Dear Friends:

The students, Kathleen and I are all on our mid-term break. About 14 of them have taken the night train to Mutare and then a day bus onward to Chimanimani to go climbing in the Eastern Highlands. Five are in Zambia seeking "the cutting edge of Africa", as their guide book described it, and one has gone with her urban homestay family to a religious retreat. There is also a pile of mail here waiting for the students; it will make them very happy (and somewhat homesick) when they return.

Kathleen and I are at home: I am grading exams and papers, preparing the next exams, and confirming the remaining lectures and seminars. Kathleen is putting the final touches on our next two field trips and checking in with the urban homestay Moms and Dads. And, to be candid, we are taking lots of naps.

Since my last Letter, we have seen the Big Five and the Small Five up close. We have heard lions roaring at sunrise and walked within 15 feet of rhinos and their calves. We have watched elephants bathe their young and identified more than 170 species of birds. We have tracked, observed, listened to, identified, and studied the African bush and its wildlife. We have designed and laid the ground work for an exciting, long-term Dartmouth study in Hwange National Park to identify and measure the impact on vegetation by animals, especially elephants, attracted to the water in artificial boreholes.

All of this began on Sunday 8 October when we met at the old railroad station on Kaunda Street in Harare to take the overnight sleeper to Bulawayo. All the students arrived on time - my professorial fret is that someone may miss the train - and quickly settled into their compartments. We took almost one entire coach - shared with a middle-aged Canadian couple who are taking a year off from high school teaching to - get this! - bicycle around the world. They have already biked from Cape Town to Harare on their way to Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.

The students slept four to a compartment crammed in with their backpacks and other gear. As soon as we pulled out, Meghan Dowd unwrapped home-made chocolate chip cookies, thus continuing a Dartmouth tradition among the seniors on this trip started by Matthew Orosz '99 (who is now in the Peace Corps in Lesotho). Some of the students explored the train as it creaked and rumbled through the night, and then settled into various compartments to play cards, gossip, write letters or journal entries, etc. I'm not sure when they slept, but all were up and ready when we arrived in Bulawayo at 0830, two hours late.

Colleen and Russell Pumfrey met us at the station with their guide staff and after a breakfast in town we drove out to Matopos National Park. Matopos is a small but geologically spectacular park with improbable rock formations: boulders stacked one on top of another; massive granite rocks, some as large as houses, balanced on round domes the size of hills. After settling into our tents at Maleme Dam, a large artificial water site with resident warthogs and baboons, Mr. Woody Cotterill, curator of the National History Museum in Bulawayo spoke to us about the geomorphology of the Matopo Hills and the national park. In addition to the geological history, we also learned about the park's biodiversity: the interaction between hyrax and leopard (Matopos has the highest concentration of leopards in the world), raptors (the park also has 40 species of raptors, three of which were nesting across the dam during our lecture), and, well, snakes: boomslang, vine snakes, puff adders, night adders, burrowing adders, cobras, mambas, gabon vipers. The usual suspects. Kendra Tupper, who had voiced her concern about snakes during her interview last spring, seemed to take this all in stride in the field.

We headed out into the field after lunch for a walking lecture by Ken and Betty Blake, local experts on trees and birds in the region. The weather was very hot (95 F.) but dry, and the students held up well despite the mopane bees, tiny insects that do not sting but seek moisture from your eyes, nose and mouth. They were all over us.

I think one of the most memorable parts of Matopos National Park is our visit to the caves to see Bushmen (San people) drawings that date back thousands of years. Ian Player in his book Zulu Wilderness, which the students are reading, describes these caves that stretch from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic across Southern Africa, as the original art galleries of the region. After tea and a rest, we hiked up to Nswatugi Cave to look at some of these drawings. I have seen this cave more than five times, but with each visit I am once again awed by the skill of the artists - the precision, delicacy and clarity of their work - and the amount of time they took to record what they were seeing. There is even a "hidden woman" drawing which you cannot see in direct light but becomes a standing figure of a women when you hold your hand or your hat to cast it in shade. From Nswatugi we climbed the bald dome that creates the cave and at the top spread out into small groups or alone to watch the sun set, red and quickly, behind distant rock-strewn hills.

One of the other highlights of Matopos is tracking rhinos. (There are two types of rhinos, called "black" and "white" which has nothing to do with their color; your student will fully explain this to you.) After several lectures, we get into our tents early (the students are sleepy by 9 PM) and rise at 0500, eat a light breakfast (toast and tea), break into three small groups, each with an armed guide, and ride into the Intensive Protection Zone (IPZ) to search for rhinos. Matopos has one of four IPZs in Zimbabwe; these are areas patrolled by armed guards to protect endangered rhinos from poachers. It seems to work: no poaching has taken place in these IPZ in five years and the rhino population is growing at about 5-7 % per year. (The rhino population in sub-Saharan Africa fell from about 500,000 in the 1960s to less than 10,000 by 1990; Zimbabwe's white rhino population was wiped out in the 1970s.)

Colin Nott, former warden of Matopos, guides my group which consists of Leah Horowitz, Anil Antony, Arun Palakurthy, Amy Lodge, Jesse Foote and Merrielle Macleod. As soon as we enter the IPZ in a small truck, we spot leopard and rhino tracks in the dirt road. Colin pulls off, we secure the vehicle, and with water and light packs, set off to follow the rhino tracks. (Of course, we first have a "professorial moment" of asking each student to identify different tracks, the age of each track and the direction, speed and character of the animal.)

My group proves excellent in the field: quiet, patient, alert and disciplined. We hike for more than two hours in rising heat, seeing zebras, warthogs, impala, lots of rhino tracks - but no rhino. After moving up into a small valley, we stop following the tracks and try to estimate where the rhino might be. We cut back down the valley, cross a dirt road, and enter mopane scrubland to a small open savannah. Just as we emerge, Colin signals us down and from our squatting position we see four grazing white rhinos -- a mature male, an adolescent male, a mature female and a suckling calf. Colin motions us forward, and we crawl to within 30 feet of the group. The rhinos settle down and the calf suckles; the two males face off and clash horns and push each other around in the dust. The female and her calf next sprawl in the dust and sleep. Colin motions us closer; we get to within 15 feet, still crouched. After about 10 minutes of tolerating us, the older male decides we have entered his turf and, after the oxpeckers warn him, he lumbers toward us. We stand and, following Colin's whispered directions, walk slowly backwards away from the rhinos.

Other groups had similar experiences; one found nine rhinos and several calves. Later, several bird enthusiasts went out with Dr, Peter Mundy, chief ornithologist for the national park service, following his lecture on raptors to observe black eagles and fish eagles in their nests. Our classroom continues to be the encountered and observed field; during Dr. Mundy's lecture, baboons barked along the opposite hill.

We traveled from Matopos to Hwange National Park by truck. Hwange is Zimbabwe's largest park, almost the size of Belgium, and filled with wildlife. We first camped for four days at Sinamatella, on a high bluff overlooking a vast expanse of middle-veld savannah and mopane woodland. Some of the action came to us: four female lions, with a cub, trailed by a large male lion, killed a Cape buffalo down below our campsite and we watched them over the course of the next two days as they fed, protected their kill from vultures and hyenas, and finally dragged the remains for a final snack in higher grass. We also watched elephants, rhinos, impalas, kudu, buffalo and wildebeest as we listened to lectures on wildlife and park management issues, elephant populations and water resources. Hyeans walked through our camp at night.

Hwange held two special learning experiences. On 13 October, we broke into three small groups and joined dozens of other teams spread throughout the park for the annual 24-hour, full-moon game count that helps the national parks determine how many animals it actually has. The other counters, mostly Zimbabweans, also came from as far away as Sweden and Germany; we were the largest group and the only one from the States. We volunteered to take the non-traditional game-count areas and unlike 1999 we therefore saw much less game. (Also, because of the cyclone that struck Southern African in January, there is much more water in the park than normal during the dry season and the game is more spread out.) My group went to Tshakabika 3, a primitive camp site along a dry river bed (no fence, no water, no toilets). We formed observation teams and settled in. The teams consisted of Courtney Smalley, who stood watch with me from 1300-1500, 2100-2300, and 0500-0700; Kendra Tupper and Amy Lodge (1500-1700, 2300-0100, 0700-0900), Darren Carriero and Anil Antony (1700-1900, 0100-0300, 0900 -1100), Christina Glastris and Meghan Dowd (1900-2100, 0300-0500). Although we had two tents, most of the students slept on the ground under a clear sky filled with stars. We were rewarded by spotting a black rhino and then three large elephant herds in the moonlight. The sand bed of the river held some water just below its surface and the elephants created small pools by digging with their tusks and feet.

After showers, food, and a restful day back at Sinematella following the game count, we headed to Bambusi (camping at Masuma Dam and watching hippos, giraffe, elephants, kudu, impala). At Bambusi, national parks plans to put in a borehole and create an artificial water source. This has several pluses and minuses: it attracts wildlife which, in turn, draw tourists (for needed foreign currency receipts); but the animals attracted to the boreholes create large, concentric biospheres of vegetative destruction. No one has ever measured the vegetation before a borehole was put in, and then compared it to what occurs after the borehole is filled and attracting animals. Over the course of two long mornings, and in great heat, the Dartmouth students completed two extensive transects: one heading north from the proposed borehole site for 2 kilometers; one, south for 2 km. Every 100 meters we drove in a steel stake, took a shrub vegetation survey for 10 meters around the stake, measured and recorded the dimensions of all trees larger than 20 centimeters in circumference. The students divided into teams, and with great spirit and enthusiasm created a solid quantitative baseline north and south of the borehole. For example, Hilke De Smedt and Caroline Pott recorded all the data; Sora Kim and helpers measured the 100 meters with a compass and tape pulled by Darron Carriero; Julie Greene, Amy Lodge, Leah Horowitz, Meghan Dowd counted shrubs and trees; David Cohen nailed the numbered tags into the designated trees; Whit Warlow, Anil Antony and Paul Blackcloud pounded the steel spikes into the ground. Others helped with the GPS system that kept us on the north-south axis (and got us back to the trucks; mopane scrubland can close in rather quickly). Next year, the Dartmouth AFSP '01 team will return to Bambusi, set up a camp at the new borehole, observe the animals, follow the two stake-lines and record the vegetation. This will begin a long-term study of the damage created by wildlife attracted to artificial water sites.

In some ways, Hwange is the core of the AFSP. We get to see lions, elephants, buffalo, giraffes, rhino, antelopes, several hundred bird species (this is the migratory season) all on foot on the ground. The instruction is all done in the field: our "classroom" is surrounded by wildlife. For example, during their two-hour mid-term examination from the Field Manual, held at Masuma Dam's thatched-roof game observation blind, these students got to see a bull elephant charge a hippo and actually toss it in the borehole pond because it got in the elephant's way to water.

We celebrated two birthdays in Hwange: Jesse Foote turned 22 and the team gave him a walking stick to go with his advanced age. Paul Blackcloud became 20 and the team presented him with a carved hippo which they had bargained for secretly during a roadside stop.

We ended the field trip in Victoria Falls, which is still dramatic and thundering despite the dry season, with rainbows formed by mists of spray curling hundreds of feet up sheer canyon walls.

One sight remains with me. In Hwange, my small group came upon an old bull elephant in the heat of mid-day, his two tusks securely embracing a young baobab tree, his forehead pressed against the bark, one leg bent, his trunk curled over a tusk, eyes closed -- and all of him sound asleep. We silently passed by and let him continue his afternoon nap. And so it is with Kathleen and me during this mid-term break.

All good wishes,

Jack Shepherd