A place that once was

Living near the border of Zimbabwe means that I hear a lot of stories about what’s going on over there, both first-hand from Zimbabweans coming to Botswana to look for work or even just do their shopping (though less so now that the situation that side has slightly improved) and second-hand through the news and travelers coming from there. It’s probably no surprise then that my desire to visit Zimbabwe and at least see something for myself had gotten stronger and stronger the longer I’ve been staying in Chobe.

Drew’s visit to Botswana provided the perfect opportunity for an albeit brief trip there. Of course we were already going to be going to Victoria Falls to see “moosi wa tunya” (the mist that thunders), but I figured we might as well tack on a couple extra days to see a bit more of the country. Our destination after Vic Falls was Hwange National Park—an enormous park just south of the falls by about two hours. I hadn’t heard a lot about Hwange specifically, but during my three years of study at UC Berkeley, Zimbabwe’s pioneering community based natural resource management program, called CAMPFIRE, had always loomed large. CAMPFIRE was the first program of its kind—designed by mainly white Zimbabweans to protect Zimbabwe’s wildlife and parks by creating incentives for local people to conserve them. The idea was that if local people had more ownership and decision-making powers over the land and its wild animals, and could begin to see benefits from them particularly through wildlife-based tourism, then human-wildlife conflict would be reduced and the goals of both conservation and development might be achieved. CAMPFIRE had a lot of problems (namely, ownership and decision-making was never truly devolved to the local community level), but it still stood as the model for the numerous other CBNRM programs that have now proliferated across the global South. In more recent times of course, people have questioned whether a program like CAMPFIRE could stand a chance in a country with a completely corrupt government, starving people, and well, near chaos. The answer, though not completely clear since surprisingly there haven’t been all that many studies on the current state on CAMPFIRE, seems to indicate that things are not well—animals have been poached by hungry locals and tourism to anywhere in Zim other than Vic Falls has declined dramatically, making any community enterprises based on tourism very difficult to sustain (though interestingly supporters of CAMPFIRE say that hunter tourists still come to Zim).
When I mentioned to a few people that Drew and I would be going to Hwange for a night, people seemed pretty surprised—as in, why would you go somewhere where all the animals have been poached out when you can see loads and loads of animals in your own backyard (ie Botswana’s Chobe National Park)? Still, I wanted to see for myself, and I liked the idea of Drew and I going somewhere completely new for both of us together.

So what did I come away with? Upon arrival at Miombo Lodge a few kilometers outside the park and alongside a railroad track, I immediately felt a little nervous. The pictures on the website had made it look like the typical mid-range lodge—rustic but quaint with lots of wood paneling and African-inspired printed pillows. If you squinted your eyes, it did look like that, but when you looked close, everything had a somewhat run-down quality to it. Like it all had once been nice and sparkly and well-cared for, but in recent times it just hadn’t gotten quite enough love. Not enough tourists, not enough capital to keep the place up…a potentially vicious downward spiral. The other strange thing was that we were the only guests, and there seem to be just the bare bones of staff present—the place at first almost felt eerily quiet. Drew and I were led to our tree-house cottage and my feelings changed slightly—the room actually had a lot of character and it was clear that the owners/managers were doing the best that they could—there were flowers sprinkled on the bedspread, and cool water in a pitcher that had been boiled since the water from the tap was marked in big letters “UNDRINKABLE”. The staff also turned out to be incredibly nice—given what I’m sure are limited options grocery shopping-wise, the food they prepared was delicious. Nothing fancy---fried chicken, potatoes, squash and a sort of succotash for dinner—but really satisfying after our afternoon/evening game drive. (However I must say that desert was canned fruit served with a pitcher of a pink sauce that Drew was smart enough to stay away from and I was dumb enough to discover tasted exactly like amoxycylin. Yuck.) At first it seemed a little strange to be eating at a long dining room table clearly meant for a lodge-ful of guests, with just Drew, myself and our guide, but we quickly fell into conversation with our guide who was soft-spoken but incredibly inquisitive about the US and the world in general. We talked a lot about the currency situation in Zimbabwe (the fall of their currency, the move-over to US dollars, etc. etc…I’ll let Drew explain the rest  ), and both of us came away with the impression that our guide was an extremely intellectually curious person, just one who had a very limited education and knowledge base.

In terms of the park itself, I’m not sure where I stand on my assessment of it. On the drive in, I was shocked to see the park entrance—it made Botswana look pathetic! The park headquarters seemed to be in tip-top shape, there were boards full of information and pictures of the park and its history (granted I think the posters had been made back in the colonial days and miraculously were still standing), and behind the main building were a bunch of little cottages that were very cute and apparently available for tourists to rent. There was even a restaurant, which of course was closed—not surprising given that we only saw one other tourist car the whole afternoon and the cottages looked mainly unoccupied. But still, it seemed like a place that once was probably almost on par with our own parks and infrastructure (e.g. Yosemite, Yellowstone) and that had only recently fallen into decline. The drive through the park itself was fascinating for me too—almost all of the roads were gravel!! None of the deep sand and crazy mud of Botswana’s parks. The landscape itself was absolutely beautiful—a mix of thick miombo woodlands that would break open into grassy savannahs with a few “Africa trees” dotted around. There were a few man-made waterholes that we stopped at, two of which had built-up wooden hides you could sit in for hours (again, I was amazed at the contrast with Botswana where no such thing exists—working pumped waterholes and comfy chairs for wildlife-watchers to sit in!), and to be honest these were really the only places we saw animals, apart from at the park entrance. I know man-made waterholes are a controversial topic—do they screw around with the natural ecology or are they important for maintaining wildlife populations in times of drought, etc.., getting back to the whole question of how much should we as humans “manage” wildlife—but it was pretty cool to pull up and see a herd of giraffe drinking, and then a crocodile pop to the survey, catch a fish and crunch it with his very scary teeth! Lots of birds too, which I liked. However, for me the most noticeable quality of the few animals we did see was how skittish they were. Drew would pull out his camera and they would bolt—a clear sign that poachers are around. I tried to explain how in Chobe, they just stand there as if they are posing for their picture! Definitely a big contrast in terms of behavior, but the lack of animals number-wise didn’t seem to necessarily prove that they had all been poached out—given the vastness of the park, it is possible that in our relatively short little game drive loop, we just weren’t in the right places.

In the end, I’m still not sure what I would say if somehow asked me if he/she should visit Hwange. It’s true—we didn’t see a ton of animals, the ones we did see ran away pretty quickly, and the gravel roads (which I personally think are fine) might not be the right cup of tea for those who want more of the Botswana style adventure “wild” driving. But even so, when I look back on our trip, Hwange was one of my favorite parts—the sleepy charm of the lodge and the people trying their best to make it hospitable and pleasant for its guests, our memorable guide pouring us instant coffee and making sure we had blankets in the back of his rickety old land cruiser safari car on our morning game drive, the breathtaking scenery of the park especially when the light hit it just right at sunset, and a general feeling that if this is a place that once was, it has the potential to be so again.