SKATING WITHOUT SKATES, WALKING WITHOUT SNOWSHOES, CITY WITHOUT SNOW, & SAP RUNNING EARLY

This winter the fields looked more brown than white

Sometimes there's a dusting of snow

To be honest, we have seen some beautiful snow here.  Well, not precisely here, as in right here, but nearby, in the mountains.  On the first of March, for example, while the Champlain valley was experiencing mere flurries there was a virtual blizzard up at Rikerts at Middlebury’s Breadloaf campus where we had gone with Lesley to cross-country ski.  When we skied in the open it was pure Antarctica: howling winds and pelting snow, almost a whiteout. Once in the woods the snow turned turned gentle, most of the trails untracked powder.  Downhill skiing has had its great moments too.  It’s just that there have been too few of those days.

Having no snow to shovel or plow has its advantages.  Obviously.  The fields are easy to walk about in, especially with the dogs.  No drifts to push through, no need to get all toggled up.  For those who ice skate, this has been an excellent winter.  Even though it hasn’t been steadily below freezing the ice has been amazingly thick.  We have walked on ice just offshore on Lake Champlain, have seen people ice skating there, and heard talk of prime conditions on Dead Creek where you can reportedly skate for kilometers.  (A neighbor told us about how people who routinely skate on the Lake or Dead Creek carry a rope at each end of which a block of wood is attached with a stout protruding nail–if you fall through the ice you use the nails like ice picks to pull yourself out.)  

Our pond has been frozen since early winter.  The weekend of Ken’s 80^th birthday (yes, hard to believe–80!) everyone here for the celebration took off for a hike across the road through the field to Otter Creek, starting off with a little pond sliding.  There were many styles of pond sliding as no one had ice skates.

It was the first time we’d walked all the way across the field to Otter Creek from our house.  When we look west its easy to imagine the Creek flowing just beyond the distant trees.  Not so.  It may be as much as a mile away.  The texture of the field is more complex than it looks.  There’s a rocky hillock (in Africa this would be called a koppie) right in the middle, and the smooth appearing field is really waves of rising and falling ground that appear flat only from a distance.

Pastures in warm winters like this one present complications to farmers, the kind of complications that are completely foreign to anyone who lives in the city or suburb.   Or are newcomers to the country, like us.  In our local paper I read that alfalfa depends on good snow cover to prevent its fragile root system from heaving out of the ground.  There are dangers for domestic animals too.  Wildly varying temperature swings can begin a causation chain than begins with barn ventilation.  Many barns are closed tightly in winter, limiting ventilation.  But when the temperature warms rapidly animals (mostly cows, I guess) can be exposed to respiratory pathogens.   Then there’s this:  “During the cold weather in a normal winter, intestinal parasites become encysted in the animals’ (horses this time) gut walls and are inactive.  Since weather has been warmer than normal, the parasites have not encysted and horses are paying the price with an increased number of colic cases, a potentially serious condition.”  Then there are the sheep and goats and new lambs (lambing season is approaching)–all endangered by parasites.  As if this wasn’t enough, “In adult cattle the winter has brought an increase in foot rot, caused by frozen uneven ground causing stress on the skin between the claws of the foot, allowing the organism, which lives in the soil and organic material around the farm, to cause disease—a challenge to treat on organic dairy farms.”  Severe winters undoubtedly have their own costs, but this sounds like the margins are really slim for a “good” winter.

The sap has been running early.  There’s some concern on the part of big time maple syrup producers as to quality this year.  Will the lack of snowpack mean less sugar in the syrup?  Will the varying temperatures affect production?  The weekend of Ken’s birthday with many hands available, our sugaring operation was set up for Year Two Syrup.  While we were in New York City one recent weekend we received this email from Chris, our de facto maple sap wrangler:

On the sugaring front, we reached critical mass on Thursday and had to do a boil Thursday night because the temps were dropping.  I got started around 6pm and the night ended at 1:30.  The evening was still and the stars brilliant.  I missed sharing the experience with you all, although the solitude was delicious.  At 11:30 a lone coyote howled for probably 10 minutes and he/she was in the field between your house and the Gallant’s.  Moments after the coyote stopped, an owl treated me to a guttural kind of hoot in the woods just to the east.  That was my first night boil and it was altogether different.  I did not have the endurance to finish all the sap; the last hour and a half was trying.  Interestingly, our trees were flowing more that your trees, I suspect because of the solar exposure.  I am guessing that our trees will also dry up sooner.  All said, about 6 quarts of excellent syrup.  Maple sugar is starting to run in my veins.

Two inches of snow here in the valley.

We read Chris’ email in a hotel room in New York–deliciously far from the scene he described.  It’s the contrast that’s the beauty part.  What better than to be in NYC (where we saw a photography show, a musical, a drama, an art exhibit, a concert, and ate Korean, Thai, Austrian, Israeli-Druse, and walked until our legs hurt) and know that at the same time our trees are making syrup to the music of the woods.  

When I grew up in New York I never felt as if I lived in the “real” America.  To me, New York was a separate world with different points of reference.  I remember a song from childhood that began, “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go,” that was for me about another place entirely, a place I’d rather be.  In Queens there were no woods, no river (I didn’t count the East River or the Hudson) and there was no grandmother’s house (grandmother and everyone else lived in apartments or attached houses, and they didn’t count either).  Now I can like New York.  The buildings.  The streets.  The people.  All of it.  Wait, let me qualify that.  I still can’t stand Queens.

OF MEAT AND MINES

Houses in Port Henry, NY

The Police Blotter in our local newspaper, February 2:

”Received a complaint from a North Street resident about a suspicious white male in his 40’s.  The man apparently asked the resident if he wanted to purchase some steak or chicken.  The resident told the police he had a friend who encountered a similar incident, and the salesman later broke into his friend’s house.  The suspicious man’s black Toyota pickup truck had New York plates, two freezers in the back, and a sticker that read “Prime.”  There were no further complaints related to such activity.”

This is a story that belongs to this part of the country in several ways. First of all, there’s the issue of meat. 

You might well ask:  What’s the likelihood of someone knocking on your door and asking if you want to buy meat?  Stolen meat?  Poached meat?  Who would buy meat without knowing where it came from, anyway?  No, I don’t think anyone is going to knock on our door anytime soon looking to sell meat. However, up here buying meat from people or places that are not actual meat markets is not unusual.  After all, people who shoot deer may end up with some two hundred pounds of venison.  And people who raise animals for their meat sometimes end up with more than they need.  At the end of this month, for example, we will be buying half a pig (the other half going to my daughter’s family in Newburyport) from someone who will have more pork on his hands than he needs after having several pigs slaughtered.  There’s meat for sale all over the place at different times of the year, grass-fed, organic, or not.

So much for meat.

Looking back toward Vermont from the New York side, Port Henry

More interesting is the fact that the suspicious man’s black pickup truck had New York plates.  Maybe mention of the New York plates was inadvertent. In any case, some Vermonters have a thing about New York State, or at least the part that’s directly across Lake Champlain.  I heard a story, possibly apocryphal, about someone from Vermont, I think it was an ice fisherman, who left his pickup on the Lake overnight, quite near the New York side.  Too near, I guess.  Next day, the pickup was on blocks, all the tires gone.  If he’d parked it on the Vermont side, you see, this wouldn’t have happened.  So they say.

The New York side of the Lake is noticeably different from the Vermont side.  At least one town immediately across Lake Champlain–I’m thinking of Essex, for example, at the New York end of the Charlotte, Vermont, ferry–has that old New England character with quaint buildings, an interesting store, an art gallery, an ice cream shop, a small restaurant, nice homes, all with good paint jobs.  If you traveled no further you might imagine the road ahead would lead to much the same.  This is, after all, the home of the famed high peaks that loom just behind the foothills that begin right at the shoreline.  But it doesn’t.  Just as the Adirondack mountains are wilder and rougher than the Green Mountains, more woods than meadows, less farmed than mined, the town also are rougher and more unkempt.  

On this side of the lake the mountains seem to press aggressively into some of the houses.

In the Adirondacks, but these are not actual mountains.  They are mine tailings near Moriah.

It’s mostly about mining.

Mining operations began in 1824 with the discovery of a top grade of iron ore in the mountains around the New York town of Moriah.  A lode called the Cheever bed, located some 1 to 1-1/2 miles north of Port Henry, is the oldest, although there are other, mostly smaller ones. In Moriah's earliest days settlers would go to the mine, pile the iron onto sleds and drag them back to town, according to Wikipedia.  The Cheever bed began to be worked more seriously in 1853, along with the other smaller beds. An economic boom was set in motion.  Along with mining companies came the railroad to bring the ore from the towns of Mineville and Witherbee to the main line at Port Henry, eventually turning that port into a busy transport terminal for the railroad and lake barges. An aggregate of 230,000 tons was produced from the ore beds in 1868, presumably the heyday of iron mining.

The local economies of towns like Moriah, Port Henry, and the uninspiringly named Mineville boomed for as long as the mining operations lasted.  But that wasn’t long enough.  In the early 1970’s when huge open pit mines were developed out west, the mining industry in New York State went bust. Now the towns look worn out and tired, with more closed storefronts than open ones. This probably has little to do with the recession of recent years; this downward slide looks as if it’s been going on for decades. 

Several of the large companies that operated the mines left their marks in the local architecture. The company headquarters of Witherbee, Sherman now serves as the Moriah/Port Henry town offices. 

The amazing building that was once a mine company headquarters; now town offices.

Once grand but now decayed Victorian-era buildings beg for rehabilitation. Streets are still filled with company houses, many of which were built with blocks made from iron ore tailings.  Sadly there are no signs of the charms that animate Essex. 

This Moriah town park has it all: directional sign to "Moriah Shock," gas or electrical meter, a digital clock, a gazebo and who knows what else, dedicated to a Medal of Honor winner.

Someone may be trying to save this house in Port Henry.

Rexall drugstores went out of business in the late 1970's.

Perhaps all is not lost:  In 2011 Port Henry was the port where sections of the stunning new Champlain bridge were assembled and towed to its site.  And the area has one noticeable industry: not far from town is the New York State Shock Incarceration Correctional Facility.  Housed, fittingly, in former mine buildings in a remote area north of Mineville. Which is itself remote.

SNOW AND ICE AND DOGS

Gazing west to the Adirondacks I could be convinced this is the heart of winter.  The mountaintops have been white since December.  But there's no telling how deep the snow is.  The Vermont mountains to the east of us have no cover, thin cover, or half-way decent cover at the highest elevations.  Ski areas have been suffering, as has the Vermont economy that depends upon ski tourism.  Most of us have been skeptical of ski reports, not expecting much, given this strange cycle of cold followed by warmth, without a single serious snowstorm.  We see the words "frozen granular" and figure it's time for spring skiing.  ("Granular" being ski slope-speak for half-melted soggy and/or icy stuff, permissible in late March or April.)


In the valley winter has been looking more like this:

Enough snow to last maybe a day or so, then back to bare ground.

Fifteen or so miles away things can be very different.  Monday, the 30th of January was one of those days when things were unexpectedly and spectacularly different.  It was cold here in the valley although just under freezing and the ground was completely bare.  There was a mild wind.  The night before we had our usual 1-2 inch dusting of snow. It was time to give Sugarbush a try.  As we drove there we began to notice snow cover beginning above the town of Bristol, altitude 570 feet.  (Vergennes is at 194.) By the time we crested Appalachian Gap at 2375 feet ("App Gap" in local lingo) on Route 17 the snow was a respectable 2 feet or so, a fierce wind building drifts.  On the other side of the Gap the Mad River Valley ski area was operating and the slopes looked good.  When we got to Sugarbush we could hardly believe our luck.  There was powder skiing on a packed powder base, a wintry wind swirling with fresh snow, and few other skiers.  Better yet, all the snow boarders were in school!


Other results of this not-quite-winter weather have included a lot of ice, like the ice shapes on our pond:

And sometimes the ice has covered the driveway, like this (claw marks in the foreground are the result of braking with studded snow tires):

Meanwhile, here by the fire

...are Rufus and Harry.  Rufus just had his vision restored (double cataracts removed) and will be recuperating for the next two weeks wearing a collar to protect his newly repaired eyes. He's not pleased with the collar, bumping into things, getting stuck, but his world has brightened and a playful and contented personality is blossoming.

Going where their noses lead, as Rufus will again once his eyes have healed.

THE SKY ABOVE, THE DOGS BELOW

The sky tossed us a freaky snowstorm (twelve inches!) the day before Thanksgiving, but within the week all the snow that fell had completely disappeared.  Since Christmas, or as far back as the first official days of winter, we haven’t experienced serious winter weather.  I mean the real thing, winter the way it’s expected to be in Vermont, the way everyone imagines it–stormy, snowy, cold.  We are certainly ready.  We look at the cloudy skies–and they have been cloudy a lot– with hope: we have cross-country skis, downhill skis, snowshoes, our tractor is outfitted with a huge snow blower and chains, and snow shovels are at the ready aside the front door. But, alas, we have only had dustings of snow strewn like confectionary sugar that are either blown away or melted by the next day.  Our pond is in a pattern of freeze, thaw and refreeze.  (Interestingly, the water that was so muddy in summer is now clear.) We managed a taste of downhill skiing one day last week in pretty good conditions, although trail choices were very limited and cross-country was out of the question.  We find ourselves looking more to the beauty of our dark storm-less clouds and our magenta and ochre sunsets than our drab snowless landscape.

Two dogs live here now.  A few days before Christmas we added Rufus, an eight-year-old beagle from the Addison County Humane Society, to the household.  There were three beagles there at the time, a two-year old, a middle-aged guy, and an older guy.  The young beagle was insanely excitable, the middle-aged one walked all over Harry and pulled on his leash like the dickens, but the older guy was “just right.”  At the shelter he bore the uninspiring name of “Bud.”  Since he was said to have been a stray in Panton with no additional back story, we figured “Bud” was just a throw-away “hey, bud” kind of name.  So we renamed him Rufus.  Rufus been a fast learner of “Rufus,” since he surely thinks it means some kind of food.

Tiered seating, Rufus below, Harry above

Beagleness is a state we didn’t know much about, but we’re learning.  An acute and sensitive nose is what being a beagle is about.  Smelling is more important than seeing, luckily for Rufus whose eyesight needs some improvement.  (A trip to a canine ophthalmologist is on the schedule.) Beagles also come supplied with a tremendous howl.  Fortunately for us Rufus doesn’t feel the need to say very much in this loud voice (we’ve only heard it at full volume once, briefly, at the vet’s).  He’s considerate of Harry, obedient, friendly, and low key.  Age is a factor.  Although Christmas was spent with a large crowd in Newburyport, preceded by a long car trip, Rufus took everything in stride even though it was only our third day together.

Audrey with Rufus and Harry on Rufus' first day

AFRICA, STILL ON MY MIND...

Hippos, a major danger to humans in Africa, in the Zambezi River.
(Also the subject of this year's Christmas card.)

A few weeks after returning from Africa the distance from there to here seems to be growing, as if I’m looking at Africa through the wrong end of a telescope.  Vermont is so benign, Africa not.  Here I can walk in the fields and forest (“the bush”) and I won’t be eaten, I can walk at night and I won’t be robbed, and our mosquitoes won’t give me malaria. In Johannesburg–where you don’t walk anywhere at night because you could be mugged–I picked up a memoir written by Peter Godwin called “Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa” to read it on the plane.  (Godwin has written incisively about the sordid regime of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe in “When A Crocodile Eats the Sun,” and told of far worse in “Fear.”)  What struck me in “Mukiwa” were the ordinary dangers in everyday life–forget wars, failures of the state, or haphazard medical care.  I’m thinking of his tale of the cobra that lived under the front porch steps for years after he bit the family dog, blinding him for life.  Or you can read the stories of Alexandra Fuller who grew up in Zambia.  Her “Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight” is replete with childhood perils, to which add: land mines.

"Oooh, I wonder what's under that bush?  Why don't we have a look!"

"Oops, I think those are lions!"

Recently I read “The Magnetic North” by Sara Wheeler in which she mentioned a guy from Togo, one Tete-Michel Kpomassie, who made his way from Africa to the Arctic over an eight-year period early in the 1960’s.   I enjoyed reading that he fled Togo to avoid a ritual involving a python, and, deciding he would go as far away as he could from pythons and anything like them, headed for python-free Greenland where he lived for several years with the Inuit, eventually producing a book called “An African in Greenland.”

"And here's an unusual looking doggie..."

Here in benign Vermont we have bears, but not the dangerous kind. Last March we only saw the partial remains by our creek of one that had been shot.  We have our New England version of impala–deer–but we haven’t seen any at all since a single doe crossed our field months ago.  The one moose we could count was the one spotted last spring near downtown Vergennes.  Nearly every night we can hear an owl in the woods behind our house.  (Our resident heron is long gone.) And that’s about all I can say for our wildlife count.  (In Africa we filled a notebook with the types of animals we saw!)

In Chobe it was possible to capture all at once (from left to right)
one beautiful, tho' unknown, bird, a fish eagle, a warthog, and impala. 

Hunters out for deer this year report far fewer kills (600+ versus 900+ last year in Addison County) and far fewer deer seen than in the past several years.  The reasons for this aren’t clear, but lower numbers have been attributed to the epic snowstorm at the end of last winter (the snow that came the day before we moved, just for the record), and also to the lateness of the rut.  When bucks are in rut they have only one thing on their minds and are easier to hunt.  Snow geese that migrate along a nearby corridor are usually gone by November, but this year there were still some on the ground as late as Thanksgiving.  It was the warmest November in many years.  

When we were in Victoria Falls several local people commented on the weather, how hot it was for so early in the season.  In Botswana there were comments about the lateness of the wet–and cooler–season.  Usually it starts in the early days of November, but we were there in mid-November and it was hot and dry.   It’s not a stretch to link this to global warming.  An article in the New York Times on December 5, on page four, mind you, noted:

“Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, rose 5.9 percent in 2010, the increase, a half billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air making the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution and the largest percent increase since 2003.  This solidified a trend of ever rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult if not impossible to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.”

AFRICAN DIGRESSION

(where no one seems to have heard of Vermont...)

Kalahari elephant at Chobe, Botswana

The Beautiful and the Bad

Cape of Good Hope

Cape Town itself was more familiar than foreign–excepting the road signs warning of baboons, and the knowledge that actual zebras were grazing unseen on the escarpments above.  It has a great deal to like:  rugged coastline alternating with idyllic sandy beaches (patrolled on occasion by great white sharks), dramatic mountains, an alluring waterfront (called the “V&A,” as in “Victoria and Albert” – really), terrific food, and pleasantly situated overall.  Yet there are walls and barbed wire enclosing nearly every attractive home.  Where there are shantytowns and people living at the margin, there are those who turn to crime. (Black South Africans blame Nigerians for much of it and for bringing drugs.)  It isn’t advisable to go strolling after dark, even near busy waterfront areas.

Kirstenbosch Gardens, Cape Town

Johannesburg, city of Jacaranda trees, is also a city of walls, guarded entrances, barbed wire, shanties and crime.  Yet there is so much going on that is good.  We visited Soweto, the middle class Soweto and the poor Soweto, specifically the Klipstown Youth Program sector run by and for poor young people. We were more welcomed than we’d have expected.  The scars of apartheid and race are still relevant and urgent issues.  The generation now in its 20’s or 30’s may have had little experience of apartheid but their parents did.  Apartheid only ended, after all, in 1994.  A fine play we saw at the famous Market Theater, “The Girl in the Yellow Dress,” dealt with such things that divide us – race, language, history. 

A street in Lower Houghton, Johannesburg, with Jacaranda Trees

A street in a shanty part of Soweto

Animal Time at Mala Mala

Mala Mala, is a game reserve surrounded by other private game reserves on the one side and by the vastness of Kruger National Park on the other.   Each day has a rhythm: 5:30am wake up for coffee or tea followed by a game drive in open vehicles led by Shaun, our personal guide (shared in our case by a couple from Spain), return for an outdoor breakfast at 9 or so.  Free time until lunch at 1:30, game drive at 4pm that continues until well after sunset, followed by a late dinner in the boma or on the patio.  After dessert the black camp staff sing a cappella in strong voices. Mala Mala Main Camp looks over the Sand River.  Paul Theroux devoted an upbeat chapter of his otherwise gloomy portrait of Africa in his 2003 book “Dark Star Safari” to MalaMala and the Rattrays who founded it.  And upbeat it should be.  This is a class operation in all respects.  

The animals we saw were all in good health, and despite the intimacy of our contact (mere feet away from lions, leopards), were un-intruded-upon. Happily we heard there is no poaching in this area.  In fewer than two days we’d seen our “Big Five” (lion, leopard, elephant, Cape Buffalo, rhino).  Maybe we were just lucky as we also saw a cheetah, spotted hyena (so close I could have touched him), and were able to follow four lions as they stalked a herd of Cape Buffalo.  After a lot of buffalo observation, they simply fell asleep, evidently not hungry enough and risk averse.  Lions sleep a lot.

There was both abundance and endless varieties of antelope.  We couldn’t help but wonder about the evolutionary logic of dividing a species into so many sub-species:  impala, nyala, kudu, puku, roan, sable, duiker (2 types), klipspringer, suni, dik-dik, oribi, lechwe, bushbok, reedbok (2 types), steenbok, grysbok (2 types), rhebok, gemsbok, waterbuck, and eland – all beautifully marked, the males with exceptional horns. (Lion food! Leopard food!)  

A beautiful Nyala

Not exactly beautiful but more fun to watch were the dung beetles, each one laboring to roll his ball of dung somewhere, usually uphill for some reason, while facing backward, stopping to thwart rivals, climbing on top of his ball quickly to get his bearings lest the ball roll backward which it tends to do, then zipping back into position to push his burden onward over lumps and bumps, tenacious to the last.

Dung Beetles

Animals:  Which is the most vicious?

It’s hippos, hands down.  More people in Africa are killed by hippos than by any other animal.  Cape Buffalo also have a reputation for being ornery.  But pound for pound the honey badger has an even worse reputation.  Lets say a lion came upon the hole of a honey badger and killed and ate its babies.  WIth most animals, that would be that.  Not for the honey badger.  When the mother honey badger returns to the nest she is likely to pick up the scent of the offending lion, track it and stalk it, likely wreaking considerable damage on that lion, making him sorry he ever ate a honey badger.  

Hippos in the Chobe River

We saw no snakes (puff adders abound) but during a night drive with a guy from Botswana he stopped the Land Rover and said “There's a black mamba here, I can smell it.”   We didn’t find it, but there really was a faint odor in the air, something between spicy and rancid. 

Musa

Musa picked us up in the town of Hazyview a couple of days after Mala Mala.  A family man and strong Christian Musa said he thanks God every day.  He seemed not to hear other questions we asked about religion.  He has four children, the last named Syabonga or "thank you" in Zulu as in "Thank you God, this is the last one." “Do people in your country have more than one wife?” he asked.  He has only one, you see. But his brother has five. The king of Swaziland has as many as seven!  During apartheid, there were more men who had many wives, but when apartheid ended in 1994 they got electricity. This made life easier, so there was no more need to have one woman to tend the crops, another to fetch water, another to watch the children, and so forth. Musa also railed against Nigerians (as would many other black Africans we were to meet later) because they bring drugs and other bad things to South Africa.  He deflected questions about Zimbabweans who have been flooding into S.A. and straining the economy, yet we knew there have been serious problems recently including beatings, even murder, of Zimbabwean refugees not far from here.

Tribes

Our guide one day was Khulesi.  He lives in Soweto but is originally from a small village on the Limpopo River. If he could live anywhere in the world, money no object, he would choose to live in his village.  His tribe is Venda.  He speaks six languages including  a click language of the Bushmen. Khulesi can click quite beautifully, sounding almost like a xylophone, clicking with each vowel. It’s fun to listen to.  We tried to make the sounds with mixed success.

We hadn’t thought about the fact that Nelson Mandela is Xhosa, the dominant tribe in South African politics up until now when the current president is Zulu.  This has brought about political change with Zulus, long the majority tribe in South Africa, ruling for the first time and, unsurprisingly, appointing members of their tribe instead of Xhosas.

Christine, from Kenya, the chef of our small hotel in J-burg who awaits her parents' payment of cows as dowry before she marries; she stands next to her chef's certificate, per her request. 

Having just finished reading Peter Godwin’s “Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa,” I have a far greater awareness of the importance of tribe.  We were in Zimbabwe, a country long dominated by the Shona and near where there had been horrendous conflict with the Matabele in the 1980’s.  In Botswana I assumed our guides would be speaking the language of the country,Tswana.  Not so simple, two of the guides laughed, I speak my tribe’s language and he belongs to another “so we speak 'international!'”

Two nice ladies, Soweto

Rob and Joy

Rob and Joy manage the Muchenji Lodge in Chobe, Botswana. (Chobe has one of the highest elephant concentrations in Africa.) To live this kind of life, managing safari camps and whatnot, they decided long ago to have no children.  Their work timetable is about four years on, followed by a whole year off.  (The one year they spend everything they earned in the four, said Joy.)  Rob has worked all over the continent as a representative, or maybe it was mechanic, for Land Rover.  After that he worked in construction, rebuilding places damaged by wars.  No lack of work there, sadly.  He’s the kind of guy, the “old Africa hand,” who’s seen it all, and who just scoffed when we mentioned the temperature in Victoria Falls had been been pretty high (43 Celsius,109F; several locals complained about it –“too hot for spring”), Roy just said huh, wait until you’ve seen 50! (That would be 122F.)

Rob and I discussed some books about Africa.  I had found Paul Theroux’s “Dark Safari” in the lodge’s library that has an entire chapter on Mala Mala that I quickly reread.  I wasn’t surprised that Theroux thought highly of the management of Mala Mala; he just didn't care for the tourists.  And he has a point: whites come here to see African animals, but have little or no interest in Africans.  Ron shrugged at “Dark Safari.”  Too dark?  Well, no.  Not realistic?  Well no, there’s some truth in it.  How about Mala Mala, I asked. That did it.  Mala Mala, well, said Rob, they have fences (they actually don’t), and there are roads all over the place whereas here in Chobe we have no fences, and it’s so big, over 7,000 square miles (or 4,000, depending on your resource), animals roam completely free.  (Well, yes and no to that.)  Roy recommended "Cry of the Kalahari,” saying he was in on many of the experiences Mark and Delia Owens report in the book, knew them well. The names struck me as familiar. Later I remembered The New Yorker had a major article about the Owenses last year that concerned some controversial events including poaching, a shooting, and a divorce, details I couldn’t recall at the time.  Anyway, Rob claimed there was nothing in the news about the Owenses implying if there was he would know.  I emailed him the article.

Botswana’s biggest industry is mining, and also livestock, but Rob says the money is in beer (St. Louis brand) and towels.  Most towels sold all over the world are made in Botswana.  Who knew!