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October 2, 2015 danlambey Leave a comment

Our final week in Africa was spent mostly in Cape Maclear at Lake Malawi where we relaxed, snorkelled with Cichlids (fish) and enjoyed eating out at the various bars and restaurants. It was a lovely place to go and reflect on what we had experienced on our travels. There were also lots of amazing craft stalls to browse, and lots of people pestering us to buy things which sometimes got to be a bit too intense.

The best way to get some peace and quiet from the hustle and bustle of the main beach was to rent a kayak and paddle across to Thumbi West Island, or take a short walk into Lake Malawi National Park and visit Otter Point. These were also the best places to swim with the Cichlids!

After our 5 days at Cape Maclear were over, we headed back into the capital city, Lilongwe. We made sure we stocked up on plenty of carvings for gifts once we got home, and then spent most of the last day trying to fit it all in our cases. The lodge in Lilongwe had no running water (not a big surprise) so we had to wash in the swimming pool.

By this point, it was hard to believe that within 48 hours we would be back in England. The feeling was a lot different from what I felt when we first flew out to Africa in February. When we left I was quite scared, I had no idea what to expect, I’d never even left Europe before and it sounded like life in Africa could be tough. But living in Africa wasn’t at all as scary as I’d imagined. It was diverse and colourful beyond my imagining, and despite the fact that many people live there without basic commodities which we take for granted in the UK, they are some of the happiest people I’ve ever met.

Flying back I was very restless and struggled to sleep. A great journey needs to have an end, and the perfect end for me was to touch down and see my family again. Our time spent in Africa was a wonderful experience beyond what I ever expected. We’ve met some incredible people and animals, and laid eyes on some awe-inspiring places. It has changed my perspectives in many ways and I am sure I will venture out again in the future, but for now I’m very happy to be back home and sharing stories with those closest to me.

Thank you to everyone who we met during our time in Africa, it is thanks to you all that we had the amazing experience that we did!

Malawi

Farewell to Kasungu

September 5, 2015 danlambey Leave a comment

After 5 weeks we have completed our final volunteer project for the Kasungu Elephants Foundation and left Kasungu National Park. We are terribly sad to leave such a wonderful place and want to say a huge thank you to Remke for hosting us and hope the projects that she and Matt are working on will benefit the park long into the future.

Unfortunately, we have left on a sour note with Lifupa Lodge (the lodge in the National Park) due to the behaviour of their staff. In the last week we had the lodge manager try to demand $600 from us even though we hadn’t stayed in the lodge’s guest accommodation (it is clear that they are not making enough money due to the lack of guests). We also became aware that the lodge had been lying to guests, claiming that they “fund and run anti-poaching patrols”. Although the lodge is supposed to be a conservation effort and should be helping to fund Matt and Remke’s work, this is far from the truth, and currently it is doing more to try and take money from them. And finally, on our very last day, I had to witness a member of staff from the lodge, working on a pipe right outside our house, throw a heavy metal object at a passing elephant (Fupa, one of our favourites who often comes to the house to say hello to us) whilst laughing. To say we were furious and disgusted is an understatement. We responded by writing a strongly worded but professional email to the lodge manager raising all of these issues (and several more), also raising the issues with Act to Protect (the owners of the lodge concession) and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife manager from the park. We have been assured that all of the issues will be dealt with seriously by the DNPW, and received a rather rude response from the lodge manager himself telling me these things aren’t any of my business. We hope that things will change and improve there soon because the park needs a successful lodge to help fund the efforts to save the remaining wildlife in the park.

Aside from this, we have had a fantastic time and really enjoyed working on our projects with the Kasungu Elephants Foundation. Here is a roundup of our last days in the park!

The Beehive Fence Project

We had to work hard to get it done, but along with two promising funding proposals, we completed our 24 page report assessing the possibility of constructing a beehive fence on the border of Kasungu National Park. If the funding becomes available I am confident that the project could be a success and it will be interesting to see what happens over the coming months!

Elephants

We had been waiting a long time to see some particular elephants, and in the last few days two of them made an appearance for us. First we met Zere, a cheerful one-tusked male who bounded out of the trees by the dam one day and greeted his friends, before joining them for some play fighting in the water. On our last day a huge crowd of elephants gathered on the opposite bank of the dam after Fupa had fled from the hostile lodge staff at our house. Amongst the crowd was the PPA family and their 6 month old baby, Mzanga. Mzanga is tiny and absolutely adorable.

Anti-Poaching Drone

The Anti-Poaching Unit have had a drone donated to them, and it looks like it will become a really useful tool in the efforts to catch poachers. We spent a few days with Matt helping him get to grips with flying it, controlling the camera and tracking people running through the bush using the thermal camera. The drone can reach speeds of 90km/h and is generally just awesome. Controlled via an iPad and an incredibly complex looking control pad, live images are fed back to us as it flies. This makes looking for poachers in the bush much easier, and believe me, it is nearly impossible to hide from it.

Dam Walk

One morning we took a walk around the dam with one of the park scouts, seeing lots of birds, and the Hippos and Pukus up close.

Chess Set

Matt and Remke have teamed up with a craftsman in Lilongwe to make exclusive handmade “scouts vs poachers” chess sets. The board and pieces are absolutely beautiful and it is hoped that sales will help to raise more money for their work.

Black Rock

We spent our last evening up on Black Rock watching the sunset. It is a gorgeous place and I will really miss the views of the park from up there.

Other pictures

Here are some more pictures of things we have seen over the last couple of weeks 🙂

Next Steps

Our volunteer work is finally over, after some fascinating projects and some great experiences. We have decided to spend the last week of our stay in Africa at Lake Malawi, relaxing and reflecting on what we have seen and done. This place is unbelievably beautiful and besides the constant pestering from people trying to sell us things along the beach, we are going to have a wonderful rest before we head back to England. I am getting very excited to come back and see lots of familiar faces. See you soon!

Malawi

Kasungu National Park

August 23, 2015 danlambey Leave a comment

For the last four weeks we have been living in Kasungu National Park in Malawi, doing volunteer work for the Kasungu elephants Foundation (www.kasunguelephants.org), run by Remke Lasance. We have been living in the Anti-poaching unit house next to the dam at Lifupa Lodge in the middle of the park, 56km from the town of Kasungu.

chopping wood for fire to make a hot shower

The location is gorgeous, and the lodge here has incredible potential but a remarkable lack of guests due to poor marketing and management. We have no fences around our house, we are literally living in the wild. We regularly have elephants on our doorstep, as well as occasionally hippos and leopards in our garden. So we have to be very careful outside, especially at night. The dam often attracts animals, the hippos are always somewhere by the water, elephants regularly come to drink and there are always fish eagles, kingfishers and yellow-billed kites hanging around. And we often have visits from Remke’s cat, Fulu, too.

Malawian Standard Dog. All dogs look like this here.

There is one big problem with this park – it has been savaged by poaching over the last few decades. As recently as 1992 there were over 800 elephants, and now there are only around 50 remaining. So few, in fact, that we already know most of them by name. And not just elephants are poached, buffalo and antelope are also poached for meat. It is incredibly hard to protect such a huge area of land with very limited resources, but that’s what Remke and Matt (from the APU) are aiming to do. The protection put in place by the park management itself is simply insufficient for what is required, much of the park border is unfenced and many of the staff are alcoholics, unmotivated and incapable of doing a good job of protecting the animals.

Matt generally takes on ex-military volunteers for the APU who help him with patrols of the park and arrest any poachers they find. They have already seen a decrease in the rate of animals bing poached as a result. Remke is focussed more on monitoring the elephants and their movements to be able to develop better ways of protecting them. Both of them have an incredible passion for what they’re doing here and have some really exciting projects coming up.

Generally, living in a remote area of Malawi is a very strange experience. It is a very poor country and there is a great deal of corruption and, as I’ve mentioned, alcoholism. It is very rare to see a person with white skin in these rural villages and we have even come across some children who had never seen a white person before. One actually cried when he saw us. But as a white person, I am seen as a symbol of money. People are very friendly, but often they are trying to befriend us before asking us for money or our possessions. When we drive through local villages we are usually met by children shouting “Mazungu!” (“White person!”) and waving happily, though some of them simply run towards the car and shout “Give money!!”. Maybe one time we will stop so I can tell them how much student debt I have (in local currency it’s tens of millions of Kwacha…). I am actually now getting used to attracting large crowds when we stop to buy vegetables and it’s not unusual to have people take pictures too.

Black Rock

One of the highlights of Kasungu National Park is black rock, a large climbable rock in the middle of the park which has incredible views which stretch as far as the border with Zambia. We watched the sunset there one night and then saw a leopard run across the road on our way home! 🙂

The Elephants

We have seen the remaining population of elephants a lot of times in the last four weeks. They love to come and drink at the dam and seem to feel safe around the lodge and our house. We are learning their names and their different attitudes – Panja is adorable, Fupa is usually very chilled and Lifuzu always seems very keen to come as close to the house as possible to say hello to us. We all have whistles to use when the elephants are nearby to let them know we are around. This way we can’t surprise them and they can decide whether they’re happy to stay around or leave.

One time we forgot to whistle near Fupa, he saw Remke making a sudden movement and gave a mock charge which was TERRIFYING. But he soon decided we weren’t worth the hassle and wandered off and ripped a couple of trees down to show off his strength. Generally the elephants have poor eyesight so you can get very close to them without them seeing you, but you have to be aware of the wind direction because obviously they can smell and hear you if they are downwind.

One morning the elephants came to visit us at Remke’s house and we saw a huge number of the males having their breakfast of leaves and oranges. Lifuzu came over to say hello and ended up literally at the doorstep. He could have easily touched me with his trunk. It was incredible to be so close to an elephant in the wild, and very nice that he didn’t try to threaten us in any way! 🙂

Here are a big bunch of our elephant pics 🙂 –

Me watching a group of bachelors in the water

Our Volunteer Projects

Beehive Fence Project

Our main long-term project whilst we have been here has been to investigate the possibility of constructing a beehive fence on the eastern border of the park by a small village called Mndaka. We have visited the proposed fence site, visited local beekeepers and held meeting with the Department for National Parks and Wildlife, COOPI and the local VNRC. We are writing a large report on whether we think the project should go ahead (so far the signs are very positive!) and we have also been working on proposals to get the project funded.

Ruby and Remke examining elephant crop raid damage

Walking the fence line towards the Lingadzi River

A local beekeeper’s traditional log hive

The visit to the local VNRC was a very interesting experience, around 70 local people were at the meeting to hear our proposal, and the big area chief even paid the meeting an unexpected visit, which was greeted by a lot of bowing and rhythmic clapping from the locals. He then asked us for diesel money. Cheeky. But another example of how most people just expect us to have money to give them.

Camera traps

Another little project we have worked on is setting up camera traps near our house to catch footage of which animals which are passing by, particularly at night when we are asleep! We have had some really interesting animals, including leopard, warthog, hyena, civet, genet, hippo, puku and elephant (of course).

One morning I went to check our camera trap and found it had been smashed, what could have done it?

There were lots of potential culprits, but luckily we had video evidence! We had videos of warthogs, a civet cat and a puku on the camera trap that night. But finally it all became clear when we found footage of a hyena chewing his way through the top of the camera for 15 minutes. Thanks hyena!

Dung Collecting

Remke is also involved in a study to take elephant DNA samples, this means collecting fresh dung! When she went away for a couple of days it was left to me and Ruby to try and collect some. First we saw a tuskless female which we named Kamanda pooing on the opposite bank, so we called for a scout to escort us to the scene of the crime and collected a sample. Just a few days later one of the males left some dung for us by the lake right near our house so we scooped that up too! It is important to learn about the genetic diversity of the remaining elephant population because otherwise it will be difficult to help this population to recover without inbreeding.

Walking to the poo site with Ruby and Vincent

ID Booklet

We also worked to complete another one of Remke’s projects, a Kasungu Elephants ID booklet. This helps her to identify elephants which are seen and follow the movements of individuals and families. We also made a Quick ID Booklet that we can carry around when we are on the lookout for elephants, which has proved to be very useful! We identify the elephants using unique features such as notches/holes in their ears and tusk characteristics, Fupa also has an obvious kink in his tail.

Lifuzu with distinctive notches and holes in his left ear

It won’t be long until our time in Kasungu National Park is over, from here we will be travelling to Lake Malawi to take a week long holiday before flying home. See you soon!