African safari journal – one year ago – never get tired of the elephants
June 19, 2019 — We got our cold weather yesterday, up at 5 am for the morning game drive. Camp Kipwe wasn’t cold. I’d assumed it might be at night, knowing the wide temperature fluctuations you get in the desert and judging by the heavy blankets the resort laid on the bed. But it remained warm all night and it felt like the mid-60s at breakfast and when we set out on the drive. But it quickly got colder as we went across the desert – into a different micro-climate? – and the wind whipped through the open safari truck. We drove for more than an hour down relatively smooth dirt roads, rough dirt roads, and rutted desert landscape – more African massage – until we found a dozen elephants.
Even though we’ve seen literally more than a hundred elephants so far, this was worth it. These were desert adapted elephants, of which only about 600 remain here, with longer legs and broader feet. We got pretty close, a dozen or so yards, and saw a mother with her baby, including breastfeeding, and two immature males play fighting, locking tusks and tossing their heads around.
On the way back we stopped for coffee in the middle of a flat sandy desert plain, nearly devoid of visible life other than ourselves, with irregular notched mountains in the distance. The temperature got up to the 80s or 90s by then.
We were really surprised by this heat. We were expecting more of the same, even colder, temps in the 30s or 40s first thing in the morning, and 70ish in the hottest part of the day. Instead, it’s hot and the sun is bright, the kind of weather that makes you want to stay inside in the a/c bxack home. Fortunately we’re prepared, with clothes for any temperature from 40 degrees to 100 degrees. (After that, clothing won’t help you.)
I wonder what the temperature is at home. No internet means no way to find out.
At lunch, we decided to skip the afternoon activity and just take the rest of the day as a down day. This was a comfortable spot for it. We’d once again been upgraded to a suite, with comfortable chairs. We had a good nap – those 5 and 6 am wake up calls add up, combined with long, leisurely dinners that start at 7 pm. After nap, I had a shower, which was lovely, as our African schedule has allowed me only three or four of those per week.
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We woke up this morning for breakfast at Okonjima Lunxury Bush Camp and were driven to Okonjima Airstrip by Gabriel, the manager of the resort, a South African with a nicer four-wheel drive vehicle than the others we’ve ridden in. He told us that he ran the place with his wife Sarah, a Canadian, who we’d met previously. The staff is, as Julie surmised, all men. He said that started by coincidence, but they kept hiring men and turning away women because that meant they did not need separate housing. Also, no maternity leave, ha ha. Other than institutional sexism, Gabriel was a pleasant fellow, and told us about difficulties running a resort in Namibia. Hard to find supplies, businesses close at lunch, no Internet access, to name three.
We took another small plane, big enough for eight passengers but with the seats taken out and only me and Julie riding. We encountered moderate turbulence over the mountains. I’m doing much better with that; I still don’t like it but my brain continues to function. I keep my eyes open and concentrate on looking at the horizon; I think I read that somewhere. Also, while there are no handgrips in the plane, I gripped the bottom of the seat with one hand, which was helpful. No big deal. We landed at Twyfelfontein Airstrip after 50 minutes, a smooth landing. Our pilot, Nick, bid us farewell.
As was the case at most of our other stops, our guide greeted us at the airstrip. As with most of our other stops, he will be our guide for the duration of our stay. His name was Festus, and over the course of our first few hours together, he revealed an encyclopedic knowledge of natural history, including botany, zoology, geology and anthropology – I was interested to learn from Festus that there had been a recent discovery of a new human ancestor, Homo Namibius, placed between Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus, at about 3.5 million years before present, if Festus recalled correctly. He knows African and Namibian history, and he served us a tasty lunch of beef schnitzel, green salad with feta cheese, and fresh fruit, along with fresh water, with soft drinks available but not requested. The schnitzel, along with apple strudel at dinner, is a byproduct of Namibian’s colonial history, it was a colony of Germany.
Twyfelfontein proved to be another hotbox, and Festus drove us through the desert for two hours in heat I estimate at 90 or even 100 degrees, and me wearing hiking boots and medium-weight cargo pants. The desert is even more austere and beautiful than Okonjima, all khaki and a few hardy plants and animals, with flat plains stretching off to abrupt mountains.
And now we are at Hoanib Valley Camp in Kaokoveld, which is in the middle of the desert, surrounded on several sides by khaki mountains and abutting a broad plain of desert life. The camp is about a half-dozen guest tents, with a big common area for meals and relaxing, with coffee, tea, wine and treats on tap. The food and service are impeccable, as at nearly every place we’ve visited on our trip. We have the Honeymoon Tent, with a big broad king-size bed, linen sheets, a small writing table on which I’m writing this journal entry, and a living area with couch, table and chairs, and front deck beyond, with chairs, looking over the desert. Like Camp Xakanaxa, it’s basically a lovely hotel room inside a tent.
The manager, TJ, showed us around the tent, including the shower, which has a steel bucket in one corner. He said he expected we encountered that arrangement before, but we had not. He explained that the bucket is a water conservation measure. When the shower starts and runs cold, you run it into the bucket. When you add hot water and have the temperature the way you like it, you push the bucket aside and shower normally. The maids come in and use the water from the bucket to clean the floors.
Hoanib Valley Camp has WiFi, and the electricity runs 24x7. The WiIf is slow but functions. I’ve got my iPad plugged in and am uploading photos to the cloud.
(Click the photos for a bigger view)
View from our tent at Hoanib Valley Lodge.
Our shower at Hoanib Valley Lodge. The bucket is for water conservation.
Nice bathroom at Hoanib Valley Lodge.
Our tent at Hoanib Valley Lodge.
These little birds hopped up on the table and begged for treats at Camp Kipwe. The waiter scolded Julie for feeding them. The staff’s attitude at Camp Kipwe contributed to this being not our favorite place in Africa, despite the camp itself being lovely.
Panoramic photo of the desert. That’s Julie next to the truck.
🌍📓
Petition calls for statue of Christopher Columbus in Ohio city to be replaced with Chef Boyardee
The city is Cleveland and it’s actually not a bad idea. Ettore Boiardi was an immigrant success story.
Remarkable time-lapse video of a toucan growing up from hatching to adulthood. Seems like an intelligent, playful animal that recognizes its person. ∫youtu.be/nfK6k8nCW…
“ ... trying to shame people into wearing condoms didn’t work—and it won’t work for masks either.”
Shaming didn’t work to get men to wear condoms during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, but making condom-wearing convenient and less unpleasant was effective. The same lessons need to be applied to mask-wearing today.
Julia Marcus at The Atlantic:
Public-health professionals have learned this lesson before. In 1987, Congress banned the use of federal funds for HIV-prevention campaigns that might “promote or encourage, directly or indirectly, homosexual activities.” As a result, public-health campaigns avoided sex-positive imagery and messaging, and instead associated condom use with virtue and condomless sex with irresponsibility, disease, and death. According to one particularly foreboding poster, which featured an image of a gravestone: “A bad reputation isn’t all you can get from sleeping around.” But those moralistic, fear-mongering health messages often fell flat. Other HIV-prevention campaigns began to adopt a harm-reduction approach, which empathizes with people’s basic human needs and offers them strategies to limit potential dangers. For some men, condoms got in the way of what they valued most about sex: pleasure and intimacy. Not surprisingly, HIV-prevention campaigns that put pleasure and intimacy at the center of their safer-sex messaging tended to work.
When the public-health community talks about harm reduction, we often talk of “meeting people where they are.” A fundamental part of that is, well, literally meeting people where they are. Just like the buckets of free condoms stationed in gay bars, masks need to be dispensed where they’re needed most: at the front of every bus and the entrance to every airport, grocery store, and workplace. Masks should become ubiquitous, but distribution should begin in areas where the coronavirus has hit hardest, including black and Latino neighborhoods. (That black men who wear masks may be at heightened risk of violence is one more grim illustration of why combatting racism is inextricable from public health.) What matters most is that people choose to wear a mask when they are indoors or in close proximity to others—and that choice needs to be rendered as effortless as possible.
“… infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’s Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences.”
The White House is taking increasing measures to protect Trump from covid, even as he insists publicly the disease is no big deal
As he seeks to insert rival Joe Biden’s health into the presidential campaign, Trump has voiced escalating concern about how it would appear if he contracted coronavirus and has insisted on steps to protect himself, even as he refuses to wear a mask in public and agitates for large campaign rallies where the virus could spread.
When he travels to locations where the virus is surging, every venue the President enters is inspected for potential areas of contagion by advance security and medical teams, according to people familiar with the arrangements. Bathrooms designated for the President’s use are scrubbed and sanitized before he arrives. Staff maintain a close accounting of who will come into contact with the President to ensure they receive tests.
Measures to protect Trump from coronavirus scale up even as he seeks to move on
Russia offered the Taliban bounties to kill American soldiers, and Trump has been dithering about a response for months, according to this report in the New York Times.
Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says
House passes bill to provide D.C. statehood
Republicans oppose statehood for DC because DC is mostly Black people.
Pence tries to put positive spin on coronavirus pandemic despite surging cases in South and West
Dangerous moron Mike Pence says increase in cases is “very encouraging news” and a “great success.” Asked whether people should wear masks, he said they should pray.
Obamacare Must ‘Fall,’ Trump Administration Tells Supreme Court
No, it is the Trump administration that must fall.
In the middle of the worst pandemic in a century, Trump wants to eliminate medical insurance for 20 million Americans. Even for Trump, this is depraved and evil.
YouTube views of sourdough videos jumped 400% in coronavirus lockdown. And “workout from home” video views more than tripled
A subsurface ocean on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, may have been habitable. For microbial life at least, possibly sometime in the past.
Paradise, California, suffered extensive damage and deaths in 2018 forest fires, and is now grappling with the pandemic and recession. The high school graduating faces uncertainty with hope for the future
Justine Calma at The Verge:
For the second year in a row, graduation at Paradise High School became a tribute to triumph over disaster. The tight-knit small town — where many seniors have taken classes together since kindergarten — was almost entirely razed by the Camp Fire in 2018. It was the deadliest and most destructive blaze in California’s history. Then, COVID-19 upended the school year, and seniors once again graduated into a world that looked very different than it did when the year began.
For the class of 2020, even the near future is a question mark. The pandemic has already taken over 100,000 lives in the US and no one can predict when it — or the economic collapse in its wake — will end. Temperatures are soaring to record highs, an ominous sign for the coming fire season. Persevering through compounded crises is the new rite of passage for graduates across the US. The town of Paradise, California just happened to have an early baptism by fire….
In some ways, Paradise is a glimpse into what might be a new normal for many of us: a cycle of upheaval, followed by adrenaline-fueled hope, exhaustion, and, ultimately, adaptation….
Eighty-five people died in the Camp Fire, sparked by deteriorating PG&E power lines; 18,804 homes and buildings burned. Roughly nine of every ten Paradise High students lost their homes; [Class valedictorian Katie-Lynn] Chandler was among those whose homes burned. The care facility where her mother worked was also destroyed. She and her mother rent a room in a house from the person who owned the place where Chandler’s mother had worked.
Surviving paradise: Through fire and fear, Paradise, California’s teens take control of their lives