Locusts again

 

I briefly mentioned locusts towards the end of a previous blog entry .... 

http://luolaughter.blogspot.com/2020/07/mama-pat-african-updates-and-qavs.html

.... and now the plague is back in Kenya in ever greater swarms.

The Daily Telegraph recently had a report:-  "Biblical plague or manageable threat? Swarms of the pests, driven by climate change, are wreaking havoc on the food supply of a region regularly facing acute bouts of hunger"

From the air, the mountain valleys are awash with millions of flitting white dots. A swarm about twice the size of the City of London ready to devour every bit of vegetation in its wake looks like this from the air.

    

"Last year, East Africa was hit by a once-in-a-lifetime invasion of voracious desert locusts. Billions of insects poured across the border into Kenya from the Arabian Peninsula, Somalia and Ethiopia. 

Commentators compared it to something from the Old Testament – a biblical plague of Abraham, driven on by climate change, wreaking havoc on the food supply of a region which regularly faces acute bouts of hunger.

There had been nothing like it in Kenya since the 1950s and officials were caught flatfooted, trying to battle swarms roughly the size of Luxembourg with a handful of planes and almost no proper equipment. 

Pilots tasked with spotting the swarms sent their locations back to base on WhatsApp on shoddy rural internet connections.

A single locust swarm can contain up to 80 million locusts and fly 30 to 80 miles in one day depending on the wind. By the time, spraying planes arrived at the WhatsApp coordinates the next day, it was often too late. 

The locusts had warmed up in the morning sun and moved off into the wilderness, laying millions of eggs. Every day, each locust can eat its weight in vegetation daily and multiplies twenty-fold every three months. A swarm can easily eat as much food as 35,000 people in a single day and multiple two dozen times in three months."

Pilots of small planes and helicopters more used to flying celebrities to game lodges are now tracking swarms as they settle for the night, and are ready at dawn to spray the settled swarm as they start to warm up in the dawn sun .... and spray with a U.N. approved pesticide.  

(summarised from a Daily Telegraph report)

'Old Africa' ... issue 93 has come !

 

I was interested to see a photo of a visit to Kenya by HRH Prince Charles, supposedly from "early 1970's"

I have my doubts about that date, as I remember when we lived in Nakuru, all the families and the children from my daughters first school gathered at the airstrip near Lanet to 'meet and greet' .... HRH was on his way to have lunch with Mzee Kenyatta at State House, and when he went for his lunch, the air crew from HRH's plane invited the children to have a look around the aircraft, and I believe they were given sweets !

Here, I've got a vast collection of letters that we sent 'home' to our parents, probably around 500 or 600 of them, which I've sorted into date order, so was easily able to find the letters for the relavent time; which wasn't "early 1970's" as the children were too young to have been in school then, and we didn't move to Nakuru until about 1976.   

Bingo .... I found a mention of the visit in a letter to my mother from  May1977, but D.W., my old Maseno friend, found the article below in the New York Times, which dates this visit to March '77 .... so I am now wondering why I didn't write home about it until May, and only to my mother and not also the parents in law ?   One of lifes mysteries .... 

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Prince Charles Leads Newshounds on a Merry Chase in Africa

NAIROBI, Kenya, March 9—Prince Charles, who is in Kenya on a photographic safari, is himself the quarry in a journalistic hunt mounted by a Fleet Street caravan.

The press caravan, composed of nine top reporters and photographers of the British popular press, was at Nairobi Airport on Sunday when the Prince of Wales arrived, landing his own plane. He met the group affably, saying, “Sorry I'm late. Had to check the controls. Pleasant flight. Bit bumpy.”

That was all he said before disappearing for unknown places. It was hardly enough to justify expenses for a trip to Greenwich, let alone Africa.

Members of the group, however, are an indomitable breed. Among them is a man who once spent tens of thousands of dollars tracking a milkman in Argentina in the belief that he was Martin Bormann. He found out that he was a milkman.

Through charm, guile and the disbursement of money, the reporters have, among them, ferreted out hundreds of circulation‐boosting secrets and true confessions.

Still, by Sunday night, they had not learned the whereabouts of the Prince. Messages from their London offices demanded stories, offered suggestions, provided goads. Obviously, the situation was serious.

By very early Monday morning there was a breakthrough. The reporters had reliably learned that the Prince was in the Aberdares. This is a forested mountain region about the size of Rhode Island, only much bumpier.

Mau Mau fighters hid in these dense forests for years from thousands of British troops. Could the terrain provide enough covering for Charles to evade the Fleet Street pack?

The journalists set off in LandRovers for Treetops, a lodge for viewing game in the area. It was at this lodge that Charles's mother became Queen when King George VI died a quarter century ago.

The reporters saw elephant and buffalo but no sign of royalty.

For a while the resident Nairobi press corps, all colleagues and admirers of the Fleet Streeters, lost contact with the group. Some of the Fleet Street pursuers had said they would be back in Nairobi for dinner. When they did not show up, one resident journalist explained, “Newsmen in Lion Horror,” offering as well a paradigm of a British headline.

Yesterday came word by telephone that—except for no Prince—all was well. The journalists moved to the Outspan Hotel. Many funny stories were reportedly being told. Expenses were mounting. The man from The Sun said that royal tracking was being impeded by Kenyan soldiers under orders to keep the newshounds at bay.

“They're not playing about,” said the man from The Sun.

But neither are tilt reporters. Those who have watched them in action before are not eager to bet against them. After all, they haven't yet used disguises or hired bearers. They may yet burst upon the royal encampment, emerging from a thicket of thorns, ragged but triumphant, cornering their quarry with a “Your Royal Highness, I presume?”

(from New York Times, 10  March 1977)

Kenya says it will get first coronavirus vaccines this month

 (Its a pity the lady in blue isn't wearing her mask correctly !)

NAIROBI (BLOOMBERG) - Kenya expects to get its first Covid-19 vaccines by the end of this month and inoculate 16 million of its roughly 53 million people by June next year, according to Health Secretary Mutahi Kagwe.

The country will procure vaccines made by AstraZeneca Plc, Pfizer Inc and Johnson & Johnson, and any others in the Covax facility, an initiative for developing countries to access doses, Mr Kagwe said Friday (Feb 12) in a statement.

East Africa's biggest economy targets 24 million doses from Covax and will buy another 11 million shots from other mechanisms.

The first vaccination phase covering 1.25 million people will prioritise health, security and immigration workers.

Kenya will decide by the end of next week whether to approve vaccines from China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd and AstraZeneca, and a Russian version known as Sputnik V, Fred Siyoi, head of the country's drug regulatory authority, said by phone.

(From The Straits Times)

Ebola again ...

 

At least three people have died of Ebola in Guinea, with five others testing positive for the virus, health officials say.

They fell ill with diarrhoea, vomiting and bleeding after attending a burial.

Between 2013 and 2016 more than 11,000 people died in the West Africa Ebola epidemic, which began in Guinea.

But in response to that epidemic several vaccines were developed, which have since been used to fight outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ebola infects humans through close contact with infected animals, including chimpanzees, fruit bats and forest antelope.

It then spreads between humans by direct contact with infected blood, bodily fluids or organs, or indirectly through contact with contaminated environments.

Community funerals, where people help wash the body of the person who has died, can be a key way of spreading Ebola in the earlier stages of an outbreak.

The bodies of victims are particularly toxic. The incubation period can last from two days to three weeks.

Dr Sakoba Keita, head of Guinea's national health agency, said more tests were being done to confirm the situation in the south-eastern region near the city of Nzérékoré, and health workers were working to trace and isolate cases.

The World Health Organization's Africa director, Matshidiso Moeti, tweeted that the global health agency was "ramping up readiness and response efforts" given the potential resurgence of Ebola in Guinea.

An Ebola vaccine was first trialled over four months in 2015 in Guinea - started by the Public Health Agency of Canada and then developed by US pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD).

One hundred patients were identified and then close contacts were either vaccinated immediately, or three weeks later. In the 2,014 close contacts who were vaccinated immediately there were no subsequent cases of Ebola.

(from BBC news)

Good news !

 

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has said that no rhino was poached in the East African nation in the year 2020, a rare occurrence to be witnessed in the country since 1999.

According to the latest poaching statistics from KWS, poaching is all-time low since the onset of COVID-19 that saw travel bans in many African countries.

In a statement, KWS Director-General Brigadier (Rtd) John Waweru said: “For the first time in 21 years, KWS reported zero poaching of rhinos in the year 2020. Rhino poaching has reduced from a high of 59 cases in 2013 when poaching was at its peak to zero poaching in 2020. The last time this feat was achieved was in 1999.”

Waweru attributed the achievement in reducing rhino poaching to working with stakeholders, anti-poaching and intelligence-led operations.

KWS said during the COVID-19 pandemic period, there were increased threats of poaching as the authority recorded an increase in bushmeat poaching and associated crimes.

KWS said there were increased cases of human-wildlife conflicts due to rising demand for agricultural land and space for human settlement.

Kenya also recorded the lowest number of elephants poached in 2020, Waweru said, adding: “Elephant poaching has also reduced from a high of 384 cases in 2012 when poaching was at its peak to a record low of 11 in 2020, the lowest ever in KWS history.”

According to the Kenya Wildlife, by the end of 2017, Kenya had a rhino population of 1,258 (745 black rhinos, 510 southern white rhinos and 3 northern white rhinos). The last male northern white rhino died, bringing the total number of northern whites in Kenya and across the world to just two.

Some 500 northern white rhinos were roaming in several countries in East and Central Africa, south of Sahara till 1970. Poaching reduced the population of the species to 15 by 1980 and then 32 in 2003. There are now just two female rhinos left, both born in captivity.

(from Anadolu Agency)

And see this link:-     https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1204216357769455725/6882207449678115013  

Another giraffe takes to the waves !!

A third endangered Rothschild’s giraffe has been rescued from Longicharo Island on Kenya's Lake Baringo.     See  http://luolaughter.blogspot.com/2020/12/moving-giraffes.html   

As water levels rise around the lake, the land continues to shrink threatening the survival of trapped animals.  There are still six giraffes remaining, that will be moved in the coming months. They had been trapped in Lake Baringo following a bout of flooding caused by heavy rainfall.

Rothschild’s are one of the largest of the nine subspecies of giraffe and can reach heights of nearly six metres.

"We recently moved one more giraffe in addition to the previous two, which removed early December. This is because over time we've trained the giraffe to feed within the barge, they got used to feeding and it was easy to move that giraffe without tranquilising it or using any medicine." Aloise Naitera, from the NRT- Baringo county said.

The giraffes were originally homed on the island in 2011, in order to protect them from poachers. There are thought to be fewer than 2,000 Rothschild’s giraffes left in the wild, making them one of the most endangered giraffe subspecies.    Today, fewer than 3,000 Rothschild’s giraffe are left in Africa, with about 800 in Kenya.

Naitera explained "The target is to move these animals by maybe April or May latest, or around there, then we'll have moved all the animals."  

(from 'AfricaNews' .com)

More books for my groaning shelves !

 Watching a repeat Michael Palin programme about the Sahara, he was reading a book about the Niger river, and being me, I was tempted .... so managed to get a very cheap secondhand, ex library copy, post free, on the 'net.  

I visited the Niger about 48 or more years ago, at a place called Lokoja in Nigeria, and remember just about nothing of the trip !   But seeing Michael Palin visiting the Niger at Bamako and Timbuctu in Mali, my curiosity was stirred.   I knew the Niger flowed out into the sea at the Bight of Benin, and that it had been seen (I think) by the explorer Mungo Park, but I had absolutely no idea where the source was/is ..... and am now astonished to find it rises in Sierra Leone, flowing north-east, and then taking a sudden turn past Timbuctu, to the south-east.   For hundreds of years it was thought it started at some unknown lake or springs far north in the Sahara.   "Ex Africa semper aliquid novi."   I'm enjoying the book !

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My second new book is about the 'white settler' houses to the west of the Aberdares.  

There is a group of enthusiasts who have formed a group called 'The Happy Valley Heritage Trust', who have realised the importance in the history of Kenya of old buildings ... and Juliet Barnes, who wrote 'The Ghosts of Happy Valley' is one of the trustees.    They have a Facebook page:-    https://www.facebook.com/happyvalleytrust/

So when I saw in Old Africa magazine that they had published a small book called 'Happy Valley Homes' .... well, I was more than tempted !   Several of the houses have fallen down or are in an advanced state of disrepair, but others are now used as schools and community venues.  I can imagine that, if repaired and advertised, several would be very profitable small hotels, and could bring useful $$$ in to the community.   Look at how successful Giraffe Manor (in the Langata suburb of Nairobi) is as a hotel now, where guests can feed the giraffes who poke their heads in the bedroom and dining room windows !