The origins of the day go back to the great Zulu king Shaka and until recently it was referred to as Shaka's day to commemorate the fact that Shaka Zulu managed to unify many Zulu clans into one unified nation.
In 1995, when our list of public holidays were published this day was excluded from the list. The opposition party, and mainly Zulu party, Inkatha Freedom Party protested and the ANC reached an agreement and made the day what it is today.
The day has changed it's name because it represents all the different cultures in South Africa that have joined together as one nation. That meant that no matter where you come from and what your family heritage is you can celebrate the day in that heritage and still feel South Africa. To make this easier most people, including of European heritage celebrate by having what we call a braai, or in other parts of the world they call a BBQ. It is something that all South Africans can enjoy and it doesn't exclude anyone from the celebration. Due to this in 2007 Archbishop Desmond Tutu made sure that the day would from then on be called National heritage Braai day.
South African take this holiday very seriously and hardly anyone misses out on the celebration.
HAPPY BRAAI DAY :)
Friday, September 24, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
World Rhino Day
Yesterday was International Rhino Day according to WWF and they had a huge campaign in South Africa to help raise awareness and money for the anti-poaching cause. We were meant to blow vuvuzelas and hoot to show that we support the initiative. In the area where I work there was not a sound to be heard besides for my own vuvuzela. People were either not aware or could care but it was someone else’s problem.
I chatted to a friend of mine about poaching in general and remembered the first time I saw the results of poaching. I was working for a company that was then called CCAfrica, now known as &Beyond. They sent me to one of their camps in the Northern border between Kenya and Tanzania, Kleins Camp, to do work on their computers. There was only one computer and I was there for a week so when I got a chance I went on game drives. Needless to say the stay was fantastic; I got to see black eagles that were nesting on a cliff face just above the lodge and mounds of other wildlife. It is one of my favourite places, if not my favourite place in the world.
On one of the days we were sitting looking out from the meal deck when we saw vultures circling not too far from the lodge. There were no guests in the lodge so the lodge manager and his wife took me on a drive to see what had been killed. We came across a huge elephant bull that was lying on the ground dead. The elephant had a huge hole ripped into its belly and the vultures were climbing in and out of it, tearing the elephant apart. Seeing an elephant dead is quite rare so we took a closer look and I hate to admit it we didn’t even notice that the tusks were missing. We had not heard shots over the last couple of days so we didn’t even think that the elephant had been poached.
What alerted us was that we noticed that the stomach looked like it had burst open; a vulture and most other animals cannot tear open a hole in an elephants skin so what had happened was that the elephant had been killed long before hand and the stomach juices and gasses had expanded until the skin ruptured. Only once we saw this we looked for the tusks. Needless to say they were missing. It was a horrible site to see such a magnificent creature that had been killed for nothing. Well what I consider nothing.
Don’t get me wrong, I eat meat and I do understand that hunting safaris bring in a lot of money for conservation but I do believe that it needs to be controlled. To ad to my above story, I was in a lodge where all the guests were out of a game drive. The game drive came back early and instead of seeing happy faces of guests that had an awesome game drive; I saw tears, anger, frustration and shock. I asked what happened and I was told that they were on the drive when a land rover full of hunters stopped next to their land rover opened up its windows and the shot a herd of Wildebeest (gnu) to pieces then they left. The hunting land rover had trespassed onto a game viewing farm and taken hunting to a new level. What kind of hunter gets a kick from blowing an animal to pieces? I thought that the fun in hunting was tracking the animal down and not the killing of the animal.
I am happy to see that a poaching syndicate was caught earlier this week. I hope that more get caught soon.
http://www.eyewitnessnews.co.za/articleprog.aspx?id=49117
http://www.andbeyond.com/
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/rhinoceros/
I chatted to a friend of mine about poaching in general and remembered the first time I saw the results of poaching. I was working for a company that was then called CCAfrica, now known as &Beyond. They sent me to one of their camps in the Northern border between Kenya and Tanzania, Kleins Camp, to do work on their computers. There was only one computer and I was there for a week so when I got a chance I went on game drives. Needless to say the stay was fantastic; I got to see black eagles that were nesting on a cliff face just above the lodge and mounds of other wildlife. It is one of my favourite places, if not my favourite place in the world.
On one of the days we were sitting looking out from the meal deck when we saw vultures circling not too far from the lodge. There were no guests in the lodge so the lodge manager and his wife took me on a drive to see what had been killed. We came across a huge elephant bull that was lying on the ground dead. The elephant had a huge hole ripped into its belly and the vultures were climbing in and out of it, tearing the elephant apart. Seeing an elephant dead is quite rare so we took a closer look and I hate to admit it we didn’t even notice that the tusks were missing. We had not heard shots over the last couple of days so we didn’t even think that the elephant had been poached.
What alerted us was that we noticed that the stomach looked like it had burst open; a vulture and most other animals cannot tear open a hole in an elephants skin so what had happened was that the elephant had been killed long before hand and the stomach juices and gasses had expanded until the skin ruptured. Only once we saw this we looked for the tusks. Needless to say they were missing. It was a horrible site to see such a magnificent creature that had been killed for nothing. Well what I consider nothing.
Don’t get me wrong, I eat meat and I do understand that hunting safaris bring in a lot of money for conservation but I do believe that it needs to be controlled. To ad to my above story, I was in a lodge where all the guests were out of a game drive. The game drive came back early and instead of seeing happy faces of guests that had an awesome game drive; I saw tears, anger, frustration and shock. I asked what happened and I was told that they were on the drive when a land rover full of hunters stopped next to their land rover opened up its windows and the shot a herd of Wildebeest (gnu) to pieces then they left. The hunting land rover had trespassed onto a game viewing farm and taken hunting to a new level. What kind of hunter gets a kick from blowing an animal to pieces? I thought that the fun in hunting was tracking the animal down and not the killing of the animal.
I am happy to see that a poaching syndicate was caught earlier this week. I hope that more get caught soon.
http://www.eyewitnessnews.co.za/articleprog.aspx?id=49117
http://www.andbeyond.com/
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/rhinoceros/
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Global Warming Reality or Myth?
A week ago I was involved in a conversation about global warming with a friend of mine that owns a couple of coal mines. I am not the most knowledgeable person in the world when it comes to this issue. As with most people I have listened to quite a couple of news bulletins and watched a documentary or two that speaks about global warming but does that make me know enough to argue a point. By the way, my friend believes that global warning is a money making conspiracy.
Most people don’t have a problem arguing a point and have no idea what I am on about but I like to make sense when I talk and not just trail on mindlessly. So where do I begin to learn about this reality/conspiracy. Who do I have to speak to, what do I have to read? Here I was lucky, I bought a DVD called “6 Degrees Could Change the World” by national geographic. I bought that DVD at 15% of its normal price.
The DVD is very vague and covers a lot of ground in 1h 40min. It covers too much ground to convince anyone either way but it does help one find where to look. I must admit that years ago I watched Al Gores movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and found my time inconveniently wasted because there was way too much in that movie that was convenient to prove a fact. The national geographic one was done by people that do believe in global warming but in the DVD they do speak about certain aspects where people could be wrong in their estimations and beliefs. They also give some hocus-pocus solutions to the problem.
Before I spend loads of money buying books and other DVDs I can spend some useful time just browsing the internet and looking for explanations that can help me write this blog. There are loads of Al Gore websites like http://www.climatecrisis.net/ , or www.algore.com , or www.wikipedia.com and look up his books. Then there is the wikipedia page itself. You will have to look very closely here; there are loads of items to lookup and you have to understand exactly what to look for otherwise you can get caught up and learn very little that is focussed in the right direction. Of course you don’t need to be a scientist to sort out the articles but there is so much that is so interesting that you can lose your way. I just looked up global warning, global warning crisis, global warning conspiracy, etc.
I have taken these articles and now I have to read through them and find out where to next. At the same time I am going to look at the DVD again and get some sort of structure in my research. I have not decided if I am going to use the DVD as a reference and in 6 articles tell you how the earth will change, or if I am going to do something totally different. All I hope is that you are going to learn with me.
Things to look at:
The earth has been hotter that now
There has been more co2 in the atmosphere than now
In no time in history has the earths temperature changed so drastically so quickly
Fine, the earth might recover but in past periods where we have had ice-ages or periods of high heat most of the living creatures in the world have been wiped out. Will we be wiped out?
What are the stages in global warming?
Are there any geological changes that might happen due to global warming?
What is happening to our atmosphere?
Etc.
Most people don’t have a problem arguing a point and have no idea what I am on about but I like to make sense when I talk and not just trail on mindlessly. So where do I begin to learn about this reality/conspiracy. Who do I have to speak to, what do I have to read? Here I was lucky, I bought a DVD called “6 Degrees Could Change the World” by national geographic. I bought that DVD at 15% of its normal price.
The DVD is very vague and covers a lot of ground in 1h 40min. It covers too much ground to convince anyone either way but it does help one find where to look. I must admit that years ago I watched Al Gores movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and found my time inconveniently wasted because there was way too much in that movie that was convenient to prove a fact. The national geographic one was done by people that do believe in global warming but in the DVD they do speak about certain aspects where people could be wrong in their estimations and beliefs. They also give some hocus-pocus solutions to the problem.
Before I spend loads of money buying books and other DVDs I can spend some useful time just browsing the internet and looking for explanations that can help me write this blog. There are loads of Al Gore websites like http://www.climatecrisis.net/ , or www.algore.com , or www.wikipedia.com and look up his books. Then there is the wikipedia page itself. You will have to look very closely here; there are loads of items to lookup and you have to understand exactly what to look for otherwise you can get caught up and learn very little that is focussed in the right direction. Of course you don’t need to be a scientist to sort out the articles but there is so much that is so interesting that you can lose your way. I just looked up global warning, global warning crisis, global warning conspiracy, etc.
I have taken these articles and now I have to read through them and find out where to next. At the same time I am going to look at the DVD again and get some sort of structure in my research. I have not decided if I am going to use the DVD as a reference and in 6 articles tell you how the earth will change, or if I am going to do something totally different. All I hope is that you are going to learn with me.
Things to look at:
The earth has been hotter that now
There has been more co2 in the atmosphere than now
In no time in history has the earths temperature changed so drastically so quickly
Fine, the earth might recover but in past periods where we have had ice-ages or periods of high heat most of the living creatures in the world have been wiped out. Will we be wiped out?
What are the stages in global warming?
Are there any geological changes that might happen due to global warming?
What is happening to our atmosphere?
Etc.
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