December 2009 : Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve, Zimbabwe

It happens once in a blue moon and it happened on 31 December 2009…

The popular belief is that a blue moon is the second full moon to occur in a single calendar month, and because of the moon’s 29.5 day cycle it only occurs once every two-and-a-half years. In honour of this rare event, the festive season and the end of the year I thought it would be a good idea to shine the spotlight on some of the many community projects, conservation initiatives, less celebrated wildlife and fascinating people at Singita Pamushana…

VEGETABLE GARDENS

Singita Pamushana is the ‘ecotourism arm’ of the Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve and guests are encouraged to share the magic of the lodge and the donor-funded Malilangwe Trust. Proceeds from Singita Pamushana are used by The Trust to implement various conservation, community outreach and development programmes. Part of The Trust’s Neighbour Outreach Programme includes helping to establish irrigation schemes so that villagers and their livestock have a clean supply of water and are able grow their own vegetables.

I recently joined guests on a community tour and one of the stops we made was at a large vegetable garden. Women were tending the healthy-looking crops - channeling water into the fields, weeding and removing pests. Thanks to The Trust a borehole had been sunk and the community taught about sustainable water utilization. The tuition empowers women in particular to be self-sufficient and provide for their families, - and by the look of the lush cabbages, tomatoes and onions I’d say they’re doing a superb job of it!

 

CAUGHT ON CAMERA

One of the wildlife projects on the go is a leopard census to establish how many of these secretive cats the 130 000 acre reserve supports. The most accurate way to do this is to grid the reserve into blocks of four square kilometers. Then a bait is placed in a tree with a supporting branch leading to the bait, and a concealed camera that’s triggered by movement is set in place to photograph the animal, on its right side. Now this is all very good in theory if it weren’t for interferers like lions!

They are so often the culprits for a mangled, saliva-soaked camera! Fortunately the cameras are housed in extremely strong casings and we’ve been getting some astonishing results. We’re not finished the census yet but have already identified 29 individual leopards! Each leopard is identified by the unique spot pattern of its coat.

But just as surprising are the other nocturnal visitors who’ve showed up and expressed interest in a free meal. Take a look at these photographs that reveal the wealth of wildlife that’s here: A honey badger (Mellivora capensis) sniffs out the offering.A pair of previously unrecorded brown hyenas (Parahyaena brunnea) jump up to try and retrieve the bait. Even a herbivorous black rhino (Diceros bicornis) shows interest!

 

THE MOPANE WORM (Gonimbrasia belina)

Let me be brutally honest here, I am no fan of caterpillars - they give me the heebie jeebies. It thrills me to encounter a lion or elephant on foot, but not a hairy caterpillar. But since they are about at the moment, and in an effort to appreciate all creatures great and small, I will attempt to embrace them (figuratively speaking).

I think that what terrifies me the most is that many southern African communities actually eat them. (I’m not joking.) They are plucked from the trees, pinched at the tail-end to rupture the innards, then squeezed like a tube of toothpaste to expel the slimy, green contents of the gut. Then they’re sun-dried or smoked - for additional flavour!

This important source of protein can be eaten raw as a crispy snack, or soaked to rehydrate before frying until crunchy, or cooked with onion, tomatoes and spices and served with corn meal. The flesh is yellow and the gut may still contain fragments of dried leaf, and the taste, I am told, is somewhat reminiscent of tea leaves (I’ll stick to my usual cup of Earl Grey, thank you). One of mopane worms favourite trees is the mopane tree (Colophospermum mopane). Mopane means butterfly and the fluttering leaves of mopane trees are very reminiscent of beautiful butterfly wings. (But alas, I digress.)

The mopane worm’s life cycle starts when it hatches in the summer, after which it proceeds to voraciously eat the foliage in its immediate vicinity. As the larva grows, it molts four times then burrows underground to pupate, the stage at which it undergoes complete transformation to become a rather non-descript adult moth. This happens during winter and thereafter it emerges at the beginning of summer. The adult moths only live for about four days, during which time they must mate and lay eggs.

As you can see from this close-up photograph, bravely captured by wildlife filmmaker Mark van der Merwe, the worm is black, peppered with tiny scales in indistinct alternating whitish green and yellow or red bands, and armed with short spines covered in fine white hairs (I have shivers down my spine). The worms’ main predators are birds and humans. The trade in mopane worms is apparently worth several million dollars every year, but outbreaks of them are unpredictable and much of the value is captured by large-scale traders rather than local communities.

 

SIPPING SNAKE JUICE WITH OLD MAN SPARROW

Old Man Sparrow steps out from beneath the boughs of the biggest baobab I’ve seen (67 feet in girth) and is wearing a pith helmet, knee-length socks, khaki shorts and the wisdom of 87 years gleaming from his blue eyes. We’re at his home built upon the sandstone cliffs opposite Singita Pamushana Lodge. Ray Sparrow is the pioneer who arrived here in the late 1940s, when there was absolutely nothing other than the wildest wild. There were no roads or ridges and his nearest neighhbour lived a 70-mile journey away. He called his ranch Lone Star, ran cattle very successfully on it, then turned it into a game ranch and after decades of extraordinary stories passed it on to the Malilangwe Trust so that this land may be protected and conserved for as long as possible.

I’m eager to hear his stories, particularly of the wildlife, and have been invited for tea. As its being poured he exclaims, “Ah! Snake juice!” which immediately has my full attention, and he chuckles away genuinely surprised that I am not familiar with this term for bush tea! As a young man Ray grew up near the Zimbabwe Ruins and after school went contracting to learn about finance. During World War 2 he was in the medical section working between Zimbabwe and South Africa. He took up land via the ex-servicemen’s land distribution scheme, and so it was that Lone Star began.

In 1948 he walked up the dry riverbed of the Nyamasikana and decided a craggy gorge was the ideal site to build a dam wall. He had to be duly respectful of the legend of the Nyamasikana (meaning ‘meat of the maidens’) as his tracker told him that they were near a large rock where the maidens were trapped for eternity, and that when the waters came one could hear them crying out for help! He tells me of severe droughts, floods and fires and the hardships of running over 1 000 head of cattle. There is regret in his eyes when he recounts shooting 100 lions in his first decade of being here. He would spend nights staying awake to kill the marauding predators that kept coming back for his cattle – a particular pride taking 11 head of cattle in one night. He confesses, “I’m not proud of it.”

 

I ask him about his favourite wild animal and his eyes light up, “Impala are the darlings of Africa!” He has hand-raised many in his time and then, with age-old wisdom, wins me over with, “The best wild animal is a wild animal.” Other hand-raised characters included a rhino calf named Charlie Brown! During a severe drought farmers supplemented their cattle’s diet with bales of fodder. A white rhino cow swallowed binding wire with fatal consequences. The Sparrow family raised her orphaned baby calf and the much-loved animal was certainly one of the first white rhino claves to be successfully raised by humans.

Then there was Tsere – the Shona name for Honey Badger. The young badger followed Ray everywhere and flourished on a diet of porridge with sugar and honey! He earned his keep as a member of the family by going on patrol with the night watchman, wearing a collar and leash. His days were spent out on his own, but at nightfall he always appeared for duty. Tsere used to scare unsuspecting visitors witless and Ray’s children loved this – they, “laughed to beat the band!” he tells me.

He has so many stories and I happily sip a second cup of snake juice… The tame Klipspringer that insisted on jumping upon their dining room table… The tragic tale of a pair of aardvark – the female was blind and would follow behind the male, but the male fell off a cliff one day and died and the female pined and died shortly thereafter. The account of two enormous pythons that he discovered dead and reeking of decay – killed by a ferocious honey badger.

Old Man Sparrow is as fluent in Changana, is one of only a few white men who truly understands the Changana culture and has gained the respect of all who know him - a ‘lone star’ himself, if ever there was. “I promise to tell everyone I know in the US about this wonderful place!” Singita Pamushana guest, Clint Hermes, New York, USA.

By Jenny Hishin Singita Pamushana Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve Zimbabwe 31st December 2009