Chongoni Hills World Heritage Site

I went on a day trip to Chongoni Hills a few weeks ago
with Small Steps Adventure Tours.

It was in a beautiful area near Dedza.

We hiked up to a cave and saw rock paintings from
the early residents, who were were pygmies,
hunter/gatherers who painted in red.
The later residents were Bantu farmers,
who painted in white.

Here we are on our lunch break.
This area has the highest concentration
of rock paintings in Central Africa,
and the paintings were mostly made by women.

Last Faidherbia Cutting (2)

Salima was our last location for cutting Faidherbia.

The goats enjoyed the leaves and twigs we
had bundled to weigh.

Maurice and I discovered the stump of an enormous baobab.

Here is a Baobab near Zomba

We were all tired of using the axe.

And we were really happy when we were finished.

Zanzibar (2)

On the last day, we did some sightseeing:

Zanzibar is a majority Muslim province, but there
is a big Anglican church near downtown Stone Town.
It is built on top of the old slave market.

The monument behind the church shows how the slaves
were put into pits for the buyers to view. Zanzibar was
historically a hub for the East African slave trade, and
the Anglican church made a serious push in church-planting
and colonizing these countries to stamp out the slave trade.

The church, then and now, operated schools.

The church was beautiful inside.

This crucifix was draped in purple for Lent. It was
interesting because it was made from wood from
the tree under which David Livingstone died in Zambia.

more on David Livingstone:
http://www.livingstoneonline.ucl.ac.uk/biog/dl/bio.html

Zanzibar

Last month I went to Zanzibar

Not for vacation, but for a workshop on
writing better research papers.

We spent the first three days in the hotel conference
room, and walked past the beautiful swimming pool
and looked down towards the nearby fishing village...

and watched them sail off to work before we
went back to our work in the conference room.

We did get to see some of the sights the last day,
more on that on the next post.

Last Faidherbia Cutting

We cut our last Faidherbia trees in Salima last fall.

Here we are walking to one of the fields.

We had to mark and number the branches so
that we could evaluate the trees for fractal analysis.

We sat under a guava tree to eat lunch.
(more next time)

Around town

I've been around town the last few weeks,
so the pictures are also from around town.

We have a new shopping area on the west side
of town, and if you look to the left,
you see the blue parasol's of the new pizza place,
which beats all the other pizza places
(except the Italian restaurant).

they started with some nice foreign pine trees...

and spent quite a bit on landscaping, so it is a pretty place...

My office is on a research station in
the country, so wildlife visits us regularly.

Even in town, the views can be nice.
If you look to the right you can see
a trace of the second bow of a
spectacular double rainbow.

Namibia (2)

Gobabeb Desert Research Centre is beside
a riverbed that divides a flat white gravel
desert from a desert full of red dunes.


They say that this river floods during part of the year,
but I would have to see it to believe it.