19. Thatch

19.  Thatch

I see them walking home through the sultry shadows of the ghommos at the end of a long day;

it’s the end of winter, the grass is ripe. Ready.

Measuring their paces like someone documenting a long journey,

they head home.

Thick thatch, bundled burdens, carried on their heads, supported by proud necks and elegant shoulders.

They move graciously like their own shadows, holding their heads high.

In spite of the load, there is a lightness in their hearts,

carrying it with dignity and carrying it with pride. 

It will bring warmth on cold winter nights

and it will be cool on hot summer days.

Simple thatch. Twined together like vibrant families into larger communities. 

Labour of love.

They sing and cut and sing and measure and then,

all at once, stamp them into shape.

All the edges aligned: from grass to thatch. 

Labour of duty. 

On their straight backs and proud shoulders they carry, and they sing,

and they sweat,

and they ache

and they laugh

A baby is born, and the golden thatch will proclaim their joy;

a bright new life

a new hut,

a new place.

The baby will grow, and become a man, an old man.

With him the thatch will fade, its colour lost.

Its purpose may remain for many seasons and many harvests

but at the end it will be, like the old life, replaced.

Amongst the songs and dances the young and fresh will replace the old and the wise.

Dexterous hands will merge branches into poles and grass into thatch

to weave a roof as strong as a nation.

All together.

Grass to thatch to roof. Sheltering life, and transitioning nature into homes;

from the earth the mud will rise into walls structured by poles to strengthen

and carry the heavy loads being brought in on proud necks and elegant shoulders.

A calf is born and stands for the first time in the moonlit night.

The young heifer will lick him, love him, support him

and the life of the herd bull will begin here and now, on this cloudless night.

Somewhere distant a dog barks and a lonely drum measures the journey of life.

Until morning.

A fresh bucket of water is brought to the surface by the tender muscles of adolescent girls,

laughing and spilling water in the sand; their shy smiles offer me some,

and I wash my sunburnt face in the cool of the water and think of the thatch:

 a similar coolness, the rich smell of water from the earth. 

Through the water in my eyes, I see the oxen harnessed to a plough,

and soon the soil will be turned and its rich smell will announce its receptiveness.

Ripe. Ready. For the seeds to germinate.

It will harbour and nourish a crop, if the rains are good.

They duck down into thick grass where no bold man will go, where leopards and snakes may linger

 in the shade of the tall grass.

Labour of love. Labour of duty;

to provide shade and warmth, protection from the sun.

Thatch.

They sing and they cut and measure and they stamp grass into thatch.

And they smile and they wave, as we drive past

into our future, leaving them in our past.

They are memories, etched in my mind forever. 

17. Understanding death: the Matobo experience

Death is often regarded as a singular once-off event. The end of life. Like birth, it is one of the most important “events” in the journey of life itself. It marks the other end of birth. The final stage. As it is at the opposite side of birth it also creates very much the opposite emotions to birth - both for the individual who experiences it and the people who are “left behind”. (That euphemism actually says a lot more beneath the surface. In essence it means that death is after all not the final stage but that death actually allows the individual into the next phase…to leave others behind, the deceased is moving on, elsewhere!)

Most, if not all religions in the world, suggest in some or other way that there is life beyond the dark curtain of initial death. We either “go to heaven” or come back as another human or component of life, perhaps wiser and better equipped than before, ever improving as individuals. (An interesting thought to evolutionists… how do the reincarnates contribute to increasing vigor or value of the species?)

Being with Matobo, and seeing its processes and transitions and the flow of life in many different forms and mutations, death becomes more of a continuous process rather than a single event, often challenging my understanding or perception of death, which was primarily formed as part of my Christian upbringing. Death as the end of life becomes a little more muddled when one looks at nature and how death is manifested in other beings. 

While I may have seen many dead trees, the actual death of a tree may take many years to complete, a slow process that reduces the elaborate branches to mere wood, which remains a wooden skeleton for decades, as if it created its own tombstone, the final tribute to many years and cycles of life and death itself. 

In the case of deciduous trees, large parts of the tree die off each year, the bark and leaves peel off and fall to the ground and they are incorporated in the soil beneath the tree, turned into nutrient-harboring compost which the plant may absorb in an absurd form of auto-cannibalism (which is a completely different subject - lets contain our focus to death!).  Trees, or at least, parts of trees die off every year, something higher organisms such as humans and other mammals do not experience. The skin is said to be the largest organ of the human, and therefore snakes and other reptiles who lose their skins each year, shedding it to sport an entirely new fresh skin, therefore also suffer some limited form of an annual death cycle!

Like the tree, that grows new leaves all the time, or in annual bursts every spring, colonies of termites and bees, may grow new individuals who can not survive on their own, and therefore form part of what is often referred to as a single organism, the colony. The “castes” represent different organs - the breeders are likened to the reproductive organs, and those growing mushrooms from lignin and other plant material are said to be the gastrointestinal system of the larger being etc. Here the death of an individual is nothing more than shedding an epithelial cell or two in the digestive tract of the larger organism. So, how do we define death in this case where the death of an individual is simply an unimportant process of recycling as fresh beings contribute to the larger whole?

While an individual tree may experience many years of cyclic deaths or deaths of smaller parts of itself, some vegetatively reproducing plants, like certain grasses, may actually never really die! The clones or new shoots grow from parent material and although seen as “new youngsters” they are actually the parent plant itself, at least genetically. While other parts of the plant, other clones may die off, the actual individual may end up as many individuals and while some of these may die, the actual plant survives many deaths! The original remains intact and alive in many places all at once! Bizarre.

My beloved lichens may undergo a similar process, though it is even more complex, considering the fact that they are made up of two species merged into one morphological being that grows clonally for many thousands of years, separating from itself and creating “new” colonies (yeah, not even individuals, cause the individual is made of at least two species!!!). So for them, and we may not be able to fathom it, death as we know and understand it - may actually never come! Great, is it not?!

What would be catastrophic is the death of an entire species, extinction, the ultimate death. That would constitute the passing of what could be a critical component of the complex system. As long as the deaths are countered by births and clones and seeds emerge to replace adults with young then its all ok. But too many deaths of critical components may lead to the death or collapse of the entire system as we know it. Meta death, if there is such a thing!

Incredible as nature is, this has happened many times before, and may happen again. We can only hope that a new order may emerge from what is left and evolve to initiate another revolution of evolution around the axis of life itself.

8. Fire

Although there are a whole bunch of glossy magazines out there suggesting we eat our vegetables raw, the mere fact the we, or our ancestors rather, were able to cook their food, changed the course of human evolution and we were well on our way to yuppies driving four wheel drive SUVs clutching cellular phones!

Huge plumes of smoke, painted with light
from the fire and the setting sun!

The ability to hold a root over the fire, provided Zog and family with an opportunity to detoxify the tubers and other plant materials, increased their palatability, so the toddlers would also eat roots and tubers otherwise filled with vile tannins, increasing its digestibility. To cook meat so it would last a little longer also contributed significantly to improve diets and reduce the body's strain against toxins and other strange chemicals… Cooking increased our culinary diversity and many great thinkers suggest therefore that fire lit up human evolution and put it into overdrive… some even suggest that the use of fire lead to the rapid increase in human brain size! So its clear that since our days as cave-dwellers, fire has played a clear and directing role in the evolution of humankind.

However, this is not a lesson in anthropology! And I am seriously digressing!! I am simply trying to justify my innate attraction to fire… I love fire, and as a scientist I need to have an hypothesis as to why it is such a demanding factor in my make-up as a modern man writing blogs!

Systematically consuming all dry vegetation
converting biomass into heat, ash and carbon dioxide  

My theory is that fire had such a profound impact on the collective human construct that our fascination and attraction to it remains to this day. Not only did it cook and preserve our food but it prevented us from freezing to death in our wintery caves, and crucially it kept the predators at bay. Fire therefore contributed in various ways to reduce mortality in the human line able to control it. That is not trivial and we will not forget that! Reinforcing the role of fire, it gave us the opportunity to invent graffiti, and the written language was born as our ancestral toddlers started playing noughts-and-crosses on the cave walls using charcoal left over from last night’s tuber and ostrich BBQ!

The other side of fire, the uncontrolled wild fire, is incredibly devastating! It destroys, it requires oxygen and fuel and creates heat and if that fuel is your grassland or house or car, then fire is an immense enemy! That side of me also hates fire. As a biologist I understand the role of fire, positive and negative on the environment. It can transform a golden waving grassland into ash and black soot in minutes and hours… an entire season’s growth can be destroyed in a single fire lasting no longer than a few hours. A year's rainfall can go up in smoke and leave us with nothing but bare soil and starving herbivores. The reality is that Africa still burns probably much like in the days when Zog and his clan discussed ways in which to control this new innovation! Its been part of this (and other) continents for a very very long time. It shaped the vegetation and everything else with it. No part of this world is untouched by it (apart from the poles, to some extent!). In short, fire shaped the way this continent and its inhabitants evolved and it will continue to do so in many ways.

Captivating the human mind and soul.

So as I leave the office and drive home at night in the winter, and I turn onto Matopos road my eyes start looking for the tell tale glow on the horizon. I am looking for it cause I don’t want to see it! I love watching the savanna grow and ripen into a rich honey colored mass of waving grass in the late summer. To see it destroyed with all its inhabitants is soul destroying. Then when you see it, that red and orange smokey glow in the distance your heart pounce in your throat, just like in my younger days on the farm, where fire was enemy number one and everyone in one’s household was ready to assist if a neighbor would call and say the dreaded word “FIRE”.

But when you see it and when you are over the initial shock of it, and like the rest of Africa, who has accepted death and destruction to a large extent - when you get to that point, then the ancient role of fire takes its effect on me. I cannot drive past it, I can not ignore it though other cars speed by. I, however, have to stop and look, get out the car and walk to it, as I am drawn to it. You often hear the anger in it - its amazing how much noise it makes, an angry beast consuming everything in its way. An incredible number of minute explosions, as oils and resins and gasses ignite with audible cracks and sizzling sounds are emitted as gasses are extruded from confined spaces in dead and live wood and dense grass stands.

The contrasts are amazing - dry grass, bright fire, dull smoke
and an amazing array of smells and sounds

When you stop and watch, it is mesmerizing… it consumes your mind like it consumes the dry vegetation. Sometimes rapidly it will lunge itself forward into large clumps of dense fuel, other times it will gently find its way through the short grass, bridging itself to the next large accumulation of dry matter… almost like an athlete pacing himself, for the final assault on the finish line. Sometimes during these the gentle periods, there are patches which are rejected, or forgotten by the fire or simply not worthy of being devoured, either the biomass is too sparse or the fire out-burned itself and then cant get to it… I love looking at these patches of unburnt vegetation amongst a sea of black, after the fire. They remind me of last standing pieces on a chessboard, the last remaining subjects of a game between masters… the last men standing in a war.

While fires are attractive - be sure not to ge trapped!

While devastating, and highly destructive, fire is also amazingly life-giving. How contradictory can this be? Like the rest of this continent, there are paradoxes and ironies and sometimes just plain illogical phenomena. Yet, soon in contrast to the otherwise black world a new sword of green grass will emerge, bright green, greener than where the veld did not burn - or perhaps it is a cynical play of color in your eyes and in your mind! The reality is that this world sometimes needs it - where we live and work in rural Africa, the grass are habitually burned every year, which is not good. But in places with “sound” management - there is often the need to burn.. To remove the dead wood, the moribund grass and reset the system. Some plants only germinate after smoky fires stimulate their seeds from dormancy… So its not all completely negative! It facilitates and initiates the next cycle, its just that sometimes these cycles follow too rapidly after each other.

Fires at night are simply amazing. Captivating, Awesome!

Whichever the case may be, in the day that may follow such fires, I always look for the new grass, those green little guys bravely pushing their heads into this great new world, unaware of what may follow. Not knowing whether they fill the simple stomach of a locust, the complex series of fermentation chambers of a ruminant like the impala or the sheep and goats, whether it will be a stately sable antelope or if they would survive the cycle and be consumed by Africa’s ultimate herbivore, fire.

Turing reality into a temporary fairy land of color and a
hypnotic theatre of which the aftermath is a cruel black world. 

So, I stop and look, perhaps allow the fire to play with my eyes and my mind a little… allow myself the luxury to travel back to the cave days where our ancestors may have scavenged the after effects of these fires, just like modern raptors swoop down and catch insects fleeing in the face of the fire or other scavengers searching the barren landscape for half cooked victims of the fire…. I may take a few photographs… smell the smoke, wonder about the puff-adders and squirrels again… and when I have had my fix I drive home. There, I greet my family, eat a well cooked meal, pour something smooth and settle in front of my fireplace, and contemplate my day and the ones to follow.

Read some more!

Please look at Gary Larson’s cartoon

On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe.  Wil Roebroeksand Paola Villa 

The New York Times; Of Tubers, Fire and Human Evolution, By MARK DERR, Published: January 16, 2001 

5. Transitions

Change, cycles, natural rhythms and transformations

Grass, trees, rocks an boulders all
contribute to this dynamic mosaic

According to the dictionary on my computer, transition is the process or period of changing from one state or condition to another. So the word is used to describe both the process and the timing of change, from one place to another, or the same place changing over time. An interesting concept when you want to photograph “place or space” and “time”.

During the last few days I have been driving to and from work at odd hours, and the concept described above keeps coming back to me. There are all these transitions which this time of year highlights so clearly. During the wet season, when everything is green, it is almost impossible to see the transitions, or the delineations, between grass, shrubs and trees, or between riverine and savanna and savanna and hill: the ecotones, as we call them, the areas of transition between vegetation communities. But now, in winter, the lines demarcating them are stark, clearly-drawn, even to the untrained eye. There are, however, many more transitions: those between states which change in reaction to soil type or man-made entities, like the edges of roads, and natural pasture giving way to crop fields, and parks to agricultural land. There are the transitions as you go up the hills from the river or drainage lines at the bottom-lands to higher lying areas, with grass and acacias. Then up hills with their own vegetation type (defined by structure and species composition) and granite outcrops, so characteristic of this part of the world. Those are the transitions in space: one vegetation condition following another in a pretty predictable pattern as governed by aspect (south facing versus north facing) soil type and moisture levels, as well as altitude, land use and abuse.

The cycles of grass growing, dying, burning and sprouting
is in stark contrast with ancient solid granite.

The other transition I see unfolding as I drive is the process of change which happens to the same place over time: the cyclic nature of place in areas with high seasonal variability. It is the natural (or sometimes, not so natural) progression of green grass lignifying, hardening and protecting itself against herbivory (i.e. being eaten by herbivores!), ensuring the production of viable seeds. What remains is the dry, golden-colored grass, moribund as its lifecycle is complete. Slowly, this rich standing hay is consumed by eager ungulates in search of a digestible diet. 

Annual fires change the landscape - it keeps small trees
from growing and maintains what is called a fire climax savanna

In many areas this grass will soon be grazed by cattle, to be ruminated at night in peaceful kraals with their brass bells ringing softly as their jaws move rhythmically, or trampled into dust and eventually returned to the soil either as undigested organic matter or manure: good ecology either way! Often though, as in much of Africa, the inevitable happens, the incredibly fast transition from rich golden biomass to heat, smoke and ash as a fires rage through the dry landscape. The end result of this is a black and ash environment, devoid of any nourishment where regeneration, stimulated by rain, is the only way to new life. 

Total transformation - Black & Ash

Against all odds!

There is always a little happiness when I drive to work through the burnt areas and emerge on the other side…and I always eagerly seek out where the fire ceased its destruction and the grass maintained its presence. Every night I drive home I instinctively look for the red glow in the distance. I hate these fires, but when I come across them I always stop, mesmerized and shaken up by their incredible destructive power, drawn to it. I stop, look and, in a strange way, I enjoy them. There is something about veld fires – the powerful display of energy as light – and even though it is extremely destructive, there is a mysterious and  magical attraction, something that brings about an increase in a man’s heart beat. Perhaps it only happens to Africans, and other people who understand this proud continent, and the processes which drive the transitions here.

Strip roads remain a feature of this landscape connecting
outlying rural areas with vibrant Bulawayo!

Perhaps the fascination with transitions this time of year relates to the instinctive expectation of the new season about to emerge. The sense of excitement, as you smell summer: you look for the changes in the sky, eagerly and subconsciously keeping an eye on the faintest of clouds, only to see them losing their feeble hold on the dry atmosphere. Patience and time will bring about the greatest annual transition…the greening of the earth after a long dry season. 

I should not be too expectant now, it’s only the first week of September, the first rains could be months away…and there are still some severe processes and transitions to play themselves out before then. Like the tiny green grasses I saw emerging on the barren apron of the road this morning, where the veldt burnt some weeks ago. “Residual moisture”, I heard the voice of the rangeland scientist in me; “Stupid ignorant little sods!” answered the cynical side of me, “Good luck to you!” I shouted as I drove by, making a mental note to check upon their progress in the next few weeks.

Mopani leaves dry out during winter - creating lovely colors
which will soon give way to a new season. 

So, transitions would be a good word to keep in mind as I attempt to capture the essence of Motopos, an added component to consider when engaging in Ansell Adam’s visualizing of a subject. I am sure you will see it, whether intentionally focused on it or simply as a natural characteristic of the scene photographed. But look out for it, its omnipresent in our complex and dynamic world!