Part 1: Lions, Zebras, Hippos, Giraffes.. Oh my!

One of my favorite landscape photos of our trip

Heading into Zambia last minute for a 4-day safari in South Luanga National Park turned out to be a very good idea! We heard that the South Luanga was one of the best places to do a safari in Africa and it has yet to be completely over commercialized.  We originally thought we might do this in May but due to visa issues we needed a quick leave the country solution, so we thought why not do it now!   We went with a tour company called "Kiboko Safari Tours" which was recommended by some friends, and I second their recommendation. It was a great experience and our tour guide Moses was amazing.  His knowledge of both the park and the animals was nothing short of amazing.

Our safari vehicle- very sturdy and sitting in the back going
over all the potholes was a ride all its own!

We opted to stay in tents.  But this tenting meant that animals
could come at night.. which they did! The first night a hippo
came right outside our tent.. all i heard was munch munch munch!

Not your 'average' tent- fitted with beds and even electricity!
I highly recommend!

Where we ate as a group every meal.

We spent two full days exploring the park, going on both early morning and late afternoon drives. Unfortunately the best times to see the animals is very early in the morning, so that meant we were up at 5am every morning and on the road by 6am..  that didn't make for a very happy danny.. but I surprisingly did very well! And watching the sun rise was an added bonus. Beautiful!

The view from our camp around 5:30am

Heading into the park at 6am

I didn't really know what to expect on this safari, would we see the Big 5? Josh and I didn't necessarily care about that, we just wanted to see zebras and giraffes. In the South Luanga you can only see 4 of the big 5 (no rhino's), but every drive is different and I wondered what these next days would bring. It turned out that we were soo lucky and saw most everything (including wild dogs which our guide himself hasn't seen in a year) and it was really thrilling to see such gorgeous landscape and animals.

You can only visit 1/10th of the park

Entrance to the park

And it's true, they do- You'll see below in my elephant photos of
a group of them taking over the road!

The roads were natural which I really liked, not paved or tarred

Moses- our amazing tour guide taking us through the north
part of the park

During this safari we visited both the north and south part
of the park, this was also in the north. I love the clouds!

I loved the different tree species that existed in the park. My favorite was the 'sausage' tree named for the fruit it produces that look like sausages and of course the boa trees.

The sausage tree- see the hanging sausages?

Boa tree- so amazing!

Not sure what species of tree this is.. but I loved the contrast
of green and white.

Now Josh and I are definitely not 'birders' nor have we really ever taken an interest in bird-watching, but here they were amazing. So colorful and some had such interesting calls.. I definitely understand now why some people love birds!

Eagles!

Storks

Bee eaters (i think!)

The animals we definitely saw most frequent were Impala's, Monkey's and Baboons. I learned that you can tell the difference between a monkey and baboon by their tails. Monkey's are straight and Baboon's have curved ones.. see, it might have been early but I was paying attention!

Impala's- they reminded me of deer. Such graceful animals

awww baby monkey's

One of my favorite pics

Since I have soo many photos I am going to split this post into two. In the next one I will post photos of elephants, hippos, lions, giraffes, and hyenas :) Stay tuned!

Engagement Party Malawi Style

A couple weekends ago Josh and I had the unique opportunity to attend my co-workers engagement party. We weren't quite sure what to expect.. we heard it was going to be a big party, and were warned ahead of time by friends that we should bring lots of small bills because people throw money at the couple. Huh? Needless to say we were extremely intrigued and knew this was a must-see event.  It started at 1:30 and ended around 6pm. When we arrived at the hall (unfortunately an hour late because the mini-bus to Blantyre was soo slow and a poor girl was barfing in the back.. ugg) we were met at the door by about two dozen African tribal dancers, dressed in their traditional clothing.  I didn't have my camera out for that.. too bad!  But here are some photos of the hall:

Comesa Hall in Blantyre

Walking into the hall

The program for the day

 We were instantly blown away by the amount of people! There must have been over 500! The hall was lavishly decorated with a "hut" at the front and long red carpet down the middle leading to this hut. We found out soon enough that the engaged couple leave and come back many times, often changing their clothes in between.  What a party!

Unfortunately this doesn't capture how many people were there.
To the right were rows and rows, as well as behind us. Ahead
were the tables reserved I think for family.

A big entrance from Joe and Nancy

Joe waiting at the front waiting for Nancy to enter in again.
Just dancing away to the music- there was so much dancing!

One of the most interesting things about this party was the "Perikani-Perikani"- not sure the exact translation, but basically people come up and literally throw money at the couple and they catch it in these big baskets. And this doesn't just happen once..there were at least 3 perikani-perikani's in the program. One for the couple, one for each set of parents, there was even one for Joe's "facebook" friends to come up!

We all lined up to "dance" towards the couple to
throw money

Josh throwing money- did he get it in?

Catching the money in a basket

The program also consisted of traditional dances from each of their tribes. I've never seen such clothing and head dresses- this was a true African experience!

Traditional dancers making use of the red carpet

A second tribe

And then of course there was us :) Just taking it all in! This is something we will never forget- the sheer size of it, all the dancing and throwing of money and gifts (some people gave chickens). We were truly blessed to have been able to attend!

Sometimes I forget how much we stick out! lol

The Garden: Things are growing

Here's a mostly picture update of the garden veggies. 

Things are growing well, much more green

TOMATOES

The 30 of so tomato plants are doing really well and have started to flower and give fruit. No harvest yet as I'm waiting for them to go red...

Flowering Tomato plants. You can see that I've failed to cut the
"suckers" in time, so the plants are quite bushy.

Tomatoes Lined up in a row

Some fruit showing, hope to have some red juicy tomatoes by next week
especially because their price has doubled in the market :(

What does Danny do everyday?

When someone goes abroad to do something like this, it often leaves people wondering, “well what are they doing anyways?”  So it hasn't all been about creating a fantastic garden (and to be honest I can’t take much credit for that!) but in my day to day I have also been involved in some neat projects with my organization- so I thought I’d take a moment and let you in on the details about some of them.

A brief description of my non-profit organization:

LEAD SEA (Leadership for Environment and Development, Southern and Eastern Africa), is one branch of LEAD. The head office is in London (LEAD International) and there are 12 branches (known as member programs) of LEAD around the world. LEAD’s mandate is to develop a new generation of global sustainability leaders, and this occurs through their Fellowship Training Programme.  The 12 member programs help to deliver training to new LEAD associates and support a network of LEAD fellows.

LEAD SEA is the member program that covers southern and eastern African countries. It strives to develop the leadership potential of people and communities to collaborate and deliver sustainable solutions. They are involved with the LEAD fellows trainings and they also manage and engage in specific local programs.

One key project that LEAD SEA is managing (which I am most involved with) is the Lake Chilwa Basin Climate Change Adaptation Program (LCBCCAP):

  In collaboration with the Forestry Research Institute of Malawi (FRIM) and Worldfish Center, LEAD SEA is implementing a five-year (2010-2014) programme, to secure the livelihoods of 1.5 million people in the Lake Chilwa Basin and enhance resilience of their natural resource base. This is being achieved through development and implementation of basin-wide climate change adaptations in support of the Malawi National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) to enhance the capacity of communities to adopt sustainable livelihood and natural resource management practices.

Phew, that is quite the mouthful.  Basically in its simplest form we train and build capacity of people so they can better adapt to climate change.  Through the LCBCCAP we are also engaged in a sustainable livelihoods project for communities that live around Thuma Forest Reserve. 

My title here is ‘Assistant Project Manager’ so my role is to assist in planning and implementing the activities of the LCBCCAP and of the LEAD Fellowship Training Programme. 

LCBCCAP Office in Zomba

Inside the office- My desk is on the left

Currently one of the major tasks I am working on is:

·      Thuma Ecotourism Feasibility Study: This is part of the Thuma Livelihoods project and in December I was tasked with the job of undergoing an ecotourism study for the forest reserve. The purpose of this study is to see how viable ecotourism is in Thuma Forest Reserve and if it can become an alternative livelihood and income generating activity for villages in and around the reserve. It has been really interesting researching about what ecotourism really means, how ecotourism has been done here in Malawi, and devising a methodology for this study. It has become quite the research project filled with interviews, focus groups, household surveys, demand surveys and site observations. Two weeks ago I was in the field for a week and another trip is planned for April.  

Josh has also been involved in the Thuma Livelihoods project, specifically in assessing sites for piggeries and bio-gas projects.  During the field visit they kept calling him the biogas expert from Canada and he would receive a round of applause after explaining things, so that was quite funny.

Map of Thuma- the colored pins represent incidences of poaching or charcoal burning

Driving into Thuma Forest Reserve to the basecamp- beware.. Elephants!

View of the reserve from the basecamp- so peaceful and beautiful

The kids at the village of Mvululu where
we were pre-testing the household survey

 Some of the other major things I have been involved with:

·      Payment for Ecosystems Workshop: A workshop was held in November 2011 for key stakeholders (NGOs and key government officials) about the concept of payment for ecosystems, and how PES could be used in Malawi. I was involved in planning and co-facilitating the workshop.

PES participants- can you spot me?? lol

Participatory mapping exercise

  

·      ICT Supported Education Workshop: This was a 3 day workshop held in December 2011, facilitated by 3 Norwegians, which brought together about 40 education practitioners from all over Malawi to learn how to integrate e-learning into their courses and learn practical ICT tools such as digital storeytelling to help teach about climate change. The task of organizing this workshop was passed over to me when the original organizer took leave.  I see this as one of my major achievements here as the workshop turned out to be a huge success and required a ton of organizational skills on my end. I’m sure you can only imagine what it takes to organize something like this in a culture that is not your own!

Facilitator Birgitte Wegerland talking about digital storeytelling

Participants creating a map of Lake Chilwa for their digital story

  

·      Climate Change Toolkit: This climate change toolkit has been over a year in the making (the previous intern worked on this as well). So this toolkit, as well as being an information tool for Malalwi it also needed practical tools. Therefore I took on this challenge, found community based tools that could be incorporated, and am now just editing with comments from the director and hopefully this document can be published soon!

So those are just some of the major tasks I have been involved with.  LEAD SEA does a ton and always has so many things on the go- I have been very fortunate to be able to learn so much and be exposed to so many different things!

If you have any questions or want to know more about what I’m involved in, let me know!