live alone with just her son Pavodok.The Story Photos At this moment, the hippos have split into two groups. Seven hippos live with Tembia and seven are with Robin. The hippos with Tembia are the original ones that lived in that particular area with Happy, the other mature bull. Bob chased Happy away from this area back in 2001, with Tembia taking over the Majekwe weir earlier this year. The entire Abe family-herself and her three daughters Surprise, Odile and Tacha- are all with Tembia as well as Surprise’s two calves, Climber and Sabi. The only non-member of the family is Blackface, the older female, who has left her family Cheeky, Brucie, and Inonde with Robin, who I think is Blackface’s son. Robin also has Mystery and her son Kuchek, as well as Storm and Hope, Cheeky’s son and daughter.
Although Tembia is smaller than Robin and at least ten years younger, he will, I believe, grow into a huge bull like his father Bob. Already Tembia is taking on many of Bob’s characteristics. He now gapes with a huge open-mouthed performance just like Bob used to do. The amazing thing is that Tembia has an identical mark on the inside of his lower jaw, visible when his mouth is open. It is a dark pigmentation in the mouth on the right hand side, in exactly the same position as Bob used to have. Tembia has put on quite a bit of weight since he has established himself at the Majekwe weir part of the river. I believe he may end up the more dominant of the two bulls, but at this stage he appears satisfied with staying in the area he has found. Robin has a slightly crooked front leg. This could have happened in a fight with another hippo or perhaps by putting his foot down a pothole and twisting his leg. He does not seem to be in any discomfort, but it may affect him if he is faced with defending his territory against an equally matched bull in weight and size.
The pool he has chosen to live in is pretty small in area, only about thirty feet in width and around one hundred feet in length, but with a nice overhanging bushed area. There, the younger calves Kuchek, Hope, and Inonde can hide underneath. It is in a nice quiet spot, which we call the Owl Tree. Years before, a pair of Pels Fishing Owls used to live there, in one of the large false ebony trees growing by the river. There is a large area of sand next to the pool that the hippos can lie upon in the winter months, during the daylight hours.
The weir pool that Bob used for over three years is now empty of hippos. It does not need any work this year with the sand pump. A lot of the accumulated sand was washed away when we had decent rains. Yet for some reason the hippos avoid the pool. Four crocodiles live there but the hippos have only utilized the pool twice since Bob died and it is as if they wish to start a new life in a completely new pool, away from the memories of Bob. The new area is only about 500 meters upstream from the weir pool so I can still be with the hippos within five minutes of leaving my home.
Tembia and the others are approximately 5kms upstream so I do not see them as often as Robin’s group. The game scouts working for the owner of that area actually live just half a kilometer away from them, so they patrol that area daily and the poachers tend to avoid it. This puts my mind at rest, as it would be difficult for Jean-Roger and I to patrol that area as well as the land around Robin’s group and to cover both areas adequately. For the last three months, the poaching in our immediate area has not been as bad as in previous months. We have still found just over one-hundred and thirty wire snares and five dead animals still in the snares but we believe that a combination of the weather and our constant patrolling has forced the poachers to change their pattern.
Often we'd find a snare line the day after the poachers had put the snares. As we were in no position to set up an ambush and capture the poachers, we just removed their wires and then cut them into tiny little pieces so that the snare could never be utilized again. We had a bit of luck in finding a stash of 27 snares hidden in a rock crevice on a tiny rocky hill. Those snares had been put there to use, perhaps, on a full moon or even at dusk. It appears that the poachers are aware of our daily patrols and have taken to putting their snares at dusk and removing them before dawn to avoid us taking the snares away. With the stash being found they must have been a bit put off as it takes them time to make each snare. Also, they have stolen most of the wire that surrounded the conservancy in our area, so to steal more they have many kilometers to walk to find fencing.
Then we had a very strange weather pattern with nearly two and a half inches of rain falling at the end of June. That is something that has not happened in this area in the last fifty odd years. Our winter months from May through to November are normally without any substantial rains; perhaps just a couple of drops of what is called guti in these parts- which is a basically a drizzle, but never full blown rain.
This unexpected turn of events was a godsend for the animals. The dry grass sprouted green again, the areas that the animals and the hippos use for grazing increased. The new greenery allowed the animals to move around and they were no longer restricted to set paths and patterns due to lack of food. This all makes poaching a lot harder for the people who set snares. They could still hunt with their bows and arrows and their skinny hunting dogs. Then we would hear them if they had come into our close vicinity and they did not. Only the odd poacher set snares around us, and most snares we found before they killed an animal. Then the land began to dry up again and by August the veld once more was taking on the winter hues so well portrayed in television documentaries overseas- the colors that most foreigners associate with Africa, the rich golds and yellows, the dry sandy soil. Then again we were blessed with the most peculiar weather and more rain fell in early and mid-September, a total of two inches, which is, again, totally unheard of for this time of the year.
Now as I look out at the bush, the land is once more a colorful bright green. A lot of trees are in bloom, new buds on many, and there are the most delightful scents when one walks in the bush. Some of the flowering trees are so pungent that it is impossible to stand for too long near one of these gloriously colorful scenes. Purples and pinks, whites and reds, even the animals take on the flowers' hues. Our families of vervet monkeys who visit us nearly every day of the year now have red little faces. They push their faces into the Flame Combretum flowers and the pollen comes off on their black faces, creating an amusing clown-like appearance. To see a one-year-old baby vervet monkey with his face all red brings a smile to ones lips. In today’s troubled Zimbabwe, any deviation from the daily problems is just great. The animals have always managed to help me relax, just by watching them in their natural ways. So when things become a bit too blue I try to focus on nature and the animals.
Another piece of good news was that I wrote an article for a UK daily newspaper called the Daily Mail. The article was written thanks to one of their journalists, a lady by the name of Sue Reid. She has been to South Africa and, although British, she found Africa’s people, both black and white, as well as the beauty of the countryside and the animals, affecting her and influencing her in many ways. She is all too aware of the problems that are happening in Zimbabwe and was keen to try to portray to the British public some of the problems that we face here. Through Sue my article was published.
The article is on this website but may prove a little bit upsetting for younger readers. But, sadly, what I write about on the poaching side is true. The good thing about this article is that over 118 readers of the paper wrote to me after reading it. They sent words of encouragement and/or donations to the hippos. Those letters and cards really help Jean-Roger and I.
When your life centers around stressful events, often your health and your spirit suffer. We manage most of the time to remain optimistic but there are days when one just cannot feel good. When the problems around become just a little bit too much and you wonder if there will be an end to it allm if Zimbabwe will ever recover from this present state of lawlessness and disregard for the environment.The saddest thing is that people in the rest of the world are often tired of hearing about another African country, which is collapsing in all ways. People have heard it time and time again. Yet Zimbabwe has had its independence for over 23 years and only now are we really sinking and following other African countries by killing off the wildlife-totally destroying the tourist potential. This should not be happening.
Those letters from people reading my article, people who are total strangers, really give one a tremendous morale boost. To know that people out there really care, that they are prepared to take the time to either write, or even send some money for these wonderful animals, really does help us. Since I formed this Trust back in 1994, it has always been those faceless strangers who have allowed me to help these hippos, be it with food, or water, or building, or removing sand from their river, or any work that I or Jean-Roger have carried out here on behalf of the hippos. All of it has been possible thanks mainly to people I have never ever met. Some of these people, over the years, have become friends on paper. I write personally to a few and hope that one day they will be able to come to a peaceful Zimbabwe and meet the hippos and us.
Many of the people who have supported these animals are foster parents of the hippos, some of them having been foster parents for six to seven years. Without these people, be they fosterers or people who donate, we could never have achieved what we have to date. The Daily Mail article was another way that people have entered the hippos' lives, and if any reader of the Mail is reading this, I thank you. I answered those letters that included an address but many people do not wish to receive acknowledgment. I would just like you all to know that the hippos and us greatly appreciate your anonymous help.
With this unexpected green flush of grass this year, we hopefully will not need to supplement the hippos’ diet, as the poachers and the “invaders” cannot set fire to the bush, like they have done for the previous two years. If our normal rains come in November it should remain too green until then, so they cannot cause huge bush fires. This is a tremendous benefit to the animals. It does not look like the government is in any way interested in moving these people out of here. Even the people know that their crops will never grow here but while they can still poach and kill anything that moves they will be happy to remain in this wildlife land.
The ludicrous thing is that most of these people are actually wealthy Africans. They have cattle and land in other areas, and in some cases own up to fifty head of cattle. They have their wives in their original lands working, and then move another wife here to take care of the land they are clearing. Some of them have up to three or four wives. So while one wife works the one land, the man is out poaching on a daily basis. With the money from the meat, he buys more cattle and brings them into this wildlife area. The cattle mix with the wild animals and then carry the foot and mouth disease out of the conservancy. We see the tracks of their cattle on a daily basis moving in and out of the conservancy. Some of the cattle are used as oxen to pull carts filled with poached meat, so the foot and mouth disease spreads.
In the past, the owners of these ranches within the conservancy paid millions of dollars to erect fences to surround the million-acre area. The poachers using the wire for snaring have stolen these same fences in the southern part of the conservancy. So now foot and mouth has broken out all around the area, outside of the conservancy. The government, of late, has said they will come into these wildlife areas and cull all the buffalo to stop the spread of the disease, but that is beyond any sensibility. You would have to kill all cloven-hoofed animals to stop the outbreaks, but even that would not stop it while cattle are living in this area and are allowed to move in and out.The only way to stop the outbreaks would be to put the fences back up and remove the cattle, goats, and sheep that the people have brought into this area, and stop all movement in and out of this conservancy. In other words, return it to the land use it was only three years ago. We do not know if the government will carry out this threat. If they do, it is obviously not a solution and will just be a temporary way to obtain meat, and kill hundreds of wild animals, with absolutely no benefit at all to Zimbabwe. We have to hope that there are still people with some kind of sense left to stop such a stupid and murderous event.
One unfortunate and upsetting event that occurred here in August was the death of another hippo. The game scouts found the hippo dead at the measuring weir (a part of the river in the area occupied by these people). We went there immediately and managed to examine the hippo in a relatively shallow part of the river. Sadly, it was a female hippo, of between 27 to 33 years of age. I could quite clearly see most of her body as she was lying on one side in the water. She had no markings on her body that were recognizable as any of the Turgwe Hippos. Out of the hippos that are missing from this area, she does not seem to be one of them. She appeared to have been killed by another hippo. She had a large gash in the side of her jaw and another hole on her belly area. She had a lot of scratches on her back and over her hindquarters. These kinds of markings have been seen in the past on hippos fighting each other. Years ago, Bob attacked Lace, the mother of Tembia, as he was trying to chase Tembia out of the pool. Lace continued to defend Tembia, taking the brunt of Bob’s attacks. One of the consequences of this was deep scratches on her hips and hindquarters just like the hippo that was killed.
Since that hippo’s death, the game scouts have twice seen a small hippo in the vicinity. I have only seen its tracks. It is not a tiny calf, more like a three to four year old. I think that this female possibly had a son and came into the Turgwe from another river system, perhaps the Sabi River. Sadly, perhaps a bull, or even another female, killed her, although that is unusual. She may have been trying to defend her son and an unlucky lunge of a lower canine tooth cut her badly so that she bled to death. I cannot be sure of what exactly occurred, but I am more or less positive that she is not one of my missing hippos. Until I can identify the calf, I cannot be one hundred percent sure. The calf is grazing and old enough to look after itself so it just means being lucky enough to see it at some stage for identification purposes.
The peculiar thing is that, in the last decade of studying these hippos, I have had no deaths. Now, in the last three years since this area was invaded by these so-called “war veterans” and their minions, I have had three hippos die. A bull in 2001, Bob in early 2003, and now this female. All lost to natural deaths from conflicts with other hippos, but, even so, one wonders. We know that we are under tremendous daily stress, so what is there to say that the animals do not suffer the same way? Many of their normal habitats have been taken over by these people. If they go there they are harassed. I probably do not know half of what these people do to the hippos when I cannot see them. The animals are definitely more nervous than they have ever been in the last 13 years, so even though these three hippos died naturally, perhaps just the presence of these people has in some way brought it about. It is a worrying thought, as we can keep patrolling and removing snares, but we cannot stop the stress factor brought about by those people living in a wildlife area. We just have to hope that somehow these people will be removed and that the area can return to being a land for wild animals only.
We now have our own hippo calendar for 2004. It has my slides of 11 of the Turgwe Hippos, and is the first calendar on hippos that we have produced. If it proves successful we will try to have one published every year. It measures 444 x 280 mm in size and is dedicated to the memory of Bob. I send it courier post, so we need a phone number or email address for that purpose. It costs US$30, or GBP20 or Euro 30, with cheques made payable to the Turgwe Hippo Trust. This is the latest project we have, which helps us raise funds for the Turgwe Hippos and the other animals. We still have a few copies of our video “For the Love of Hippos” on the American and European television system. That lasts for just under fifty minutes and shows most of the foster hippos and some of the other animals around our home. Also, I have filmed a little bit of the work we have done to date and a small part on the problems we now face here. It costs US$30 or GBP25 or Euro 30. Unfortunately, no new hippo calves have been born this year. I still hope that a new calf will come along before the end of October. This would mean that Bob probably would have mated the mother.
Hope and Sabi, the two calves born in 2002, are our youngest members of the hippo family. They are quite different from each other in character. Hope is a little bit more timid than Sabi. She is darker in color, looking more like her one brother Storm than her mother Cheeky. Sabi is the spitting image of her mother Surprise and her two sisters, Kubi and Climber. I believe that Bob fathered both these little calves, so his genes live on.
We at the Turgwe Hippo Trust thank all of you for caring about these wonderful animals' lives.
Karen Paolillo, Hippo Haven, Save Valley Conservancy, Zimbabwe. 25th September 2003.
