ZEN
It has been over four months since my last update, and I am sure that most of you are aware that Zimbabwe is having more than its fair share of major problems.
Although we live in the bush, things here have not been calm, so I believe I should relate some of the incidents that we have had. Therefore this update will not be the usual one about hippos and the Trust.
It started back in April when we had to go for one night to South Africa in order to buy food for ourselves, the animals, and also fuel and Trust goods. On our return we met up with our only neighbours leaving the Conservancy. Jane had my one cat with her and she flagged us down. I had left Socks with her as my Mother’s cats had been bullying him.
She tells us that trouble is expected on April 18th and 19th and that all people that can, are leaving for that period. Well we checked with two other landowners who had heard nothing about this trouble, so decided we would sit it out at home. Yet on arrival we realized that a celebration was happening at the house just one kilometer from us. This house was stolen from our neighbours back in the initial land invasions of 2000. There a “war veteran”, Mamungaere, resides and it sounded like a lot of people had gone there.
As a precaution we packed some suitcases with our most precious valuables, wedding photos and items of personal value, and at first thought we would stay at home. The songs were initially mainly church songs. Then we realized that there must be at least 100 people there. The noise level rose and the songs then changed to Chimurenga songs, the songs from the liberation war, which are aggressive and loud.
By two in the morning we realized that most of the people were drunk and as we believed there was no backup within the Conservancy close to us if we needed help, we decided to pack the animals up and leave for two days. We put our four goats into one pickup truck, and the then seven cats and a tortoise into their traveling boxes in the other truck.
There is only one dirt track road out of our home and it goes past all the huts of the people that invaded this area. Often they put temporary road blocks of rocks or tree branches across this road. Fortunately there was nothing but the dryness of my own mouth and the racing heart beat, which was all part of the stress as we drove away from our home. Silas, our one employee, and the two game scouts had been told what we were doing and that if any trouble came they must try their best to keep our home and possessions in one piece, but not at the cost of danger to themselves.
We finally pulled over on the side of the road within the Conservancy, about thirty kilometers away and slept there until dawn. We arrived at the one ranch in the very southern end of the Conservancy at 7a.m, for they had kindly allowed us to come to stay. The couple, George and Madelon, who manage that property also have cats, dogs and an old goat; they both love their animals, so accepted my need to evacuate with all of my own.
The owner of the property, an American, kindly allowed Jean-Roger and I to stay in one of his safari chalets and the plan had been two nights and then home. I then went down with malaria so we actually had to stay four nights. In the meantime Jean drove back to check on everything two days later, and nothing at all had occurred. All was quiet without any problems! So we had moved out for nothing! Jean had managed to lose his only pair of reading glasses and the animals had been quite stressed. Sadly, rumours in Zimbabwe can make a person very jittery, and sometimes you need to react to them. In some cases a rumour has actually saved a person’s life, so one has to listen to everything.
Then in May our neighbours actually had a huge mob of people come to their home. The mob of over 250 men, many of them from the lands invaded within this Conservancy, held hostage three of the owners: Arthur (Jane’s husband), his brother-in-law Richard, and Anne (the wife of Roger, the other brother). They were kept outside in their garden, while the mob danced around them holding sticks and stopping just a few inches from their stomachs.
None of them were actually hurt, but the amount of people and their demands and attitude were very worrisome. At one stage they demanded meat, making their cooking fires in the garden. Later it was found out that they had injured one of the domestic pigs so badly that it had to be destroyed the following day. Eventually after many hours of “history lessons”, one manager from the north of the Conservancy arrived with a group of police support unit, which he had picked up from Birchenough Bridge, about a two hour drive away.
The situation was finally defused and the police asked for the people to be sent back to their lands by our neighbours’ own transport, using their tractors, their own fuel, etc. Finally, at well past 2 in the morning, their ordeal was over. We were listening to all the communications over the Conservancy radio and obviously were extremely worried for their safety, but had been told to keep away.
Then our one employee Silas went home for his week off and on riding his bicycle back to us was stopped at a “youth brigade” roadblock within this Conservancy. All the routes out of the Conservancy have had “youth” occupying them for the last few weeks, and they have been checking on the workers going back to their homes.
Silas was made to show his ID card and then the two who had stopped him made him lie on the ground and they hit him around his head and on his back and bottom, telling him he should not work for a white couple. Instead he should work for them. He explained that he needs a regular income to support his wife and two little sons and that his employer helps him with schooling, etc, but that just made them angrier. What probably saved him from a more severe beating was the fact that he is the nephew of the war vet next to our home, Mamungaere, although Silas started working for us many years ago, long before the present problems within the country.
They did not mark his body, and although it obviously was a terrible experience for him, he loyally continued to us and is still working here. He had a problem during his next trip home as well. He had been beaten on a bush road that he has used of late to go to, and come back from his home in the communal land, due to the elephants.The bush track he normally takes has been fully taken over by a large herd of elephants and on the one trip home he was extremely lucky, for he literally bumped into the herd and one elephant charged. He managed to get up a rocky hill and had to dump his bicycle (his treasured possession) on the road. Fortunately the elephant did not trample it. In the past this has happened to other people’s vehicles, bicycles or motor bikes. We cannot give him a lift home, as the Trust’s only four by four has a major problem and cannot be driven.
So when Silas had to recently go to vote again, he decided to take another route home to avoid elephants and “youth”. This entailed crossing the Turgwe River carrying his bicycle. As the river in most places is now only ankle to knee deep, that was fine. Only an hour away upstream, he sees three men crouched in the grass and as he stops they beckon to him.
They demand to know where he is going and tell him they are also “youth”! Yet they are obviously poaching for one has a bow and arrows and the other two are carrying snares. They hit him as well around the head a couple of times, and demand he empties his pockets. He is carrying many billions of Zim dollars as he has just been paid, but as we have hyper inflation the money is more or less worthless within a couple of days. He nonetheless hopes to find some maize meal to buy for his family later that day.
One poacher demands five hundred million dollars to buy beer, but Silos says bravely that it is his money and he needs it for his wife and children. Fortunately he is carrying his Zanu PF card, without which they could have been even nastier, and they finally let him go.
Silas is now back with us again, but like ourselves he does not know from one day to the next what he can expect to happen in Zimbabwe.On the hippo front I then had one of the most upsetting things that has ever occurred here since I arrived in 1990. Although the hippos are alive today thanks to me feeding them back in 1991/92, according to Zim law they belong to whichever land owner’s property they are upon. At the moment the majority of them are on our tiny piece of land, in the pool at Hippo Haven.
On either side of the Turgwe there are safari setups: both now only deal with hunting. In the past this Conservancy had 23 land owners with quite a number of them using photographic and eco safaris as their businesses. When Zimbabwe had its first major problems back in 2000, most of the photographic tourists stopped coming to the Country, but the hunters did not. So now all of the people here, apart from obviously Jean-Roger and I, all have hunting safaris as their business in order to run their properties, pay their staff, etc.
The two hunting setups on each side of the Turgwe have never shot a hippo since I started working with the hippos, and they tell me this is out of respect for what I do. They used to shoot them before I moved into this area and then I saved the last hippos lives back in the 91 drought.
At the property on the northern side of this Conservancy one of the hunters there totally despises me. Over the years we have had many problems. Just recently I actually mentioned to his brother that this man and I should take off the boxing gloves and get along better, as in today’s Zimbabwe what is the point of an ongoing feud? Why don’t we just respect each other’s different points of view and beg to differ? But one week later this guy Pete has, with his American client, shot one of the Turgwe Hippos!
Zen born in May 2004, hence a baby of four years and one month (the hippo sitting on a crocodile, on last year’s web Christmas card), was shot and killed at dusk on June 26th , 2008.
He had been wounded previously by another hippo and I had seen him on June 14th with large wounds on each side of his body. Yet Zen, back in 2006, had been very badly wounded in his stomach area by a hippo. This had resulted in his mother, Mystery, and her older son Kuchek leaving Hippo Haven.
They moved into the Mokore River pool, and this had made the bull Robin and most of the Turgwe Hippos move over to that pool too for the next year or so. All because Zen had been hurt so his mother took him away. That wound, which was huge, eventually healed, and he went on to be a normal hippo, playing with his best friend Bobin. Eventually, after being weaned late, he then left his mother and moved back to Hippo Haven. He was then looked after by another older female called Abe, who is the grandmother of Bobin; the two juvenile male hippos stayed with Abe for the next year.
Zen’s family and all the other Mokore hippos returned to Hippo Haven earlier this year, after the Mokore pool silted up and was far too shallow for them to remain in. Zen did not have a problem with the bull Robin, or his brother Kuchek, and continued to live with the group.
Then one day he was wounded in a fight with another hippo. I am not sure who attacked him, but the wounds looked bad. But because I have seen so many serious wounds on elephant, hippo, monkeys and baboons that heal up, allowing the wild animal to continue having a normal life, I was not overly worried.
On the 15th June he moved off from our area, going downstream to the Measuring weir. Although he was sore, I was sure he would survive. I last saw him alive on the 21st and then he was shot. Nobody told us about this. I had heard two shots on the Thursday, and had a gut feeling something had happened to Zen. Two days later, Jean-Roger went to check on Zen for me.
Jean found evidence that a hippo had been killed, and of course there was no sign of Zen. He started walking the next two miles to the safari camp. On the way he bumped into Pete with his American client and a dead leopard they had just shot after it had been treed by their hunting hound dogs! Pete told Jean that Zen had been shot as he was, according to them, apparently in a bad way. The owner of the camp had ordered to put the hippo out of his misery.
Jean went to see the owner and met up with his one son, who told him I had not been notified as the hippo was on their land, and also that I am too involved and might not have agreed to Zen being shot.
In the meantime, I would never stop an animal being destroyed if it was in pain and could not survive its injuries. When Jean asked why nobody told us afterwards (as when I have a missing hippo I can spend weeks tracking it and trying to find it) he was told they had been too busy!
The son agreed to send photos of Zen, which had been taken to show his internal wounds. He said Zen had a broken rib that had punctured his stomach, as well as a punctured lung from a deep wound. I have had these photos now and have actually sent them to a hippo foster parent who is a vet, as I cannot make out too much from them myself.
The thing is that the client actually paid to kill Zen and take his young head back to America to hang upon his trophy wall!This is a very harsh thing for me to write for all of you, but I believe in honesty and the truth, and yes Zen may have been badly hurt, but I still think that his demise was handled without any sensitivity. The fact that Pete was involved obviously makes me believe that he must be very happy that he has managed to have one of the Turgwe Hippo killed.
There are fewer hippos in the Turgwe River at this moment than in many previous years. It is mainly due to their habitats either having silted up within the river system, or areas that they used having now been taken over by the people who invaded this land. The people use those waterways to wash and fish in, and do not want the hippos around. In the past they have hurled rocks at the hippos and generally antagonized them in order to keep them from living close by.
We continue to do everything that we possibly can to help the Turgwe Hippos. Back in April Jean-Roger, Silas and the two game scouts put bags filled with sand upon the weir wall at Bob’s weir pool, on our land at Hippo Haven. This gave more depth to that pool and I now have 18 hippos living there, including one new calf “Kim”, the calf of Odile, whom I think is another little male.
We continue to spend each day checking for the wire snares that can easily kill a young hippo or maim a larger adult, and also kill any of the other animals within the hippos’ grazing areas. Poaching had actually become very quiet, but with the death of my mother we had to leave here twice in the last few months in order to sort out her home and animals. On both occasions the poachers came back, and just recently in May they managed to kill a waterbuck and an impala very close to Hippo Haven, just while we were away for those few days. So we cannot leave our home for long if we want these animals to continue to have a future.
With the death of my Mum and now Zen’s death, along with all the problems we all face daily within Zimbabwe, it has been very, very difficult to remain optimistic of late. Yet these animals are my life, and their well-being and future are so important to me, as well as what we try to achieve here for their further conservation and protection.
Thanks to our wonderful hippo supporters, and especially one very special lady we now have satellite communications at home. This means that not only can we have a reliable daily email service, but we have skype phone for emergencies. This has proved highly beneficial when needing to check with other properties within this Conservancy on the security situation.
You may read this and think: why do we continue and why do we bother? I must admit that at times of late, I have asked myself the same question. Especially as we are at each other’s throats a lot these days. The pressures and the stress factor can only make one like this, so you take it out on each other.
We have no personal income, our own finances nearly non-existent. We live off my photos and the odd story on the hippos that I sell. We have depleted our personal savings and Jean-Roger needs to work not only for our finances but for his own state of mind, and yet we are trapped at this moment on that front.
I have lost a young hippo to a man that really does hate me and who will never obviously change! I have too many pussycats now living with us but could not let my mother down. She had 12 cats and a dog! Honey the dog has gone to a superb home in Zambia. One of Mum’s cats died in the sanctuary in Harare due to a tumour.
9 cats of my mothers are at home here at this moment with us, alongside one of mine. Another old cat, Mike, passed away in May, but he was 20 years old. Tiger my half-wild cat has moved out, but 10 cats share our home now! 2 more stay up at the sanctuary, but as nobody wants adult pussycats and there are hundreds of cats and dogs up there, I know that probably we will have to bring those 2 home as well.We can handle it here, as the house is open plan and there is the space but maybe it should be called Cat Haven and not Hippo Haven as these days there sure are a lot of pussycats. But I have honoured my Mother by homing her cats with us.
Life has been so harsh of late, and yet I am an optimist and amidst all of this we are all in one piece at this moment. Silas has a job, we have our home and animals, and the hippos that are with us are alive. I have some wonderful hippo supporters, some who send us goodie boxes with food, chocolate, essential oils, videos, lovely gifts and Hello magazine which I adore for its escapism! All this keeps the depressing town of Chiredzi, which is nearly empty of goods, worth a visit when our post office box has a gift in it.
Just lately a superb hippo supporter in Holland sent Silas a huge box of used clothes (but looking like new) for his two children. The smile on his face was beautiful to see, as these days it is kind of hard to smile much in Zimbabwe.
So we keep going. I still have hope and I thank every one of you with my heart for caring, as without you I do not think I would have the strength to continue.
Karen Paolillo, Hippo Haven, Save Valley Conservancy, Zimbabwe, July 5th 2008
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