Saturday, February 28, 2009

A visit to the King of Gambos


One of the more important parts of the first field visits is to get to know the people we want to work with and to let them get to know us. We are going to have to work together for the next two years. There have been fact-finding missions and what have you to prepare this project, but since it was not sure at all at that time whether the project would be financed, no promises were made and no indication of when anything might happen was given. So for most people we are a bit of a surprise. Suddenly, out of the blue, all these pale-nosed people come along and want to talk about life in Gambos.

Protocol has to be respected of course. So we started introducing ourselves to the members of the local government and to the traditional leaders, who still play an important role. The most important leader is the King of Gambos. He is the traditional leader of an area about the size of The Netherlands. Naturally you cannot just knock on the door and come in, this reception had to be prepared. Luckily one of the members of local government is a nephew of the king, so we had a good contact. Therefore we could be received relatively quickly. The nephew noted in one of the preparatory meetings that the King prefers red wine form the Portuguese Dão region, so we took that in account when we went shopping.

The reception was brief but pleasant. After all the hype, the King appeared to be a very modest man. He was interested in the project activities and discussed it with his council and us at some lenght. At the end he wished us succes and we were allowed to leave his presence

Please do not be deceived by the picture or any notions about African kings in the 21st century you might have. This King is not some sort of puppet, he wields some very real power. If he and his council decide they don’t like a project, it is very probably not going to happen and if you stubbornly go ahead, it is almost certainly going to be a failure.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

A visit to Bicoar National Park

The Bicoar National Park lies more or less in the south east of Huila Province and is fairly easy to reach from Matala or Quipungo. If you know your way around that is, because signs are still rather scarce. The Angolan government has recently started a rehabilitation programme, and buildings for park rangers are being repaired or newly built. If they also find some funds to put up road signs, people can actually visit the park (provided you have a visa).

Through my contact with Michael Mills, I was invited to come along with a group of Southern African biologists who were doing a biological survey in Southwestern Angola. We left somewhat late on Saturday morning and Michael and I made a first short walk just after two. The camp site is near a small dam with ducks, dabchicks and weavers. In the grasslands around the dam we found lots of cisticolas.

The evening drive made clear that human encroachment is the main problem is for the park. People have planted fields right up to the boundary of the park and they cut wood and graze their cattle inside the park. This became even more obvious the next day, when Michael and I made another walk in the company of two rangers. We heard someone chopping wood, so one ranger went to investigate. I asked the other one what would happen and the reply was: wood chopping is bad, we will arrest the culprit and take him to the camp. However, when the investigating ranger came back, he did not bring an arrested person, but had his hands full of honey combs. Apparently he and the culprit had decided that it was much easier for everybody if a fine was paid in honey.

The northern part of the park has not much wildlife due to all the human interference. However, some people saw a leapord with two cubs and Michael and I found over 50 species of birds. Not the ones we were hoping for, because the woodland is not mature enough in this part of the park. But Michael did find some cuckoo finches.