Mutinondo Wilderness Blog - Mutinondo Limited

Mutinondo Newsletter 2020

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0200

The year started dreadfully for private, public and probably political reasons, and then Covid possibly saved Zambia from what was turning into a national disaster caused by crazy fear amongst the people due to a series of alleged gassing attacks, followed by a deadly wave of mob injustice throughout the country, at least 40 innocent people lost their lives and many were seriously injured. By March it was hard to open emails knowing that there would be more covid related cancelations. April brought a few local bookings, usually followed by prompt cancellation of the same bookings, as no one knew what covid was going to do to Zambia. Over these first few months our staff agreed to work half month shifts, we didn't send the vehicle to Mpika for supplies and just did with what we had stocked up with for the large groups which had cancelled in March. Lari had already returned to live at Mutinondo, so there were no management salaries to pay either.

By May, bookings started to come in earnest from local residents and we have not looked back. The 5 night/4 day hike was the perfect fix for people wanting to get away from the crazy world. This hike is a life changing experience, you are escorted along a spectacular route by 2 guides to the Mutinondo Waterfalls, 2 nights are spent wild camping along the way, the third is spent at the waterfalls where you can explore the escarpment down into the Luangwa Valley (without your packs), and then the last night is spent at another campsite also on the Mutinondo River. Where else can you walk for 5 days and not see another person other than your group, not have to carry water due to the water quality along the way, and camp each night next to beautiful river where you can safely swim and bath???

July long weekend was a buzz of young cyclists, runners and hikers celebrating the freedom of being at Mutinondo. The rest of the year has been spent in awe that so far Zambia has not been hit how we had all expected, and how lucky we have been to be able to operate as business as close to normal as can possibly be expected. We have absolutely loved all the local residents who have supported Mutinondo so well.

This has also been a very special year with 6 notable events happening around Mutinondo.

1. Mutinondo now has its very own photo rich field guide to the 1634 different species of plants which have been identified in and around the area over the last 25 years: ISBN978-1-949677-20-1
https://academic.oup.com/aob/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aob/mcaa193/6031675

2. Mutinondo is 25 years old. On 23rd August 1995 Mike and Lari put up their tent at Mutinondo, you may have received the 25 year Newsletter earlier this year: http://www.mutinondozambia.com/blog/post/25-years-newsletter-1995-to-2020/
(or please ask us to send you the version with photos)

3. In August/September Lari and 8 others walked from Mutinondo to Mfuwe and then returned with the remaining 5 from Luambe to Mutinondo (walking apart from getting a lift between Nabwalya and Muchinka).

4. The first 10 Peak Challenge event was held at Mutinondo over the Prayer Day weekend 19th October. Congratulations to all for the effort and fun shared by all, and a huge congratulations to Rory Mackay and Dan Betts who completed the 28km, 1.9 km elevation 10 peak challenge in 4 hours 32 minutes and 50 km bike ride in 3.02 hours. Save this weekend for 2021!!!

5. On 11th December, Red Rhino hosted the first stakeholders meeting in the area, this was the first step towards joining with surrounding custodians to prepare an application for World Heritage recognition and protection of this very special area.

6. The first yoga retreat, led by Sonal Desai was held at Mutinondo on 19th to 22nd December. Save this weekend for this year!

This year has taught us many things, one being that we are not suitable for the 10 plus ton camping rigs which have hammered our roads and vegetation. Mutinondo now has a 5 ton limit on visiting vehicles. On the opposite end of the scale, it is wonderful that people can come to Mutinondo in tiny cars which are so much more environmentally friendly than these monsters!

We finish this year with a full and very happy camp. Rains have been slow to start which is proving to be just perfect weather for our visitors. Interestingly there is much more rain along the main road, so the farmers are happy with that and our river is getting a top up from there too. 2019/2020 wet season brought a record rainfall (1579.5 mm) for whilst we have been recording at Mutinondo.

We are extremely grateful that we have got through this year safely, especially in the light that others around the world have not been so fortunate. This year has definitely been a year of contemplation - to embrace, be content and even enjoy what we have, and a shining reminder of what an absolute gem Mutinondo Wilderness is.

Wishing you all a 2021 of less stuff, less rush, less stress and much, much more fun!!!

Much love from us all at Mutinondo

Lari and Mike

PS In early December we heard from Hitoshi Takano that Mutinondo has a new moth - Tumicla mutinondo! Thank you to Toshi and his team for the wonderful work they do at Mutinondo!

25 years newsletter 1995 to 2020

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0200

CELEBRATING THE FIRST 25 YEARS OF MUTINONDO WILDERNESS (1995 TO 2020)

Please email us to request the complete version with photos - info@mutinondozambia.com

Welcome to celebrating our first 25 years at Mutinondo!

This is a perfect time to contemplate, celebrate and cherish the fact that it was 25 years ago (23rd August 1995) when Mike and Lari put their tent up at Mutinondo. The spirit of enjoying many Mutinondo memories started with David and Christine Moffat's visit earlier this year, they are Mutinondo's most frequent "flyers" having returned over 20 times. David is also considered Mutinondo's God-father especially during the Zimbabwean landgrab attempt (1998-2002). We can't emphasise enough how much we have appreciated all the special people who have visited and so often returned to Mutinondo over these past 25 years, the beauty and peacefulness of Mutinondo is a celebration in itself and a pleasure shared is a pleasure (at least) trebled.

This can't be called Mutinondo's birthday since the granite rocks (inselbergs) are 1 to 1.6 billion years old and the miombo woodland developed over 8,000 years ago! Two of the most recent flags to note Mike and Lari's first 25 years as custodians of this magical place are:

A. A MAGNIFICENT MURAL ON THE RECEPTION BY QUENTIN ALLEN

B the completion of a set of 2 books entitled A PHOTO RICH FIELD GUIDE TO THE WETTER MIOMBO WOODLAND by Dr. Kaj Vollesen and Lari Merrett, these contain descriptions and photos of over 1630 plant species found within the Mutinondo Area. (SEE FLYER PG 2)

These are available from: Mudpackers, Greens and Grain, Bookworld Pinnacle or online (Lusaka); Kerry Mac Farlane/Ntanda Ventures (Chingola); Sally Greyvensteyn (Mkushi); Paddy and Jay Fisher in Solwezi/Kalumbila. International outlets include: http://www.silverhillseeds.co.za/ (Africa); https://www.amazon.co.uk/Photo-Wetter-Zambian-Miombo-Woodlands (UK); https://www.mikeparkbooks.com/quicksearch/all/miombo (UK, Worldwide except Africa).

A celebration for the 25 years will be held in the form of a fun

RUN, CYCLE, SWIM AND HIKE IN THE FOREST FOR THE FOREST!!! - 16th to 19th October 2020!

All proceeds from entry fees will go directly to the promotion of fuel-efficient woodstoves in the Mpumba chiefdom. For all standards and ages - Flyer to follow!
ENTER AND BOOK NOW, SPACES LIMITED TO 50 ONLY: info@mutinondozambia.com

As a light over-view of these 25 years, we share some photos and memories using 25 categories, just 25 pages long!!!:

1.LOOKING FOR A LODGE SITE page 3

2.CONSTRUCTION OF THE LODGE, ROAD AND AIRSTRIP page 4

3.COMPARISONS AND CHANGES OVER THE YEARS page 4 and 5

4.CLIENTS page 6

5.CRITTERS, GREAT AND SMALL page 7

6.COLLEAGUES AND CO-WORKERS page 7 and 8

7.CONDOLENCES page 9

8.CONTRIBUTORS page 10 and 11

9.CREATURE COMFORTS page 12

10.COMMUNICATIONS page 13

11.CULTIVATION AND COMMUNITY FARMING ACTIVITIES page 1

12.COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTIONS page 13 and 14

13.CONSERVATION page 14

14.OBTAINING 99 YEAR TITLE page 15

15.PUBLICATIONS page 15

16.CREATIVITY, DESIGN AND CRAFTSMANSHIP page 15 and 16

17.THE SPECIAL AND THE SPECTACULAR page 17

18.COMPANIONS pages 18, 19, 20 and 21

19.CELEBRATIONS page 21

20.CHALLENGES page 22

21.CURRENT SITUATION page 22

22.THE MAGIC - scientific evidence page 23

23.THE MAGIC - culturally and spiritually! page 23 and 24

24.COLLABORATION page 24

25.CONCLUSION page 25

1. LOOKING FOR A LODGE SITE. (1995)

While waiting for our land application to be considered by the Mpika District Council Mike and Lari spent six weeks camping and hiking from a temporary base in Mafone dambo, to get to know the area, and to look for the best site for the lodge. They were accompanied by two guides appointed by Chief Mpumba, Paul Saili who knew the area like the back of his hand and Mark Ngosa. It was a very simple life – where to walk and what to eat!

2. CONSTRUCTION OF THE LODGE, ROAD AND AIRSTRIP

This wouldn't have been possible without the abundant local skills and materials.

Building started in August 1995, the road took 3 months using 30 employees and an old ODA road design. This entailed clearing a 5 meter track through the bush in the rains by digging around the tree roots so the weight and height of the tree pulled its own roots up, ditches of 1/2 m width and depth were then dug along each side of the track and the soil was thrown onto the "road" to contribute to its camber. The bricks were made on the site to begin with, and then we found it more efficient to buy from the skilled brick makers in the village. Poles were obtained from Shiwa and Serenje, timber from Katongo Kapala near Danger Hill, and some was sourced locally. The airstrip was cleared by hand by Bright Banda and Fred Kawina's group from Spoon's village. Fred and his team still slash and maintain the Mutinondo driveway each year. When we arrived in the area, the quality of craftsmanship was impressive, all of the doors, door framesframes, window frames and furniture at Mutinondo have been made in-house, by father and son team Dixon and Peter Chilufya.

COMPARISONS AND CHANGES OVER THE YEARS
The most conspicuous is the tree growth around the buildings: e.g.

There have been several versions of bridges crossing the Musamfushi River:

In 2015, due to the lack of use and cost of maintenance and licensing , the airstrip was closed:

4. CLIENTS
Mutinondo continues to attract a wonderful array of clients whose support is of course the pulse of Mutinondo - enabling it to still be alive and kicking after 25 years. We all really appreciate your interest, support, kindness and friendship which has always been so special and raises the spirit of this beautiful place immensely and making life at Mutinondo such a pleasure.

Our visitors have not all arrived the conventional way, some have arrived by foot from Luangwa Valley, others have walked or cycled in from the main road having taken public transport,. Mutinondo accommodated the African Odyssey Rally of classic cars between Kilarni RSA and Nanyuki Kenya in 2006. One couple (geophysicists, Drs Richard and Beth Kahle) arrived on a tandem with a trailer en route from Cambridge to Cape Town in 2013/14! Clients thoroughly enjoyed the horse back riding which had to be stopped due to the maintenance, challenges. More and more guests are bringing there own bikes and more and more are enjoying running and cycling along the old horse tracks, some have brought their paragliders! Swimming and canoeing in the croc-free rivers is also special!

5. CRITTERS GREAT AND SMALL.

Our staff and the scouts on patrols assure us that the number of animal sitings are increasing. Recently herds of eland, sable and roan antelope have been seen and recorded fairly close to the lodge and a number of bushpigs and warthogs have been sited too. The most recent lion was heard in July (over the long weekend), a couple of males had killed 3 of the Chief's cattle before we heard their calls slowly fade away as they returned towards the Luangwa Valley. The hyena is a common evening call across the river from camp and leopard remain as elusive as ever. Bushbuck are heard and seen more frequently around camp. in 2014 Frank Willems noticed tadpoles with seemingly much longer tails than normal, swimming in seepage areas on lodge rock. They have now been identified as being the tadpoles of a new species: Ptychadena mutinondo (aka Frank's frog). Another record of note from the past was that of wild dog seen on our access road 17/8/2004. (Frog and leopard photos by Frank Willems)

6. COLLEAGUES AND CO-WORKERS:

The backbone of Mutinondo is its staff! Thank you everyone for being such a major part of the creation and care of Mutinondo.

7. CONDOLENCES

The following very special members of staff who played extremely important roles in the development and success of Mutinondo are now the late, and are still greatly appreciated and sadly missed.

Harry Kaluba: the most gentle and conscientious and very skilled builder who led in the creation of all the original Mutinondo buildings (except the reception) between 1995 and his death from recurrent malaria in 2002. Apart from the amazing buildings, he is also remembered by a road called Harry's Road as well as Harry's bar. Mutinondo trained his sons in building who have since left.

Boniface Banda: bush chef extraordinaire who could produce delicious meals regardless of the circumstances and availability of ingredients (when he wanted cranberry sauce, we made Mfungo jelly), without an oven he presented delicious Christmas roast Turkey and ham, with all the trimmings cooked in our tin bath, he had trained 27 bush chefs before joining us at Mutinondo (1995) and was the seed of all the magnificent meals produced by the array of competent chefs who have followed in his footsteps since his retirement at the end of 2007.

Mumbi Ndeke: was an inspiring transition from "King" poacher (which means lion and elephant were part of his prey) to conservationist. In 2006, as you see from this photo, his muzzle loader blew the thumb and finger off his right hand making it impossible for him to fire guns. He then joined the Mpumba Conservation Society, whose Chairman, Leonard Bowa recommended him as a Mutinondo scout. This subsequently proved too taxing as HIV started to become apparent., He then succeeded in becoming a very accomplished horseman and rider, taking over the head groom position within 11 months of being introduced to the riding section of Mutinondo. He fought HIV with admirable determination, growing and eating plenty of fresh greens at Mutinondo and insisting to work, despite obvious health problems. Sadly in those days not enough was known and he didn't "qualify for ARVs", he died of AIDS related meningitis in August 2009.

David Chomba: a true gentleman in every sense, as well as being part of the clan who buries the chiefs, one of the last true talking history books of the area. His contributions towards Mutinondo right from the beginning were great, these included his knowledge of the area's history as well as about the local plants and their uses. He was also an excellent guide thanks to his previous poaching and portering skills. He died of throat cancer in September 2009.

8 CONTRIBUTORS

Larry Barham put Mutinondo on the archeological map by bringing a group of students from Liverpool University to collect and study the artifacts and rock art found in the area; Stuart Marks instilled an essential respect for the human face of poachers and poaching in the area, his good and often humerous coaching, publications and research made our lives in the bush far less stressful than it would have been. He continues to be the obvious go-to for advice for all community/conservation projects in the area; Helmut Schroëder was another of Mutinondo's Godfathers who, like the American Commercial attaché, Paul Russell and David Moffat protected us and Mutinondo from illegal land grabbing attempts by Tazara Corridor and a group of Zimbabwean farmers. During the last couple of years whilst both visiting and working at Mutinondo. Hitoshi Takano and his NHM team, together with William van Niekerk have all contributed towards an impressive inventory of the invertebrates found at Mutinondo totaling about 688 of which 283 are different species of butterflies. One of these species is Charaxes mutinondo which is a tribute to the huge amount of time, energy and passion Collin Congdon and Ivan Bampton spent collecting and studying eggs, larvae, and butterflies at Mutinondo.

The flora of Mutinondo and the amazing support from the following deserve a very special mention. To date the number of plants identified within the Mutinondo Area is in excess of 1700. This is thanks to the Kew Botanic Africa drylands team, particularly Kaj Vollesen who co-authored the Miombo Woodland book with Lari.

About 16 new plant species have been recorded to date, some are featured in photos above. (left to right)

9. CREATURE COMFORTS

1995 - this living area complemented the little tent Lari and Mike lived in. A gas freezer was a welcome addition after 2 years without refrigeration. The first tent rotted after about 3 years which meant an upgrade which was even big enough to put beds into. Icy baths in the river were replaced by a "bushdush/hand filled shower" or bucket baths and then in 2001 an amazing hand built bath was built in Mulombwa chalet.

After the second tent was flattened when the protective thatch roof collapsed on it, Mike and Lari lived out of suitcases in vacant chalets until they moved into the little campsite room which was originally built to be the campsite reception. From there they moved to a staff house and then thanks to the closure of Lari's jewellery business in 2009, her workshop was converted into a house with a bathroom in 2014 for the various managers. It is now a very comfy place for Lari to live. Before moving to Lusaka in 2015 Lari and Mike even added a satellite TV, this is now with Mike in Lusaka. The veggie garden was resurrected this year.

In 1995 communications consisted of a twice monthly visit to the post office and farmers shop in Mpika (100 km away). The land lines in Mpika hardly ever worked but the postal system to and from Mpika worked extremely well. In 2002 Charlie Harvey insisted that we joined the Bushmail network. This was an email system linked to a short wave radio which transmitted emails at about 250 bytes a minute (on a good day). It worked brilliantly for bookings and cost USD1000 per year. Unfortunately as other options developed this service slowly died out and Mutinondo had to replace the short wave aerial with a satellite dish and internet. It is incredible that one can (usually) have full access to everything online whilst sitting in the middle of nowhere (for just over twice the cost of Bushmail). Occasionally this does fail and fortunately there is scant cell phone coverage from various hills which acts as a good backup.

10. COMMUNICATIONS

11. CULTIVATION AND COMMUNITY FARMING ACTIVITIES

Whilst waiting for the Mpika District Council to approve the land application Mike and Lari got involved with farmers' input distribution, soya bean outgrowers and bought the old ZCCB shop in Mpika which they opened as a farmers' shop. These ventures were a good way to find out more about the area and meet many members of the community, but due to battles with accountability and government controlled prices of crops, were not successful businesses. Soya bean outgrowers and farmers' shop continued until 2004.

12. COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTIONS

Mpumba Natural Resources Conservation Society, overseen by the Mpumba Conservation Trust, was set up in conjunction with Mutinondo, WWF Washington and Mano Conusltants; Mutinondo hosted football and netball coaches from UK together with donated kit to teach at schools. Mutinondo sponsors Chongololo clubs in the area and welcomes local schools to experience the wonderful Wilderness. In July 2008 Mutinondo hosted a one week birding guide course held by Valery Schollaert and funded one teacher from each school to attend. Mutinondo was instrumental in getting Bsweet to start their bee keeping activity in Chief Mpymba's area.

13. CONSERVATION

1995 Mutinondo hosted a meeting for His Royal Highness Chief Mpumba and headmen to introduce the concept of the investment, consequently there have been several meetings held at the lodge to discuss the poaching problem in the area. Mutinondo now employs Village scouts to join DNPW scouts on patrols in the area. Hopefully the future plans for the Community conservation area will give alternative income opportunities to the local hunters. Recent growth in demand for long hikes at Mutinondo proves what good guides, porters and assistant guides ex poachers are. Their bush skills are second to none, ensuring the safety (and fun) of the guests.

14. OBTAINING 99 YEAR TITLE

14 year title was obtained 01/10/1999 after nearly losing the area to a group of Zimbabwean farmers, and 99 year title was eventually secured on 27/05/2012 after a Zambian based cartel tried to block it! Thank you to Anti-corruption Commission and all the individuals who assisted in re-enforcing the law during these very worrying times.

15. PUBLICATIONS

Mutinondo has features in the above publications as well as articles in other publications such as Zambian Traveler, African Geographic, National Geographic, Africa Birds and Birding and research for various thesis have been carried out at Mutinondo.

16. CREATIVITY, DESIGN AND CRAFTMANSHIP

Quentin Allen has adorned Mutinondo with unique murals, maps, chitenge designs and much much more. Much of the wood work was designed by Mike and crafted by Dickson Chilufya and his son Peter.

Ryan Chibowo contributed hugely towards the crafts at Mutinondo, turning our waste paper, old boxes and plastic bags into jewelry boxes and recycled paper cards, beautifully decorated by collage from glossy magazines left by clients. He could put his hand to anything, he made our staff chitenge shirts, made all of the napkins and table cloths, painted the sign (which got knocked down by a truck), made snakes out of bottle tops, cut the tops off savannah bottles to make our tumblers and so much more. Tragically he got run over by a train 20/01/2011.

Lari designed the Mutinondo logo, made silver and gold jewelry, cut stones on a converted singer treadle sewing machine and trained Simon Mutambo to help produce stock for the lodge shop and other outlets. (together with her Mpika based jewelers).

Over the years Mutinondo has had numerous contributors towards making it what it is today. For example: Pete Leonard, Carl Beel, Lizanne Roxburg, Frank Willems and many other birders of note have built a substantial birdlist of 362 species; Quentin Allen and Steve Robinson recorded the magnificent views by paint and camera respectively and promoted Mutinondo through their stunning artwork and exhibitions.

Over the past 6 years the (rather too many!) managers have all contributed towards Mutinondo. For example: Julian Enjies designed and executed the wonderful signs along the paths, Frank Willems and William van Niekerk contributed hugely towards the inventories of species in the area, Jeff Ives got Mutinondo into booking and payment online (with the help of William, and Inge introduced us to the wonderful accountants Kabinga!
Thank you everyone!

THE SPECIAL AND THE SPECTACULAR

Mutinondo and the surrounding area encompasses thousands of hectares of woodland. This amount of woodland is enough to influence and regulate the region’s rainfall and temperatures. This is one of the last remaining places on earth which has miles and miles of beautiful miombo woodland!!!

Within this incredible expanse of woodland and associated inselbergs, dambos and evergreen forests, an extraordinary array of species live and interact with each other. For example, without the woodland, the array of fungus, insects, birds and dambos would be lost. The woodland regulates the flow of water into the dambos which in turn hold water in these huge natural sand filters, slowly releasing the content into the Zambezi River basin throughout the dry season. A continual and regulating stream of effects and dependencies flow throughout the woodland between all aspects and inhabitants of the area creating a very healthy holistic environment for all. Below are just a few of the magnificent creatures, fungus and plants which coexist within this special area:

Not only is the diversity incredible (to date: over 1700 species of plants including over 112 different species of orchids, 362 species of birds and 688 invertebrates of which 283 are butterflies) but the landscape is breathtaking. Everyone who visits this area becomes enchanted by its beauty!

18. COMPANIONS

The horses were all just great fun for everyone, including staff and visitors………but like all of us they too have expiry dates……..
The first 4 horses arrived at Mutinondo 28th October 1997 (date of the failed coup attempt)

Zambuka, the clown who was loved by everyone (put down after damaging himself in a panic attack in the truck when being transferred to the Lusaka house 20/12/2015 -21 yrs); Cloudy was an ex Namibian desert horse who introduced many of the children guests (and the odd raven!) to riding (lived until 7/12/2015 when melanoma got into her spinal cord so Paddy and Neil kindly put her down at +-28 years).

Bushy (died of a twisted gut 10/2011 -24 yrs); Sonny Boy (heart failure 18/9/2004 +-25 yrs). Both the most noble horses and leaders.

25/10/2003 Crystal and Jumping Jack Flash arrived at Mutinondo

Crystal a robust and spirited Arab cross Boereperd until Feb. 2009 when she died of CROD (Chronic Respiratory Obstruction Disease) and related complications +-12 yrs, Jumping Jack Flash lived up to him name probably due to issues with his back and adults considering his complete change in character when given to a child (died in Lusaka, much loved by Zazy 8/3/2015 +-28 yrs)

2/11/2004 another 4 horses were brought to Mutinondo:

Kite another noble gentleman and ride leader (15/2/2016 of Epizootic Lymphangitis +-25 yrs); Swanford a stunningly beautiful, well bred thoroughbred who was just showing a fun character before being shot by poachers on 23/9/2005 +-12 yrs.

Jet Cruise - such a character, we never really did work him out before he died—possible from a snake bite 8/8/2006 +-16 yrs); Pokohuntus was rescued from being put down at the age of 4 because she had turned nasty after being handreared by her previous owner, she was so intelligent but not dependable for guests to ride so was given to Patrick in Lusaka.

Northern Minstrel also a well bred thoroughbred, but didn’t do well at Mutinondo before being diagnosed and dieing of Trypanosomiasis/sleeping sickness 10/2011 -16 yrs. Zebadee - a rejected police horse (our first name for him was ZP1!) and perfect trekking horse until he was killed by a lion in 10/2010 -11 yrs.

During these 18 years, the extra dimension which these horses gave to Mutinondo was irreplaceable but keeping them healthy (and alive!) was a challenge and to this day Lari feels she let them down with her lack of veterinary skills. It was almost impossible to get a vet to visit although they were all wonderful with assisting by email. It was much easier to take blood to the vet than get horse to vet or visa versa. Each horse died from a different cause. Initially Sinkobo (Dermatophilus congolensis) was a huge problem, so were 5 day bouts of high temperatures which were never identified. Maybe this was Mutinondo and the surrounding areas saying that this is not the right place for domestic animals. Already many of our neighbour’s livestock are suffering from illness and loss of life.

2010: Kite, Zebadee, Minstrel, Ceswa, Poko, Jack, Zambuka, Bushy, Flame, Spirit and Cloudy

Not only did our horses give everyone a huge amount of pleasure (and worries and heartache), so did our lovely dogs:
Past:

Stella, (snake bite) Karla (dip or snake bite) and Jack (snake bite) -all from LAWS

Missy (top left) from LAWS –kidney failure

Max from Lusaka house -bilary

Chuck and Rox and Rex from LAWS now in Lusaka with Mike Jock wandering spirit dog!

Present:

Happy - aka Mercedes from LAWS.

Thank you to Lusaka Animal Welfare who do an amazing job rescuing and homing an incredible array of very special dogs! All are unique and great fun to have.

19. CELEBRATIONS

Celebrating 2000 on Mayense! Plenty of Happy Christmases!

…..And birthdays and some weddings too…………………

20. CHALLENGES

Mutinondo had 2 attempted land grabs, 2 armed robberies and Lari and Mike together with Lari's sister Jan had a nasty illegal onslaught on the family farm in Chingola. Mike had major back problems and finally surgery in 2005, Lari snapped her achilles in 2014 and had both her dislocating arms fixed in 2015 and 2017 respectively. The plan was for Mike and Lari to happily retire in 2015, but due to management and other problems this plan hasn’t worked — we plan, God laughs!!!.

The sons of the original Mutinondo builder and carpenter have continued with their parents' skills, the upgrades in the campsite proves this. 4 of the 7 campsites now have shelters, a block of 4 new showers have been added, the old ones have been rebuilt, 2 new toilets (loos with views!) have been added and the 5th is being rebuilt. Comparison of old and new shower block above!

2020 (from left to right): Of the 9 people employed at Mutinondo, everyone does all the required camp work, and each specialises or excels in various tasks: Kennedy joined 25 years ago (1995, with a 3 year sabbatical working in Mkushi- driver, chef, mechanic- usually able to find and or fix anything!), staff motivator, driver, cell phone bookings and communications; Peter joined his father Dickson to learn carpentry under him in 1998 - together they did all the woodwork and roofs seen in the lodge, he is also a guide and waiter; Christopher joined in 2002 - senior staff motivator, driver, chef and responsible the non office part of Mutinondo; Joseph our builder also joined in 2002. Kennedy's younger brother Humphrey arrived at Mutinondo in 2005 - and is now chef, senior staff motivator, driver, bookings, communications, book keeping, attended a computer course at Mechanics for Africa in Ndola; Brian (chef, waiter and assistant buillder) and Victor (chef, waiter and guide) were employed in 2008; Moses 2009 and Gibby 2012 - both are guards, waiters, camp cleaners and assistant builders.

Thatching:

At the beginning of building Mutinondo lodge, we were told to expect the thatch to last up to 20 years! Mwila our original thatcher had been trained by Overseas Development Agency in Mpika, his brother Sampa has since taken over from him. The photos on the left show the two and a helper after finishing the first roof (shop and workshop store room), which is still fully intact and functional after 25 years, just looking a little weathered (like the Mutinondo owners)

COVID: Thanks to the greatly appreciated support from local residents, Mutinondo has so far survived a very weird 2020. So far we have been very lucky, and salute those in far worse situations throughout the word. It is certainly a time to make the most of what one has, right here and now!!! Let us hope that we all remember what we have learnt during this time.

The 4 night/5 day hike to the Mutinondo River waterfalls on the western escarpment of the Luangwa Valley to the east of Mutinondo has proven to be a very popular option for those wanting an isolated break away from the rest of the world. Where else can you hike for 5 days and not see another person apart from your guides? It is a life changing experience!!!

22. THE MAGIC - scientific evidence!

Mutinondo's peace and quiet, 10.000 hectares of prisitine woodland, sparkly clean drinkable river water, endless cut and signed tracks through uninhabited bushscapes, and the freedom to roam, offers visitors an escape from the stress and disturbing news which is intruding more and more into the "normal" way of life. The connection between physical and mental health with the need to live amongst trees and natural surroundings is becoming more researched and appreciated. Eco-therapy is being heralded as the obvious solution to mental imbalances, there is no dispute that we need trees for oxygen and a clean and secure water supply.

Research in New York State proves:

Exposure to forests and trees:

- boosts the immune system

- lowers blood pressure

- reduces stress

- improves mood

- increases ability to focus, even in children with ADHD

- accelerates recovery from surgery or illness

- increases energy level

- improves sleep

And the the National Health has proved that recovery from operations when trees are in site of the patient improves the rate and quality of recovery.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/un-desa-policy-brief-80-forests-at-the-heart-of-a-green-recovery-from-the-covid-19-pandemic/

https://www.upwithtrees.org/news-events/news-and-updates/how-trees-affect-our-health-and-wellness/#:~:text=From%20another%20health%20standpoint%2C%20trees,childhood%20obesity%20up%20to%2020%25.

https://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/90720.html
https://nhsforest.org/evidence-benefits

23. THE MAGIC - culturally and spiritually!

Mutinondo visitors never cease to surprise with new gems of fascinating information. Recently it was pointed out (thanks Lynette!) that Mutinondo Wilderness 31˚15' to 31˚21' shares its longitude with some pretty impressive and powerful features:

the Great Pyramid 31˚08' 13"

the Great Sphinx of Gia 31˚08' 81"

the Nile 30˚05'59" to 33˚

Murchisen Falls 31˚41' 07"

Lake Victoria almost on the junction of 31 degrees and the Equator

the Rift Valley 28˚46' to 34˚48'

Zimbabwe Ruins 30˚55'53"

Timbavati 31˚18'49"

The 31 degrees longitude is also known as: Nilotic Meridian, the Great Pyramid Meridian, Zep Tepi - Line of First Time

“Both the Egyptian & African traditions converge on one conclusion: theMeridian is sacred beyond comparisonit represents the beginning of timewhen lion gods walked among men.”

The 31 degree Meridian was the original Longitudinal equator, China and France then claimed that it went through Beijing and Paris respectively and published their maps accordingly. In the late 19th Century Greenwich was made the official ZERO Latitude line.

https://blog.world-mysteries.com/science/the-great-pyramid-earths-natural-prime-meridian/
https://toolonginthisplace.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/lions-of-longitude/

24. COLLABORATION

Back on the ground, some other amazing things have been evolving within and around Mutinondo. Mike and Lari's situation has changed and together with nephews Paddy and Jay Fisher, it has been decided that Mutinoondo is no longer for sale. WeForest, Frankfurt Zoological Society together with South Luangwa Conservation Project, Kasanka and Red Rhino Society have all started to work together towards helping the community and land owners conserve this area.

Over the past couple of years conservation organisations and conservation minded individuals have also appreciated the value of the Mutinondo Wilderness and the surrounding woodland. The 8,900 ha of community land to the east of Mutinondo which was set aside for community, based conservation in 2002, was subsequently illegally reallocated to individuals at a later date. These dodgy land deals have been fought by various organisations and the progress that has been made is fantastic. The misled inhabitants have been ordered to return their titles and letters of offer, and will be given other land outside the Chintu Mukulu Conservation Area. Watch this space, already reports and research are being done in conjunction with the community leaders to work out how best the community can now benefit from having this land under their control. Mutinondo looks forward to working with them and the other organisations involved.

This, together with the long time wish and vision of many, is a vital step towards creating a conservation corridor between Luangwa Valley and Lavushi Manda (and possibly Kasanka National Park). This is very possible. Mutinondo has proven that thoughts, dreams and wishes DO happen - if enough time and energy is put into them.

25. CONCLUSION

The original thoughts, dreams and plans to build a lodge in a wilderness were planted in Mike's mind during his involvement with the Ruaha National Park in the 1980s. When he and Lari set out to find the place to do this in 1994, their criteria included: somewhere beautiful, which was uninhabited with remnant wildlife, which they could obtain a 99 year title for. During the journey of making this dream come true, the Mutinondo area has taught and inspired them to do things very differently to many of their original plans - for example to build a dam and flood the incredibly sensitive and biodiverse Musamfushi Dambo - heaven forbid!!

“Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively ” - E.B. White

Mutinondo Newsletter 2015

Sat, 28 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0200

This year was our 20th at Mutinondo Mayense Camp. We first saw the area in October 1994, returned the next year and walked extensively in June and July looking for a suitable site for the lodge and what area we wanted included in our land application. On 21st June when the Mpika District Council gave us permission for two blocks of 5000ha we had the luxury of drawing a line around the area we wanted. On 23rd August 1995 we put our tent up in the woodland below the main camp (west side) and started to build our beloved Mutinondo which filled the next 20 years with sweet and sour experiences. Mutinondo has taught us a lot in that time, from road and lodge construction including puzzling about "hook pylons" and all sorts of funny things we have had dropped on us along the way! After six years of developing we opened in 2001 which was another steep learning curve but, as with the building, we had great staff to work with and thank heavens for our very forgiving and extremely appreciative guests. And now 20 years later the most important thing is that despite several challenges Mutinondo Wilderness Ltd has survived and we are both still happy and healthy. We are privileged to have truly had the time of our lives thanks to Mutinondo and all the people and things which Mutinondo has introduced us to!
The years have certainly become easier (which unfortunately also goes with shorter) as many of our projects such as our 1500 outgrowers, farmers shop, jewellery company, community work, horse riding etc fell off the table for various reasons. In comparison to "those days" this year has been an absolute doddle and here's to another very boring peaceful newsletter!!!

Life was just settling down by late January with the New Zealand holiday mode gradually washing off. Lari hopped off Kite after an early ride just as he went for a fly, bumped her elbow and out popped her arm for the 23rd time. The problem this time it wouldn't go back in (after all the physio to try to keep it in!). Thanks to Dr. Pauline and team (and pethadine) at Chilonga Hopital it got put back. Poor Mike after having a wife hobbling around for half of last year after rupturing her Achilles tendon now had a one armed one! The good thing was it kept Lari office bound for 3 weeks playing with her plants (one handed) in preparation for pending botanist visits.

Mike, Christopher and Humphrey continued running Mutinondo fantastically as was the case last year, leaving lucky Lari to accounts, odd jobs where she can help and....the plants. Kennedy now has his driver's license renewed which adds another driver and reliable person to the Mutinondo A team!

February brought Jo Osborn of Kew RBG and Florence Nyrienda of UNZA to Mutinondo to collect for a couple of weeks. Kai Vollesen and Sally Bidgood, both from Kew and Kenneth Bauters from Gent University visited for the month of April. We are astounded at what magnificent work is being done for Mutinondo plants especially by Jo and Kai, never in our wildest dreams would we ever have expected to have got over 1000 determined species within the Mutinondo Wilderness Area. This started as a ham fisted hobby for us and then thanks to Paul Smith's (ex Kew RGB now at BGCI-Botanical Gardens Conservation International) guidance and endless help from Kew Botanical Gardens (names listed in last 2014 newsletter) and Mike Bingham it has truly flourished with many more species still to be determined (and undoubtedly more species waiting to be collected - Jo, Sally and Kai found at least 3 new species to science during their visits). Even after 20 years Lari is bound to find something she has not seen before whilst out with the dogs.
Talking of which, our little dogs from LAWS have adapted to their not so new bush life a little too well. Roxy the little (17kg) African brown with not a lot of help from the others has killed 4 baboons since April! The first was when Lari was cycling with the 3 dogs when she saw a bundle of fur rolling across Little Chipundu dambo and realised it was a ball of dog and baboon! Despite attempts to separate them the dogs won and the baboon had to be shot. A different ball game all together from the normal dogs barking and baboons barking back safely from the trees. So now Roxy has to be walked on a lead, luckily for the baboons she too will soon be leaving Mutinondo.
In an effort to keep the 2 remaining younger horses safe from the insidious Kleibsiella pneumoniae bacteria which took Lari's mare Ceswa last year Mike drove Spirit and Flame to Lusaka at the end of February.

It was clear that the arm needed sorting because Lari was protecting it to such an extent she was getting drop wing! Dr. Van der Merve who did a great job on her Achilles pointed her in the direction of shoulder fundi Dr. De Beer in Pretoria. After a good month of fossicking with Sally and Kai at Mutinondo she went to see him having already booked an appointment for an op, just which op had yet to be decided. The Later jet procedure was done on the 14th May in the highly professional manner expected of SA medics and SES insurance followed by 5 months rehab with the endless encouragement of equally professional physio Elsabe. The physio was much more specific than that for the Achilles so Lari became a periodic Pretoria resident spending a total of 2 months at a real gem of a guest house called Treetops being extremely well looked after by Jeff the manager and his lovely ladies. On a leafy ridge west of Pretoria within 30mins (safe and view filled) walk to the hospital which had a little friendly shopping center opposite and only another 15 mins walk to the Austin Roberts Bird Sanctuary, it couldn't have been more perfect.

Possibly a bit too soon after the op we went to Malindi on the 19th. Just lovely to meet on the Rwanda Airways plane from JHB to Kigali via Lusaka where Lari first saw Mike’s golf clubs being loaded and then his bag and then him! A perfect plan to go and lie by the beautiful Malindi sea this time being spoilt by the wonderful Driftwood staff, Liz and David for 2 weeks whilst Mike played golf with Dave. Thanks to Stu Fisher for the advice to sleep sitting up if your shoulder is too painful to sleep lying down - so it was a beach bed by the sea by day and a beach bed in the room at night! Our staff ran Mutinondo without a campsitter, except our retired Diwell came in to help run the office with Humphrey. They did a great job! A HUGE thank you to everyone for all their unbelievable help and kindness which gave Lari her arm back.

A few days before leaving Malindi we heard that Spirit had been found dead in the morning. He had been ridden the morning before and was fine, a post mortem done by a Lusaka vet couldn't find anything, a possible bacteria which caused a heart attack??? The most robust Basuto cross quarter horse, - a big strong healthy beautiful grey boy WITH CHARACTER. The survivors at Mutinondo are Kite, Zambuka and Cloudy, 2 out of 3 are living miracles. Lari has started singing "Its time to say good bye" (Con Te Partiro) in Cloudy's ear, she is nearly 30 with terrible melanoma but wow what a little trooper still determined to keep going. Zambuka looks like a thoroughbred in his prime having been so close to death 18 months ago and Kite's legs are beginning to show the strains of his racing and polo past.

The horses are good reminders of how long we have been here - Zambuka was 4 when we got him, he is now 21! They too must look at us and think - mmm they are getting long in the tooth! As mentioned in previous newsletters and discussed with many of you whilst visiting, we have been concerned about Mutinondo's future. Since 2009 we have not found suitable buyers and have had a few false starts with management. Our staff are very capable at running the day to day business of Mutinondo but it needs more than that. Mutinondo like all small businesses needs to be very carefully managed to ensure close attention to detail, tight discipline and good business common sense to stay in business - especially now.

In August it became a possibility that Inge and Frank from Kasanka could join us. We didn't want to count our chicks too soon until immigration formalities were met. In September Gerard Fagan very kindly camp sat for about a month whilst we went to Turkey for a couple of weeks with Ali, Charlie, Sam and Fred with time in the UK too. We were on an island off Marmaris, Adakoy, which was a really great fun venue for a family holiday.

Whilst there we heard that the change of employer procedure was successful! Inge and Frank have both worked at Kasanka for 7 years, are familiar with a similar operation within the same area (Kasanka is only 200km away). Many of you already know them. Frank is an ecologist and the official bird list keeper for Zambia. Frank and Mike have added 4 new birds to the Mutinondo birdlist this month: Pallid Harrier, Honey Buzzard, Red-capped Lark and Little Swift, bringing the total to 328! As well as the bird watching we are in the midst of handover (and mega clearing) so thought it an appropriate time to send out the good news in an early newsletter! We wish Inge, Frank and little 5 year old Robin all the very best in their new life at Mutinondo. Robin has brought a new dimension to Mutinondo, and to the horses especially Zambuka who has the huge responsibility to teach Robin to ride! It is the beginning of a new era at Mutinondo. We trust that Mutinondo, our guests and staff will be in safe hands with Inge and Frank.

Earlier this year Frank, Inge and Robin visited Mutinondo and Frank found a tadpole with a longer tail than normal - as one would. It is possible that this is a new species to science. We wonder what else is out there for him to discover? - watch this space!

Last year's newsletter ended with: "Here's hoping for good rains, clean, peaceful elections and a more responsible government........."
986mm was not enough rain for the rivers and dambos to recover from 3 dry years. No one in Zambia needs to be reminded of the plight of the low level of rivers and reservoirs resulting in urban power outages of up to 9 hours a day. Elections were not clean and the Government has borrowed and spent so irresponsibly that the Kwacha has shrunk from K6 to a US Dollar this time last year to K14.5 last week. The combination of the price of copper going down, the severely reduced production due to power cuts and the fall in the Kwacha is alarming, the implications are yet to resonate fully. Earlier this year someone interviewed on the BBC used Zambia as his prime example of the African equivalent of Greece!
The school groups didn't come to Zambia with World Challenge this year mostly due to Ebola which doesn't say much for the quality of geography being taught in the UK! Instead we had 3 CAMPTREEs organised by peacecorp volunteers, it was run very close to non-profit but wonderful having children from villages in Muchinga, Central and Luapula Provinces having great fun at Mutinondo. Our pretty average annual turnover this year is worth only 38.6% of its value a year ago. This is just a small reflection of what poor governance can do to an economy. If a business goes bankrupt it is a jailable offence for the directors responsible, if a country's entire economy is crippled no one is held responsible. We have another election next year and heaven help Zambia if we don't get good leadership this time (someone who will appreciate the importance of the statement: "It's the economy stupid!"- Bill Clinton.)

Sadly on Zambia's Independence Day eve our solar waterpump was stolen. Not a good sign of the times.
Another frightening fact highlighted is in the 2016 budget: Environmental Protection is the lowest allocation 0.3% of the entire budget equating to K151.41 million, the second lowest being Recreation, Culture and Religion at 0.5%! Zambia is presently being branded as the fastest deforesting country in the world.
Levison Wood's staggering read "Walking the Nile" highlights the damage civilisations and development has done and is doing to Africa's forests. "Africa has to develop, its people have to be empowered to use their natural resources - but.....to think of the forest that had once been here, vanished forever so that we can get fat and rot our teeth." - Referring to the sugar cane estates north of Jinja Uganda.

A seemingly good development within Chief Mpumba's area is the introduction of about 2000 bee hives from John Enrite. The harvest figures aren't great this year but it is hopefully a small beginning for a sustainable small holder enterprise which in turn should help to protect the woodland. Our harvest this year was badly affected by a bad fire on 28th September which came from the east, a huge thanks to our staff for protecting the lodge. It is the worst fire we have ever had here.
It is a challenging time for everyone in Zambia (except the jet setting politicians and prez!). We have had to revert to putting our prices in dollars based on K6 and then deducting 30% to accommodate the fact that everything within our cost of sales has not suddenly doubled in price. These rates will be valid until 15th January when we will redo the pricelist and offer a 20% discount for the wet season. Your feedback on this would be very helpful and we really hope many of you will be returning to Mutinondo soon.

We launched our updated website and promotion cards earlier this year (see below). These highlight great offers for hiking and cycling including free camping in the bush on longer hikes and bike rides (guided or unguided). Mutinondo is one of the few places where you can still hike in pristine woodland for days without seeing any settlements or people and swim in and drink from the rivers and streams. The roan herd have been seen often in the last few months, the number of reedbuck and warthog continue to increase. It's as magic as ever and we look forward to coming back on holidays and to campsit when Inge and Frank go on leave.

Cathy Sharp and Meg Coates Palgrave will be holding mushroom and tree identification courses in early February next year please tell Inge if you would like more information about this. Likewise please tell us if you wish to be taken off our annual newsletter mailing list.

It's now time for us to say good bye! Please stay in touch and hopefully we will see you around. Lari's email is larimerrett@gmail.com, Mike is mike@mutinondozambia.com and our cell number is 0979 484820. The Mutinondo email addresses include: info@mutinondozambia.com; inge@mutinondozambia.com and frank@mutinondozambia.com. Keep an eye out for when Inge puts Mutinondo on Facebook!

Wishing you all the very very very very best.

Much love and all the very best wishes from us
Mike and Lari X
AND "Here's hoping for good rains, clean, peaceful elections and a more responsible government"

Mutinondo Newsletter 2014

Sun, 28 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0200

January brought the AETFAT botanical conference in Stellenbosch, thanks to Mike Bingham who encouraged Lari to attend. An incredible experience for Lari, Mike (Merrett) had to stay at Mutinondo because Julian was away on health matters only returning in March having had job interviews whilst recovering from various ailments.

Lari's grey mare (+-9years old) Ceswa developed an extremely painful back leg in January which recovered after a dose of cortizone and phenylbutizone. In March Lari noticed she was having trouble going backwards whilst doing Pat Parelli with her. She started coughing straight after this, within days the cough developed into a high fever and gasping dry cough. Drs. Chitu and Pauline suspected pneumonia, penstrep had no effect, others suggested horse sickness. She died a week later. Blood, lung and heart samples were given to Vetlab which forwarded blood to Deltamune in SA, results came back negative for Horse sickness, positive for Kleibsiella pneumoniae only susceptible to Amikacin antibiotic. Ceswa was an exceptionally comfortable and sensitive little horse ridden bareback with a head collar and a superstar at Pat Parelli.

Julian decided in February she would like to go back teaching. When her interviews were successful it left us until mid July to spoil ourselves with a couple more trips. We visited UK in April/May, enjoyed Easter in Pembrokeshire with Ali's family followed by time with Mike's cousin and sister before Lari spent 10 days at Kew attending the Tropical plant ID course followed by 2 weeks of Malindi bliss along the Kenyan coast with Dave and Liz.

June took us to a two week long family holiday west of the Kruger in SA. Great to have more time with Charlie, Ali, Sam and Fred and to see Vicky's lovely shop the Nut Tree in Casterbridge - White River. Fortunately Vicky was able to leave the shop in trusted hands and join us for a week at the Kruger Park Lodge together with Jill, (Mike's ex.) Jill was embarking on learning to live with her newly fitted prosthesis having had her lower leg amputated after an accident just before Christmas 2013. With 2 days to go of family holidays Lari ruptured her Achilles tendon playing tennis with Ali which left 2 out of 3 Mrs Merretts hobbling around on luminous green crutches - and nobody came round to ask Mr. Merrett a few questions!

With school holidays looming in SA it was easier for us to postpone Lari's rupture repair op than to change the dates for our Kruger booking. A very cosy safari experience which couldn't have been better timed. Our tiny little hire car, not much bigger than a golf cart, squeezed its way between elies three times its size, tour guide/driver/cook/carer Mike in front and Madam Lari with foot on pillows in the back. To avoid the southern hoards we stuck to the north, a very beautiful area especially around Punda Maria. South Africa and SES lived up to its good medical reputation, Dr. Van der Merwe fixed and reinforced Lari's Achilles with a neo tendon (malegan in a box) and SES duly footed all the bills. A BRAHMS (Botanical Research and Herbarium Management) course at the Burrows' Buffleskloof Reserve was the perfect distraction from "the foot" after the op, a hundred thanks to Barbara, fellow students and John for accommodating it so well.

Mid July put us back into harness, Lari mostly stuck at her desk entering plant data into BRAHMS with the big black bionic boot pitched next to the laptop being completely spoiled by staff, clients and Mike. With the prospect of a possible permanent future at Mutinondo we shuffled many responsibilities to Christopher and Humphrey who continue to do a great job running the day to day aspects making our lives very easy. Before leaving Lusaka on our way back from SA we splashed out on DSTV, VSAT and solar deep freezes! It's been great to watch sport after so many years of rationed reports on the Beeb. Limited WiFi is now available at Mutinondo for those who have to check emails whilst on holiday. You are allowed an uncomfortable chair in the sun for an hour at midday! Otherwise we still appreciate a phone free camp, calls should be kept minimal and to the step outside the office or campers rock. Phones used in the bar and dining room make wonderful firework displays when popped into the fire, the more expensive the phone the better the array of colours! Please feel free to complain about staff and visitors using phones within hearing distance.

Some perfectly timed and long overdue quality time for Lari with sister Jan at a yoga retreat at Kapishya Hotsprings happened in mid July. Thanks to yoga teacher Lar Fisher's gentle encouragement it was also a huge help in assisting Lari's mobility and recovery together with the amazing Hotspings topped with Mel's magic meals.

Three World Challenge groups walked from Mutinondo to the Chifungwe gate this year. In September four boisterous chaps bounded into camp after a 10 day hike via the Munyamadzi River from Luawata. A couple of emails had made us aware of their plan and to book a campsite for their arrival but we knew very little else. Great to know it can be done with such little fuss but not for lesser bush savvy folk. The following day they caught the bus back to Lusaka. In November another group hiked from Mutinondo to Chifungwe gate where they met up with pre-arranged scouts to escort them along the Mupamadzi. This was a little more complex with over 45 emails in the planning. Despite an email and meeting with Peter Ndala of ZAWA Mpika in August about this planned trip, on the day they set off from Mutinondo he started phoning and messaging us at Mutinondo threatening to "SEND OFFICERS TO DEAL WITH THEM FOR CONTRAVENING THE LAW.". After several emails to find out what law they were being accused of contravening we received a message "SEE ME AT THE OFFICE IF YOU WANT A CONCLUSIVE RESPONSE FROM ME. EMAIL IS NOT AN OFFICIAL PLATFORM". Fortunately scouts weren't sent or didn't find the group but it was a worrying time.

During Mike's meeting with Peter Ndala in August Peter brought up ZAWA's concerns about the road being built from Mpika to Mfuwe. Firstly there has been no EIA (environmental impact assessment) and secondly part of the contract has been given to a Chinese company. Why is a completely new road being put into the valley when so much has already been spent on the Nabwalya road? What will happen to the Ntunta ZAWA scout post and the Mutinondo bridge? He asked if the group could gather information on flora and fauna and to report any flora or fauna needing special note and protection.

Whilst trying to find which law the hikers had contravened Mike found:
THE ZAMBIA WILDLIFE ACT, 1998
"PART VI, GAME ANIMALS AND PROTECTED ANIMALS
32. (1) Any person who has reasonable grounds to believe that any proposed or existing government plans or activity of the Government or any other organisation or person may have an adverse effect on any wildlife species or community in a National Park, Game management Area or open area, such person may request the Authority through the Director-General that a wildlife impact assessment be conducted.
(2) Whenever the Authority receives such a request, it may within thirty days of receipt thereof require the Government, organisation or person to conduct the assessment in accordance with the procedures specified by the Environmental Council under the Environmental Protection and Pollution Control Act taking to account:
(a) existing or anticipated impacts upon wildlife, including an account of the species, communities and habitats affected and the extent to which they are or may be threatened; and
(b) any endangered or endemic species which are or may be affected."

Mike has written to the DG (ZAWA Director-General" <info@zawa.org.zm) and hopefully others could also raise concerns about the implications of this road.

On a much more positive note about ZAWA we have appreciated the diligent anti poaching activity from Kalonje and Mpika scouts under the good guidance of Modesto Sinfukwe and Julius Chinkumba this year. Together with Mutinondo staff and or village scouts they have collected 11 guns and caught 8 suspects. Much of the poaching is done by employees from the new surrounding farms in the area. Some of the new farm owners along our road are late or meagre in paying their staff causing their staff to live off the land. Lion have been reported to have eaten 8 cattle and a donkey from these farms, a lion was reported to have been wounded with a shot gun by a ZAWA scout. Further reports suggest that employees of the farms have blamed some of their cattle theft on the lion.

A meeting between ZAWA, Ministry of Agriculture, Chiefs and stakeholders in June discussed the possibility of making a conservation corridor between Mutinondo and Lavushi Manda turning the areas surrounding Mutinondo Wilderness into a GMA. This would be a dream come true for us!

Wildlife sitings seem to be on the increase, frequent reports and good views of warthog grazing with the horses, a herd of 17 roan almost resident during the dry months and sable have been reported by staff. A group on a sundowner with Mike in October saw 9 reedbuck, 4 bushbuck, 17 roan, 2 warthog ...(but no partridge in a pear tree...). Additions to our bird list include a Dark-backed Weaver (aka Forest Weaver), Variable Indigo (2013), African Thrush (race "stormsi") and Miombo Pied Barbet (seen on our access road) = total now 322!

A huge thanks to the Africa Drylands team at Kew who have been ploughing through the Mutinondo samples and to everyone else who have also helped to confirm or determine the plant species within the Mutinondo area (Darbyshire, I.; Osborne, J.; Vollesen, K.,; Browning, J.; Xanthos, M.; Paton, A.J.; Smith, P.P.; Goyder, D.J.; Cribb, P.J.; Bingham, M.; Coates Palgrave, M.; Ashton, P.; Cheek, M.; Pasquet,R.S.; Bone, R.; Burrows, J; Byng, J.; Mellenthis, J.; Cohen, C.; Congdon, C.; Hyde, M.; - and to all the help from the Flora Zambesiaca and Flora of Tropical East Africa). To date 869 plant species have been determined or confirmed at Mutinondo (up from 558 this time last year!!!).

This year Eske De Crop and Jorinde from Gent University spent 2 weeks at Mutinondo studying mushrooms, Jens Kipping studied dragonflies and Hatoshi Takano of the NHM returned to study mostly dung beetles and moths. Mutinondo is proving a good place for research - it is easily accessible, relatively safe, offering unspoilt/uninhabited miombo with accommodation (at special research rates) without park entrance and research fees.

Developments at Mutinondo include signs along the hiking tracks - thanks to Julian, Constantin and our staff who all did a brilliant job whilst we were away enjoying ourselves on holiday - the much needed signs have turned out really well - painted arrows, names and distances on flat rocks supported by cement and boulders. At the beginning of the year w decided to embark on a honey project. 149 bee hives were been bought, assembled and hung in trees in February, to date 47 are occupied. In early December only 23 were harvested producing a rather disappointing 126 kg. In addition as part of the project about 2000 hives have also been distributed to Chief Mpumba and surrounding farmers and villagers by John Enrite and his son. Building wise Kankonde camp now has 2 showers and 2 long drops to cater for the larger groups going there.

Thankfully the forex fiasco (aka "Surprise" Instruments 33 and 55) which caused plenty of problems to visitors and operators was eventually revoked. We cringe at some of our tourists' tales of ATM "malfunctions" and extortion and intimidation by police and immigration officers. We encourage travelers to report these incidents to as many authorities as possible. This year brought our first experience of accusations of extortion from a rather angry American guest. He booked for his family to stay at Mutinondo on his way to Kapishya Hot springs then had to come alone because his children had become ill. Before he left he asked Julian to book for his return trip but didn't turn up. Consequent emails between Julian and Mark agreed that he would make a deposit for the cancellation including 2 beers left unpaid on his previous visit. On our return whilst reconciling bank statements with invoices we noticed this hadn't been paid. We contacted him and were consequently accused of trying to get him to pay twice AND to pay for beers when he didn't drink alcohol, concluding: "You understand, of course, that scams and threats like you have made have consequences in both directions. We do still have strong connections to two expat communities in Lusaka as well as to locals (including one of your Lusaka neighbors)." Strangely enough he did actually pay the cancellation fee but not for the beers...?????? Once again, the one difficult client makes us appreciate all the other lovely people who visit Mutinondo more than ever!! THANK YOU!!!!!

In October Karla our adorable female rug-rat-rotveiller seemed to be suffering with abdominal pain, Mike took her to vet Lisa in Lusaka. She was diagnosed with a swollen spleen, traces of tick borne disease but nothing conclusive, she later developed a ring-shaped wound with a Bont Tick attached on her rump. Exactly as Dr. Tink at Shiwa predicted the core of the wound fell out and she recovered. A month later Missy, our very special little brown dog, got a high temp and became very wobbly which took Mike back to Lisa in Lusaka. Having found ticks on Missey she suggested we changed to a different dip. The following morning Lari dipped Karla and Chuck at Mutinondo with a different chemical. In the afternoon she took them for a run/bike ride up the drive, lost them for most of the ride but regrouped just before getting back. Karla was slow going out and slow coming back again, she stopped and rolled in the driveway, looked as though she was rubbing her eyes, Lari washed her eyes thinking it was either the dip or snake spit irritating them. Karla got fed up with this and gapped it to underneath the desk. Ten minutes later the guards called Lari because Karla had stumbled out of the office where she soon died despite a dose of atropine, presumably as a result of a snakebite. Poor Missy had to be put down due to renal failure a week later. As if that wasn't enough heartache, the day after we got to Lusaka on our way to New Zealand in December, our little black and tan dog in the Lusaka house was in shock with severe abdominal pain, back to Lisa we went where poor little Gypsey had to be put down due to a burst tumour on her spleen. Just an unbelievably sad end to the year.

Thanks to LAWS and its lovely little hounds longing to be loved we start the year with Rex and Rox together with headboy Chuck while Quentin and Betcha have replaced Gypsey in Lusaka with Andy and Blondie.

A happy animal story is that in June Zambuka (20yrs) was diagnosed with cancer growths up his nose and was starving to death because he couldn't swallow, six months later he looks like a young thoroughbred - though still with lumps and snuffles after Bell's body talk from Kenya and 8 phenergan twice a day. Phenergan has also worked wonders with our 28 year old grey mare who has melanomas from top to toe. It's worth a read!
http://www.whale.to/cancer/jones.html

Julian and Diwell returned to assist the Mutinondo team for the festive season, enabling us to abandon ship AGAIN to spend a splendid month with our dozen NZ rellies enjoying all the magic things NZ offers. We thoroughly enjoyed Tiritiri Martangi Island which has been completely replanted with native forest and restocked with many of NZ's endangered birds after being farmed for many years. Then we saw the New Year in the perfect setting of Lari's favourite place outside Africa – the Coromandel Peninsula with Tony, Di and their lovely friends and family.

When we left Zambia it felt like the rainy season - but without any rain, Mutinondo rivers were the driest they had been since 1995 after 2 years of low annual rainfall. Rains started slowly with only 29mm up until the 21st December when we had 93mm and hey presto our solar water pump control box got struck again and had to be replaced.

Here's hoping for good rains, clean, peaceful elections and a more responsible government and the end of Political Fighting!.

Happy new year to everyone!

Much love and very best wishes

Lari and Mike

Mutinondo Newsletter 2013

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Like the year, the rainfall was very short totaling 875mm, our average since 1996/7 is 1145.64mm and this year the last significant fall was on 12 March, so they cut off very early. Consequently we had a looooong dry season. The Musamfushi river only just kept flowing, it was down to a trickle by early October. There were still lots of swimming spots though. By the end of the year the river was still not spilling over Coso falls.

Plants have kept Lari out of trouble for most of the year. Paul Smith from RBG Kew/Wakefield visited in March and sorted through some of her dried specimens to be sent to Kew for identification. 804 plant specimens have been donated to RBG Kew over the past 2 years; to date the confirmed plant list of Mutinondo Wilderness Area stands at 558 (within 409 genera and 108 families); an estimated 592 names and samples remain to be either identified or confirmed. A new record for Zambia was collected in a batch of Cyperaceae collected for Jane Browning of Kew: Fuirena obcordata. Our diverse paradise hosts 94 species of orchids and over 100 types of legumes of which only 54 have been determined! Ruth Bone from Kew visited with a CITES certificate to collect orchids to study the evolution of Eulophia spp funded by the Swiss Orchid Foundation. Thank you to everyone for their assistance in the Mutinondo plant project, particularly Kaj Vollessen, Mike Bingham, Paul Smith, Jonathan Timberlake, Iain Derbyshire, Jane Browning, Martin Xanthos, Tom Heller and Ruth Harker.

Mutinondo has been visited by several entomologists this year: Colin Congdon continues to study the host plants of butterflies, Stephen Downs to study the different flies in the area, a group from the Museum of Natural History in London who are surveying Zambia's moths and dung beetles and Alan Gardener had a brief stop and glance at moths since he was here on other business.

We joined friends in Southern Tanzania in May leaving Mutinondo in the capable hands of our staff. Driving was a very different experience to the train. To avoid Nakonde border (commonly called the worst border in the continent) we went through deserted but very smart (on the Malawian side!) Chitipa border post into Malawi. Had 2 nights on the lake at Karonga before a delayed departure due to Lari's arm dislocating during an early morning yoga session and being further delayed at the border whilst getting ripped off by the helpful insurance man at the Kyela Tanzania post. We got to Mbeya just in time to meet Liz and Dave for our safari and highland holiday in the Ruaha and Mufindi, enjoying some of Mike's old haunts. It was a very short week before dropping Liz and Dave back at the airport, Liz was reunited with her lost luggage the evening before they left. We wandered slowly home via the flower filled Katulo plateau, a few days on a Lake Nyasa beach at magical Matema and back through Malawi via Kyela. This time at Kyela Lari was conned by a friendly money changer, his friends eventually refunded us.

In June a friend, Julian Entjes, offered to look after Mutinondo for a couple of weeks which suddenly enabled us to arrive at Mike's sister's 70th birthday party in the UK unannounced on 19th July. Julian subsequently told us she would be happy to stay longer and we could stay away for 2 months. This turned it into a holiday of a lifetime with friends and family in UK during the most magnificent summer ever. This included LOTSOFGOLF on stunning and special courses including the Belfrey's Derby, Brabazon and PGA courses, Windermere, Siloth on Solway and the Royal Worlington. We adopted Selsey Golf course which was within walking distance from Mike's son and daughter-in-law's home near Chichester. We bought a second hand bike which Lari cycled mostly along the Avon Kennett canal from Henley on Thames to Bristol and down to Exeter catching up with friends along the way. Everything was pretty close to perfect with plenty of time to enjoy getting to know Mike's 22 month grandson and a healthy expanding little group of grand nephews too, no nieces! We got so comfortable we started eyeing real estate, Lari reckoned a garage or boathouse would do. Fortunately the weather changed and we were reminded what life in real England would entail.

Before leaving for the UK we applied to de-register Mutinondo from VAT, because our turnover is below the threshold, which caused a shock when we returned: a statement from ZRA (Zambia Revenue Authority) showing we had hardly paid any VAT since 2005, a debt of a mere K147,000 rebased (equivalent to +-USD30,000!) Lari bet every stitch of clothing on Mr...... in the ZRA Lusaka office that we had paid every ngwee owed. Letters and emails to ZRA were ignored resulting in a trip to Kitwe in November. Of all our quarterly payments and VAT returns made since 2004, 90% of our returns were captured, 20% of our payments were recorded and 50% receipts were issued. Reason given for this appalling lack of record processing being "It's the system" which actually turned out to be several different systems used since VAT was introduced in Zambia: (incl. DEO Data Entry Operation; NCS; Vatlink; TAPS and ITAS) of which none are interlinked or updated from previous systems and we were told that "lightening strikes cause town to town challenges". What a mess and heaven knows what will happen with the new fully electronic system "Tax on Line" just introduced. On 27 December we finally had our de-registration, a huge step forward. It means our lives will be a lot simpler, a lot less accounts work and we expect it to result in savings too.

Another reason to go to Kitwe was to take our hilux for panel beating after one of our general workers with no driving experience had a bash at driving our little Toyota hilux causing K35,500 worth of damage. Ouch!

The upside was that Lari's sister Jan was transferring her horses to their farm in Kitwe offering endless therapeutic horse hugging and riding and the VAT problem was saved by someone who recognised us from when we paid VAT at the Lusaka ZRA office and kindly sent us out for lunch while he captured all our payments from the various systems! A further huge Kitwe achievement was the resuscitation of the "plant laptop" which had crashed the morning we returned from UK. It had just been set up with a programme called Brahms to record the plant data. Cosmic in Lusaka had it for a month and did very little for the K320 they charged, Father Thomas of Mpika RC Diocese got it back to life while Lute from Digital Horizons (0966 190420) at Parklands in Kitwe returned it back to its former self and recovered everything for K150!

The year closes with exciting new beginnings: firstly the birth of Freddie, Mike's second grandson in November; Julian has stayed on to help manage Mutinondo for us; we have signed a letter of commitment with BioCarbon Partners (BCP) for Mutinondo to become part of the REDD+ project; and we have just finished assembling the first 112 out of 150 beehives as an introduction to what sounds like an exciting honey project for the north of Zambia in conjunction with John Enright of Kitwe. A meeting was held with Chief Mpumba and some of his headman just before Christmas to introduce the scheme which was positively received.

Our new government has not made business any easier, the dependence of our overseas visitors on bank transfers and ATMs has caused considerable problems. Foreign visa cards are subject to abuse by machines which record successful transactions without yielding any cash. When questioned, the bank staff blame "the system" (again!) and assure the poor cashless visitor that if they report it to their banks they will be refunded. Not much help when you are in mid Africa in need of cash to pay bills, even worse with a master card which is hardly recognised here. One transfer raised eyebrows this year: a VIP guest brought her sister's friends and family on holiday to Mutinondo. After several false starts of how to pay: "What is the best means of payment? Is there a means of avoiding carrying a huge bundle of cash?"; "Can you provide some additional details so as to enable the transfer of payment? We need a swift code or BACS to make an international transfer"; "It was always going to be an incoming transfer from UK as I am, sorry to say I haven't got much money in Lusaka". It took six months for us to receive the K12,000 owed. Despite detailed instructions from the bank the international transfer never actually made it, they paid locally instead - the excuse being "As stated below, they were not clear to someone not experienced in making international transfers as the first instruction includes two SWIFT codes. This applies as much to the staff in my local high street branch as to myself." - not THE SYSTEM again! John Hay from South Africa also seemed to have had trouble but this time with the exchange rate since he only managed to transfer half what was owed! Please remember to bring Kwacha not dollars or anything else. Otherwise guests have been great in depositing and paying promptly - thank you!

Zambia is becoming more and more difficult to visit and thank you to those who persevere, they assure us that Zambia is worth all the horrendous border hassles, the blatant police fund-raising ambushes, high visa costs, very high cost of living, crumbling roads etc. It is still a very special country with special people all paying a high price for our blase and greedy government. How we wish our government would recognise that there are serious problems handicapping development, investor confidence, conservation and tourism. Sadly our leaders are proving to be a huge disappointment and no improvement on the ousted MMD.

Unfortunately money is god in Zambia's ruling morality from top to bottom. The instigator and very generous provider to a twin schooling program involving Muchelenje School at the end of our drive sums it all up beautifully: "Though instrumental in navigating the petty politics and personalities of earlier committees, it seems Wonder, without the oversight of an outside entity, has turned the project into his own cottage industry based on the golden rule - he who has the gold makes the rules."

Enough of things out of our control and back to the basics at Mutinondo. We would like to clean up our little patch and are very concerned about our overwhelming pits and piles of rubbish, especially tins and plastic bottles. So we have decided to ask all our visitors to respect our beautiful Mutinondo and pack up your non bio degradeables (including disposable nappies) and take them back to town with you. We would really appreciate your consideration, this will go a long way helping us to control Mutinondo's rubbish. Within the lodge we use reusable bottles wherever possible, turn our savannah cider and wine bottles into glasses and drink water from the river, avoiding plastic bottles of water completely. We try to encourage our staff to avoid using things in tins and plastic packaging where possible. Any suggestions and comments on this subject would be very welcome, we have all ignored it for far too long.

Our loyalty to solar power has been challenged this year: an internal part of our Loretz water pump disintegrated, we were told it could not be replaced and we must buy a complete new pump, then 2 control boxes for the same pump had to be replaced - K14,053 later (which included replacing well used deep cycle batteries) and our supplier couldn't be bothered to get off the phone on our last visit.

Bushmail has had some considerable downtime this year. Please note that we have other backup email addresses: mutinondo@yahoo.co.uk (which also gave us trouble this year) and now mutinondowilderness@gmail.com. We also had a time when Airtel was down so we now have an MTN number as well: 0966 198198 (our airtel number is still 0978 198198). Hopefully all angles are now covered.

Animal sightings and poaching have both increased this year. We have seen more warthog than ever before and there have been good sightings of Roan herds but the farms around us have proved to be staging posts for local hunters who are becoming very bold even hunting within sight of the camp at night using torches. Hopefully the capture of someone on boxing day and confiscation of three muzzle loading guns will prove at least a little deterrent.

Thank you once again for your continued interest in and support for Mutinondo. We have enjoyed our freedom to get away more this year including a family Christmas with Lari's sister and family in Kitwe.

Happy happy new year to you all.

Much love

Lari, Mike (and Julian)

Mutinondo Newsletter 2012

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Just after our last family left bringing an end to the festive holidays at the beginning of the year a lioness appeared on our lodge rock. A staff member was taking a suitcase to Kayimbi chalet when he saw her in his path. She didn't move, just sat staring at all of us about 40m from the office for about 20 mins. Fortunately, the visitor who had just arrived, was an experienced marksman so Mike and he let off 2 warning shots. She reluctantly moved off after the 2nd shot. We noticed she had a limp, favouring her back left leg. Mike and the visitor went off to try to see where she had moved to but couldn't find her. 2 members of staff then tracked her between the rock chalet and the bar down to the river where she turned downstream for about half a kilometre before returning towards camp onto camper's rock where she lay out in the open. Mike and the visitor went to see what they could do, they saw her, tried to go round behind her to get in a better position only to find she had moved. Eventually Mike spotted her among the bushes 10m from where they had just come from. She appeared to be hunting them. It was getting dark and very soon they would lose sight of her. Mike then asked the visitor to shoot her which he did with one shot to the head.

By this time Lari had arrived with a ZAWA scout after an unsuccessful hunt for a goat in the village. On inspection she (the lioness - not Lari) was covered in ticks, condition not bad but she had a deformed back foot which was presumably the cause of the limp. The inner claw was missing and another bent over the one beside it.

ZAWA requested the skin and 50kg of salt to "cure" it. We asked for a small piece of skin so that DNA tests can be done to try to establish where the lioness came from. This was not as simple as it sounds, it took a couple of months before the skin was dry enough and then "the sample" was collected by somebody else completely unbeknown to us and Mike had to fight for another and eventually got one. The following morning the sample had disappeared and so had our lovely little dog Missy! Mike had to go back and ask for another one .......

Our very good groom Stan left us in January, this, together with the constant worry of lion and all the other angst that goes with taking visitors out, riding is being phased out. (Good news for riders and especially horses there is a great book out: "Twisted Truths of Modern Dressage" by Philippe Karl.)

By February progress on both the Lusaka house and our application for 99 year title deeds was getting nowhere despite us believing we had hired professionals to do both. The land title was being held up by a mystery letter from Mpika District Council insisting that the council inspected our development. Despite endless requests to the Council we could not get an inspection done. On one visit to Mpika, the planning officer said it was not up to the Council to do this, they had already done it for the 14 year lease. Our lawyer said in his 32 year experience this had never been requested before. After a fruitless few weeks the only positive outcome Lari had to show for her head banging was our lovely little Missy, another very special brown pound hound from LAWS. We were warned that she was a cat killer, she had previously been adopted by someone at Musikili School, had a happy four months until she killed the headmaster's cat and was returned to the pound. Claudia at LAWS was assured that we only had big cats......

A wonderful high for February and Zambia was Zambia winning the Africa Cup of Nations - Zambia was just humming with happiness.

After a busy Easter in camp our plans to celebrate our 120 birthday turned into a blissfully quiet weekend at Isanga Bay, just us and Missy. Apart from walking to Kalambo falls, looking at plants and birds along the way we just enjoyed doing nothing by the beautiful big lake. Missy found a friend to play with and ate the bosses dinner - fortunately no cats!

May brought Jonathan Timberlake and Paul Smith from Kew to Mutinondo for a brief but good visit, later Jonathan returned with Mike Bingham but unfortunately we had already left for Botswana. The plant recording at Mutinondo is soldiering on with very generous assistance from Paul, Mike, Jonathan, Iain Darbyshire, Kaj Vollesen, Philip J. Cribb, Frederic Melki, David J. Goyder, Peter Ashton, Brita Stedje, Charlotte Bjora, Shakkie Kativu, Inger Nordal, Jane Browning, Meg Coates-Palgrave and Martin Xanthos.

Lari had another spell in Lusaka trying to sort out the house and title deeds in June. After many many hours at the Ministry of Lands standing in endless lines, reading newspapers, making friends and reporting a rogue officer to Anti-corruption Commission, the files for our farms were found, a satellite photo was requested to ensure no villages were on the land. K7.2m., 4 trips out to the National Remote Sensing Centre near the airport later we felt we were getting somewhere at last until the report from NRSC stating "the areas are not settled by any human communities" was translated into....we had done nothing - there was no development!!!!.........come back on Monday 3pm! Damnit - had we chopped all the trees down and built big ugly obvious buildings we would have had proof of our development. It was a very fraught weekend and Monday trying to work out how we were going to prove our 17 years of hard work. Thanks to Ilse Mwanza's vast library of aerial and Google satellite photos and the most encouraging breakfast ever Lari became armed with proof to get at least the Ministry of Tourism's support before meeting the Commissioner at 6pm Monday evening and what a HUGE relief when Mutinondo's development was greatly appreciated and our title was approved. YAAAAHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! We had no idea how heavy this cloud of land concern was until it had been lifted. We had been warned that there was a syndicate after Mutinondo and that is where the strange Council inspection request had come from. It was fantastic to know that the system does eventually work and once the rogue officer was reported to ACC the rest of the Ministry of Lands officers could not have been more professional, efficient and an absolute pleasure to deal with. They are drastically understaffed and overworked often found still working after 7pm and then back in the office before 8am.

We floated around on cloud nine for the rest of year. The Chief of our area, His Highness Chief Mpumba, decided that he wanted our little farm where we had cleared 10 hectares and planted fruit trees and grown some veg etc 20km from camp. We had no other option but to "donate" this to him, one less responsibility for us but we will miss the fresh produce from there. Lari sold her part of her family farm and some of her jewelry equipment so the plan to simplify our lives is slowly panning out. Late in October the Chairman of Mpika Council phoned us at 6am to say the Council were having an emergency meeting and were coming to inspect our development, they didn't turn up - very strange. What are our council's up to? News from lodges in Mfuwe report visits from their council who confiscated homemade products including ice-cream because there were no expiry dates as well as meat in deep freezes for the same reason and whisky was taken for being too old!

No new birds to add to our list this year but we have had a few interesting sightings. First a pair of Black-tailed Grey Waxbills in mid July. One was then seen carrying nesting material, no sign of the nest though. Then in August there was a small group of eight...they had bred?? They remained around the office until late September and then disappeared. Very pretty little birds. Then at the beginning of December a Grey Wagtail on our airstrip. African Broadbills have been heard frequently during the year, mainly down near the stables or Coso falls. One strange observation, we used to have many Black Flycatchers around our dining room and bar, some used to nest nearby. For the last six months we haven't seen a single one, where have they gone and why?

Our lovely big old dog Maxy had tick bite fever on our return from UK and very sadly didn't recover, we miss him.

Having visited Tanzania, Botswana and Rwanda, it is extremely concerning how jacked up our competition is, they are serious about their conservation and tourist industry - especially the latter. Zambia has to wake up and catch up before we lose our wildlife and tourists for ever.

We thoroughly enjoyed our week in Rwanda with our friends Tina and Steve. The country was the cleanest we have come across in Africa, plastic bags are banned while the population goes out collecting rubbish on Saturdays joined by the President. Nyungwe NP was fantastic as were the Albertine Rift birds, 50 "lifers" in 3 days. The Gorillas and Virunga mountains unbelievable. In our life after Mutinondo we'd like to return and spend a month there combining it with W Uganda.

After visiting Rwanda we continued to UK to see Mike's family and to celebrate his grandson's first birthday. Thanks to Vanessa, Lari was fortunate to attend the Tusk Trust Amex 2012 at the Royal Geographical Society, a hard hitting talk entitled "Savannah to Shanghai". The contents were shocking on many fronts and also noted that Zambia's policing ability and future of our elephants was ranked amongst the lowest in Africa. The link to the film of this talk is: https://vimeo.com/groups/168164.

May the whole of Zambia work towards the good of Zambia's future and may our politicians please stop squabbling. They have one job to do: to look after ZAMBIA and ZAMBIANS (not themselves!) this won't happen unless they stamp out corruption. Zambia's future and resources deserves better. We all need to care and take responsibility for this good country.

Congratulations to Christopher Katongo Zambia's football skipper for becoming Africa's BBC footballer of the year. A wonderful role model!

Mushrooms popped up all round us as the year drew to a close. What a joy to be able to go out and pick such a variety of edible ones.

All the best for 2013 and take care

Much love

Lari and Mike

Mutinondo Newsletter 2011

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Very early on the 21st January Humphrey told Lari that Ryan had been run over by a train. She thought, or maybe wanted to hear, that it was actually the lion which had got run over. Tragically, it was Ryan, the talented, wonderful artist who made many of the items sold in the shop. He cut all our glasses out of bottles, made napkins, table mats and cushion covers, altered and mended clothes, made the Christmas decorations and all the jewellery bags and boxes, was so clever and creative and such a pleasure to deal with. He had just had a successful exhibition in Lewis, Delaware, USA organised by Seth Price where his collage art on recycled paper was a hit. He was due to be at Mutinondo the following day to bring out more works of art to send to Seth. We all miss him dearly and are reminded of him at every turn by all the things he has made around us.

In February we had a break through with Lari's seemingly endless family saga. The Zambian Law Association held a hearing and told the estate lawyers to supply accounts. The LAZ panel also encouraged Lari to pursue legal action against the executrix as it was her responsibility to supply the beneficiaries with accounts. (The executrix had refused to supply these for the past 3 years.) The estate lawyers justified their conduct with what they always say – “we are just following the executrix's instructions”. After further pressure from LAZ, eventually in December final payment was eventually offered (on the condition we the beneficiaries signed an indemnity declaring that we would accept it as full and final and not take the estate team to court). Thank you LAZ for bringing an end to this bad and sad story. Something should be learned from this: do not make beneficiaries executors; keep lawyer and accountant involvement to the absolute barest minimum (their charges and performance are absolute opposites). Sadly, I don't know how someone with dementia can be protected from being made to change her/his will – any suggestions are welcome. Mum and Dad should have just done much more “SKI-ING” - Spending the Kids Inheritance. (However, the estate team should represent Zambia in the Winter Olympics!)

Fortunately there is a lot more to life than pros and cons (which of course doesn’t mean professionals and con artists). Fascinating visitors continue to visit Mutinondo, enhancing our lovely wilderness with appreciation and constantly enlightening us. Mutinondo is still amazing us with its beauty, over 100 different orchids have been photographed in the area. Our staff especially Christopher, Diwell, Humphrey and Stan have done their jobs so well that we have so much less to do. Stan studied the Pat Parelli horse training home study course with excellent results on Spirit. Our dogs also made our year so much fun.

March had a huge treat in store for Lari. Sally Greyvenstein advertised that Meg Coates Palgrave (co-author of Trees of Southern Africa) from Harare was doing a tree ID course at their farm in Mkushi. After the course Lari brought Meg back to Mutinondo for a few days for a recce to do a course at Mutinondo later in the year.

The first quarter of the year brought high wage hikes and very few guests, resulting in our first cash flow concerns since starting Mutinondo. We decided to reduce our horse herd. Patrick Phiri took over Poko and Jack who just hadn't fitted in as guest friendly horses. He has done absolute wonders with Poko who is now the “laziest ride in his new riding school” and Jack has found his perfect home with Alex Walsh.

In May Mike continued his work with Chintu Mukulu. Guni and Misael Kokwe kindly offered their expertise and some of their time to access funds to further this community project. Sadly no progress has been possible because the large area of land allocated to Chintu Mukulu by the Chief and District Council was
purposely incorporated into a farm block being demarcated and established by Tazara Corridor. Currently efforts are being made to have this reversed. Meanwhile Chintu Mukulu has no land to base a project on. Sadly it now looks as though a fertilizer scam has emerged within the Chintu Mukulu co-op leaving many of the local farmers and our staff deprived of their valuable shares and fertilizer. Another disappointment is a joint attempt to build a four schoolroom block for Muchelenje School following the collapse of the roof of the existing building in January 2010. As their contribution the parents undertook to make bricks, provide water, bring sand and move the bricks to the site. The Ministry of Education disaster fund provided most of the materials, Seth Price of Muchelenje Development Project paid for the crushed stone and we paid for the transport. Building is being held up because parents refuse to carry bricks 50m without payment.

In June, Angie and Chris' daughter Alison got married in Longsleddale in the Lake District. Angie is Mike's UK sister. This was another great gathering of friends and family from UK, New Zealand and South Africa. It was wonderful to catch up with Chris's side of the family and meet Jim and his lovely friends and family. We had good fun staying with close family in the various beautiful places Angie found for us in this spectacular remote valley. We ignored the weather, hail and all, enjoyed some good walks and even some golf in the wet but very beautiful hills of Cumbria before heading south with Mike's cousin Nigel and Colleen to their bit of paradise in Dorset, meet their alpacas and visit many “memory lanes” around Golden Cap where Mike and Nigel spent a lot of their childhood together. The last part of our month away was spent with Charlie, Ali and Vicky in Horsham. A few days of sunshine allowed Lari to borrow Charlie's bike and nip off along the South Downs Way to Eastbourne. Yet another magic part of the UK. While we were away Lari's sister Jan and Quentin campsat for us. A very big thank you Jan and Quentin.

Jack, our lovely Rotweiller-cross, was bitten by a snake while we were in the UK. He had a habit of shaking snakes which sadly was a one way ticket to a Darwin award. He had even dug this one up! He was a beautiful dog inside and out, we and Karla his sister miss him terribly. Subsequently some neighbours of our Lusaka house were threatening to poison one of our dogs in Lusaka so we brought him to Mutinondo to replace Jack. Max is a huge old Ridgeback cross, also a very lovable and special pound-hound who we adopted with all the geese, cats, staff etc when we bought the house and cottage.

While we were away Minstrel developed very high temperatures. He was treated for tick fever, recovered and then went down again several days later. Jan and Stan did wonders to keep him alive. They called a vet out who unfortunately didn't do any investigations to find out what the problem was. When we got home he was still going through fever spells. Blood samples we sent to Onderstepoort returned with the diagnosis of Tryps +4. Very grateful thanks to the following people who generously shared their knowledge and advice, tested and monitored Minstrels progress during the long and tough following months: Drs. Amy Cantley, Neil and Louise Anderson, Lisa Oparaocha, Pauline Borsboom, Boniface Namangala (of UNZA who is studying Tryps and kindly continued to test blood samples after Minstrel had been diognosed); Alison Mundy with her incredible hands-on experience of dealing with horses with Tryps in Tanzania; Vanessa Buxton and her Mum's network of UK vets; Abdi from Medina Chemicals in Nairobi, Dave, Liz and Mark Hopkins and DHL who managed to get the drugs to us and Amelia Kinkade and Jeff who tried to help Minstrel through herbs and alternative methods. We were warned that once Tryps gets into the central nervous system horses don't survive but we wanted to try everything just in case. We were thrilled in September when Boniface reported that the latest samples proved negative. Minstrel started to put on weight but his tail and hind legs were still semi paralysed. We hoped for the best.

The Mutinondo tree course was held very successfully soon after we got back in June. Lari then drove to N.W. Province with Meg for a couple of weeks to find trees neither of them had seen before. Fortunately we were introduced to Edson Katota from Chief Nagwesa's area near Ikilenge who was an absolute wealth of knowledge. There is a drastic shortage of accommodation north of Mwinilunga and a big thank you to Charles Rae for all his help including letting us stay in his house. Going through Solwezi was interesting having not been there since 2000. It is extraordinary how it has morphed into a sprawling mining town, salted with pampered expats, a bizarre reflection of Copperbelt towns 50 year ago.

Another great treat and assistance towards our attempts to record the plants of Mutinondo was the arrival of Paul Smith and family in July. Wonderful assistance followed from Paul's colleagues at Kew's Royal Botanical Gardens (Iain Darbyshire, David Goyder and Kai Vollesen).

Work started on our Lusaka property in June. We contracted Daniel Chilekwa and his team from Mpika, also using his buyer from Mpika, and started building two staff houses and a studio and art gallery for Quentin. Quentin spent the whole of 2011 exploring for as many new waterfalls as he possibly could. His trips are recorded in the Lusaka Lowdown which are worth reading. He has had an incredible year doing a magnificent task of charting waterfalls most at least 2 days (sometimes 5) hike away from the closest access road. On several occasions he hopped or stumbled into Mutinondo for a number of days of R&R, a good feed and scrub up between trips. At the beginning of the year he moved all his things into the cottage on our Lusaka property to save paying rent in his Makeni house for the year and, now that his “waterfall year” is over will live there.

Phil Turner has had his crew fixing up our Lusaka house since July. By the end of November it was looking much better. Thank you Phil for doing our lovely house justice, it helped so much to have someone who was creative, practical and very optimistic. Hopefully it will soon be finished..... We have also sorted out the outstanding business with the previous owner. (It's a wonderful peaceful place if anyone knows of someone who would like to rent a house in the bush only 15 minutes drive from Lusaka Golf Club.)

August was a very special month, continuing with the building theme, but this time in Mutinondo. The bathroom extension to the ex jewellery workshop and shop was completed. It is great to have our own bathroom at last as well as the most lovely little home to unpack some of our belongings and a place we can call our own.

On 2nd Aug Mike, Quentin and Michael Colbert drove to the escarpment. 3Km from camp they came across pile after pile of elephant dung. A herd of about 5 elies had wandered along the road. Very exciting that they have now visited Mutinondo area 2 years in a row without being hunted.

Also in August, we stayed with Gus, Rod and family for another magic stay at Kutandala....possibly for the last time due to ZAWA's difficult attitude towards operators (– another institution our new government needs to sort out!). The loss of Kutandala to Zambia's tourism is tragic, they run such a fantastic camp with the perfect site, Rod's phenomenal guiding skills and Gus's amazing meals!

The month ended with a very welcome and interesting visit from Peter Ashton, an expert in African epiphytic orchids, who kindly went through the Mutinondo orchid photos solving many of the long-term “unknowns”.

Mutinondo has attracted several potential buyers who loved it. Very interesting people and encouraging to know that there are such suitable people for Mutinondo on the market. Unfortunately the Ministry of Lands is either being very inefficient, corrupt or there is something more sinister happening (or maybe all three). Chintu Mukulu the community project land to the east of us is facing similar obstacles at the Ministry of Lands. After our previous bad experiences with Tazara Corridor we suspect that we will soon have to resort to some exposure of this concerning situation. Everything will hopefully get sorted out eventually, in the meantime we continue to love life at Mutinondo. The longer we stay here the better the plant collection will be – but unfortunately not good for the golf – unless we put a few holes on the airstrip!!! (well actually Lari meant along the side of the airstrip.)

Zambia did itself proud with the September elections, a huge congratulation and relief that all went well. Our new Government has so many rotten institutions to sort out, we wish them all the very best for fulfilling their good intentions and promises. Its' not going to be easy and nothing but a change only for the good of Zambia and Zambians should be accepted. Greed, contempt and corruption has been tolerated for far too long. It is disgusting what people have been allowed to get away with, starting with Chiluba and all his henchmen. NAPSA is immoral the way it has abused Zambia's pension fund. David Chomba (our wonderful member of staff who died in 2009)'s wife, Dorothy, has spent K400,000 visiting the Mpika Napsa office 10 times to collect the money owed to her only to be told “come back next month”. It is all so unfair.

We salute our democracy as well as those very brave people in the Middle East who managed to change their unacceptable governments through peaceful protest. Here’s to change and please don’t let it get hijacked by power and greed.

Our beautiful old grey gelding, Bushy, tragically died of a twisted gut on 9th October. A young boy, William, rode him in the morning and he died in the early hours the following morning. He was such a special horse, he’d hardly done anything wrong since we bought him from Lorraine Chalcroft in 1996, an absolute gentleman, he was about 24 and couldn’t have given us more than he did. Heaven knows how many children had lovely safe rides on him over the years.

Much of the remainder of the year was blissful. Mike became a grandfather to Sam Michael Merrett born by caesarian at 21:40 on 13 November, 8lbs 8oz. We went over to the UK to welcome him. Another lovely family gathering and wonderful to see more of Ali's family and thank you so much for our special time with you all. We continued on to Kenya to meet friends and family at Mathaiga Club, a soggy round of golf between plenty of rain, great food, wine and company before all flying to Samburu on safari supremo, followed by a few days of being utterly spoiled in Mukima House at the foot of Mount Kenya, playing some croquet and golf, again between rain, great company, food, and wine. 5 days in Malindi with Liz and Dave Hopkins was just a splendid end to a perfect holiday. Another big thank you to our staff and Quentin for making it possible for us to get away again.

Our homecoming on 8th December was the biggest and sorest thump imaginable. Stella, our absolutely magic little dog and companion, had died of a presumed snake bite two days before on the 6th. Diwell described her beautifully to Jan as “a darling in every sphere”. Minstrel deteriorated and needed to be put down after we returned to Mutinondo on 16th. They must have both been so unlucky, Stella was clever with snakes, always watching them from a safe distance. She had no wound but hemorrhaged after her death. For an infected tsetse fly to have bitten Minstrel it must have traveled in by car or plane. We moved into the festive season with very very heavy hearts. All we really wanted for Christmas was our dog back. The most amazing group of Christmas guests could not have been better company for our very sad souls. Thank you the Green, Van der Nest and Bate families, you have no idea how good you were for us (not to mention all that delicious cream Frank!).

May everyone’s year be filled with good people, loads of love, laughter, peace, health and happiness.

Much love and very best wishes to you all.

Lari, Mike and everyone at Mutinondo

Mutinondo Newsletter 2010

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0200

When we applied to adopt the dogs from LAWS we were questioned about leopard and we assured the ladies that we would keep the dogs safe from attack. We were sitting with our clients having dinner and a shot went off! Oh dear we thought – here we go again! But... it was only a leopard in the tree next to the reception checking out the dogs. Fortunately the dogs have their own armed guard who let off a warning shot and the leopard has not visited the dogs since.

The beginning of the year was a fretful time but we are at last at peace with our paradise again. We have put Mutinondo on the market. We are not in a hurry to sell but if the right people come along we will be happy to let it go and start our next life. The decision itself without the actual action of selling has been good for us, it made us appreciate the things we took for granted. Lari walked down to the waterfalls on the escarpment three times for various reasons, each time thinking it might be the last! The plant data base has had to have plenty of attention as we might not be here for ever to collect and record ad lib.

A new plant species found here has been described and named after Mutinondo, a Scrophulariaceae now called Crepidohopolon mutinondoensis. It is a very pretty little plant which grows all over the rocks near the lodge in March, April and May. Many years ago Mike Bingham found an unusual dry season orchid to the south of Mayense Hill which has since been named “Habernaria binghamii”. Paul Smith of Kew gave Lari a whole day of his precious time in Mount Makulu Herbarium and visits from Maartin van Hove from Belgium, specialist in Rubiaceae and James Byng from Kew have all been a great help and inspiration for the plant data base.

We have had a good dash of travel, golf and birding this year. Mike's son Charlie got married near Hazyview in SA. A truly wonderful occasion full of fun, family and lovely to meet their friends (and plenty of golf!). We have also enjoyed local trips to North and South Luangwa and Kasanka and have been reminded just how absolutely magic our doorstep destinations are. Many thanks to Vanessa Buxton for getting us to visit South Luangwa again. The last time we were in Mfuwe was for Norman Carr's memorial in 1997!

Very sadly Lari's jeweller Elliot was found dead outside a bar in Itimpi on the Word cup opening night. We had already closed the workshop due to its attraction to the previous robberies and Julie had very kindly taken on the equipment and given him a job. The centrifugal casting, stone cutting equipment and fabricating jewellery equipment is for sale.

In preparation for our “next life” we found a perfect house on a hill in the bush but only 15 minutes drive from the Lusaka Golf Course. The sale went amicably until the seller owed us money due to the change in exchange rates and the promise of payment proved as leaky as the roof and as dodgy as the wiring! This was the beginning of a trend this year of what Alexander McCall Smith calls “no moral imagination”. We thought we were so lucky when we soon got a tenant working for Madison Life Insurance who wanted to rent the house for 3 years, signed the agreement requiring 2 months notice either way, gave us a list of repairs to be done and then failed to return or to honour the agreement. We had to accept a third of what he owed us otherwise we would “get nothing” or have to donate more money to lawyers. Apparently he got a better job offer with Sanlam Life Assurance in Lagos – no problem with such inconveniences as having to honour agreements there!

The above problems and ongoing problems with Lari's parent's estate are summed up well in a joke Colin Congdon told us over Christmas: “As an engineer was about to be welcomed into the pearly gates the Devil pleaded with God to borrow him for a year to do some maintenance on the boilers and air conditioners in Hell. God agreed but made the Devil promise that the engineer would be returned after a year and they shook on it. After the year went by the engineer wasn't returned so God reminded the devil that they had an agreement. The devil refused to return the engineer and told God to sue him if he wanted. God asked: “Where do you expect me to find a lawyer?”

This year's problems were mostly created by our attempt to plan our new life. We thought management would release us from the day to day demands of Mutinondo. Lari was very enthusiastic about the couple we employed, one a biologist and the other an outdoor activities instructor. Mutinondo seemed to be the perfect place for them. Unfortunately our paradise isn't to everyone's liking and our values clashed considerably. They resigned after 6 weeks. We would still like to employ management or have campsitters for at least for a few months to allow us to get away a bit more. If anyone knows of preferably a Zambian resident who would appreciate the wilderness and conservation aspect of Mutinondo with “good moral imagination” please ask them to contact us.

The huge but natural hole of 2010 was caused by a lion which killed our beautiful big bay gelding Zebadee. He was the only horse which had been trained well enough to believe that lions didn't exist, he didn't shy and was wonderfully placid. It was a stressful time trying to shoot the lion, thank you for your help Charlie Harvey and Mike Fisher. After four nights it wandered off much to everyone's relief. Many thanks to Lucy and Steve Rufus for advising us on how to keep the horses safe from the lion in the future, they are now protected by an armed shepherd when the lion are in the area.

We became resigned to the fact that Cloudy's (our old grey mare) melanoma under her tail had got so bad possibly beginning to restrict manure movement that we realised we would have to soon put her down. Thanks to Janice May's research on cancer and alternative treatments and Dr. Pauline's reminder we now give Cloudy 8 x Phenegan a day and the melanoma has reduced considerably. Apparently Robert Jones spent his life researching and proving this but ended up writing “In the dark shadow of science” in frustration with the medicine industry which refused to recognise his discovery.

In November one of our staff noticed large pot like indentations in the sand down by the bridge. On further investigation it became clear they were caused by an elephant which had also been eating the matete (reeds). From there it moved towards the villages where we are told it met another elephant. Apparently they both made their way safely back towards the valley.

Last night we watched the last sunset of the year, it looked as though it was going to be a wash out but then suddenly burst into the most brilliant crimson cradled by the Ishilankuli hills. The end of a fairly tranquil year and we are really hoping for a VERY, VERY quiet and maybe even boring 2011.

All the very best to you all and may you have the sort of year you wish for too.

Lari and Mike

Mutinondo Newsletter 2008

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0200

20th February was the darkest day at Mutinondo. An armed gang walked into camp at dinner time, tied our 8 foreign visitors and Mike up, repeatedly threatened to kill them, let a shot off which grazed and deeply shocked our employee David Chomba, robbed everyone and then drove Mike and all but one of the guests into the bush, tying everyone to a tree before the 4 thieves drove off in a Mutinondo vehicle (after complaining it was too old!). The gang leader is most probably the driver who brought a group of birdwatchers here in January 2006, we gave his name, operating cell number and bus licence number to the police. The combined complete lack of police response, horrible experience and huge loss has been counterbalanced several hundred fold by the magnificent support, help and encouragement from so many very very special people. Thank you all so much for reminding us why and how much we love being at Mutinondo. We embrace you all together with the great relief that no one was injured and that Lari’s late return that night from the Copperbelt meant she just missed them driving out.

Our Nissan Patrol had to have another engine fitted after the fly wheel nut came loose last year. Lari spent a chunk of February in the Kitwe waiting for it to be fitted during which she spent many contented days in the Kitwe herbarium photographing appropriate samples to help with the Mutinondo plant identification. Nissie has served us wonderfully hauling loads of supplies to camp for the past 8 years. After many consequent break downs Eugene Meinjties seems to have revived the old girl by fixing and fitting the original engine. A sign of the times, our staff are retiring, our horses are aging and our cars are needing more and more maintenance - like their owners! We are looking for another manual Nissan Patrol, please tell us if you know of a good second hand one for sale.

In mid March Quentin bounced into camp with his usual refreshing and inspiring enthusiasm before he and his team sloshed off on their first leg of a 6 weeks waterfall marathon dubbed “2008 - over the edge”. They returned for a couple of luxurious nights out of the rain AND on mattresses!!! Then Lari joined Quentin, Ilse, Timmie and Co to explore the Mupamadzi waterfalls south of Mutinondo. April fools night was spent camping next to both cars seriously stuck in the mud - snapped winch cable and all. Bush bashing by 4x4 in the Northern Province in early April is definitely only for waders and "cataractophiles" (Quentin and Ilse's name for waterfall addicts). After scrambling around the magnificent Mupmadzi, Lari and Willie decided it was the perfect opportunity to walk home. The clamber up the escarpment brought the end of her Timberland boots, the flooded rivers were a problem to cross, red ants, bees and rain visited their tentless "camp" but the walk was absolutely wonderful. They wandered into camp a few days later, spent a day preparing their bikes and then set off again to meet cataractos at Lusiwasi power station. Mike got away from camp in time to join Lari at the nearby unsung gem of a place, Kaumba Mountain Safaris, for a few days of blissful birding, hiking and gazing across the hazy Luangwa Valley whilst (by now a much leaner) Quents continued his waterfall mission.

A trip in search of plants in the Luangwa Valley brought Paul Smith (from Kew) to Zambia in May, - unfortunately not to Mutinondo. He brought us the corrected version of our plant photos sent to Kew in 2006 and thanks to his encouragement we have started collecting. With great help from Paul and his colleagues from Kew, Mike Bingham, the Kitwe Herbarium, Ivan and Colin (the butterfly collectors who know all their caterpillars' food plants) and an ever increasing plant library 538 species have been identified at Mutinondo. There are still hundreds of plant photos and samples in “work in progress”and plenty more plants waiting for us out there too!

Lari’s Mum died on June 1st so after the funeral Mike held the Mutinondo fort whilst Lari spent most of the month with her sister Jan on the Copperbelt. Sadly Mum’s last few months were not happy ones, may she rest in well deserved peace and be happily reunited with Dad (who died 11 months earlier). A four day lull in greatly needed heart warming news from Mike and Mutinondo resulted in a report that 3 lion had chewed the hose pipe at the stables before chasing our ever adventurous horse Spirit down the road. (He was the horse that went walk about to the escarpment for 11 days last year). You can imagine the relief in camp when a very sweaty and muddy Spirit returned the following day, the staff tracking him estimated that he ran in a large loop covering at least 50km touching Kankonde Camp. We repeatedly asked ZAWA for permission to arrange for the lions to be darted and relocated to the valley but they said they could not understand the problem as "most lodges want such beasts". Eventually an assessment team was sent to take a look. Then, after 2 of our neighbour’s cattle were eaten in September, ZAWA authorised SLCP to capture the lion.

So we were left with lingering lions for our busiest months when we definitely didn’t need any more sideshows. The lodge and campsite were full for most of the time including 175 youngsters in 11 different school groups from the UK who stayed here before they walked with our guides and village porters to Chifungwe gate in South Luangwa.

A first for us was a bird watching guide course which we organised and sponsored. It was conducted over 36 very full days for 11 participants by 2 Belgians who gave their time and expertise free.

Another first was a part time volunteer who asked if she could help us out in exchange for reduced rates. We gave her a 70% discount and a lot of silver jewelry for her help during her 59 days stay. Polly thanked us for the discount and jewelry and asked if she could transfer the funds from the UK. She later emailed to say she had to pay in instalments and complained that she had actually expected to only pay the equivalent of 10%. Then, instead of paying a penny, she sent us a bill: £625 X 20 days “consultancy” less 70% discount = £3750!) Kasanka’s practice of charging volunteers up front is highly recommended.

The birding guide teachers saw several birds not on our list but these are still in the process of being verified, otherwise as proof that we have not been out bird watching enough this year the only new addition is the Banded Martin which Mike saw way back in January bringing our bird list total to 320.

A visitor from Tanzania kindly took Mike for his first-ever flight over our area in September and guess what were the only animals they saw? 2 lion in Kabasano dambo 4km from camp!! A few days later while having a quiet Mosi sundowner Mike watched most likely the same 2 lion in the same dambo. In October Rachel Mc Rob and her team arrived from South Luangwa with what looked like the making of a mega braii and disco. Despite inviting the lion with trails of hippo offal, blood curdling renditions of squealing pigs and a very smelly hippo leg nothing came to the bait. Seems they followed a herd of Roan instead.

Many thanks to Rachel, Paula White and team together with Jeremy Pope’s generosity in offering to fund the relocation flights. Sorry our lion had other plans. The lion disappeared until December when they have been heard calling in the mornings - does this mean they have claimed this as their territory?

It is very encouraging that there now appears to be enough game to attract what ended up to be 5 or 6 lion. One concern is that maybe there isn’t enough food for them and that they will start topping up their diet with people and domestic animals. We warn our visitors when lion are in the area and really appreciated how responsible and realistic they are when trying to assess the risk. Hopefully the quality of their holiday isn’t affected. We have reluctantly had to consider introducing an indemnity form and would appreciate your comments and suggestions on this.

The lion prints were often found following a herd of about 16 roan which were around Big Chipundu for most of the dry season. Our scouts continue to do a pretty good job discouraging illegal hunting in our area. They have reported good sized herds of eland and sable and an eland, which had died of gunshot wounds, was found by the Myala traditional leaders whilst they were doing their ceremony in the area in November. The scouts continue to do their brave work, this year they captured 12 muzzle loading guns from poachers and carried out additional patrols with the SLCS scouts from Mfuwe.

The airstrip is featuring a little more at Mutinondo. We had 3 charters and 2 private planes come in excluding the times Ed brought his boys here to ride. Klaus and Lizanne brought their microlight here in November, a perfect plan for all - they were to ring birds, fly their microlight and keep an eye on Mutinondo whilst we went to Zanzibar for a very relaxing 2 weeks with Mike’s sister Angie and her husband Chris. One of the first things Diwell told us when he collected us off the train 3 weeks later was that Klaus had taken him, Kennedy, Christopher and Joseph for a flight each (and they didn’t see any lion). It was a very happy home coming, (especially after being on the train for 60hrs!) reassuring that things go on as normal when we are not here ….and....... at last our scruffy outside kitchen has been transformed!

Last year our wonderful chef Bonnie retired followed this year by Binwell and our great carpenter Dickson. Many of our staff have been with us for over 10 years, 3 resigned this year after seeing how much money is received for terminal benefits. We boosted and rejuvenated our staff in October with 7 new employees on trial and training - our training manual is complete and our senior members of staff are using it to train the newcomers. We really hope they all settle well into the Mutinondo way of doing things and become important and dependable members of our operation (sadly one very promising new recruit has already slipped down the "not telling the truth chute").

Family and friends gathered at the end of the year, Lari’s sister Jan and her family came on the 26th with a friend and 3 motorbikes! The boys went off the following day and managed to get to the Mupamadzi river and back to Mutinondo on their bikes, spending 2 nights on the way - Auntie as usual is very impressed - it was difficult enough to push a double-barrel Eagle bike up the escarpment!

Lari left Mike holding camp AGAIN to join Jan and Mike Fisher for a blissful wander down the river to many magic spots ending up at a waterfall we hadn't seen before. We hiked, swam, camped and feasted on wild mushrooms and masuku along the way and the Fishers backpacks were like walking with a couple of bottomless Christmas stockings........ returning on the 30th in time to join the Quarmbies, Quentin, Julie and the Robinsons, Kim and her boys with Frank and Inge from Kasanka for New Year.

The 30th brought some interesting action: Frank and Inge had the most wonderful view and photo of a leopard at midday carrying a large baboon near Charlie’s rock, Paddy, Jay and Tom photographed a spider killing a herald snake and James called Mike and some guests to have a look at an Olive Grass Snake devouring a small Rainbow Skink.

Lets hope 2009 is a rich year full of equanimity, good people, family, friends and happiness which will give us all enough spirit to flourish despite the surprises and challenges it will no doubt have in store for us.

Lots of love and very best wishes

Lari and Mike

Mutinondo Newsletter 2007

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Lari’s parents had their 50th Wedding anniversary celebration in March gathering many old friends and recollections in the process. Lari scanned their married life’s collection of about 3000 slides during the very wet February when the limited solar power permitted. The rains reached 1155mm and despite cries from Luangwa Valley dwellers to stop sending any more water down, our Musamfushi River just got fatter and kept rolling by. We sold the microlight in February but we are not allowed to talk about that……………and then we splashed out and bought 5 new horses which arrived at the beginning of March - many thanks to the Asherwoods for parting with these great horses, they are just the type and temperament we want, complementing the others beautifully.

April brought a truly magical wedding celebration to Mutinondo. Julian and Bruce and about 30 of their very special family and friends gave us a wonderful week of what fairy tales are made of!

In June we went sailing in Croatia for 2 weeks after a fortnight in UK when Lari did a very wet but extremely interesting week-long Pat Parelli horse training course in Devon. Several islands down the southern coast of Croatia were the destinations for our flotilla, we had a Gibsea 33 and fortunately Mike could still remember how to sail. The undeveloped parts were wonderful but still showing evidence of the war. We flew back the day after the airport and nightclub car bombs so the airport security hype was sad, very inconvenient and a good deterrent from future plans of putting our carbon footprints too far afield. Archaeologists from Liverpool University were very busy doing a dig at the Caterpillar rock art site whilst we were away, it was good to get back before they left to enjoy hearing some of the adventures of what Quentin called “the giggle” of archaeologists!

Whilst we were away Edmund from Kasanka gallantly got our airstrip fully commissioned and licensed, he recommends flying in but isn’t too confident about heavy departures which will be very good for business at Mutinondo! In July/Aug we had another 5 groups of World Challenge school leavers walk from Mutinondo into Luangwa Valley where they get a transfer to Mfuwe which might be the solution for those who fly here but can’t get out! The other option is to depart from Mpika airstrip if the load is too big for a Mutinondo based take off. This advance in our communications was joined by Celtel network becoming available in July. We appreciate our guests being very private with the use of their phones and threaten to throw any noisy phones at the bar into the fire.

For most of July Lari was kept out of the office practising Pat Parelli horse training with Kerin and the grooms - hope the horses enjoyed it as much as the learner trainers did! After a very sinister visit from our Chief Mpumba and Tazara Corridor officials questioning the validity of the Mutinondo title deeds followed by a liberating and fun ride jumping the chopped trees at the end of the airstrip Lari got the news that her Dad had had a stroke. Sadly he died a couple of days later.

Mike spent the rest of the year running Mutinondo whilst Lari tried to help her sisters sort out their Dad’s businesses and look after their Mum. Frequent sightings of Roan antelope rewarded Mike’s hard work at home when he got out of the office on his bike. Lets hope that the new year will allow us much more time to enjoy Mutinondo and Mum who we hope will be joining us as much as possible up here. After 10 weeks of grinding through what used to be Dad’s daily routine in ever-increasing Copperbelt corruptions, we cherish Mutinondo even more than ever for the quality of life it gives us, its natural charms and all the very special people it has introduced us to. We continue to be spoilt by our wonderful guests who make our “work” such fun - many, many, many thanks to you all for your encouraging support and the friends you have also introduced to us. A big thank you also to the Zambian Bradt Guide, Lonely Planet, Reisen in Zambia und Malawi and Alison Cooper, our website keeper, for introducing people from further afield. The number of direct bookings from overseas guests has increased significantly this year.

After reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring we will never take bird song or our wilderness for granted. Our bird list additions for 2007 are the Striped Kingfisher, Dwarf Bitten, Yellow Wagtail and Black Goshawk. The first batch of photos and names for the Mutinondo plant data base has been delivered to Paul Smith at Kew Gardens for checking. The IBA (Important Bird Area) project had a Barn Swallow art competition in the surrounding schools followed by a gathering of winners and representatives in Lusaka. Mike is still working with the Mpumba Natural Resources Conservation Society and the Community Centre and its campsite is progressing well and should be open soon.

Lari returned home for a rest in September. The morning we were to leave to collect Mike’s sister and her husband from Lusaka Mike found that his bag of socks was missing - that led on to the discovery that Lari’s bike had also been stolen by an ex employee who had become a problem over the past few years. A couple of days later Diwell and Willie received a text message saying the culprit had been arrested with the bike by Moses of Mufubushi neighbourhood watch 60km away. They collected and took all three to Mpika Police Station. Bikes are stolen all over the world all the time but Lari took this very personally especially when she heard that the police were seen riding it around Mpika. Friends and family visiting from UK and Kenya were a wonderful distraction and excuse for us to have a fantastic holiday at home, we went camping and hiking with them and loved being tourists in our own backyard.

The evening before we were due to take Angie and Chris back to Lusaka to catch their plane three of our horses went walk-about. One returned that evening but it was horrible leaving camp with the other 2 still missing. It was good to hear the following day that one had been found by the scouts but the third was still out heading towards the escarpment. We got back from Lusaka as quickly as possibly to join the search. Lari and the grooms, later joined by visitors, went out for several hours every day on horseback trying to lure Spirit home. Apart from the anxiety to find Spirit, it was fantastic to explore the valleys to the Southeast and continue on wonderful rides towards the escarpment. About 200km later after crossing the umpteenth boggy stream we eventually met the trackers and Spirit who had been traced back to a dambo below the Mutinondo and Musamfushi confluence (where he seemed to be hanging out with a hippo with a young one). What a wonderful bush horse, he was fine, a little thin but completely cool about everything and had also become an excellent ditch jumper. We will never understand why they walked off 2 hours before feed time, away from the other horses and towards a dreadful fire to the South of the camp and just kept walking. The two fillies turned around only when they came to a ditch too big for them to jump.

What a relief to have them back safely. We were just getting back into normality when, having been out for a morning ride and let the horses out, a very shaken staff member who was on his way home returned wide-eyed to say there were lion footprints on our road heading towards camp as close as campers rock. Mega mega panic! - the horses had just gone off that way and it was just before Independence weekend when we were expecting plenty of campers. We found the horses, tried to get them home but they went off and couldn’t be found for the rest of the day. A lady visiting from SA came across a lioness drinking from the river on her return from an early morning walk so at least we knew they had moved downstream a bit. Fortunately Dee retreated very slowly before coming back safely (and very quickly!). Understandably no one wanted to investigate where the 2 lion were hiding out so Diwell collected 2 ZAWA scouts from Mpika to guard the horses for the night and they looked for the lion the following morning. They had moved further down river by then and hopefully have gone back to the Luangwa Valley for good. A few weeks later a group of visitors went riding and on their return they came across tracks of a very large hippo coming down the road, he too seems to have made his way downstream.

After spending November in the Chingola smog Lari escaped and we hopped on the train to Dar with our nephews and their 2 friends for the most perfect 2 weeks of swimming, reading, sleeping and enjoying the boys adventures over cold beers and delicious food in an idyllic setting in Zanzibar- Pongwe Beach Resort.

We got back just in time for Lari to attend Mpika court to try to retrieve her bike. It took all day before she gave evidence and then the case was adjourned to Christmas Eve - the bike was released from Police custody and Simon our jeweller working in Mpika returned it to Mutinondo on Christmas day! On Boxing Day we cycled out and collected a big basket full of huge mushrooms to celebrate its return and a happy ending to the year.

With love and very best wishes to you all for a peaceful 2008.

Mike and Lari

Mutinondo Newsletter 2006

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0200

The big plus of this sad story is the wonderful void of the nightmare logistics the project caused us every dry season to administer, finance, collect, transport and market the crop. We have had much more time to enjoy our wilderness and go traveling. The plant database has benefited although there are still plenty of question marks to be solved. Pete Leonard continues to keep our bird list in line, additions for 2006 include: Openbill Stork; Hadada; Eastern Red-footed Falcon; Swee Waxbill; Blue Waxbill; Rufous bellied Heron taking the total to 314. The fish we reintroduced into the Musamfushi have at last almost become big enough to amuse some visitors and great to see Mike wander out of the office with rod in hand on the odd afternoon. Our new self catering camp on the Mutinondo River is slowly gathering a following and is also handy to visit on foot, horse back or bike from the main camp. We now have two mountain bikes for our visitors to use as well as our own. We had a magic spell half way through the year when we could cycle to a dambo with some beers, sit on an anthill and wait for the herd of roan to come and graze as the sun set. Then we would return in the moonlight feeling very lucky indeed.

The 6 village scouts which we employed in 2005 have continued to be incredibly brave and determined, they have "captured" 25 muzzle loading guns and a shot gun this year and ZAWA has recognised their good work. The most exciting reports of the year from our scouts were four wild dog in October and a herd of 9 eland in November.

Chief Mpumba asked to have a meeting with our staff in April to ask them to show more loyalty to us and not to pass on any inside information to their fellow villagers. The DJOC (District Joint Operating Committee) have arranged meetings with us and some members have visited Mutinondo as a result of last year's problems which is reassuring.

In April Mike went to Malindi to recuperate with friends and family whilst Lari had a fun and easy time with a camp full of guests and friends. It's becoming more and more difficult to define the difference between clients and friends and work and pleasure! A big thanks to our staff and the sort of visitors Mutinondo attracts who all make our lives wonderfully stressless. Lari cycled to North Luangwa via Katibunga Mission in May and in August did a round trip to Kasanka via Mabonga and Waka Lake returning along paths through the south of Bangweulu - a great way to see parts of this area which you can't reach by car. Then in November at last we went away together - to Zanzibar by train and ferry to join Charlie and Ali (Mike's son and his girlfriend) for a blissful week on the east coast. The train was far better than expected and the game viewing through the Selous and "window shopping" from the train were added bonuses. It's good to know we can leave our staff to run the camp and things were fine when we got home.

Congratulations and thank you to Manfred Vachel for the wonderful ZAMBIA ROAD MAP ISBN 3-932084-30-6 he produced this year.

In August our beautiful big thoroughbred Jet died, possibly of a mamba bite. He was a big cuddly bear and we were very sad to lose him as well as him being the 2nd of our big gentle giants to die in 13 months, restricting the size of our riders until we replace them.

The 2 local craft initiatives which we have been encouraging seem to have stalled this year. Ryan the recycler has gone underground possibly due to "misinvested funds" for his workshop along the main road. Simon the stone cutter has given up the prospects of buying his own equipment to start his own workshop on the road possibly due to family pressures and lack of security. Mike is still working hard with the Chintu Mukulu group to have their own campsite and centre along the road and ultimately their own wilderness for tourist activities similar to ours. Two of our staff, David and Willie, visited the 5 IBA schools to promote conservation awareness, tree planting, vegetable growing and bee keeping, hopefully the school children's enthusiasm will continue and grow with future follow ups.

The imbalances of assistance, policy and actual development in the area and in general continue to be an enigma. "Zanzibar Chest" by Aidan Hartley (only bought because it had a horse and the word Zanzibar on the front) puts this quandary in a realistic perspective. It also makes one really appreciate the value of peace which we take so much for granted in Zambia.

All the very best to everyone for next year.

Mike and Lari

Mutinondo Newsletter 2005

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0200

It hardly rained for the rest of the season! Our soya outgrowers scheme really took off in Dec 2004 and despite the poor rains production was good. We lent out 20 tons of seed to over 1000 farmers, they grew about 400 tons, we arranged a market for 310 tons and started collecting in early May. Towards the end of May we sold 100 tons and then our truck's engine overheated and needed a major overhaul. By the time we managed to start collecting again most farmers had sold their crop (including many of our loans) to traders, we had lost our market, the price had fallen by USD35/ton and the Kwacha had started revaluing. The 100 tons we managed to collect with our hilux pickup is now in storage with the hope it regains its value next season.

Four months of fuel shortages presented the worst possible scenario to the tourists visiting Zambia and duly undid the effort and resources used to promote Zambia as a serious tourist destination. Kerosene for the fridges and lights is still a challenge; we had to send an employee by bus to Tunduma in Tanzania to keep our deepfreezes going. The best thing to do with all the uncertainties and cancellations caused by a fuel shortage is to get on your bike which a friend and I did. We cycled for a week through Lavushi Manda National Park, across the eastern toe of the Bangeulu Swamps finishing in Kapishya Hot Springs. It was an absolutely magnificent break.

Edmond Farmer from Kasanka made mega Mutinondo history by being the first plane to land on our unfinished airstrip and Hugo and family furthered this by braving it for three visits. The two Mpika airstrip transfers with international clients were far too stressful making the completion of our strip very necessary (as stated in the last 2 newsletters!) It's disappointing that we seem to spend so many hours doing unproductive work and thus neglecting such essentials. Community work is continuing to be endless paperwork and frustration. 10 years down the road non-accountability, non-repayment of loans and local village politics continue to stop development in the area. On a more positive note, Ryan Chibowo "our recycler" has got his Kalulu Crafts sign up on the Great North Road near Salamo Village and we hope he finishes his workshop soon and sells plenty of his wonderful products to the passing traffic.

Our solar pump stopped working at about the same time as the truck and Mike's back, this couldn't be repaired after three attempts and then our beautiful new one worked for a week before following suit. So much of our staff time during the last three months has been spent carting water up the hill in wheel barrows! We didn't get our house built this year (again!) but instead we built 6 new brick and proper thatch toilets and kitchens in our staff village to replace their temporary ones and built a self catering camp on the Mutinondo River for visitors who had booked to stay here for 5 months. It's a beautiful camp and is now open for bookings and has a young family staying in it for New Year. We employed a group from the Community Conservation Society to build a road to the confluence of Mutinondo and Musamfushi River to the east of the main camp to put another satellite camp there in due course. The Society group has gone on to become scouts to patrol our area and they have been very brave in their unarmed anti poaching work and have also reported very encouraging wild life presence. We have been enjoying watching a herd of 5 Roan grazing on a small dambo and have been seeing three hartebeest around camp recently. Additions to our bird list are the Scarlet-chested sunbird, Laughing Dove and Yellow warbler and we look forward to hearing from Pete and the Chittendens to confirm the Miombo Pied Barbet sighting. Mutinondo Wilderness was declared an Important Bird Area -IBA (but not International Boxing Association). Mutinondo was the first in the group to have its stakeholders meeting and the program was going very well until we had to change priorities and concentrate on local security problems.

A burglary in the new camp in September sparked a spate of death threats against our staff who caught the thief. A group then shot one of our horses, Swanford, and each time the police and ZAWA came to find unlicensed firearms another round of death threats and violence started. They beat up Willie's daughter and wife, a grandmother and the caretaker of the Community Conservation Center, burning a building and thatching grass belonging to the Center which is being funded by WWF. We spent a very anxious three months and over K8,000,000 trying to help catch these guys. Three culprits were arrested but released after paying fines of K150,000 to K250,000. Chief Mpumba was very disappointed that they have been released because they cause him so many problems too. The Police Commanding Officer of Northern District and the Permanent Secretary of Northern Province visited Mutinondo to assess the problem and plan to put a police post in Salamo which will hopefully protect the community and development in the future. Their support and response to these problems were very reassuring.

Poor Mike has had dreadful back pain since May. He tried all sorts of different therapies and when he found that nothing was working he went to South Africa in October for an operation. Peter and Karen Brown came camping here in August (funnily enough because of the fuel shortage!) ended up being Mike's guardian angels in SA, arranging everything for him down there, looking after him before and after the op and keeping everyone informed of his progress. He is recovering very slowly and is still in quite a lot of pain but is assured it will come right in 3 or 4 months.

When we started to get things back to normal again the value of our hard earned dollars were slashed by 30%! In a matter of 3 months the Kwacha "revalued" from K4,700 to K3,200 to the dollar (and the Mpika fuel price rose from K4,700 to K6060 during 2005). The decrease in earnings, increase in fuel prices and the proposed increase in the minimum wage by 350% is very concerning for the viability of our business.

Three tantalising local books were brought out this year. When business is this difficult it is a great wake up call - Why are we bothering with all these problems when we could be discovering and exploring the contents of this wonderful new library? Important Bird Areas in Zambia by Pete Leonard ISBN 9982-811-01-0 Guide to Little-Known Waterfalls of Zambia by Quentin Allen, Ilse Mwansa and Heather Chalcroft 9982-9952-0-0 Field Guide to The Trees and Shrubs of the Miombo Woodlands by Paul Smith and Quentin Allen 1 84246 073 0 Quentin and Steve Robinson further illustrated the too often forgotten true nature of Zambia with a string of exhibitions. Steve launched his website last week: www.spirit-of-the-land.com

Our visitors to Mutinondo are even more valued than ever for reminding us why we are here, what a wonderful wilderness we live in and how therapeutic and human friendly it actually is. Thank you to everyone who helped us through this difficult year, we really appreciate all your support and friendship.

All the very best wishes for a wonderful and peaceful 2006 to you all.

Mutinondo Newsletter 2004

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0200

Once again we've enjoyed our regular customers and school groups returning and Mutinondo has also continued to introduce us to a string of fascinating visitors and natural history snippets. This year seems to have been very bird and hiking orientated. Bulbul our adopted Black-eyed Bulbul continued coming home for banana, pronutro, defrosted flying ants, shoulder sitting and general office entertainment until we started seeing two bulbuls in the office and then less and less of our little friend until they disappeared in October. We hope he/she is enjoying family life and that no eagle has enjoyed him/her instead. In April we released the Groundhornbill, Berend, from Chimfunshi who decided early on that a group of his own type across the river were better company than us (much to Bulbul's relief).

Thanks to Warwick Tarboton and Johanne Grobelaars' article in SA Birds and Birding April/May issue and Colin Valentine's write up on the SAbirding website (and undoubtedly Zimbabwe's demise) we had South African and Namibian birders venture north of the Zambezi and onto us to enjoy our miombo woodland birds. This is a great clientele which we would like to encourage and they, plus our local birders, have also added several species to our bird list (305 to date). A Booted Eagle got caught in Tim Osborn's net when it came down for an ensnared bulbul (not ours) whilst Tim was doing some ringing. Joerg says its already on his Mutinondo list but also found a Great spotted Cookoo later this year which wasn't on either list! During the Valentine's two visits this year they added a Corn Crake, Lesser Moorhen, Buffy Pipit, Little Greenbul and Laura's Warbler. Fortunately the Long-toed flufftail stayed hunkered down well enough to guarantee the return of the Valentines!

Hiking has been a good focus this year with some serious kilometres covered. We had a group of teenagers from World Challenge who walked about 60km east from here to the Mutinondo waterfalls on the escarpment, down into the valley and across to the Mupamadzi River to be collected by Derek Shenton's truck and taken to Mfuwe for a well deserved rest. Johno from South Africa hiked to the waterfalls and back in a couple of days to see it with the prospects of bringing hiking groups up here. We then had a visitor from Germany who walked south from our camp into the valley via the Mupamadzi gorge, through Mukulubwe village along the Mupamadzi, into the National Park, back tracking until crossing over the corridor to the Mutinondo River, up the escarpment near the waterfalls and back to camp. When Gerald sends us his report on this 19 day hike we will post it on our website. Julian a friend from Lusaka stayed a month in Mutinondo hiking and exploring new day walks from camp and has left sheets of inspiring suggested treks for future visitors. She and Lari walked from our Kamulepa Farm down the Musumfushi River which proved to be an idyllic 10 hour, 25km meander down an endless dambo (wetland) via the iron age workings on Nyandela dambo.

Our horse herd went from six to five to nine. Having been very lucky with our horses for the past seven years we were all very sad to loose Sunny Boy to old age in September. The new food ration based on village grown grain and worked out by Peter De Vet in Lusaka has worked wonders on their condition and it's great not to have to cart bran around the country side. With an increase in the number of people coming here to ride we realised that we didn't have enough horses and we also needed some big quiet horses to take inexperienced men (especially since Sunny was getting too old to do this). Thanks to Alison MacKendrick we got three gentle giants and a naughty young mare. The plan was to only get two more horses but one thing led to another and Mike concluded if we were going to build two new stables we may as well build four!

Apart from a new block of stables for the horses we didn't do much development at Mutinondo this year. We tried to get things tidied up and working before getting into building more chalets (or our house). Our water pump and all the piping, solar heaters at each chalets were installed which has saved us from all the previous water carting and fire lighting and it is wonderful to have running water in camp. The airstrip had plenty of work done on it and now needs manicuring and a date with the DCA. On the scientific side the Mutinondo Charaxis which was found by Colin Congdon and Ivan Bampton a few years ago has been classified as a new species and now needs to be described. The Double-collared Miombo Sunbird which was suspected to be something different has been DNA tested and nothing unusual has been found about it. The Miombo Woodland book by Paul Smith and Quentin Allen is very nearly out and we look forward to seeing it. Larry Barham is returning to do DNA tests on the Bisa tribe to see if there was any intermarriage between the Twa and Bisa.

Chintu Mukulu, the community project funded by WWF under the consultancy of Mano reminds me of a rich and talented lady sitting out a five year long pregnancy in an expensive private hospital. The reports are good so we trust it's not a phantom expectancy! A trust has been formed and things are happening slowly on the ground in the meantime. A visiting doctor from Mporokoso introduced us to Mporokoso Popular Theatre Group and Bwafwano Bwafwano Training for Tansformation. Mutinondo has since sponsored the group twice and the ladies from T for T are have completed three training sessions out of the required five so far. We are hoping that this is a concrete contribution towards the development of the area as it is meant to strengthen individual's determination to do things for themselves instead of waiting for donors and governments to provide. Dr. Van Andel says the change he saw brought about by these talented local people was irreversible in Mporokoso.

Our shop in Mpika is now officially shut having found a K13.5m deficit after stock taking this year and failing to get the manager to sell some of his properties and repay us. The manager then got caught with stolen copper in Kapiri and drank rat poison which was a shock to us but we are still trying to confirm this. The soya bean farmers had a good crop this year after we had a bad season in 2002/3 (after losing most of our loans to briefcase business men and poor germination). We collected over 200 tons of soya, this was made even better in monetary terms because the price was great and the farmers received 50% more per kilo. Even the nearby villages increased their meagre bean production this year to nearly double the previous year. We had given up with the local community with farming as all our attempts of input loans have failed in the past so it was very encouraging to see so many beans for sale this year. National Geographic was here briefly and recorded some of the bean buying in the village for an article about Zambia next year but unfortunately its all in black and white which loses all the magnificent array of chitenge colours which celebrate market days.

On New Year's day this year Mike Fisher found wonderful rock art on Hirax Hill. It's now already the end of December and Quentin is visiting so we've been hiking in the rain, looking for rock art and collecting mushrooms which has become a bit of an annual ritual. We went along the north east facing slope of the "Caterpillar" to the base of magnificent pink cathedral like rocks and were thrilled to discover it adorned with more schematic rock art and we collected a basket full of various amanites along the way. We had lunch under the gigantic overhang whilst it poured with rain and looked out over miles and miles of very wet miombo and wondered how different or similar the view was 2000 years or so ago? Who's to complain that this year has gone too quickly!

Very best wishes to you all for a happy and healthy 2005.