Vienna has many faces. One very beautiful. The city, peacefully slow yet vibrantly social-democratic, has scored the top ranking as the world’s most livable city for the past ten years (Mercer Quality of Living City Ranking). One very ugly: Stained and scarred by history: fascism, the holocaust and the loss of the city’s Jewish community.
Vienna counts almost two million faces – plus 90. Italian-German photographer Luigi Toscano has mounted 90 larger than life current portraits of holocaust survivors at Vienna’s picturesque main boulevard, the Ringstraße, an avenue that features the architectural splendor of the old city. The collection of photos, printed on water repellent, slightly transparent canvas, has toured 70 countries to commemorate the past: Lest we Forget! in times of resurgent totalitarianism, xenophobia and right wing extremism worldwide.
But it was only in Vienna that the photos – touching close-ups of aged, wrinkled faces, eyes that 80 years after the fact still reflect the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, the sadness of the being orphaned and unrooted, and even the optimism and love of reconciliation – were vandalized: defaced and slashed with swastikas.
Toscano’s outdoors exhibition, free and accessible to anyone, has arrived in Vienna in the midst of a political scandal. Until last week, Austria was governed by a coalition between the neo-liberals and the right wing party . The former, whose young chairman Sebastian Kurz eerily resembles the young Emperor Franz Joseph II, husband of Sissy and erector of the Ringstrasse, mastered marketing and political staging to the perfection, hence becoming strongest force in Austria. The latter not so: A video surfaced depicting the right wing leaders drugged and in the act of instigating corruption. A week and a parliamentary motion of no-confidence later, the coalition was history. The act of vandalism, it is suspected, was an act of frustration, hate and antisemitism, which the government had encouraged.
The destruction of the portraits came as a shock to everyone. Another shameful mark in the history of Vienna. But it’s from the dark that the sun rises. Viennese spontaneously got together at Ringstraße, brought needles and threads and sewed the torn portraits back together. Vigils are held to protect the photos 24/7, flowers laid, candles lit. Vienna has learned from its history, it seems.
Who are these faces who stand the rain, the wind and the cold to keep watch? It’s the young Catholics. It’s the Boy scouts. It’s the Young Muslims, who sit feasting through their days of Ramadan and for whom the Chief Rabbi brings food each night. What love, what solidarity!
The portraits now are as scarred as the city. But what is a scar? It’s something that mends together which hate, violence, fear and terror has ripped apart. A scar is a symbol of growth. Of: love conquers everything.
Vienna has many faces. Scarred faces, beautiful faces.
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 20th 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.
In the 19th century, French Jesuit missionaries in South Africa presented King Moshweshwe I of Lesotho with indigo printed textiles. The king so loved to wear the dark blue fabric with the white pattern that he literally kicked off an indigo craze. Henceforth, the indigo fabric was called after him – ShweShwe.
Whether this little anecdote is true or just folklore, it is a fact that Shweshwe is the most emblematic garment of South Africa, worn especially by the Xhosa people but all over the Southern continent, bridging generations, tribes and skin colors.
The mountain kingdom of Lesotho – where Shweshwe got its name.
Yet the history of the so called Denim of South Africa is by far more complex, revealing the mutual exchange of different and distant cultures through history.
Indigo, the dark blue color, stems from India, where for thousands of years it was produced from the Indigofera Tinctoria plant. The Arabs traded the blue dye along with qutan (cotton) on their trade routes that span from Asia to Europe and Africa as early as the 12th century.
In Europe, blue color had always been used to dye fabric. Traditionally, the blue dye was gained from the woad or pastel plant, which was a complicated, labour-intensive and time consuming process. It was only in the 16th century with the import of Indigo dye as colonial merchandise that blue print really took off.
The 30year-war had left central Europe impoverished and the blue print came in handy: well applicable on coarse working fabric like linen and wool, and hard to stain; conveniently, indigo proved to be an easier and cheaper alternative to the pricey pastel plants.
Blue-dying turned into a well-established craft; apprentices on their journeyman-years spread the craft all across Europe, and with it the traditional patterns often depicting tulips and pomegranates, or meticulous geometrical designs, old patterns unchanged for centuries from ancient Egypt to the seafaring Netherlands.
In England, after the introduction of Indian indigo, the young Isaac Newton defined indigo as one of the seven colors of the rainbow by means of a prism. He linked the seven colors to seven notes of a major scale, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, with orange and indigo as semitones.
The technique of creating patterns on the blue was to first dye the entire textile, let it dry and then pass it through copper design rollers, which by emitting an acid, removed the color with utmost precision. It was still a painstaking undertaking and as soon as industrialization hit the continent, the craft disappeared. It was in Africa that blue print found a new life.
Cape Town, South Africa
In the 17th century, the Dutch had already founded Cape Town at Africa’s Southernmost tip. Initially only a refreshment stop for their Dutch East India Company, the city now expanded. The Dutch ventured inland and engaged in trade on location – importing indigo cloth both from India and Europe. Also, German settlers that soon arrived in Southern Africa liked to dress in blaudruck – blueprint – as they had done in their home countries already. Finally the Xhosa women, inspired by either King Moshweshwe or the European immigrants, added Shweshwe to their ceremonial outfits, supplementing their traditional carmine clothes with indigo.
To meet the every growing demand of the printed fabric in Southern Africa, a certain Gustav Deutsch started producing blue print – or blaudruck – or Shweshwe – on a large scale in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. A German chemist, Bayer, had managed to synthesize Indigo and nothing stood in the way of industrialized production of blue print. In the 1930ies, however, Deutsch was forced to emigrate and resettled his factories in Lancashire, UK, producing the world’s most famous Shweshwe brand: Three Cats.
For the long transport over seas, it was important to render the clothes resistant against wetness and mold. The use of starch turned the fabric stiff and gave it a particular smell. Both stiffness and smell left the garment after washing.
Although Shweshwe was worn for quite some time in Africa, it was only in 1982 that South Africa began the production of indigo dyed fabric. The Da Gama company, who had purchased the Lancashire fabrics from Deutsch, settled in the Zwelithsa township outside of King William’s town in the Eastern Cape, bringing its own version of the Three Cats trademark on the market, called Three Leopards. Three Leopards also produced in new colors, first red and brown then expanding to gold, pink, green and turquoise in all shades – and started growing cotton locally plus importing from neighbouring Zimbabwe. Shweshwe production boosted the Eastern Cape’s economy and jobs in the textile sector attracted people from allover South Africa.
But the heydays of Da Gama are certainly over. Shweshwe production has come under pressure by cheap Chinese imports of wax print. Jobs in the South African textile sector are lost in high numbers. The Eastern Cape – which so benefited from the Shweshwe production is now stricken by unemployment and poverty.
“Just as apartheid destroyed the Afrocentricity of our fashion industry, so the Chinese are destroying what’s left – which is Shweshwe,” an executive of fashion industry in Johannesburg is quoted.
Sundays in the center of Johannesburg
But there is a young new generation of fashion designers in the big cities, Capetown and Johannesburg, who use Shweshwe in their design – still holding up against low quality imports by using exclusively high quality South African Shweshwe. As any responsible consumer, they know how to tell the original from the counterfeit: The trademark starch, the smell, and the standardized 90cm wide fabric of Da Gama.
Some people claim that indigo is simply blue, or indiscernible from blue to the naked eye. It’s not. It’s more purple. It’s closer to black. It’s rich and dramatic. It’s born in Africa, it’s born in Europe. It’s born in India. It’s starched by time, by bad weather and history.
It’s the colour of the rainbow nation.
Nelson Mandela smiles on his shweshwe clad rainbow nation. The famous mural in central Johannesburg:
During the first two weeks of April, a fascinating spectacle takes place in the vast planes of the Hungarian Puszta. The Great Bustards are all hopped up and ready to rock and roll. It’s mating season and the males go to dramatic lengths to please the ladies.
A Great Bustard getting ready for display. The Puszta is his lek.
Native to most of Europe, Great Bustards are extremely shy birds, evading human contact by all means since in the run of the past two centuries they have been hunted to the edge of extinction. It’s only due to elaborate conservation efforts that resettle bustards from custody into the wild that the big birds are making a comeback.
No wonder Great Bustards were on the menu before. Males can
weigh up to 15 kilos. With a wingspan of up to two meters they’re the world’s largest
and heaviest flying bird. Females however are only half a male’s size, and in
general, males and females have little to do with each other. Females live separated
and raise the youngsters completely on their own. Males live in bachelor groups
where they have little else to do but work on their courtship routines. It’s only
once a year that they get to meet the ladies and put up their show on the lek –
which is the ornithological term for the area where male birds display.
Full display
For his display, the male Breat Bustard puffs up his throat poach, which turns his long whiskers up vertically. He draws back his head and neck and turns his tail forward, thereby lowering his wings and erecting his shorter feathers. In this position he looks… stunning. Certainly getting the ladies’ attention. But to be chosen by his critical audience, he needs to do more. Let the dance begin!
One April morning in the Puszta, the Great Burstards get together for the courtship ritual.
Taking turns among the other bachelors, the Bustard gigolo bobs and bounces, literally shaking his tail feathers. Will the elegance and fluidity of his moves, his posing and his attitude charm the females? It’s the Ladies who decide who gets to procreate.
But there seems to be more to the story than good looks and hot moves. By displaying their behinds, males also present their cloaca to the females, a kind of multifunctional hole which also functions as au lieu of a penis. (Yes, bird sex is nothing more than a cloacal kiss in most bird species). So the cloaca’s state is indeed of interest to the females and they appear to inspect it closely.
Two males roughly the same size. Display is also a means of establishing hierarchy in the bachelor group. The displaying bird’s feathers are clipped. He is part of a conservation project
To get their cloaca presentable, male Great Bustards feed on a diet of blister beetles, which are in fact toxic to most animals. Female Great Bustards have not been observed to feed on blister beetles, but males seem to prefer them over any other. It’s a risky habit, but by precise dosage, the beetle toxin will only kill off bacteria in the male’s digestive tract without harming the bird itself. Beauty knows no pain, and a lek is a Great Bustard’s world.
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.
Hippos in the Delta
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.
High papyrus
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.
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.
Rain in the mountains
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.
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.
A European Roller
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.
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.
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).
Always graceful…
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.
The Rufiji River in the Selous Game Reserve still there.
Yesterday, December 11th 2018, a contract was signed between Tanzanian President John Magufuli, nicknamed the Bulldozer, and Egypt. For more than 300 milion US Dollars, The Arab Contractor’s Egyptian Company will build a dam and hydroelectric Power Station at the basin of the Rufiji River, the so called Stiegler’s Gorge. But the actual prize will be much higher, paid by generations to come.
Stiegler’s Gorge is located within the Selous Game Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage property and one of the only remaining wilderness areas in Africa, with – according to UNESCO – undisturbed ecological and biological processes and exceptional biodiversity. But of this little might remain, once the dam gets built.
Inhabitant of the Selous Game Reserve:
A Velvet Monkey
The Selous Game Reserve is indeed nothing short of breathtaking: peach colored sunsets over endless grasslands, swaying palm forests and golden savannahs, lazy, meandering sand rivers peppered with hippos and crocodiles. The Selous is teeming with wildlife; not only home to the world’s biggest populations of elephants and rhinos, it’s a place of pristine nature: where the endless cycle of life and death continues, designating a vital role to every creature, from dung beetle to lion, from whistling fish eagle to whistling tree.
Regal fish eagle out for a hunt
There is something magical, life-altering even about watching wildlife, in its natural habitat. To see this planet in the state it is supposed to be, which is a place of perfect balance. The lesson that nature teaches cuts deep: there is space for everybody, there is enough for everybody, and we humans, who have come to rule the world by means of technology, need to act according to a moral, and not ask for more and more, insatiably.
The area now known as Selous Game Reserve is located in South Eastern Tanzania and has known a breathtaking past. David Livingstone got lost there on his search for the source of the river Nile. And Morgan Stanley, who would later find Livingstone, barely made it through it alive. It is indeed an isolated area, remote and difficult to access because of natural barriers like rivers and mountain riffs, and biological barriers: the miombo – the local woodland – is the ideal habitat of the Tse Tse fly, which carries parasites that kill cattle and inflict the sleeping disease on humans.
Hippo fleeing the sun. A hippo’s skin is very sensitive to the sun. If it stays out if the water during the day, it will get sunburned.
Tse Tse flies, Malaria and Elephantiasis are not the sole reason why the area is free of any human settlement. In the 19th century slave trade ravaged through the land, capturing humans and killing elephants: Slaves were forced to carry the ivory along two main corridors to the East coast, in massive convoys made up from thousands of slaves, that were cynically called Black and White Ivory. It was witnessing the inhuman living conditions of the slaves that turned Livingstone into the anti-slavery champion he is still venerated as in Tanzania. Yet, after the abolition of slavery, brutal colonialism by both England and Germany, as well as military battles between the same two European nations during WWI took care of the rest.
Rufiji River
It was the German colonisateurs however who first realized that if not people, then wildlife needed to be protected in their Eastern German Africa and established the first Game Reserve. But under another name. The current name Selous – pronounced Seloo – goes back to an English daredevil, Frederique Selous, a hunter and ranger who spent his life in the wilderness of Tanzania. He is also the historic figure after whom screen hero Indiana Jones was modeled. A captain in the British Army, he fell in battle against the Germans in WWI, right there in the Selous, near the Beho Beho hills, right next to Stiegler’s gorge. His grave is still a pilgrimage site for modern day hunters, yet ignored by ecotourists for whom the Northern part of the Selous is reserved.
-Egyptian Geese on the way to the river
It is through a combination of eco-tourism in the North, hunting concessions in the South and a budget granted by UNESCO that the Selous Game Reserve has finally managed to prevent poaching and provide the high standards suitable for up scale safari- and ecotourism. That’s how local communities and businesses benefit from the Selous – by job creation in both wildlife protection and tourism, but also by strengthened social resilience, an important factor in a poverty ridden land like Tanzania. However, all this can soon be history once the bulldozer switches the engines on.
Lion cub. There are big prides at the Rufiji River. But for how long? Will the next generation still see wildlife?
The UNESCO “…is concerned that the construction of the Stiegler’s dam is
likely to have a devastating and irreversible impact on Selous’ unique
ecosystem, and that it will jeopardize the potential of the site to
contribute to sustainable development”.
“The survival of our wildlife is a matter of grave concern to all of us in Africa. The wild creatures amid the wild places they inhabit are not only important as a source of wonder and inspiration, but are an integral part of our natural resources and our future livelihood and well being. In accepting the trusteeship of wild life we solemnly declare that we will do everything in our power to make sure that our children’s grandchildren will be able to enjoy this rich and precious inheritance.”
Julius Nyerere, First President of Tanzania and Father of the Nation, Arusha Manifesto, 1961
A Lilac Breasted Roller, the Africa’s most photographed bird, feeding its chick.
In 1964, three years after President Julius Nyerere had peacefully walked the former Eastern African colony Tanganyika out of British colonial rule, he united his country with Zanzibar. This archipelago in the Indian ocean just off the African East coast was by the time an even younger democracy: it was two weeks since the end of the Sultanate.
Three syllables, Tan(ganyika), Zan(zibar) and Ia (the Swahili ending for together) melted into one new word, into one new nation: Tanzania.
Children playing in the harbor of Stone Town, Zanzibar
120 separate tribes with distinct languages had for centuries lived in Tanganyika, due the vastness of the land in relative peace and tranquility. It was colonialism that drained the soil and wildlife, and left cracks in society.
First it was the slave and ivory trade by European and Arab merchants that turned not only elephants, but humans into cheap and abundant merchandise. Unspeakable misery was cast over the land. When the Germans colonized and shamelessly exploited the country, rebellions against their ruthless regime ended in more bloodshed and tears. In WWI, enlisted as soldiers for their colonial powers, Askaris (as African soldiers working for their colonial powers were called) were made to kill their own neighbors, their own cousins even, in the name of Germany respectively Great Britain, or the colonies of German East Africa and Malawi. And after WWII, the new colonial power Great Britain tried to use the land as a granary to stave off a famine in their war torn homeland. The notoriously unsuccessful Groundnut Scheme afforded the UK a loss of 49 million pounds, and turned the land into a useless dust bowl.
Plenty of fruit.
When Great Britain finally dismissed Tanganyika into liberty, it was mainly because they had failed to draw enough profit out of a land that had been drained for too long. The Tanganyika Julius Nyerere took over was one of the poorest places in the world.
But the man had a plan. First, he re-united the estranged tribes by one common language: Kiswahili, a hybrid language that had formed in the run of centuries by mixing Arabic and tribal languages, was promoted through literature, drama, and poetry. It was also made official language and installed as educational language in the schooling system. For Nyerere also introduced obligatory schooling from the age of six. The Pride of Tanzania – a street scene.
Nyerere’s plan was a socio-economic system he called Ujamaa , family in Kiswahili, or commonly called African Socialism. Emancipation from colonial rule, pride and solidarity as a nation were paramount, economic self-reliance and cultural independence the goal.
But unlike other socialist economies, he didn’t build massive factories. Instead he villagized the economy and put family and solidarity into the center of attention. His policy showed success. Infant mortality dropped, life expectation rose, as did literacy. The Tanzanians called Nyerere The Father Of The Nation.
a man lugging two logs, an incidental cross. There is religious freedom in Tanzania. While Nyerere was a devout catholic, the language and culture of Swahili is muslim. Christians and Muslims live peacefully side by side in the villages.
But Ujamaa could not withstand the pressures of capitalism and neoliberalism. In 1985 Tanzania was still among the world’s poorest nations. Nyerere resigned and the chapter of Ujimaa
was forever closed.
On the beach. Also the proud Massai people, who have preserved their customs and dress codes for centuries, speak Swahili
Lately, it has been Safari tourism, nature and wildlife that brought Tanzania and its economy back into the game. Especially since the unrest in neighboring Kenya, hitherto a number one Safari Tourist destination, Tanzania has known an influx of upscale tourism. The secret is the social peace and stability that Kenya, which never unified its country under one language, lacks.
Tanzania’s current economic upswing is still owed to Ujamaa. Let’s hope it will continue – despite today’s different political and economic system. The current president of Tanzania, John Jospeh Magufuli, also has a nickname: The Bulldozer.
Fishermen in the Kilombero river. The people of Tanzania are still poor, but working hard on a brighter future.
