The lodge

the waterfalls

eventure falls

On Sunday the divers had their "dry day" (for me and Markus right now
every day is dry day...). As we got invited by the Danes of the
eventure camp to visit their waterfall we went over to Katoto again
and while the others went up on an exhausting hike to this waterfall I
stayed behind and slept in a hammock on the terrasse. They want to
rename the falls "eventure falls" after they bought it from the chief
(kind of the head of the tribe their, he owns all the land) for a red
Toyota. The falls were nice ( I was told). A a Danish tv crew was
joining them for the hike. They were visiting the project with a
famous Zambian-Danish singer that is giving money to the project.
Danish national television is broadcasting a show on here "roots".
Afterwards they had a volleyball match with the Danish camp.
Unfortunately the Danish won...

Mbala

On Friday Markus and me went to Mbala to get a x-ray as I have some
lung issues. We travelled with the common transport option here: A
Toyota Minibus (8 seats) with 20 passengers and lots of stuff on the
roof. Its not really comfy but really quick! The Hospital was
surprisingly ok. And really cheap even if we choose the high cost
treatment. The xray was ready in 5 min. We were done after 2 hours!
That is faster then in europe! Impressive...They still only have 5
doctors there. Its strange how we met lots of foreign missionaries,
researchers, volonteers teachers but not one doctor or nurse yet.

mysterious fish

Some fischermen from the village next by sold us this fish. We now
keep it in a concret basin. We think it is a goldmorph of
Lepidolamprologus lemeri but we are happy to get other suggestions. It
was caught at 10 m depth (according to the fishermen). Any idea?

Komische Mission

Gestern bekamen wir unerwarteten Besuch von 2 polnischen Missionaren
die gerade in Zambia stationiert sind und zur Zeit in Ihrem Urlaub das
Land erkunden. Innerhalb weniger Minuten schon kam das Gespräch auf
AIDS zu sprechen und nicht nur das sie recht Ahnungslos waren was die
Krankheit angeht, sie vertraten tatsächliche die Meinung dass Kondome
schlecht wären da Sie die Menschen hier zu mehr Unzucht anregen
würden! Das Verbreiten sie in Ihrer Diocese. Da die Katholische
Kirsche einen sehr grossen Einfluss in Sambia hat finde ich es ist
eine Schande so einen Stuss zu verbreiten. Somit haben diese
fahrlässigen Priester meiner Meinung nach viele Menschenleben auf dem
Gewissen.
Ich bin dann einfach mit dem Boot nach Mpulungu geflüchtet. Der
Kompressor muste repariert werden, das traf sich gut. Als Ich wieder
kam waren sie zum Glück wieder verschwunden. In Mpulungu trafen wir
noch 2 von den Dänen Pere und Estelle die noch etwas in der Stadt
erledigen müssen. Sie übernachten heute nocheinmal bei uns.
Es sieht hier aus als ob der Regen kommt. Seit 2 Tagen ist trübes
Wetter. Die Einheimischen halten aber daran fest : Regnen wird es erst
am 24. Oktober. Warum auch immer...

Bad Monkey!

We visited some danish guys on Sunday in Katoto, a village 40 min
from here. They are building a sustainable agriculture school tourism
project there(or something like that). Essentially its a lodge,
huge,with electricity and plombage. A very beautiful place they build
a year ago. Glenn and Julie are living there with their 2 small
children and 4 volonteers. At the end they want to get groups of 18
people there for 6 weeks : they start by doing some tourism and then
the next 3 weeks they work as a volonteer at the school they are
building. They plan to have 40 pupils at the school taugth by zambian
teachers and volonteers. They even plan to build an international
standard football field (90x40 m)! AND THIS IS IN THE MIDDLE OF
NOWHERE, ZAMBIA!
A very ambitious and impressive project. People were nice except for
the stupid monkey that sensed that I would not want it to climb on me
and then would not let go of me. Very annoying....it even squeezed
Markus nipple ! this was my fist monkey experience. Now I know I do
not like monkeys...
A German tourist joined us at the lodge on Saturday. He has been
travelling with his bike across Africa for 2 years and is now on his
way home. He will be leaving on Friday with the Liemba
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Liemba) a very old german ship crossing from
Mpulungu to Kigoma, Tanzania, once a week.
Only two of us are diving, me not included. I am bored and I hope I'll
get better soon so we can go on with the project.

That the link to the danish project: http://www.eventure.dk/

Lunch at Tanganyika Lodge

Markus Arne Barbara and Michael are enjoing their Lunch after a the first dive of the day

Sonnenuntergang im Wohnzimmer....

fighting or dancing ?

Exciting days here in Mpulungu. I managed to get my first samples, the elections are on and Barbara and Michael are going to head back to Switzerland already. Nach ein paar Anfragen werde ich diesen Post mal auf Deutsch weiterschreiben.

Am Dienstag wurde gewählt in Sambia. Wir hatten das Glück durch die Lodgmanagerin Celestine und ihrem Ehemann Augustin ein Paar Infos über die politsche Situation in Sambia zu bekommen. Generell gibt es 10 Parteien (nicht schlecht oder ?). Die MMD und die PF dominieren aber das politische Geschehen. Die MMD ist zur Zeit an der Macht mit Rupia Banda als Presidenten. Ihr  Zeichen ist die Uhr und das Handzeichen ein L mit Daumen und Zeigefinger. Die PF (Patriotic Front) ist eine Oppositionspartei mit dem Parteiführer « King Cobra » Sata and der Spitze. Das klingt ja schon einmal abenteuerlich...Ausserdem ist Ihr Handzeichen die Faust. Die MMD wird der Korruption bezichtig und generell ist wohl die PF die Partei der Armen und die MMD die der Reichen. Die Handzeichen sind deswegen für uns von Bedeutung weil die Boote, die an der Lodge vorbeifahren das eine oder das andere Zeichen zeigen je nach dem welcher Partei man angehört. Markus hat sich einen Spass daraus gemacht mit der Fuast zu antworten. Meist ist ein Jubelndes Schif die Folge.

Heute müssten nun die Ergebnisse verkündet werden. In Mpulungu hat die PF bereits die Lokalwahlen gewonnen. Als wir gestern einkaufen gingen trafen wir lauter betrunkene tanzende Menschen und keine Randale weit und breit. Hoffen wir das es so bleibt. Am Tag der Wahlen wollten wir uns das Wahllokal in Kasakalawe anschauen gehen. Leider wurden wir dort ausdrücklich rausgeschmissen. Ich wurde auch etwas nervös als ein Mann im Militäraufzug uns nach unseren IDs fragte. Als wir meinten, dass wir leider keine dabei hätten war er aber nicht sehr aufgebracht und lies uns nach Hause gehen.

Eine Erkältung hat mich fest im Griff. Ich hoffe bald wieder auf dem Damm zu sein und Stefan entlasten zu können. Die Frustration ist gerade recht hoch da die blöden Fische sich einfach nicht fagen lassen wollen. Einendhalbstunden Tauchen um einen einzigen Fisch zu fangen ist wirklich (um es mit Stefans Worten zu sagen ) „Zach" .

Mehr Infos zur Wahl gibt zum Beispiel von der TAZ(danke Till)

http://www.taz.de/Wahlen-in-Sambia/!78389/

Finally recovered

After 4 days of taking turns in getting sick everybody is feeling

better. Lets hope we are all stable. It is also nice to have the

termites in the toilet so you can observe them while you are stuck in

there...

More visitors this week! Alex Jordan, an Australian Cichild researcher

we already met in Bern in august, came along for the afternoon on

Tuesday. At this point none of us were really talkative unfortunately.

We hope to meet him again soon as he will be staying at Mpulungu.

Yesterday Christian Sturmbauer, a researcher from Graz and 4 belgian

students (Arnold, Pascal, Lulile and the funny guy, I can't remember

his name) from Leuven University visited us for dinner. So many

Biologists! all interested in Cichlids! Lake Tanganyika is definitely

not only a biodiversity hotspot but also a hot spot to find

biologists.

The visit to the village was very interesting. I took video material

that will be available here when we are back. The Headman of

Kasakalawe showed us the school and the "clinic". Kasakalawe is a

village with approximatly 10000 inhabitants. It is loosely organized

under Mango trees. Most houses are circular, made of stones and bricks

covered with hay. Each room is a building. There lots of chickens

around. I was impressed the most by the crowd of kids following us. It

started with only 3 or 4. We took pictures with them and they had fun

watching them afterwards. More and more came along and wanted to pose

for the pictures. At the end I think at least 100 kids were following

us round the village. Some small guy was reeaaaly scared when we

walked by his house and started screaming and ran away. I never felt

so scary.

The clinic has neither doctor nor medicine and the school has just few

chairs. However the school seems to be developing in a good direction

and they even learn ecology and anatomy of insects there (we saw it on

the black board, yeah!).

adventure dives, zambian bestiary and visitors

Yesterday we sunk a barrel. filled it with stones and attached a buoy
to it. Stefan Barbara and me wanted to guide it from the boat to the
bottom at 10 m depth but , again , it did not work out as planned: the
barrel sunk like a stone, stefan had ear problems and had to resurface
after 3 meters so me and Barbara had to do the job. after lifting
heavy stones into the barrel at the bottom I got a cramp as well. We
are now however able to attach the boat to a buoy. This will make
diving from the boat easier. Ear problems are getting more frequent as
the dives accumulate but the moral is high and jokes are getting
worse.
We had the opportunity to observe termites building nest around the
lodge, as well as unfortunalty in the toilet hut. A scolopender
sneaked into Katas bed (she heroically chased it out while I was
sleeping and did not hear a thing) and the roaches are getting bigger.
I have a ant highway passing my pillow ( I won't miss out on proteins
this way). So much for our "lodgemates".
Today both the headman of the next village, Kasakalawe, and Heinz
Bücher visited our Camp.
The Headman is going to show us around town on Sunday. I am very exited!
Heinz Bücher is a Swiss recreational researcher. He knows the lake
like no one else. Very interesting character. He will be cruising the
lake with his 7 m boat for 6 weeks so we can hope to see him again
here at the Tanganyika lodge.
Its getting busy here¨!

the joys of fieldwork

Today was quite exhausting. After a dive in 10 m I finally managed to
catch a Neolamprologus pulcher! This sounds trivial but it is in fact
very difficult and time consuming as they are really clever
bastards…However time was running out and we had to hurry to get to
the surface in time.
In the afternoon I did not dive but helped getting some experimental
cages down to our experimental area in 10 m depth by driving with our
boat to the spot marked by a floater and dropping them attached to the
floater. It sounded really easy: the cages will then sink softly to
the ground and Stefan and Barbara can then fix them at the bottom
while diving.
"Pustekuchen" : First we could not find the floater. When the 2 divers
then dropped into the water they realized that those 1x1x1 cages are
not really handy. Especially under water. They also do not sink
softly. It was quite a hustle to get them to the bottom (the divers
said). On the boat we also struggled with currents, floaters that did
not float, divers we did not want to collide with etc.
No everything is well and I am going to enjoy dinner. Now.

Re: abfahrt

First News,

We started our trip a week ago. After a long but cosy flight we
arrived on the 27 in Lusaka. We stayed in the Gossman Mission during
the day, a beautiful place, to get some rest and buy some stuff we
would need for the field season but could not be found in Mpulungu. In
the afternoon we then embarquied on a gruesome bus ride to Mpulungu.
20 Hours later finally we arrived at the lake Taganiyka. This bus trip
was the worst I ever been on, however apparently not the worst in the
history of the field trips to the lake. It might have been the longest
yet. We past some car and bus crashes (the bus transported some of
the injured people to a hospital on our way) and had to leave the bus
repeatedly so it could weighed without the "extra" weight of 20 of the
passengers.
From Mpulungu we got a ride on a boat to the Tanganika lodge were we
have been staying since. To arrive here was a real delight after this
tiring trip. A beautiful place…
We managed to get air compressor and solar panel to work and we have
all been diving already. Some of us (including myself) had go through
some gut problems but everyone is well now.
The food is amazing. The fishes are amazing. The lake is amazing.

juhu

tickets sind ausgedruckt....ready to fly!!

abfahrt

morgen gehts los