Africa gives Ab the bird(s).

I spent too much of last weekend thinking about trail cameras. I know that they are only tools, but I’ve been treating the blasted things as if they were encrusted with diamonds. Whenever I set a camera this year, I remember how much it cost and how much trouble it was to pack and how in Zimbabwe trail cameras are as scarce as hamburgers. I did not feel that way in the Year 2000, when I considered myself a wild & crazy, free-wheeling impresario of trail-camera deployment.The basic problem is that on the A.U. campus, human extractive activities have increased by an order of magnitude since I was last here. Nowadays every game-trail has also become a people-trail, frequented by desperate locals seeking firewood, medicinal plants, or animal protein. None of these folks would know what a trail camera was, but most would scarf up an expensive-looking apparatus of plastic & glass: maybe they could swap it for a scoop of sadza or a plate of beans. Therefore, rather than deploying my cameras on trails as intended, I’ve been forced to hide them in the middle of nowhere. Worse, I’ve had to monitor them almost daily, thereby leaving human scent that scares varmints already harassed to near extinction. Consequently, as you would expect, my success in getting T.C. pictures has been minimal. And despite all my precautions, Friday night I lost a camera.

This theft irritated me beyond reason. Back in the States I deal with comparable irritations by ingesting a few dozen Whopper Malted-Milk Balls. Here, however, lacking such a certain remedy, I needed to achieve perspective—and Africa sure-enough provided that! The day after my hidden camera was stolen, I was walking trails in a thick section of bush just to the north of the A.U. dairy farm. Shortly before dusk I heard a rattle of dry leaves and the distress call of a bird in pain. Of course I hoped to discover a snake or genet in the act of depredation, but I found instead a fine Swainson’s Francolin caught in a leg-snare. Without even thinking I caught up the bird and cut the monofilament line from around its leg. The francolin did not tarry to thank me, but as it escaped into the bush, I felt very good about myself—for about ten seconds. Then reality hit me: the bird would have been somebody’s dinner, here, in a world where animal protein is as scarce as, well, as scarce as trail cameras.

When we ignorant white boys try to apprehend a different world, we don’t always think as clearly as we should. We are surprised when desperate folks see a university’s wild campus as an exploitable resource rather than as a study-area. We don’t recognize the value of illegal cook-wood for a mother trying to stretch meager rations across children whose stomachs always hurt. We refuse to understand that a meal’s meat costs a Zimbabwean more labor-time than a digital trail-camera costs a Wofford teacher.

I am nowhere near the Ginocchioan level of Zen-Enlightenment , so my achievement of perspective did not entirely alleviate my white boy pissed-off-ness. Still, Africa often provides rewards commensurate with the irritations she inflicts. And, on the Sunday after the trail-camera’s loss, I discovered an eagle-owl’s nest, complete with an enormous pair of big-eyed owlets.