Miombo

Thanks to substandard mattresses and pillows I woke up crumpled like a gremlin with a bad neck. Fresh chapatis and a 3-in-1 packet coffee provided a part-cure.

Today’s mission was investigating more of the livestock management issues in the Niassa-Selous Corridor, which are causing conflicts between farmers and pastoralists. We plunged into tracts of miombo woodland, which is the dominant habitat type here and one of the most important ecosystems in southern and eastern Africa. At this time of year before the rainy season sets in, miombo is both gnarly and inhospitable yet with its palette of greens, reds and oranges, welcoming and familiar.

It sounds like I’m writing a travelogue from the Victorian age of exploration, not behaving as a modern conservationist. Although miombo is picturesque for the likes of me, I want to be careful not to romanticise it. For rural communities it’s not an easy landscape to eke out a livelihood in, the delicate balance between people, natural resources, sustainability and nutrition made more precarious with the onset of climate variability and changes to rainy season patterns. We found more examples of very large cattle herds moving through the forest, accompanied by felling of trees by pastoralists in order to create bomas (enclosures). There is also evidence of pastoralists using poison to kill lions and reduce predation on their herds.

As usual in this game, the more appreciation of a context, the more nuanced and complicated the challenges. However, today wasn’t the time to solve them. There had been no power in Namtumbo town from 7.30am until around 6.30pm, then it flickered all evening until 11pm when it went off again. The townsfolk bedded down and prayed for improvements to basic infrastructure.