Dear Friends:

We have now returned safely from the longest field trip through the widest range of ecosystems in the history of the Africa Foreign Study Program: 23 days stretching from the Kalahari Desert to the Indian Ocean; from temperatures of 105 F. down to 45 F.; from bone dry desert to soaking wet coastal cyclone; from 100-foot sand dunes to 18-foot seas; from gemsbok and desert lions to baby whales and basking sharks.

Today, the students are well into their ENVS 84 team paper which will spring, as magically as a desert bloom after rain, from documents and interviews into a 200-page research paper, by 0800 on 7 December. The paper examines the Trans-Frontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) and uses two case studies. One is the new (and first) Kgalagadi TFCA that reaches across an international border and combines the former Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, in South Africa, and the Gemsbok National Park, in Botswana. The second case study is the proposed, and highly controversial, Maputaland TFCA which may include Tembe Elephant Reserve and Ndumo Game Reserve. We visited both areas.

Our historic trip started on 5 November when we landed (once again) at Johannesburg international airport, where Prof. Albert van Jaarsveld (Department of Zoology and Entomology, and Director of the Centre for Environmental Studies, University of Pretoria) and his graduate students met us with four Land Rovers and two Land Cruisers. We were joined by Prof. Ross Virginia and Prof. Bill Roebuck, who flew out from Dartmouth's Environmental Studies department to join this leg of the AFSP.

Off we went looking like an invading army with our gear piled high on the Rovers. Our journey out to the Kalahari took two days, with an overnight at Upington where we replenished supplies, filled our jerry cans with water from the Orange River (the largest in South Africa) and did some bird watching or played a little rugby with the UP grad students. Our drive the next day took us to the edge of the desert, at Kalahari Trails Nature Reserve, Alpha Camp.

The dunes around Alpha Camp and in the Kalahari are the color of burnt ochre. They undulate in parallel waves running northwest-southeast about half a mile apart. The dunes rise some 15-30 meters (about 45-100 feet) above the dune valleys (or "streets") between them. The Kalahari Desert is part of the largest continuous sand region in the world; it covers nine African countries (about 2.5 million square kilometers) and the sand reaches depths down to 350 feet. The term "Kalahari" is derived from the name of an African ethnic group that inhabits central Botswana, the Kgalagadi. The word may mean "wilderness," or "land of thirst" or "the land that has dried up". Thus, when South Africa and Botswana combined parks to form the first TFCA in Africa in 1999, the name chosen was Kgalagadi. This is now an enormous ecosystem free from human influence. The entire TFCA has only three designated rest camps.

The desert is not without life, however. There are about 625 plant species in the Kalahari, some of which serve as water reserves or staple food for the Bushmen. The desert contains more than 300 bird species and some 60 species of mammals like the blue wildebeest, spotted and brown hyaena, black-backed jackal, cheetah, leopard, and the famous Kalahari black-maned lion live along the dry river beds. So do 55 species of reptiles!

We stayed two days at Alpha Camp, where we all bunked into a one-story house or slept out under the stars. Led by Dr. Noll van Rooyen, an emeritus professor from the Department of Botany, University of Pretoria, we quickly settled into a pleasant routine of early morning and late afternoon excursions into the desert to study plants and trees, dune ecology, birds and mammals. One morning, a native tracker led us along mammal and reptile tracks across the dunes. The next evening, all of us rode to a distant row of dunes and, settling down in twos and threes, watched the sun set to our left while a thunderstorm raged silently in the distance to our right. Enormous anvil-shaped cumulus clouds rose above the desert some 60-80 miles away; we could see vertical and horizontal lightening that sometimes reached across the full length of the storm.

But we heard nothing.

Our next several nights were spent in the TFCA itself, at Bitterpan, Nossob, Loffiesdraai and Twee Rivieren. At Bitterpan, we reached the most desolate point of the entire AFSP: a desert outpost almost 40 kilometers along sandy tracks off the only gravel road. Bitterpan is an encampment near a dry lake bed where a windmill slowly draws salty desert water out of the sand into a large tank. Although the water in the tank was covered in green algae, temperatures hovering near 105 F. drove several students into a brief plunge to cool off.

There was no privacy at Bitterpan campground. The camp is about 100 feet in diameter, with the salty water pumped into an overhead tank (for bathing only) and a straight drop toilet some 200 feet outside the camp's perimeter. Because of lions, from just before sunset to after sunrise we rode to and from the single-seat toilet in shuttles using one of the Rovers. Drinking water came with us in a 500-gallon tank trailer. There was a small thatched building with a cold-water bucket shower, another for cooking, an open fire pit, the latrine and our "cage". That was Bitterpan. Nothing else for 50-60 miles.

We all slept in the "cage": a wire enclosure covered with thatch roof. In the reverse of a zoo, the animals roamed free and we packed into the cage around 9:30 PM, including our armed Bushman guard. The gate was closed and locked for the night. Anyone needing the bathroom had to rouse the armed Bushman and ride out to the toilet; as far as I know, no one did. In truth, it was fun: alone in the desert, animal sounds, the utter darkness, the stars. We were perfectly safe, and yet at some sort of cutting edge.

Prof. Clarke Scholtz, chair of the Department of Zoology and Entomology, UP, an international expert on insects, joined us at at Bitterpan where he started a series of talks and lectures in the field on his speciality. One incident illustrates to me the knowledge and humor he brings to his expertise: Standing in the dry lake bed of Bitterpan, surrounded by our students, staff and the directors, Dr. Scholtz held up a large winged and pincered beetle. In the middle of his talk, a biting fly landed on his bare neck and a helpful graduate student snatched it off, only to hear Dr. Scholtz shout: "Don't kill it!" This was followed by a second talk about that particular fly and its important role in the desert ecology. Prof. Scholtz knew what had landed on his neck although he could not see it! A bug that I would have gladly smooshed between my thumb and index finger became an object for a discussion about insects and bio-diversity.

At Loffiesdraai, another "cage" campground, we undertook a transect in the heat of day to understand the wealth of diversity in the desert. The team broke into four groups and each headed out from the desert encampment on one of the four compass points. Within a kilometer, we had collected insects, vegetation, bones, feathers, scats, and other objects and sighted birds and mammals (no reptiles!). We brought back everything but the birds and mammals and laid them out on tables to identify and discuss. One group even retrieved the skull and horns of a gemsbok.

One of my favorite discussions concerned the well-named Shepherd's Tree (Boscia albitrunca). In the arid savannah few trees offer any shelter, but the Shepherd's Tree, a low, wide and thickly leafed tree with white trunk, spreads it welcoming branches in a most enticing manner. Its roots are made into a desert coffee; its fruits edible (I think; better learn that!). There is only one problem, in addition to the fact that leopards also enjoy its shade: most Shepherd's Trees also shelter an insect called the "tampan" in the soil beneath their branches. The tampan are alerted to the presence of mammals, including us, by our emission of carbon dioxide for oxygen. Sensing this exchange taking place by the mammal resting above them, they rise to the surface, give the mammal a nasty bite, and draw blood much like a tick. Just to add to the desert's many challenges, some Shepherd's Trees do not harbor the tampan. How do you tell which one?

One day, we found such a Shepherd's Tree on a dune during a walk. It was truly lovely: gnarled and twisted; white trunk and limbs reaching out some 30 feet in diameter; cool sand underneath. We all sat on or under it and with Dr. van Rooyen discussed the many virtues, and the two drawbacks (leopards and bloodsucking insects) of the tree. Wishing to see how much the students had learned, Dr. van Rooyen at one point asked us: "And what biting insect is sometimes found under the Shepherd's Tree?"

"The Tampax," one eager female student shouted back.

Prof. Virginia also gave us lectures on desert ecology, his area of expertise, and the mesquite tree which is a transplant and interloper brought from the United States, in part as food supplement for cattle. The tree is difficult to eradicate, a water user and is responsible for converting grassland to dry savannah.

Other discussions circled the difficult and challenging issue of land use that we have been tracking all term. Whose land is this, and what should its primary uses be? Is there a moral obligation to use land in a specific way, for conservation or to alleviate poverty? How do we weigh the use of land v. the needs of people? These and other troubling questions are now bubbling in the rising ENVS 84 paper underway two doors from my flat where I write here in Harare.

On our last night in the Kalahari, at Twee Rivieren, Dr. Paul Fumston reviewed his research on lions. Dr. Fumston lives in the Kalahari with his wife and his six-month old son and has studied lions for two years all over the TFCA. Everyone comes to the game parks of Africa to see lions, yet in the Kalahari the unusual black-maned lions are in competition for range with cattle ranches which ring the Kgalagadi TFCA. Our students gently complained that they had not see a single lion during their stay in the desert. Was desert ranching winning out along the perimeter of the TFCA?

Our last night, all 20 students piled into an open, three-tiered vehicle and went on a night drive. They saw gemsbok, blue wildebeest, antelopes; and finally, as their luck would have it, three male lions sauntering along the dirt road. Their manes were not black, but a light sandy color, and as the students tracked them they quickly became "the beach boys" -- an appropriate name considering the next destination of this field trip.

All the best,

Jack and Kathleen