Life is a story, waiting to be told
My sisters enjoyed their Zebra of the Day pics, so here is the October Zebra of the Month for you, just in case you need a reason to smile.
ZZZZZZZEBRA!!!
NOTES: ©2024 Jadi Campbell. Photo ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
In Namibia we drove a long way to reach Twyfelfontein. We had a great tent as our lodging that night.
We spent the next afternoon on a guided tour of a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Twyfelfontein, also known as /Ui-//aes, is the home of one of Africa’s biggest concentrations of petroglyphs. It’s an open-air gallery in the Namib Desert, with 1,000- to 10,000-year-old images carved on slabs of basalt. A petroglyph was sent to the National Museum in Windhoek in the early part of the 20th century, but otherwise the site is mostly intact.
San (Bushmen) hunter-gatherers had long lived in this area. They carved and occasionally painted animals they were familiar with or hunted. Lions and more than 200 giraffes and 100 rhino are depicted, along with hippos, ostrich, impala, elephant and zebra. And we were astonished to see shore birds and a seal!
The San had traveled across the desert to the ocean and back, recording what they’d seen and hunted there!
Along with figures with bows and arrows, foot and paw prints, some petroglyphs depict magical creatures. One engraving is of a lion with human toes, portraying a shaman who had crossed over into the animal world.
According to the explanatory signs in the Visitors’ Center and the excellent article https://www.africanworldheritagesites.org/cultural-places/rock-art-pre-history, “Rock art was the preserve of medicine people, or shamans, and had two functions: as a means to enter the natural world and to record the shamans’ experiences in that world. … The shaman’s vision became disturbed at the start of trance, and he would ‘see’ patterned flashes of light. Produced in the brain, these flashes are also known as entoptic images or images ‘in the eye’. They are depicted in the seemingly abstract geometric images in the rock art. Meanders, dots, lines, grids, spirals and whorls resemble entoptic or inner-eye images recorded in neurophysiological experiments. Although entoptic images are similar for all people in the world, the associations formed in a state of trance are contextual. The shaman fuses his hallucinatory visions with images of animals and other potent spiritual symbols.
…. Engravings of human footprints and animal tracks are frequently placed next to or inside tunnels, deep fissures and inaccessible surfaces, as if these indicate paths and entrances into the spirit world. It was believed that a shaman could move through solid rock, using entrances not visible to the normal eye. To the artist the rock face was not merely a canvas but rather a veil serving as the threshold to a parallel spiritual world.” [1]
The petroglyphs also provided practical information, like where to find watering holes.
The region is sere and beautiful in a severe way.
I’ve said this before, and will go on saying it: UNESCO World Heritage sites are for everyone who cares about our shared history and planet. Go visit!
NOTES: [1] https://www.africanworldheritagesites.org/cultural-places/rock-art-pre-history/twyfelfontein.html For more information go to Info Namibia.com/ © 2024 Jadi Campbell. Photos © 2023 Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
I’ve posted steadily about our trip to southern Africa. It’s fun to write about! The region is a bottomless wellspring of inspiration.
That trip gave me something I don’t feel very often: hope.
We’ve spent months in Asia in natural habitats that are now being dammed, or mined, or paved in the name of progress. It’s all happening so quickly. We know we won’t recognize those places when we go back.
But in southern Africa, in Botswana and Namibia, we were thrilled by the wildlife and the inhabitants. These countries spoke in growls and whistles and birdsong and hippo songs and human voices.
The Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) is the largest transnational conservation area in the world at 444.000 km2. It is enormous, larger than Germany and Austria combined and nearly twice as large as the United Kingdom. The KAZA TFCA lies in the Kavango and Zambezi river basins where Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe converge. [1]
There are issues to deal with – the loss of domestic animals to predators. The way elephants eat or trample crops. The complicated cross-country agreements. But, as their website states, “Local communities participate with enthusiasm in management of the TFCA through the Transboundary Natural Resources Managment Forum. The aim of this forum is to maximize skills and resources to promote sustainable land use, conservation of wildlife and landscapes, and rural development.”
I urge everyone to learn about this multinational effort to preserve the environment for the benefit of ALL inhabitants, whether winged, hooved, legged, or finned. FINALLY! A region of the world that’s getting it right!
NOTES: [1] https://www.kavangozambezi.org/ ©2024 Jadi Campbell. Photos ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
This summer I took a train to Hamburg for the first time. Hamburg has more bridges than Venice, Amsterdam and London combined. The St. Pauli Reeperbahn is where the Beatles got their start playing in small clubs. (It’s pretty seedy in the daytime, but I did spot the life-sized silhouettes of the Fab Four.)
The one thing my friend Diana was insistent on seeing was the Miniatur Wunderland. This is the world’s largest model train museum.
Layout size: 1,490 square meters or 16,038 square feet.
The rooms go dark for part of each hour and the exhibits light up!
Now take a look at the SCALE….
The people who built these models must have great senses of humor. You have to squint anyway to take in all the details (260,000 figures! 130,000 tiny trees!). But when you begin to look you see the funniest things.
I’ll end this with my personal favorite: A boat on Venice’s Gran Canale filled with wild animals.
NOTES: ©2024 Jadi Campbell. ©2024 Photos Diana Lopez and Jadi Campbell. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
Jorge Luis Borges was born on August 24, 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a colassal figure in Spanish language arts and letters. His work is classified as fantasy and philosophical literature; he was a poet and translator, too. My second book Tsunami Cowboys includes a quote of his.
Borges said, “Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.” [1]
In his honor I am reprinting the post I wrote after visiting a tiger park in India. – Jadi
“A brave heart and a courteous tongue,” said he. “They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling.” —The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling [2]
We’re in India for a few weeks and currently we’re riding in the back of an open jeep. We spent the better part of five hours each day on really bad roads to get here.
Now we’re layered in the few long-sleeved clothes we brought along. How cold can it be if you’re not way up north trekking in the Himalyas?
How cold? Man, it’s effing freezing.
It’s shortly after 6 a.m. in the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve and we’ve been up since 5:00. “Remind me,” I beg. “What are we doing here?” I wrap the blanket the tiger lodge lent us tighter around my body. (What I really want is a sub zero temperatures sleeping bag.) “Remind me,” I ask again. “Why are we doing this?”
“You wanted to come back to India,” Uwe prompts.
“Oh, yeah. Now I remember.” And it’s true: I was really excited to return. I fell in love with the subcontinent when we visited a decade ago. In Goa we walked miles of pristine beaches. In Karnataka we attended an astonishing Nandi Purnima, the full moon festival, and Hampi was a bare landscape filled with gigantic boulders and ancient temples.
In a country this exotic and large, surely we’d experience something new when we came back. What I did not expect was that I’d be freezing my ass off.
***
We’re doing a mix of culture and nature. India is one of the two most populated countries on the planet, and we thought it would be smart to schedule some time in quieter areas too. I’m glad we did. The north central region of Madya Pradesh is green and varied and home to some of the few remaining wild Bengal tiger populations.
So for two days at Bandhavgarh and a day at Kanha National Park*, we haul our sorry butts out of bed at the crack of dawn, pull on all our clothes and drape ourselves in borrowed blankets. 6 a.m.-1 p.m. for the early safari; 3-6 p.m. for the afternoon attempt. If we’re lucky, we’ll spot a big cat.
We’re not lucky. We’re cold.
***
Later we shed layers as the day warms up. The parks contain barking and spotted deer,
gaurs, nilgai,
lemurs and langurs,
wild peacocks and other birdlife,
wild boar,
and a landscape filled with watering holes and high grasses, forest and farmers’ villages. On the second day at Bandhavgarh our jeep carries a park ranger to inspect a water buffalo kill from the night before. It occurred just outside the official boundary of the preserve and the farmer will be reimbursed for the animal the tiger took down.
We aren’t allowed to leave the jeep – ever – and the ranger approaches the carcass very slowly.
Where there’s a fresh kill, the big cat can’t be far.
By the third day I’ve perfected what I name the mummy wrap. I have myself wrapped so tight that I literally can’t move, but this way the blanket doesn’t unwind in the cold wind.
Brr.
And, suddenly, a tiger leaps from the forest, followed by his mate. He moves into the reeds and returns dragging a dead spotted deer by the neck.
We see them for less than a minute and those seconds are absolutely worth the days of waiting. My God, they’re magnificent! During the afternoon safari we get lucky again: 10 seconds of spotting a shyer, rarer leopard.
Uwe captures the group of spotted deer nervously fleeing the leopard. He’s in Photographer Heaven.
Naturally we’re already dreaming – about an African safari.
In memory of Jorge Luis Borges, 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986
NOTES: [1] New Refutation of Time, Other Inquisitions, 1952. [2] Kanha National Park provided the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. © 2014 Jadi Campbell. Previously published as Remind Me Again: What Are We Doing Here? All photos © Uwe Hartmann.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
“Wherever there are birds, there is hope.” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan
There is something incredibly surreal — and very, very funny — to be out in a jeep in the sand dunes on the Namibian coast and see the world’s largest bird stroll by.
Uwe posted photos from our recent trip to southern Africa on his photography website. He now has an entire section dedicated just to birds of Namibia. http://viewpics.de/pics/Namibia/Birds Here are some of his birds and their stories.
The ostriches were seemingly everywhere. They walk around in the Namib, the world’s oldest desert and one of the driest places on the planet. They hang out in flocks in Etosha National Park.
They hang out with other species, too. It’s safety in numbers, as well as combining forces against predators. The elephants provide their bulk and the impalas have keen hearing and sight.
We saw hundreds of flamingos on the coast.
When the rainy season arrives, the flamingos send birds north to see if the saltpan in Etosha Park has flooded yet. If the scouts don’t return, the rest of the flocks head north as well. Ann and Mike Scott in NamPower/Namibia Nature Foundation Strategic Partnership Newsletter No. 5: September 2010 had this to say: “Greater Flamingos are widely distributed in southern Africa with concentrations at flooded salt pans (during breeding) and coastal bays (during non-breeding). …at the central coast, they are concentrated at Walvis Bay and Sandwich Harbour. … Breeding occurs in large, typically mixed colonies on raised islands on flooded salt pan at Etosha …. Laying induced by extensive flooding and continued high levels increases chances of success.”
The birds migrate to this giant saltpan in Etosha once it floods. 1,100,000 flamingos were recorded in an especially rainy year!
Uwe photographed this juvenile African openbill stork in Etosha.
I’ve saved my favorite photo he took of the Southern carmine bee-eaters for this post:
Here’s another bee-eater, this one in olive.
For the final image, I leave you with a species that birders and guides all get excited about: the lilac-breasted roller. Our guide was really pleased with himself that he got us close enough to this elusive bird for a photo.
Much as I’d love to take credit for this post, it owes everything to my husband’s great eye and good camera equipment.
NOTES: One last comment about the flamingos: their other regular breeding site in southern Africa is Sua Pan in the Makgadikgadi Pans in Botswana. We visited Makgadikgadi a few weeks later. ©2024 Jadi Campbell. ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
Yes, another post about the wildlife of southern Africa. I’ve written about lions and giraffes and ostriches and marabou storks and hippos. No lengthy explanations this time. Instead, here are Uwe’s photographs of some other animals we saw. Every day brought new creatures into our consciousnesses. They’ve taken up residence there….
We saw all these wild animals during the four days we spent exploring Etosha National Park in Namibia. Seeing them in their natural habitat is powerful magic.
NOTES: ©2024 Jadi Campbell. Photos ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
We took the trip of a lifetime last year in Namibia and Botswana.
Once you are away from the few cities, the choices for overnight lodging become scarce. We picked lodges on rivers or watering holes. Each meal brought something new to identify and photograph and add to our growing list of fellow creatures.
I’ve already mentioned the giraffes that came to drink on precarious legs.
Here are some photos of the other visitors to the watering hole. I’ve just given names and photos. Their presence speaks for them without needing any more words from me.
NOTES: Uwe took all of these photos from the watering hole at Onguma Bush Camp, Namibia. ©2024 Jadi Campbell. Photos ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photography and his photos of our trips can be viewed at viewpics.de.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
Johnny Hartman was born July 3, 1923 in Houma, Louisiana. As a jazz singer Johnny Hartman is most famous for his 1963 collaboration with saxophonist John Coltrane on the sublime album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. Also playing on the album are McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones. (This was John Coltranes’s only album with a singer!)
Hartman was a crooner par excellence. Frank Sinatra’s name might be more famous, but from the first time I heard Hartman singing a song I knew who I’ll forever prefer. I discovered him late in life, the soundtrack to a film perhaps, or playing on a jazz radio station. In any case, I promptly bought three of his CDs. When I’m in a mood for love or my spirit needs soothing, I listen to his voice. In his honor here is a post I wrote about romance. How can I not honor him? Hartman’s kind of music will never go stale. – Jadi
For twenty-five years (minus a day) I had a memory of rose-colored glass. Uwe and I got married over a quarter of a century ago. Aside from thinking Yikes, how did that happen?!, I have sighed Awwww. Not many things last this long, especially when we’re talking about human beans….
You know how some couples seem to glide through life without ever having a disagreement?
We aren’t that couple.
But I distinctly recall that the hotel room where we spent our first night as husband and wife had old-fashioned windows with glass panels in various colors. I can remember looking at those little panes and thinking, How wonderful to begin married life looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. That first image has comforted me countless times. It’s provided me with endless inspiration, and I love telling friends the story of those old windows that shimmered and glowed like gemstones.
We wanted to return to the little town in Alsace where it all began. We booked the same hotel and both of us think we may even have been given the same room. We drove over a day before our anniversary and checked in as it began to rain. The sight of the rain on the windows was get outta here romantic.
I took some pictures. But later, checking to make sure my photos turned out, I was puzzled. The views of the village outside the windows had stayed pretty. But, wait a second: where were the colored panes of glass both of us are sure we remember?
Had my mind and emotions played tricks all these years, keeping me roped in with a faulty metaphor? Or is my eye sight seriously that bad?
The mystery was solved by a friend who reminded me that hotels – especially old ones – spend money on renovations. So, along with the elevator that was not there when we checked in 25 years ago, the windows were probably recent too. The glass in the windows is now textured, maybe ‘pebbled’ is the word I want. The view is still ever so slightly wavy and distorted…
We had three gorgeous days in one of our favorite regions in Europe. Yes, it remained romantic. As you can see from the photos, with rain or without, the views from the windows are lovely.
And, in the right light, my world as a married woman still looks rose-colored.
In memory of Johnny Hartman, 3 July, 1923 – 15 September, 1983
NOTES: ©Jadi Campbell 2024. Previously published as My Silver Wedding Anniversary, or, The Rose-Colored Windows that Weren’t. I dedicate this post to Uwe, my wonderful, long-suffering spousal unit. 30 years and counting! To see his photos from our trips go to viewpics.de.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
I keep posting about the trip to southern Africa that Uwe and I made in November 2023. I’m doing it to share Uwe’s breathtaking photographs, and to share with you what we experienced.
The act of blogging reinforces my memories. Writing these posts helps me recall where we went and what we did.
But there’s something else going on here. In the months since we returned home I’ve created post after post after post after post after post, as if nothing can shut me up….
They aren’t just for the followers who stay with me as I tell tales. I write to keep reminding myself of how great I felt about the world during that entire trip.
The feeling came to me as a revelation. When I climbed shakily out of what I considered a toy tin helicopter after our ride over the Okavango Delta, I was startled to realize I was feeling something unfamiliar:
Optimistic.
I don’t know about you or everyone else, but it looks to me like ongoing world events are grim. Wars, climate change, mass extinctions, corrupt and greedy politicians destroying democratic governments to hang onto power…. It’s a long, depressing list. So to feel unequivocally GREAT about a spot was wonderful.
Thanks to all of you for reading, liking, and commenting on my endless flow of stories about southern Africa. I want to spread my sense of optimism. Let’s share some hope for a change!
NOTES: ©2024 Jadi Campbell. Photos ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.