travel writing – wanderwarbler

November 19, 2021December 26, 2021

5-YEAR RECAP

I started this website, wanderwarbler, in early 2017 not only to document my travels, but to contemplate and venture into terra incognita philosophically, by means of the books, the poems, the lores and legends of the places I visited. My research deepened my understanding of geography, biology, and of humanity as a whole, as art and abstraction always reveal the truth hidden underneath the banalities of travel schedules, or of daily life.

In the beginning I questioned the moral rightfulness of travelling in a world where travelling was a privilege reserved to a wealthy minority, yet equally a chance for the under-privileged to make a living in tourism-related jobs. I believed in respectful, openhearted and openminded travel, traveling beyond the pitfalls of mass tourism and neo-colonialism. The challenges and experience of travel no doubt made me a wiser, enlightened person. But would my tales and travels change this planet for the better?

My hope was to build an argument for cultural diversity in a world ever more McDonaldized, H&M-ized, Hollywood-ized. Wanderwarbler could make a case against Club Med, but support the family-run Beds and Breakfast’s. In short: emphasize the difference between tourism and travel, which means to respect and to treat every place as somebody’s home, and not a entertainment park.

For five years I kept travelling, learning, researching, writing, but not exclusively for my readers. I kept writing to come to terms with what was hard to bear, or witness: social injustice, scars of wars, the irreversibility of death.

*_{Great Zimbabwe, 2019: 1000-year old stonewall}* –

Obviously, I am not a war reporter. I shy away from war torn places, or countries in turmoil and civic unrest, and my destinations are those everyone could visit without fearing for their lives. Still, wherever I went, on or off the beaten path, I came across poverty and illiteracy, pollution and destruction, and screaming injustice. I held on to the thought that sharing my experiences could change the world for the better, at least on some homeopathic level. Five years later, the world has changed dramatically.

Five years – in terms of planet Earth are nothing, but in terms of social dynamics, a lot had changed. Demagogues – the Trumps, Orbans, and Bolsonaros of this world – scarred communities. Social media didn’t knit us into a tight fabric of humankind, but entangled us in alternative facts and half-truths, in the fake, misogynistic, beauty-filtered world of Instagram. The pandemic and climate collapse, and with it the rapid destruction of habitat and disappearance of wild life, and the commercial conquest of outer space, have widened the gap between rich and poor, between left and right, between those who will have the means to save themselves, and those who won’t.

*^{_{Franz and Innozent show off their Vogueing Poses in Maltahöhe, Namibia, 2018}}*

For the last two years, Corona travel restrictions have prevented me from travelling far. My trips nowadays are mostly restricted to neighbouring European countries, and to journeys into the past, again and again revisiting those moments that in their intensity, and sometimes in their perilousness changed my life. It’s the African episodes of my travels that keep springing to mind most prominently, like lessons for life.

I often remember Lovemore, whom I met in the streets of suburbian Johannesburg. A tall, lanky man in his early thirties, Lovemore worked as a 24/7 security guard in one on the richest neighbourhoods where the streets are lined with blue blooming jacarandas and the sweet air filled with bird song. He spent his days in his little hut outside an electrified wall, which blocks the view of the villa behind, the pool, the lush garden and the luxury limousines that park in the drive way. Lovemore himself lived in the notorious Vodaphone tower in the city center, a sky-rise that after the fall of apartheid had been taken over by squatters, lacking of electricity, running water, and garbage disposal: a stinking hell in the hands of armed gangs. But Lovemore smiled. On his phone with the cracked screen, he showed me photos of his children, his wife, his family. He talked about the brother- and sisterhood of all people. And how people are misguided, abused, by politics. I wouldn’t be like Lovemore, I thought then. In his shoes, I’d be Loveless. But Lovemore appeared happy. He seemed to live a fulfilled life. We are still friends on facebook and maybe, today, I believe, I love more.

And I remember a journey through remote Tanzania, the Landrover staggering along the dusty red dirt road when we passed by a funeral procession. My driver, Salim, a Muslim, and my birding guide, Emanuel, a Christian, stopped the car, jumped out and ran to hug the grieving family, then shouldered the coffin and helped to carry it along. When they later got back to the car, I asked them whether they knew the deceased. “No,” they said. “That’s what you do. You pay respect.”

Of course it was those moments that exposed the transience of life that challenged me most in my morals and responsibilities as a human being.

I remember the night I got lost in the Kruger Nationalpark in South Africa. Shaking with fear from lions and buffaloes, I had to walk back to the camp after our car broke down in the middle of the savannah. The Milky Way sparkled above me, a tiara of zillions of brillilant stars in the black of the night, as my feet kept sinking deep into the lose sand, slipping with each step on fresh elephant dung. And I remember, years later, fearing for another creature’s life, when I got to observe three regal lionesses stalking an antelope in the bush of Botswana.

I was transformed when I reached the camp in the Kruger unscathed, and I was transformed when I watched the antelope look the lionesses in the eye with defiance. The lionesses abandoned the stalk and lazily lay down in the sun. Life, I learned in the wilderness, is a brittle little thing, and yet it’s only this brittleness that bestows value on it. Only when it seems to slip away, we want to hold on to our lives. Some with fear, some with defiance.

If we all realized that the world as we have known it – a planet filled with animals and birds, with trees and snow-capped mountains – is slipping away between our fingers like desert sand, and if we realize this means our lives, our memories, our values and even our possessions, all we’ve ever owned, will fade as well, will we love our planet, hang on to it like to our lives, fight for it, with fear or defiance?

No matter where I travelled, I was never alone. There were always other beings around me, humans and non-humans, and I realized that we’re all sitting in the same boat, struggling through troubled water. We all belong to the same ecosystem: a system that’s changing for sure, as we do in a lifetime, and one that’s as brittle as our lives are, and as unique. It is after all the only eco-system in billions of years that brought about human life. Maybe, if I keep telling about the lionesses, whose families are as organized complicated as ours, about the elephants and wild dogs, who take care of each other with love and tenderness just as we do, or the birds, whose songbook exceeds the Bach-Werkeverzeichnis, will it be evident that we are all the same, but speaking in a different language.

*_{Family of Egyptian Geese, Tanzania, 2019}*

I had to travel to the other side of the world to realize that the life of dung beetle like Sysiphos forever rolling its ball is just as meaningful as mine. Travelling has taught me that I am just a tiny speck in this world, but that I am an important, essential part of it: That I am part of nature, part of humanity, part of every tribe in this world, part of every species. Everywhere is home.

August 31, 2021October 18, 2021

Italy: A View of Paradise

At last, after a long losing streak, the tables are turning. For three years of soaring unemployment, of closed shopfronts, deserted beaches, and soup kitchens, the future looked bleak. Now the golden sun sparkles on the turquoise waters of Lake Lugano again, the trees don’t shiver, but sway dreamily in the early summer’s breeze. Once again everything seems possible. Once again, the people of Campione d’Italia are gambling for high stakes.

Campione d’Italia is a little Italian town located at Swiss Lake Lugano. With stunning mountain views and clear waters, cypresses and palm trees, and dolce fa niente, the Italian enclave is indeed a piece of Italy in the middle of Switzerland. The name goes back to medieval landlord, Campione, who left his estates to a monastery in Milan. A Papal State that remained Italian when the Helvetic Protestants took their oath, Campione was for decades spoilt for success.

The rise of Campione started in 1917, during WWI, when with the sole purpose of spying on foreign diplomats, a gambling licence was granted to Campione to open a casino. After the war, the Casino di Campione was closed again, and the town fell back into provincial slumber, but in the 1930s, Mussolini, recognizing its strategic importance in the middle of neutral Switzerland, not only added “d’Italia” to the former name “Campione” in an imperialistic gesture, but he reopened the Casino. Tax-exempted, all profits were to go to “Campione d’Italia”.

The Casino soon became a hot spot of international intelligence. The US Office of Strategic Services – the precursor of the CIA – opened an office there, and, with diplomats of all sides rubbing shoulders at Roulette and Black Jack, the little town saw a fair share of secret service intrigue and 007. After the war, when Italy lay shattered in ruins and ashes, Campione d’Italia kept prospering.

The Casino provided jobs to a quarter of the 2000 locals, and a steady inflow of foreign currency. With the roulette’s wheel turning until 6am, nightlife was vibrant, with concerts and music festivals all year round. Restaurants, hotels, gyms, and boat clubs and upscale boutiques were flourishing as international High Society and VIP’s promenaded along the lido, the lakefront.

Campione had the best of both worlds. With Italian verve, it outshone luxurious, but staid Lugano on the other side of the lake. Cappuccino was ordered in Italian, but paid in with Swiss Franken. Telephone numbers were Swiss, as were car plates, and insurance policies. From rubbish collection to schools, municipal services were reliably provided by Switzerland, and paid for by the Casino. With gambling prohibited across the border, fortune smiled on Campione. Money kept rolling in and Champagne bottles kept popping, real estate prices soared.

But the rich didn’t flock to Campione simply for the fun. With a moderate income tax, no inheritance tax at all, nor gift tax or VAT Campione d’Italia was a tax haven.

Then Campione started pushing its luck.

In 2007, Casino was rebuilt. At the cost of more than 100 million Euro, Swiss star architect Mario Botta designed a block-shaped 36,000 square metre colossus that offered 56 tables and 1,000 slot machines to 3,100 gamblers at a time. Sitting at the lakefront, the ochre monster dwarfs the old town up the steep slope behind it. Instead of Italian charm or Swiss understatement, the Casino di Campione d’Italia oozes Sowjet megalomania.

The redesigning came at a bad time. The same year, new Italian laws allowed for gambling machines in bars and café, stealing Campione its unique selling point. Then Switzerland unexpectedly permitted gambling and soon three casinos opened near-by, one of them in elegant Lugano on the other side of the lake. Then, unforeseen online gambling became a thing. And really no one in Campione had thought about the possibility of the Swiss Franken gaining in strength against the Euro. Relying on Swiss services, Campione started amassing enormous debts.

So the unlucky streak began. When the Casino failed to come up with the maintenance costs of its high-priced municipality, one after the other, the city offices, the nursery schools closed down. The mayor resigned, and clerks were left waiting for months for their pay checks in offices they had no fuel to heat.

When finally, in 2018, the Casino declared bankruptcy and closed for good, the boutiques first lowered their prices, then the scrollbars. The gyms shut their doors, then the bars. Then the restaurants closed, and the soup kitchens opened.

But then things got worse. In 2000, after long legal battles, Campione was forced to join the European Union, an unwanted “Brexit al contrario.” Italy finally revoked Campione’s old tax exemptions. From one day to the other, people of Campione had to report to Como in Lombardy, crossing EU borders to get new car plates, telephone numbers, even to collect their amazon parcels, which were now delivered by Italian postal services. They realized with horror that no one in Campione had a tobacco license. For each package of cigarettes, they had to cross borders into Switzerland now.

Just when it looked as if couldn’t get any worse for Campione, the Corona virus spread over Europe, holding Lombardy in a tight grip. Cross border traffic between Switzerland and Italy came to a halt, bus service was suspended. The only way to get to Como was now to walk to the Italian border, and to quarantine.

Rien ne va plus.

“S-O-S. Campione is dead.” A banner the local Lion’s club had mounted on the lido read. People now had to rely on meagre Italian unemployment cheques, others went without pay. Debts to Switzerland counted 175 Million Franks. Neighbouring Swiss communities helped their suddenly impoverished neighbours with warm food and clothes. But while some felt desperate, it was a moment of catharsis to others.

“If you eat too much caviar, you will get sick,” the starred chef Baptiste Fournier said in an interview with the BBC. He saw a new beginning, a chance to re-organize the economic system, become independent from a single employer, or from another country. There is, after all, much more to Campione d’Italia than Baccara and Black Jack.

There are palm trees softly rocking in the breeze, there is the sweet scent of the ancient cypress trees in the ear. Red kites are whistling as they cross the cerulean sky, and flocks of black-headed gulls come sailing in to rest on the calm, turquoise waters. A group of old men are playing cards by the lake front. One of them, turned away from the group, is singing the old Italian song Volare, flying, in the delicate falsetto of old age. He looks across the lake, to Paradiso, Lugano’s cosmopolitan lakefront, the elegant lido against a backdrop of high mountains.

Then, luck turned.

This June, a court in Milan approved a refinance plan. By the end of the year the Casino is scheduled to reopen, people are re-employed, restaurants re-opened. The sun shines on Campione again, and again Campione d’Italia is counting on Fortuna. The ball is rolling.

September 28, 2020September 28, 2020

Le Mal D’Afrique |Zimbabwe

Due to the Corona pandemic I cannot migrate to the South this year. Missing Africa, I dwell in memories.

In the township

There is laughter. The joyful treble of children at play: The girls, skipping with an old elastic rope tied to their waists, are showing off their intricate foot work. The little boys are chasing each other, trying to ride an old cast-off tire, its rubber grey and worn off. White teeth, red lips, little bare feet against the dry orange soil. The children throw you hidden glances and when they see you smile at them, they scream in delight. Their laughter comes as a relief. They don’t hate you. You, who in your Goretex shoes and polarized sunshades, your high-tech camera gripped tightly in your hand, didn’t come from another country, or another continent, but a different world altogether.

Makokoba is a township at the outskirts of the South Zimbabwean town of Bulawayo. A township like so many other townships in Africa, installed by European colonists in need of work force but in fear of Africans. A place to keep the workers close by, to cultivate their fields, clean their clothes and wash their dishes, build their roads and houses and churches, but safely fenced off, separated from their roads and houses and churches. A township to keep the Africans out of sight. To send them back to Africa when night falls.

The main streets of Makokoba are paved, but they are potholed, and blanketed with thick layers of orange dust. A bitter stale taste that with every breath coats the inner of your mouth. A pale orange that clings to the children’s skin and the stray dogs’ shaggy fur, the scattered plastic trash that piles up at every corner, the bare bricks of the one-storied buildings, and the rubber sandals at the callused feet of the people of Makokoba. When you catch their eye, you wave at them: “Salibonani!, you call, which, as your guide told you, means “Hello!” in their language, Ndebele. An old woman – or maybe your age only, yet prematurely hunch-backed and brittle, clad in an apricot-colored head dress waves back at you. Her smile reveals bare toothless gums in a wrinkled face. A young man with bloodshot eyes keeps his gaze at his feet. His gait is unsteady as he passes you by. Still you smile at him. You grip your camera tighter. Not because you fear he might rip it from your hand, but because you feel just as unsteady. You feel out of place. You feel guilty.

The land, fertile and sunbathed, was given to the English immigrants, in exchange for coming to Africa. The land, fertile and sunbathed, was taken from the African tribes that had settled here before. The Ndebele people were relegated to the barren land, far off the water lines, not living from their land anymore, but working for the landlords.

“Salibonani!” A woman in a yellow T-shirt and a skirt of a green leafy pattern wants to show you her garden. She has used discarded tires as beds to plant vegetables. Water is expensive here, you learn, she has to buy it a high price by the barrel, back there, at the manually operated iron cast pump. The rubber tires keep the water from dissipating in the sandy soil. Her plants are thriving: full leaved cabbages reaching for the cloud covered sky. She poses for a photo with a sunny smile.

Makokoba is an enchanting word. Within the century of its existence, the township has gathered fame as a place where African culture has thrived amidst all the poverty and oppression, a place that has brought about music, dance, and literature. A symbol of how a bitter root can bear the sweetest fruit. But still, Makokoba is a poor, disadvantaged African township, where unemployment and poverty lead to gangsterism and alcoholism. A place forever at the margins.

At the market, in the midst of terracotta pottery, bowls and pans neatly aligned, and hand-carved drums, lined up by size and tuning, among iron headed spears and glass pearl-chains and silver bangles, among dried herbs in cardboard boxes with Chinese labels, sits the sage woman. Her face weathered and serious, her eyes piercing. She knows of all the illnesses and their cure, your guide tells you. And you want to buy from her, but you don’t speak the language. You can’t spell the illness. “Salibonani,” you say instead. You smile. But she looks back at you, empty handed. She doesn’t have the cure.

December 13, 2019December 14, 2019

Zimbabwe: Matriarchs

A matriarch is a leader. A general. A decision maker. A caring mother. A matriarch guides her family from the moment of its formation to the moment of her death. A matriarch will die for her children.

*The pattern on the fur are unique, like a fingerprint.*

Painted Wolves live in a strict hierarchical system that can safely be called altruistic. In the den, they huddle together to sleep, and when they wake, before leaving for their risky daily business, hunting big game in the wilderness of Africa, they perform long and joyful rituals. Dances that show their mutual love and devotion. Who knows who will return in the end of the day?

Fights within the pack are rare. Instead, the pack members take good care of each other, feeding incapacitated members, and licking each other’s wounds.

Their leader is the alpha female, the matriarch. When she dies, the pack will dissolve. She and her alpha male are the only ones to breed. Their pups will be looked after by the whole pack. At first the little ones will be fed regurgitated meat when the adult animals return from the hunt, but as soon as the pups are old enough, they will join the hunting party. The youngsters don’t contribute to the hunt yet, they are here to learn, but they will be the first to eat, guarded by the adult animals.

Painted Wolves are formidable hunters. Their success rate lies at 90%, a number that by far exceeds that of other apex predators, like lions, leopards or hyenas, and is undoubtedly owed to their perfect organization.

A typical hunt starts with the pack spreading out to cover more ground and give each member enough space to manoeuvre. Once prey is detected, the pack is called and together they spread panic in the heard to separate them. The ensuing chase will be both long distance – with pack members performing flanking movement to cut off any escape routes, or driving herds towards rivers and waters, deadly traps. And it will be high speed. The prey will tire, but not the painted wolves: Comparable to a cycling team, pack members at the head of the chase will pull back once they’re exhausted and other members will take their place, taking the weakened prey down.

Until the present day, there is no incidence recorded of painted wolves ever attacking humans. In fact, for thousands of years Africans and painted wolves lived side by side. Oldest testimony thereof is a palette from ancient Egypt, than 5000 years old, that depicts the big-eared creatures while dancing. It was only when the Europeans arrived on the continent that things went dire for the Painted wolves.

When the Dutch first encountered painted wolves, they thought that they were hyenas – which was wrong. They were soon corrected by the British naturalist Joshua Brookes, who recognized them as canids, and named them: Lycaon Pictus, which is a creative mixture of Latin and Greek, meaning something like: a painted wolf-like thing. What the Romans themselves made of painted dogs, is not known. But they surely held wolves in high esteem, especially when it came to motherhood… With this hybrid name however, Joshua Brookes was closer to the truth. Painted Dogs are neither dogs nor wolves, but their own species.

By 1900, painted wolves lived all across the African continent, an estimated 500.000 of them, roaming the savannas, the semi-deserts, bushlands and forests. They lived at the sea shores and even on top of the Kilimanjaro. Then the European settlers started to establish their European ideas of agriculture in their colonies. Painted Wolves, or Wild Dogs, or Painted Dogs, or whatever name they gave them, to the settlers were a vermin. A pest. Their threat to live stock radically overstated.

Rhodesia (nowadays Zimbabwe), which considered painted wolfs “problem animals” until 1975, paid a reward of five shillings for each wild dog destroyed. Their excellent organization was of no help to the painted wolves when it came to shotguns. Government records state that in the 1950ies alone, 3,679 Wild Dogs were killed for reward. That’s more than half the number of Painted Wolves living today: 5000-6000.

Men have decimated the number of Painted Wolves by 99% within a century, making them an endangered species, their number lower than that of elephants (500.000), giraffes (70.000), rhinos (25.000) and lions (20.000).

Habitat loss continues to be the greatest threat for the painted wolves, predators that need large spaces. Their future is looking bleak. The tragic fate of these loving, joyful creatures has been largely ignored by the world.

Until David Attenborough’s BBC series Dynasties hit the screens. In the fourth episode he tells the story of Tait, matriarch of a pack living in Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools Nationalpark. Her bravery has not only touched the hearts of a world-wide audience, but turned Mana Pools into a prime eco-tourist attraction. Tourists that bring desperately needed money into the country, and therefore might ensure the survival of the painted wolves.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06mvrr0

Recommendation: Painted Wolves by Nick Dyer is not only a beautiful and informative book, shot in the Mana Pools National Park, but its revenue will go into the conservation of Wild Dogs.

https://www.hphpublishing.co.za/products/painted-wolves

July 11, 2019July 22, 2019

The Lion King

25 years after “The Lion King” hit theatres as one of the world’s most successful films, Disney will release its remake on July 19^th. While the 1994 original won multiple awards for its creative animation work, the 2019 remake relied on photorealistic CGI technique – computer generated Images – a technique so realisitically precise, it could fool the movie goers into believing they’re watching an Attenborough documentary, if it weren’t for the unrealistic plot.

That and its anthropomorphism will surely turn the remake into an even bigger success at the box offices. For lions have fascinated humans as long as they remember.

A lion king in the Okavango Delta. It is said that Botswana owns the strongest anti-poaching units. They shoot first, then ask questions.

Spotting a lion, or a lioness, in the wild is a both intimidating as awe inspiring experience: the demeanor of a queen, a king, the innate grace that stems both from superior in strength as well as the unconditional solidarity to the pride. No wonder humans have idolized them.

The oldest known object of figurative art is in fact a figurine of a human’s body with a lioness’s head. The so called Löwenmensch, German for Lion Human, was carved out of mammoth tusk about 40,000 years ago. Discovered in Germany in 1939, only a couple of days before the outbreak of WWII, the Löwenmensch is proof of the presence of lions all over Europe.

In ancient Rome, gladiators had to fight Barbery Lions, lions from the land of the Berbers in Northern Africa. They were in fact damnatii at bestias – condemned to Death, their prosecution entertainment for the lower class.

Neither cave lions, which roamed central Europe in prehistoric times, nor the smaller South European Lion, Panthera Leo which the Romans still enountered when they ruled the continent, had humans on their menu – unless of course they were made sparring partners to unlucky gladiators at the colosseum. Rather, lions and humans have always been competitors on the hunt.

A competition, humans won. The Panthera Leo Europea has long gone extinct. And for the African Lion, the Panthera Leo Leo, the outlook is just as bad.

The Selous Game Reserve offers sufficient space and prey to apex predators

25 years since Disney’s “The Lion King” ran as one of the highest grossing films of all times, lions have halved in number to less than 25.000 – there are fewer lions than rhinos worldwide. Only six countries are home to more than 1000 lions respectively. All of them are in Southern or Eastern Africa, most notably Tanzania, which with its Selous Game Reserve and Ruaha National Park – still offers sufficient space and prey for large predators to thrive.

A young male in the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania

Lions have suffered a dramatic loss of habitat through fragmentation due to agriculture and livestock replacing their natural prey, fueling the conflict between carnivores – humans and lions in this case. Many lions are simply killed in retaliation, or because they are perceived a threat to human livelihood. Poaching, badly managed trophy hunting and bush meat hunting – due to poverty in rural Africa – have done the rest to put lions on the list of endangered species.

A lion cub in the Selous Game Reserve in Southern Tanzania. It’s future is unsure.

25 years after Disney’s “The Lion King” hit the theatres as one of the best selling shows ever, the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, put lions on the list of endangered species.

But real, wild lions however are important in this world and to individual countries. As apex predators they keep ecosystems in balance, they increase the touristic attractiveness as a country for ecotourism. But most importantly, they have as any other living being on this planet has an unconditional right to live.

A lioness also in the Selous Game Reserve in Southern Tanzania

25 years since the first Lion King, the Walt Disney Corporation has asked fans to donate to their Lion Recovery Fund, as well as donating $1.58 million to various lion protection projects since August 2018 themselves. A number dwarfed the $814.7 million adjusted life time grossing of the first Lion King.

A bachelor in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. This young male was actually wearing a colar. Scientific research is fundamental in saving the lion population by tracking their ways and preventing conflict between the big cats and local cattle farmers.

Here are some links of lion conservation projects for you to donate:

The Ruaha Carnivore Conservation Fund:

ABOUT RCP

Remembering Lions

June 16, 2019June 17, 2019

Austria: La Ronde

It’s this time of the year again: The bee-eaters, those agile, gregarious birds, have returned from South Africa and set up shop at Lake Neusiedl. By means of their sharp bills they dig their burrows up to two meters into the vertical sand stone, completely ignoring the burrows they had carved out the previous year. It’s in their nature to build a new home each June.

It’s not in their nature to find new partner, though. Bee-eaters mate for life. Their romantic fidelity has inspired poets and biologists alike. Albeit, their sex lives aren’t as straight forward as it may seem. Both husband and wife like to engage in extra-marital affairs to further their own offspring’s chances of survival, turning the colony into a stage for a veritable Ronde à la Schnitzler.

Courtship follows an elaborate protocol. The groom presents the bride with a present – a bee or a dragonfly or even a butterfly, the avian equivalent to a bouquet of roses. After a little cuddling, the female will assume a receptive posture, after which the consummation of marriage will take place. Then both will joyfully take to the skies. Love is in the air!

However, monogamy is often limited to “social monogamy” – the shared raising of the hatchlings. Copulation often happens in the hidden, sometimes it’s forced, and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.

A couple usually enlists other birds as babysitters, most preferably their own children. If the latter however wish to start their own family, the old couple will go to extraordinary lengths to prevent them from mating. The daughter in turn will sneak out in the wee hours of the day to find herself a secret lover.

In general, as recent studies have shown, a lot of extra-marital sex in the world of birds is in fact instigated by females. Married males will not shy away from a little tete-a-tete, especially if they don’t have to take care of the hatchlings later. On a darker note: bachelors who haven’t managed to impress a female will resort to drastic measures to get their DNA spread: coercion and rape.

Comes September, the bee eaters will head South again. Many more of them.

The Austrian doctor and novelist Arthur Schnitzler published his novel “La Ronde” (Der Reigen) in 1879, causing a scandal for its frank description of sexuality. Or rather: it caused a riot. Not surprisingly, the book was banned. Then became a best seller. The Fifty Shades of Grey of its time. Passion is more colorful at Lake Neusiedl.

May 14, 2019

Vienna: Mother Figures

In 1908, during archeological excavations close to the sleepy village of Willendorf, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a tiny limestone figure depicting a voluptuous woman was found. The archeologists immediately recognized the value of the find, put it in a wooden box and delivered it personally at the imperial-royal Museum of Natural History in Vienna. The figurine became an archeological, historical and art sensation: the later dubbed “Venus Of Willendorf” turned out to be some incredible 29,500 years old. Hopes were high that the figurine would shed light on Stone Age and the beginning of human society. Yet, more than hundred years later the little woman remains a mystery. In her silence however she tells us more about us – and human nature.

The origins of the Venus remain unknown. The limestone she is carved out is not local, and the ochre she supposedly was painted with has long faded. She has no face, but an elaborate hairdo of seven concentric circles. She measures 11,5cm from the tip of her head to her ankles. The little woman has no feet, and never had. What she has instead is big buttocks, burly breasts, a billowing belly, and a prominent cleft between her thighs. She is without doubt a symbol of fertility. Fitting snugly in one hand, she was maybe a lucky charm, meant to be carried around.

But then again, if she was of a nomadic tribe, part of a group of hunters and gatherers, why was she obese, her arms thin and unfit to pick berries or dig for roots, and no feet to run from or after big animals? And if she was a token of procreation, why was she an older woman, instead of a young one at the pinnacle of fertility?

The terror birds roamed Earth in the Stone Age. This one roams the Museum of Natural History, Vienna, now residence of the Venus of Willendorf.

The Venus of Willendorf most likely was no lucky charm, but a totem of womanhood, the epitome of femininity, the antithetical man. Some researchers suspect the figure to be the self portrait of a female artist – her exaggerated proportions the foreshortening effect of self-inspection, her facelessness the result of the lack of mirrors. Others argue that the figurine does not depict a human woman at all, but a deity, a kind of Mother Earth. The Venus is maybe another proof that early societies were in fact matriarchies.

Whatever the truth behind the little figurine, the Willendorf woman was not the only, nor the oldest figurine found in the region in the 20^th century. But she was and still is the most prominent. Something about her seems to resonate with (not only) Austrian culture. She is among the most popular archeological objects in the world – and definitely the prime attraction of the Museum Of National History in Vienna.

Museum of Natural History as seen from the twin Museum, the Museum of Art History. Both Museums were built in the style of Viennese Historism.

The Natural History Museum in Vienna dates back to 1750, when emperor Franz Stephan purchased the then largest collection of natural history objects from Chevalier de Baillou in Florence. This collection, assembled by noblemen and royals, comprised 30,000 fossils, snails, mussels, minerals and precious stones and made its way from Italy over the Alps by means of a mule caravan. The emperor was quite taken with his purchase. He visited the collection every day and furthermore financed expeditions around the world to ship home even more rare specimen of live animals, plants and stones.

Emperor Franz Stephan had enough time to indulge in his passion. It was up to his wife, Maria Theresia of Austria, to run the empire – and the family. The couple had sixteen children. Yet, it was exactly her being a supermom that turned her into a successful leader and business women. Despite her being a strict, authoritarian leader inspired by catholic fundamentalism, to the people of the empire she appeared gentle and big-hearted. Despite never having been crowned emporess, that’s what the people called her. Emporess Maria Theresia. She was their mother, a mother to nine nations. A mother of 50 million.

Another Mother Figure: Maria Theresa was mother to 16 and the rest of the monarchy.

Maria Theresia herself had no interest in natural history, but she recognized the importance of her husband’s collection when it came to mineralogy and the importance it possibly held for mining and exploiting raw materials from the soil. When Franz Stephan died, she donated the collection to the public. She hired a curator to create a museum (open by individual admission only, mind you) at her Imperial palace.

In the following 100 years, the collection kept growing and finally, under her great-great-grandson Emperor Franz Josef I, a new building had to be erected. The new Museum of Natural History, opened in 1889, is situated at Vienna’s pompous Ringstraße, facing its almost identical twin, the Museum of Fine Arts. In between the two imposing buildings, Maria Theresa sits enthroned as a bronze statue. A mere twenty years after the opening of the two museums, by 1918, the monarchy was history itself, but the two museums and Maria Theresia are still standing tall. As is the Venus of Willendorf.

Sunset in Vienna. Maria Theresia and a general in bronze, the museum of natural history in the background

After 29,500 years hidden in the soil, the Venus of Willendorf was condemned to her little wood box until 1989, when she was finally presented to the public. She now resides in her own little chamber on the second floor of the Museum, from where, through the windows, the visitor also has a good view of Maria Theresia, Emporess.

March 26, 2019May 13, 2019

Botswana: Smoke on the Water

Some 50,000 years ago an earthquake caused the Okavango River to crack up and spill into the Kalahari Desert, creating one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa: the Okavango Delta. Situated in present day Northern Botswana, the largest inland delta in the world stretches over 18,000 km2, a lush oasis offering a variety of habitats to an unequaled fauna and flora. Massive populations of elephants roam the savannas. More than 400 bird species nest in the mopani forests and at the clear waters teeming with hippos, crocodiles and lilies. In the open grasslands, some of the last remaining prides of wild dogs compete with lions, hyenas and leopards over plenty of lechwe and impala.

The cycle of life and death is not limited to the animal world. The Delta itself undergoes constant change. There is little rain and what falls during the summer quickly evaporates in the merciless heat. Exclusively watered through the Okavango river as there is little rain, seasonal floods and varying water levels wash away and recreate islands on a regular basis. Bush fires burn old and dry plants; they destruct, but simultaneously offer new growth and fertilization of the soil, hence ensuring constant rejuvenation.

Bushfires are a spectacular display of nature’s power. The billowing smoke clouds color the afternoon skies flaming orange and turn the sun into a fierce red ball of fire. The dry papyrus reeds, so typical of the Delta, pose an extra-ordinary risk. Papyrus ignites quickly and its roots smolder underground, enabling the fire to travel long distances, jumping rivers and firebreaks.

Smoke turns the sky violet and the sun into a fierce ball of fire

As essential as they are, fires cause great damage to the Delta and threaten the slow and smaller among the animals, those who lack the ability to migrate long distance, or leap through the fires and over the waterways.

Mostly occurring during the dry season, June to August, when water levels in the Delta are highest, bush fires are easily sparked off by a lightning in the dry grass, and fueled by winds or storms. Recently however, they are often deliberately set: by farmers clearing vegetation for agriculture or fishing, by lodge owners even to move game towards their lodge, or simply as a result of careless behavior in the dry bush.

A lone elephant crossing open grassland under wades of smoke.

Uncontrolled fires burn over 30% of the Okavango annually. At the moment, a fire is raging in the Delta since February 22, purportedly man-made.

for updates please check:

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/fires-and-smoke-in-the-okavango-delta-botswana

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.