Dispatches from the Field & Project Summaries
Hoerrikwaggo Trails – South Africa (South African National Parks)
March 6, 2009
On World Environment Day June 8 1998, then-South African president Nelson Mandela established what is now known as Table Mountain National Park (TMNP) in Cape Town, South Africa. The move was a definitive consolidation of 16,000 wild hectares that had previously been 3 separate conservation areas. A Natural World Heritage site, Table Mountain National Park is the backbone of the tourism economy in Cape Town – not only the most visited of all South African National Parks , but the most visited park on the entire African Continent with 4.8 million visitors in 2007. Incredibly bio-diverse, Table Mountain itself, at just under 60 sq kilometers, has at least 1,470 plant species – slightly fewer than the 1492 species in all of Britain.
Some impressive statistics, aren’t they? Truth be told, the majority of those visitors rarely stray very far into the park’s limits – most shuttle via cable car to take in the panoramic view of the city, take a few snaps and head back down into the city in time for cocktail hour. Tourist checklist: Table Mountain? Done. But the folks at TMNP understand that the vast, incredible gem in their care has so much more to offer: world class flora, fauna and photo opps galore. If they could provide visitors with a camp-to-camp hiking adventure with high quality accommodations and services that allow them to appreciate this unique resource, they’ll happily invest their vacation dollars to experience an exciting, exotic once-in-a-lifetime holiday.
This cutting-edge endeavor was dubbed Hoerikwaggo (the Khoi’san word for Table Mountain meaning, “Mountain in the Sea”) created to offer visitors a rigorous yet luxurious multi-day hiking experience. With government funds from South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Program (similar to the US’s WPA/CCC programs from the 1930s), TMNP was able to hire previously unemployed from impoverished Cape Town communities, provided them with training and jobs that helped restore and revitalize the park.
Each camp on the Hoerikwaggo trail has a visual theme that reflects the camp’s environment, designs dictated by their specific context. The first stop on our trek was an evening reception at Slangkop – a picturesque ocean side camp, complete with a white-washed lighthouse standing sentry at edge of the sea, glowing pink in the sunset. “Touching lightly on the earth” was of paramount importance in the creation of each of the Hoerikwaggo camps. New camp structures have built upon already disturbed or developed sites where teams removed alien invasive vegetation (and often using these invaders as building materials), thereby rehabilitating the location to its natural state. In addition, there are no true “permanent structures” on any site, allowing rapid recovery from human occupation should the site location ceased to be used.
Hospitality was the operative word upon our arrival. Strolling atop wooden boardwalks, edges lapped by nasturtiums, our trail guides gave us a tour of the camp, showing us our simple but incredibly well-located accommodations served by passive solar hot water heating that provide our deliciously hot showers the next morning. Toss away all your memories of freeze dried camping food – Hoerikwaggo comes with catering. Cheryl Wyngaard and her family merrily ruled the kitchen throughout our stay, serving the familiar alongside regional specialties with aplomb. In a phrase? Spice cake with creamy caramel sauce. That’ll do…
The next morning we were off on a 15 k (9.3 mile) hike. Our first stop was a visit to Silvermine Camp – a mountain themed camp that serves hikers, mountain bikers and climbers who can spend days playing on the Silvermine Crags just above the campsite or on the bouldering wall set up behind the kitchen. Onward we trekked across artistically engineered stonework paths that had been assembled by teams comprised primarily of women who had formerly lived in poverty (in 2006, Table Mountain National Park sustained almost 900 direct jobs, of which over 600 were aimed specifically at poverty relief).
We made a slow steady climb on our way to Blackburn Kloof, the trail spilling over into a rocky, windswept descent with spectacular views of Hout Bay Harbour and Sentinel Mountain (providing just a few thrilling moments of vertigo). Our guides Syndey and Thandiwe were attentive and informative, sharing their insights regarding natural history and geology along with great interpretive explanations of the incredible diversity of plantlife from a multitude of protea flowers (an indemic beauty) to medicinal plants alongside a few poisonous or spiky specimens.
At the approach to Orange Kloof, our respite for the evening, more expansive views of Cape Town come into view. Syndey and Thondiwe show us Cape Town landmarks and then point beyond the affluent, primarily white neighborhoods into Cape Flats where their families and neighbors had been moved under the Group Areas Act (also known as the Great Displacement) under apartheid. Their hands move gently along the horizon, just as they did pointing out Sentinel Point on Hout Bay Harbor, sharing stories about their homes: “Sydney’s from Mitchell’s Point, Thondiwe and Nosiviwe are from Khayalitsha, that’s Grassy Park and Lavender Hill, Zoekoe Vlei…”
Our guides are amongst the first black Africans to work as guides in Table Mountain National Park. After completing 18 months of rigorous training, they have become anomalies in their communities and are still met with disbelief by their neighbors, many of whom have never visited the park in their city, who can hardly fathom that our guides have actually spent one night, much less many nights, atop Table Mountain.
Sydney: “Not everyone has this opportunity, this good luck. We all have had to sacrifice a lot – the commitment to very hard work, time away from family, but I am so happy to come to the mountain to work – I love my office”.
Descending a trail adjacent to manicured Constancia Vineyards, we arrive at Orange Kloof – a grassy forest clearing with peaks above, the Disa River running nearby. The camp feels very like an inviting tree house laid out across a meadow – beautifully crafted structures built with extracted alien species, the buildings offer open sightlines and lots of light along with green and sustainable methods for processing fuel.
Our guides mention offhandedly, “You know this used to be a car park…”
Ridiculous but true, this beautiful green space was once a parking lot. When humanity chooses to rectify its intrusions, nature can bounce back beautifully well and Table Mountain National Park is a brilliant combination of mindful reclamation, creation and sustainable design that provides capacity building and jobs that directly benefit economically challenged communities.
Compelling, complex Cape Town can be navigated by urban guidebooks with checklists of cosmopolitan points of interest, but the truly transcendent experience is Table Mountain – “Go Hoerkiwaggo” for the only environmentally and socially responsible world class hiking adventure to ever be enjoyed within any city’s limits.
Streetwires – South Africa
March 6, 2009
In Cape Town, South Africa, we stroll downtown under crystalline skies in a visually stunning tableau where human structures are humbled by Table Mountain National Park soaring above the cityscape. Turning onto a quiet side street, we amble into an unassuming entryway that belies the enormous creativity and productivity within. We’re welcomed to Streetwires by Cathy Ronaasen who guides us through the history and operations of this business’ unique approach to capacity building through wire craft.
Wire art’s South African origins sprung from need remedied by clever resourcefulness. Unable to access commercially made toys, South African children have long created playthings out of scrap – coat hanger wire, tin cans, and bottle caps, creations that evolved into remarkably elaborate playthings that double as whimsical folk art. Adults began to recognize the marketability of these wire toys and began making their own creations and selling them to visitors. Today, wire craft is a thriving African art in which artisans, called “wiremasters”, are able to support their families in the brisk trade of their colorful, fanciful creations.
Founded by artists in 2000, Streetwires identified wire and bead craft as a trainable, marketable skill that could be taught to the unemployed, providing both capacity building and economic benefits to the trainees whose incomes would grow as their skill, speed, and creativity increased. Streetwires recognized that wire art had previously been promoted solely as a localized tourist business. Streetwires’ founders opted to “think big” and scaled the business for volume by bringing on a team of artists and artists-in-training, marketing their creations internationally and producing on a grander scale with consistent standards of quality control. From this larger business model sprung the potential for even more previously destitute people to benefit from sustainable, meaningful long term employment. The organization set about posting job flyers at bus stops in downtown Cape Town: Will train, no experience necessary.
Fast forward to 2008: The retail store (which is truly a gallery of artwork) is a testament to the incredible range of the team’s creativity: the room is wildly colorful jewelry/curio store, home fixture shop and menagerie all rolled up into one. Our first pass through the gallery was a tantalizing tour – I knew we weren’t leaving that building without dropping some serious rand. The booming bass and disc jockey chatter from a popular radio station grows louder as we approach the lively workshop, a bright space humming with activity – tables with beading teams of 4 to 6 people, chatting and laughing while hands swiftly carry on with threading beads onto wire, sculpting, shaping, weaving.
When a beading team accepts a project, they receive an sample of the object they are to produce so that employees understand the exact size, shape and color of the deliverable, along with the calculations of the entire costing of the project so they can see how much money they will make when they complete the task – straight-forward information about the expectations and the income related to each project.
Some thrilling facts: Streetwires has provided the skills, training, support, and raw materials necessary to enable more than 100 formerly unemployed men and women to learn a marketable creative skill – many of whom have “graduated” into their own wire art businesses, making room for new trainees who can leave the ranks of the unemployed to provide for themselves and their families. Streetwires’ business is booming: a growing number of local and international retailers are selling their wares and with the excitement of the impending 2010 World Cup in South Africa, there are lots of projects on the schedule and plenty of optimism about future business.
As for our team, we departed Streetwires with bags of bright stars, sharks, cars, rhinos, soccer balls, picture frames, earrings, elephants and the coolest fully-functioning AM-FM radio (with bottle caps for knobs) to have winged its way back to North America in a suitcase.
Cape Leopard Trust – South Africa
March 6, 2009
Driving north from Cape Town, we enter into agricultural country, rolling through the vineyards this region is famous for, then slowly ascend to Bains Kloof - magnificent table mountain sandstone cliffs cut through by swift, bright streams.
In the 1840s, this pass offered migrating settlers from the Cape a departure from the verdant, fynbos settlements of Wellington and Ceres to the more arid regions of Central South Africa where they found vast tracks of land that, though dry, were still suitable for agriculture and livestock. From Bains Kloof we wound our way into the Cederberg Willderness Area, famous for its unique rock formations and numerous Bushman (San) paintings – a North American visual comparison: the Cederberg feels very like Utah’s Canyon lands sans the hoodoo spires. A former inland sea whose sedentary rock produces marine fossils from 30-40 million years ago, the upper elevations of the Cederberg receive snow in winter, while spring is an eruption of wildflowers before the harsh high temperatures of summer settle on an area dotted with small populations of klipspringers, baboons and ostriches… and even fewer leopards.
Quinton Martins, project manager of Cape Leopard Trust, fell under the spell of this unique region 6 years ago when he’d left a career as a safari guide to pursue his Ph.D. With each visit to the area, he talked to locals who told him that there were leopards in the area, unique to the region, were being taken out by farmers and on their way to extinction. Upon further investigation, he discovered that there had been no documentation of the leopards in this area since 1923.
A mission was born.
Quinton used all his cash, sold his car and camera equipment, finally hitch hiking from Cape Town into the Cederberg to track the elusive Cape leopard.
Quinton’s work has produced remarkable information that turned many prior investigations of the Cape leopard on their ears. Early animal count estimates were erroneous based on researchers’ beliefs regarding the limits of the range of the Cape leopard. When they identified fresh sets of paw prints within mileage disparate locations in a matter of days, it was presumed that the evidence indicated that there were two cats. What early researchers failed to consider was the possibility that Cape leopards might move swiftly across unusually large ranges for individual animals. After a motion-triggered camera count, original estimates of 80 animals in one area were dwarfed to an actual 2 leopards. GPS tracking helped Quinton verify the count, proving that territories, especially those of male animals, are dramatically larger (and the Cape leopard population perilously smaller) than ever believed in the past.
Local farmers have long viewed the Cape leopard population as robust - an army of predators out to extinguish farmers’ livestock and have used “gin traps” (known in North America as not-particularly-humane leg hold traps) that maim and kill whatever creatures fall into their jaws. Quinton and CLT have reached out to farmers in the community with perdator population and behavior education as well as livestock guard dog distribution… all steps to saving a species, but their work and plans are far from complete.
The Cape leopard leads an enigmatic life – they are hard to track and are even more challenging to capture and affix with tracking devices. With Quinton fast on foot, we had a few days of chasing the man who tracks the Cape leopard and we quickly determined that those cats have the right guy looking after them. With a small staff, an exceedingly elusive subject and countless miles of open territory to cover, Quinton is out early and late, standing on tiptoes atop precipices to receive transmitter signals from traps. Upon hearing a signal indicating that a walk-through trap has been triggered, he drives and then hikes into deep canyons to document and release animals (oft times, of the non-spotted ilk), or heading to the exact 2 foot square on a nameless cliff to make a call into the far end of the leopards’ territory to check on trap status. He’s been known to travel hundreds of miles in a day if he’s out of town when a leopard is captured. Quinton embodies tenacity, patience and the much abused word, passion that fuels Cape Leopard Trust. He’s a leader who does his best fundraising in person – when people can hear him speak and feel his fire for his cause.
But the rough and tumble life in the Cederberg isn’t without its own regional amusement. On our way out for tracking one afternoon in the company of Quinton and his fiancée Elizabeth, a teacher who is heading up the Cape Leopard Trust’s outdoor education program, the Cederberg Leopard Camps, the Land Cruiser screeches to a halt. A spitting cobra, dark iridescent hood open, is lurking through roadside weeds. As it turns its back on us, it’s a 50s underworld thug – dark sharkskin overcoat and fedora with shoulders shrugged, menacing even with its departure. Once the viper has slunk into the high grass, we accelerate to proceed to our tracking location. Not 30 seconds later, the car seizes to a stop once again as Quinton announces, “Jeepers, this is about as close as you’re ever gonna get to a puff adder!”
When the leopard safari doesn’t work out, poisonous snakes are a great way to entertain visitors.
Cape Leopard Trust muscles onward thanks to the will, wits and commitment of Quinton Martins who works all day most every day on behalf of creatures that rarely gift him with a glance. On the celebratory occasion that a capture occurs, Cape leopard sightings are an intoxicant that consistently supplies revealing data that pushes CLT onward. Dual credit to the tenure and tenacity of the species in this region go to both the Cape leopards’ own crafty, swift moving nature and the commitment and vigilance of Cape Leopard Trust.