Hello all,

sorry for the massive gap in posts. I've been crazy busy. This has turned from a job and more into a lifestyle/cause.

There is a lot to tell.

So I have gone from just doing the land management plans to keep the donors happy to being invited to be potentially involved in a 4 million euro project sorting out the Ramsar wetlands nearby. As I got on well with the council members I was working with I got invited to a Ramsar meeting. I expected a small room with half a dozen people. As it turned out it was a large conference room with delegates from all potential stakeholder groups. Within 2 minutes I was asked to talk about my interests in the area so I gave a quick impromptue speech. Then we were given a2 paper and told to basically pitch why our stakeholder group should get funding (ours was research). So with half an hour prep I gave a speech on how reseach forms the basis of everything, how if you don't know what the current situation is you can't make accurate decisions, if you don't know what happens once you implement a management strategy you have no idea if it works or not and how essentially long term planning has to include research. I then went to the pub with the french ramsar guy who said it looked very promising for us. If we get funding that would mean we could do a ton of interesting stuff that might actually save this corridor.

One of the reasons that this has turned into more of an adventure than a job is that the corridor here will either be saved or destroyed in 2 years and it would quite nice to see it not destroyed. Also the poaching in this area is quite hectic and if a wildlife managed area gets set up and works then the selous would be greatly protected from this side indefinately. If it does not then its all buggered.

mmmmmm crazy stuff

any way love to all and I'll post again soon

just got back from pub, had chicken for supper which was very exciting as its the first bit of meat ive had in weeks. also I remembered something blogworthy, I found a dead green mamba, an intensly poisonous snake, and so I skinned it, naturally.

its currently being eaten by ants in my banda, im not really sure what i can do to preserve it.

busy busy

so still running about doing land management stuff.lots of not particularly interesting meetings. there are exciting bits though when I'm asked to give advice.

I managed to find some time to play some football yesterday although as it turns out the Tanzanians don't really understand football. They play with goals 2 foot wide and they don't really try to score, they just pass the ball between each other. theres all the normal running around looking excited but theres no point, they aren't trying to go in any direction or achieve anything just pass it between them. They have two teams but I think thats more of a formality.I played for about half an hour before getting mindnumbingly bored and leaving. It's literally football without the interesting bits, which is saying something.

anyway leave some comments people

sam

Land management crazy

So I have spent the last few days doing land management stuff. Tis exceedingly tough, I spent 7 hours today in a council meeting. I have also been butting up against one of the africans on the team I'm working with who is an utter moron. anyway I'm learning a massive amount about african negotiation. As it turns out one of the other guys is great so I've been working with him.

Also I got an article published! http://www.travel-wonders.com/2011/06/volunteer-wildlife-conservation.html

Pretty happy with that :D

So the volunteers and my girlfriend turn up on tuesday, exciting stuff.I'm going to go and get them from the nearish town of Ifakara. It will almost count as a day off. I realised the other day that I have had half a day off since early May. One of the downsides of being the "big boss" is that everyone saves up all their problems for you to solve.

we have chickens which I have just about managed to get to stay in camp. Touch wood. for some reason their presence or absence has a huge effect on my stress levels.

I realised that I had reached some level of aclimatisation the other night, I saw a tarantula when I was brushing my teeth and I spat toothpaste at it until it fucked off. It looked a bit peeved. But minty.

I also discovered that they sell the same kind of palm sap beer that they sell in the Comoros which is epic news. Its stonger here which is kind of a scary idea. It reminds me of good times though.

I'm also negotiating a deal with a local teak company to survey their nontimber woodlands which looks like a really fun project. lots of walking about in forests catching birds and things.

anyway I must go now, boss duties call.

love to all

broken car

So I am learning a lot about how to fix cars.
the coolong fan on the waterpump broke loose and battered the radiator. we got a tow to the nearest village where we welded the thing back on and repaired the radiator using tea to block up the tears.no joke. i have spent today doing some serious barganing to get new(ish) parts. unfortunately i missed the last ferry back so im in ifikara tonight.

oh also a headless snake slithered into my room the other day. turns out its a legless skink that has no eyes, nose and a mouth thats invisible. its literally like a snake with two tails. bloody wierd. oh also i had a tarantula under my bed, that was awesome. i moved him on. he looked peeved.

I also ran a three day camp in the forest with all the staff which was fun. Its very strange being called boss all the time. the tanzanians are very heirarcical, which as I was the boss of their previous boss means they take it quite seriously.I'll see if i can stick up photos tomoz. bed time now though

love to all

Igota!

So I have arrived on the camp in Igota that is to be my home for the next few months. 40km north are the forest covered Udzungwa mountains and 30km south are the forest covered mountains of the Selous game reserve. In between is the Kilombero river and a patchwork of farms, swamps and forests. To get here in fact I had to cross the river via a ferry. The ferry in this case being a kind of truck on stilts that drives across the river bed carrying cars, lorries etc. The river itself is only about 30m wide at that point but crossing on the ferry is somewhat amazing. The camp itself is all made of teak and is very nice. There is high grass in between all the bandas (huts) that means that each hut is in its own clearing and the camp is full of animals. There is for example a lizard that looks very komodo dragon like that is about 4 foot long living behind my banda (i have named him puff). There are also a large number of birds, insects, lizards etc. Something that is a bit of a hazard here is army ants. A column missed my banda by about 6 foot which is very handy as the only thing I would have been able to do to if they had decided to invade my banda would have been to move to another one. As it was I had great fun feeding them cockroaches and slapped mosquitoes.

Rather dramatically on my first night a lion and her cubs walked into the village and unfortunately got shot. I went to see the bodies in the morning and discovered that the mother had a snare around her foot that had made her lame. Unable to hunt she had then moved onto easier prey, in this case humans and dogs. As there was a crowd gathered wondering who the hell I was I decided that this was the time to introduce myself and gave a short speech in Swahili as to who I am and why I am here. I also told them all the reason for the lion coming into the village and I’m hoping to use the incident as an education program. The relationships pretty clear really, use snares for poaching and you risk making a lion lame, which means they will come after you. To further that I managed today to persuade the game guards of the area to permanently lend me the skulls of the mother and cub so today I spent my afternoon picking rotting flesh off two lion skulls. One of the funniest parts of this job is putting the phrase “today I got paid to” in front of any activity I do.

So next week I will meet the rest of the chairmen of the villages I will be working with and I will tell the council that I want to start work the following week. The work that I will be doing will be basically driving around on the back of a bunch of jeeps tracking where all the habitat uses are. This will give the council a good map of what is actually going on in their land, allowing them to accurately manage it.

Also at this point I should mention the kids. There are tons of them. And they are on camp most of the time, pottering about and innocently getting in the way. They are very sweet and also very numerous.

ok will post again soon, love to all

dar

I'm in Dar again, hectic as hell. nice though. I plan on finding the beach today and I got a good tip about a fruit market which I am intending to check out. I had pizza and indian chicken yesterday, both of which were epic. for the next few days however I am doing admin which is going to be terrible. especially as I need to get a total of 125 passport photos printed for all the volunteers...

still nice to be getting paid to be in africa though