Thoughts and Reflections on African Issues

Each of the three biggest waterfalls is the biggest in one category.

Carcasses in the Maasia Mara.

Croc and water bottle.

This is not the best photo, but does show the garbage.

Information about tusks and the ivory trade in Kruger NP.

 Speaks for itself.

 Horned in Kenya...

 dehorned in Zimbabwe.

 Great information.

While buying your pop or chips you can also pick up an animal skin. A zebra will only cost you 9000 rand or $654 US.

I don't pretend to be an expert on south Africa but having been here twice I have noticed some things and learned some things I'd like to comment on and record so that I don't forget. Maybe I am naive or wrong, but these are my thoughts and observations.

The safaris we went on and the game viewing we did was wonderful, but I can't help but reflect on my experiences from six years ago. It seems to me that there are less animals in some of the parks. We saw very few lions (except for that one pride) and saw only one male lion at all. I saw no leopards in Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe or South Africa despite being in one park that claimed to have the highest number of leopards in Africa. And I only saw cheetahs once and that was in Kenya. I know that game viewing is hit or miss, but the cats just seemed to be missing and I did see all of the above in 2010-11. From everything I have seen on TV I know that the large carnivores are in steep decline mainly because of habitat reduction. I was however, very happy to see lots of hyena which I missed almost entirely last time and to see African wild dogs was both amazing and a miracle. In the Maasai Mara I had an uneasy feeling that the plains weren't healthy, because I saw a number of carcasses of animals just laying around. There were no vultures or hyenas devouring them and some looked liked they had just rotted away undisturbed. Our guide Joseph said that the scavengers wouldn't eat a diseased animal. That begs the question what is the disease and my understanding is that scavengers will and do eat rotten meat. So I'm not sure what the problem was. I did not notice this issue in any of the other parks I visited.

Then there is the issue of bush meat. Maybe this is the answer to where all the animals have gone. Again I am no expert but it doesn't take too much imagination to figure out what hungry people in a country with 88% unemployment are going to do when living beside them are edible animals in game reserves. As I was travelling through Kruger, although there were a variety of animals around, they were not in the numbers I expected. Kruger shares a long porous border with South Africa and Mozambique and animal poachers are not penalized. Matopos National Park where they zealousy protect rhinos is almost devoid of other wildlife. There are animal droppings here and there but we didn't see any animals; so either they are been taken for food, or they are so afraid of humans that they hide. As a result the two tourist camps in the park we saw are falling into disrepair, I surmise because the tourists are not coming as there are no animals to see.

As we drove through Africa we saw people doing just about anything to make money and it goes to show that when there are no jobs everyone becomes an entrepreneur.

Our guide in Kenya told us that the government is trying to get people to move out of that huge slum, by providing subsidized housing. However, the people they are trying to move are unemployed and cannot afford to live in those houses, so they rent them out to other people and live in the slum. One solution to a problem causes another.

I'm not sure which it is, either the people have no pride in their environment, or the governments do nothing to pick up garbage, but in some areas around towns and villages there is garbage everywhere, especially plastic, bottles and cans. Plastic bags decorate some acacia trees so that they look like Christmas trees. Plastic bags are even seen in game parks and I took a photo of a crocodile laying beside a plastic bottle (that hopefully was not left by the tourist it ate!). The one positive I saw was that Kenya has banned all plastic bags and people in possession of them can be fined.

Aids is still a huge issue in this area of the world. A whole generation, or two, were devastated and children were brought up by grandparents or became orphans. I asked the guides on our trip about HIV?AIDS and how it affected them. Ernest said he lost a sister and Timon told me he lost both parents but he was in a boarding school and was thereby saved from the orphanage or living with other family members. I heard from them that when a smart couple wants to have sexual relations for the first time, they make a trip to the clinic to get tested.

Timon shared with us a scary moment that happened in July. When the truck full of tourists left the Holiday Inn to start their journey they were harassed by two vans on the streets of Johannesburg. They were trying to stop the truck to rob the passengers. Luckily Timon and the driver saw what was happening and turned a different way which caused the vans to have to follow until they were on the highway. Then Timon and the driver were able to keep the van on the left from cutting them off and almost forced it off the road. The other van was reluctant to put itself in the way of the large truck. The overland truck is equipped with a panic button and shortly after the driver pushed it police cars arrived on the scene and a helicopter! The drivers of the vans were caught and Timon heard afterwards that they confessed and gave up the security guard at the hotel who had phoned the van drivers and tipped them off as to when the truck would be leaving and what route it would take.

And finally there is the issue of poaching. I know that elephants are being poached at an alarming rate for their tusks, but we didn't get exposed to that issue too much. And in some of the parks we visited we saw hundreds of elephants to the point that some people were suffering elephant overdose. So it made it look like they were not really an issue. Rhinos on the other hand...

I missed the visit to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary at the beginning of the trip where the group first heard about rhino conservation and how important it is. We have learned a lot about it since. When we were in Matopos and had the opportunity to get up close to three male rhinos in the bush, our guide Curt taught us a lot. He told us Botswana has a shoot to kill policy with poachers, but in South Africa “poachers have more rights than rhinos”. He also told us to turn off the GPS recording equipment on our cameras as poachers use it to locate the animals.

Rhinoceros' horns are unique not only because of their position, but also because of their composition and structure, being made only of keratin. Horns of other mammals, like cattle, buffaloes, giraffes, antelopes, sheep, goats, gazelles or pronghorn, have a bony core covered by a sheath of keratin, the same substance found in nails, hair, wool, bird feathers, reptile scales, or in the outer layer of vertebrate skin.

The horn grows like nails, and in the African black rhino it can be 1.4 m (4 ft, 8 in) long, while in the case of the African white rhino, which doubles the black rhino in size, it can be even 2 m (6.6 ft) long. If the horn breaks, it grows back by 8 cm (3 in) per year.

Today, these horns have been the reason why rhinos die by human hand because many cultures price them for their supposed magical or medicinal qualities. In Malaysia, rhino horns are used against malaria, nausea, fever, heart conditions, dementia, toothache. Those medicines have of course the same effect as chewing your nails... Paradoxically, Africans do not regard rhino horns as aphrodisiacs, even if now only Africa delivers rhino horns to the black market.

Chinese traditional medicine has used rhino horns since the first century BC. Especially the freshly killed male horns are sought. Powdered horns were used against epidemics, for chasing demons and against poisoning.

Rhino horns are the most useless way of wasting money (a lot of it) and time to achieve nothing; its (illegal) usage in traditional Chinese medicine comes from the performances of the animal (rhino sex lasts from 30 minutes to more than one hour) and its large penis (on average 80 cm or 2.5 feet). People regarded the horn as a symbol of the sexual power of the rhino, perhaps because the horn could resemble an erect penis. For ignorant minds, that's enough to grind and ingest it to get the rhino's powers. Chewing nails is at least for free and does not kill such a superb beast like a rhino. In 1993, China banned the trade with rhino horns, but illegal trade is still made.

Curt told us that South Africa has lost 1500 rhinos this year. Matopos has lost about half of its population of rhinos in the last ten years and is down to 65. However, they have not lost one since 2015 and this year they have a bumper crop of new births. They are particularly excited by births of females. The rhinos at Matopos have their horns sawed off as a means to discouraged poachers from killing them. The horns do grow back, because they are basically made from fingernail material, so they have to be cut again. A kilogram of rhino horn sells for about $100000 US, so the price is irresistible to poachers. Most of it is sold in Asia.

There is a raging debate amongst countries that have rhinoceros and those that don't and want to protect them from extinction. One side argues that sawing off the horns deters poachers and protects the rhino. But, that position is under attack because the material is so valuable that poachers will still kill them to get the stump or the new growth. They even kill baby rhinos to get their small horns.

The other side argues that removing the horn is damaging to the rhino's lifestyle, as after all it evolved the horn as part of its weaponry and a tool for digging up things.

The South African government is sawing off the horn and selling it to Asian cartels in order to make money, despite an international uproar. They argue that the poachers are going to do it anyway, so why not do it to protect the animal and make money, thus eliminating the poacher or middleman. Botswana and Matopos are beginning to lean in this direction. Curt said that the park rangers think that with that much money at stake the government could make a share (and Zimbabwe is bankrupt) and there could still me money left to give back to the local community, thus giving the people a reason to protect the animals and put some much needed cash into the community for schools or safe water.

It's an emotional debate with countries picking sides. But the reality is that people have to sort it out soon as rhinos are becoming more and more endangered as the debate rages.

And what about the men who risk their lives as rangers and policemen sent in my the government to follow and protect the rhinos and authorized to shoot to kill any suspected poacher. This is a boring and potentially dangerous job and with the government of Zimbabwe being bankrupt, they are either underpaid or frequently don't get paid.

Then there is the issue I pointed out the other day: in the same service station plaza there was a informative display about rhino poaching and right across the hall in the convenience store they were selling animal skins. Sort of sums up the problem.

I don't even pretend to understand African politics, but when crossing the chaotic borders between African countries and the lines of trucks that wait sometimes for days to be cleared, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to surmise that Africa would benefit from the free flow of goods between the countries in the way that the European Common Market does. They need to form one giant interdependent and united African community for the continent to move forward. However, I know that there is too much corruption and all the tribes and special interest groups involved have their own issues that get in the way as well.

If you have made it this far, congratulations and thank you. I welcome your thoughts or corrections. It is nice to know I am not typing into a vacuum.