EARTHQUAKES AND BEHAVIOURAL CHANGES
Many things have happened here in the southeast Lowveld of Zimbabwe since I last wrote about the Turgwe Hippos. Climatically we have had a few very strange occurrences, and the hippos’ behaviour has changed quite considerably for the first time in many years.
We had good rains, beginning in early December and within a few weeks the hippos could once more graze throughout the area, leaving their pools that they utilize during the dry season. Once the Turgwe starts flowing a lot, there are many areas they can live in. Like any wild animal they make the most of the opportunity to go and find new grazing lands and change habitat during the rains.
Normally in January and February the Turgwe comes down in flood and the hippos leave it altogether, moving to quieter affluents of the Turgwe. These tiny rivers normally only hold water when the Turgwe is in flood. By 22nd February the Turgwe had only flooded a couple of times and not too badly, so the hippos had been able to remain in the pool nearly opposite our home, Hippo Haven. Then on the night of 22nd February we had an earthquake.
I was awoken well after midnight by a feeling I hope I will not encounter again. The entire room felt like it was shaking. In fact books came off the shelves and our staircase, which is made of mopane wood, was actually vibrating. The entire house appeared to move and our pussycats were terrified. I woke up Jean who knew immediately what we were experiencing and told me to get outside quickly. We rushed to the door and the four cats shot out into the garden ahead of us, obviously terrified. The ground seemed as if it was moving but it was more the vibrations that made it appear so, and the kind of deep rumbling sound that came with the grounds movement.
The wild animals behaved differently. The hippos were calling loudly from the river, as the quake must have affected the water. Yet the baboons who roost in the large riverine trees next to our home were deathly silent. They only became vocal, and very vocal at that, once the shaking and tremors stopped. The quake shook for about ten minutes solid non-stop, and then after that it carried on and off for about another forty minutes. My domestic goats seemed totally unperturbed but the cats certainly were really upset, and took a lot of calming down once it was all over. Our speki tortoise carried on sleeping!
We heard the next day that the quake’s epicenter was only about one hundred and fifty miles away from us, over in Mozambique. This explained why we felt such strong tremors.I must admit it was a very unsettling experience and I cannot imagine how the wild animals must have felt, especially animals like elephants and rhinos. Just having the ground appear to move under your feet is really very frightening. The noise, a kind of rumbling with our thatch roof and walls all vibrating, was really quite awful. I think it is the feeling of not having any kind of control whatsoever over such an event that really makes it scary.
The next morning I went straight across to the hippos’ pool to see how they were, but they were all back to their normal selves. We had small tremors for the next week but nothing like that first one, and hopefully we will not now become an area susceptible to such events. I would prefer meeting an angry elephant than a quake any day.
On the 28th February it started to rain, and we were lucky to bump into four lions in the south of the Conservancy on our way home from a shopping trip in Chiredzi. We were in our vehicle but the lions were quite content to watch us without fear of our presence. They were young and full of mischief and the one young male strode onto the dirt track road and literally pranced, with his body carriage showing off his malehood, strong in his knowledge that he was surely the king of beasts. For me it was simply fantastic, as in all our years here we have heard lion, found their tracks, but we have never seen them. The Conservancy is over a million acres in area and there are probably not more than thirty lion living here, so it was superb to see four of them.
Although I have heard that five lions have been found snared and dead since these people came into the area.On March 4th a huge flood came down the Turgwe and all hippos left the main channel. Some of them moved into the Chichindwi River, a tiny river that joins the Turgwe about one mile upstream from our home. Since that date the most hippos I have seen at one time has only been 9 of the 20 hippos that are normally in the area.
Climber, a juvenile female, had left the area back at the beginning of the year. I have been trying to locate the others but not being able to cross the Turgwe on foot, and only now being able to cross one area with the LandRover, has made it very difficult to find the missing hippos. Fortunately I located 15 of them on April 22nd but have still not been able to see Tembia, the younger bull. He is normally on the opposite bank of the Turgwe in a channel. Tacha, Pavodok and young Bobin have also not reappeared, although I saw Bobin only a couple of weeks ago with his grandmother Abe.
Odile has only recently weaned him and he was left with Abe so that Odile did not have to attack him, and be as aggressive towards him as most mothers are when weaning calves. I have not seen him for a while now but just hope he is with Tacha. She is also a relative, being Abe’s older daughter. None of Abe’s calves have ever left this area since my study began sixteen years ago, so I am sure that Tacha is close by, I just have not been able to locate her.
What has worried me a bit is the behaviour of the Blackface family. She and her calf Five, as well as her older daughter Cheeky, and all of Cheeky’s offsprings, Storm, Hope, Relief, and also separately Odile and Sabi, have moved back to the area that these people invaded in 2001.
All of those people have been arrested more than once for poaching the wild animals. The leader, Robert Mamungaere, their so-called chief, has various people working for him purely on a poaching basis. His own nephew has been caught four times, and his cousin twice. Often when arrested, they give a false name to the police and then get an even lighter sentence. The fines for poaching and the sentences are so minimal that they have absolutely no effect upon slowing the poaching down. The money these people can make from just one dead kudu antelope is far higher than any fine that they may receive. They hardly ever get jailed.
The pool that the hippos are living in is actually in the river at present. It is also an area they used all the time before this area was invaded.
For over five years the hippos have not returned to that Chabata area. The people harass them and the hippos do not enjoy having stones thrown at them and being abused. Now that the river is so full, the hippos can live there, and the people cannot get close enough to hurt them.The problem is that I cannot go and daily check on the hippos’ welfare, as the people are totally aggressive towards us.
As we constantly remove the snares they use to kill the animals, and as we now have two armed game scouts who daily patrol the areas these people have taken over, they are not happy to have us anywhere near where they are living.When Blackface’s family first went back there, I thought I would just quietly go to the rocks right near the river and watch them, without advertising my presence. I did not tell Jean-Roger where I had gone, which was rather stupid but I did not expect such aggression from the people.
I was sitting watching the hippos using my binoculars, when I noticed Cheeky suddenly become more alert than normal. She stared towards some reeds, downstream from where I sat. I then saw a man approaching the bank and recognized him as one of the poachers we have seen trying to kill warthogs in our area. I thought the best thing I should do would be to move away before he noticed me.
A woman alone a mile or so from anyone, was just too easy a target. As I began walking back along the sandy beach I heard him shout at me. His language was most unpleasant and he went into a very loud and aggressive verbal assault. I just kept walking at the same speed, not showing any fear, like one does with any predator: you move away and try to keep out of their space.
He continued following me, as his voice was getting louder. I just kept walking and finally reached the part of the riverbank where the hippos have made a nice trail leading up to our one hippo pan, and then to our home. On approaching the trail he shouted a final scream of abuse and I kept going until reaching home.
I must admit my legs were shaking and I was pretty shook up myself. What with earthquakes and then very abusive men, my adrenalin of late had certainly been working at peak performance! It is pointless reporting this incident to the police, as these people obviously despise us, as we affect their poaching activities. We are still told that the government does not want them to remain in this wildlife area but so far they are still here, and show no signs of being removed.
In fact, as always they are continuing to clear more of the natural bushveld land, the mopane trees. They open up huge expanses of land and then plant a tiny smattering of crops. They just destroy but do nothing positive for the environment at all.In early March the Conservancy have located two dead, poached black rhino with their horns removed. They have been found on one of the properties, Levanga, taken over by these people. A man working for WWF was flying low over the one invaded area and saw a carcass. The Conservancy then took a lot of scouts and did a sweep of that area and found another poached rhino. I am sure there are more dead rhinos, which have not been discovered yet.
We know that Mamungaere told our employee that he could buy a bus with the proceeds from rhino horn. It was also his own relative that has been implicated in poaching a rhino over one year ago, and yet that man and his relative are still walking around and are not in jail! This speaks volumes!
So, to have now some of the hippos in those areas worries me. Jean-Roger is convinced that once the river drops they will return home as the people are bound to harass them once more. I have to hope he is right. At the moment I have to sneak along the riverbank to daily check on them. It is ridiculous to have to hide to watch the hippos, but it is sadly all part and parcel of this new life we lead here at this moment in time.
The bull Robin and five other hippos, including Mystery and her two young sons, Kuchek and Zen, along with Surprise and her youngest male calf Chubby are all even further away at this moment in time.
By road, for us to reach them in the LandRover after crossing the Turgwe, it is over 15 miles. The hippos obviously followed the Turgwe until they reached another smaller river called the Mokore. By river it is only about four miles from our home. They have found a spot by a small bridge built by the safari operator in that area. He recently increased the size height of the causeway and there is a much deeper pool now upstream, which will possibly remain deep enough for the hippos for a couple of months.I believe that Robin followed Mystery, who is one of the females he prefers. She had been harassed earlier in the year by, I think, Abe a mature female, so she had moved away. She has two sons, Kuchek a juvenile of five years, and her calf Zen, who will be two years old in May. Surprise’s son is also male and of the same age as Zen.
There is also a new female hippo with the group who Robin was staying very close to. I do not know her, and she is not one of the females that have left this area over the last so many years. She looks to be about a seven to eight year old and has obviously, like some of the Turgwe Hippos, moved into this area in search of a new mate, and has found Robin.
She was obviously quite nervous of me, not knowing me as the others do, and she looks like a Sabi Hippo. The hippos in the Sabi River have a different appearance to the Turgwe Hippos. They have heads with kind of roman noses compared to the prettier head of a Turgwe Hippo, plus they are normally a lot smaller.
So in my immediate area the only two hippos I can see daily without being harassed by the invaders are Abe and Tsakus. They have remained, using either Owl Tree pool or a tiny pool literally just below our house. Abe seems quite content to be alone and perhaps is pregnant again but she has not chased her daughter Tsakus away, so may only give birth later in the year. It could be why she was aggressive to Mystery. Her daughter is the calf of Tembia, the younger bull.
The area that Robin and the others have moved to is a hunting area so I think that once the hunters start shooting, the hippos will hopefully return to us, where shots are not a regular occurrence. A lot will depend on Robin. He is the largest bull and the oldest, and hence the dominant one. Tembia only became a father in 2004. He is still growing and not yet strong enough to become a territorial bull. Storm is even younger, so I do not believe he would take over in our area. If Robin returns, then the others should follow him. The big question mark is Mystery and her two sons.
For me it is very frustrating after all these years to not be able to daily watch the entire Turgwe Hippo family, but again they are behaving as any wild animal should behave. Many foster parents think that we have these hippos in some kind of enclosed area. This is not true at all. The hippos have total freedom to come and go as they please, it just so happens that in all these years our part of the Turgwe River has had the largest dry season pools, and we have managed to open up smaller pools using the Trust’s sand pump. Hence the habitat in our area is far more suitable to the hippos once the rains are over.
Snaring has increased of late, with the scouts finding on average approximately 100 snares a month. Considering they found just over 400 for the whole of 2005 it has definitely picked up. The rising cost of goods within Zimbabwe makes meat even more popular if sold cheaply, and I am sure that is why the poachers are increasing the snaring and poaching. We are also finding a mixture of wires used for snaring.
Some are old mining cable, some from the government-owned Zesa electricity power lines, and then the usual Conservancy boundary fence wire.
When they first invaded they cut many kilometers of this fencing wire and then used it to kill the animals. I think that in our area they have not got as much wire as they used to have. We destroy every single snare that is brought to Hippo Haven, so that it can never be used again to kill an animal.In the meantime it appears that I may be going back to England in June/July to once more talk about the Turgwe Hippos. A very talented and amazingly gifted Zimbabwean artist, Patrick Mavros, has offered to support the Turgwe Hippo Trust. He has a studio in London where some of his amazing silver sculptures can be purchased. The bulk of his work is here, as Patrick is a fourth generation Zimbabwean.
He is going to organize an event to help the Hippos, and I am extremely honoured that he wants me to participate. I have never seen hippos designed to such perfection in his chosen medium of silver. I wear one of Patrick’s hippo creations around my neck. This gold hippo is superbly crafted and was designed by Patrick as a gift to me from Jean-Roger.
I do not know for how long I will be in England, but I hope to be able to meet a few more of the Turgwe Hippo Foster parents. It is so wonderful to put a face to a person who in some cases has supported these Turgwe Hippos for up to eight years. I write to many of you personally, but only in November of last year was I fortunate to actually meet nearly 50 of the Hippos parents. It is the foster project that is now the main income for the Turgwe Hippo Trust. Since the problems of the past few years, hardly any tourists visit these hippos, and so we are entirely dependant on the hippo foster parents to carry out important projects, in order to safeguard the future of the Turgwe Hippos.
I would dearly love to go to America during the same period to give a couple of talks there, and meet some of the American Hippo supporters but I do not think that it will be possible. We are not in a position to arrange air tickets and travel costs for such an event. I am grateful though, to be offered this trip once more to the Country of my birth.
In the meantime on the personal front, Jean-Roger can no longer afford to stay at home to protect me from the problems these people have brought with them. He will have to go back to his own career as a geologist, in order for us to have a stable financial life. In the old days Jean-Roger worked away from home for about three weeks, and then came home for one week. During that entire period I lived here alone, apart from being helped by Silas, the African we employ. I slept outside in our thatched gazebo and the only times I met poachers was once in a blue moon. They always ran away when I came across them. Things are no longer the same in Zimbabwe.
So, for an added security benefit, we have advertised for somebody to come here while Jean-Roger is away, to act as a male presence. Unfortunately being a woman alone in such an unfriendly environment is not advisable. I am terribly independent and prefer my own company and yet now need to have a male person stay with me when Jean returns to work. Just recently we met a couple of applicants for the position, and I am sure I have found the person who is ideal and hopefully he will be able to come along when the situation occurs.
I love to be alone and so it has been a harsh decision to make, but after the recent event at the Chabata section of the river I know it is the only way to go at the moment. Nonetheless, we continue hoping that sooner rather than later, these people will really be removed and that the animals will be allowed to get on with their natural lives and live without fear.
In the meantime I will be constantly moving around the river keeping a check on them all, and I thank everybody for their support of these Turgwe Hippos. Without you they would not have the life they have.
A very big thank you to DHL Harare and Swift Transport Harare for their continued support of the Trust with the Hippos foster parcels.
Karen Paolillo, Hippo Haven, Save Valley Conservancy, April 27th 2006.
