Sioma
Camp
Newsletter
April – June 2011
As usual
let me start with the road. Work on this upper section is
progressing well. The first tarmac application tests have been
carried out and I assume that the tarmac phase will soon start,
at least up here. The first section from Sesheke to Kalobolelwa
has not progressed that far yet. The positive news is that by
now a parallel detour road has been constructed all the way from
Sesheke (Katima Mulilo) to Sioma Camp. This means that what used
to take say 3½-4 hours one year ago can now be done in
approximately two hours....and with far less damage to your
vehicle. A four wheel drive vehicle is no longer required, at
least as long as you stay on the main road. If you are driving
from Livingstone all 320 km to Sioma Camp can now be covered in
less than 5 hours. The road is still expected...so I am
told....to be completed by mid next year. At least for this
upper part that seems almost realistic although I am sure the
first section from Sesheke will take quite a bit longer. I am
also told that work is progressing well on the other side, from
Senanga and down to Sioma (on the north side of the Zambezi).
They have a few major obstacles on the way though that may delay
the completion of that section with quite some time. The Liu
River for instance is about 1,4 km wide and although shallow
requires a lot of very time consuming concrete construction
work. As I understand the contractor is placing 5-6 meter long
concrete ‘culvert/bridge’ sections across the river. This of
course consumes a lot of material and takes a long time. Work on
this road section may continue well into 2013.
The
construction of the bridge has for whatever reason been delayed
and has not started yet. We may end up with a situation where
there are two nice sections of tarmac road completed on each
side of the river....and no bridge. In that case I hope the
pontoon ferry from Kalongola/Sitoti can be brought down to
somewhere upriver from the Ngonye Falls and that preliminary
roads can connect to it on both sides. Apparently another
Chinese company has been selected as the bridge contractor and
is expected on site sometime in August. The actual work I am
told will start in September. However there seem to be quite
some uncertainty on the starting date. I have heard estimates on
when the construction work will start ranging from August to
November this year. The problem is that it will probably be
difficult to do much actual construction work in the river in
the rainy season. Probably work ‘in the river’ will only be
possible say from June/July – when the water level is getting
fairly low – to November/December – where the river starts
rising again. The bridge construction will take around two
years, so one year after the road sections at least on this
south side of the river have been completed it seems.
Once
everything is in place the Western Zambian Circuit will be in
place and tourists will be able to do the roundtrip from
Livingstone through Sesheke/Katima Mulilo, Sioma, Senanga, Mongu
to Lusaka. On the way of course visit Ngonye Falls and Sioma
Ngwezi National Park, Liuwa Plain National Park (West of Mongu)
and Kafue National Park on the way to Lusaka.
I can’t
help commenting on the environment in relation to the road
construction. Don’t they learn about environment in China? I am
of course aware that some trees may need to be removed to make
space for the road in some sections, but the apparent mindless
bulldozing of trees, including valuable hardwood species like
rosewood, Zambezi teak, mukwa (kiat) etc. just seem out of
proportion. I am sure this is not in accordance with the advice
contained in the Environmental Impact Assessment for the road
building. So, it leaves me puzzled.
Again
this year the river has been quite high reaching the peak
towards the end of April (quite late; and we even had some rain
on the 19th of May). None of our tents were under
water this year, so for the last two years the water level has
gone down after the excessive flooding in March 2009. In
January/February and again in May/June the rising/dropping of
the water provide good opportunities for a bit of swimming.
There are small ...fairly safe, but always watch out for
crocs......secluded parts of the river where you can relax
together with Tigerfish and other smaller fish. Even the
Tigerfish are not very afraid and come quite close (some times
less than half a meter). They are very beautiful, colourful,
slender and agile. At times you may see big packs of up to 100
Tigerfish cruising over the sandbanks. I had to share my
favourite bathing spot with a small crocodile (less than 1,5
metre long). When I came for my bath he (I for some reason
assume it was a male) was often laying sunbathing on a small
sand island and then slipped into the river on the other side of
the island leaving my side of the island for a quick
bath........we seemed to have a mutual agreement...(or so I
felt).... you - the croc - stay on your side of the island; I
stay on my side....but to be honest I never quite trusted him!
(You should be able to find a photo of him on the Sioma Camp
website, or on the Sioma Camp Facebook site).
I went
to Denmark in April. I haven’t been ‘home’ (?) since October
2007. It was nice to link up with my two sons again and we had a
lot of fun playing a computer game called ‘Supreme Commander’.
In Denmark it was the hottest April month ever. Average
temperature 9,5 degrees celcius or something like that. Yeah,
that’s hot! Here in South West Zambia we are right now having a
very cold period. Several nights the temperature has crept down
to between -5 to -10 in the early morning hours. I thought
freezing taps were a North European occurrence, but not so.
Unfortunately the freezing cold has left many mango and papaya
trees completely ‘dead’, at least for now. I am afraid this
means it will be much more difficult than usual for us to serve
our delicious papaya cake for our guests this season. I also
wonder how the crocs survive. They need to generate a lot of
heat from sunbathing during the day to get through the cold
nights.
Business
has been extremely slow and I have the feeling that there have
actually been more cancellations than guests staying here; for a
number of good reasons of course, but still it has been very
annoying and frustrating. May was the worst month ever since
Sioma Camp opened in July 2008. Total income in May: US$ 571.
The costs amounted to almost US$ 3000. That is of course hardly
sustainable. That’s also why I have realized that if possible I
simply have to return to Denmark and take up my old job. It will
at least take another2-3 years before the combination of the
road/bridge is completed and I sincerely doubt that Sioma Camp
will become viable before that happens. And 2-3 years is a long
time. I will probably face commercial hara-kiri unless I do
something drastic in the meantime to survive. So, I have applied
for various positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (in
Copenhagen). My ‘private sector’ experience from ‘The Heart of
Africa’ doesn’t seem to be much sought after.....at least that
is the feeling I have so far. I do however remain fairly
confident that by 1. September I will be back in Copenhagen
overlooking the old port area around Asiatisk Plads.
While
away I will have a manager to run Sioma Camp. And I am not
giving up on the Camp, merely taking a break. For how long I
can’t say. I hope that a stable income will enable me to
complete my investment; the lack of funds when you have so many
– costly – plans have become increasingly frustrating.
I have
started constructing two ‘luxury’ teak cottages with four more
in the pipeline. Work progress is slow though. The landscaping
of a swimming pool is almost completed. I just need some good
advice on the actual construction. I don’t want to use concrete.
My intention is to create a natural pool, using water from the
Zambezi (pumped with a so-called sling pump). I hope that it
will be possible to use ‘calcrite’ as the bottom layer, then a
mix of ‘calcrite’ and clay (hopefully these two layers will
provide a sufficient seal) and finally a layer of nice white
river sand. Water from the pool and water from some fish ponds
that I intend to construct as well will hopefully flow together
and form a pool under the restaurant deck. The way I imagine it,
it will look very nice enhancing the river and water atmosphere
of Sioma (River) Camp. Hopefully the water will attract a bit of
wildlife and a lot of birds.
Speaking
of birds I am getting more certain that actually the number of
birds around the lodge has increased. I see more bird parties
and get the feeling that there are birds around here all the
time. As I recall there used to be far fewer. Maybe it is
because burning of the bush has not been done on my plot since I
came.....apart from a few minor uncontrolled ones. This probably
has left better nesting places and improved breeding
opportunities as there are now more insects to be preyed upon.
I
haven’t seen a lot of wildlife recently; maybe because I haven’t
been much in the bush. Some guests from Livingstone were here
mid June and went for a few bush drives and saw some sable, some
tsessebe, some impalas and some duikers, but not impressive
numbers in any way. At the airstrip a few km away some of the
farmers have been complaining about sable antelopes eating the
sorghum seeds. Apparently a group of around 15 had made it their
favourite dinner area.
In camp
we had two lions in the beginning of April. Mubita, my
driver/tracker saw a lioness close to the safari tents. She ran
away and apparently joined the male at the campsite where they
managed to kill a duiker. A few weeks ago I drove from Sesheke
in the evening and around 30 km before reaching Sioma Camp I saw
a caracal. It has been several years ago since I saw one the
last time (At that time I actually saw 3 in one evening, on the
way from my bush camp).
We had
an impressive....and long lasting total lunar eclipse on the 15th
of June. We will of course try to offer this attraction to our
guests again as soon as possible. The problem is that it is
quite expensive and the ‘Lunatic’ authorities aren’t very
service minded.
The
Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area ...in short KAZA
TFCA.... process is moving, but slowly. Village scouts and
additional ZAWA ...Zambia Wildlife Authority...wildlife police
officers have been recruited and slowly, slowly there is hope
that it may start to have an impact on the level of poaching. A
major problem is that people still seem to ‘accept’ poaching and
I am afraid it will take time before the local communities more
actively decide to oppose the illegal activities of the
poachers. Again (I probably have been saying this before)
systems need to be put in place so local people can start to
benefit from wildlife. As for now they don’t and then of course
they will continue poaching and very few will become
‘whistleblowers’. It does seem however that more ......again
slowly, slowly....people from the area have started sharing
information with ZAWA on the activities of poachers. It is a
battle over the hearts and minds of the communities living
around the park. Local people need to be convinced that the
poachers are actually stealing from them. They also need to be
convinced that the whole poaching business – at least what the
trade in bush meat is concerned – is extremely bad economics and
that the value from tourism and sport hunting is much higher
than the value to be generated from the sale of bush meat. But
it will take time........and the communities need to see some
tangible benefits soon.
In all
humbleness Sioma Camp will now introduce a ‘tourism based
wildlife sighting community incentive scheme’. In short the idea
is to create a direct link between (sightings of) wildlife and
money to the community. Whenever guests at Sioma Camp take a
bush drive or go for a bush walk they will be asked (the scheme
will be voluntary) to tick of the various species (not number of
individual animals) they see on the trip. For each species a
value is attached, say if a group of guests see a duiker they
pay 1 US$; if they see a reedbuck they pay 2 US$, if they see a
Kudu 3 US$, a sable antelope 4 US$ and say a lion 5 US$. Based
on our bush drives/bush walks last year a group of tourists (as
a group) will on average pay about 25 US$ per trip (on top of
the standard activity fee to Sioma Camp). Hopefully the
villagers in the area will eventually make the connection
between the money coming from tourists doing game viewing in
their area and the number of game that is there. In essence the
tourists will be paying the local communities for NOT poaching.
I hope many of our guests will join the scheme. I know it is
extra money but on the other hand it is not that much and it may
actually be your direct contribution to help save the wildlife
in the African bush for the next generation. The villages who
will benefit in this area will be Kabula 2, Mwanambao and
Sikuka. The money generated will each month be handed over to a
representative from the Villages, probably from the Village
Action Group. We will monitor the use of the money closely in
order to make sure that the funds are spent on actual community
needs......such as the local school, water supply, health clinic
etc.
Kabula 2
has been the first village to benefit from funds from Peace Park
in putting up an elephant fence. After the first season it
seems that the fence has been successful in keeping the
elephants out. So this year no elephants managed to eat and
destroy the maize fields around Kabula 2; although a dry spell
took its heavy toll nevertheless. As I keep saying, this area is
no good for agriculture....either the wildlife finish of the
fields or you have either too much or too little rain ...at the
wrong times. As usual nobody seems to listen to me. I wonder
why.
On a
last concluding note please be informed that any person
travelling between South Africa and Zambia now need to have
proof of yellow fever vaccination. This apparently also goes for
in transit travellers passing through the airport in
Johannesburg.
Hans
Christian Aaskov,
Sioma
Camp
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