I took the morning game drive off and slept in and, as it turned out, didn't miss much. As the guides continually pointed out to us, this isn't a zoo, these animals are wild and so there are no guarantees you will see anything. Jan and I had a nice chat with Arthur during the lunch/siesta break... he's quite talented and knowledgeable, continually aweing us with tracking skills and insights about the local cultures. He's always upbeat and loves to tell stories and jokes.
Seen here in his chitenge and sporting a warthog tat at the Boma dinner...
I'm writing again at the writing desk on the raised deck here at Linkwasha camp right now. I just heard some whistling downstairs... it was one of the staff shooing away baboons who like to wander into the lodge and take the tea and sugar and charging cameras, or anything they can get their hands on. There is free laundry service at all of the camps, except that they won't do 'smalls,' underwear... they provide laundry soap in our rooms for us to do them ourselves but caution against hanging them outside to dry, as the baboons love to snag them, though we have yet to see a baboon wearing lingerie.
The guides are full of great stories and local customs and lore. In some Zambian cultures, pubescent girls will not collect the wood of the Knobby Acacia Tree for use as firewood for fear that their breasts will not grow if they do. And the pubescent boys choose a Kigelia tree (sausage tree) that has large, elongated, hanging seed pods to watch. They believe that their penis will grow according to the length of the pods on their chosen tree... so they must collect the pod after it has grown to sufficient length but before it gets too long!
The Kigelia tree does provide the ingredient for Kigelia cream, a popular and effective treatment for skin diseases and for skin maintenance.
Which brings us to elephant dung... yes, elephant dung. Imagine our safari vehicles bouncing along through the bush with a can hanging on the back from which smoke is rising and fanning out... burning elephant dung repels the notorious tsetse fly which transmits malaria. Robert, our driver, makes occasional stops to 'shop' for elephant dung, turning it over in his hands to determine it's freshness... the dung is actually not disgusting at all... more like damp grass given the elephants' vegan diet. Kids play games using elephant dung. And the best story is Arthur's cure of lifelong nosebleeds. He had tried everything, been to all of the conventional doctors, all to no avail. He was finally told by a tribal elder to inhale burning elephant dung. It didn't work... until some time later, he was told that he had to do it correctly, get it right up to his nose until he could feel the heat in his nasal passages... voila, his lifelong nosebleeds stopped and have never returned!
In the next camp, it was the birthday of another in our group. One of our guides, Mafuka, made a nice toast at the end of our dinner that night, then proudly had the cook bring out a birthday cake for the birthday lady, giving her a knife to cut it after she blew out the candle. She worked and worked to get the big knife to cut through the cake. Eventually she got the knife in and it sort of fell apart... much to Mafuka's delight. Yep, it was elephant dung!
I think this elephant was saying you're welcome...
Choose another day below --- or click 'Newer Posts' at bottom for next day - or click 'Older Posts' at bottom for previous day.
To view blog from beginning to end, click 'Day 01 - Sep 07' - Then you can click 'Newer Posts' at the bottom of each successive post to go to the next day. Or you can choose a day from the list below.
Home
- Nature Imitating Art
