Victoria Falls / Mosi oa Tunya

Devil's Cataract with a raaaainbow!

the first viewpoint

Victoria Falls brought me to tears. It is so crazy beautiful that I could not help lingering at the many viewpoints, and (when there weren’t too many other tourists around) literally yelling about how amazing it is. I had to hold my head on because it was about to float away from me and drop down the cliff with those waters. I settled to imagine I was any one of the dragonflies or sparrows darting over the edge and into the gorge.

I visited the Zimbabwe side. This has the best views of the falls. If you visit the Zambia side, you can actually go in the water right at the edge where a natural “armchair” formation called Devil’s Pool allows you to sit right at the crest of the waterfall. I watched some crazy people do this. Someday when I come back, I’ll try it myself.

the Main Falls at low water

Devil's Pool at the edge of the Main Falls

There are 16 viewpoints along the walk, stretching from the statue of Livingstone overlooking the Zambezi near Devil’s Cataract to the Main Falls, then further along the gorge to Horseshoe Falls, Rainbow Falls and the Eastern Cataract. It’s a few kilometer walk with areas near the main spray that are thick like rainforest down to bare basalt rock in the driest portions near Rainbow Falls.

The Main Falls

Victoria Falls is also called Mosi-oa-Tunya, “the smoke that thunders.” It overwhelms the senses. I’m told that during high water in April and May, you can’t even see the water for all the clouds of vapor rushing off the rocks as the falls plummet and crash. But, now in December, it’s low water. The falls are not continuous, but separated into distinct portions around the island rivers. In some portions you can see the basalt cliffs behind the water. I was amazed to see lichen growing on them. What an incredible survivor.

It is no surprise that this place is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It’s exquisite and ferocious. It steals my words and flings them hundreds of feet down into white and green froth, soaking them for a moment in perpetual rainbows.

What drives me the most absolute out of my mind with thrill for waterfalls is that they are never the same. (Ok--sure, that’s true of everything if you want to get esoteric. But bear with me.) Each surge of water, if you can separate the continual outpour, is a different compilation of droplets, molecules, etc. Even though it looks like a solid sheet of water, you can watch each distinct portion as it moves from the edge down back to become river again. For a moment, it is purely suspended in freefall.

Horseshoe and Rainbow Falls

I wonder what it feels like as it falls. I do not aim to find out in this lifetime. Of course, a rare hippo, crocodile or clumsy tourist does go over the edge and is smashed to bits at the bottom, sometime recovered in the Boiling Pot downstream.

Perhaps the pictures do a better job of describing the experience than I have in writing. The water itself tells the best story though, and I urge you to come listen to it for yourself. We could even come back together.

With love,

Carrie

me at the Main Falls

Kasane

elephants in Chobe National Park

I went to Kasane without any real plans. Said I’d figure it out when I got here. But it's all worked out wicked well. I got lucky that, out of all the phone numbers I called, the most affordable one was the only one with a room available. My home this week is run by some of the most helpful people I’ve yet met.

My accommodations here in Kasane have been Bophirimo Guesthouse run by Kebonye and Simon. They have helped to connect me with the folks who run the Chobe Snake Park, a local geologist and literature aficionado, and best of all, two local writers: Peter Comely, a safari guide and novelist, and very accomplished poet Onalethuso Petruss Ntema. Meeting these two has been very inspiring. And they both signed copies of their books for me. (Score!)These are the connections I look for. Serendipity is a real blessing.

crocodile on Sedudu Island between Botswana and Namibia

I’ve visited the Caprivi Strip in Namibia, crossing the convergence of the Chobe and Zambezi Rivers to play a homemade marimba and watch pied kingfishers, crocodiles, and hippos along the riverbank. The reeds on the island in the middle of the river had been mown flat by the local herds of elephants.

I visited the Chobe Snake Park and Biodiversity Centre where they keep a variety of snakes and other rehabbed wildlife. Some were local captures, others were recovered from smugglers, or found injured by poison or car-strikes. I got to hold pythons, brown house snakes, and beaked snakes. I kept my distance behind the glass from the puff adders and black mamba, admiring these deadly creatures.

Chobe is elephant territory

Best of all, the staff at the Snake Park let me tag along to help with some of their research projects. That turned out to be an extraordinary day. Someone had called in a report of an injured white-backed vulture. This individual seemed to be poisoned, potentially by Rat-X. With the proper permit clearance from the wildlife department, the vulture, dubbed Jiles, was brought back to the centre for food and water and some charcoal tablets to help absorb the poison. Latest I've heard is that he's doing well and soon to be released.

I helped with a community study of diseases carried by flies and got to talk the similarities between scientific and literary journals, the effects of poaching and anti-poaching efforts, local culture, and as they say here: all the what-what. Shop shop [Ok]. It was a great opportunity, plus he blogs about his experiences working in conservation, which is very affirming to me in my search for the connections between conservation and writing.

Lilac Breasted Roller

I also got to visit Victoria Falls, but that’s going to be a blog entry of its own. I hope to return to Kasane someday. I’ve loved it here, and highly recommend Bophirimo Guesthouse to you when you come.

Next time I see you, ask me about the night on the wildlife corridor when I stood in a herd of elephant. Ahemdullah.

Love,

Carrie  

big ol bull elephant (guess how you can tell)

Khama Rhino Sanctuary

zebra and wildebeest at the pans

My major nature conservation work here in Botswana has been at Khama Rhino Sanctuary. I came in through the Botswana Workcamp Association, which was the most feasible way for me to volunteer in the sanctuary. I was there for two weeks at the end of November and returned in December for another two week stint.

Khama Rhino Sanctuary entrance

Khama Rhino Sanctuary is a non-profit community based conservation organization operated by the three neighboring villages of Serowe, Paje, and Mabeleapudi. It’s about 8500 hectares of protected land intended primarily to conserve the white rhino and black rhino populations, though there’s tons of other wildlife as well. There’s a perimeter fence which keeps animals in (most of the time) and poachers out (ideally). Both are capable of breaking through, like the pair of sparring kudu who crashed through several fenceposts one day during my time there. But the fence certainly makes one question the real definition of “wild.” Which is just what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s one of the major questions of my fellowship year.

But, this is supposed to be a travel blog, and I’m reluctant to post my yet-unarticulate philosophic mumbo-jumbo here. I want to tell you more about the rad things I’ve been doing.

I’ve been seeing so many animals that I never expected to see in real life, as well as (to be perfectly honest) some that I’d never even heard of before. In a lot of ways, this year is revealing so much of my ignorance and exposing me to listen to new stories, new ideas, new lifestyles, and new life histories. Nearly every day at Khama Rhino, on the drives between our campsite in the bush and our worksites at other places in the bush, I saw wildlife.

White Rhinos

Zebra, wildebeest, impala, warthog and white rhino were a nearly daily sight. I saw giraffe, kudu, eland, spring hares and springbok less commonly. The rarest sightings were a tortoise, chameleon, spotted hyena, jackal, and the crown jewel, a young leopard. Alas I didn’t always have my camera handy, but I felt incredibly blessed to witness these animals in the flesh in their real lives.

And I haven’t even mentioned the birds! Perhaps I’m listing too many things in this blog, but my life is flooded with all these amazing creatures. My heart is the ark and we’re set sail for far longer than forty days. Some of my favorite birds to see so far were the Maribu Storks (considered one of the Ugly Five that juxtapose Africa’s Big Five animals), Yellow-billed Kite, Go-away Bird (Grey Lorrie), and Crimson-breasted Shrike. Even the common Cape Turtledove that sings Bot-tswaaa-na Bot-tswaaa-na.

Giraffe

I’ve also seen so many neat bugs! Praying mantises have become my dear friends here. They are just too cool with all their different varieties. They all seem to love landing on me and climbing all over my arms and under my collar. It’s a bit tickly, but it feels like a blessing. The dung beetles zip across the pans at a zillion miles an hour and look like little hulks when they walk on land, deflty pushing balls of scat backwards in front of them.

The actual work at Khama Rhino often felt tangential to the wildlife, but I’m learning about how these tasks relate to the work of conservation overall. The people I met were an interesting mix of true nature lovers passionate about wildlife and others who liked wildlife but saw their involvement at the sanctuary as merely a job. Perhaps they’d rather be a nurse of a teacher or a taxi driver, but there’s work available here. Conservation is a business, and there are a lot of stakeholders.

After working, we cooked everything by open fire and I became good friends with the other volunteers as we chatted late into the night by the fireside. Fires and rivers and animals. I could watch them all forever.

More soon.

Love,

Carrie

firewood collection in the pick up truck selfie