Originally distributed December 2009
Well, the BBC ruined my 15 minutes of fame opportunity. I was supposed to appear in the black mamba documentary. I hadn’t actually seen it myself before it aired on tv in the US, even though a dvd of it was floating around Swaziland. So I didn’t say “and by the way I’m in it,” and I’m glad I didn’t because all you see of me is the back of my head while riding in a vehicle, and my back as we walked to release one of the snakes, depending on which version you saw. Such is reality in the film and tv business. So all the mamba tracking that they talked about in the program was the same mamba tracking that I did in Jan-Mar.
To fully fill you in, the BBC was there in January when my coworker, Mduduzi, and I went to the park to start the black mamba tracking project that he and I (solely) did for two months. We watched them film the surgeries in which the transmitters were implanted as well as re-enactments of some of the mamba captures they did. I think some of them were real-time captures but some of them had happened before and they were re-enacted for the program. I wonder if that’s why one of those snakes was so ornery. It was probably taken from a terrarium (handling #1), transported across the country, put in a room somewhere (handling #2), captured again (handling #3), transported back, and put back in the terrarium (handling #4).
November was my last month in the field. Very sad. I’m optimistic that I’ll be back to Hlane though. We had our staff Christmas party on the 30th because several people are off for Dec, including me :) We did the gift exchange/stealing game and it went on for ages. Here is one of the great treasures someone walked away with.
We’ve had lots of storms lately, mostly thunderstorms with heavy rain and sometimes wind. But we’ve also had a few hail storms and a tornado hit Ezulwini Valley. Here are a couple of funny lines from the Swazi Times about the weather.
Man spends whole night in tree
“There is at least one man who will not be crossing any flooded rivers in the country for the rest of his life. … For hours, he hanged in there for dear life. … The police are said to have taken him across the river and directly to his homestead, where he was instructed to keep warm and was left sitting in front of a fire.”
The sun comes out
“Temperatures as high as 28*C (82*F) are expected for Mbabane by Wednesday, which should be a relief to many members of the public who had been getting worried about their accumulating laundry.”
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