only thing I could think about was how big and empty this country is.
From altitude it looks like the American Southwest -- huge, flat, dry,
with the occasional ridge or plateau rising up from the plains. On
the ground the only difference is that the tress are larger and
termite mounds are everywhere. Instead of junipers there are acacia
trees, but the shrubs look just like the sagebrush, rabbitbush and
bitter bush back in the Great Basin.
For those of you who don't know much about where in the world I am
right now, and I don't blame you if you don't, Namibia is located in
the southwest corner of Africa, along the Atlantic coast just north of
South Africa. It is a new country, just over 19 years old.
Originally the area was home to a number of groups, including the
Herrero, the Damara and the San bushmen. The last two groups include
clicks in their language (think of the film, "The Gods Must Be
Crazy"). In the late 1800s the Germans claimed ownership of the land,
a title they lost after the Great War when the British annexed it.
South Africa kept it as a colony after their independence and Namibia
was finally freed in 1990. Of course there are plenty of embarrassing
stories of colonial oppression as there are in the rest of Africa. If
you're interested in learning more I recommend the Namibia Wikipedia
page.
Present day Namibia is still very rural. The country is the size of
Texas and Louisiana and has 2.2 million people, most of whom live very
close to the Angola border in the north. I'm in central Namibia, and
there's hardly anyone around. Windhoek is the largest city by far
(and the capital) and its population does not surpass 300,000. The
coast is mostly sand dunes with some penguin and fur seal colonies and
holds the ominous title of the Skeleton Coast, due to the large number
of shipwrecks. The interior is mostly desert, with the exception of
the northeast, which is part of the Okavango watershed. Most of the
country is divided into farms for cattle and small stock, a subject I
hope to get into later.
I'm working on a series of eight large farms, totaling over 50,000
hectares in size. The CCF Centre where I live is located on the farm
Elandsvreugde, which is an Afrikaans word meaning "eland's joy".
Eland are the world's largest antelope. This farm has a 1500ha open
pasture that has been creatively named The Big Field. I drive safaris
out there to count game including eland, oryx, greater kudu, red
hartebeest, warthog and cheetah. Not a bad gig. I should also
mention that there are several leopards living within 100 yards of my
room, and a black mamba killed one of our goats today. Welcome to
Africa.
Our other farms are just about as interesting. Due to some scheduled
changes, I've lived on three farms so far, the other two being Boskop,
where we keep the donkeys and horses that feed our 46 captive
cheetahs, and Cheetah View, which also has leopards but few cheetahs.
The latter farm also only had power for a few hours each day and I had
to build a fire every morning for hot water. The showers were
outdoors and it is winter. I'm pretty glad I moved.
I won't mention much about the other farms except that two of them
recently received some black rhinos which I will be tracking using
radio transmitters, and another is our fenced in farm where our
giraffe and zebra live. I believe it's also where we do trophy hunts.
I've been on each of our properties setting up a camera trap study to
estimate cheetah population sizes...more on this in an upcoming post.
Anyway, that's a much delayed intro into where I am. Up next -- the
international course on integrated livestock/predator management that
I helped run at the beginning of June.
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