The Sand Pump Project for the Turgwe Hippos Pool

This involved hiring an over two-ton pump from a place called Kadoma over 600km distance to the Turgwe River. The pump arrived on a lorry on May 3rd but due to many teething problems the actual work in the river did not begin until 10th May. By this stage all workers (8 men including the machine operator Wilson) myself and my husband were as ready as we could be. Offloading the machine in the middle of the bush was not easy, especially as it had to be taken down the riverbank to the river itself over a rocky area. Needless to say, we hired a tractor in case the lorry got stuck, a precaution that proved a necessity. The Turgwe Hippo Trust does not own any machinery capable of lifting off large loads from lorries, nor do we employ a large workforce as most daily work involves just studying the hippos and patrolling for wire snares set by poachers.

We organised a labour force from our nearest neighbours over 16kms away and my husband was in charge of the overall operation. This proved to be very hard work as my husband, being the tallest, was the only person who could remain in the river holding the suction pump and cleaning all debris from its inlet. The African workers assisted my husband but spent a maximum of thirty minutes twice a day in the water beside Jean-Roger. Being 8 men they could relieve each other. For Jean there was nobody to take over from him. I was far too short and too weak to hold the weight of the end of the pump! In fact, Jean would hold it with one other guy but that guy spent a short time in the water.

By the fifth day of operation Jean was beginning to suffer badly from the cold. We both thought we had worked out all the needs for the job but the one thing we both forgot was that if a person spends nearly nine solid hours a day in water, even though one is in Africa, it gets mighty cold and uncomfortable. Jean could only break for a five-minute space each hour. Otherwise complications arose with the cleaning of the pump and the water getting too deep for the African men. We had put over 150 meters of white PVC piping called the outlet pipe through the bush to the other side of the river. All sand and water that was sucked through the pump that Jean held was then deposited a fair distance away by the outlet pipe. Here two men shovelled the sand/water mix to stop a massive amount of sand accumulating and blocking the outlet pipe. The machine ran on diesel, which was just as well since we have no electricity at Hippo Haven which was a five minute walk from the river pool.

You can see by the photos that the pool was totally filled with sand. This sand was washed down the river and has accumulated the whole length of the Turgwe since the dramatic flooding in 2000. The floods were an offshoot of the cyclone that hit Mozambique and caused tremendous damage here in the Save Valley Conservancy. The Turgwe River had had four weirs built over the years in the river itself- rock cemented walls that stretch across the river in suitable spots where the rock base is good enough to anchor a wall. The floods in 2000 were so huge and severe that three of the four weirs were breached. The Chichindwi weir (right next to Hippo Haven) was the only weir not broken. This left only that area for the hippos to live in during our dry season, normally from April through to December. All the hippos had left the pool in February when we received late season rains. They had been living for over a month in channels up and downstream in the Turgwe. But for the last six weeks they had moved to living under the bushes adjacent to the river, using the channels which were by now too shallow just to roll in each morning to keep wet. They were going to have a major problem if we could not clear their pool in order for them to move back in.

Plus, due to the breakdown in law and order in Zimbabwe, this wildlife conservancy was invaded by many poachers and these people were setting wire snares only a couple of miles upstream from where the hippos lived in the bushes. My husband and I had already found two snares actually set on one of the hippos exit points from the river channel. We were terribly concerned that if we did not do the work on the pool as quickly as possible the hippos would move further upstream into the heavily snared area. At the same time, to work in the river there was still quite a strong current bringing more water and sand as my husband worked. By the 18th May, Jean had already cleared about half of the pool, and thanks to our wonderful neighbour Anne Whittall (she purchased a wet suit for Jean which made a one hundred percent difference), he was no longer shivering at nine o' clock each evening! And I am sure it actually saved him from getting very ill.

I did as much as I could in tidying the area daily, bringing hot soup and coffee and generally keeping an eye on the outlet pipe and the guys working there. But for once my services were not very useful on the physical side of things. So I continued to patrol our area daily for the awful wire snares. On the 23rd May Jean declared the work finished. The company had told us they would need their machine back soon and the pump had cleared up to the temporary corridor that we had laid earlier in the year. Jean-Roger calculated that over 2500 cubic meters of sand had been removed. We knew that the sand would continue coming into the pool but we just hoped that the hippos would return as soon as possible.

The following night, two hippos went in the pool, one (probably Bob, the territorial bull) defecated by spraying his dung on the wall. The next night two more and two calves visited but were not in the pool during the daylight hours. On the 30th May at four pm, four hippos moved back into the pool: Bob and Cheeky and her two sons Mvura and Storm. The following morning of the 31st, another 7 hippos had joined the original four. This included Blackface,Brucie, Abe and Odile, Wish, Pavodok and Libra. Finding 11 of the 21 hippos back that morning was a wonderful sight but obviously I needed to see 21 hippos all in one piece without a snare attached to any part of their bodies. Jean had cleared over 200 feet in length, 75 feet in width and in places 5 feet in depth.

Sadly, in one week we lost about one quarter of that area to the returning sand. The current was still very strong and no hippos moved in to keep the pool area open. On 1st June another 7 hippos joined the 11 and 18 hippos have been back in the pool since that day. I am missing three hippos. One is a young male called Fen, whose mother Mystery had a new calf in March, so it is understandable that he has not joined his mother with her new young son and perhaps will return or stay alone upstream in the bushes. I did see him about two weeks before the hippos returned to their pool so I know he was fine at that time. The other is a young five-year-old female called Flood. She is the third five-year-old female to leave the group. There could be a very good reason for this, in that young females go looking for a new mate when they are ready to conceive. I have even had cows at that age give birth. I had seen Cheeky with a new calf and this calf has not returned to the pool with Cheeky. Sadly, I think it was possibly killed by a large crocodile that was living close to where I saw Cheeky with the calf. Or, worse scenario, it was snared. The brightest side of the equation is that I may have made a mistake and the calf was not Cheeky's but her sister Flood. These two hippos do look a bit alike and I only saw Cheeky twice with the new calf and both times studied her through binoculars and she was tucked up under the reeds in the one river channel. So maybe it was Flood. Then she should come back to this pool soon with the new calf. Only time will tell.

Whatever the case, it is too wonderful to see the hippos daily and be able to watch them on their sandbank each morning. At first when they returned to the pool, they were nervous and jittery. But now they are totally relaxed again. Our biggest problem is that the pool is daily shrinking and there is only now just over a quarter left of what Jean-Roger cleared. We knew we would have sand come back in but were hoping that the current would slow down and the weight of 18 hippos would keep a lot of the sand at bay. So, to counteract this new problem, we have ordered our very own sand pump. A lighter, more user-friendly machine- one that hopefully will not need so many workers nor a tractor to hire, and one that Jean and I can operate together.

We need it urgently, as we believe we will have to work on the pool again by end of July if not a little earlier. We do not yet know the price of the machine but have asked the company responsible to let us know details as soon as they can. In the long run, it will work out a lot cheaper than hiring a machine with all the relevant problems of transport, etc. Also if the Trust owns its own pump we can work on other areas within the Turgwe and make pools up and downstream of the Chichindwi weir, not only for the hippos but for other animals to utilise, like the crocodiles and elephants.

So once again the Turgwe Hippo Trust needs help of a financial kind to buy this machine. We have earmarked another wonderful donation from a Dutch artist and her friend who sold a hippo painting to another very kind Dutch lady and donated the money to these hippos. That money we wish to use to repair one of the broken weirs but we may need to get the pump before we do the repair on the one weir. However, if anybody out there can help us by either fostering a hippo or making a donation, however small, it would be greatly appreciated.

The photos basically show the work we did to date but like anything worthwhile one cannot sadly just sit back now and say, well that's it boys, we have done it we can take a rest now. That is not practical. We need to open the pool again! This time we may need to work in there with the hippos still present only about fifty feet from where we work! So it could prove interesting. As a by line, whilst Jean worked on the last few days, a seven- foot crocodile moved back into the pool. So all the time he worked one had to keep a very observant eye on said crocodile, who fortunately kept away from the noisy pump!

The Turgwe Hippo Trust, Jean-Roger and myself thank you all for caring about these hippos. Without other people's financial help, we could never do ninety percent of the work we carry out here for the welfare of the Turgwe Hippos, and their further protection and conservation.

 
Karen Paolillo,  Hippo Haven, Save Valley Conservancy, Zimbabwe.  June 2001