Dear Parents and Friends:

We arrived safely back in Pretoria in darkness Thursday after a 12-hour drive from Mozambique following 19 days camping in five different locations in two countries. We were ready for showers, clean laundry, and a good night's sleep.

We awakened Friday to glory: The jacarandas are in full bloom and greeted us with a lavender haze across the entire city and university. Kathleen and I walked to class under an arch of blossoms and debated how to describe the color: violet when displayed against green leaves; a soft lavender when viewed from the ground up through branches. The petals fall upon red clay soil. Entire neighborhoods are transformed.

And so, of course, are we all. Nineteen days in the African bush will do that even to those who have been going into Africa for decades. I am surprised how far back in my trip journal I have to go to find the beginning of our journey.

Monday 6 October: After breakfast of rusks and tea/coffee, "JC" Strauss has us in the field at 0730. We are studying physical tracking and field observation. This will hone our skills in observing our environment, recording our observations and being acutely aware of what is around us. "JC" tells us about ground signs (tracks), aerial signs (brush, grasses, wind), presence signs (other wildlife such as birds). We study the age of a track by examining meteorological signs (dew, rain) and "layers" that may have formed on the track (dust, another track). We try to determine when a track was made. We learn categories of tracks: huge, oval (elephant); huge, 4 toes (hippo); huge, 3 toes (rhino); paw, 4 toes, no claws/nails (true cats; lion); paw, 4 toes, claws/nails (cheetah, dogs, etc); paw, 5 toes, claws/nails (honey badger, porcupine); 3 toes (ant bear); hands and feet (primates); non-cloven hoofs (zebra, horses); cloven hoofs (antelope, but also giraffe, eland, cape buffalo). "But is a giraffe an antelope?" "Which insect can fly, but cannot walk?" "JC" asks us.

This is not a benign classroom: This is the African bush along the Olifants River and we stand staring down at veritable highway of tracks: impala, hippo, elephant, waterbuck, kudo. "JC" has us fan out to identify what we can. So begin our lessons in the field. I love the challenge and surprise of this: Did you know that you can tell the difference between a cheetah and hyena track (4 toes, nails/claws) because the hyena track is asymmetrical? Draw a right angle next to a track and the hyena's will invariably be at 45 degrees. The cheetah walks a straight line. We study "middens" and learn the difference between a hippo and rhino midden, and whether the rhino is a black or white. "JC" adds in tree and plant identification, and high in a cape ash along the dry river bank we find the remains of an impala, hauled up by a leopard for dining and storage purposes; the leopard has marked the tree with long scratches.

During our three days with "JC" Strauss at his camp along the Olifants, we spend mornings and afternoons in the field, with a mid-day rest. During the evenings, we boat on the Olifants, rapidly draining because of the drought and dam activities, or watch a wildlife film on "The Big Five". In plenary sessions we discuss what we are learning (including group dynamics!). We learn how to survive in the bush by making rope, fish hooks, sandals, fire from various sources, etc. One student declares: "Dartmouth ought to require everyone to do this to graduate."

"JC" is an excellent instructor and uses hard work, then humor. He crams in an evening slide show of tracks and lightens it by trying to convince us that we can identify the gender of zebras because the females have black-on- white stripes and males the opposite. One day in the field he pops a kudu dropping into his mouth and challenges the group to see who can spit the dung the farthest. Kate takes the challenge first, followed by Dave and Andrew. All of them propel the prune-size kudu dropping about 10 feet, to the cheers and laughter of us all.

On our last day, we load into trucks and go out along the Olifants, where "JC" hands each of us an exam sheet, and then finds real tracks made by live animals, draws a circle on the ground around them, and asks us to identify the tracks. We ace elephant, hippo, leopard spoor, but then stumble on genet cat, a baby hippo (trick question!!), a small rodent, and even a kudu. We are almost ready for the real bush.

That comes at Timbavati, our next stop, a 74,000 hectare private game conservancy tucked next to Kruger National Park, a 2.2 million hectare national park the size of Israel. Kruger is a north-south, rectangular park. But look at the map and you will notice a large and growing bulge halfway down its western boundary. These are a gathering of private game conservancies that have formed out of cattle farms and have opened their fences to Kruger, thus becoming de facto part of the park. They are riding the growth of tourism coming as Kruger expands to be a Trans-Frontier Conservation Area (TFCA) with national parks in Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

We are here to study several things: the role of these private game conservancies; the coming linkage of Kruger (and therefore Timbavati) with national parks in Mozambique and Zimbabwe to form an enormous Trans-Frontier Conservation Area; further wildlife management issues; water conservation; and to hone our field skills.

We camp in tents along a dry riverbed under a wide jackelberry tree whose canopy spreads over us more than 100 feet in diameter. We all fit under it. The jackelberry fruit is a favorite of baboons (more on this in a moment). There is no fence, and during our week in Timbavati elephants, hyenas, cape buffalo visit our camp almost nightly; one elephant munched his way through camp late one afternoon, momentarily trapping Kelly Miller and Sally Newman in the open outdoor showers. Timbavati comes with a staff of three rangers, who are our principal instructors, a camp assistant (Solomon) and an extraordinary cook, Elizabeth, who prepares all our meals over a wood fire. We are also joined by our first "swooper", Prof. Chris Sneddon, from Dartmouth's Geography Department. (Each term in Africa the AFSP is joined by two additional Dartmouth faculty, who "swoop" in for two weeks or more to assist with instruction in the field. Prof. Bill Roebuck joins us in Namibia in early November.)

Our days at Timbavati are full. We rise at 0445, eat breakfast of rusks and coffee/tea at 0530, and are in the field by 0600. We start the day by breaking into small groups of 5-7 students to head into the bush with an armed ranger/instructor (this is Big Five country) and one of the Dartmouth staff. We return to a large brunch at 1100, rest until 3 PM (1500) or so followed by lectures or back into the field, then perhaps an evening game drive before dinner and a plenary discussion or free time.

One morning I walk with "LD", our ranger (and an instructor at the University of Pretoria's Institute for Wildlife Management), Sally, Josh, Kate, Jackson, Dan, Ingrid. We are off to study water management issues and wildlife and vegetation interactions. We hike out into the dry savannah in profile against the rising sun. "LD" leads with rifle slung across his chest followed by the students and me. The heat lifts dust to our nostrils. We identify elephant tracks in a dry riverbed, then impala, kudu and a lion print – How old is it and where is he? On the way, "LD" tries to tease a baboon spider out of his hole. He shows us the "toothbrush tree" and cuts twigs to use for cleaning our teeth. We identify various lowveld doves. My favorites include the Cape Turtle Dove (which says "Impala, impala" or as I tell the students "Work harder, work harder") and the emerald spotted dove with its soft descending "du, du, dududu" tailing off at the end. This is a call I always associate with the African bush. We learn how to identify the Burchell's Coucal, a white- chested, robin-size bird, which also calls "du, du, du, dududu" in descending tones that, however, rise at the end, to indicate coming rain. We "pitch up" as the South Africans say, at a pan, with an artificial water source, already crowded with 15-17 elephants in a matriarchal herd that ranges from the old female leader herself to about 4 young ones still nursing. We approach the pan cautiously, opposite the elephants, until an adolescent male decides we have come too close and marches out toward us, ears wide, trunk up, to show the herd he is on guard. We carefully walk backwards a safe distance, to observe. Other elephant herds come in, some actually running to get to the water. At full count, perhaps 35-40 elephants could be seen around the pan.

Water is a major and controversial issue in southern Africa, especially concerning wildlife. Kruger is examining vegetation damage around its artificial boreholes, and closing some or shifting others. (We read later in The New York Times of widespread death in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park because the Mugabe government has bankrupted the country and there is no fuel to run the generators to bring water into these artificial sources.)

Elephants are wily creatures. Here in Timbavati, we are studying these artificial water sites and vegetation losses. This particular morning, we note that the elephants, who may hear the site's generator start up, are carefully sucking water through their trunks from the water pipe outlet, and not the pan's pond, which has "old" water in it covered with a green slime. They learn about, and prefer, the fresh water brought up from underground by the generator, and patiently line up to get their trunks into the pipe's flow.

Part of our instruction at Timbavati focuses on these water issues. We study artificial sources and the impact of large mammals like elephants on the vegetation around them. We divide again into three small research teams. One group of students (Dave, Kelly Groggan, Sally, Courtney, Kate, Jonathea, Whitney) forms to study the Timbavati waterhole management projects in the field. Two other groups of the same size also spend a day examining mopane trees as indicators of changing vegetation near and around water areas (Jenny, Ingrid, Kelly Miller, Josh, Meryl, Cliff) , and termite mounds (and termites). "Team Termite", as they called themselves (Dan, Griff, Doug, Tia, Andrew, Karla, Jackson), learn that termites are excellent indicators of how much vegetative matter is available in a dry region like Timbavati, and therefore how many large mammals (cattle or elephants) the land might carry. Data from all three teams was carefully compiled and presented during an evening's discussion. The three field tests will be repeated by future Dartmouth AFSP groups, and compared to see if any changes are taking place in the savannah environment that might affect wildlife, water and wildlife management decisions.

There are also several practical exercises. Those students who want to may learn to fire the AK-47 rifle. Why? The AK-47 has transformed Africa. It is the preferred weapon of poachers, and game rangers now carry the AK-47 (among other rifles). It is the weapon of the African bush. If necessary, I would like some of the students (and myself) to know how to fire the rifle in an emergency. But most important, the weapon is a teaching tool about the transformation of Africa, both in its game parks and its war zones. The AK-47 is preferred by poachers and child soldiers alike.

All of our students also learn navigational skills. We practice in small teams, and each is sent on a separate triangular course that ends back in camp. Jonathea, Jackson, Dan, Sally, Kate, Whitney and Courtney bring us (and me!) directly to each of three markers, and smartly into camp just in time for dinner. Two days later, the same three teams are dropped 4 kilometers from camp (with armed ranger and Dartmouth staff), and find their way back using only a compass and map (no convenient reference points). I am suddenly aware of the confidence-building measure this is: Three weeks ago these students were fresh off their trans-Atlantic flight. Now, they are leading their friends and peers – not to mention their lost and hungry professor -- across the open African bush.

This is a serious and good-natured group of students. They are working long days, learning on a steep curve. "We're on a roll, Professor" one tells me. They maintain their wonderful sense of humor. Baboons over-night in the jackelberry tree above us. They bark ferociously and call to each other in the dark. (Two weeks earlier, one of our rangers tells us, a leopard came in and took a large male baboon in a struggle that spread blood across several tents.) Early one morning, we try to shoo off the baboons and Solomon employs a slingshot with pebbles from the riverbed. He whacks a few of the larger males. They get their revenge. On Saturday morning Kathleen and I hear the baboons awaken, before dawn, and urinate down on all of our tents, followed by a methodical plop-plop of their droppings. There are howls of protest, then eruptions of laughter from the students, who (safely inside the tents) start describing the scene as though it were a contest.

Our third stop is Skukuza Camp in Kruger National Park. Having looked at a private game conservancy (Timbavati) with its open fencing and walks across the African savannah, we are suddenly tenting in a campground for 2,000 visitors with a bank, restaurants, gift shop. We feel claustrophobic; a lone, woeful hyena prowls the fenceline just beyond our campsite. But Skukuza is also a major research station, and here we learn about alien plant species, controlled burning, and the impact of 11,000 elephants on the park's vegetation. We discuss issues about culling (killing), translocating, or trying various forms of contraception to reverse this growth. The new Kruger TFCA may offer some hope; starting in 2002, more than 6,000 elephants are being moved during the next 5 years from Kruger across the border to Mozambique to stock that part of this enormous TFCA. We also go on two night drives, and the second night out find two glorious lionesses warming themselves on the tar road. They make the long days worth it.

After two nights in Kruger, we spend the next three days in Tembe Elephant Reserve, with a visit to Ndumo nearby. The principal issue here is the proposed link between Tembe and Ndumo, with possible forced removal of several communities of indigenous people, and the development of the Maputoland TFCA across the border with Mozambique. Here we again divide into smaller teams, to look at the impacts of elephants, cape buffalo and lions (introduced to Tembe last year) on the proposed TFCA. We visit tourist lodges, try to locate collared lions, and examine impacts and issues between wildlife and people.

Our final site is on the coast of Mozambique, to continue our investigation of the development of Maputo Elephant Reserve as a TFCA. But the real lessons come in the contrast between South Africa, a second-world country like Brazil, and Mozambique, one of the poorest countries globally. We see this immediately at the border. The paved road from South Africa ends at two small border posts, one brick with computers (South Africa), the other cinder block with thatched roof and two harried Immigration officials pounding passports with rubber stamps (Mozambique). The paved road ends at their front door. From there for more than 120 miles, the only and main road to the capital (Maputo) is a sandy, pot-holed, 4-wheel- drive track across open savannah and dunes. We visit the Maputoland reserve with 90,000 pristine hectares and no fence. The land is wild, promising, but already under siege from wealthy southern Africans seeking a toehold on the coming tourist boom.

This part of our instruction ends, and of course begins, here. We encounter poverty at every turn: In small kids begging for "sweets" from each hut, in the jarring road conditions, in the contrasts between South Africans on holiday and the Mozambique people serving them, in our accommodations, in the bullet-pocked buildings left over from the civil war that ended only ten years ago. One afternoon, I sit in a roof-top restaurant with MTV and watch a middle-age with one leg plant a small vegetable garden among the huts below me. A land mine victim?

We were lucky on our trip: Only two days above 40 C (about 100 F.). The Burchell's Coucal was right once again: We had lots of pleasant cloudy weather, and even rain. "Dartmouth brings the rains," one of our African instructors said, happily.

In Pretoria this weekend, thunderstorms bathed the clay with jacaranda blossoms.

Jack and Kathleen