Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Camp TIECH and the end of Oct


Camp TIECH in Chelinda was fantastic! I spent 3 nights in Rumphi town with fellow volunteer Christy who was one of the coordinators. We went to Rumphi ahead of time to collect supplies, arrange transport to Chelinda, and generally prepare for the students arrival in Rumphi. Christy headed up to Chelinda a day early while I waited for the students to roll in. They arrived Sunday morning, and through a whirlwind of activity we managed to get the matola loaded with all of our supplies and food, and also get 30 students fed. (matola is the word for a big flatbed truck – the one that would carry us up the plateau) Nothing ever goes perfectly here and of course we had a hiccup with the driver and his funds not being released by the owner of the truck.

            Finally on our way, and only running a half hour late we hit the road. Mind you, we had packed everyone gear and all of the food quite well, to prevent anything being crushed – apparently they had issues last year. One hour into the drive it starts to rain heavily on us (unusual this time of year!) and we have to scramble to cover everything with a large tarp. Later we would find that much of the fruit had been crushed in the process!

            The ride from Rumphi to Chelinda took us about 4.5 hours with a stop in Thazima to check out the information room. We were accompanied by Harry Kapira, an education and extension officer from the Karonga district side of the park who had worked in Chelinda for several years prior. He went through the info room with the students and would prove to be a fantastic resource throughout the week.

            We did have another unplanned stop inside the park when the semi became stuck in the mud and all of us had to pull it out! We saw one elephant off in the distance and many antelope as we drove the remainder of the way. All of us were very excited, but quite exhausted arriving in the dark. Thankfully Kay and Christy had arranged for dinner to be ready when we got there, and after a meal and short meeting we headed to bed for a very cold night of sleep.

            The students would be in class from 8 am to 5 pm each day of camp. We took all meals with them and spent the week teaching about a variety of health and environment topics. Some of these included: HIV/Aids and Malaria education, healthy sexual choices, composting, agroforestry, diet diversification and nutrition, etc.

            On average, counselors started the day around 5 am and ended around 9pm. It was a great time for all of us to bond with each other and build on existing or create new friendships. Luckily we all also had plenty of time to appreciate our surroundings. Nyika is full of breathtaking views and interesting animals (as you may remember from my earlier posts). Bushbuck antelope are ever-present around Chelinda and we also got to see our share of reedbuck, roan and eland. I also got to see zebra, duiker, klipspringers, toucans, turacos, one jackal, and countless other plants and small animals.

            Two animal encounters in particular stand out to me. One night while walking from the guest house where the counselors stayed to the youth hostel where the students sleep and have classes Kay and I spotted a leopard! I had my headlamp on, and about 20 meters ahead of us I spotted large, wide set, brilliant green eyes flash back at me and suddenly crouch down. After a moment the leopard decided we were neither a meal nor a threat and stood up and turned to our right, slipping behind a small hill. I caught its full silhouette before it disappeared. Damn. Those things get big! We kept watching and would catch a glimpse of its eyes as it looked back at us between tree stumps as it wandered away.

The second was at the end of the week as we left the park. We were riding in the back of the matola and as we rounded a corner we came upon the same elephant we spotted at a distance coming into the park. Apparently he is a large bull that roams around on his own. We must have startled it because he came charging at the open truck bed, ears flapping and truck held high in threat display. Luckily he didn’t come to close – Either the driver spotted this, or simply never noticed the animal, we didn’t even slow down to watch it as we usually did when spotting an animal.

That day the camp ended, we took the students from Chelinda all the way to Mzuzu so that they could visit the university and see the SMART Centre for water and sanitation. They received a tour and demonstrations on several appropriate technologies for Malawi, including water catchment/ pump systems and composting toilets. We had dinner and breakfast with them before finally sending them home the next morning. The hope is that students will begin to initiate activities they learned over the course of the week at their home villages.

I stayed in Mzuzu for the counselor dinner that Sunday night and then returned to site in Thazima briefly before returning to Rumphi town to attend 2 days of the Nyika/Vwaza Trans Frontier Conservation Area conference for Zambia and Malawi with my supervisor. The conference tried to fit far far too much into too small of a period and was even called short – the Zambian officers had to leave early due to the unexpected death of the countries president. In spite of all of this I still gained quite a bit from the event. It gave me a far more complete picture of the issues facing the Malawi and Zambian parks and the communities surrounding them. I also got a better idea of the efforts already in place to help reduce poaching and human – animal conflicts. Overall the event really reinforced for me my role in my community. It also provided possible opportunities to work more closely with the park system.

 Later that weekend I went to Kande Beach for Halloween celebrations and to visit Ripple Africa, and NGO that operates in the area. Halloween was fun, though I was a party pooper and slept early both nights, as I had exhausted my energies in the sun during the day. At one point we paddled out to a small nearby island where I got to see a fish eagle up close and a water monitor in the wild! Better still, I got to put to use some climbing shoes I had lucked into finding at the market in Rumphi. That’s right, I got to check deep water free solo climbing off of my life list! It was a huge rush and a ton of fun, I look forward to doing it again soon.

Though I really enjoyed seeing my friends and a very busy 2 weeks, I was also very happy to finally get back to site and start working towards the coming planting season. I will be working with a few very interested farmers to teach about contour ridging and I am also building a demonstration plot at my house for conservation agriculture and reclaiming/rebuilding soils using agroforestry species. Somewhere in there Prince and I hope to do some more cookstove work. It is so dry right now, it is hard to imagine that the rains are just a month away!