Renegade Research

I've spent the past three days in Maun participating in a fantastic impromptu workshop led by a couple of English botanists. They instructed the two Kuru oral history research teams on such topics as: collecting plant specimens to the approved botanical standard, setting up a database of traditional medicine, and pulling incredible research positions out of thin air.

The (brief) story of the researchers:

Botswana, as a tourist destination, is definitely one for the wealthy. The tourist camps are set up for maximum luxury, minimum impact – if you only have a handful of very affluent clients, the wilderness remains pristine for the lucky few that can afford it. Prices run as high as $2300 per person per night, for such camps as the Abu elephant-back safari camp. (At Abu, I believe you have to stay a minimum of 3 nights – otherwise it upsets the elephants. There are probably even more expensive options – someone is always willing to provide the opportunity to pay more, after all.) The tourist camps must also make a commitment to conservation – they are either part of a national park, in which case park rules and management make sure they contribute, or they are on wilderness areas leased to communities or companies with certain restrictions on usage that also require conservation efforts.* Different tourist camps keep to those requirements to varying degrees of success.

This English couple had been visiting the same camp for many years, but they were approaching retirement – him from banking, her from archaeology – and they were heartbroken at the thought of no longer being able to afford visits to their favourite safari destination. On a whim, they asked the camp managers if there were any way in which they could be useful to the camp, any job they could do that would permit them to camp there for free. Surprisingly, the camp replied that they had a research project investigating elephant impact on vegetation, and they needed some support. The English couple signed on immediately, and returned the following year to work. However, they quickly realized that their vegetation assessments were hampered by the fact that they didn't know what most of the plants were, and in seeking more plant resources, they got in touch with The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. They started collecting samples. Soon enough, with absolutely zero official scientific training, they parleyed the elephant-impact project into their own, independently funded plant research project, and to this day they work at cataloguing the plants of the Okavango Delta.

I'm not sure if you can appreciate how awesome this is. Facts: NO training, just a lifelong interest in botany. NO association (then or now) with a university. THEIR OWN CAMP on Chief's Island, one of the Okavango's most prized destinations. TOTAL OFF-ROAD ACCESS. They drive instead of walking because there are close to 200 lions on Chief's Island, which is a very small island.

It's like a shout back to a more frontier-like existence, when rugged men in leather hats (and leather pants as well, if the ladies were lucky – even luckier, ladies in leather pants, though those were probably rarer – anyhow, I digress) just showed up in the wilds of Africa, jumped into a Land Rover and trundled off to do some renegade research. Just because they liked plants. Or elephants. Or whatever. There's a wealth of information at the University of Botswana's campus in Maun from precisely that kind of source – a man named Peter Smith who just showed up in Maun in the 1970s and decided that he wanted to catalogue Okavango plants. So he went off into the Delta and collected them. I love it. It's just the opposite of my own training – I doubt Peter Smith gave a rat's ass about getting a technical article published in the leading botanical journals, or having a PhD from a well-known university. The U of B (definitely not well-known) is currently working on a project to digitize his map notes – he had a lot of big charts of the Okavango upon which he pencilled innumerable, illegible notes about his observations. “Water high this year.” “Found new species here.” And so on.

It delights me to know that you can still do that, though it's becoming more difficult – if you have a passion for the living world, if you are in essence a naturalist, you can just show up and make a go of it. Persistence and luck, persistence and luck. Of course, these two English amateur botanists are now doing legitimate research that will be of great value to the world of botany, but it's the beginnings, the impromptu, informal nature of it all that fascinates me. Credentials are no substitute for passion and determination.

I'm not sure if this is a very un-PC sort of fascination – in a sense I suppose I'm clinging to a colonial illusion where Africa was a utopian wildland, full of resources and animals; forget the people who lived there. It was a frontier, a jewel-box of precious metals and beautiful animals, an open book for the colonists to write on as they pleased. A place where you could still live a “rugged” life, free of modern complications, free of bureaucracy and urbanity. Where you could disappear into the bush and just observe nature as you pleased. I know that's not true. But I can't help my attraction to that vision (however inaccurate) of the continent. We all need a frontier to dream about.

Go siame,

Jenn

* The area that the Huiku Trust controls is one such wilderness area – unfortunately, the Western Kalahari is not the Okavango, and nobody wants to set up a $2000/night camp here.

** Notes on The Plant Formerly Known As Epiphyte (see entry “Pula”): it's not an epiphyte, which is technically a plant that survives above the ground in a non-parasitic way, e.g. by perching on a branch and living from rainwater and the nutrients in decaying bark, fallen vegetation, etc. This plant is some variety of mistletoe (so the British botanists inform me), and it taps right into its host tree and sucks out what it needs – that's why the trees with mistletoes take so long to green up, because the parasite plant takes up the water before the host plant can use it. Only after the mistletoe has quenched its thirst, so to speak, does the host plant start to leaf out. Parasites! Aaah! I could honestly write every entry about a new type of bug, if I so desired.

***Related note: Apparently, if you go out into the Okavango Delta and do nothing but collect beetles for a week, you're pretty much guaranteed to discover a new species. IS THAT NOT TOTALLY CRAZY?! Let's all go become renegade entomologists! We could all have a beetle named after ourselves!