Malawi Independence Day

Cuba lies so close to our shores and yet has been shunned by the US for most of my life. It was on my list of places to visit one day because of the contradictions that make it so fascinating. Is Castro an idealist or cruel dictator? Is he Communist or populist? Why have successive […]

After a short flight from Cancun in a vintage Russian plane, my group was driven into Havana past sugar cane fields, which gave way to houses, tiendas (small shops) and the shaded parks of the suburbs. We passed baroque and neo-classical mansions as well as more modern buildings but all were in poor condition and […]

This is the text of a book by the same name available from Amazon. Included in that book are two related items:  Mountain Women, and Gifts from the Poorest of the Poor. When the Peace Corps invited me to teach in Tanzania, I was delighted. I had passed through East Africa on my way home […]

Mwanza 16 January, 1966 Here at last! Steve Sterk, Winnie Golliday and I climbed onto the train in Dar-es-Salaam with several others in our group. Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) usually take second class, but those seats were sold out, so Winnie I and travelled first class. The car was a bit younger and cleaner than […]

Wednesday, April 13, 1966. Dar-es-Salaam Dear Family, School closed a week earlier than we’d planned. Three religious holidays were coming up in a row, so Mrs. King’ori, our new headmistress, decided to send the girls home on Saturday, April 2nd. The girls on the athletics (track & field) team stayed that day for the meet. […]

Saturday, May 7, 1966. Dear Allen and all, I have launched my career as a senior science mistress. Four classes with 140 students totalhave now been exposed to “discovery science” from my class in Dar. One class is doing photosynthesis and the other transpiration, closely related subjects. Each student has to do an experiment, and […]

Friday, August 11, 1966. Dear Family, Goodness. A letter from each of you! Pop, when I decide to rough it and become a hermit maybe I’ll go out to your land in Prince George. I’ll write a book about beavers. Do they have a high school there in need of a clever science teacher? If […]

Tuesday, August 30, 1966 Mwanza Dear Mom, For the three days after I got back, the weather was cool and rainy or overcast. On Sunday, twenty-seven teachers from Mwanza, including six from Bwiru, were going of a field trip to learn about the local culture, so I hoped we would not get wet. The Sukumu […]

Saturday, November 26 Dear Carol, The girls are off for home, and we have almost two month’s break. Kay and I are staying here for a while before driving to Kampala, where she will visit friends and I will go to the Peace Corps doc and dentist. Thence to Nairobi to meet you and Mom […]

Wednesday, February 1 Dear Mom and Carol, I hope you’re enjoying Rome, and your feet are holding up. Things are getting back to normal after the break. It was so nice having you here. Now you can understand what’s up when I write. Miss Inkpen is getting over the loss of her beloved dachshund, and […]

The bleak landscape of East Falkland Island came into clear view as I pressed my cheek against the plane’s cold window, surveying this remote island. Scrubby bushes peppered rugged hillsides, and one paved road dribbled off over a rise. Next to a few lonely airport buildings at Mount Pleasant Military Complex, a British flag flapped straight out, caught in a stiff wind. I had waited a long time to realize this dream trip, and at last, it had begun.

Yay! I’m so close to one of the most remote places on earth. Next stop, Antarctica!

When our plane touched down, my spirits rose. No more plane rides. It had been a long haul to reach this remote place. When we stepped onto the tarmac, the British term for asphalt, a balmy summer wind whipped our clothes and hair. Since the seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere, it was a nice change from the chilly November weather we had left at home in Portland, Oregon. The British Royal Air Force had built this small international airport after the Falklands War in 1982. The friction with Argentina over the possession of these islands remained after the brief war, so to protect the Falklanders who are mostly British, they made the airport part of a military complex located 37 miles from the capital, Stanley.

My first impressions of the Falklands were fuzzy after our two-and-a-half-day trip from Oregon. My only break occurred between flights in Santiago, Chile where I saw my first Andean Condor sailing high above a ski resort at the end of a steep mountain road—a most impressive sight.

After landing, we rode on a small bus for half an hour toward Stanley, home to most of the Falkland inhabitants. The landscape looked barren, but our chatty bus driver pointed out the short shrub heath, and the tall tussock grass, a coarse white grass with broad leaves that thrashes in strong breezes. The bus driver told us her family heats their house with peat, the partially decomposed tussock grass that forms in acidic swamps, abundant in the Falkland Islands. The acidic swamps are also the reason why there are no native trees. The few farms we passed sat near well-grazed pastures, and depended on prickly gorse planted around the houses and barns to break the near constant wind.

Occasionally, formations called stone runs or stone rivers, broke the monotony of the landscape. They are a curiosity found throughout the Falklands and scientists have studied them for years. When granite froze and thawed repeatedly during the last Ice Age, this geological activity created the stone runs by breaking apart the rock and rounding the edges into smaller chunks. The runs have the appearance of water seeping down the gullies, only instead of water there are heaps of rounded stones that form a flowing pattern.

OUR FIRST FALKLAND BIRDS
The polar expedition ship, Clipper Adventurer, waited in the next bay east of Stanley. The crew prepared for our arrival while all the passengers stopped for lunch in Stanley. This left us plenty of time to see the quaint and very British capital that was only a block long.

For a birder, the best thing about travel is that you can easily see birds that are locally abundant in a new environment, but often scarce or nonexistent elsewhere in the world. This was true in the Falklands, which is home to 59 bird species that habitually breed on the islands. Most of them are water birds.

Directly across the street from the Upland Goose Hotel, our lunch stop, a finger of the sea stretched toward the town, creating an ideal spot for water birds to congregate along the shoreline. Several unfamiliar birds immediately drew the attention of my Portland Audubon group.

Falkland Islands, Stanley upper right, Carcass and Westpoint Islands upper left

This was my first international birding trip and I knew I had a lot to learn, so I shuffled up close to the three birders who seemed to know the names of the birds on the water. Bill pointed to quite a large gull that fluttered a foot above the shallow water. After the third shallow dive, the bird came up with a small snail and flew off. Bill said, “Kelp Gull. Found only in the southern hemisphere. We’ll see that further south.”

“Oh, look,” John said, jutting his chin toward a small grey goose with a brownish head walking along the shore. “That’s a Ruddy-headed Goose. Threatened, and most of them live here in the Falklands.”

“A steamer-duck,” another birder quietly chimed in, loud enough for us to pass on to the others in a very soft voice so as not to spook the bird.

“Boy, it sure is, but which one?” John agreed. “Both the Falklands Steamer-duck and the Flying Steamer-duck live here.”

A pair of dark grey ducks floated on the water as the subject of the birders’ discussion about field marks and behaviors. Their observations boiled down to, “If only that duck would fly, we would know if it’s the Flying Steamer Duck and not the Falkland Steamer Duck, but even they don’t like to fly in spite of their name.”

Maybe annoyed by the discussion, the two birds suddenly jumped up and churned their way ten feet out into the water, as if trying to fly, but not quite taking off. The splashy and frantic movements reminded me of a paddle steamer.

“Well, that’s what steamer-ducks do, but it didn’t help with the I.D.,” Bill sighed.

The experts got out their books, and I listened while they tried to determine which duck we were observing.

Steamer-ducks have shorter than usual wings and are quite heavy, easily up to ten pounds. Scientists are still debating whether their weight evolved before or after the evolutionary change in their shortened wingspan, which rendered all but one species flightless.

My brain soon filled with birding minutiae and refused to take in any more. So, I pulled away from the discussion to watch those rare and peculiar ducks paddling around in their home territory. I felt jittery with glee; the breeze on my face, the sun on my back, and in a remote place far from the crowds. Perfect.

My stomach grumbled. As I passed the experts on my way to the hotel, I overheard one of them say that he knew a researcher who studied steamer-ducks. While out in the field one day, the researcher stepped too close to a pair of the ducks and got a good crack on his shin. These flightless ducks defend themselves by using two keratinized knobs that grow on the middle joint of their wings, great for whacking a potential threat. That researcher got a firsthand experience with those wings. I studied the ducks for a moment longer looking at their wings, but their red knobs were tucked under their feathers.

The author on the streets of Stanley

The Upland Goose Hotel put on a luncheon spread for all 75 of the eager Antarctic passengers who arrived in waves, our Audubon group among them. The buffet overflowed with creative dishes. The scent of baked bread and sweets fresh out of the oven wafted through the dining area with a yeasty fragrance. We feasted on several kinds of quiche, baked fish covered with cucumber slices, potato salads, and green salads trimmed with sliced hard-boiled eggs. We may have been on a remote island far from urban comforts, but this buffet was as plentiful and savory as any culinary spread in a good restaurant back home. The hotel employee keeping the platters replenished explained that some local farmers built green houses on the island that defy the winds and cool weather in order to provide an ample bounty during the tourist season, their summer months from October to April.

WAR AND LAND MINES
After lunch, I decided to visit the Land Mine Museum situated near the Upland Goose Hotel. The Falklanders had built this museum after their war with Argentina, and I wanted to learn more about this little understood conflict.

Land Mine Display

Walking along the picturesque waterfront felt divine, a great way to stretch my legs. Caught up in the moment, I almost passed the obscure small museum. Once inside the dark lobby, I studied the displays that explained the history of the 72-day war. Great Britain first claimed the Falkland Islands in 1690, and then lost control to Spain. Britain reclaimed the archipelago in 1833 and installed a governor, which initiated the first permanent settlement. Argentina is physically the closest country and the logical claimant, and has disputed Great Britain’s sovereignty for years. Some say that internal unrest in Argentina spurred the invasion of the Falklands on April 2, 1982 after claiming the islands as theirs, again.

During the war, troops from both Britain and Argentina planted almost twenty thousand land mines throughout the islands, including thousands along the coastline near Stanley, thus the reason for this little museum. Great Britain prevailed and after the short war, the few attempts to disarm the landmines resulted in too many injuries. The British military fenced off the 117 minefields and set up the Land Mine Museum to educate the townspeople on how to recognize and deal with mines they might find in the ground. At the museum, a dim display of about a dozen types of landmines included labels with each mine’s name and its potential dangers. The heavy mines, often buried in the soft peat, could still be dangerous years later to anyone digging in the peat.

Restricting access to the minefields had been a boon for the shrinking penguin population. During the whaling years, workers used penguin bodies as fuel to render whale blubber, diminishing the penguin population. In more recent years, overfishing in the area depleted the penguins’ food supply, further devastating their numbers. But penguins are not heavy enough to set off the land mines, so they have survived in areas where people, cows, and sheep have been prohibited for their own safety. I love that this unintended outcome of the war benefited the penguins nicely.

Economy of the Falklands
Archeologists have not identified any artifacts indicating that indigenous people lived on this land. The only signs of human existence in the Falklands are from people who came to the islands in more recent centuries. Since the 1700s, ships stopped at the Falklands for supplies and repairs, whalers on their way to whaling grounds in Antarctica and trade vessels preparing to round the tip of South America.

From the beginning, Falklanders have led a hard and lonely existence. The current inhabitants are all transplants, mostly rugged British settlers. The first permanent settlers arrived after Great Britain installed a governor in 1833. Britain established a land-based whaling station there in 1909 to process whale blubber for oil, but the small number of whales in the area did not support the whaling station. The hunters added elephant seals and penguins to the rendering vats, but the numbers still proved inadequate. Britain opened another processing plant on the South Georgia Islands and closed the one in the Falklands in 1915, leaving the workers to find other ways to survive.

Many islanders consider the 1982 war as the event that defined the beginning of the Falklands’ modern history. At the time of the war, fewer than 2,000 people lived in the Falklands permanently, mostly on East Falkland Island in and around Stanley. When we visited in 2001, the population was 3,053, which did not include contractors and military people living on the island temporarily.

Products from sheep continue to be important to the economy of the Falklands, and income from fishing and tourism is increasing. After the war, the burgeoning interest in Antarctica prompted the arrival of huge ocean liners full of tourists that stopped in Stanley on the way south. In the year I visited, more than 22,000 tourists passed through. Some tourists came to see the remnants of the Falklands War; others were on their way to Antarctica.

East Falkland Island

Tussock Grass

After everyone finished a hearty lunch, our group enjoyed a quick tour around East Falkland Island to see more of the surrounding environs and learn more about the residents. Our local guide told us she fell in love with the Falklands when she arrived on a cruise ship in 1980, and decided to move to the island. During our visit, her family was one of the few still heating their home with peat, the only local and plentiful source of fuel. She helped her family cut peat blocks out of the bogs and stack them for drying. Our guide noted that burning peat formed from tussock grass smells like burning hair, which is probably why the rest of the island’s inhabitants switched to oil for heating. The imported oil is pricier, but less work to obtain, and emits no unpleasant odors.

On our tour, we passed small settlements, some consisting of one farmer’s house and outbuildings, protected from the wind by head-high, prickly gorse. Beyond the wind barrier grew additional thick clumps of tussock grass we had seen all day on the barren, windswept expanses. Fitzroy, one of the settlements, is located on the ring of roads that touch the battlefield sites throughout East Falkland Island. During the war, Fitzroy Settlement had been the site of Britain’s greatest blunder. During an air fight that left their base unprotected, 51 soldiers died and nearly 100 were injured. That story reminded me of the stories of our Civil War, where elderly ladies watched the battles from their farmhouse windows. I wondered, Did those remote Falklanders stay for the battle, or did they wisely seek the safety of Stanley? Our guide had so much to tell us that I didn’t get a chance to ask her about that.

As I often do, I tried to imagine myself living there. With such a small population, everybody would know everyone’s business, something that made me feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, the community would be tight, tolerant, and helpful since they all had to depend on each other. I have enjoyed living in communities like that for short periods of time, which was enough for me.

In a small bay, out of sight from the town, we climbed off our small bus where our ship waited at the pier. At last, we were about to embark on our journey to Antarctica!

Okavango Delta

For years just a reference to the Okavango Delta made me long to witness Botswana’s magnificent and massive wildlife habitat. This legendary phenomenon is the largest inland delta the world, over three million lush acres when the surrounding areas have become dry. Called the “Jewel of the Kalahari,” this delta teems with more than 530 species of birds, and 200 species of mammals.

When I booked the birding tour to Botswana and Namibia I did not know much about Namibia. I would soon learn that both countries have unforgettable wildlife in breathtaking settings.

I first learned of the Okavango Delta through documentaries that captured the herds of elephants sloshing through knee-high water, thousands of grunting wildebeests pounding across dried grasses, and waves of pronking antelopes, vigorously leaping with legs straight and backs arched. Filmmakers always document the Delta during the migration between March and August for the greatest dramatic impact. Millions of animals return to the braiding waterways and some 150,000 islands created when the Okavango River floods the expansive savannah. As the dry season in Southern Africa reaches its peak, thirsty wildlife of all kinds plod across desiccated deserts to the life-sustaining waters that glitter between islets of grass and trees in the Delta.

At the first documentary, a tour of Botswana became a priority. In May 2009 I joined a birding group through Field Guides Birding Tours. Terry Stevenson had guided my previous trip to East Africa, and I was impressed with him as a skilled birder and delightful storyteller. When he mentioned that his next trip would include two weeks in Namibia, followed by one week in Botswana I knew I had to go. Terry explained that we only needed one week in Botswana to view birds and wildlife because they are so densely populated in the Okavango Delta. What a hook!

Before the trip, I discovered an exquisite photo in one of my calendars of an enormous pink sand dune at dawn. The knife-sharp ridge line curved like a snake, slicing the restless sand into bright sun and deep shadow. Those startling dunes were located in Namibia, a country that I would soon learn about firsthand.

Geographically, Namibia abuts the Atlantic Ocean directly north of South Africa and lies west of land-locked Botswana. The two countries share many attributes: dry climate, low population, sparse and unreliable rainfall and an abundance of astonishing wildlife.

Namibia+Botswana

The First Peoples

As a teenager, I read The Lost World of the Kalahari by Laurens van der Post. Post’s account of an expedition up the Zambezi River to the Kalahari Desert of Bechuanaland, now Botswana, in search of the last tribes of the Bushmen was published in 1958. The chronicle of this dangerous journey into unfamiliar territory under harsh conditions filled me with the wonder of survival in harsh places.

The Kalahari Desert covers a large part of both Namibia and Botswana. For at least twenty-six thousand years the indigenous peoples roamed widely throughout southern Africa. Those people are called the San, or Bushmen, and include several hunter-gatherer groups. Rock art paintings marked their presence and their passages in the Kalahari. Individuals are easily recognized by their small stature and usually lighter skin than the dark Bantus. Family groups moved from one source of water and food to the next in an easy and respectful rotation.

Archaeologists have agreed for years that modern humans evolved in Africa. In May of 2009, Dr. Sarah Tishkoff and her research team published their ten-year study in the journal Science. They concluded that the San have the oldest genetic lineage on earth, that they are the descendants of the ancestors for all modern humans. All other modern races are descended from the San’s ancestors.

By the fourteenth century, Bantu tribes had begun to move into northern Namibia from Angola. By the seventeenth century, the Herero people had migrated from the East African Lakes to settle there as well.  As the agrarian population grew, the Bantu pushed the hunter-gatherer San further into the challenging Kalahari Desert.

By the time of Post’s trip, the population of the Bushmen had been diminished dramatically. Their survival depended on the challenges of the Kalahari Desert, the only safe place left for them after the encroachment of later arrivals. Then, the survivors were told to leave in favor of game reserves and tourist income.

The Great Boer Trek (Namibia)

The first European merchants established a trading post in Cape Colony, South Africa in 1652 to support trade with Asia. Over time, some retired employees moved away from the trading post to farm the rich land nearby, condoned by the merchants as long as they agreed to sell all their produce back to the company. Their descendants identify as Afrikaners, the Dutch word for African. They included Dutch, German, and French settlers who had developed their own language and culture, influenced by their interactions with Africans and Asians.

Tensions grew between the Dutch East India Company that supported the Cape Town colony as a profit center and the employees who wanted to live outside the rules of the company. As a result, in 1835 waves of the pioneers who called themselves “Voortrekkers” began a northeastern migration in wagon trains from South Africa that would be called the Great Boer Trek. By 1849 some Voortrekkers arrived and settled in Namibia where Windhoek, Namibia’s capitol, is now located. Indigenous people, the Namaqua tribe to the south and the Herero to the north, destroyed the town twice, but after fifty years of bloodshed the Afrikaners, the settled Voortrekkers, won out and in the late 1800s the settlement began to thrive.

This was all happening inland from the sea. Ships came and went from the protected bays of the coast, but no permanent settlements emerged.

The German Incursion

In 1884, Germans seized Angra Pequeña, one of the first incidents in the European “Scramble for Africa,” eventually resulting in the colony known as South West Africa and later, Namibia. The Germans committed unspeakable atrocities on the indigenous peoples, including the banishment of some 8000 Herero tribesmen and their families to perish in the Kalahari Desert.

After World War I, the League of Nations placed South West Africa under a British mandate, with the administration of the territory entrusted to the government of the Union of South Africa. The economy grew, tightening the bonds between the two, while most of the wealth accrued to the whites. In 1948 South Africa implemented its apartheid laws in South West Africa, the laws that institutionalized racial discrimination against black Africans. Over the next several bloody years, the tribes fought for independence against the South African desire to annex the mineral rich territory. In 1988, the effort collapsed, and the United Nations supervised the creation of the nation of Namibia.

 Another Path to Independence (Botswana)

In 1872, Chief Khama III united several of the warring Tswana tribes to fight the encroaching Afrikaners who settled on the best grazing land. The white settlers’ cattle displaced antelopes, zebras and other grazers important to the Tswana and the San. Overwhelmed by the numbers, Chief Khama III approached the British to protect them. After a British military expedition surveyed the land, Britain agreed to the creation of the Protectorate of Bechuanaland in 1885, and agreed to share leadership equally with the local chiefs.

In the 1890s, when British mining magnate and politician Cecil Rhodes, then President of South Africa, tried to take control of the region that promised diamonds and gold, three of the chiefs sailed to England to convince the British government to not support Rhodes. He vehemently believed that the white race was “the first race in the world” and black Africans were a “subject race.” In time, history would judge Rhodes and his ruthless imperialism as an “architect of apartheid.”

During that period, clashes between the San and the Bantus increased as well. While the San were not pastoralists, the animals they relied on for food needed good grazing land—the same land the Bantus wanted to claim as theirs. Eventually, in the face of the more powerful forces, the peaceful San retreated to the Okavango Delta where the millions of tsetse flies bred in the wide swaths of the delta’s waterways gave them a measure of safety.  The tsetse flies spread diseases fatal to the Bantus and their cattle. However, the nomadic San had lived in the area for thousands of years and were more adaptable to the environment’s challenges.

As the interlopers spread across southern Africa, Namibia and Botswana developed as two countries with their separate histories. I learned this after our birding tour in 2010. The wildlife drew me to Namibia and Botswana, and history enriched my understanding of the land I had visited.