the big squeeze

We sleep in the shadow of elephant gallows. 

This is not quite correct, for the elephants in Etosha National Park were killed on the ground and not hanged: they were first tranquilized with darts, then shot. But the structure, erected to hoist and then butcher huge inert bodies of the largest mammals still walking the Earth resembles oversized gallows of old. 

Viewed from a lofty ramp leading to a new thatched hide, which provides a comfortable setting for tourists wishing to watch animals coming to a new and ecologically sound waterhole, the tall structure looks incongruous and otherworldly. It has a name and is called, rather grandly, Olifantsrus Field Abbatoir. And it rises not just above the soft red soil of this lovely campground and its neat structures housing a reception, a small museum and ablution blocks, but also above the vast plain of the park, its golden winter grasses and its many denizens whose shapes we can sometimes discern when we look hard and long. The structure is beginning to rust and, come evening, the rust blotches start to resemble dried blood.

What happened? I learn that 525 elephants were killed and butchered here in the early 1980s. A well lit display in the camp's museum tells me the animals were culled officially and legally, with all rubber stamps firmly affixed to whatever reports needed to be prepared and signed.

The display explains that as poaching of elephants accelerated in Northwest Namibia, many pachyderms sensed the danger and migrated to the safety of the park. But since 1983 was a terribly dry year in Etosha and its grassy cover shriveled and died, the management decided to remove a percentage of the park's largest herbivores. It already happened in the Kruger in South Africa, and in other national parks. And it was to be done for very good reasons: to slow the process called desertification of the environment, which would endanger all animals living here, including the black rhino, a standard bearer of Africa's endangered species. 

And it was to be done better than anywhere else. The workers, hired to perform the job, had to adhere to three main points. Entire herds -- appropriately called family units -- had to be killed to avoid dispersal of upset and confused survivors. All butchered elephant parts had to be utilized and delivered to markets, with no waste left behind. And the maximum amount of scientific data had to be obtained.  It was all done, documented and even photographed. And since a picture of a hoisted elephant body was perhaps not available, an artist rendered the scene in soft pastels. A lifeless gray bulk with its dangling trunk, suspended on a steel cable from the tall white frame against the pale African sky. It comes to me in my dreams. 

I do not accuse anyone here. We all know that as our human population grows, we need -- and take -- more room. Room to grow our crops, build our shelters, factories and roads, utilize our water supplies, extract our minerals and fossil fuels. When Etosha  -- meaning 'Great White Place' -- was proclaimed a game reserve in 1907, it covered approximately 30,000 square miles and was at that time the largest natural protected area in the world. Today, after many adjustments and trims, it has been reduced to about 8,500 square miles. It is still grand and beautiful, and it could easily cover half of Switzerland, but it already feels the big squeeze of human population relentlessly pushing against its borders. 

And it is not just the shrinking of its size. We sometimes hear the whoop of helicopters patroling the park and looking for rhino poachers. Yes, there is a tall fence surrounding the park to prevent animal migrations from damaging farm fields and water pumps and other infrastructure, something African pastoralists around the park rightly fear. But poachers dig under the fence or cut it, sneak in, kill a rhino, cut off its tusks, and most often vanish. 

There are also many waterholes with parkings for tourists, where much of the wildlife of Etosha must come during these hard dry winter days to survive. We see many herds of antelopes, zebras and giraffes -- family units all -- eagerly approaching the water but often stopping, hesitating, backing off, trying again, and at times turning and sinking into the surrounding bush without a sip. Sometimes it is our presence causing their retreat. Sometimes it is other cars rolling in and out, with eager faces bright in every window and excited voices spelling out surprise and joy. In and out. Kicking up dust to see the show. Going for night safaris, with guides shining lights on animals. In and out.

It all adds to pressure.

And so it goes, not just in Etosha but in every corner of the world. As our population grows, the ranks of wildlife diminish to the point that frequent visitors to nature reserves call animals they know by names they bestowed on them. Oh, we do want to protect these creatures, and see them live their magnificent wild lives. But since we do not want to give up anything we need and want -- we squeeze them. More and more. Day after day. 

Tonight we will sleep in the shadow of elephant gallows.    © Yva Momatiuk

lion morning

The warm days of our Namibian winter turn our skin silky and dry. Our stay in Etosha National Park enters its second month, and John and I are trying to plan our moves a bit. We know our predictions will not materialize, for we are dealing with nature and its habit of ignoring human plans. Nevertheless, out of the old and rigid habit of trying to make some sense out of our short winter days, we attempt to control at least our moves. And since we are both photographers and no one is playing a second fiddle in our working union, we often start our days by asking: "Where do you want to go now?" and then turn the incoming ideas to and fro, looking for some vague promise of great animal dramas which will surely happen somewhere in the desert but are still unknowable.

This morning we are trying to catch the rising sun climbing above a nearby waterhole, as well as drinking giraffes and their elongated reflections in the crimson pond. The concept so described sounds awfully trite, but pulling it off well is not. Besides, when we arrive the banks of the waterhole are empty. We wait, watching the sun climbing mercilessly and stripping the crimson right off the water, then drive away, mildly disappointed. At the bottom of the slight hill we meet a family of giraffes and John rolls down his window: "Too late, guys. Maybe tomorrow?" he suggests pleasantly. I look around and see a bunch of animal shapes spilling on the gravel road ahead. A whole Rolodex of ideas suddenly explodes in my mind. Birds? Too big. Impalas? Too heavy. Zebras? Too long. What I sense -- rather than see -- is the softness. Not the staccato of tense little feet of most herbivores. Not the lumbering heavy duty shuffle of rhinos. Not the fleeting smudge of running jackals or a quick trot of warthogs.

Lions. A line of lions, going places. Look, I tell John, this is crazy: the whole road is full them, let's go!  But John turns our rig back and drives to the waterhole. He is right. The lions are already coming, their fur the color of dry African grass, their paws massive and soft, padding along the wide elephant trail one after another.  We count them as they crouch and slurp the water shining between the rocks: there are twelve. Twelve days of Christmas, so it may be a gift from Etosha. The lions are young, with several males just sprouting their adolescent manes, and their bodies are still unscarred, beautiful. They take their sweet time, drink, swat each other, stretch, yawn, and slowly depart. We exhale. Probably we got no pictures, we say, since the cats were terribly back-lit and as usual did not listen to our silent pleas not to overlap each other. But it was great to see them. So many!

We go for a slow and relaxing bush drive in the opposite direction from the one the lions took. Soon, a dik-dik. Tiny, all brown like a horse chestnut, the smallest antelope the size of a large hare with spindly little legs. The animal is resting in the sun, peaceful and sleepy. We photograph and admire. It is warm, cozy, companionable, and perfectly safe.

Then  -- a muted growl. Very low, subterranean, with a whoosh of great lungs exhaling; unmistakable and very close. Then another. And again. Our dik-dik is already on his feet, and my survival sense quickly informs me I am vulnerable: my window is rolled down, and my arm cradling the telephoto lens propped on its sill is not far from the ground. One good leap, and grab, and pull. Isn't it exactly how that young woman died in South Africa only two months ago? And how about two lions killing a tourist sleeping in his bag near a watering hole here in Etosha, in 1993? And the lioness who was shot and killed by the park's staff last year, after she entered our Etosha bush camp through a hole warthogs had dug under the fence surrounding the camp?

I bypass my fear and we reverse slowly, gluing our eyes to the bush where only moments ago we saw nothing at all. The growls keep coming, now more in unison. "Digestive sounds," whispers John, and he is right again: you do not growl this way while hunting or traveling.  And -- yes. A mere stone's throw back, close to the road and betrayed only by small openings in the exceptionally thick bush which are now filled with tawny fur, there are four more lions. Digesting. Growling softly. Sending their voices out in ripe, throaty belches of contentment and latent power, while we no longer feel safe. And suddenly we understand we never should. Not here. Not now. Not even for a blink.  ©Yva Momatiuk

bedazzled

Seen from the air, it could be a crazy patchwork of dark waterways and sandy spits, or perhaps narrow plots of land -- some dark, some light -- laid out in a desert and awaiting the first hint of green. From up close, and as close as our long lenses can reach, it is a pure geometry of survival, painted on zebras' flanks, necks and heads.

If this kaleidoscope of stripes, which move constantly when a herd of zebras is in its full escape flight, seems disorienting, it is supposed to be. Dazzling, unsettling, unfocussed; all this. And that's why -- for many years now -- the answer to "why do zebras have stripes?" was quite firm: to mislead and confuse big predatory cats in their intense pursuit of sweet zebra flesh.

But a new theory suggests that air currents caressing a zebra move fast over its dark and heat absorbing stripes, and slow when flowing over the light ones. As these airflows converge, the swirling air cools the skin, particularly of the animals whose dark stripes are heavily clustered. The difference of the body temperature between a zebra and a plain-skinned herbivore in the same part of Africa may reach several degrees Fahrenheit, making the zebra a truly cool animal. Another theory proposes that many disease-carrying insects avoid striped animal skin, perhaps leaving zebras alone -- and not infected.   ©Yva Momatiuk

talking to animals

"Yes, you, the little springbok. Get your head up."

"No, not you.. the one behind you."

"Please do not cover his horn with yours. Please."

"Now, move to the right and stop scratching. I cannot see your head when you do this."

"How about a drink? And may I see your lapping tongue?"

John and I are huddling at a remote waterhole in Etosha National Park in Namibia, and I am trying to communicate my artistic needs to several dozen animals who drifted in from the surrounding flatness of the desert to get a drink. And the more actors appear on my stage, the harder it is to find a composition which moves the heart. I see my monologue falls on deaf ears but hey, it does not hurt to try.

"Please don't move! Not one step."

"Turn... turn... turn... a bit more. More. Thank you. This is really good."

"Stay there if you can. Please. I am still waiting for that oryx."

"Where are you going? They may finally all drink, and you will get in front of them."

"Keep moving! Now you are overlapping with my ostriches."

Only this morning I realize that as soon as I bring my eye to the viewfinder of my camera to photograph wild animals, I begin to talk to them, usually in my mind. But here in Africa I actually speak. Softly, in a low and constant patter. I am polite but also maddeningly persistent. And I offer a string of suggestions, even though the animals are oblivious to my desires.

"If you just move left, this foal could also get in and get a drink, too. And I need him there."

"What are you doing? Please stay out of my frame, just for a moment."

"You are about to cover my oryx, and you don't want to get into this mud anyway."

"See? This was no good. Just stay where you are: your ass looks perfectly good there."

"Oh no! This was such a wrong move... My mistake. Sorry."

Persistently, and at times desperately, I am trying to choreograph the animals coming into my frame. They do what they want, but I do not quit. But why am I not content with what I see, and instead try to direct them, even if what I do is so ridiculous? Perhaps some ancient cultural imperative of all humans is making me try to rule this wild and unruly roost. Or maybe I want these photographs to show the awe I feel when I am in their presence, and I need my animals to help me. But this is not it.

I just love them. The little springbok, who ruins my composition. The ostrich, who shows me his plucked ass when I need his head and overlaps with another giant bird. The oryx, who seems to walk on someone's back. 

And I feel this love makes them my good and tolerant friends. They may not do what I want but at times they will suddenly do far more than I had ever asked them for, and overwhelm me with their wild and boundless generosity. They will suddenly show me what I could not even imagine possible. And it will be perfect in every way.

Not today, but maybe soon.     ©Yva Momatiuk

crazy like a giraffe

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    We scramble out of our narrow camper bed well before sunrise, glad to escape its sliding seat pillows we again tried last night to tie together with a nylon rope, and drive off to forage for images. 

It is a difficult undertaking, since Etosha National Park in Namibia is a flat expanse of a sparsely overgrown desert with no eye-boggling sand dunes, soaring rocky outcrops and fat glistening rivers. Instead, the park embraces an enormous salt pan, now dry and wrinkled with cracked mud, and scores of dense clusters of low trees and shrubs, mostly armed with sharp spikes and all dusty and inhospitable. But never mind the thorns. The park rules forbid visitors from leaving their vehicles and looking for wildlife on foot, so either some animals come to you, turn just the way you want them without overlapping or dropping their noses behind a rock, and do exactly what you hope -- and wish-- and pray -- they would do, or you will get nothing at all. Again. And again.

From time to time, other park visitors report some miraculous sightings we are always too late or too early to see: a baby black rhino killed by four young lions, a bunch of zebras swimming in a waterhole, a leopard scouting the thicket... 

It is easy to get discouraged. 

And now it is another noon hour, the time of pesky black shadows and bleached rocks and bland sky; never kind to our pictures or, come to think of it, to us. We try another waterhole, flat and silvery, with a band of white rocks dotting its banks and a fringe of dark trees forming another horizontal strip which, should any animal appear, would dissect its background in all the wrong places. There are also some distant giraffes, standing like tall sentinels amidst the horizontal landscape of Africa, resting, or drinking. This is a lovely and soothing view, but hardly inspiring: the light is truly bad, the animals distant and mostly in repose.

There is a movement. Now!

All elongated thin legs and improbably tall necks, two baby giraffes suddenly go berserk with their joy of speed, galloping together across the sun drenched desert. Running is not uncommon, of course, and many young animals run, and run often, but what we see here is a superbly coordinated chaos of flying limbs, snaking long necks and flapping short tails, followed by a cloud of pale dust. 

The babies jump and twist and reverse directions not unlike superbly trained figure skaters, and gallop with their mouth open, sucking in the arid desert air of Namibia. Unlike their mothers, they do not spend much time drinking: since they are still suckling they do not yet depend on water for sustenance and get enough moisture with their diet of milk.

And -- a surprise. Even from a distance we see the giraffes' baby horns are bristling with stiff black hairs covering the bony tops. These are females: the tops of male giraffe horns are always bare. And this is our surprise, because such playful behavior among large and powerful herbivores is usually a domain of young males, while females are often calmer and seem to regard such antics with a hint of disapproval. 

But perhaps these two young giraffes are among those who defy this pattern of restrain, even though their future lives of long pregnancies and rearing of the young may force them to use their energy only when it seems to make sense in terms of survival. Or perhaps they are simply less watchful and self-aware, and a bit more crazy than some others. No one will ever know.    ©Yva Momatiuk

horns of Africa

The morning after the kudu bull was killed by the lions who then lost its carcass to the hyenas, John and I return to Chudob waterhole to have a look at the yesterday's battlefield. It is all quiet now, with the ochre sand blowing here and there as the wind increases and an odd ungulate walks across the salt pan to get a drink. I look for the great kudu horns but they have already vanished, as if all traces of the battle had to be wiped off the stage to make room for another play. 

But these magnificent African horns haunt me. I grew up in Poland, at the time when the culture of hunting and rifles, trophies and venison suppers, was still very much alive. My father, a forester's son, grew up in the woods and remembered shooting his first hare one snowy evening before he was old enough to go to school. Like many kids in those days, he roamed unsupervised, learning the sounds and silences of the forest with every step: an only child, a boy alone, mesmerized. He told me he often returned home at night after having to find his way in the dark, and hearing the owls, the wolves and the wind talking to each other. And he learned to imitate animal sounds so well that when I heard the hyenas' battle cry yesterday I had little doubt he would have learned it, too.

He was a very good hunter, and I grew up with big mounted heads hanging on our walls. 

But these heads with their massive horns came from Africa. There was a Cape buffalo I did not like very much because it seemed too cow-like and graceless, and a lovely impala buck with its lyre-shaped horns, and a mysterious head I loved best for its delicate lines of its great horns. Many years later, in Kenya, I finally thought I found its origin: it was probably a topi, a big reddish antelope with sloping shoulders and tiny yellow eyes located so low on its beautiful narrow head the animal seemed blind. 

But why on Earth did we have African animal heads in a small city apartment?  Right after the war, Pecia, as we children called our father, was encouraged by Mister Antoni, another forestry engineer, to take a train to what had just become western Poland, newly liberated by the Allies and handed to Poland after the Yalta accords became final. Virtually all Germans who used to live there were deported or fled on their own, leaving behind an unimaginable wealth of their fully equipped homes, stores and outbuildings.

And some Poles, who still had to mourn their war dead, and whose own possessions were all but gone, and who were often hungry and penniless, quickly realized this was the best time to go and collect from the newly abandoned German houses whatever they could, from furniture to underwear. I remember this postwar Klondike rush was called "szaber." The new and chaotic phenomenon amounted to mass looting of properties no longer guarded or legally owned. And so the Second World War continued, as if its destructive course which already lasted six terrible years maintained its deadly momentum and could not stop on its own, perhaps never.

I dimly understood that szaber, if performed to benefit your hungry and ill-dressed family suffering through another bone-freezing Polish winter, was an honorable undertaking, which amounted to "taking what was rightfully ours." Yet if it was conducted solely to speculate and sell the loot to those in dire need, it was considered a plain and immoral robbery. This distinction and the final judgment greatly depended on who was talking.

So Mister Antoni, a refined and urbane man with slender wrists and wire-rimmed glasses, led our reluctant and somewhat bewildered Pecia to the szaber grounds out west. They soon came across a German hunting villa with well appointed grounds, and set to work. The absent owner appeared to be a wealthy man and an avid hunter. Perhaps -- and I can only speculate on this subject -- he even had a strong connection to the German colony of South West Africa, including parts of today's Namibia. And so the two intrepid engineers collected what they considered the most important, boarded a passing train full of similarly burdened passengers, and safely returned to their families. 

I remember Mister Antoni brought back a score of pots and pans, some fluffy down comforters, clean linen and heavy table silver, which could be sold to buy food. It was a hungry time in Poland, and precious metals were a common currency of need. He also brought some winter clothes for his family, all practical good stuff, hugely desirable and much needed.

And what did our Pecia bring? Three large sets of the above mentioned African trophy horns, all mounted. One native African hunting lance, 6 feet long, tipped with a sharp bit of metal. Two grass African plates, with nice muted designs in many shades of wet clay. And two heavy volumes of a German book titled "The Grave of Tutankhamun," describing an archeological expedition which discovered and excavated Tutankhamun's tomb under one of the pyramids in Egypt. The books had black linen covers with gold letters and were published in old German Gothic alphabet.

My mother despaired, albeit not for long. By then, she knew what she could expect from her husband, and I am sure she knew what she would have done if she had gone instead. She was born in the tsarist Russia, lost her father who was murdered soon after the Bolshevik revolution engulfed the country, and came to Poland as a refuge when she was 12, already hardened and endlessly resourceful.  Perhaps she also recognized that not everybody could be like her, madly courageous, hard driving, and kicking her priorities in a strange but logical order. When she saw a couple of straw mats she wanted to hang above our kid beds, she slipped off her ring and left it in the store to pay for it later, but the mats went home with her that day. And when our dog Czertez found a roast -- which someone miraculously procured and left on a high window sill outside until a gust of wind blew it down -- she would serve it for our dinner and let Czertez have his share. So, if she made a mistake of letting Pecia go, she should not have been surprised by the results of his szaber expedition.

And for me his esoteric loot became an instant source of delight. I loved waking up to the shadows of those great horns moving slowly across the room as the sun rose. I played with the lance and imagined I was strolling all alone across the savannah, ready to meet many animals who would accept me immediately as one of their own. The grass plates were wonderful to touch and very pretty. There were also the books. I could not read yet -- in German or otherwise -- but there were many pictures. Small, black and white, and beguiling. The pyramid, the camp, the bearded men digging and excavating one ancient chamber after another, all mysterious and dim. I still remember marvelous reliefs on the walls of the catacombs and finally the find, the sarcophagus, and the scary, strange and very dead mummy. Then the opening of the casket, shaped like a person and richly decorated, and a wrapped human shape, and the unwrapping.... 

All this was thrilling beyond description. I knew I did not want the warm clothes Mister Antoni's daughter just received: this is what I needed more than anything else. This, and the African animals' heads with their horns turned to the sky. And perhaps in my life's journey I traveled as determinedly as my mother did, and brought back the amazement my father would like.   ©Yva Momatiuk

the kill

Today carnivores rule, and the life and death drama visits the Chudob waterhole in Etosha National Park in Namibia. The waterhole is a pretty oval of blue water sunken in the ochre colored banks and, with its plume of tall green reeds, decidedly bucolic. It is also -- now that the dry season is riding on dusty sails of desert winds -- an open air theater where wildlife plays are performed. 

None of them are rehearsed or scheduled, but all involve a cast of characters arriving from the surrounding desert, sometimes heralded by a puff of dust, and at times hardly ever noticed. They may be gentle and soothing, as when a herd of thirsty impalas sip daintily at the edge of the pond. They may also explode with sudden ferocity and are blood curdlingly brutal. If programs of such plays were written, they would stress that the "brutal" label is strictly human-made: for the predators of Africa any moral judgment is meaningless. All plays speak about survival and leave human sentiments aside.

John and I, busy attending to elephant's tracks in dry mud of the Etosha pan, arrive too late to witness the opening act. But Marianne and Howard, our friends and fellow photographers who tend to appear at such events with an uncanny sense of timing, tell us about four young lions who showed up at Chudob soon after daybreak. The cats were playful and lively. They tried to chase animals while kicking up a whole lot of fine sand, but all that effort led them nowhere. Then they noticed a kudu bull -- that of a magnificent corkscrew horns and a tawny coat -- who after seeking safety in the deeper end of Chudob tried to sneak out and escape. Marianne thought his long wait made him stiff because after the lions gave chase he seemed to stumble. But who knows? Perhaps just the sight of impeding death closing the distance in smooth, long leaps made him unsteady and weak? 

What we see is act two: a carcass, with its bright magenta guts spilling and the magnificent kudu horns in repose. And the lions, now satiated, resting nearby. The day drags hotly throughout the bland afternoon hours, and the lions take turns lapping the pond's water and flopping down again, their muscular shoulders relaxed and soft. The dense ranks of springbok, zebra, impala and oryx, well aware of the lions' proximity and patiently waiting, slowly begin to descend toward the water's edge. A young male elephant comes, too, and smelling the lions he advances toward them with his great cabbage ears flapping, the trunk sneaking, the feet pounding. 

He puts on a good show and the great cats retreat a short distance to placate him, but return as soon as he leaves. 

Then from a thicket of mopane trees a new shape appears: a massive head, a long neck, low hunches. A spotted hyena. It comes slowly, obliquely, as if that pile of meat on the ochre bank meant nothing at all, but it comes closer and closer, pulled by the string of a scent we cannot detect. 

Then, as the third act opens, the singing begins. Loud, piercing and steady call of the clan, summoning its own. And very soon another shape appears, a twin of the first. And another. We try to count the shapes but as more arrive, the cats stir, and the largest lioness runs over, perhaps trying to intercept and stem the flow of hyenas which multiply as if by some dark desert magic. 

I quickly do the math: four lions, dozen hyenas... that's three hyenas per lion. Three pairs of steely jaws against one cat, however powerful he is. But the math fails as soon as the invaders reach the carcass and their song changes: it is no longer a summoning call but a steady raucous growl of intimidation, and threat, and triumph. 

THIS CARCASS IS NOW OURS

The lioness knows it, too, but tries to rewrite the play's inevitable ending. Boy, does she try!  While the smaller cats retreat far enough to be safe, she grabs one hyena by the throat, slashes another, then turns and pounces on several rushing shadows. But the hyenas are too quick, and now there are two dozen, and they know they are winning. Some attack the lioness from behind and aim at her genitals, unprotected by her teeth and claws, and she crouches low to protect herself, the same way we saw grizzlies in Alaska trying to escape the fangs of a family of wolves. And in this crouch she suddenly looks vulnerable and submissive, even though she still tries to bite, and slash, and grab, and rescue what she can.

The dust stirred by the fight rises fast, and the hyenas heads appearing from the flying dirt remind me of taxidermy trophies, great theatrical props devoid of bodies and suspended in space. The lioness retreats, then turns and tries again, but nothing can be done:

the kudu carcass is now entirely covered with so many spotted bodies that only one hoofed foot pokes from under the mass of tearing, snapping and chewing hyenas. 

We look in silence. The play has ended. There is no applause and no flowers are tossed for the best actors. But we know we have just witnessed a great performance, illuminated by the brave and the athletic and the determined, who just want to hold on to life. At whatever cost, with whatever it takes.

©Yva Momatiuk