THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2009

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to Cohort 11

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POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 3:20 PM 0 COMMENTS

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2009

IETA Closeout

The adventure ends. It's back to work. Everyone survived (though we're still waiting for two to come out of Nigeria and Kenya) with only the occasional episode of giardia, machetes, and rogue elephants.

So Merry Christmas to Cohort 11, and I'll see you in some airport on the way to another adventure.

Signing off,

E.M.

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POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 4:20 PM 0 COMMENTS

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2009

Well, not entirely out yet...

There's still that debrief at CDC next week. Should be interesting to hear how everyone else fared on assignments in various parts of Africa and SE Asia. And then there's the group photo....

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POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 6:52 PM 0 COMMENTS

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2009

Out of Africa

Henry David Thoreau- Walden

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Well, I didn’t come to Africa to live deliberately. (Though, in selecting some books to bring along on the trip, I did pull my old copy of Walden off the bookshelf and toss it into my bag.) I think in my own way I had already lived deliberately through a long and pleasant education, one marriage, a family, decades-old friendships, rock faces and mountaintops, sailboats and scuba tanks, the occasional fall from an airplane, travels to more places than any blue-collar kid ever might have expected to see, and the not so rare bout(s) of civil disobedience.

No, I came for one last big adventure, to alien territory, before opportunity and age slipped by. And though it nearly cost me my life one sunny afternoon, I don’t regret having come back to the cradle of humanity.

Now I’m leaving--eagerly, because I have a fine life to return to--and regretting only the eternal poverty, ignorance, superstition, and violence that is Africa. I leave behind the acronymed “agents of virtue” with their SUVs and big budgets to continue the work of what the fictitious British Lord Beaumont cynically called “saving Africa from the Africans.”

Driving through the bush to learn how people lived, and reading the local newspapers to learn how they died, I think even Sisyphus would be discouraged. But then he never had any grant money.

____________________

Agents of virture- from Paul Theroux’s “Black Star Safari.”

Saving Africa from the Africans- from the movie, “The Ghost and the Darkness.”

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POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 10:06 AM 1 COMMENTS

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2009

Going Native?

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 10:38 AM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: SWAZILAND

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2009

Predators

NYT, October 13, 2009

A Long, Melancholy Roar

(Being the third and final piece in a series about predators.)

On a recent evening at twilight, I was sitting on the grass in Regent’s Park — one of London’s most manicured public spaces — when I heard the fierce, melancholy sound of a lion’s roar.

I wasn’t dreaming: it was coming from the zoo. Listening to it, I began to reflect on predators — and us.

On returning home, I did some reading. I discovered that between 1990 and 2004, lions attacked 815 people in Tanzania, killing 563. Some of the victims were pulled out of bed during the night after lions forced their way inside huts.

Between January 2000 and March 2004, crocodiles in Namibia attacked 35 people, killing 23. In the 34 months from January 2005 to October 2007, leopards in the Indian state of Kashmir attacked 18 people, killing 16. In the Sundarban swamps of Bangladesh, tigers killed at least 20 people last year.

Dig around, and you can also find records of deaths from attacks by bears, cougars, sharks and a number of other wild beasts.

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 8:14 AM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: MISC.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2009

Images of Africa

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 3:49 PM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: MISC.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2009

The Last Weekend

I’ve been looking at my watch a lot; not for the time but for the date. I’m ‘getting short’ as they say in the military. Just a few more days. I celebrated part of my last weekend in Africa with an elegant dinner at the Royal Villas south of Mbabane. Excellent food, with a Tunisian slant. The wine was mediocre, but then it’s hard to find a good white wine in southern Africa that isn’t sweet. Still, the Irish coffee was excellent, and just what I needed to drive through the late night fog and clouds and drizzle of high-altitude Mbabane.

I haven’t been able to sleep here for more than 6 or 7 hours at night. I hardly need an alarm clock to get to work on time. So when I got home last night, I finished off my last 50ml of Jameson in the hope that I’d sleep through the night and a good part of the morning. I only made it to 7:20AM.

So, the last weekend in Swaziland. Saturday I cleaned the house. Opened all the windows. Scrubbed the bathrooms. Did the laundry. (I came 8,ooo miles for this!?) On Sunday--another day of fog and clouds and almost rain--I drove a 100Km east to Hlane Game Park again. Last time I was here there was a lot to see and I stayed overnight. Today it was harder to spot game. Maybe it was the time of day, or the weather, or the thicker foliage. Things have finally turned green in the highveld and the eastern part of this New Jersey-sized monarchy.

So I’m back at the house. Adding a few dated pictures from the Reed Dance in August that I got from a friend the other day. There’s the King (far left) and his men, some locals--probably my neighbors--and the large crowds. Quite a few people in attendance. It’s not often that one gets the chance to see 70-80,000 mostly naked women, 50,000 of whom are carrying bush knives. Probably with good reason.

So tomorrow is Columbus Day, which means nothing in a land-locked African country but does apparently mean something to the U.S. Embassy. It’s a holiday, but I’m going into the office any way just to be a good COP monkey (Country Operating Plan, which must be filed each year around October 16, the day I leave).

There should not be too many more entries to this blog. I’m running out of time and material. My “year of living dangerously” is coming to a close and I’m looking forward to being “out of Africa” and “coming to America.”

Yes, I know, I’m making bad use of good movie titles.

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POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 7:52 AM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: SWAZILAND

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2009

Swaziland: It's good to be king

Nov 27th 2008 | JOHANNESBURGExcerpts from The EconomistSwaziland remains a deeply traditional and rural society, where chiefs wield a lot of authority. Dissent is largely confined to cities. But the lavish celebrations of the king’s 40th birthday, coupled with the 40th anniversary of independence from Britain, made the royal family’s lifestyle look even more outrageously extravagant in a country where most people are dirt-poor and AIDS is ravaging the population of just about 1m.In August, angry protesters called on the authorities to spend more on easing the country’s hunger and tackling AIDS, after reports that eight of the king’s 13 [now 14] wives had been on holidays in the Middle East and Asia with large entourages. In September thousands of pro-democracy campaigners took to the streets to demand reform. But SADC [15-country Southern African Development Community], while wringing its hands over Zimbabwe, seems loath to take the king to task.

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 5:40 PM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: SWAZILAND

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2009

Still on the Loose

According to the local papers, those lions and two elephants that escaped into Swaziland are still on the loose.

You might think two elephants would be easy to spot, but if they step a few feet into the bush and don't move, they're essentially invisible.

Of course, so are the lions, and you won't see one until it's too late. (Henrik, our guide in S.A., said one day, "Never run from the lion you hear toward the lion you don't.)

Hope the Swazis are listening.

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POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 2:50 PM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: SWAZILAND

Zululand and the Elephant Coast

Back in South Africa near the Indian Ocean. Last adventure before closing out my time in Swaziland. I didn’t see much of the ocean last week in Maputo, but here, along this wide and wild stretch of the Elephant Coast, it’s hard to miss. It’s a scary looking ocean. No swimming here. The waves are Atlantic storm huge: green walls of water breaking far off a shallow, sandy bottom and coming in with frothy, wind-blown crests from a strong northeast wind. The waves reach half-way up a beach that is both wide and desolate. And they pull back a lot of sand so that the next incoming wave is more a light brown slurry of sand and water and air instead of the fast-moving green water behind it. It’s probably abrasive enough to remove your tan. Not that that would be a worry. Get dragged out by these guys and your chances of getting back in are very slim. Five hundred years ago, the Portuguese in their fragile caravels would not have been happy sailing up along this coastline. Nowhere to put in.

St. Lucia is a tourist enclave with expensive hotels, good bars, and nice shops. This is just what I need. Damn the cost. (Actually, some of the cost was souvenirs and phone calls home so they don’t count.) The whole area is a vast environmental zone, protected estuary and giant game park to the west. I’m doing a 5AM game drive. I can’t sleep late in Africa anyway so I might as well get up and do something.

I noticed the hotel pool has a sign warning guests about the wildlife. I wonder what creatures warrant a poolside warning? Crocs? Boas? Hippos? Then there’s the malaria, which supposedly isn’t here. I’m still taking Malerone just in case.

The drive down was hellish. I headed due south out of Swaziland to the N2, which is the major east-west highway through Zululand to the Coast. But it’s under construction. About 100Km of it has been turned into a one-way country road, with long delays waiting for alternating east-west traffic to move out of the way. Who plans things this way?! In the rest of the world, you do short sections of highway, finish, move on to the next section, and keep the one-lane-wait-your-turn to a minimum. But not here. Anyway, I’m not going back through it. Instead, I’ll head part way back up the N2 and then into the eastern part of Swaziland and hit my usual routes from there. That should work….but then this is Africa.

Sunday MorningI may have been wrong about the stars. Standing in the parking lot at 5AM I’m pretty sure I see Orion. A pleasant, but unexpected surprise. I’ll have to check the Internet for Orion’s visibility here in the Southern Hemisphere.I was up for a 3-hour game drive through the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi (Go on, just try to pronounce that. And the locals have trouble with my name.) Park. Game-spotting is hit-or-miss, and this was a miss. It’s a huge park and probably worth trying again sometime, but I won’t get the chance.

Still, it was interesting to see another part of South Africa and stick my feet in the Indian Ocean. (The last time I had a chance to do that was in Chennai, but the outflow from the city’s main river--which was black in color and easily detectable by its smell--discouraged any kind of wading or swimming.)

The drive back was indeed less traumatic, not to mention shorter by about a 100 klicks. 335Km in about 4 hours of easy driving, kombi passing, cattle dodging, etc. The only hang-up was the usual border crossing. The border area looked like a Bosnian outpost that had recently been shelled, and the revival meeting on the South African side added to the impression that they might be burying the dead. A train rumbled by, temporarily cutting off any other would-be border crossers. I looked at the long line of people spilling out of the Swazi building and thought I might be here for an hour. Fortunately, I was looking at the line of people heading back into S.A. and not into the Swaz. I got through in about 20 minutes with the usual amount of confusion about where to go, where to park, who wanted to see my passport and who wanted to collect the piece of paper about my car registration. The place was so confusing I probably could have just driven through; certainly I could have walked right through. I wonder how many people do?

So I’m home again in Mbabane. This was my last weekend for roaming around Africa. No more Kruger, Pretoria, Maputo, or Hlane. Next weekend I’ll be finishing up work at PEPFAR and cleaning up Peter’s house. (I think I’ve mentioned that rather than try to describe where my house is I just tell people, “I’m in Peter’s house.” Everyone in Swaziland knew Peter the Dutch nurse and epi guy before he moved over to Pretoria. I expect it will still be Peter‘s house when I move out.)

So with no planned trips or other adventures, what do I blog about?-

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 7:28 AM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: MISC.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2009

Evolve or….!

SWAZILAND: NGOs and government on a collision course

MBABANE,, 1 October 2009 (IRIN) - Simmering animosity and tension between non-governmental organizations and the conservative authorities of donor-dependent Swaziland are threatening to boil over, bringing legislation that could restrict the activities of civil society.

"It has been building for some years. The deeper Swaziland sinks into poverty, hunger and AIDS, and the more dependent we become on non-governmental organizations [NGOs], the more hostile government officials, like MPs and some chiefs, become to NGOs," said Amos Ndwandwe, who works as a counsellor for an HIV/AIDS NGO he declined to identify, in the second city, Manzini.

King Mswati III, the last absolute monarch in sub-Saharan Africa, heads a traditional system of chiefs that ensures the perpetuation of customary laws, and appoints the country's prime minister in a parliament that excludes any opposition.

[snip]

"The country is now opened up by these new highways and here come these NGOs preaching gender equality and human rights. By custom, no person may set foot in a chiefdom without first going to the chief’s kraal, stating their business and receiving permission to proceed. If NGOs wish to engage the people they must first educate the chiefs and convince them they are not involved in politics," [a traditional leader] said.

Parliamentarians have routinely criticize NGOs for perceived extravagance, despite frequent denials by the National Emergency Council on HIV/AIDS (NERCHA), a government office responsible for dispersing monies from international donor organizations.

[snip]

"The workers are well paid, they have nice offices, and cars. Donors in Europe may not think twice about paying for a fleet of pricey vehicles as 'part of doing the job,' but Swazis see these off-road vehicles zooming around city streets as luxurious."

**"This particular campaign is said to be based on a misguided perception that NGOs are turning the people against the monarch through their civic education," Musa Hlope, a political commentator and former Chairman of the Swaziland Federation of Employers, told IRIN.

"If the relationship between members of parliament and civil society is not mended soon we may have a law that will seek to close all available spaces for NGOs to operate freely and effectively throughout the country," he said.

Some NGOs have become strident critics of human rights abuses and have embarked on education campaigns to inform people of their rights under the new constitution approved by Mswati in 2005; among other things, it ended customary and institutional discrimination based on gender after centuries of tradition that relegated women to second-class status.

Prince Mahlaba Dlamini, Mswati's elder brother and a leading proponent of traditional laws, recently condemned the constitution for stripping the king of some of his powers, the local media reported.

Swazis for Positive Living (SWAPOL), a support group for HIV-positive women, has been scorned for becoming "politicized" after it protested against an MP’s proposal that HIV-positive people should be branded on their buttocks.

The protest was condemned by traditionalists, who demanded to know where the women’s husbands were while their wives were showing disrespect to the nation’s elders.

[snip]

However, should court action be decided in favour of an NGO’s constitutional rights, such legal sanction may prove redundant, as Swaziland's dual system of governance gives chiefs unilateral powers on Swazi Nation Land, where 80 percent of the about one million population live.

______________________

**Civic or secular education will do that all by itself. Once people start thinking for themselves or learning about other people who do, there’s no telling what may happen. That’s why popes and Republicans have always hated public schools and universal education, and why fundamentalists “teach” their kids from the safety of their cloistered homes.

Someone once said that no tradition ever freed a slave. True enough; anyone who ever benefited from some ‘traditional’ practice was always reluctant to give up that tradition. No tradition ever freed a slave. No workhouse ever helped put an end to child labor. No business ever volunteered a 40-hour week. No Southern ever encouraged civil rights. No king ever surrendered his “sovereign rights.” No priest ever questioned his beliefs or behaviors.

Two things seem to be happening in Africa: devolution and natural selection. Economically, many African states are devolving back toward a subsistence agriculture and economy. And as for ‘natural selection,’ those women and children who can escape their traditions and cultural practices will survive; everyone else will be extinct. In a 100 years, Africa will be a very different place, populated by very different people. Swaziland may be a microcosm of what’s happening in sub-Saharan Africa. Or maybe it’s the epicenter.

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 4:42 PM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: SWAZILAND

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

Some background from a Swazi tourism website.

Highveld: In the west is the highveld, a mountainous and forested region with indigenous and exotic trees, also featuring waterfalls, valleys and deep gorges. The highveld has an average altitude of about 1200m above sea level. [At some 4,000 feet, the sun beating down on Mbabane is very hot, but when it goes down the temperature quickly falls. Right now, I seem to be switching from car AC to house heat depending on the time of day.]

Lowveld: Further east is the lowveld, a subtropical region characterised by typical African bush vegetation and a hotter, drier climate. [Malaria is often a problem in these regions and I pop Malerone whenever I stay in these areas.]

Seeing locals dressed in traditional attire, for example, is common, although Western dress is also widely worn (and often accompanies the wearing of traditional animal skins and other paraphernalia). [That includes war clubs and spears.] The Swazi's have a distinctive, colourful national dress known as emahiya that is regularly worn by men, women and children. Different accessories and head-dresses are used, depending on the status and age of the individual, as well as the occasion.

When it comes to marriage, Swaziland is traditionally a polygamous society and men may take several wives on payment of a dowry, known as lobola, which normally entails giving cattle to the bride’s parents. However, monogamous marriages, performed in the Western custom, have become more common as Swazi's adapt to and adopt the Western lifestyle. [Cattle rustling can get you killed here.]

The majority of Swazi's belong to Christian churches, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, whose missions were responsible before independence for many of the education and health services, particularly in the rural areas. However, many adherents also retain the traditional beliefs and practices. Traditional healers are still widespread in Swaziland, and are known by different names depending on their roles and abilities. The inyanga is a healer who relies on home-made medicines, while a sangoma (usually female) can communicate with spirits to reveal solutions to problems and the umtsakatsi can harm or kill people through magic.

[In a nutshell, the trappings of the 21st-century West--cell phones, cars, suits and ties, and antibiotics--are a fragile veneer that barely covers the day to day reality that is southern Africa.]

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 8:10 AM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: MALARIA, SWAZILAND

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2009

A Quick Trip in and out of Mozambique

Another weekend, another road trip. This one was about 215Km (3 hours) from Mbabane to Maputo. I went for the prawns...though in fact I'd never eaten one and kept thinking about the ugly aliens in the new South African movie "District 9" who are called "The Prawn." Still, I managed to wash them down with some of Mozambique's so-so beer.

The Mozambique border is a curious place. I doubt I'd have any trouble smuggling guns, drugs or cattle across it, but God forbid I not have auto insurance. They seem rather obsessed about the whole business of cars, rental cars, chassis numbers, engine block numbers, how many tires I had, the color of the car. On and on. There was a lot of flipping through my papers, stamping this, stamping that. Finally, I escaped, though in the process of stamping my rental car documents, they neglected to stamp my passport. I entered the country illegally. I won't discover this until I tried to leave on Sunday.

So Maputo is a big Third World city whose humid odor reminds me of India and whose Socialist-style block apartments remind me of Moscow in the 1980's. Maybe this is what Havana looks like: Moscow on the Equator. There wasn't much to do: by Saturday afternoon everything was closed. The same with Sunday. I didn't want to drive around too much because I didn't know the city, and the roads up and down the coast are very bad. So I walked. Pretty soon I was in a full sweat from the heat and the Indian Ocean moisture. I found relief in a bar.

When I arrived in Maputo, there was some election activity going on. Lots of signs and decked-out vehicles stomping for Frelimo. I’m not sure of the current political situation here, but the revolutionary spirit does seem to live on as evident by the street names: Karl Marx, Mao, Frederick Engels, Castro, Lenin of course, Ho Chi Min, avenues for Goa and Angola, and, oddly, Allende (the CIA-assassinated leftist Chilean leader) and Olof Palme (the non-CIA-assassinated Swedish Prime Minster.) I wonder what street the U.S. Embassy is on? I would think that would be a good way to tick off the Americans: rename the street after Castro or Noriega. I’m surprised the High Commission of South Africa isn’t on Mandela Avenue. Maybe Mandela wasn’t radical enough…though the Boer might disagree.

As I mentioned to Jorge in an earlier email, there’s a ‘Marginal’ or coastal road running along the Maputo ocean front. It immediately reminded me of the somewhat infamous Marginal that runs from Lisbon out to Estoril, and which has been the scene of many a high-speed crash and late-night pull-over by the cops. It’s less scary now that a new highway has been built inland. The new route is faster and safer, but the view just isn’t the Marginal.

Money matters here are complex. Not Zimbabwe complex, but probably headed in that direction. I went to a Barkley’s ATM when I got into town, punched in a 100 in local currency (the Metical) and got a single bill worth about 0.004 dollars. I have paper gum wrappers in my car that have more intrinsic value! Next, I asked for 200,000MZN, but this turned out to be only about $7.29. I gave up and decided I would offer Rand or dollars or Visa. Screw the local currency.

And that worked out just fine. Mundo’s, a restaurant just down the block from my hotel, would present you with a bill listing the cost in MZN, Rand, Euros, and dollars. I liked that; not a lot of complicated international finance and doing math on a cell phone. I paid my highway toll (Come on! What does Maputo need with a toll plaza for about 6Km of cow-free, pedestrian-free highway?) in Rand too. Of course, I got change back in Metcais coins, which even the beggars distain.

Back at the hotel, I took advantage of the rooftop pool. Swam around. Worked on my tan. Took some photos of the city and the neighborhood. Couldn't find any Vinho Verde in the hotel so I went looking for prawns and Laurentina beer. Which I found.

It wasn't a very exciting trip--until I got back to the border--but it was a nice change from my house in Mbabane and my own cooking. But 25 years of war and revolution have left an almost permanent mark on Mozambique. It's a hard place to live and move around, and so I wasn't unhappy to leave.

But there was that missing entry stamp in my passport. The border guys were mystified and I had sudden visions of them staying that way for several days. They don't move quickly in the Goba Border Post. I watched one guy working on my passport problem walk across the Post lobby at a pace so slow that small shrews lived out their entire lifespan in the interval. He drifted back. Or perhaps the rotation of the Earth brought him back around. He told me I had to pay 172 Rand for a visa, which I did. I might have suggested he simply rotate the date stamp back one day, stamp my passport, and then stamp it again with today's date. No, no. Forms have to be filled out. People have to be made to wait. Money most be collected. Change must be made.

The amazing thing is stamping passports is so fundamental to border control how could anyone forget to do it? It's the first lesson of immigration. Stamp! Hell, I'm sure some countries have already trained small primates and grey parrots to do it.

Anyway, I escaped.....into Swaziland. Next weekend I'll escape Swaziland (for a while) and head into Zululand in South Africa.

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 2:54 PM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: MOZAMBIQUE

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

Buddy, Can You Spare a Charge?

Some days I feel like one of the engineers in the movie, Apollo 13: always looking for more power, one more volt, a stray amp or two to complete the mission. This is my collection of adaptors, convertors, plugs, cables, and chargers for remaining 21st century-esque in Swaziland. I have to recharge my laptop, recharge the batteries for my camera, transfer images from my camera to my laptop, recharge my iPod (it’s my only source of movies and music), charge my cell phone and my Blackberry, and charge up the razor. Remembering what to pack for weekend trips has been a pain; I’m zero in four for remembering everything.There was a time when I traveled with just one waterproof, wind-up watch and a Minolta 101 SLR that worked just fine even without the light-meter battery. Now I’m just some pathetic electron-seeking creature weighted down with cables and plugs, not to mention spare batteries. Where’s my hand-cranked cell phone and solar-powered iPod?!

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 4:19 PM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: MISC.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009

Maybe they’re working together.

Times of Swaziland, 20 Sept. 2009

LOMAHASHA—There is panic in this community as a pack of six lions and two elephants escaped into the country from South Africa.

The animals are said to be originally from a game reserve located at Sikhukhuza in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. The lions have since killed and eaten a cow in this community and a head boy who spotted them miraculously escaped their wrath.

Police have requested the nation to be on the lookout for these animals and they have further requested the nation to stay away from them because they have the potential of killing.

Well, I guess that’s another good reason to stay out of the bush and off the ridgelines.

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 2:21 PM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: MISC.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

Strange Stars

I came to Africa knowing that it would be an alien place to me; most of my travels have been east and west and above the Equator. This was going to beterra incognita, but so too was the sky. Looking up at night, I saw none of the familiar northern constellations. No Orion. No Pole Star. Just as mass of bright, randomly scattered stars against Africa’s very black nights.Still, with a little hunting, I did eventually spot the southern hemisphere’s North Star equivalent: the Southern Cross (Crux). It’s pretty easy to find once you know what to look for. And after a little more hunting around I also found the Centaur constellation (Centaurus). I wasn’t particularly interested in this constellation but for the fact that its brightest star is Rigel Kentaurus: better known as the three-star system of Alpha Centauri, the fictional destination of the Robinsons in “Lost in Space.” I suppose if astronomers find any rocky planets orbiting the system’s yellow or orange suns in the next few years, we’ll probably find a way to go there someday. It’s only 4.3 light-years away. Of course, I’ll probably be in a rest home--on a ventilator--before we even get back to the Moon.

So now there’s a couple of familiar objects in the night-time sky. The day-lit ground, however, is still very much a mystery and I’m watching where I step.

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 8:02 AM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: MISC.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

More Shots from Kruger

POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 1:55 PM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: KRUGER

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

In Kruger

This weekend I drove up to the famed Kruger National Park in S.A. It’s about 150Km and took 3 hours with the border crossings and a wild amount of fog and low-lying clouds. It was hairy driving in the highveld and coming around one mountainous curve I suddenly came upon the ghostly images of some three dozen people dressed in white and kneeling beside the road. I couldn’t think of a better place or color of clothing with which to get to the heaven they were evidently praying for. I sent none of them on their way.

I reached the entry gate, checked in, and drove about 19Km into the park to a camp called Berg-en-Dal. This being the lowveld now, I was taking Malerone against malaria. (Parishioners in the mountains, mosquitoes in the bush. There are hazards--big and small--everywhere.)

I stayed in a brick and thatch-roofed hut near the fenced perimeter of the camp. Each of the camps is fenced to keep things from wandering in in the night and crushing or eating the guests. (At least I think all the camps are fenced. There are quite a few of them because Kruger is huge: probably the size of Israel or Ireland, with wild and rugged terrain, good roads between camps, and pretty good jeep tracks for wandering through the bush. You need a map--even if one costs 25 Rand. You don’t want to be lost out here after dark.)

I booked a late afternoon guided tour. (Always good to go with someone who knows what he’s doing, can provide lots of interesting factoids about the park and its denizens, and looks a bit like "Doctari".) Then I drove about 70Km north into the park, looking for game, and checking out the birthplace of “Jock of the Bushveld” near another camp called Pretoriuskop.

Jock, for anyone not familiar with him, was a real dog who lived in the Transvaal during the 1880’s and 90’s with his owner, Percy Fitzpatrick. Jock is the Rin Tin Tin and Lassie of South Africa, and the bedtime stories Fitzpatrick later told his kids about him and his dog became the famous book, “Jock of the Bushveld.” It’s been in continuous print since 1907; I bought a copy of the centenary edition in Pretoria last week.

So on the way north, I managed to see a lot of game. It’s hard to miss it when giraffes are walking down the middle of the road, juvenile elephants are playing “I’m the toughest” and stopping traffic, or a pack of wild dogs [photo to follow] decides to use the road as the easiest route.

The southern part of Kruger is very dry at this time of the year. The only river or stream beds I saw that weren’t dry were the fairly large Crocodile and Mlambane Rivers. This is good for game-spotting because they all have to head to the same watering holes, and the dry, leafless countryside makes it easier to spots animals lurking in the bush. Of course, it’s hard on the animals not wanting to become dinner for a lion pride or a stealthy leopard waiting at those waterholes.

I didn’t see any big cats on this trip--I missed a pride at a waterhole, and the lower part of Kruger is not good running terrain for cheetahs. But I did stop to admire a leopard kill stuck some 20 feet up a tree. It was a freshly killed giraffe. [Photo to follow.] Imagine the strength of a cat able to haul a young giraffe carcass up a tree.

Now I’m home again in Mbabane, and will probably have to go in to work. (It’s the C.O.P. for those having to work on the same thing in other embassies.) Actually, just before leaving S.A. I got pulled over for speeding. This presented some problems for me because I didn’t have my license with me and the cops usually like their tickets paid on the spot, in cash. Well, I didn’t have 750 Rand, but I did have my official passport and some fast talking--sort of like my fast driving. Anyway, I got away with a smile and a handshake, and a promise never to drive in S.A. again.

Final note: I did see one Kruger guide walk by carrying a gun case. Apparently, some of them, in some places, go about armed. Finally, it’s pretty easy to spot the tourists in their safari clothes. They look and act nothing like the real guides and local Afrikaners whose similar khaki or green dress seems so natural on them. (Yes, I was wearing a short-sleeved green safari shirt. But I bought it from LL Bean years before I ever thought of Africa. The rest of my outfit consisted of Levi jeans and a National Geographic ball cap. No bush hats and six-pocket pants for me.)

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POSTED BY EDWARD MCSWEEGAN AT 2:21 PM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: KRUGER, MALARIA, PRETORIA

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