POACHING

The only part of Tembe Reserve that is closed to us is a portion of the northern boundary, which also happens to be the border between South Africa and Mozambique, where poachers cross into Tembe and wreak havoc on the wildlife here, making fortunes from their mostly Chinese clientele who lust after rhino horns, elephant tusks, lion paws and heads and other animal body parts for what the Asians believe are their medicinal and aphrodisiac properties.  

The third largest tusker in the world, a bull named iSillo, died from old age several months ago.  His carcass was discovered by reserve rangers mutilated and with his tusks removed.  

A lion, ensnared by a trap, was found with neither head nor paws.

Rhino are killed at the rate of 3 per day in Africa and will be extinct by the end of the decade.   There are only 6 known white rhino left in the world.   The 7th was killed in Kenya just a short while ago. Almost half of the rhino herd here has been slaughtered by poachers.

There is an anti-poaching unit stationed up at the border, but many here question the loyalty of some of the patrol units.  Since Tembe is administered by the government for the benefit of the community, most employees are local residents.  Some may be informants for the poachers, but there is no way to prove  it.   The poachers have already informed the head of the anti-poaching unit that they will use their new AK-47's and other advanced weaponry against those patrolling the reserve's border.

Although no one has yet been killed, poachers from northern Mozambique, where sophisticated syndicates are hugely successful, will inevitably move south as their prey numbers decrease and the fight here will intensify.  

Researchers and monitors at Tembe hope that a protected path will open sometime in the future that will enable animal migration between Tembe and a not-too-distant Mozambique reserve.    Animals cannot survive without the space their species requires.  Without room to hunt, chaos will ensue. and will result in the animals breaking through the fence and escaping into the community, killing people and damaging crops.  Rage among the populace will cause them to (understandably) seek the animal's destruction.  An animal population that exceeds the ability of the geography to sustain it will require culling.  Management of the eco system here is therefore crucial.  Among other things, more space is required.  Negotiations between the Mozambique and the South African governments are continuing.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

We had a very close encounter yesterday with two elephant bulls who were feeding on roadside vegetation.  They had blocked the road with their enormous bodies as they fed and we were stuck waiting for the traffic to clear, as if on the LIE, so that we could pass (one never goes around an elephant.  A safe radius of about 75-100 feet must be maintained).   It was getting dark and we were anxious to get back to camp but we were forced to sit there, safely in the open air jeep, for quite awhile.  Neither elephant seemed to mind that we were watching.  Finally, the elephant closest to us disappeared into the bush and we edged forward waiting for his friend to clear the path.  We sat for awhile longer.  I was dying to pee.  Suddenly the elephant in front of us started making his way towards us, ears flapping furiously.  We knew there was an elephant behind us, but there was a curve in the road and we couldn't see where he was.  We were stuck between two elephants without an exit strategy,  a potentially dangerous situation.   If an elephant decides to charge he can destroy his target in seconds.  

A drunken field guide and his equally drunk tourist decided to taunt an elephant here not too long ago.   The tourist was urged by the guide to get out of the vehicle and approach the elephant.   The animal charged the tourist and "smeared" the floor with him.   He died immediately.   The guide was fired.

Philip, the monitor with whom we were working and the driver of the vehicle, decided to reverse in the hope that the elephant behind us would still be off road in the bush.   His gamble worked.  We raced in reverse, sped past the elephant and made a quick getaway.  We had to take the long way home and made it back only 2 hours late.

INTERESTING ELEPHANT FACTS

Did you know that...........

1.  Elephants have 6 sets of teeth throughout their lives that move forward at different stages, as if on a conveyor belt, to replace the older, previous teeth as they fall out.   Once the last set of teeth falls out, at around the age of 67-70 years, the elephant dies not of old age, but of starvation as it is no longer able to eat.

2.  Elephants must eat for 16-18 hours a day.  While elephants sleep lying down they cannot do so for more than 2 hours at a time as their weight makes it uncomfortable.   After age 35, an elephant sleeps standing up by locking its leg joints and leaning against a tree.

3.  The ears of an African elephant resemble the map of Africa while the smaller Asian Elephant's ears resemble the map of India.  When an elephant is threatened it will extend its ears as wide as possible to seem larger and more terrifying.  Elephants hear infra sounds which are to deep for humans to hear and they communicate with each other over long distances by using deep, throaty groans that only they can hear, similar to whales.  They use these deep mumbles to locate other elephants and warn each other of danger, hence the nickname "Silent Thunder," for their incredibly sophisticated way of communicating.

4.  Some elephant tusks can grow to weigh 100 pounds each and are used to dig for water, rip bark off trees and defense.  Elephants rest their heavy trunks on the tusks.  The tusks become visible at around age 2 and never stop growing.   An elephant's age can therefore often be estimated by the length of its tusks.  There is a certain Indian elephant species with no tusks at all - its ancestors were wiped out for their ivory.   Five percent of today's African elephant population are born without tusks, an increase due to poaching.

5.  An elephant's trunk has 100,000 muscles (humans have just over 600 muscles in their entire bodies).  Their sense of smell is 500 times that of a dog.  The African elephant has 2 "fingers" at the end of its tusk which enable it to use the tusk as a hand, with extreme dexterity in its fine motor coordination.   Asian elephants have only 1 'finger" so they must wrap their trunks around things to pick them up.  Trunks are used as snorkels when the elephant is underwater and to greet other elephants.    

6.  Elephants don't produce sweat.  They flap their ears like giant fans to cool down their bodies and, using their trunks, throw mud and dirt over their bodies to protect their skin from the sun.

7.  When an elephant is stressed or mourning a lost relative, the holes behind their ears start to cry.   Drops of moisture drip from them and run down the side of their temples.  

8.  Elephants' brains are the largest of all mammals.  Their brains grow from infancy as they age and learn.  

9.  When elephants walk they barely make a sound since they walk on their toes, which are cushioned.

10.  If male elephants ("bulls"), fail to leave a herd voluntarily at around age 15 they are forced out by their mothers and will eventually join a herd of other bulls.  The matriarch, the strongest and wisest leader of the female herd stops the young bulls from intra-breeding among the herd.  Young bulls are strictly disciplined by their mothers while in the herd and later, by the older bulls in the male group he joins.  The matriarch also prevents the young females ("cows") from mating until they are 16 years or older.   Their hips are not yet adequately developed before that time to carry a 200-pound fetus to full term (there is a 22 month gestation period).

11.  At about 20 years old, the glands on the sides of the bull's head ooze a watery substance and they begin to smell of a strong scent.  This condition, known as "musth," lasts for three months a year and is an indication that the male is ready to mate.  Only then can he temporarily join the herd of cows and mate with a suitable partner.     

12.  An angry elephant will life up his trunk, let out a loud trumpet and charge at up to 50 km per hour.

There are loads of incredible stories about elephants, such as my favorite, as told by the author of The Elephant Company, the true story of a young Brit sent to Burma in the 1920's to use the local elephant population to harvest lumber for export to Europe.   A mother elephant had been accidentally blinded by a poisonous leaf and was being lead to and from work and feedings by her young, 3-year-old daughter, whom she followed by placing her trunk on the youngster's rump.   When the daughter was swept away by floods, the mother heard her cries but couldn't see her.   She trumpeted and became very agitated.  From that day on she refused to either eat or work and died only two weeks later from a broken heart, wrote the Brit in his diary, who knew elephants well.

Big night tonight!   Call up of the lions.   Bait will be placed and the lions darted by the vet with an anesthesia that lasts 45 minutes.  The race will then begin to place monitoring collars around their necks, perform partial hysterectomies and certain pre-selected lions will be moved to the 'boma," a large, fenced-in area where they will be then transported to another reserve, a much needed exchange of lions to prevent in-breeding.

Tembe Elephant Reserve

KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

There’s a legendary Kenyan elephant, who, locals say, worked diligently over the course of several months to saw off his tusks by rubbing them against the trees of the dense forest to prevent his own death by poachers. 

When I heard this story in 2010 I was intrigued not by its disputed veracity but rather by the awe of those who know elephants well.   Elephants, they said, were intelligent enough to understand unseen specific danger, access advanced reasoning to formulate a solution and use a tool (the tree) to protect their long term interest even though the consequence would be physically disabling;  an extreme act not unlike the American hiker who cut off his own arm when trapped by rocks in the Utah desert.

I was intrigued enough to begin reading in earnest about elephants.  The more I read, the more I began to admire elephant intelligence, their ability to communicate over long distance and familial bonding.  I was struck with the same awe as those Kenyans.   Did you know for example, that elephants will mourn dead family members for a week and work together to spread the bones of the dead over large distances in designated elephant cemeteries?   Or that elephants are pregnant for 22 months and nurse their infants for almost two years?  If the mother is unable, for whatever reason to nurse (i.e., death) a lactating female relative will nurse the infant in her place.  The entire herd, which stays together for life, will protect their infants, even if it means losing their own lives in the process.

I wanted to get closer and learn more. 

So here I am, at Tembe Elephant Reserve in the far northeastern corner of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal, Nelson Mandela’s birthplace.   Wild elephant, lion, and giraffe, as well as rhino, leopard, hippo, buffalo, and many more species of wildlife populate these 30 square miles in a unique venture between the local community and the government.  When nearby farmers grew tired of the elephant who were trampling their crops and the lions who were attacking and killing their workers and families, they asked the government for help.  After lengthy negotiations, Tembe’s land and animals and all of its revenue belong to the community while the government manages the ecosystem.

But this is  Zululand, not Disneyland, as the park rangers like to say.   This is not a zoo or Florida’s Africa Safari.  The animals here are wild and can be dangerous. 

Most of the reserve’s original elephant herd fled here from neighboring Mozambique during that country’s civil war and its tolerance of poaching, which together were decimating the elephant population.  (Ivory can earn the lucky poacher $50,000 per pound.  An elephant’s two tusks can together fetch $500,000).  The elephants were rightly fearful of and furious at humans.  It took two years for them to understand that not all humans were killers.  Two rangers however, lost their lives to elephants during those early years.   

Before coming here I spent many tortured days deciding between working at a sanctuary, where rescued animals are fed, cared for and rarely released back into the wild, or at reserve, which is a far different “animal.”  

In a reserve, the animals must hunt for and kill their own food.  They are not fed by humans.  They are rarely treated for injuries, even if life threatening.  But the eco system is limited and must be managed to prevent over-population of a species, gene-tainting by intra-breeding, and break-outs by dangerous animals who will cause havoc in the community.  If for example, there are more lions than the reserve geography can handle, the lion will break out looking for more territory to control.  Lions are therefore selectively sterilized to prevent overpopulation.  But here at Tembe, management believes that the risk of temperament and behavior change is too great in complete sterilization, so only 1/2 of a lioness’  ovaries are removed, allowing them to give birth to half the amount of cubs they normally would.  A male lion will be traded for another from a different reserve so that his DNA is not disproportionately spread among the pride, resulting in tainted genes.  Nyala, the prevalent antelope prey populating the reserve, are overabundant and decimating the plant life for herbivores.  They must be culled to keep the delicate balance between predator, prey, and vegetation vital to the survival of all.

Despite popular opinion, there are very few large wild animals left in the world.   Nowhere on the planet can one find prides of lion, herds of elephant, buffalo or rhino roaming freely in significant numbers.  Lions have been killed for their paws and heads and rhinos for their horns (at the rate of 3 killings per day in Africa), all sold in Asia for medicinal purposes.  Elephant may likely be extinct in our lifetime.   Other large animals, including buffalo, have been hunted for sport, sustenance and trophy.  The only safe place now for these animals is on the world’s reserves, like the Serengetti, Chobe, and other government-owned and private, protected lands in Africa and Asia. 

Here at Tembe, there are 5 of us working with Monitors who travel the reserve twice daily by open jeep -10 hours per day - ensuring that the balance is maintained.  We are housed in a small, bare, but clean and comfortable bungalows with communal toilet, shower and kitchen facilities.  Our camp is entirely surrounded by fence with a gate that is open during the day, but closed at night, to protect against entry by the animals, although nyala and chimps visit daily.  Just today the chimps got into the kitchen (someone forgot to close the door) and wiped out our apples, onions and bananas.  Rice, oatmeal and cracked eggs littered the floor.  Fences are mere “suggestions” to animals to stay out.   If a large animal wants to enter he can - just like a thief can break through a locked door.  Elephant have broken into camp before, although since I’ve been here, I’ve only seen them feeding on the trees just outside the fence. We’ve been briefed on how to behave if there is a close encounter with a dangerous animal, which mostly involves giving the animal its personal space and moving slowly backwards.  Contrary to popular opinion and the films that fuel it, large wild animals will not attack without good reason. But one never knows if the animal he meets has a good reason or not.  Caution and prevention are key.

Clinton, Philip and Leonard, the South African monitors with whom we work, are all degree candidates in related fields such as nature conservancy, animal behavior and environmental management.  We are up at 3:30 a.m. and on the “road” by 4 using telemetry equipment to locate collared alpha lions and wild dogs.  At certain key junctures we stop the open jeep, (taking care to NEVER leave the vehicle), stand up, turn to the radio frequency of the animal we are searching for and slowly rotate an antennae 360 degrees above our heads until we get the telltale beep of an animal’s location.   We then head in that direction hoping for a visual siting.  Since both the lions and the dogs sticks together in packs, only a few from each pack need be collared.  If we visually locate the pack, we park the vehicle and observe their behaviors, which makes the early rise and tedious monitoring worthwhile.

We’re back at camp by 9:30, eat a quick breakfast and then head back out for another 4-5 hours.  In the afternoons, we catch up on sleep, do laundry, read, prepare dinner or any of the other mundane things one does anywhere in the world. I’ve been leading an hour of yoga a day for my English and German cohorts, since it is just about the only time we have to significantly move our bodies.  

Tembe, is a “sand forest,” a unique eco system where the ground of the entire reserve is composed of fine beach sand, with thick and abundant vegetation, including scrub brush, acacia trees and much more.  There is a tourist lodge here, but the capacity is low.  It takes almost 2 hours to reach the northern boundary of the reserve from housing in the south.  Travel is at a speedy 15mph over sand “roads” just wide enough for one vehicle.  The numerous animal paths that lead into the thick bush are off limits to all vehicles so visuals can only be made if the animal is on or near the road.  Just as we were rounding a curve in the road the other day, we practically rammed into an enormous agitated elephant in musth (a kind of male heat), a potentially dangerous situation.  We put the car in reverse and made a successful getaway.

This week there are planned “call-ups,” where targeted animals are “called up” with nyala carcass.  They are then darted with anesthesia by the vet hiding in a vehicle nearby.  The group then has 45 minutes to collar the animal, perform contraceptive work, or ready the animal for transport to the reserve’s “boma,” an enclosed area where the animal is kept until ready for exchange with another reserve.  The work is intense and stressful as the work must be done while the clock is ticking.  Guards with rifles protect the group.  But its the opportunity of a lifetime to get very up close and personal with a wild, free and dangerous animal, albeit a sleeping one.

Will write about that when I can.

  

The Ethiopian Highlands and Other Stuff: Warning: This is a Very Long Post. Read at Your Own Risk

Our three-week trip  to the north and first leg of our Ethiopia adventure has ended with a bang ( or rather a splat!).  I have Montezuma's Revenge.  ( Although Montezuma has never been here, his vengeance, I have heard, reaches far and wide).  Before even discussing the magnificent scenery of the northern highlands, the miracle of 12th century rock-hewn churches and other highlights of this vast and varied land, I must first describe the food and overland conditions, which are far from miraculous. 

The Food:

The national dish is injera, a kind of spongy, salty, slightly sour bread.  While one side is pock-marked with air holes like coral, the other is smooth like a wet cloth.  Its served completely covering a large, round platter, coral-side up, with a smorgasbord of sauces and/or cooked meat and vegetables speckled on top.  No silverware is ever given as enjera is eaten completely and exclusively with the right hand by breaking off a piece of the bread and then using it to scoop up the delicacies laid out on top.  

Injera is made from tef, a grain grown only in Ethiopia, and which, gram, for gram, contains more fiber-rich bran and nutritious germ than any other grain and is the only one to contain "symbiotic yeast" (whatever that is), which means that no yeast is needed during the cooking process.  

Ethiopians have quite a few semi-fasting holidays in which no food is eaten until dinner.  On Mondays and Wednesdays throughout the year, they eat absolutely no animal products at all.  Both the vegan and dinner-only days are considered "fasting" days.  Every other day of the week and non-holidays are "non-fasting" days.  All restaurants have two menu categories, regardless the day of the week:   "fasting" (vegan) and "non-fasting"(meat) choices.  

I got sick of the injera pretty quickly.  

The only other items on the menu, no matter the restaurant, no matter the town, are rice or spaghetti with tomato sauce, bolognese or vegetable sauce.  That is it!  Injera, rice or pasta.  I haven't had so many carbs since Dr. Atkins got his degree.  

After two weeks in country, I remembered the reason for the lack of food choice.  It was the hunt to gather our dinner shopping list that jogged my memory.  The reality on the ground is mind-boggling for someone from the west.  

I suddenly remembered that THIS IS AFRICA.  

We were traveling to Axum, legendary home of the Ark of the Covenant (the very same Ark that Indiana Jones has devoted his life to finding) a distance of two full days of driving.  Since the roads outside the cities lack any kind of amenity (gas, food, water, hotel are virtually non-existent), and because night travel on African roads is not at all advisable, we made camp in a dry, very wide riverbed, a day's drive from restaurants, cafés or "supermarkets".  We had shopped for dinner and other supplies before we left the "big" city.  Although it was no easy task, it took us only a few minutes to get what weneeded.   Lalibella, the number 1 tourist destination in Ethiopia, is a 1-street town with no sidewalks, a dirt main street and open sewers.  There was only 1 tuk-tuk, a 3-wheel taxi, in the entire city.  We bought the only food we could find:  two kilos each of tomatoes and potatoes from a couple of women selling these products on the side of the road;  we cornered the market on bananas, and successfully begged a juice seller to forego the juice and simply sell us his avocados, mangos and papayas.   We stumbled upon another woman selling some cabbage.  Our hotel manager had some connection to fresh eggs and 1 1/2 litres of milk.  That was all the available food in the entire town.   Thankfully, there was some pasta and lentils on the truck that had been purchased in Addis before we left.  It's quite clear that making a shopping list and dinner menu is a complete waste of time.  There are no supermarkets with aisles of choices in every category of food.   Eighty-five percent of Ethiopians are subsistence farmers - they grow their own food and have little surplus left for sale.   Moreover, this is the dry season. 

Despite our worst fears, dinner was a huge success: lentil soup, avocado and tomato salad, cooked cabbage and potatoes mashed together and fried, and of course, (we just can't get away from it) pasta with tomato sauce.  Breakfast was mango, papaya and banana PANCAKES!   Someone in the group had the foresight to buy some flour in Nairobi.  

The Roads:

One of the highlights of the northern route are the Simien Mountains, considered "The Rooftop of Africa."   Although Kilimanjaro in Tanzania,  is the tallest peak on the continent, the Simien range, at an average altitude of over 10,000 (and rising to 15,000 at Ras Dejen, Africa's second highest mountain), is the longest and highest.  

In order to start our planned 4-day trek and 3-night camping experience there, we had to drive to the National Park's entrance, at  9,000+ feet, along roads that would be closed as construction sites in the US. 

The entire 60-mile distance was unpaved.  We traveled at a rate of 10-miles per hour.  Many parts of the road had recently been cut into the mountains.  There were no shoulders separating us from the abyss below.  Massive piles of gravel, large drainage pipes and other material were scattered across the road.  Bulldozers and men worked, while goats, cows, donkeys and people came in and out of sight, as we shimmied our way past, navigating the narrow switchbacks, and hairpin turns.  Three-point turns were often required to round a corner. Wheels were dangling on the edge of cliffs.   The scenery was gorgeous but it took courage to look out the window to appreciate it.  

    (Phone pics of this road hell on FB).  

The Sites:

The 10 churches for which the city of Lalibella is known were built by the King of the same name in 1101 and all ten buildings took a total of 23 years to build.  The structures are unique in the world - built as freestanding monoliths from a single rock.  According to legend, Lalibella was born the brother of the incumbent King.  As a young child he was covered by a swarm of bees, which his mother took as a sign that he would one day be King.  ("lalibella" has been translated as "the bees recognize his sovereignty.")   After a nasty fight with his brother, Lalibella was crowned King and immediately set about gathering the world's greatest craftsmen and artisans in order to carve the churches, which are something of a mystery - it has been estimated that 40,000 people would have been required to carve them.  

Incredibly, the ten churches were all built from the ground DOWN, starting first with the construct of the roof.   The entire structure was then carved out and separated from the rock to which it once belonged.   The top storey windows were chipped out to allow light and air for workers who hollowed out the interior of the rock for future worshippers.  Visitors approach the churches from ground level (which is the roof of the church) and descend a set of stairs as much as 50 feet to enter.  Hugh columns, both inside and out, support the roofs.  All ten churches are connected by a maze of trenches and tunnels.  Religious paintings using natural dye of local flowers and plants decorate the interior walls and date from the 12th century.  

A quote from the Bradt guidebook says it best:

"Were it virtually anywhere but in Ethiopia, Lalibela would rightly be celebrated as one of the wonders of the world, as readily identified with Ethiopia as are the pyramids....of Egypt.   Lalibela's obscurity is shameful, but for those who visit the town, it is part of its charm."

Lalibella's location is magical.  Perched at an altitude of almost 8,000 feet, among wild, old craggy mountains and vast rocky escarpments, it is majestic and isolated.  

Perhaps even more amazing is that Lalibela's churches have been in consistent use for 900 years.  Mass is held inside the carved-out rocks every Sunday, and white-robed Priests and monks emerge from their monastic cells within the 10-Church complex and into the early morning chill to wander the town's streets, handing out blessings, while the chants of the religious echo through the mountains and pierce our hotel walls, lulling us to sleep and awakening us (ugh) before sunrise.  

We had dinner at a crazy place - Ben Abeba restaurant - owned by a Scottish woman and her Ethiopian husband.  The building looks like a UFO, with multiple, staircase-accessible, round "landing pads" stacked randomly skyward, in all directions, where drinks are served. It sits at the edge of a precipice, midway between the lush valley thousands of feet of below and the wise mountains thousands of feet above.  Yosy said that in the course of a 5-minute walk from our hotel, we went from the Bronze Age to the Jet Age. The menu though was like everywhere else.   I had the spaghetti with tomato sauce.

Before reaching Lalibela we had spent 3 nights on the shore of Lake Tana, second largest lake in Africa and the source of the Blue Nile, which when it meets the White Nile in Khartoum, ( Sudan) forms The Nile, the world's longest river.  

We left our traveling companions lazing by the lake on the second afternoon to visit an unusual village - unique perhaps on the entire African continent.  

Awra Amba is a weaving cooperative of 400+ people, where there is equality between the sexes (men cook and women work the fields), pre-k through high school is a reality for all and adult receives the same wage and spends it as he sees fit.  The community was founded by an illiterate elder (whom we were fortunate to meet and interview) who believes that hard work and education are more reliable predictors of the fulfillment of hopes and dreams than religion.   The people of Awra Amba are not exactly atheists, but rather believe in one God for all people.  Prayer is a pasttime.  

The most striking observation about our visit to the village was that not a single child (or adult) begged as do so many other children in Ethiopia.  There was a fairly well-stocked library in Awra Amba and a senior housing center.  The latter was particularly memorable as it contained one relatively large room with cubicles, the size of a single bed, carved into the cement walls.  These cubicles were the sleeping quarters for the 9 aged women and 1 man we met there.  Like orphans, these seniors had no family to look after them.  

The Ugly American is Me!

On a lunch stop enroute from Lalibella to Axum, the religious center of The Ethiopian Church, home (according to Ethiopian legend) of the Ark of Covenant and the tablets within, written by Moses in the desert)  I lost my cool when I broke the  golden rule when traveling in Africa.  The guilt since then has been gripping me.  

Tourists have corrupted much of the Ethiopian and other African populations - especially the children in the tourist centers.  Decades ago no one begged here.  But then the foreigners - the tourists, the ngo's and other aid agencies all began to come and give handouts.  There's so little here that everything is considered a precious gift: pens, sweets, empty plastic water bottles.  When farangis (white people) are spotted, children run to them like flies, asking for money or anything that the whites are willing to give or throw away.  Responsible tourism has recognized the error of its past ways and the mantra now is to refrain from giving ANYTHING to the locals - handouts are strictly forbidden as they do nothing but help develop and encourage a culture of begging.

Its important for our sanity to know that,  unlike the consequence of the politically-induced famine of the 1980's, no one here is starving.  They may be hungry and have a limited variety of diet, but no one looks emaciated or malnourished.  Ethiopia is rich in fertile land and feeds itself. Eighty-five percent of the population are farmers.

We had bought pizza the night before we left Lalibella and ate it (cold) at lunchtime the next day.  As usual, within minutes of our arrival at our makeshift picnic area, 8,000 feet high on the side of an empty road, children came running from the surrounding hills and villages to observe the strangers.   We ate atop a cliff with a stunning view of the high mountains and numerous river gorges boldly carved between the hills and valleys.  Once satiated, we realized that we had 15 slices of pizza leftover.  There were 10 kids, mostly barefoot, with ragged clothes and dusty faces, quietly watching us.  This being the countryside, an area where tourists rarely tread, not a single one of the kids had asked for anything.  They simply stood or sat silently at a close distance, watching.  We proceeded to offer each of them a slice.  Three politely refused.  The rest took the cold pizza, not knowing quite what to do with it.  Some took a second slice.  We talked with them a bit and posed for pictures.  One of the older kids told us he wanted to be a mechanical engineer.  Another was minding the family's goats.  We cleaned our picnic grounds and left, as we always do, without a trace of our presence there.   Once back aboard the truck/bus in which we are traveling, we got reamed out by a fellow traveler.   He had done his masters thesis about the begging culture in the developing world; a culture developed by the well-meaning tourists who travel there.  "Did you see the elder from their village?" he asked.   I had not.   It seems that one of the adults from the boys' village ran to the kids and demanded that they throw the pizza away, IMMEDIATELY!!!!   "By giving these kids something for nothing, you are teaching them to beg rather work," our master thesis candidate explained.  Multiply our relatively small handout by hundreds and hundreds of tourists a year, over a decade or two of increased tourism, and within a relatively short period, the youth have learned to view every white visitor as an opportunity to relieve him of his hoards of cash and other spoils of the western world.  

I realized in a flash that my values and prejudices had replaced the reality of the situation.  

The kids came to our picnic spot not because they were hungry or wanted something from us, but because they were curious. We are as foreign to them as they are to us.   If they had cameras they probably would have clicked away too, taking our photos without first asking for permission either.  

The kids were definitely not hungry.  My standard for a normal weight has become so warped that I mistook their thinness for emaciation.  They were not emaciated.   In fact, they were probably closer to what is a normal size; certainly what is a healthier size, than many children of their age in the US.   

They wanted nothing from us other than to practice their english (which they learn in school), and to know where we came from.   They were curious and only wanted our friendship.   How dare I presume that they wanted something tangible; that they had simply been too polite or too shy to beg.   How ignorant I was!  How irresponsible!   I had forgotten the rule I had learned 5 years ago on my first trip to Africa:  No handouts!  Ever!  Even if hungry, for the reasons outlined in "Wahib and John," posted here and dated April 10, 2011. 

But what about gifts?   Can't I give these kids a gift?  What's wrong with the gift of a slice of pizza?  If I have leftover food must I throw it away?  Gifts at home don't foster begging or teach laziness.   Or do they?   Are our own kids spoiled and riddled now with a sense of entitlement because they received so many gifts?  

Everything about our culture of plenty is suspect after one visits Africa.