In the African night, the beat of a drum means news...

December 2002

Read about events at Djuma Game Reserve

Vuyatela

Bush Lodge

for more information visit www.djuma.com

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This newsletter is archived in the Drumbeat section of our web site

Since our last newsletter we have had 90 mm of rain and so the bush is looking green and the animals are under less pressure than before, but historically we have had a drought every ten years and the last serious drought was in the early 90's. These droughts are normally associated with the El Nino effect that is developing over the Pacific Ocean at the moment.
Not counting the march of seasons, El Niño has the most profound impact on climate variability - and thus on human society - worldwide.
El Niño is the name given to the phenomenon, which occurs when sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) in the equatorial Pacific Ocean off the South American coast becomes warmer than normal. These persisting warm SSTs influence the atmospheric circulation and consequently change climate patterns globally. La Niña, Spanish for "the girl", is the opposite of El Niño and not discussed here.
El Niño is translated from Spanish as "the boy child". Peruvian anchovy fishermen traditionally used the term - a reference to the Christ child - to describe the appearance of a warm ocean current off the South American coast around Christmas. Over the years the term El Niño has come to be reserved for the sequence of changes in the circulation across the Pacific Ocean and Indonesian archipelago when warming is particularly strong. Since 1950 thirteen El Niño events affected the world. Amongst them was the 1997-98 event, by many measures the strongest thus far this century, although South Africa escaped the impact of it to a great extend.
The Pacific Ocean is a huge mass of water which can control many climate features in its region, since changes in the ocean result in characteristic changes in the atmosphere which, in turn, alter climate and weather patterns across the globe.
During normal years, relatively cold water occurs along the west coast of South America, an effect increased by upwelling of cold water along the Peruvian coast. The cold water then flows westward along the equator to Australia and is heated by the tropical sun. These normal conditions make the western Pacific about 3°C to 8°C warmer than the eastern Pacific.
During El Niño years, the area of warm water (usually over the western tropical Pacific, near Australia) cools down and the warm water is displaced eastward to the central Pacific. The upwelling off the Peruvian coast is suppressed and the Sea-surface temperature (SST) in this region becomes warmer than usual.
During an El Niño phase, the normal atmospheric circulation is altered due to the changes in the Pacific Ocean. The lifting and sinking of air - and therefore rainy and dry conditions - move with the warmer and colder SSTs to form the pattern known as the Southern Oscillation.
The changes in the Pacific Ocean are represented by the term "El Niño/La Niña", while the changes in the atmosphere are known as the "Southern Oscillation". Because these two cannot be separated, the term ENSO (El Niño-Southern-Oscillation) is often used.
El Niño and La Niña influence both rainfall and temperature patterns worldwide. The figure below shows the changes in climate and weather patterns due to El Niño. Please note that these figures are only applicable for December to February (summer in the southern hemisphere) when ENSO's impact on southern Africa is most profound. For the winter months the picture looks a bit different.

Greetings from the bush! November has been yet another busy month at Vuyatela. We had our resident Vuyatela dam croc deciding he was large enough to take on an old wallowing Buffalo bull! The Buffalo was slightly annoyed at being disturbed and moved slowly out the water onto the bank. The croc realizing he was having delusions of grander disappeared from the scene with tail between legs.
Graham Cooke guided guests who stayed with us for eleven nights. They were the Dauphin's, who are filming a documentary for French television along the lines of what time is to animals. Well all that aside, they had some awesome sightings, including a rare find of Cheetah with cubs and a Leopard showing interest in them. The female Cheetah did manage to chase the Leopard away, in a once in a lifetime display that was captured on film.
We were also visited by, I believe, Shivati male leopard, last night. As Graham was walking his guests to bed, he looked over to the dam and saw the leopard moving towards the lodge. There is nothing wrong with tad of adrenaline running though ones veins before closing down for the night!
We had a rather sad experience with the death of an Elephant not far from the Lodge. We did not hear or see it until Aubrey smelt something odd. He tracked it into the bush and found the Elephant. By our calculations he had been dead about five days. Vetenary officials were called in but no out of the ordinary cause of death could be found. As you can imagine the odour in the air was rather overwhelming at stages. By law we are obliged to remove the tusks and hand them to the Kruger National Park. The task was given to a number of people but Amos and Warren were the two who cut the tusks out. Steve, Campbell, Chris and the rest were there for moral support. On returning to the Lodge it was noticed that a few people were looking rather pale, as the smell was too much for them. Mark requested that Warren and Amos rather leave the lodge until they had soaked in a "Savlon" bath as they decided to come and chat about the whole experience in the office. It was a smelly affair.
As the summer moves on we are still in need of a lot more rain but it seems to be evading us.
Until next moth ciao!
Mark Labuchangne

November has been another hectic month at Bush Lodge and leaves us still with our feet barely touching the ground and wondering 'Can it possible be only a month till 2003?'
With the new staff accommodation finally completed, the much anticipated renovations to the original guest chalets went off without a hitch - well in all honesty with many interesting hitches (as only building work can bring) but nothing our highly competent team wasn't able to quickly put to rights. As usual Campbell set a tight schedule and we were pushed to keep up, but full marks to George who managed to keep to the schedule and in fact came in a day early! The rooms look fabulous (if we say so ourselves) with a new vanity area and a much lighter, more modern look in the bathrooms. Awesomely romantic huge mosquito nets help complete the stunning changes.
On the staffing side we said a very sad farewell to Edward Hoare who has been with Djuma for over two years (after originally only coming for a long weekend...) He has returned to the UK to catch up with family and friends and we hope he brings his cheerful personality and professional manner back to the bush before too long. His farewell was a wonderful gathering and the highlight was undoubtedly Edward and Nestah getting down and boogying his version of the mochongolo (traditional dancing). Sadly we have no photos to offer (surely Edward planned that?) We welcome Willy Fick, a local lad who hails from Hazyview to our team and we look forward to making him part of the Djuma family. We've also had a Dutch student, Jacqueline, with us for a month and she has been a wonderful help around the camp and we welcome our new student for December, Moshe, who is from Soweto outside Johannesburg. He's currently studying Nature Conservation and will hopefully be trading knowledge with our rangers and guests.
On the guest side we had a wedding at Bush Lodge! Congratulations to Matthias and Claudia Wunderlich from Hanover in Germany on their special occasion. Their sunset wedding in the Bush was certainly a moment to treasure and we wish them much happiness for the future.
The two new 'kids' at Bush Lodge are now sadly just one. The female squirrel did not survive, but the male (now named Stuart Little) is a character around camp to be reckoned with. He has free roam all over the lodge during the daylight hours - causing much consternation amongst the staff (many of whom are terrified of him) but still returns each night to sleep in his cosy and safe bed. He definitely seems to have the best of both worlds.
We wish you all the best for the upcoming festive season and we'll bring you highlights next month of our 'Christmas in Africa'.
Liane Allaway

While on the surface the lodges appear to run like clockwork, we do experience the odd day here and there that can only be explained as a "Fawlty Towers" day. Usually after such a day, trying to remain optimistic, I always thinks it is better that every curve ball is hurled on the same day, and not in dribs and drabs more often!
It just so happened that Galago was expecting new guests at lunchtime and I was in town for the morning. This meant that a camp check was planned for 13h30, later than normal. There was also a good chance the guests could already have checked in. Before getting into the drama that awaited me in the bush, I was informed at about 10h30 that our chef would not be able to make it to camp for this group. Quick negotiating, hundreds of phone calls and Elisabeth Mkanzi (Vuyatela chef) agreed to come back to work even though she was on leave.
On arrival I sighed with relief to see the parking area vacant and proceeded through the entrance and realized that the main electricity (ESCOM) was down. This was not too out of the ordinary as we have been having really bad service lately and there is not much one can do in these situations. The backup power supply was currently down for repairs and upgrades, so that option was not viable. There was a trickle of water seeping from the bottom of the bar fridge that had started defrosting. Once again, no problem, out came the mop and that was temporarily sorted out. Then the bomb dropped. The swimming pool was half filled with green water! William had been emptying the pool earlier when the power went down thus making the pump stop! I guess he thought he would just wait for power to resume and in turn continue emptying and filling the pool. OK, pushing panic to some place far from mind, I rushed off to Chris Dreyer's house. Chris is the land manager for Buffelshoek and by luck he was at home for lunch. I convinced him to bring his mobile generator over and get the pump working to empty the pool.
While that was set in motion I raced home at break neck speed to get some decent clothes on so that I could be all presentable to explain the drama to the guests. As I returned to Galago, relieved that the guests weren't there, was shocked to see large pieces of blue fibreglass being hurled out the now empty pool into wheelbarrows. On the lawn was a generator, a mountain of tools, brooms, mops and in the pool were three men working like crazy. Chris informed me that there was a huge crack in the fibre glass floor of the pool, and he did not want any guests getting their feet cut, so he decided the base of the pool had to come out! OK, in I jumped, beige outfit and all, hammer and chisel in hand, while William "got rid of" the debris. Then some tidying up with rags and mops things started coming together. Apart from the cement base contrasting with the blue fiberglass walls lining the pool, it looked pretty good. However, we now had an empty pool, baking hot weather, no air conditioners, cooling geysers and three defrosting freezers…(and a partridge in a pear tree).
Needless to say, power was resumed later that day after the guests arrived and the pool started filling up. A special thanks to Lex Hes and the Mathisen Party for being so understanding.
With a few days open in early December we will be revamping the camp. A fresh lick of paint outside and in, and some new artworks will be great. Oh, and the pool is getting a new fiberglass lining!
Pippa Moolman

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Djuma Game Reserve
P. O. Box 338, Hluvukani, 1363, Mpumalanga, South Africa
Tel: (+ 27 13) 735 5118
Fax: (+ 27 13) 735 5070
 

 
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