The most beautiful sunset greeted me as I descended to Pemba airport. A wall of grey above powder puff clouds and a sliver of golden light slashing across the border between the two striking formations. As we swung round to the west, a lower belt of cloud was visible as the rest cleared and the scene resembled a divine painting with rays of golden light beaming down to earth. I was truly drawn in and captivated by what the remains of the day had to show any who cared to look out of the window. It felt like it was just for me and I treasured every moment on a physically, mentally and spiritually. It may sound strange, but the vista did speak to me.
After a really pleasant evening with Paulo and Rebecca, I set off with Jasper to Mareja. The weather threw everything at us from torrential rain to beaming sunshine but I was glad to be able to watch the landscape change. The vegetation became less obviously influenced by man as we left Pemba behind although there were still plenty of people selling charcoal by the bag and piled high on the roadside. There was a plentiful supply of hardwood planks for sale too. Jasper painted a fairly grim picture of the cycle started by the Chinese making roads into an area to harvest the most valuable hardwoods and then the locals come in for the rest, followed by the slash and burn cultivators and charcoal makers. It leaves behind a pretty barren landscape.
We met a Ranger returning to the National Park (N.P.) post at the base of the hill near Mareja. It is a constant thorn in D’s side as they are poaching animals and trees and have burnt an estimated 5000 hectares of land, for no apparent reason. They are supposed to be there solely to protect the N.P. radio antenna on top of the hill. D caught the Rangers transporting sections of a prized hardwood off the mountain some time ago, and there’s no reason to suggest that business will cease until they exhaust the supply.
Mareja is beautiful. It has a wildness about it and was a breath of fresh air after leaving the "Police shamba" amongst others, behind. I met Dominik after he'd returned from a patrol and he was fairly glum about what the future hel dor Mareja's elephants. In his words, by the end of this year, there may be none left. The National Park are complicit in all kinds of exploitation of the fauna and flora and there are very few mature elephants left. We went on a patrol and saw evidence of their passing from several days ago. Very fresh tracks of sable antelope and greater kudu were a lift and ven better when we returned to the rover and the other team had seen 3 sable close to the river. We collected another patrol on the way back and a few minutes from the camp, lioness and 2 six month old cubs walked across the road 30 yards in front of us. We shone the light on her after approaching carefully and through the binoculars I could see her tail thrashing as she gave a snarl. Dominik heard one of the rangers loading his gun whist standing in the back of the pickup so he warned him against that and I backed up the command with slightly more volume. She was only protecting her kids. Dominik hadn’t seen any lions for 6-7 years, which made the sighting even more special. He’s had a lot of bad news lately and I was glad to be there when something put a smile on his face.
