Main aims and objectives of the project:

• Establish the Arts Faculty E-Squad as a permanent fixture within the faculty, funded by participating departments (and other funds where appropriate).
• Extend the E-Squad with at least one student from each department.
• Research and report on the issues involved in students (digital natives) transferring skills and understanding to staff. A report will be submitted to the ALT-J journal, and a paper proposed for the Shock of the Old 7 conference at Oxford University (in 2008 the conference will focus on the concept of ‘digital natives’).
• Develop a transferable model for such student-staff support teams, so that they may easily be established by other faculties, departments and services. This will be presented at showcasing events throughout the university.
• Develop a training programme, delivered online and in class, to enable future students to quickly obtain the required skills (technical, communicational, pedagogical etc).
• Develop a means for recording and reporting upon the personal development and work experience of each E-Squad member.

Description of the project

The Arts Faculty has established a team of nine students, able to support staff across the faculty in basic to intermediate level e-learning technologies: the Arts E-Squad. Four of these students are funded through WUAP work/study, and five through Unitemps (paid by individual departments). We hope to extend the technical capabilities of these students throughout the year, with training and mentoring provided by the Arts Faculty E-learning Advisor (a PGCE qualified IT teacher). As such, they provide a human resource capable of responding to tasks specified by staff through an online request form. Feedback from current E-Squad activities has highlighted the usefulness of this model, but also that it is often advantageous for the staff member to be supported by a student from their own department. Furthermore, many departments already have their own WUAP and Unitemp students who would benefit from the support and training offered by the E-Squad. However, such an expansion of the current E-Squad will require some time spent upon developing systems and support to ensure scalability is possible, hence the need for extra funding to allow this development to occur while the E-Squad is in operation (with an administrator from one of the departments temporarily running the day-to-day activities).

The initiative also has a more ambitious intention: to see a transfer of skills and understanding from E-Squad students to the staff that they support. This is in part a response to the very considerable challenge of encouraging and enabling the uptake of new technologies across the whole faculty, with every member of staff, at every point in the IT capability scale, advancing.

In this way, we hope to enable digitally immigrant staff to consider using IT in ways that are closer to the patterns of use already prevalent amongst the digitally native students that they teach. For example, when creating an online learning activity, the E-Squad provides the capability to test and evaluate that activity from a student perspective. This second strand of the project would seem more difficult than simply providing a team to complete tasks as they arise. We are proposing to undertake a research project alongside the running of the E-Squad, in order to understand and adapt to the issues implicated in this student to staff support model. This research project will contribute to the development of the E-Squad, the description of a transferable model for other faculties, as well as our wider understanding of task of bringing staff into the digital-online world. Again this will require administrative assistance to run the E-Squad alongside the completion of the research strand.

In his book The Medieval Traveller, the historian Norbert Ohler estimated that a person travelling by foot, as most did at the time, could expect to cover between 15 and 25 miles a day. A surprising multitude and variety of people were on the road in this manner; whenever war, pestilence and the climate of the time allowed. There were well established routes, often leading to popular places of pilgrimage. For example the Pilgrim’s Way through Kent to Canterbury, along which I once managed to hobble a few muddy miles. There were also more adventurous types out on the road, cutting across these paths, or even escaping altogether, beyond Europe and Christendom. How far we have come since then? A few years ago in Silicon Valley I rashly decided to walk between a train station and a nearby business centre. Walk! For a start no one could give me directions that would be viable for a pedestrian. As I tramped off in the direction that I had assumed to be right, the inevitable road crossings were met with everything from disbelief to aggression. I wonder how many thousands of cars passed me in that hour? One could easily believe that the total number of miles travelled by pilgrims during the entire middle ages would easily be surpassed by the total number of miles travelled by motorised vehicles along the roads of a major city in a single early 21st Century day.

The act of walking is not, in the contemporary mind, in itself heretical. It is the purpose of the walk that matters. Walking for therapeutic or spiritual reasons is considered noble. Walking simply for leisure, given that leisure time now is the sacred, is similarly exulted. But walking out of necessity? Walking as a mode of transport or labour? Walking as a way of life? Walking through urban and post-industrial landscapes, far off the leisure guide’s map – tramping? How offensive does that word sound to us? ‘Tramp’: in reality one of the many terms for the itinerant travellers who walk out of necessity. ‘Gypsy’ is another such word. This prejudice no doubt extends to other lesser forms of transport. In Ireland there is a small but entirely respectable travel industry based upon tourists travelling by horse drawn ‘gypsy’ caravan. And yet who are the most despised, the most abused of Europe’s minorities? – those for whom that is a way of life. The title of the book under consideration, The Gypsy in Me, might at first seem a little odd. It could be read as the story of a diasporic jew’s return. There is indeed an element of that. But the book isn’t The Jew in Me. Ted has a keen and sometimes comic interest in pigs and (organic) pork products; assuring there’s no devotion to orthodoxy or racial purity here. It is an encounter with gypsies, in Romania towards the end of the book, that retroactively adds sense to the fragmented events and sensations of the journey: it is a gypsy journey; the un-constrained, joyous, irreverent, landless, journey of a gypsy; a very different kind of walk, a very Other kind of walk. A journey as old as Europe, and as old as the European paranoia that has repeatedly driven the continent to extremes of persecution and violence.

The Gypsy in Me is travel writing with a radical undercurrent. It contains many propositions that challenge our dangerously cosy Euro dream. It is the story of a man walking, tramping even, across a large part of the continent; not only the picturesque and fertile lands of the Euro dream, but also post-Communist urban and agro-industrial wastes, which seem more determining of the journey’s character. Ted Simon is perhaps more a migrant who writes than a conventional travel writer (although he is brilliantly skilled as the latter). And so travelling is for Ted serious work; sometimes fun, sometimes grim, but always engaged with fully. But there lies the tension in his writing, in his travelling. Successful travel writing is necessarily eventful. That’s its work, that’s what he has to offer to us the readers and to them the subjects of the story amongst whom he travels. He presence makes things happen. But at the same time he must travel lightly, with low social impact, never seeming to be a threat. Finding ‘work’ to do, but not ever threatening the local order. Eventful and ordinary. Magical but familiar. Is such a gypsy journey possible in Europe today?

The journey begins with Ted and two companions. It quickly transforms into a solo effort – as Ted the migrant/writer comes to the fore. It’s never an easy journey, but is throughout reported with good humour. Fun is even poked at some dangerously sore feet (definitely not a leisure walker). It certainly is not a comfortable journey. Which is good. The reality is that Europe is an uncomfortable place for anyone who must walk out of necessity. Europe does not like ‘tramps’, and perhaps never has. The fabric from which it is woven is incompatible with the tramp. It has been that way for a very long time. Think back to those medieval travellers. As Ohler establishes, travelling was even then already part of a highly regulated business. Travelling, by foot, horse or boat, was very much necessary. But already that necessity was qualified by noble motives: for the spirit and for the church. A whole network of hospitality extended to ease the pilgrim on their way. Did this network extend to travellers with other motivations? Surely its purpose was abused by merchants and opportunists (Chaucer gives good account of them). But those who travel out of necessity have always been seen as suspicious. My informed guess is that there is a binary valuation at work in European history, culture, geography, deeply embedded in the European mind: the tramp and the pilgrim, or more recently, the migrant and the tourist. Furthermore, it is a continuum. The identity of the pilgrim slides into that of the tourist, then into that of the merchant, and then, inspiring the kind of fear that drives pogroms, into the ‘racial infiltrator’. This ambiguity, its paradoxes and confusions, are at the base of our confused European sense of self, and I believe, are there in Ted’s book as the problem worked over by the journey. Like most if not all of us Europeans, he is a potentially uncomfortable mixture: Jewish, English, German, Romanian…pilgrim, gypsy, immigrant, migrant, tourist, travel writer.

But then much of Europe is also populated by people who never travel. People who’s people have never travelled – or so they assume. On his journey, Ted finds many of these. In Kaliningrad, it is as if the rotting Russian occupying force, and its commander (Ted befriends his family), had always been there. Almost all traces of the former German town of Konigsberg have been erased and replaced by a new Slavic [dis]order. European history is of course a bloody mess of invasion and occupation. Perhaps it enriches the soil. Nonetheless, the foundation of communities and lineages by fresh migrants must be elided. Conventional wisdom declares this to be the only precaution against a relentless cycle of revenge. Communism regulates and limits travel through stifling state controls. Capitalism regulates travel through an assemblage of values, desires, narratives, and circuits: the travel industry. Even when migration does occur, it is perceived more as a form of eternal holiday (the villa in Spain). In both cases, the required effect is to make the sedentary population feel secure. They may have thousands of people moving through their land, but it’s OK, they are just tourists. The real colonisation is well hidden by the perpetual peace of the happy holidaymaker.

But if a community forgets how to travel, how can it adapt to change? How can an up-rooted farmer move on, ripped from the soil of his cultural and agricultural roots? The elision of travel, of the experience of migration, adds to the pain. Perhaps there is another way? A way of travelling in space and time that avoids conflict and pain?

Ted embraces the fact that travel, of the most primitive and unregulated kind, walking, is a political response to the cycle of revenge, to the ebb and flow of territorialization and deterritorialization. It is the absolute opposite of the blitzkrieg. A person walking can be observed slowly approaching, and thus assimilated physically and mentally by the observer. A car, motorcycle or Panzer, on the other hand, arrives far too quickly. Furthermore, one may see the walker’s face immediately. Individuals on foot tend to seep into consciousness. Could they represent a less threatening means for encountering the political or psychological Other? The book is punctuated by an idea, a very significant notion that seems, even to Ted himself, to be rather eccentric. But given these thoughts on the nature of walking, and the history of walking in Europe, it might not be that mad after all. There’s a dark shadow falling across the whole of the journey, cast from a land to the south: Serbia and Kosova. The atrocities were very much public. As public as the failure of NATO and the UN, with all their vehicles, to stop the killings. Is the idea now obvious? Perhaps the conflict could be seen as a continuum of the tensions between territory and migration, land and travel, repeated throughout European history? In which case the best response might be to subvert the very grounding of that conflict. The proposition was thus: a people’s walk, not a march, an unthreatening gypsy-like joyous drift of thousands of ordinary people, into the war zone.

What is travel writing? Consider a book in which the narrative and characters pivot around a single tree, rooted to the centre of a lonely cliff-top village on an island almost forgotten to the world. The tree is more than a totem or a metaphor: rather it is a geocosmic force around which the entire Earth rotates. Younger villagers feel it’s centrifugal effects, spinning them out to sea to be caught up in strong currents and carried off to other lands. The old have learnt to get close to the centre of the force, where all is stillness, willingly embracing the inertia beneath its shady branches. The most successful in the art of doing very little have enjoyed its peace for so long that their olive-coloured wrinkled skins are indistinguishable from its roots and its branches. It is then the ‘Tree of Idleness’ around which the book pivots.

And what of the book’s author? He’s pretty adept at this kind of life – island life. He has a reputation as an island poet. Corfu was his family home, along with other animals. Cyprus seems to be a familiar habitat. But his great achievement is this: he gets close enough to the pull of the Tree of Idleness so as to know it like a native, he speaks it’s Greek, he adopts its Byzantine mannerisms and customs; and yet he can pull away when necessary, both physically (making small but intense journeys around the island) and intellectually (seeing the tides of history, politics and empire washing around its mangrove roots). And that then qualifies this not only as travel writing, but genuinely great travel writing – which is never measured in terms of miles traveled on the map. Travel writing as an intensive journey through differences, in time.

What mode of transport is used? If this is travel writing, there must be a vehicle. In fact there are many, small and large, all bobbing around the shallows of the Eastern Mediterranean with varying degrees of shipwrecked helplessness. 571 miles from Athens. 470 miles from Istanbul. 151 miles from Beirut. But amongst this loosely assembled convoy of fates and desires, the principle traveller is the island of Cyprus itself. In the three years covered by the narrative, Cyprus travels a remarkable route. It had already circulated, or been passed back and forth between great powers, East and West, many times. In 2800BC Aphrodite was worshipped. In 550BC it almost floated down the Nile like a papyrus barge. 285BC took it off to Macedon. The birth of Christ was a pull towards Palestine, or rather the beginnings of its conversion into the crusader army’s battle cruiser, sitting menacingly off the Levantine coast. With the great schizm it raised the flag (and murals) of Byzantium not Rome, only to be captured by the Ottomans in 1571. But surely none of that compares to the glory of her Majesty’s Royal Navy? It served her with great devotion, love even, from 1878. And then in 1955, half way through the book, the mutiny began.

The author quickly realised that the historical key to unlocking the culture of Cyprus, as it was before the all-perverting influence of nationalism, was not that of the Ancient Greeks, or even that of Ottoman Islam. Rather, it was a kind of Byzantium. There’s a suggestion that the relative peace within which Greek and Turkish inhabitants cohabited belonged to that of a more ancient civilization, with patterns of daily life more compatible with the landscape and the climate. Each colonizing wave had been assimilated to the island, never conquering it beyond the surface. There were of course differences still, national characteristics, described with a delicious style. A Turkish businessman moves like honey off a spoon – imperceptibly, effortlessly, but still nevertheless purposefully. Durrell’s prose is often, very often, brilliant – way beyond any other travel writer that I know. It is a style that emphasises character without resorting to stereotype, with both efficiency and visual extravagance. Being also an accomplished poet he has techniques and literary tools that other writers never even know of. Principle amongst them is the depth of his knowledge of plants, animals and geography, and the way in which they provide texture and life to the text – rocks, flowers, animals, landscapes, people (their characters observed like an array of species) all permeate his writing, giving its form and its dynamic; the importance of natural history to his prose adds irony to his occasional dig at his zoological brother Gerald (who appears in the book to yet again turn a Durrell house into a menagerie). And it is precisely the observational power afforded by those textual skills that led Durrell to grasp, so well, the forces and movements happening around him: an ancient and unique island ecology battered by storms and turbulent currents from elsewhere.

It would have been easy to write a very different, more stereotypical book. As he discovered when working as a school teacher in Nicosia, the young Greeks were already writing that book. And in that act of national story telling was seeded an invasive weed which would eventually strangle the Tree of Idleness: the Cyprus tragedy. That other story was written under the drugged influence of Lord Byron, hero of Greek nationalism. Durrell tells of young students in his class reciting (badly) tales of Byron, with tears in their eyes. Byron the liberator, Byron the unifier. Throughout Durrell’s story, a paradoxical attitude amongst the Greek Cypriots is observed: they love and respect their British masters, and at the same time they want them off the island. Britain, personified by Byron (who helped to raise a navy to depose the Ottomans), signifies freedom, national unity, racial integrity, and most of all modernity. Greek nationalism, craving ‘enosis’ (unity), was jealous of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. No longer wanting to be treated as children of the Empire, ready to stand alone. In return, the colonial masters behaved with the usual incompetence and misunderstanding, imagining the Cypriots to be an eternally childish people, perhaps even noble island savages. Anthony Eden had more global and devious intentions (Cyprus being not far from Suez, Palestine, Syria), and in secret tensions between Turkey and Greece were being deliberately inflamed. But the colonial administration made a more basic error. Cyprus was part of a Europe that had changed, matured even. But the administration simply could not see that truth. It was no longer an island of farmers, but rather a homeland to a highly mobile international workforce, dispersed across Europe and America. The island that they thought they were governing, the island of the Tree of Idleness, was disappearing fast. And as Durrell smartly observes, by simply ignoring the issue for so long, an extremist result only became more likely – after all, there’s plenty of time to sit around under the tree, or in the café, continually exaggerating the nationalist story; the Cypriots being great story tellers.

Bitter Lemons is a most extraordinary book. As the work of a lyrical travel writer, we first see beauty. And then horror, as the revolt starts to grow. By 1956, when Durrell finally abandoned the island, murder and destruction was everywhere. A true tragedy. But one documented incrementally by a master of lyrical difference, of the slow and imperceptible transformation of things. As a record of normality slipping uncontrollably into chaos, and the failure of politics and administration to even perceive its fate, it is a vital story, a text book even, the crisis being in many ways a precursor to Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, Palestine. Sadly it seems that it’s lesson has been largely ignored by the politicians who might just have made a difference to those terrible developments. Being optimistic, one could imagine that an ‘enosis’ is now inevitable. Not union with Greece, but rather the union of the whole of Cyprus with the new Europe, the early undercurrent of whose formation was in reality the force that stirred the crisis of ’55. But undoubtedly the politicians will still rabble-rouse and play off minorities so as to get their snouts closer to the trough.

Fitting heated grips to an Airhead GS is far from simple. At the end of each grip a wire protrudes from the conductive material, extending down the inside of the handlebars to emerge from a small hole at the base. The first challenge then is to get the wires to follow that route, and to pull them out of the awkwardly small hole. The solution is to tie the wires to a semi-rigid length of gardening wire (the sort used to tie plant stems to supporting sticks). This can then be threaded down the bars, and pulled out through the hole using tweezers. Using bright coloured wire maked the job a little easier.

That’s all fine when using the standard BMW hand guards. However, the standard guards offer very little crash protection. For off road riding, where broken fingers are always a possibility, rigid guards are necessary. Acerbis offer the best of these, with a strong plastic strut attached to the bars and bolted into the ends of the bars. That’s fine, but completely incompatible with BMW heated grips. The bolt at the end of the bars leaves no space for the grips’ wiring. And so Touratech offer a modified set of Acerbis guards, each with a bolt that is flattened off to accomodate the wiring.

Click to enlarge

That is not. however, a complete solution. It is still necessary to cut out the rubber and plastic cover at the end of the grips. The throttle side grip gives a further challenge. It must be able to rotate as the throttle is opened and closed. As the grip rotates, so does the wire. Twist the grip too far, without having the flattened bolt in exactly the correct position, and the wires are cut cleanly apart.

This has now happened to me four times. The throttle grip costs £50. An expensive way to warm my hands. When the wire does get broken, only small stubbs are left within the grip. An effective repair therefore seem impossible. Or rather seemed impossible. Fellow GS rider Martin, it transpired, is a genius with a soldering iron. Within just a few minutes he managed to re-attach the wires to the barely visible stubs. The weld seems quite strong, and now that the grips are back on the bike, it all seems to work correctly.

Click to enlarge

But how can I be sure that they will not break again? Getting the flattened off bolt in exactly the correct position is a good start. I have worked out a technique: put the bolt into the grips; tighten the bolt lightly, and twist the grip around so that the bolt is pushed into the perfect position by the moving wire; then tighten the bolt. It seems to be effective.

I might also refrain from winding the throttle on full; such heavy-handedness has no effect on the acceleration of the lumbering old airhead anyway.

Now I must test it in two ways: 1) ride on a cold day; 2) fall off on a dirt road.

You might recognize this from the classic German war film Das Boot. This ancient BMW design would appear to have been copied from the engine room of a 1940’s U-Boat.

Click to enlarge

On the starboard side I fitted a standard BMW cover, in plain unpainted alluminium – or so they claim. Just one of these small components seems to weigh over 1KG. Perhaps then it is true: air-head boxer engines were hewn from solid granite by an army of elves somewhere deep in the Black Forest.

And on the port side I now have the modified Touratech cover. The standard oil filler on the airhead is placed behind the carburettor. With the big 35 litre fuel tank fitted, adding oil required a funnel with a long nose; not really the kind of thing one would want to carry on an expedition. The engine sips oil steadily, and so a better solution is required. With this modification, I can add oil easily, without a funnel. The oil then quickly drains back into the sump through the push-rod tubes.

Click to enlarge

A great idea. I’m sure that every airhead GS owner would want one. Unfortunately, Touratech UK told me that I just bought the last one to be made.

To mankind’s age old comment on the journey of life that “the first hundred years are the hardest,” the traveler on a motorcycle could add that the first thousand miles are equally tough. p.12

And what of those first thousands miles, down the Dover road and across a depressed Europe, June 1932? Tedium and the uncomfortable wearing together of metal, rubber, muscle and bones that motorcycle manufacturers term “the running-in period”. Robert Edison Fulton Jnr. was perhaps the first of many to take the hard way round: eastwards across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the USA. Ted Simon recommended this book to me. Bernd Tesch provides the foreward to this recent edition. They both know what it’s like to sit high over a rumbling air-cooled boxer engine for immense distances. Ted and Bernd ride BMW GSs, like mine. As travelers and writers, we are all descended from Bob Fulton, just as the DNA of his boxer engined Douglas bike is present even today in the latest high powered BMW bikes (some authorities claim that BMW copied the Douglas engine for its early bikes, mounting it transversally rather than longitudinally).

Every long journey by motorcycle has its “running-in period”, whether aboard a new machine or revisiting an old companion. But it doesn’t stop there. Beyond that first 1000, there is a slow oscillation around the point at which all runs smoothly. On a bike their is a much tighter and much more critical feedback loop between the environment, the mind and body of the rider, and the machine; all in fine balance, or working their way out of equilibrium:

As the day wore on the sound became more alarming. When I started that morning, the steady drone of the exhaust had been deep and chesty. But now, after half-a-dozen hours of desert driving, it seemed to fill with static, the machine began to wobble, the tires seemed flat, the whole engine seemed on the verge of falling apart, collapsing.

It wasn’t the machine, it was nerves; strung tight, pulled tighter by the constant thought of “what would happen if something happened?” p.65

Ride a motorcycle if you want to know and master paranoia; get a grip upon the awful power of the human mind to envisage even unlikely disasters, and to be pulled head first towards them. Psychologists now call this “target fixation”. If you look at the kerb you will hit it. That’s lesson 1 on day 1 of any riding course.

Bob Fulton’s journey is about transforming that negative target fixation into something positive: how to fall into the right kind of trouble; how to make something out of almost nothing, even amongst the emptiness and desolation of receding empires and expanding deserts. It is quite an amazing story. In many ways such a journey was easier then. America hadn’t given its people an often undeserved bad name. Imperial outposts provided staging points and frontiers linking every hiding place. Even beyond the beat of the colonial bobbies, their influence reached far: his ride into tribal Afghanistan would make a modern traveller deeply jealous. Then it was treacherous, coming at the tale-end of a serious disruption of the internal balance of terrors. Islamic hospitality was his saviour, along with enlightened rulers and friendly peasants. Now, especially for an American, it would be impossible. One is reminded of Chevy Chase hanging upside down from a wooden post: “hi, we’re Americans” – big mistake, one of many.

And after the Middle East and Central Asia, on to “French” Indo-China as it was then, before the first great US foreign policy disaster extinguished that world of relative innocence. He had assumed the service station owner at Angkor, Cambodia, was trying to rip him off. In fact it was the other way round: he was trying to give money to the brave motorcyclist! Bob Fulton realised, as many others have since, that the world is on the whole friendly and helpful, on a personal level. It’s on a more international global level that nightmares erupt. Japan for example, which in 1933 was deeply in love with all things American. If the Kobe Motorcycle Club had achieved the political power that they so clearly deserved, WWII might have been settled on the race track, aboard Indians and Harleys. And Bob Fulton might have been there cheering his new friends on. At a personal level, amongst the small band of Japanese riders with whom he crossed the islands, there could only ever be great respect.

One Man Caravan: a great adventure. Well written, with a scattering of fascinating pictures and maps. Honest. Full of excitement and exoticism, but with many connections between that world (now disappeared) and the present day.

The indignity of the Moosehead Fantasy MotoGP awards ceremony. In fact I had come fifth in the competition, after leading for most of the year. Despite my having chosen the eventual champions of the 125cc, 250cc and MotoGP classes (Talmacsi, Lorenzo, Stoner), Travis was again, sickeningly victorious.

In the absence of the third and fourth placed Mooseheads, I took to the podium (2 broken chairs and a step ladder), with a live video uplink via Stacker Paine’s rather too elaborate mobile phone. The link broke, but the champagne was effective: three bottles were fed to the apple and cherry trees.

And then the most extraordinary thing happened. The Mooseheads started to sing – although that’s not at all an adequate term. It was more meditational than mere singing. Reminiscent of a Gregorian chant. Stranger things have been heard by the residents of West Oxford. But I bet they’ve never before seen the tower of Botley Cathedral levitate under the force of a Moosehead male voice choir.

And now for the first time anywhere this side if Chisinau, you too can marvel at the harmonious bellow of the Mooses. For here it is, a Moosehead podcast:

Update: there’s a great new place in town – the No.1 Ladies’ Opera House.

1. The National Museum and Gallery

The museum has recently been renovated with many imaginative displays that illustrate the history, culture, geography and wildlife of Botswana. Highly realistic models and reconstructions are used. Traditional lifestyles are depicted with lifelike models of people (this really got Lawrence confused). Best of all are the models of animals and their habitats. An excellent way to learn.

Lawrence and the lions display (click to enlarge)

Looking at a reconstructed village scene

The museum also houses a gallery, used for displaying the best of current craft works from around the country (many for sale). There are ingenious sculptures, fine basket works, clothing, and much more. Another room hosts temporary exhibitions. In August 07 we saw some great paintings of anachronistic scenes from Botswana life, such as rondavels with satellite dishes.

In the gallery

2. Sanitas Garden Centre and restaurant

See the magic work of horticulturalist Dr. Gus Nilsson and his team of gardeners. Visit the best restaurant in Botswana. Chase the cheeky vervet monkey around the big wooden adventure playground as part of a big group of semi-wild african children. What more could you ask for? Sanitas is Gaborone’s best outdoors attraction. Visitors to Gaborone will probably not want to buy plants, but the displays are interesting in themselves. Use the garden centre as an opportunity to become familiar with the indigeneous flora and its preferred conditions. You may want to buy some of the garden ornaments on sale, such as metal animal and bird sculptures.

A useful coding system is used in the garden

Lawrence in the play area

Monkey on the climbing frame

Kalahari sands

3. Mokolodi Nature Reserve

Mokolodi is about ten minutes drive from Gaborone, along the Lobatse Road. It is a small nature reserve, with largely educational intentions. Non-members can tour the park on an official game drive. Other activities include meeting the orphan cheetahs, rhino tracking, bush picnics, and horse riding. Members can drive around on their own.

My family and other rhinoceroses

Poking a pile of rhino dung with a stick

Drought: normally this would be a lake not a pond

Drought: even the warthogs are being artificially fed

Mokolodi kudu

In the play area at Mokolodi

4. Gaborone Game Reserve

600 hectares of land right inside the city. Gaborone Game Reserve offers a chance to see some of the animals typical of the kalahari. Perhaps more significant is the bird life attracted to the large and smelly sewerage ponds that are part of the reserve. Spectacular sightings are certain. Even flamingoes and pelicans are possible.

Lawrence watching a zebra

Lawrence hiding from rapidly approaching zebra

Zebra in close-up

The zebras in the park have an awkward habit: they will put their heads through an open car window in search of food. I once had one chewing the steering wheel. This time I got the window closed in time. Lawrence was amused to watch it licking the window.

Ostrich in the sand

Ostrich burying its head to avoid the smell

5. Garden of the Grand Palms Hotel

Eat nice food. Drink underneath shady trees. Watch water birds in the small lake. Swim in the hotel pool. There’s even a children’s play area.

Children get a free lolly, dad steals lolly

Which country?

Quick answer: South Africa.

Each of the five main southern African countries has its own slightly different wildlife and tourism infrastructure, offering something a little different to the others. The best developed of these, and of most interest for a first-time safari (or a family trip) is South Africa. Years of political isolation encouraged the further development of an already excellent internal tourism market. For over a hundred years the government and the people have taken pride in and enjoyed a large network of state run national parks. These parks offer an ideal combination: some of the world’s best wildlife and environments, along with brilliantly designed, professionally run and affordable accomodation. There are three major parks boards: SANParks (countrywide), Kwa-Zulu Natal Parks Board, and Cape Nature. Each of these provides efficient booking services (we recommend booking through email, and then confirming and paying a deposit on the phone).

Alongside these many great parks, South Africa also has many private game reserves. Foreign tourists are usually booked into these at great expense. Although they may offer luxury, the much cheaper national parks give a far superior wildlife experience – if you know what to look for.

Of the South African parks, the massive Kruger Park is the best first-time destination, followed by Hluluwe-Umfolozi in KZN. The Kgalagadi (Kalahari) Transfrontier Park stradling the Botswana border offers a very different but also very special desert wildlife experience. South Africa has the additional advantage of the Indian Ocean, making it possible to combine a safari (for example in KZN) with a beach holiday (the KZN coast). Guest houses, booked when you arrive, are the best option for coastal accomodation.

I will write about the other southern African countries soon.

Park fees

There is a daily rate for every visitor to the national parks. This is usually under £10. Compared to the cost of visiting a zoo in the UK, that’s a bargain. The cost can be reduced further by buying an annual membership. SANParks (for the Kruger) offers the WildCard (I think that is around £100 for a family for a year).

What accomodation?

Quick answer: self catering cottages in South African national parks (£20 to £125 per cottage per night).

The national parks in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia provide ‘rest camps’ of various sizes, with a range of reasonably priced accomodation. The rest camps have shops, restaurants, museums, swimming pools etc. Accomodation options are:

• Camping with own tent (usually excellent, with good ablutions) – very, very cheap.
• Pre-assembled walk-in tents.
• Rondavels (small round cottages) with modern bathroom and kitchen – from £20 per cottage per night.
• Guest houses (larger cottages with a lounge, kitchen and several bedrooms).
• Rentmeister donor cottages (big luxury cottages with own grounds, sleeping 8-9 people) – around £125 per cottage per night.

Barbecues (braiis) are provided everywher. Linen and kitchen utensils are included. The bigger cottages may also have a cleaner (who can do laundry and car washing for extra). In the Kruger Park, further options are available. Especially good are the much smaller ‘bush camps’, often with only 10-15 well equipped medium sized cottages. The ‘bush camps’ simply offer a very peaceful and natural experience without shops and restaurants. When staying in a bush camp, you must take in all of the food that you require. Many of the parks now also offer a range of wildreness trails, along which participants are guided over several days walking or cycling, and camping out over-night.

Outside of the national parks, South Africa must also be commended for its thousands of excellent guest houses – they are everywhere, and almost always offer a high standard at a low cost.

Transport

The air fare from the UK is the single biggest expense. Avoid British Airways, for the usual reasons, but also because by flying on SAA the largest share of your tourism £££s goes into the SA economy. Plus, the food is better. Expect to pay around £700 to fly direct, less to go on a long indirect flight.

Once in southern Africa, there is a good network of internal flights. The SAA subsidiaries SA Express and SA Airlink fly from Jo’burg to towns near to national parks. A recent one-way flight for two adults and a child to Phalaborwa on the edge of the Kruger cost us only £60. A recent return flight from Jo’burg to Cape Town on the BA subsidiary Comair cost me £100 (but required booking by phone).

On the ground a car will be essential. In SA you can make-do with an ordinary hatchback or saloon (get air-con), for around £150 a week from any of the major hire companies. These will usually have a limited mileage agreement, but that is fine if you are just pottering around a national park. Cars can be collected from the airports near to the parks. For game viewing, a taller vehicle is better. We recently hired a Honda CRV 4×4 (a soft-roader) over 10 days for £250 from National Alamo – this was perfect. Book online.

There are also several companies that specialise in hiring out fully equipped safari 4×4s and camper vans. I’m really not convinced that such a huge expense is necessary. A serious 4×4 is only needed for very remote locations like the Richtersveld (not recommended unless you are really experienced). And camper vans are rendered obsolete by the great range of camping and cheap accomodation available.

Activities

Once inside a South African national park, there is a great range of activities on offer, either DIY or organised by the park staff. Here are some options:

• Inside the camp – there’s always lots of wildlife to see, including birds and often animals – plus most camps have view points allowing you to watch animals in rivers and water holes.
• Swimming – the bigger camps have swimming pools.
• Restaurants and cafes, often with views.
• Museums and displays – the elephant museum at Letaba is the best.
• Self-drive – just potter about in your own vehicle on the park roads looking for wildlife.
• Picnic sites – in the Kruger there are several picnic spots in which you can get out, wander around, and make your own food. They usually have gas-skottles for hire cheaply.
• Official game drives – with a trained guide – at the larger Kruger Camps, these take place in un-attractively large trucks (around £7 per person), the bush camps use smaller Hilux based vehicles.
• Morning drives.
• Sunset drives.
• Night drives – using powerful searchlights to see night time animals and activities – good chance of leopard in the Kruger Park – the bush camps use smaller vehicles.
• Guided walks – in small groups with a trained guide, expect to get close to dangerous wild animals (around £10 per person).
• Cycling – increasingly popular guided tours.
• Canoing and boat trips – in some parks.
• Specialist drives, looking at trees, birds, stars.
• Sitting by the cottage resting.

What is there to eat?

South Africa has great food. Rest camps have cafes and in the evenings good restaurants, usually with game meat and classic african dishes (bobotie, poitje stew), and often as unlimited buffets. Prices are reasonable, expect three course for under £10.

But eating in restaurants is missing the point. SA is the land of the braai (barbecue). Every cottage has a kitchen and a braai stand. Buy meat in the camp shop (often game meat, or the best imaginable beef). Cook it on the braai whilst drinking good cheap wine or Castle beer. Relax and eat outside, watching the sunset. That’s it.

When to go?

For the Kruger Park, on the north eastern lowveld (low country), the dry season is during our summer. It’s cooler, but still mild. Most importantly, the bush is less thick, so it is easier to see the animals. They may also be more concentrated around rivers and water holes. August is particularly good. Further into the centre of the country, on the highveld, the dry season is accompanied by cold (sometimes freezing). Cape Town is often windy and wet, but warmer for swimming at Christmas. The west coast reverses the rain patterns, with rain during our summer bringing our spectacular wild flower fields.

Surely there are problems?

Yes, but not really many. I’ve had worse illnesses on holiday in the UK, and never experience crime in SA (and i’ve been to Cape Town and Jo’burg). Here’s a list of the more likely problems:

• Dehydration – this is a real danger, and the one that has come closest to hurting me. Drink bottled water constantly. Watch out for salty tap water (I once collapsed with heat exhaustion after drinking salty water at the Makgadigadi Pans).
• Road accidents – South African driving standards are appalling. This has proved to be a major threat to tourists, however, there is a low speed limit inside the parks, which is actively policed.
• Bee and wasp stings – be prepared, carry Waspeze.
• Malaria – in the wet season (Christmas) use Lariam or another powerful anti-malarial, otherwise the Kruger and much of western and central SA is fine.
• Hepatitis – my mother had a bout of this after visiting Botswana, possibly caused by contaminated salad. Be choosy. Only eat uncooked food in places that you really trust.

Are the animals dangerous?

No, not at all. If you follow the rules and respect the animals you will have no problems. Unlike Botswana, SA camps have sturdy fences. If you get out of your car to photograph an elephant bull, expect to get trampled.

On our last night in the Kruger Park, we all had a great meal at the Letaba restaurant, again surprised at the excellent standards of chefs and waiters in even the most remote of places in South Africa. The next day we left our hire car at National Alamo in Phalaborwa, and drove across the mountains to Pretoria/Tshwane in “Grower’s” Landcruiser. On the way, lunch was had at the historical Dullstroom Inn high up in the hills.

“Dullstroom” – what a great name for a dorp in the middle of knowhere. I suspect that it is actually a little misleading. I bet there’s excitement if not intrigue to be found along its dusty dry streets. Well at least the fishermen are happy, the game fish growing large in the fresh and lively waters of the area. Several monster specimens are displayed around the bar, preserved in cases. A smaller but much more edible individual was served up on my plate. Possibly the best wild trout that i have eaten.

A comfortable night’s rest was had in an apartment at the Courtyard Hotel in the Arcadia district of Pretoria/Tshwane, followed by a short drive through the Magalisberg Mountains, across the Marico, and home to Gaborone, Botswana.

And the goat is served (ckick to enlarge)

And what of Botswana? Somehow it has acquired a reputation for dull food. Our friends Peter and Johanna are working hard to disprove that claim. The kalahari being goat country, they prepared and cooked a fat juicy leg, marinated in garlic. Fantastic! When slaughtering their own goat, they discovered an extraordinary world of beaurocracy, so now they prefer to buy their meat at JT Butcheries. No matter, it was perfect. Goat is a fine meat, with more depth to its flavour than all but the finest lamb. And yet even in Botswana it is known through the euphemism of “mutton”. At the Taj Indian restaurant, for example, many great goat curries (not curried goat) are served, amongst their other nice dishes.

Seswaa with morogo and pap

More evidence of great cooking in Botswana may be found at the Sanitas Garden Centre near to Gaborone Dam. Seswaa, the classic dish of the Batswana, is often on the menu. It is a tasty dish, but hard work to make. Essentially a cow, pounded and smashed to smitherenes, it is slowly cooked to a dry and stringy result, with plenty of fragments of bone and attendant marrow. Alongside the pulverised bovine, one traditionally recieves a good helping of mealie pap (polenta), gravy, and a concoction of green vegetables called ‘morogo’. Spinach seems to be part of the mix, however I’m also told that various kalahari grown wild herbs are essential exotic requirements.

Bobotie and rice

Another southern African classic from Sanitas, bobotie and rice. Minced beef, with a combination of fruit, curry and pepper typical of Karoo cooking, and topped with an egg mix. Again excellent.

A further recommendation: the patio of the Grand Palms Hotel, next to its lake, swimming pool, and play area, serves good home made burgers and salads.

Botswana then is a place for good food. Yes, there are many second or third rate restaurants springing up amongst the brash new shopping malls. And yes, Motswana are adicted to badly fried chicken. But if you know where to look, there are some world class gems.

1. The boy and his bushbuck, at Letaba
2. Monkeys, not such distant relations
3. Swinging through the trees, near Shingwedzi
4. Lions, a critical assessment
5. Drifting on the thermals, from Shingwedzi to Olifants
6. Elephants are big and grumpy, but fun to watch

Elephants are big and grumpy, but fun to watch

Mafunyane, Shawu, Kambaku, Ndlulamithi, Dzombo, Shingwedzi, Joao, Mandleve, Nhlangulene, Phelwana. We entered the great Elephant Hall in darkness. As I held the door open, Lawrence at my feet and eager to enter, bright sunlight projected shadows of the beasts onto the whitewashed walls within. Ordinarily they were simply massive. Now they had become utterly monstrous. I know the true life horror stories well, they make good tales to tell on long dark nights in the bush. Another of Kruger’s camps has a photo gallery to prove that they are not mere urban myths: cars crushed flat by 7000 kilos of angry Loxodonta Africana; surely no one escaped alive? Sometimes it happens, and no one blames the elephant: the tourist just can’t get the right angle for his camera, so he opens the door and steps out. But that gesture is, to an elephant bull in musth, an irresistable challenge. Hardly a fair contest. At Delta Camp in the Okavango we once felt happy to have been given a freshly constructed reed hut to sleep in. On the first night an elephant brushed past. In the morning they showed us photos of the previous construction, flattened by a tusker in search of fresh water.

When an elephant means business, it nearly always comes immediately and without warning except for a momentary rocking motion of its body; sometimes it comes without a sound. The tail stiffens, the tusks are held high and the trunk is drawn in against the chest. The ears are usually, but not always, spread out to their full extent giving the head a most awesome frontage of 12 feet or more. Bere, R. 1966, Wild Animals in an African National Park

Mafunyane, Shawu, Kambaku, Ndlulamithi, Dzombo, Shingwedzi, Joao, Mandleve, Nhlangulene, Phelwana. Tusks held high against dark shapes like vast threatening ears. In the darkness each of these great tuskers stood threateningly above us, as if still alive and gathered together for a conference of elephant bull ferocity. Ghosts of Kruger’s greatest, a power-cut having summoned them back from the dead. The receptionist in the Letaba Elephant Hall seemed entirely unconcerned. The lights would be back soon, she optimistically claimed. Lawrence does not yet like the dark, so we retreated, returning later to see the awesome collection of elephants, some of the biggest ever recorded. The museum made a lasting impression on Lawrence, we visited five times. He was particularly keen on a jar containing a pickled snake – very much like the Museum of Natural History in Oxford that he loves so much.

Giant elephants are, in the Kruger, not simply a matter of history. We have seen many, and have sat safely watching them for hours. The Kruger is one of the best places to see them. In northern Botswana, along the Chobe river front, it’s not unusual to find several hundred elephants together. From a boat that is spectacular, but when we got trapped amongst them in a bakkie, a rather more tense situation emerged. Add to that the overzealous safari operators, with Landrovers full of $1000 a night guests, then trouble is inevitable. In the Kruger the small family herds seem more relaxed, less harrassed. Whereas the Chobe/Linyanti/Zambezi area has around 100,000 elephants, the Kruger Park has 13,000. And so we can get close and intimate with elephants acting naturally…

(click on a photo to enlarge it)

Here are some photos of a small family herd. They ran fast across the road behind us as we were heading towards Olifants Camp, having climbed up a steep incline from a river bed. A vehicle in their pathway was shooed away like a fly. They then settled into play and grazing, allowing us to get some nice photos.

Does her bum look big in that?

Occasionally elephants are unpredictable. We had been trumpeted on a couple of occasions. Emma claims that I always get too close to the elephants. Lawrence learnt from her to say:

Daddy got too close to the elephant.

But in this case, it was Emma at the wheel of the car, although she could not have predicted that a male in musth would be following the small family herd that had just crossed the road. The big male gave us a trumpet, a bit of ear flapping, and a small mock charge.

Emma’s obvious alarm was actually caused by her inability to get the car into reverse. She had never put an automatic gearbox into reverse before. Not a good time to learn.

We also had a rare opportunity to see a herd of elephants in the rain, making for a very different photograph…

1. The boy and his bushbuck, at Letaba
2. Monkeys, not such distant relations
3. Swinging through the trees, near Shingwedzi
4. Lions, a critical assessment
5. Drifting on the thermals, from Shingwedzi to Olifants
6. Elephants are big and grumpy, but fun to watch

Drifting on the thermals, from Shingwedzi to Olifants

From Shingwedzi in the centre of the park a long hot strip of grey tar runs southwards. It was our route for over an hour, passing through varying degrees of mopane dominated landscapes, interrupted by the occasional dry river bed and cluster of larger riverine canopy.

Mopane gives the north of the park an unfair reputation. In places, that grow-anywhere arid-zone tree is tall and dense, standing as thick mopane woodland on each side of the road. When the poor soils are even thinner and sandier, on the sandveld, mopane is a mere shrub, still densely arranged but short enough for an antelope’s head to protrude through the canopy. Flying across the Kalahari, one sees this landscape in famously endless iteration. The northern Kruger is the southernmost extent of that harsh world. However sometimes, if the conditions are suitable, grassland is interspersed with mopane and other trees, forming a sparse density of vegetation. Such terrain, known as parkland, is more suited to cheetah visioned and lion obsessed tourists. And that is a problem for the Kruger Park Management, who would very much like to attract people away from their over concentration in the big southern camps (Satara, Skukuza etc).

As my pervious journal entries demonstrate, the park to the north is a wonderland rich in a diversity of birds, animals, trees and flowers. There was for us no end to this on our journey south. The trick is to zoom in and around the scenery. Become panoramic, and mopane is breathtaking – a near permanent display of autumn golds and reds. Then zoom back in to find birds and animals scattered around its vastness. At one water hole, near to the Mopane Camp, there is almost always a fascinating crowd gathered: various species of vulture.

Whiteheaded vulture (click to enlarge).

We broke the journey at Letaba, the temperature had climbed to 36 celsius. And then onwards. More mopane. On such long hot days, Olifants Camp is a relief – rising up into the cool breezes that circulate along the high rocky ridge upon which it is placed.

The Olifants River viewed from our patio.

The vast Lebombo Guest House was our eyrie (£125 a night, sleeps 8). From here we could watch eagles, vultures and storks drifting past as they caught the early morning thermals.

A saddlebilled stork passes by.

While Emma sits and reads.

The Lebombo Guest House is in fact a sprawling complex of three buildings, one of which houses two bedrooms, a kitchen and large lounge, with the other two hosting two further bedrooms each.

The two large patio areas include a braii, upon which I cooked nyala steaks.

The comic rumbling of hippos sounded from far down the mountain side.

Along with water falls as the river cut through the varying strata of rock.

Meanwhile, Lawrence enjoyed his newly discovered sport, lizard chasing.

And went for an elephant ride…

On a morning game drive, Emma photographed a family of hyenas lying next to the road near their culvert den, in exactly the same position that they had been in last time we came to Olifants ten years ago. They do not look like they have moved, or have any intention to do so.

On our second evening, Emma and I had dinner in the restaurant: a superb buffet, with a great game stew not to be missed.

Impala lillies at Olifants.

1. The boy and his bushbuck, at Letaba
2. Monkeys, not such distant relations
3. Swinging through the trees, near Shingwedzi
4. Lions, a critical assessment
5. Drifting on the thermals, from Shingwedzi to Olifants
6. Elephants are big and grumpy, but fun to watch

While staring at an unusual object it cannot identify, an impala will move its head up and down and sideways, apparently to see it more “in the round”. Estes, The Behaviour Guide to African Mammals, 1991, p.166

Estes provided, as ever, a reliable description of the African tableau before our eyes. For some time, animals moved backwards and forwards along an area of open space above a small vlei, half an hour’s drive to the north of Oliphants Camp in the Kruger National Park. A string of zebras, wandered through small groupings of impalas, an animal accurately described by Estes as “the perfect antelope”. An occasional wildebeest mingled and munched upon the sparse but adequate vegetation. Nothing unusual. Just another day on the way to the waterhole.

Assorted zebras and impalas – click to enlarge

Observing closely the black scent glands on the hind legs of a large buck impala, I was reminded of a closer encounter from a few years earlier. It was then, on the day of our wedding in Hwange National Park, that we had an opportunity to observe this typical mopane-veld resident at very close range indeed. The hosts at the venue for the happy day, Jijima Camp, had “adopted” an impala – or perhaps more accurately, had been adopted by one. The animal slept next to our tent, as it would every night, ruminating in relative safety. Although leopards and lions are occasional visitors to such un-fenced camps, the impala was probably correct in assuming that close association with humans would offer a greater degree of security from survival of the fittest. And this then is how my copy of Estes obtained its unusual signature. Buck, as the impala was known, stood just a couple of metres from the front of our tent. A male impala, complete with horns, is at close range quite an impressive sight. However, all of its dignity is immediately lost when it starts to bob and weave its head in the quizical manner described above. Buck was obviously confused by some aspect of the scene that I presented. My inevitable laughter only made him more agitated. In an effort to diffuse the situation, I sought to restore the natural order by reading aloud to him the prescription of ideal impala behaviour given by Estes in the very book that I was at that point casually flicking through. I then gave Buck the opportunity to confirm or deny the stereotype of his kind presented by the finest of zoological minds. And what was Buck’s response? In a flash he lept forwards, and with his powerful jaws ripped the book out of my hands, tossing it high into the air. I dived out of the way to avoid being impaled by his horns. And so pages 137 to 156 of my copy of the Behaviour Guide to African Mammals are now indelibly imprinted with the teeth marks of an impala, that most perfect of antelopes.

The memory of Buck amused me for long enough to be surprised upon the return of my attention to the current scene. Some unidentifiable tension had stirred during my reverie. The behaviour was again that of a quizzical impala buck: upright stance, twitching ears and tail, moments of concentration interspersed with that comical bobbing and weaving. He was, as Estes says, trying to see something more “in the round”. And we knew exactly the cause of this sudden alertness. Just after setting off from Oliphants, the driver of the early morning game drive had tipped us off. Lions had been spotted, he said, giving a quick and simple description of their location. We thought that Lawrence might like to see them, not having done so before. Otherwise, we may not have bothered. And here they were, as described, two females lying beneath a small tree. For some time potential prey had passed by seemingly unaware of the deadly duo within easy ambush range. Until finally contact was made between killer lion and lion food.

The stand-off – click to enlarge

How terribly dramatic. Imagine the Jonathan Scott commentary, suggestively hushed. Imagine the camera crew poised to get the kill in the can. Imagine the millions of viewers earnestly believing that this is real Africa.

Oh dear, and now I have to spoil the illusion. For reality is rarely like the movies, especially when a lion is in a leading role. To continue the Hollywood analogy, the truth is that they are more like Brando than Brosnan. Big fat and lazy. With huge potential and a very occasional blockbuster, but more suited to lying flat out next to the pool for days on end sipping Martinis. This impala knew the score, and was entirely unworried. Even his brief expression of interest waned quickly. Hundreds of other prey animals in the area didn’t even bother to look, although they must have known that the lions were there. Lawrence agreed. The lions were of no interest. “Where’s the monkeys?”. After the event, we have to remind him that he has seen lions, because the reality is nothing in comparison with the Lion King.

Unimpressive lions – click to enlarge, if you really want to

While ambling slowly back to the camp, Emma and I recalled our many encounters with lions, from our many many safaris. We both sense that we have seen many lions, although the sightings tend to blur into one vague impression. Sightings of cheetah, leopard and even wild cat always stand out, partly due to their rarity, but more as a result of the stunning presence of those lesser cats. There was a particularly notable male lion that I tracked along a road in the Kalahari Gemsbok Park. He had a black mane, and seemed massive, with the top of his head reaching above the window of our Hilux (a really tall 4×4). Emma wound her window up with unnecessary haiste. And then there were the lions that visited our lonely camp at Nqwethla, deep inside Hwange. We had already been driven out of our tent by an elephant. I had spent part of the night pouring parafin onto an open fire so as to scare the pachyderms off with a fireworks show. The flames seemed to at least distract the elephant from the task of trashing our camp. But they had no effect upon the noisy family of lions that walked by as we hid.

So you want to go to Africa? You deperately want to see lions? Our long standing family joke is this: one year in Hwange, a party of very annoying Americans spent their time racing around the bush, repeating the same question with urgency – “have you seen any cats?” (said with annoying American accent). Of course they missed the wild dogs, bee-eaters, and troop of banded mongeese.

Do you still want to see lions being interesting, just like on the TV? There is one last possibility. We tried it a few years ago. It works like this: Go out walking with a really good game ranger. We were lucky to walk with the legendary Frank Watts at Shimuwini Camp in the Kruger. When you spot many lion tracks, just believe him when he says that it’s perfectly safe (assume that he means that they are long gone). Then follow him up a hill, heading towards the most foul smell of death imaginable. At the top of the hill, examine closely the big runny black slick of lion crap. Proceed further, nominating a charmingly innocent member of the party to take the lead. Emma was rather surprised when a big lioness ran across her path. As we approached the half eaten carcass of a buffalo, we could hear the rest of the pride running in all directions. Yes, we had driven a pride of lions of its kill. Cowards. Frank examined the carcass for signs of bovine TB, a serious issue in the Kruger. It looked healthy. With the light fading, we slowly wandered back to the Landcruiser. Being at the back of the line, I was last to get into the safety of the vehicle. While waiting for my turn, I sensed movement behind me. I turned as I climbed into the open back of the vehicle. A fully grown male lion, complete with impressive mane, stood staring assertively at us. I could read his mind: “don’t mess with my dinner – or next time you’re dessert.”

Recently, Frank hit the headlines as the safari guide in the world famous “battle of the kruger” incident, the video of which is on YouTube. Amazingly, a herd of buffaloes fought back against a pride of lions that had taken one of their young. The buffalo survived. The lions almost didn’t. It may even be the case that this is the same cowardly pride that we encountered several years earlier.

Importantly though, I must say that the best drive that we’ve been on with Frank typified the ideal game drive. On a sunset trip there were no lions, but rather a sequence of fascinating insects and birds, including a nightjar and a sun spider.

You can find out more about Frank’s work on the Thompsons Indaba Safari Company web site.

Wildebeest, king of grunge, as played by Johnny Depp

Great photo of zebras by Emma

A taxonomy is a hierarchical structure of categorisations, with a progression to more detailed categories towards the leaves. The taxonomy defines the set of categories that may be applied to resources. Taxonomies are common in academia. Sometimes they are formal and explicit mechanisms. Often they are informal aids to research and academic communications.

Many web publishing systems allow content to be “tagged” with keywords. For example, a Sitebuilder page may be given one or more tags. Similarly a blog entry is classified using tags. Social bookmarking systems like del.icio.us use keyword tagging. Bibliographical databases also commonly use taxonomies of keywords. Most of these systems can be searched using keywords. Many of these search interfaces can be accessed programmatically.

Most keyword tagging and searching systems, such as that used in Sitebuilder, are not taxonomical. There is no taxonomical structure to which an author or researcher can refer when tagging resources or searching for resources.

I have identified a set of real use cases in which a taxonomical approach to keyword searching would be beneficial. These cases also imply that resources are tagged according to the keywords available in the taxonomy.

Here is a description of how the tool could work:

Searching

The search interface contains a tree structure representing the taxonomy of keywords.
The tree structure can be explored, drilling down through its branches.
Individual keywords, or whole branches of keywords can be selected.
There is also a text box allowing the user to type in keywords (with autosuggest giving options as they type).
As keywords are selected, they are listed in a text area showing all currently selected search terms.
Once all of the required keywords have been chosen, a search is done, returning a list of all matching resources.
The search could be ordered in several different ways, for example with resources that have a higher match coming at the top of the list.

Here is an illustration of how the interface might work (it doesn’t yet do the search):

Configuring the taxonomy

The taxonomy could be stored as an xml file on the web (for example in the same location as the search tool).
The xml file could be hand coded, or the search tool could provide an interface for creating a taxonomy file and editing its tags.
The taxonomy file to be used could be specified by the author of the web page on which it appears.
The end user could be allowed to choose a taxonomy file, it could be possible to search for taxonomy files in Sitebuilder.

Configuring the sources

The search tool will need to know about the web application in which resources are stored (for example Sitebuilder).
It will need a method for searching each web application (how to build the search url).
One or more sources could be specified by the author of the page on which the tool is deployed – it could be set to search Sitebuilder, Blogs, etc.
A version of the tool could be made available allowing the end user to choose sources.

Saving and sharing searches

Searches could be saved onto the end users local machine (Shared Object in Flash, filesystem in AIR).
Searches could also be shared with other users.

Using the taxonomy to tag resources

The search tool could be used to assist in tagging resources using a selected taxonomy.
For example, a user selects a series of keywords, and the tool displays the text to paste into the keyword tag field of the Sitebuilder page properties.

Tasks

1. find out how to save an xml file from Flash into Sitebuilder.