Bush Camps

Zimbabwe Hunters Association, Educational Field Camps

By 1983 I was becoming known for my work on the Middle Zambezi and was approached by Anton Howland, who was at that time the Chairman of the Zimbabwe Hunters Association (ZHA), Mashonaland branch. The membership of this organisation was more than 99% white and about 80% of members were from the farming community. At that time, the government of Zimbabwe broadly supported the agricultural sector in the country but not necessarily the privilege of those who chose to hunt wildlife. Some members of the ZHA saw education as the key and decided to establish a programme of field education in the Rifa section of the Zambezi Valley, downstream of Kariba Gorge. The photo left shows students at an impromptu classroom, on the floodplain.

The very first camp was run at Nyamuomba by two hunters, Owen Connor and Ian Ross, who I later learned were very scheptical of this effort. Having some previous experience of the area and some of the geological and geomorphic opportunities that it offered, I organised a set of activities for the pupils and teachers that arrived. I had also sought out and recommended Kim Damstra, then a post-graduate student in the Biology Dept., who provided input on the life sciences. The third members of the teaching team were the hunters themselves, who demonstrated techniques of tracking and bush awareness, as well as providing armed protection against the wildlife that roams free in this area. After almost a week working on the camp, both Owen Connor and Ian Ross had become their greatest proponents and following their return to Harare, the ZHA sponsored a five episode documentary series to publicise the work. In the photo left, I am shown with Kim Damstra on a hollow tree trunk and Ian Ross.

The following year, the ZHA asked me to coordinate all the educational aspects of the camps, including finding and booking teachers, organising equipment, writing a syllabus (with the help of specialist teachers). I also provided some publicity concerning the ongoing work. I continued to do this until 1988, when the ZHA replaced the informal "bush camps" with permanent buildings at Bream Pools, near Chirundu. By that time I had moved to Geology Dept., University of Zimbabwe and had a full time teaching load. I passed over coordination of the camps to Mrs. Leslie Maasdorp, a retired teacher, who has continued to manage them into recent times.

Geomorphological field work would generally start with a walk up one of the rivers in the area. Degradation of the Zambezi following damming at Kariba had caused these tributary streams to incise into their beds and the effects of that change could be seen during a walk up any of these streams, which also display the "normal" features of alluvial channels. One of the activities that the pupils could undertake on subsequent days was to use the evidence from the stream to estimate the amount of degradation at the local base level, the Zambezi itself. This work was written up in Zimbabwe Science News, partly to publicise the camps but also as a record of the science. This paper includes some of my early hydrological and geomorphological work and hydrographs generated by an Apple IIe computer, using AppleSoft Basic.