Close Encounters

Our Behind the Scenes tour with Marlice included lots of visits to animals.

First we saw the resident tame jackal walk across the yard

Baboons

We watched the big baboons for a while, as they were being fed.  One staff member was watching over two females, to protect them from bullying during feeding time.  Then, Jamie entered the enclosure with the baby baboons.  Cute, tame but naughty.  Sheila pulled off Jamie's glasses and peed on her pants!

Meerkats and Mongooses were next

Porcupine

Of course Wayne and Jamie had to jump into the enclosure with the porcupine!

What a cutie.  It wound around people's legs like a cat.

Then, on to the

Wart hogs

Marlice warned Jamie that getting in with the wart hogs would be a dirty business, but she was undeterred. Three wart hogs full of mud clambered over Jamie and nibbled at her clothes.  It wasn't dirty; it was filthy!   It took three washes to get those clothes clean!!!  But it was certainly worth it to see Jamie's continuous giggling.

Cheetahs

I earlier described the three cheetahs we visited as 'hand-raised'.  We visited them again with Marlice and learned that she got them when they were 3 days old and fit in her hand.  I asked if they were raised right in her house, as we'd been told.  She said "actually, right in my bed!", with her boisterous, infectious laugh.  Jamie just loved revisiting these cheetahs we had met before: Kiki, Aisha, and Iku.  Aisha came and lay down right beside her, to get tickled under her chin and stayed there for perhaps 10 minutes.  Marlice said that Aisha was usually very standoffish with people, so it was unusual to see her gravitating to Jamie like that.

Thus endeth our close encounters with animals so I leave with a last selection of photos.

Jamie with Aisha and Iku:

Jamie with Aisha, the allegedly aloof one:

Conservation through Innovation

Marlice van Vuuren, the dynamo behind N/a'ankuse was our guide today for "Behind the Scenes with Marlice".  Daughter of parents who moved from standard farming to wildlife conservation, she and her husband bought a huge tract of land outside Windhoek in Namibia, to run as a wildlife sanctuary.  As a well-known conservationist in Namibia, Marlice is often sought out when animals are wounded or abandoned.  

She and the rest of the team interact a lot with the farmers, who complain that these wild carnivores are a menace to their livestock.  We often hear of the dilemma of poor black farmers in Africa torn between conservation of these wild animals and the need to feed their families on their farms. However, Marlice points out that the problem is not with the poor black farmers, but with the rich white famers, of German extraction since this is Namibia.  The black farmers don't have problems, because they round up their herds at night and protect them inside thornbush-circled kraals that the predators can't penetrate. Moreover they don't dehorn cows at an early age and thus the mother cows can protect their calves.

Marlice and her team work hard to persuade the white farmers to adopt these practices.  But slaughterhouses deduct 15 cents a pound for cattle with horns (they can gore other cattle in tight quarters) and, with their fast jeeps and their guns, rich white farmers consider it easier to just chase and shoot the predators.  However, they've had many successes and have honed their approaches to win acceptance.

N/a'ankuse also has experimented with various tracking devices for animals in the wild, and particularly for those they have released.  Cheaper VHF transmitters require you to be within 8 Kim's, but the much better GPS trackers cost about 4,000 USD apiece.   Like so many other areas of technology, batteries are the problem; it's their weight that makes the trackers cumbersome for the animals.  

As another innovative approach to tracking, they have developed a software program into which you can feed a photograph of a footprint and have it identified.  They have also experimented with different ways of releasing animals they've saved back into the wild.  They have 100% success with q

'Hot release' of leopards.  Drive to the translocation place, push them out of the truck and out they go and survive.  Marlice says they are like cats, self-reliant, liking humans but not needing them.  Cheetahs need a different approach of slow release. They take them to the target release area and acclimatize them for up to 3 months in a wide range, getting the, ready to go.  They are really sweet, but very dumb, says Marlice, and much more like dogs in their dependence on humans.

It's experimentation like this that leads to their slogan of Conservation through Innovation.

N/a'an ku se is also distinguished by its treatment of workers.  In most camps we visited, workers stay for months at a time, followed by brief visits home to their families.  N/a'an ku se has a much more humane approach of families living there.  They have started a pre-school and kindergarten called Clever Cubs to prepare the Bushmen kids for school.  Their culture has made it difficult for them to flourish in white schools.  Not only do they get thrown into a foreign language, but things we consider important like counting have no equivalent in Bushman - there are no number words past 5.  

We enjoyed visiting the school and meeting kids of the staff we had got to know.  their teacher had them sing a song for us.

N/a'an ku se also supports a bus to take kids to school in Windhoek.  Marlice has a great appreciation and understanding of Bushman culture, and is one of a handful of white people fluent in the language.  I had read about the clicking sound that is part of the language and it was fascinating to hear her speak it.

The cute little school and playground were built by the Jolie-Pitt Foundation after their visit a few years ago.  Jolie and Marlice had met when Marlice was an animal consultant on a movie and she had to breed flies, and then place them carefully on Jolie's face.  Marlice herself is easily beautiful enough to be a movie star herself, and full of exuberance and expressiveness that makes her a completely energizing to be around. 

As we arrived a new batch of volunteers (up to 60 at any given time) had just arrived and were being given their intros to the place.  Some were heading out to check the kms of fencing to ensure the wire was still electrified and bearing shovels to fill in any holes beneath the fence.  Three joined us for a treat when we walked a caracal for about two hours.  I really like caracals.  Unbelievable that you could just walk along with these animals and then all return in the jeep.

Any animals who are in smaller enclosures are taken out daily for long walks, including 3 hour walks for the 52 baboons.

Marlice is on speaking terms with all the animals, calling out with high pitch and high spirits.  She grabs the baby baboons and swings them around in the air, just the way she had swung her own son earlier at the pre-school.  It's such a cliche, but she really is a force of nature.  And multi-faceted.  When I asked who was behind the design of the Lodge and guest villas, she said she was.  They are quite lovely.   Here's the dining room

And here are pics of a guest villa

Very unusual, natural and modern.

And, oh, the interactions with the animals.  I think that merits another post. . .  Coming soon.

Cheetahs

Cheetahs - my favourite animal.  Sleek, gorgeous, fast.  What a marvel.

We've had three opportunities to experience cheetahs at Na'ankuse.  On the carnivore feeding tour, we saw two cheetahs through a fence as food was thrown over to them.  (they may be behind a fence, but these animals have huge territory to range over.  It's not like a zoo.)

More exciting was this morning's Walk with a Cheetah.  Kiki is one of three cheetahs who has been hand-raised at Na'ankuse.  Farmers will often trap very young cheetah babies, and put them in a hole to attract the mother cheetah who has been attacking their livestock.  The mother comes to the hole for her young, and is captured and the farmer gets rid of it one way or another.  This time, the mother never came back and the farmer called Marlisse to take the days-old cubs.  They were consequently hand-raised off a bottle and are totally tame.

Kiki arrived in a truck to meet us out in the midde of the veldt.  There were the three of us and a four seniors from Wisconsin just finishing their education degree with a Study Abroad in Namibia.  After a bit of petting and stroking near the truck, Kiki got a bit of food to lead her out onto the veldt.  We walked quite a distance with her as she got bits of food along the way.  She spotted some hartebeest and got distracted to go after them, but mostly we just walked together through the brush and thornbushes.  Solomon told of one time Kiki took off after a baby springbok.  Worried about the demise of the poor springbok, Solomon ran to follow her, in hopes of rescuing the yougn springbok if Kiki attacked.  When the springbok fell, he thought it was finished.  However, when he caught up, Kiki was waiting by the springbok until it got up and started moving again.  These animals have the instinct to hunt, but not the killer instinct and certainly not the skill.

Well, the walk was thrilling, but of course there were 7 people taking turns getting close and patting Kiki.  This afternoon we saw Cheetahs Up Close.  Just the three of us, and three cheetahs, and Johannes the guide.  Unbelievable!

Johannes brought chicken parts along and fed the cats alternately.  He was good at advising how to get pictures with the right angle to the sun and so on.  Kiki, our female friend from the morning, Aisha, another female, and Aiku, the large male, were incredibly tame and approachable.  We spent about an hour with them.  They LOVE being tickled under their chins, just like a house cat.  And they purred constantly, with a deep-throated purr.  All three of us got to pet and tickle.  Jamie fed them some of their food: boy did they stick closely to her after that!  They kept licking her hand even after the food was gone.  They even licked my hand hopefully although I had never had food.   This was truly an amazing experience.  

I have so many pictures from that hour visit, and Wayne has so many videos, I'm torn about how to illustrate this post.  One of the big thrills for me, of course, was watching the intense excitement on my granddaughter Jamie's face.  Her emotion was palpable.

Here she is petting Aiku.

And here the cheetah is licking her hand for the food.

Caracals

We were astonished on our carnivore feeding tour to be escorted into the enclosure where the caracals were.  These had been hand-raised and so were perfectly safe.  They were so soft to the touch, we couldn't get enough of them!

Lions at Na'ankuse

We were standing a meter or so from an electrified fence behind which were three lions.  All of a sudden there was an enormous roar and we all jumped back terrified.  Well, yes, they were behind that fence, but they were awfully close. It was Clarence the male who had emitted such an enormous roar.  

The three lions were related, and left orphaned when young cubs.  They live in a wide open area within that fence, and are fed each day by Na'ankuse staff.  So they know to appear at that spot in the fence every day.  They were the first visit of our Carnivore Feeding Tour here at Na'ankuse, and already the shadows were very long, because the tour had been delayed to accommodate some guests arriving late.  They never appeared, so the lighting was dim, but we did get a tour to ourselves - AND, we're going to get a whole make-up tour tomorrow.

One of the females was in heat and we saw the male mate twice with her.  He's had a vasectomy because Na'ankuse has no license to breed lions, but he hasn't lost the desire.

After a brief few seconds, the female hisses, swats, and drives away the male.

A Little Bit of Germany in Africa

 If you walked into this breakfast room at your hotel, where would you guess you were?  Germany or maybe Austria, right?  Wrong.  Windhoek, capital of Namibia, which was a colony of Germany until after WW II.  

The whole town has quite a German flavour, mixed with African.  In the middle of Klein Windhoek, you can stand on the corner of Koch Strasse and Nelson Mandela Avenue.  The Germans really didn't treat the Namibians well during colonial times, executing one of the earliest and most vicious genocides of the Herero tribe.  Yet German street names remain.  Very surprising to someone who saw familiar English street names in Montreal get overwritten by French!

African Houses

We walked into a magnificent holiday house at Na'ankuse due to some vagaries of bookings.  Huge four bedrooms, 3 1/2 bath, swimming pool, out at the end of about 5 Kim's of rough road from the lodge.  Gorgeous vista out across the veldt.

Here's the house.

You can see how isolated it is from this picture.  Notice the chimney shaped like a bird.

Here's the room where Wayne and I were.

Here's the dining room.

Beautifully decorated but missing some things we would take for granted back in Canada, like heating and air conditioning and double glazed windows.  Basically you have to be ready to take the weather as it comes, and cope.  It was CHILLY in the morning and late in the evening.

Best of all was our ability to see wildlife right from our yard.  When we returned this morning, there was a duiker visiting in the yard.  Apparently, it had spent a lot of time at the Na'ankuse farm, but had drifted over to our place.  It was not at all skittish, as you can see.