South Africa. Part II

Baby cheetahs at HESC

      I must have been tired, or frustrated, or depressed, for it was so unlike me to preach doom and gloom on any subject.  We already have far too much of that in the world and it is little wonder that when I talk with some younger people, they are somewhat maxed out with media and what may wait for them in the future.  As a piece on climate change in Scientific American said: If people are convinced we're doomed --that there's nothing we can do-- why would they bother trying?...(But) As climate activist Greta Thunberg of Sweden so aptly put it, " When we start to act, hope is everywhere."  That was what I really wanted to say, that just about everyone I met was not giving up at all.  There were so many people in South Africa who were the animals' hope; they were in truth our hope.  Raising feelings of hope involves boosting a sense of efficacy -- that what we do as individuals and as a society can truly make a difference, noted the article.  Over the decades we changed how we looked at smoking, and how we looked at meat, and discrimination, and guns (okay, maybe not yet guns).  Why not poaching and ancient, almost ancestral beliefs (not only in Asia but in Africa as well)?  Yes, it would and it does take time.  But progress is happening.  Prison sentences are rising for poachers, tolerances for randomized killing of animals are dropping, understanding is increasing.  Even the animals themselves are adapting...elephants are becoming smaller, as are their tusks; rhinos are adapting to being dehorned (their horns do grow back, much as a fingernail does -- their horns are made of the same material); even lions are apparently shrinking a bit in size.  Trophy hunters will simply have to stay a bit longer in the bush these days.

    The government is trying but it has a long ways to go.  As a working paper published a few months ago by Good Governance Africa wrote: Very little peer-reviewed economic work addresses the question, and the one (and only) paper (Saayman et al., 2018) that does so is questionable in its methodological rigour.  It estimates the value of trophy hunting to South Africa, including multiplier effects, at $341 million for the 2015/16 season.  By contrast, tourism in 2019 was worth $22.1 billion.  At best, trophy hunting supports an estimated 15,000 jobs in South Africa, whereas nonconsumptive tourism supports at least 90,000 estimated jobs.  Just as with us the US, South Africa had their glimmer of hope in someone such as Mandela, then a complete grab and go in the form of Zuma.  The leaders of countries come and go, good and bad, and the animals continue to teach us...be patient.  There is a higher law we can't comprehend, one beyond our insecurities and our thirst for material goods. 

     My wife and I were by far the "older folks" of the group, by about five decades.  And yet I could see the hope right there.  In my early twenties I could barely afford my apartment much less think about something as outrageous as a trip to Africa.  But here they were, young students experiencing something that would stay with them forever, and seeing it all dozens of years ahead of schedule.  Perhaps they had saved up, or borrowed from their folks, or sold a Bitcoin...who knows.  But they were here, and it took guts.  They wanted to see and save and help the animals, so that alone was a big step ahead of me when I was that age.  Chill out, dude, I'd tell my younger self; this was dope.

White board with monthly baby rhino formulation.

     One other thing, I was here making judgement calls with little actual knowledge other than displaying my tourist-like bravado.  I didn't live there, I hadn't grown up there, I knew little about the food or about raising a child or even something as simple as walking through the grocery store (hold onto your phone, I was told).  Zoom further out and I knew even less about how the local or regional or state government worked, or how different rural life in South Africa is from life in a big city.  It was an eye-opener that despite our having a plethora of rescued cats in our home (who "boycott" us for a few hours when we return home after a trip, as cats tend to do), I had to agree with a piece in the NY Review by Gregory Hays as he talked about his own indoor felines: ...their inner lives remain an enigma to us.  We loved them, but we do not know whether they loved us in the same way, or even liked us. We do not know how they even conceived of us.  As caregivers and protectors?  As mobile can openers?  As larger, less competent cats?  We do not know what their thoughts were like at all.

Anti-poaching dog demonstration

      So no, I had no right to cop such a negative attitude, to dampen spirits and to crush out the embers. This was not my call, not for me and certainly not for me to relay onto others; not when a couple had given up everything to move down here with their dogs (from Switzerland and the Arctic, no less) to create an elite anti-poaching unit, purely because they knew that they had found their "passion." *  This was also HESC whose owner tapped into her personal savings to keep things going when Covid brought visitors and income to a standstill, a time when only a few donors kept giving and backing her and telling her that what she was doing was important.  These were the teachers who diligently did what they could with that they had, who told me that "in the US you do not have to struggle," perhaps in response to the shocked look on my face at how bare-bones everything was.  These were the guides working three weeks now without a day off, all to help out and knowing that things would get better. 

Young students at Paulos Ngobeni primary school

     Yes, I was taking the easy way out by unloading my sarcasm at a time when this issue deserved far better.  I was the Fox News, the carnival barker demeaning nobody but myself.  Looked at it from the opposite perspective, everyone I bumped into was quite nice: the students at school looked happy, the workers at HESC were overly-friendly (even coming in on their rare day off to wish us a safe journey home), even the guy grabbing beer at the liquor shop was polite as I gazed a bit too long at all the choices.  I watched as we "interns" did our mixing together of meat, not realizing just how precisely everything had to be weighed and measured, something evident when it came time to mix the formula for the baby rhino (supplements had to be precise as the months shifted and the baby grew larger).  No, I would be the one caught in the snare, the naïve one from the States pretending that my way was the "better" way while actually knowing nothing.  But just as with the animals, all were patient.  In fact, all were mellow, and quiet, and echoing all that we had witnessed in other countries...we, as a group, were loud, ready to listen for a brief moment (then party), assume, and to sit back and wait for the entertainment.  As one leader told me about all the beer bottles clanking, we should be here to learn (but then, my wife and I were no longer in our early 20s, and I was equally fascinated to learn from them as well...who knew that "yak" now meant to throw up, and was no longer a Mongolian animal or a world of chatter?).

     Bottom line is that I apologize and present both the good and the bad and leave it to you.  Admittedly I was humbled by the realisitc approach of Green Trax and their anti-poaching team: We are not under the illusion that we can save the world or that we will be able to stop wildlife poaching and trafficking.  We do know, however, that we are making a positive difference in nature conservation and crime prevention through active participation and through support of and collaboration with other reputable organisations and individuals.  In the coming posts I will try to encapsulate the wonder of our visit, to attempt to describe the animals (quick: what do you call a gathering of giraffes?), and to relay a tiny, tiny bit of what this large country seems to be going through.  This will certainly not be representative of all of Africa, or even all of South Africa; Kruger Park alone is the size of the UK.  Drive through England in a day?  Try driving through Kruger for 9 hours and you'll envision just how little we actually saw of the park.  But overall, which Africa would you want to remember?  Which Africa would hope to visit?   Which Africa do you feel will be there for your children?  As both Greta Thunberg and Captain Jean luc Picard would say, "Engage."

*The start-up, still in its infancy, is called Green Trax, and they operate strictly on what funds they do or don't receive.  I have rarely met two more dedicated people, a couple now attracting equally devoted volunteers to help them accomplish what they set out to do, which is to slow and to stop the illegal poaching of wildlife in the area.  They asked that people be patient as they struggle to find the time to finesse their website...web designers, you'd be more than welcome here.