Travel Advice – wanderwarbler

January 31, 2019February 1, 2019

Lesotho: Drained

High up in the Drakensberg riff sits the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. It is home to Africa’s highest mountain, the Ntlenyana at 3482m, and some of the continent’s highest waterfalls. The small republic is completely surrounded by the state of South Africa, for which it has always held a special attraction. Lesotho has something in abundance its single next door neighbor desperately wants: water.

A Sotho boy in typical outfit. Photo by Karen Smit

Upon visiting the mountainous land one is touched by its picturesque scenery and the traditional life style of the Basotho people (Lesotho means: land of those who speak Sotho). Climbing the steep slopes in rubber-boots or high up a horse – they are expert riders – clad in their traditional and super warm blankets, they appear taciturn, withdrawn like so many mountain peoples. But most striking to the visitor is the fact that tap water is unsafe in this country. It’s sad but true: 25% of the population have no access to clean drinking water.

Lesotho has known a troubled past. While independence from the British came peacefully in 1966, the small and bitterly poor republic has since been depending on South Africa – for obvious geographic reasons. The big neighbor has always dominated the region economically, but also has never shied away from armed interventions when it came to securing to economic advantages, like: access to the fresh water of Lesotho.

In 1986, South Africa and Lesotho under its South Africa-backed leader Major General Lekhaya (who came to power by a means of a coup d’etat, which many believe was sponsored by South Africa) signed the Lesotho Highlands Water Treaty. Lesotho – would supply Johannesburg and Pretoria, and the whole of Gauteng, South Africa’s arid heartland, with fresh drinking water. For water, it was was believed, Lesotho would always have plenty.

Financed by South Africa, the now functioning Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) consists of a series of dams – most importantly the Katse dam in central Lesotho – that trap water in deep mountain valleys, as well as canals and tunnels that transport water North to South Africa. This way, Lesotho makes US$45 million each year: a significant amount in one of the world’s poorest countries. So much, that the LHWP has in fact become a symbol economic integration, of national identity and pride.

But the project came at a high cost. Dams flooded the land, turning fields into water wastelands, drowning trees, leaving the local farmers struggling. Instead, profits went towards a small numbered elite in Lesotho’s modern capital, Maseru. South Africa has always protected their “Water Castle”, as they came to call Lesotho. A notorious incident occurred in 1998, when after political unrest in Maseru, a South African military intervention left 13 Lesotho soldiers dead at the Katse dam.

Things got worse for the Lesotho farmers when the effects of climate change hit the country. Increasingly unstable weather conditions and frequent droughts, most importantly the severe drought 2014 to 2016, took a terrible toll on the Basotho. The country went dry.

A Sotho woman preparing thatching for the traditional huts

There are no irrigation systems in Lesotho. Crops failed. Cattle had no grass to graze. With the drought came poverty – almost a million of Basotho were left in need of emergency food programs – and the fierce fight for survival. The number of school drop-outs soared, as did HIV rates, especially among adolescent girls, who increasingly relied on prostitution to support themselves. With lack of sufficient sanitation services the risk for diarrhea increased, threatening most of all young children. Still, the Basotho had to watch their waters flow towards South Africa.

The mighty Matsunyane falls – a tourist attraction. Lesotho also attracts skiers in winter and adventurous drivers on its steep mountain passes. Yet, tourism is not strong enough to support the country – yet!

Lesotho is not only a victim of climate change. Lesotho is an example of what happens when a country turns water into a commodity.

One doesn’t know the worth of water, until the well runs dry.

December 27, 2018January 28, 2019

Austria: Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

As of today it’s official: The Austrian Roller is extinct. According to the Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research, there are no breeding couples of European Rollers in areas they thrived in only a few decades ago. The death of a species doesn’t come unannounced. For years, NGOs and even the EU have warned of the imminent loss of the strikingly beautiful bird. In vain.

Coracias garrullus was a gregarious bird, as its name suggest, and flamboyantly colored, its turquoise feathers glittering like emeralds. Together with its close relatives, the bee-eater and the kingfisher, it was one of the few birds that brightened up the otherwise monochrome Austrian bird world. The vibrant group’s evolution can be traced back to the Eocene, some fifty million years ago. Yet it took only thirty years to wipe them from their traditional breeding grounds in Eastern Austria.

European Rollers are loyal to their homes. They return from their South African wintering grounds with unbelievable exactitude – a field, a bush, or a tree the monogamous bird and their mating partner will defend as their territory. If they come back, that is, for this year only non-breeders made their way home.

Fallow grassland in Hungary, where rollers still are abundant.

The bird’s patriotism has not been reciprocated by Austria. Intensive agriculture has eaten away their habitat – there are hardly any shrubs left, bushes or fallow grasslands the rollers need as hunting grounds. Dramatic drop in insect population due to wide spread use of pesticides and the fierce weather condition of the past five to ten years has further reduced chances of survival for the young. Finally, add illegal bird hunting in the Mediterranean – their migration route – to the equation. Life was in deed tough on Rollers.

A lonely kingfisher – the last one of its kind in Vienna…

Despite their challenges, Austrian Rollers stayed picky when it came to mating. They didn’t mingle. DNA research suggests that Austrians never even interbred with their next cousins in neighboring Hungary. But as Austrians they should have known better. The history of Austria and Habsburg Empire has proved: incest leads to decreased adaptability and ultimately extinction. The Austrian royal family practically eliminated themselves by means of genetic deficiency.

Sadly, the current Austrian government not only denies a nation’s need for diversity, but climate change as a whole. European Rollers won’t be the last species we will loose.

To be fair, it is not only in Austria that European Rollers have gone extinct. The birds no longer breed in Scandinavia, Russia and Germany. While their numbers are declining in North Eastern Europe, in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria they are still very common, in countries like Italy or France even increasing – due to conservation efforts like the installation of nest boxes or collaborative programs with farmers.

In Eastern Austria. Rollers and farmers aren’t nemesis. The former actually needs the latter as farmers dig up the beetles for them. It’s industrialized agriculture and the use of pesticides that’s the problem.

In 2015, Birdlife Austria issued a statement demanding immediate action. Rollers, as well as the buntings and shrikes, are under imminent threat of extinction. The NGO pointed towards € 40million that were provided by the EU for Austrian conservation programs but were never put to action. No single politician found the strength to stand up against agricultural lobbies in Austria. The reasons for this lack of political will or courage lie in the conservative make up of Austrian society. Agriculture symbolizes traditional values that, especially in the rural communities, still go unchallenged in Austria.

The red-backed shrike, once common, is also near extinct in Austria.

In 2013, the Albertina, one of Vienna’s most prestigious museums, lent Albrecht Dürer’s highly acclaimed water color Wing of A European Roller to the National Gallery of Art, Washington. It is one of the major nature studies in Art History.

In 2012, Birdlife International called for political action as there are only six breeding pairs of Rollers in Austria left.

In 2010, because the bird was so beautiful and oh so rare – only breeding in one little community in Burgenland, Eastern Austria – the Republic issued a stamp celebrating the bird.

In 2008, the European Union issued the Species Action Plan with the goal to restore the European population of rollers to a favorable conservation status.

In 2005, Birdlife international changed the status of European Rollers from LC – least concern – to NT: near threatened.

In 1520, Albrecht Dürer painted the Wing Of A European Roller. The bird is abundant in Europe and the painter mesmerized by its beauty.

Epilogue:

Please visit the Albertina in 2019, when from September on, the Wing Of A European Roller will be back to Vienna and on display in a special exhibition about Albrecht Dürer’s nature studies. Can’t say Austria doesn’t value its treasures. It practically excels in the art of preservation.

https://www.albertina.at/ausstellungen/albrecht-duerer/

Epilogue 2:

The reason why the wanderwarbler is quite enraged by the extinction of the roller is not only but also that contrary to what the name suggests, the bird in the logo is actually a European Roller.

December 20, 2018January 29, 2019

The Silent Death Of Giraffes

Free roaming Angolan giraffe in Damaraland, Namibia. It hasn’t rained in five years, survival is a fierce fight.

Giraffes are the supermodels of the animal kingdom, they turn the savannas of Africa into their cat walk with each sway of their elegant long necks, with each long-legged stride and each long-lashed bat of their eyes. They fill us with this warm feeling of satisfaction one gets when witnessing beauty and perfection. Humans adore giraffes – so much that the number of Sophie La Giraffe rubber toys sold each year in France alone is bigger than the number of Giraffes living on the entire African continent.

The world’s tallest animal is at the risk of extinction. Nearly 40% of the wild giraffe population in Africa (that means worldwide) was lost in the past thirty years, according to the authoritative list compiled and issued by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Masai giraffe in the Selous GR, Tanzania. Giraffes and oxpeckers live in symbiotic harmony. The gregarious little birds feast on the tics and keep the giraffe’s fur clean.

It is, as with any other endangered species, the growth of human population that led to this dramatic decline in numbers. Tackling the underlying causes requires economic and ecological collaboration on a global basis.

While poaching is a considerable problem – their natural curiosity makes giraffes easy prey, loss of habitat through agriculture, mining, urbanization and pollution seems to be the bigger problem. These giant animals need space to roam – space which many protected areas like national parks and reserves can’t offer. Loss of wild crops like mangoes and sunflowers, which are more resilient to droughts and diseases, and which provide food supplies when times get rough, constitutes another important problem.

Giraffes have exceptionally long tongues, extendable to 30cm, and are the only animal that can manoeuvre around the long thorns of the whistling tree to eat its leaves. Ants that live in the thorns are therefore the giraffes’ natural nemesis. They bite the giraffes in the tongue.

Silent Extinction

“These gentle giants have been overlooked. It’s well known that African elephants are in trouble and there are perhaps just under half a million left. But what no one realised is there are far fewer giraffes, which have already become extinct in seven countries,” the British naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough said.

While their conservation status has been considered of least concern, giraffes are now “vulnerable”. In numbers, giraffe population has plummeted from 157,000 to 97,500 since 1990. Today they count less than 100,000.

After the rain in KwazuluNatal. South Africa has been successful in raising the number of giraffes.

Recently, researchers have discovered through DNA analysis, that there is not just one species of giraffe, but four distinct species: The Southern Giraffe with two subspecies (the Angolan Giraffe and the South African Giraffe); the Massai giraffe; the reticulated giraffe; and the northern giraffe with another two subspecies (the Kordofan and the West-African giraffe).

This might seem like an irrelevant academic detail, but it is in fact problematic since in the wild distinct species do not interbreed. This means, that while the South African giraffe is actually growing in numbers due to successful protection efforts in South Africa, the three others are facing extinction.

According to IUCN chairman Julian Fennessy giraffes are especially under threat in war torn areas like northern Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia in the border area with South Sudan. With his wife, the biologist has founded GCF, the Giraffe Conservation Found that saves giraffes in their habitat. Their breathtaking work can be supported at their website: giraffeconservation.org .

This year, French babies are still happily squeezing their rubber Sophies, but they grow up into a dim future, where the living, breathing giraffes will be a nothing but a silent memory.

October 20, 2018

South Africa: Come Back, Mama Africa

A dress with Miriam Makeba’s famous Drum cover at Neighbourgoods Market Johannesburg

Ten Years ago, on November 7th 2008, the South African Singer and human rights activist Miriam Makeba collapsed after a performance. She was immediately taken to a hospital, but died from cardiac arrest. Nelson Mandela, president of South Africa, issued a statement, saying that the death “of our beloved Miriam has saddened us and our nation. She was the mother of our struggle.”

Nelson Mandela smiles on his Rainbow nation on a mural in central Johannesburg

Zenzile Miriam Makeba was a fearless emblem of the travails of black people under the apartheid system. She was a symbol of integrity and pan-Africanism, singing in any language from her own Xhosa to Swahili, from Portuguese to Yiddish. Her love songs and lullabies, party songs and calls for unity spoke of a joyful tenacity, of a will to survive: a deep cultural memory. She stood not only against South African apartheid, but for a worldwide movement against racism. She was Mama Africa.

In 1967, Miriam Makeba was also the first black woman to have a Top-ten world hit: Pata Pata. She had produced the song in the USA, as she was exiled from her native South Africa and her music banned. But in her heart South Africa lived on. “I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realizing.”

Pata Pata is a Xhosa word, her native language, and means Touch, Touch. In the 1950ies, when Zenzile Miriam was young, an aspiring singer, it was a popular dance in the shebeens of Sophiatown.

Apartheid had just been installed in South Africa, but the Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown was still spared segregation. Africans of all tribes lived door by door with Indians, Chinese, Jews, and Mulattos. Mansions and quaint cottages stood next to rusty wood-and-iron shacks ignoring race or class structures. There were gangs in Sophiatown, the Tsotsi – modelled themselves after the American Zootsuits, and Miriam was a gang member, too. She performed as a singer in the shebeens – illegal drinking dens.

Bhanzi, a dancer and performer from the Johannesburg township of Tembisa in Tsotsi style.

Music thrived in Sophiatown – giving birth to its own South African Jazz, Marabi, a mixture of American Bebop and African traditional grooves, with Hugh Masakela, Abdullah Ibrahim, Kippie Moeketsi and Dolly Rathebe starting their careers. Black intellectuals flocked to Sophiatown to talk, listen and dance to recordings of the newest jazz. And Drum Magazine, the only black magazine, covered this bubbling scene, with photographers Bob Gusani and Ernest Cole, and artist Gerard Sekoto.

Fra Stompie has been playing in the old days in Sophiatown, and does so again.

“For Africans it was the Left Bank in Paris, Greenwich Village in New York, the home of writers, artists, doctors and lawyers. It was both bohemian and conventional, lively and sedate.” Nelson Mandela wrote in his autobiography. He too, a young lawyer, had come to Sophiatown. For music and political resistance went hand in hand in South Africa. That’s how Miriam and Nelson met.

In 1955, the governing National Party (NP), sent two thousand policemen armed with guns and rifles. Influential musicians, writers or activists were exiled or imprisoned, 60 000 inhabitants removed. Sophiatown was flattened by bulldozers.

Nowadays, long after the fall of Apartheid, and a cultural organization is trying to preserve the legacy and memory of the once vibrant suburb, and revive its grooves by organizing jazz workshops and concerts.

For her last concert, Miriam Makeba had come to Naples to participate in a charity held in solidarity with the writer Roberto Saviano, whom the Camorra threatened with death. Her last song was Pata Pata.

The real Pata Pata Dance

September 21, 2017September 21, 2017

Vienna: The Caged Birds Fly

Opened in 1752, the zoo of Vienna is the oldest in the world. Mary Theresa of Austria had the zoo installed into the baroque gardens of her imperial summer residence of Schönbrunn, back then still in the outskirts of Vienna. Until 1778 only members of the royal family could wander among the cages to marvel at the elephants, giraffes, camels, bears, wolfs and exotic birds.

Today one of Vienna’s major tourist attractions, Schönbrunn with its zoological, botanical and baroque gardens as well as a lavishly decorated golden interior, was styled after Versaille in Paris. Mary Theresa sought the alliance of the Bourbon Empire to fortify her empire against her archfiend Frederick II of Prussia. On her court, French was spoken. To eternally strengthen the relationship between Austria and France, she further sent her youngest daughter, Maria Antonia, to marry the future king Louis XVI – against the teenager’s wish. However, the French empire did not last as long as the Austro Hungarian monarchy. As Queen Marie Antoinette, Maria Antonia was beheaded during the French Revolution of 1791.

At Schönbrunn castle, six year old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played for Mary Theresa. Little Mozart did not have to go to school as other children his age had to: As citizen of the independent state of Salzburg and therefore no Austrian, obligatory schooling did not apply to him.

Mary Theresa, despite her well-groomed image as the warm-hearted mother to the peoples of her multinational empire, was an absolute and strict ruler, and it was only her successor, her son Joseph II, who talked her into a slightly more liberal thinking and therefore reforms, such as opening the zoo to the public. In fact, the citizens of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy might have seen life in catholic, narrow-minded Austria comparable to living in the cages of the zoo. Definitely her own children did.

An ardent catholic – the Roman Catholic Church is still state church in Austria – she believed her power to be god given. Mary Theresa controlled her own children the way she controlled her subjects: with an iron fist. She introduced compulsory schooling for all children between six and twelve. Other faiths than the Roman Catholic were not tolerated in her empire: Jews as well as Christians of protestant faith were dispelled from the country – as long as they did not weigh in when it came to financing her wars against Frederick II. Wars she kept loosing.

Today, 300 years after Mary Theresa, the Zoo attracts two million visitors per year. In its more than 250 years of existence, it has gone a long way from its first exhibitions in baroque cages and adorned follies. Waldrapps, or hermit ibis, a central European bird species that went extinct in the 18th century, was bred anew at Schönbrunn Zoo. A complex re-introduction program which involved glider planes taught the birds, born in captivity, to fly long distance and find their migratory routs to Tuscanny, Italy, where their free ancestors spent their winters. The population of these striking birds is still small – they are among the rarest birds worldwide. Yet they are alive and free again – ironically thanks to Mary Theresa’s Zoo.