Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1128: Africa! Backpacking and Conservation with Jeff de Graffenried

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Ep. 1128: Africa! Backpacking and Conservation with Jeff de Graffenried · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_01]: We've seen some monsters too.
0:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I remember one at Kavooi, we saw it.
0:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It heard us come.
0:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It was probably 25 or 30 meters from the actual river in a little estuary little swampy area.
0:20
[SPEAKER_01]: They call it dombos, so it's in this dombothan.
0:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And man, it just started going through the vegetation, like, wow, just crashing and making all kinds of noise.
0:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And you couldn't really see it, you just saw where it went, and then it came out and looked like a literally probably four meters, five meters long, it was the biggest thing that I think I've seen, then it just gets into the river and disappears, and you're like, you know, that thing's in there.
0:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Jeff DeGraphen read, back packing and conservation in Africa.
0:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:55
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk with adventurers from around the globe to bring you the inspiration and motivation you need to get started in the outdoors or to keep you moving if you're already there.
1:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lindville.
1:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey, if Africa has ever called to you the way that it has always called to me, then you're going to love this episode.
1:13
[SPEAKER_04]: One thing I want to point out, though, is we had this conversation, Jeff and I, or six straight weeks ago, so if you think about the timing of that, turns out that Jeff was working for USAID in Africa, and he was packing up to come home, because USAID is
1:31
[SPEAKER_04]: had been dissolved.
1:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And we try not to be political on this at all.
1:35
[SPEAKER_04]: This is really about Africa, the beauty of the place, the people, the animals, conservation, and backpacking through it all.
1:43
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's kind of unique for the Adventure Sports podcast to talk to someone that has experience like Jeff's.
1:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So you're going to love this one.
1:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to call this insights into Africa.
2:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey friends, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast again today.
2:03
[SPEAKER_04]: This is going to be such a unique episode.
2:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I have Jeff D. Graffand Reed with us.
2:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And Jeff is a foreign service officer for USAID in Africa.
2:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I believe he's in, are you in Zambia right now, Jeff?
2:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Malawi Malawi right now.
2:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so you've visited Zandia in other places, but anyway, you're in Malawi right now and what Jeff is done is a series of hikes through national parks and conservation areas and in Africa backpacking.
2:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just super, super interested in what it would be like to backpack in a place like that.
2:42
[SPEAKER_04]: But Jeff has a lot to say about conservation and unique perspective on the world.
2:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So Jeff, welcome to the program.
2:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you very much, Kurt, it's a pleasure to be here.
2:56
[SPEAKER_04]: We're happy to have you.
2:59
[SPEAKER_04]: So you are in Malawi right now.
3:02
[SPEAKER_04]: It's 11 o'clock, Colorado time.
3:06
[SPEAKER_04]: close to midnight your time.
3:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not quite that bad.
3:13
[SPEAKER_04]: It's seven o'clock.
3:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Ten after.
3:15
[SPEAKER_04]: OK.
3:16
[SPEAKER_04]: OK, so not quite that far east.
3:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, thank you very much for coming on the adventure sports podcast and sharing with us.
3:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, when people think of adventure, most of
3:28
[SPEAKER_04]: are programming it focuses around adventures we have in the United States.
3:32
[SPEAKER_04]: But when people think of Africa, I mean, it just sounds adventurous.
3:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Just from the get-go, right?
3:40
[SPEAKER_04]: But you've made a life caring for the people and the countries in Africa, the land.
3:47
[SPEAKER_04]: How long have you been there, Jeff?
3:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've been in Africa.
3:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I think total of about 10 years.
3:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm a foreign service officer with the United States government.
4:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I work for the United States Agency for International Development or USAID in Malawi now.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been serving here for in a half years, about four and a half years or so.
4:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I served in Zambia before that in the foreign service we do tours.
4:23
[SPEAKER_01]: a tour very similar to the military is a two-year tour so for mine I'm a two tour officer in Malawi so we're here to serve at least four years and I've done four-year two two-year tours at all my stops
4:43
[SPEAKER_01]: 16 years into September 13th, our 12th, I'll be 16 years with USAID and have done multiple tours of one in Mexico, Canada, and Zambia, and now Malawi.
5:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Three different continents, which has been very exciting, and we've been here about 10 years.
5:09
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what, Jeff, let's address the elephant in the room and I kind of chuckle want to use that statement because it really could be an elephant in your room, but you know, usually we don't anyway, I'm not going to beat that one.
5:22
[SPEAKER_04]: The elephant in the room is USAID.
5:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, we're not a political program.
5:30
[SPEAKER_04]: So we're not going to dive into politics.
5:32
[SPEAKER_04]: But what is happening politically in the United States is impacting you personally.
5:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So address that just because people are going to want to know.
5:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Certainly, Kurt, as you mentioned, it is addressing me personally.
5:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, USA has been essentially dissolved.
5:48
[SPEAKER_01]: My last day here is September 2nd, not just here, but in USA, my last day here is actually Saturday.
5:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yesterday, today, we've been packing our furniture and packing out is,
6:02
[SPEAKER_01]: term used so the movers are here and we've been running all over the house packing stuff up and if you could see I'm surrounded by a canyon and boxes right now so this is truly a box canyon but yeah you know I mean it's difficult times we do great work we've done great work really proud of what we do the development how we
6:27
[SPEAKER_01]: and values out across the world through our development efforts.
6:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a tremendous program.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's been 60, what 63 years, 64 years now, with USAID.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and have done tremendous things all over the world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, very proud to serve our country, a very proud to be part of the U.S.
6:52
[SPEAKER_01]: government, and sorry, to change lifestyles.
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's unfortunate, but we serve it the pleasure of the president.
7:01
[SPEAKER_04]: So, well, I appreciate your...
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[SPEAKER_04]: your stiff upper lip, you have a good attitude about it, at least with me right now.
7:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And I, you know, it's easy enough to say that any organization that when it gets big enough is going to have positives and negatives and pros and cons.
7:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, it's, it people can view it one way or another.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And the media is going to take it and run with it.
7:24
[SPEAKER_04]: But you have boots on the ground experience, doing a lot of good representing the United States and helping all of these places around the world.
7:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just want to say thank you for your service.
7:35
[SPEAKER_01]: appreciate that that is greatly appreciated and I'm sure all the USA employees listening appreciate that too because we do make a sacrifice if thank it's one of those agencies that does not it's under the radar we're
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We're overseas.
7:53
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have a constituency at home.
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: We work closely with Congress.
7:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Congress gives us our money.
8:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Almost all our money is what we call earmark.
8:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's highly directed to do certain things.
8:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Which we do.
8:07
[SPEAKER_01]: We figure out how to do these.
8:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, my programming, I was the...
8:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Office Director for the Sustainable Economic Growth Office here in Malawi had roughly about an $80 million per year.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: covering environment, energy, agriculture, and humanitarian assistance.
8:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, we were the folks that helped during hurricanes that came through or what they call cyclones here.
8:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So, when cyclone Freddy comes through and floods out and destroys large parts of the country, we respond.
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[SPEAKER_01]: When there's droughts and there's food insecurity, we respond.
8:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We put, um,
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[SPEAKER_01]: America's best values for across the world to see and we provide a seed at the table for the government to be able to talk with our other governments around the world you know when you are there
9:05
[SPEAKER_01]: on the ground participating, helping the country, helping the people, you have an open door with the host government and we have good relationships with most of the countries that we work with.
9:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's really a good value for the small amount of money that's spent.
9:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, most people, some of the two
9:28
[SPEAKER_01]: the polls that have been done on this indicate that most folks in the U.S.
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[SPEAKER_01]: think that you spend 20, maybe 15, 20% of the U.S.
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[SPEAKER_01]: federal budget on foreign
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[SPEAKER_01]: Bellman in reality is USA it's like 0.3.03% it's less than 1% of the budget so it's and that's overall the foreign development so that split between all of the agencies working overseas you have U.S.
9:58
[SPEAKER_01]: bar service geological society I mean yeah you have um
10:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the Department of State, you have all kinds of Department of Justice, all these other agencies, also working overseas at our part of that less than one percent.
10:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But most people think it's as high as 20 or 25 percent.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So for a value, we gave a lot of value for that little measure.
10:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, in building relationships with the people and the governments of other countries, I mean, that's just
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[SPEAKER_04]: If the world's going to ever be a peaceful place, we've got to be able to have those relations.
10:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, 100% it's like living in your neighborhood.
10:43
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't know your neighbors, you're not going to get along with them, right?
10:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to know who they are.
10:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, back when I grew up, we all the kids knew each other.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We played together.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We ran up and down the streets together.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know what's good and what's bad and the parents got along.
11:00
[SPEAKER_01]: They can talk.
11:01
[SPEAKER_01]: The kids got in a fight that the parents could chat about it, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because they know each other.
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[SPEAKER_01]: same in world geopolitics, if there's a problem, if you're not there, you don't have a seat at the table.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's really hard to come in and say, I want to talk to you about something when you're not even there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, when we walk out of here, we create a giant void where the biggest development donor, international donor in Malawi.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so, who's going to fill the voids?
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[SPEAKER_01]: When we walk out, there's one country that's, you know, looking to do that and they are already coming in and taking advantage of the situation.
11:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So I get it.
11:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything can be improved and there's good and bads about everything specifically government, you know, it's an easy, it's an easy area.
11:57
[SPEAKER_01]: To say we can improve our government operates as a giant bureaucracy and I don't think anybody would say it's perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
12:08
[SPEAKER_01]: But we do good work and you have to be there to be able to help solve problems, create allies, stabilize countries that can rapidly spin into turmoil and create some of the problems that we've experienced at home in the past.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, yeah, that's it.
12:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, let's talk about some of these adventures that you've had in Africa that have given you this unique perspective on what the African continent is about.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And very, very few people probably have a grasp on that.
12:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Three, you've done more than this, but three that you listed and correct my pronunciation, but you did a backpacking trip through the Kaffew National
13:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, a similar trip through south, Luong Guan National Park in Zambia, and then also the Jettie Wildlife Refuge, um, I don't know what country that was in, but Malawi, Malawi, okay.
13:17
[SPEAKER_04]: So here's my thought about this Jeff, back packing with lions and back packing with other
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[SPEAKER_04]: and crocodiles aren't anything that, you know, you don't want to swim with them too much.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, most people don't have to worry about that.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Here in the United States, in some places there might be a grizzly or two to look out for, but Africa is a different place.
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[SPEAKER_04]: What is that like?
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[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, to me is a wide open question.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is, but it's, you know, it's so much fun playing joy, but you're right.
13:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, some of these, all of these places, everyone you mentioned, Kaffooi National Park in Zambia is a massive park.
14:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's as big as Massachusetts.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then if you include the game management areas and the other parks around it, it's like the size of Belgium.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a massive park.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's been around for a long time and they have all kinds of animals there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you mentioned a few, right, but they have, I think, 150 species of mammal, something like that, over 500 types of birds.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Reptiles fish.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's like close to 100 different types of reptiles, 70 different types of reptiles, close to 60 types of fish.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Fabians, et cetera.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So there's stuff around you, but really it's hard.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a hard experience because in Africa you have a, you know, one you're on a different hemisphere, but to the, the climates are different than what we're used to at home.
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: We're used to a four season,
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[SPEAKER_01]: year, not usually getting rainfall every month.
15:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you get more than others, depending on where you live in the United States, I'm from the southeast, Alabama, so we get a lot of rain there all the time.
15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank October is the dry month with two inches of rain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Some parts of Africa don't get two inches of rain all you
15:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But we have dry seasons of that here in Malawi that dry seasons starts about May, April May, and goes to traditionally about December, but with climate change and the way variations are happening now, it seems to be pushing even further.
15:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have quite a large portion of the year that's actually dry.
15:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So, there's different types of things that you have to prepare for as you go on a hiking trip, a multi-day trip across a wilderness area, the size of a cafe or any of the parks that you mentioned, they're quite large, right?
16:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are dangerous animals all over.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And the one animal that you didn't mention that I think is really the most dangerous out of all of them as us.
16:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my colleagues here, they go, ooh, you're afraid, you know, you aren't you afraid?
16:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, you know, when you go out into the bush, foot, it's much different than in a vehicle and a mobile safari, which we've, my wife and I, we're all over the place.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We love over landing and we love seeing the countryside and we've gone on some real epic road trips, which are so much fun, but on a safari in a vehicle,
16:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Lions will sit right next to your car in the shade and they're not too worried right I mean you see them or an LA you'll come up and look right at you on foot they see you hear you smell you long before you see them usually and so they they give you plenty of respect and move out of the way because when they see people on the ground historically it hasn't been good for them
17:16
[SPEAKER_01]: okay so they move on right i mean if you look at the which which species is increasing in numbers in which are decreasing in numbers you can't get a picture of the story there but um you you definitely have to be careful uh everyone i go on these national parks a reserve you have to go with a ranger or two rangers uh or more on the jedi i had
17:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I just went out with a ranger patrol by myself and we spent six days just walking through the bush.
17:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But you had three or three four rangers with me at all times.
17:54
[SPEAKER_01]: That's their normal number, they didn't increase it because of me, they just let me go on what they considered an extended range.
18:06
[SPEAKER_01]: that was exciting you know you get to see things in the natural habitat uh... you get to see things that aren't expecting you to be there uh... we we walked up on rhinoceros one time no well and got a blunt blumps of rhinos in the wild you know uh... like that which is extremely exciting but as you mentioned you know hippos you're walking through grass that's that can be three four meters high
18:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're not seeing, you may be following a hip-o-trail or an L.E.
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[SPEAKER_01]: trail.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're not seeing, you don't have a great field of vision.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And what you don't want to do is...
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[SPEAKER_01]: uh... get between a hippopotamus and water is a hippo is going to make us be lying straight for the water and you don't want to be there uh... he you want him to you want to be on the other side of that well i tell you it's so amazing most of our listeners are in the united states because we're in English speaking podcast but we have a huge audience of course in the u.k.
19:09
[SPEAKER_04]: australia new zeal and south america lots of places where english is a predominant language and and people listen from all over the world
19:17
[SPEAKER_04]: because English is the second language for so many, but I guess what I'm getting at is we're a little bit on North America's centric and I'm having a hard time imagining what it's like to back back through Africa.
19:34
[SPEAKER_04]: and the sorts of things that you would see.
19:35
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you mentioned the rhinoceros and it, you know, the hippo challenges and all that kind of stuff.
19:41
[SPEAKER_04]: But I'm thinking about different types of vegetations.
19:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm thinking about lizards that we would never have here.
19:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Birds we would never have here.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Things that you'd be like, oh, never thought of that.
19:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, can you relate some of that to us?
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: yeah for sure um one you know all these trips uh are through the bush there's not uh an established trail system so uh our houses in North Carolina when we go back to the US we'll go back to the to the Appalachian mountains and enjoy great trail systems of Bentham Akai trail the Appalachian trail you know I've got
20:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I can walk out my front door and be in a trail very quickly and connect and walk out literally walk all over the United States if I wanted to and come back and walk right back in my front door.
20:30
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a, you know, that's a rarity here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: When we go out, we just, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you
20:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, try to create a route that we want to go based on the topography based on As we want to see our knowledge of the area relying on experts that know the area much better than I do.
20:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we go out, you know, and it's through the bush, so it's a bush-waking trip.
21:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Quite often there's as I mentioned earlier, you know, you walk in through grass.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's three or four meters high.
21:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You're walking through what's called a Miyambo forest.
21:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Miyambo forest is one of the great ecosystems in the world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a grass kind of semi-decentuous hardwood ecosystem that is well established for the type of climates that are in this part of Africa.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and extremely slow growing trees, very hard wood, the acacia tree, the classic African acacia tree with the flat top, you'll see those in some places and then you see others with fruits, really taste the fruits that you can eat wild figs, or ones that let's say elephants like.
21:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So they'll go to the Marulatry and eat the Marulat fruit,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Especially after it's been on the ground for mending a little bit, they have a day at the bar and head to the Marulatry, you know, and Have a fun evening Some of their friends, you know, maybe put on a rugby game, you know, watch a little rugby I just can't imagine a drunk elephant Jeff, that's That's
22:19
[SPEAKER_01]: you know that's what they do it's it's funny fun really funny um yeah so you know animals like you tell my lizards sure you have monitor lizards which can get quite big you have very poisonous snakes cobras black mamba's uh adders different different types of snakes depending on where you are but you also have crocodiles
22:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's the interesting part.
22:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of the trails in the US are not in at least even an alligator territory, right?
22:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you do the Florida trail, at least you're walking through an area with alligators, but alligators aren't the same as crocodiles.
23:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Crocodiles will reach you.
23:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And that'll eat you quickly.
23:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, so what about the river crossings then?
23:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's talk about that.
23:09
[SPEAKER_01]: you know you have to be really careful and it's not even the river crossing let's say that you are you're going to go get some water where do you get your water where you've got to go down to where there's water I mean and this is quite interesting because you see this with animals um the crocodile will sit quite often right out where the animals come down to get
23:37
[SPEAKER_01]: and you can see them waiting right for that careless one that'll come down there and they can take advantage of or you know fish or whatever they're gonna eat but uh... there's no fooling around uh... you have to be on your uh... you have to have your alert system highly tuned uh... the batteries are energized and ready to go
24:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
24:02
[SPEAKER_01]: We've seen some monsters too.
24:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I remember one at Kofui.
24:06
[SPEAKER_01]: We saw and it just reminded me of a national geographic show is a monster.
24:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We had come up to it.
24:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It heard us come.
24:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It was probably 25 or 30 meters from the actual river.
24:20
[SPEAKER_01]: in a little estuary little swampy area they call a dombo so it's in this dombo that's connected to the river and man it just started going through the vegetation like wild just thrashing and making all kinds of noise
24:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And you couldn't really see it, you just saw where it went, and then it came out, and it looked like, you know, I mean it was literally probably four meters or five meters long, it was the biggest thing I think I've seen, and then it just gets into the river and disappears, and you're like, you know, that thing's in there.
24:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't see it, but it's in there.
24:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't get in the water too often.
25:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Intentionally, one is those kind of things, but two, sometimes there's diseases in the water, the harcya, or shistosamiasas, some of these things.
25:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a lake in Zabia that's on the Zambezi River.
25:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And people will go out and get a big houseboat.
25:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And have a great time out on the lake.
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you have a chef, you just have a big time.
25:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But behind the houseboat, they'll have a cage.
25:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can go swimming in the cage because it's safe.
25:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
25:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't go swimming outside the cage.
25:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like a shark cage, that that's amazing.
25:37
[SPEAKER_04]: There you go.
25:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow.
25:41
[SPEAKER_04]: It's interesting to me to think about what it would be like.
25:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I keep on returning to that, but you know, there's so many animals in Africa that I know so little about.
25:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And when you don't have knowledge, then that not only is it terrifying to not know, but it also exposes you to unnecessary risk.
25:59
[SPEAKER_04]: How long does it take to start to understand the bush enough?
26:03
[SPEAKER_04]: to feel like you can navigate it somewhat safely.
26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, risk management is important in whatever you do, you know, where it's especially in backpacking.
26:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I do a lot of stuff by myself because there's just not a lot of other people out here doing a lot of backpacking.
26:17
[SPEAKER_01]: The industry is very new.
26:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some beautiful places like Mount Mlaunji where they have guides and some trails, but the backpacking
26:28
[SPEAKER_01]: you end up, for me, I ended up going to places like this, but, you know, you have to manage the risk.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's real.
26:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether it's twisting your ankle out in the bush somewhere, how are you going to get out or a war situation like we were just talking about.
26:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it comes with time and studying of the environment.
26:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
26:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we've mentioned elephants a few times.
26:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I find elephants extremely fascinating.
26:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you just sit and watch an elephant, they're just amazing creatures.
27:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're so smart and so loving and so caring, but so big.
27:08
[SPEAKER_01]: and so forceful you know you really do have to pay attention to what they're doing and that only comes with time and study you know you can read about them there's books that provide insight on various characteristics and how animals behave and always going out with someone who's more knowledgeable than me so it's really great to be with other folks that
27:37
[SPEAKER_01]: have spent their life doing this.
27:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We mentioned Khufui.
27:41
[SPEAKER_01]: When I did Khufui, it was a fundraiser for a conservation organization and a camp called Musikese Camp, Musikese Conservation in the northern part of Khufui and Phil Jeffries and Tyrone McKeeath, friends of mine from Zambia,
28:07
[SPEAKER_01]: adventures but you know they they grew up in this part of the world their parents no stuff fills dad Richard also you know grew up in the bush back in the day right so back in the 50s when or 40s or whenever you know there wasn't there was a different culture here for sure and there was a much there were a much fewer people and much more
28:37
[SPEAKER_01]: read, particular animals, you know, how to read signs, where to go.
28:44
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, we got into one particular ecosystem that was short, scrub, brush with high grass.
28:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Close to a river, but not very close, and fill, you know, stop this when we were there.
28:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It said, you know, this is Buffalo territory.
29:03
[SPEAKER_01]: we have to be on alert for buffalo because buffalo's are you know they're quite dangerous and be quite aggressive um...
29:13
[SPEAKER_01]: if they feel threatened.
29:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So we wanted to be able to minimize any kind of risk there.
29:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we were paying attention, but understanding that particular ecosystem, where you are, what's likely to be there.
29:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So this time of year, it's very dry.
29:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you get to any kind of a water source, even a dry riverbed, we might walk up to a riverbed and go, there's no water here.
29:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But in reality, if you dig down a little bit, you may get water and elephants are very good at that.
29:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So you'll see where they've come into the riverbeds and have dug a watering hole for themselves.
29:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So you get to these places and you are on alert.
29:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You pay an attention to where you are, what's around you, what the topography is, where the drainage systems are, what do you hear?
30:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Just being, I think,
30:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Quite often we have won loss so much of our intuition and nature because of the lifestyles we live that we really don't have a lot of the innate knowledge that we probably had at one time.
30:23
[SPEAKER_01]: In listening is one of those where you can just sit and listen, sit still for a while and listen to nature around you and you'll learn what birds are around or they're making
30:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, do you hear something into distance?
30:38
[SPEAKER_01]: What is that?
30:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that one animal or a different animal?
30:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They can sound very similar.
30:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you can get them confused if you're not familiar with them.
30:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So, where, and, you know, where do you want to put your tent at night or, like, quite often, we don't use tents.
30:55
[SPEAKER_01]: We just cowboy camp because we know it's not going to rain and it can be fairly warm, but you just lay on the ground.
31:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Where do you want to do that?
31:06
[SPEAKER_01]: is an on top of a hill or you're going to dry camp and have to carry your water 10 km or do you want to be closer to a water source?
31:15
[SPEAKER_01]: If you do, how close do you want to be?
31:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Where's a safe spot?
31:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think looking at the environment as you get there making these judgments on what's a safe space, what do you expect to be there?
31:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you in an area that's loaded with elephants?
31:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, well you may want to camp a little differently than you do otherwise.
31:37
[SPEAKER_01]: birds.
31:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of these like people are, you know, they're all deserve massive respect.
31:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But quite often they don't want to be around you, you know, animals are a bit afraid of human beings.
31:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think they keep their distance.
31:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, we can, you know, we talk about that kind of stuff for a long time.
31:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh yeah, there's one animal that's perhaps some people say the most dangerous animal
32:06
[SPEAKER_04]: You said humans are the most dangerous in your right.
32:09
[SPEAKER_04]: But the one that's most dangerous to humans, I think surprises people in an Africa.
32:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there's so much of it.
32:14
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the mosquito.
32:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, tell what about what about malaria, what about vector borneal this is, you know, yeah, that's a, that's a real one, uh, malaria is endemic to Malawi endemic to this part of world and unfortunately, I've gotten malaria a number of times.
32:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a serious disease, it's a massive killer.
32:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the biggest killers, as you mentioned.
32:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's ways of kind of preventing yourself from getting malaria, depending on how long.
32:55
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're going for a short term trip, perhaps you want to take
32:58
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the prophylactic sits out there, malarone, there's other ones that are out there.
33:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Here we're giving malarone and told to take it, you know, some people do, some people don't because whatever their belief system is, maybe they're here for a long time and they don't want to take a drug for a long period of time.
33:21
[SPEAKER_01]: but then maybe they really don't want to get malice, so they take it.
33:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Other people test quite often, but one thing is interesting because I've had malaria, I think three times now, is that if you get it here, they can quickly identify it and quickly give you the medicine to be on the road of recovery, right?
33:44
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you go home, they're not used to malaria.
33:47
[SPEAKER_01]: and they will, there's a high probability of them not dying malaria.
33:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I experienced this in Trip to Scotland.
33:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I did the Great Outdoor Challenge, which is an annual
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: hiking adventure from where you hike from the west side of Scotland to the east side of Scotland and you select your own route and you make it you have to do it within two weeks so but you can do whatever route you want and so I plan this my wife and I went over to Scotland we had a nice introductory tour of Scotland seeing some of them
34:23
[SPEAKER_01]: beautiful areas they are taking train rides eating seafood, visiting the few that the local distilleries and just had a great time.
34:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we set off and she joined me for my first couple of days of hiking and then on the third day she caught a train and flew back because she had to get back for work and I had taken two weeks off.
34:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And so on the fourth day I started feeling a little wimpy, et cetera, and she said, look dude, you got malaria.
34:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't want malaria.
34:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't feel like that.
34:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I had it before and it developed differently.
35:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was, you know, it was very, very tricky.
35:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But I continued on and I hiked 170 miles with malaria.
35:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And finally, by the grace of God and of the kindness of a local farmer, we went in and started talking and he called the Paramedics and came and got me and took me to a hospital.
35:28
[SPEAKER_01]: which was teaching hospital and because it was a teaching hospital and they actually had someone from India who knew, right, they can treat it and once they started treating me, I got well really quickly.
35:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, if there was a day or so where they weren't sure what I had, what's wrong with this guy?
35:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Heading sauce gin is he dehydrated, what's the problem?
35:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it is.
35:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a tricky one.
35:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't, if you don't get too it quickly, it can be, it can be deadly for sure.
36:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of, lots of stories of people dying with malaria, especially children.
36:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the biggest killers in Africa in the world.
36:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, so many years ago, when I was in Kenya, I saw people that had malaria that went untreated or wasn't treated in time.
36:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And I, you know, I was asking some of the locals what what is this and said, well, that's malaria, but it was tragic what it does to people, just tragic.
36:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really really this quite interesting people have it's endemic, right?
36:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they have a high parasite count all the time.
36:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And even here, we have, you know, the security here in my house, the guards will come in and know, uh, somebody will be sick.
36:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, well, what what happened?
36:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it happens, right?
36:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And it happens every time.
36:54
[SPEAKER_04]: We say, oh, we have the cold, but malaria is way worse.
36:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's way worse.
37:00
[SPEAKER_04]: It's way worse.
37:02
[SPEAKER_04]: What are the, I don't want to spend too much time on this, but what are the efforts that are taking place to try to do something about malaria in Africa?
37:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's a, that's a great question.
37:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And here, I mean, going back to, you know, USAID, we had a huge malaria program.
37:18
[SPEAKER_01]: We spent millions and millions of dollars on various programs, helping to educate people on malaria, help with childhood malaria, distribute bednets to
37:32
[SPEAKER_01]: areas that were prone to malaria around waterways, late Malawi's is a huge lake.
37:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I forget exactly how long.
37:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like 500 miles long and 70 miles wide, 2000 feet deep, so it's one of the biggest lakes around, but with the rivers that flow into that, a lot of those areas are malaria prone.
37:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we work with those.
38:01
[SPEAKER_01]: those areas to eradicate malaria, right, to treat it, to get drugs out to people, get beddats out to people, which benets surprisingly do a lot to mitigate the impact or the occurrence of malaria because if you put it around your bed at night, you're not, and you use it properly, you're not going to get bit by an infected mosquito.
38:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So those are kind of programs that are out there, but without USA funding, those programs aren't happening.
38:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we fund other places and other programs model their efforts after the U.S.
38:42
[SPEAKER_01]: government with us pulling back that impacts, all these other programs as well.
38:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So it'll take years before we really see the impact of us moving out.
38:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's harsh because without those programs, malaria, certainly the incidence of malaria.
39:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel certain we'll go up.
39:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, another big challenge in Africa, of course, is habitat.
39:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, you know, I, I really have mixed feelings for my visits, um, I love the people of Africa.
39:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I absolutely love the people, wonderful, wonderful people.
39:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And when people don't have as much opportunity as can be the case in places in Africa, then they have to lean into the environment more and more for survival.
39:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that can be a real threat, actually, to the habitat that allows all this biodiversity that you were talking about, magnificent biodiversity that we have nowhere else on Earth, no other place, you know, has whatever it has.
39:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I know that you've probably done a lot.
39:55
[SPEAKER_04]: preserve habitat.
39:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Can you speak to that a little bit?
39:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, you hit the nail right on the head.
40:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Really, especially here in Malawi.
40:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Malawi is an extremely poor country.
40:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about 4-5th pours in the world, depending on what you look at and when you look at it.
40:15
[SPEAKER_01]: The pressure on the ecosystem and natural resources is immense.
40:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You have rapid population growth.
40:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the Maui has 22 million people right now and expecting to be by 2030, you know, 2040, double.
40:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're going to have a doubling in population, you know, in the next 15 years or so.
40:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, what?
40:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Where do the resources come from?
40:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Because right now, people heat their homes.
40:48
[SPEAKER_01]: They cook their food.
40:50
[SPEAKER_01]: All using wood products, biofuels, mainly wood or charcoal made from wood.
40:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And all that is coming from illegal deforestation across the country.
41:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You see people on bicycles, carry-in bags of charcoal,
41:11
[SPEAKER_01]: you know stacked too high maybe three high so five to six bags huge bags of charcoal on their bike it's a very difficult living to bring it into town to sell it uh... and it'll be broken into smaller pieces and sold across the town but that's how people are making a living and that's how they're heating their fuel their homes you know um... right firewood is everywhere you go you see that
41:39
[SPEAKER_01]: because there's no alternative.
41:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of our programming in the past has been to provide alternatives, help create businesses that provide alternatives to charcoal.
41:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So work with the forestry department to improve their ability to manage forests, to use technology, to measure forest growth more accurately, come up with better forestry rules and regulations.
42:11
[SPEAKER_01]: These kind of things, but you know there's a lot of people and they all need energy.
42:16
[SPEAKER_01]: If you couldn't go in your kitchen and turn on the stove, what would you do?
42:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you can't eat your house, your family, that's to your family, you.
42:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Maslow was on to something with his hierarchy of needs.
42:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he knew where you got it.
42:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Had a pet of clue what was going on there, so the pressure on wood resources in this country and not just here, but everywhere is intense.
42:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Malawi the the game parks I've talked about are usually they're all protected right there an identified area but the national parks a lot of them have fences around them because the pressure is right up to the boundary.
43:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think like the pressures in real and what really has to happen is people have to understand the value of these resources and what a park brings to them.
43:13
[SPEAKER_01]: That it's not just a reserve for trees to be cut down and hauled off and turned into charcoal.
43:23
[SPEAKER_01]: By protecting the resources in these particular areas, it brings value into their lives.
43:30
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an educational process, but once people understand that it's like anything, if you value something, you're going to take care of it.
43:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes it's not straightforward, maybe to us it is because we have a different environment that we grow up in, the environmental is different.
43:51
[SPEAKER_01]: We have an education system and even just the nurturing system that we have, is different than what is in other countries.
44:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
44:01
[SPEAKER_01]: to help a community understand the value of a protected area is really critical.
44:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll give you an example.
44:08
[SPEAKER_01]: One, one place I'm familiar with, Kusungu National Park here in Malawi.
44:13
[SPEAKER_01]: The pressure was right up against the park.
44:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Cutting trees, poaching animals, doing all this right battles between the Rangers and the community members,
44:26
[SPEAKER_01]: encroachment, illegally selling pieces of the park, or whatever, so there was this conflict all the time.
44:36
[SPEAKER_01]: We came in and put in a fence, a fence was built along that boundary.
44:42
[SPEAKER_01]: The chiefs of the communities really appreciated that because it defined the park boundary
44:51
[SPEAKER_01]: We also help them have jobs.
44:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you put in the fence, higher local people, they give them a job, right, create opportunities to come in and get the resources they need, but in a managed way.
45:07
[SPEAKER_01]: We put in solar systems, we gave them other jobs associated with tailoring or whatever, but they realized that by protecting the farm, excuse me, by protecting the park, it helped them, it provides them with resources, sustainable long lasting resources, water.
45:27
[SPEAKER_01]: because the thing that's missing here is that when you denude an area of all its resources, what happens with water?
45:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you have a real problem with rainfall.
45:39
[SPEAKER_01]: rainfall patterns change.
45:42
[SPEAKER_01]: We're, in this part of the world, we experience much longer severe and more severe droughts.
45:48
[SPEAKER_01]: When the rains come, they're more intense.
45:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're seeing a lot of that in the United States as well.
45:57
[SPEAKER_01]: and tropical rain is more intense anyway than rainfall outside of the tropics.
46:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's even worse, then the landscape itself can absorb any of the water that's coming down.
46:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So what happens, it runs off, it doesn't absorb, you create flooding situations,
46:17
[SPEAKER_01]: top soils law so you've exacerbated this problem even more right so now you have no top soil you can't plant your primary crop whether that's maize or some other crop you flooded the dombo's or the wetlands with another meter of soil so now the dombo's impacted the water
46:45
[SPEAKER_01]: you're not protecting that.
46:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of that comes back to enforcement and corruption is does the government have the will power to protect its natural resources and understand the value that it gives to its citizens.
47:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean we experience that in the United States with our national forests because we protect the national forest we can go out and use them.
47:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You're a bikerider, you can go and ride through these national forests because they're there
47:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a hiker, I'm a mountain bike rider, same.
47:17
[SPEAKER_01]: If we've learned the value of that through time, and so now we're advocates for the protection of these areas.
47:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You have multi-use areas, so you can satisfy different needs for different folks, but we're advocates for the protection of these type of environments because they bring value to our lives.
47:37
[SPEAKER_01]: The same here, you just have to help communities understand the value
47:43
[SPEAKER_01]: of these areas for their life.
47:45
[SPEAKER_01]: What is it that brings value to them?
47:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a that's a difficult, that's a difficult chore, you know?
47:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a uphill battle because people are living day to day.
47:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean it's a very impoverished area.
47:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when you have
48:01
[SPEAKER_01]: you can't you don't have a buffer to last for two months, right?
48:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You're worried about tomorrow.
48:07
[SPEAKER_01]: How am I going to get food tomorrow?
48:10
[SPEAKER_01]: How am I going to make it to next week or next month?
48:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not worried about retirement at 65.
48:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm worried about next week.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So to that and, um, you know, it's a very intense.
48:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my kids definitely, they drive, you know, your kids, how are you going to feed your kids?
48:30
[SPEAKER_01]: What are they going to do?
48:32
[SPEAKER_01]: How are they going to move forward?
48:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So all of this is about developing these economies so that they could be more self-sufficient and have an economic driver behind them that's benefits the people that are there.
48:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Well Jeff, correct me where I'm wrong here, but it seems that agrarian societies are even hunter-gatherers societies.
48:58
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they lean heavily on the land, and as population increases what we know what happens, there's only so much land, right?
49:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And around the world we've seen that when there's opportunity to live a different way, and people can can adopt that, then
49:19
[SPEAKER_04]: not only that, but when people have opportunity and they have good medical care and and such as that, then generally the birth rate drops for countries because they
49:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's face it, many people in societies like this, they have a lot of kids because they need someone to care for them when they're older and they don't know how many their own children will survive to be able to even do that.
49:45
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a numbers game.
49:47
[SPEAKER_04]: They also need more help working the fields, gathering whatever is necessary for day-to-day existence and so kids,
49:59
[SPEAKER_04]: are a huge help and resource for the family, but as as people have the opportunity of, oh, you mean so half my children are not going to die, they're all going to survive now, because we know what to do about malaria, we know what to do about these childhood diseases and cholera and all these things.
50:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So the birth rates drop to something more like the replacement
50:26
[SPEAKER_04]: and you get more of a sustainable culture.
50:29
[SPEAKER_04]: It protects the national environments, but it also is better for the people.
50:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And it seems like the common denominator and this is where I want your opinion.
50:37
[SPEAKER_04]: It's opportunity.
50:38
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a chance to do something in a different way that's beneficial.
50:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
50:45
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you think?
50:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think you really set it quite well.
50:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, all of the points that you raise are very valid.
50:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, it depends on where you're talking about, but yes, I have to say yes.
50:58
[SPEAKER_01]: With more people, land tenure is a big issue in large parts of the world because of the reasons you just mentioned.
51:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if the example I use in conversation here is
51:15
[SPEAKER_01]: right he's in the s5 boys okay the next generation your your father he inherited maybe twenty five hectares okay race so he has twenty five hectares his father had a hundred hectares now he has five boys and he's down to what five hectares so in two generations you've gone from being able to work a hundred hectare farm to a five hectare farm
51:42
[SPEAKER_01]: and now you have five kids and so it is a few generations you go from where you're actually working 1% of the property that your you know your relatives work before that.
51:57
[SPEAKER_01]: You know it's tough.
51:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Farming's tough even the best farmer will tell you it's a tough business right.
52:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So but making a living, eating a living out of a one acre or a half a hectare
52:12
[SPEAKER_01]: For most people, I think Hector's about 2.3 acres, something like that.
52:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's very hard to eat a living for a family of whatever number on a small piece of property.
52:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be done.
52:29
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a guy used to work with John Jevin, he does bio-intensive agriculture out of California.
52:39
[SPEAKER_01]: and he and his trial plots he actually worked on a thousand square foot plot to try to grow the amount of calories one person would need um... you know but it's you know it's very very difficult i mean hold the count and you got to got to realize that most of these places grow a primary crop uh... between zambian here kin is the same you've been to kinia they grow maize they grow corn
53:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, from the English bringing corn over 150 years ago, it has taken hold and it is the primary crop.
53:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Local people don't consider having eaten a meal until they've had May.
53:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So here it's called Seema.
53:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you haven't had your Seema.
53:25
[SPEAKER_01]: you haven't had a meal.
53:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Now you may have eaten other things, but it wasn't a meal.
53:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're doing food surveys, it's quite interesting because you'll ask them if you had a meal.
53:34
[SPEAKER_01]: No, really, if you eat anything, yes, I ate some greens and I ate some peanuts and I ate whatever else, but I didn't have my Seema and it's not food.
53:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I ate Seema.
53:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And in Kenya to golly right.
53:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it was Kuma wiki which is colored greens and I have to tell you I'm a huge fan.
53:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I love u golly and so Kuma wiki.
53:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's so good.
53:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I get it.
53:59
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a meal for me.
54:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you see a lot of the parallels.
54:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm from the southern part of the US and you see a lot of the foods, like grids.
54:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Like grids?
54:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Grids?
54:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for sure, okra.
54:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Okra's an African food.
54:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It came over with the slaves, right?
54:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So peas and greens and okra.
54:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of this stuff, you see a lot of commonality about what people eat this way.
54:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's tough.
54:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, being very poor.
54:29
[SPEAKER_01]: and a society that doesn't, you know, they're struggling for a day-to-day existence.
54:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a hard way to live.
54:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So, working to try to give people opportunity to get to the point where you were talking about where you can maybe reach replacement age.
54:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You can educate your children what they find is when women are educated on the birth weight does drop.
54:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So, the more educated,
54:58
[SPEAKER_01]: people get the way they can adjust their lifestyles accordingly, but at the same time you have to have opportunities.
55:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And some of these nonprofits that we were talking about really, that's what they try to do, whether it's Africa Parks.
55:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're talking about Magetti, Magetti has over 100,000 people that live around the park.
55:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So they have huge programs with these communities so that they don't apply pressure to the park, right?
55:29
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't want poachers in there.
55:31
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't want somebody breaking down their fence to cut their trees or kill their elephants or whatever it is.
55:37
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to help these communities thrive and survive because if they're doing well, that's less pressure on the park.
55:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it's quite interesting because some of these programs, if, you know, from the beginning though, if they are, if the conservation program is successful, they want to pump money back into the local economy to help the local economy.
56:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that can have unintended consequences because,
56:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You also, the school system may improve, the health system may improve, maybe the roads are getting better, et cetera, right?
56:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are all good things, right?
56:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But that community could also be right on the edge of your protected area.
56:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So now you've created this community with all these wonderful amenities in people in other areas to magnet.
56:33
[SPEAKER_01]: One thousand amenities.
56:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So now you have a really growing community in a very unfortunate place.
56:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So sometimes you have to look at this and say, okay, what are the consequences of success here?
56:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, are these the unintended consequences of success?
56:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe we didn't plan this or think this through enough.
56:57
[SPEAKER_01]: We should have thought about
56:58
[SPEAKER_01]: maybe investing in our money 20 kilometers away or 50 kilometers away or in this other area so that they could grow and they could be more prosperous so that it doesn't put the pressure directly on these conservation areas which makes success even harder.
57:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, there's so much to this, it goes deep.
57:20
[SPEAKER_01]: That's, it's complicated.
57:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you think about, I mean, we're talking about education, it's, it's very interesting.
57:26
[SPEAKER_01]: How many variables go into educating the child?
57:29
[SPEAKER_01]: You think about it's just getting, getting your, your son or daughter up and getting them out the door and getting them to school, right?
57:37
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, what if your bridge is out?
57:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been washed away by a storm and that child can't get to school.
57:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even talk about the curriculum or the quality of teachers or whatever, but you know, you, so that kid can't get school.
57:50
[SPEAKER_01]: What if you have a daughter and they don't have the right facilities at the school and makes it very difficult for her to go to school?
57:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Or they don't have books.
58:01
[SPEAKER_01]: One story I can tell you is that when I was in Sanbia,
58:06
[SPEAKER_01]: We were working with an implementing partner who was building a schoolhouse in a very, very remote community in the South of Longland National Park, or right, not in it, but adjacent to it.
58:20
[SPEAKER_01]: In the, you we had to drive several hours and we walked, we got into canoe and canoeed down a river and walks more and canoeed some more, and eventually we got to this community.
58:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And what was there was a cement slab with a steel infrastructure, a superstructure with a roof.
58:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So you had a roof, a tin roof, some iron beams and a concrete floor.
58:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's their school since 1916 raining.
58:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what people...
58:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
58:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, think about it.
58:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Fifty-six years are trying to learn in this environment, rain, cold, whatever.
59:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, try to get a teacher to go there.
59:03
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you do?
59:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I, where do you put your books?
59:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have books?
59:07
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you, what do you do?
59:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So, a two room school house was built with a central office.
59:15
[SPEAKER_01]: That made all the difference in the world and a bathroom.
59:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were going to build a new teacher's homes there.
59:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this very remote undesirable place, who had a community that was extremely, well, highly motivated, became a very
59:35
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... desirable place to go teach because you have a community that supports you you have a facility there you have uh... maybe a new house you can actually bring your family and live on the side so with just a simple small construction project and some tools and books and some things nothing fancy there was no lights or anything there uh...
1:00:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got, you've changed the whole situation, 180 degrees, right?
1:00:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that's a community again on the edge of a national park.
1:00:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So now you have this community.
1:00:12
[SPEAKER_01]: These kids are getting educated and different things.
1:00:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe even in learning how to guide, maybe getting some environmental education, learning about the value of trees, learning about the value of wildlife, clean water, et cetera.
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_01]: That this whole community depends on, right?
1:00:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So you depend on clean water.
1:00:31
[SPEAKER_01]: got to have water.
1:00:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you get water out of the river or is it too dirty?
1:00:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it healthy?
1:00:38
[SPEAKER_01]: What's happening?
1:00:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have sustainably?
1:00:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you start helping them grow, let's say a woodlot, a sustainable woodlot that you can sustainably harvest over a period of time so that you're not stealing wood or cutting wood illegally in other areas or invading the park to cut
1:00:58
[SPEAKER_01]: would out of the park so you have a sustainable woodlot there.
1:01:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's ways of doing this, but one little change can make a big difference in a community like that growing.
1:01:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Crawl.
1:01:09
[SPEAKER_04]: It sure seems the things Jeff that we take for granted so often.
1:01:16
[SPEAKER_04]: the number the first top two I would say right clean affordable energy clean drinkable water those two things completely change the equation completely I think water we take those for granted in the year one hundred percent
1:01:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, never say no.
1:01:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We get up at home, right?
1:01:34
[SPEAKER_01]: You get up and turn the faucet on, make a couple coffee, or whatever it is, take shower, maybe take two showers in the day.
1:01:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you don't even think about it.
1:01:44
[SPEAKER_04]: You drink the water without concern.
1:01:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You get out.
1:01:46
[SPEAKER_04]: You get out.
1:01:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Kurt, if you had to get up and put five gallons of water on your head and carry it two miles every day, you would conserve that water.
1:02:02
[SPEAKER_04]: a community in in Kenya their water source if if there wasn't enough rain they captured rain off the rooftops but if there wasn't enough rain then it was about a mile hike down a very very steep hill and to a muddy creek that was very very questionable I mean I I did not want to drink it you know and they would have to go down there and then
1:02:28
[SPEAKER_04]: that was their family's water for the day and you bet they didn't waste it.
1:02:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it's just did a hike across, I just did a hike across a forest reserve here called Tuma and it's on the Riff Valley apartment not far from Lake Malawi, but there the pressure is immense.
1:02:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not too far from the long way which is the capital city of Malawi and there's
1:02:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So these urban centers are a driver for illegal, but then you also have the communities around there, which are growing.
1:03:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So you see a lot of pressure on this park, even though the guards in wildlife action group, which is run by a wonderful lady, Lynn Clifford, she's an Irish woman, a very fiery passionate Irish woman as you'd expect.
1:03:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You see the pressure there, and part of that reserve had been completely denoted seven eight years ago, and then as we were walking through it, you could see how just natural regeneration had let it come back, right?
1:03:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So just leaving nature alone, it will recover pretty quickly.
1:03:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you keep the pressure on it, it'll just get to a point where it can't come back, and then you have a bad situation.
1:03:57
[SPEAKER_01]: But you really, you know, walking across that is just stunning landscape on the, a scarves on the eastern escarpment of the Great Riff Valley, right?
1:04:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is an active riff.
1:04:08
[SPEAKER_01]: The world is separating right there.
1:04:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's super cool, um, and the land, the views and landscape are just tremendous.
1:04:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But without constant protection, all of that would disappear, right?
1:04:21
[SPEAKER_01]: They, yeah, our ability to self-regulate,
1:04:26
[SPEAKER_01]: is very minimal and in some cultures it may be better than others but in these cultures it's quite interesting how their idea of property and ownership and community is much different than ours and so you have to take that into consideration when you're in these areas too but
1:04:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Lynn and this particular case she has extremely good relationships with the communities around there and so if there's a problem, they try to work it out.
1:05:00
[SPEAKER_01]: But you have to show value of this particular area for the communities to want to try to save it.
1:05:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Why should they?
1:05:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all about today, so why shouldn't I get what I can today?
1:05:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I worry about tomorrow.
1:05:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Well Jeff, we've actually burned up our time and I would like to talk to you for hours more.
1:05:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I find it also fascinating.
1:05:22
[SPEAKER_04]: There's so much good work that we could do around the world, you know, not just Africa, but I just want to say it to the listeners out there if you haven't considered how valuable affordable energy and clean water are and what a difference that that could make, not just for the people of an area, but the way that that takes the pressure off the land as well so that we can preserve
1:05:47
[SPEAKER_04]: a heritage for our children and their children, and the children's children, and these remarkable, remarkable places, give that some more thought.
1:05:54
[SPEAKER_04]: These aren't difficult problems to solve, but they require intentionality and a concerted effort.
1:06:01
[SPEAKER_04]: We know how to do it.
1:06:02
[SPEAKER_04]: We just don't have the resources together in one place to do it, and Jeff, will you leave us with an experience that you had in one of these beautiful national parks?
1:06:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Impacted you that you think might be meaningful for others, so they can understand a little bit more about how wonderful the natural environments are.
1:06:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, sure, uh,
1:06:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm happy to credit that's a nice question to be asked because you know on these, my trips across these different protected areas, there's always something so beautiful, so surprising about it, whether it's the people, as you mentioned earlier, and the warm generosity that you find and
1:06:48
[SPEAKER_01]: real loving nature of human beings and places I just always astounded at how great people can be just I think one of the one of the things that gosh and I have so many that are flooding my mind I'm just thinking of maybe in Kofuay when I was walking across Kofuay the first place we went to was
1:07:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Matumbo, it's the highest point, it's not real high, it's always very flat, it's some of the oldest world we have, and you've climbed up this extremely rugged knife's edge ridge and you get to the top and we've put a drone up to get a sight and you just look across this vast
1:07:42
[SPEAKER_01]: and how beautiful these areas are.
1:07:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you change your perspective, just a little bit, it really can change everything.
1:07:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds silly, but you know, change your perspective, change your viewpoint, but it does because you can just alter the way you see something and it changes the way you think and you feel and you understand where you are and
1:08:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I was blown away by that because you realized how fast that particular area is, how beautiful it is, and how insignificant, but how significant we all all at the same time, and what you, you know, it makes, it made me really proud to be trying to raise money.
1:08:24
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a fundraiser.
1:08:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I was trying to raise about $30,000 for Mussicaese, but you realize how worthwhile those efforts are.
1:08:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think,
1:08:34
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, one person being passionate enough can make a difference in what they do.
1:08:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have to have intentionality, you have to really want it, and have a drive to do this.
1:08:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think maybe that's it.
1:08:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I can probably go on and talk about.
1:08:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for asking.
1:08:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you Jeff for sharing a little bit of your world with us and, you know, it's maybe it's a little flip in a me to wish you all the best when you're under such pressure with USAID being dissolved.
1:09:05
[SPEAKER_04]: But I know that you're going to continue to make a positive impact on your world.
1:09:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I can see that in your heart and I appreciate what you've done and thank you for sharing your stories with us today.
1:09:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you for having me on.
1:09:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a pleasure to be on his show as I mentioned earlier.
1:09:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You bring me a lot of joy every day when I get up.
1:09:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I put a podcast on, walked work, and enjoy that, and it's quite uplifting.
1:09:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you very much for sharing your time with me.
1:09:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm really looking forward to going back to North Carolina and seeing what the next chapter is there.
1:09:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I got a CDT hike plan for next May and maybe some shakeout hikes before that.
1:09:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, life is fun.
1:09:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to make it and take it for all its worth.
1:09:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, hey, the CDT goes through our valley.
1:10:00
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you happen to be in the neighborhood.
1:10:02
[SPEAKER_04]: We need to get together.
1:10:05
[SPEAKER_04]: count on it let's all right well thanks again and for all you have to get your back back and come join me though Kurt that's the only caveat there yeah that that would be great that would be fantastic that'd be fantastic
1:10:23
[SPEAKER_04]: you know for all the listeners out there thank you for your time today and you know this is a little bit different sort of an episode but i think it was super meaningful and it's so fun to hear about what other parts of the world are like to so until the next show please get out there and have some fun.