Tastes of the Currywurst Museum.

I thought I knew all about Germany food, sausages included. Bratwurst, bockwurst and leberwurst were on my family’s snack menu from when I was a child. And I discovered the joys of weisswurst while on a extended stay in Munich some years ago.

But please excuse my gross culinary ignorance. I had never heard of currywurst until last week when I learned that a Deutsches Currywurst Museum opened in Berlin last year, near Checkpoint Charlie.

I also learned that the fast-food urban snack has a cult following and countless fans. In Germany, it turns out, about 800 million portions of currywurst are consumed per year – with 70 million of these “currywürste” devoured in Berlin.

The fast-food’s down-home nature made me think of Canada’s poutine and South Africa’s bunny chow. Keep reading for more on those.

But meanwhile, if you’re in the dark, as I was, you’re probably asking: What is currywurst?

Researching online, I read it described (on wikipedia) as “a Germany national dish consisting of hot pork sausage cut into slices and seasoned with curry sauce, which is made from a mix of tomato ketchup (or tomato sauce if you’re English) blended with generous amounts of curry power.

Keep reading for more on currywurst and a recipe.

Meanwhile, Poutine.

If you’re Canadian, you will know about poutine. If you’re not Canadian and have been watching the Winter Olympics, you might have seen the signs reading ‘Poutine not Putin’ when Canada played Russia in the quarter finals of the hockey.

And my new hero, U.S. Olympic skater Johnny Weir, suggested that Canadian broadcasters who dissed him do penance over poutine.

So what is poutine?

Think of French fries topped with fresh cheese curd, covered with brown gravy and sometimes additional ingredients. It is a comfort food and a diner staple which originated in Quebec and can now be found across Canada. And believe it or not, I’ve heard Canadians swoon when talking about it.

A designer bunny.

On to Bunny Chow

The currywurst got me thinking of this originally inexpensive and down-home street food that originated in Durban, South Africa, my home town. (It’s now become upscale and you can find it on restaurant menus. You can read a reprint of a story I wrote on bunny chow for Oakland Magazine here.
I first ate bunny chow as a teenager, on Sunday mornings, while fishing with boys from the neighborhood in the Durban harbor. We bought out bunnies from an Indian man who manned a rickety store. The bunny comprised half a loaf of soft white bread filled with a lethal bean curry that made your eyes water. The bread removed from inside the half loaf was put, like a lid, atop the curry and used to sop up the sauce.

Back to currywurst

Currywurst, it transpires, dates back to 1949 when a certain Frau Heuwer was given ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and curry powder by a British soldier. She mixed these up, added some other spices, and poured her concoction over grilled pork sausage. She must have thought them tasty and having an entrepreneurial spirit, started selling her robust snacks to construction workers repairing war damage in the Charlottenburg district of the devastated city. In 1951 Frau Heuwer patented her sauce, called Chillup. These days the fast food street food usually comes with fries or a bread roll.

If you want to try it at home, here is a recipe for a superior currywurst sauce from Saveur magazine:

Heat 2 T canola oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add 1 finely chopped large yellow onion; cook until soft, 8 to10 minutes. Add 2 T curry powder and 1 T hot paprika; cook for 1 more minute. Using your hands, crush 2 cups of whole peeled canned tomatoes (with juice) into a pan. Add half a cup sugar, quarter of a cup red wine vinegar, and salt to taste. Stir well. Increase heat to high; bring to a boil. Then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened (about 25 minutes). Purée in a blender until smooth. Strain sauce through a sieve. Serve hot over sausage. (Makes about 1 1/2 cups.)

The Deutsches Currywurst Museum has been designed as a walk-in, interactive experience in three dimensions. There are, among other things, scent components with vapors rising from sauce pots; a sausage soft; and a chef’s game for children called “Curry Up!” Visit the Currywurst Museum website for more information.

To get from San Francisco to Berlin, check out the Air Berlin website. Air Berlin, Germany’s second largest airline, is about to introduce a direct service from San Francisco to its Germany hubs. Air Berlin also flies from Germany into South Africa so you put currywurst and bunny chow on your culinary travel menu with one easy booking.

Copyright Wanda Hennig, 2010

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Story by Wanda Hennig

This story was first published in Food Illustrated magazine, London, with photography by Richard Jung

A visit to Greens in San Francisco is a celebration of the senses. Dip your spoon into a bowl of butternut squash soup and delight in the delicate harmony of lightly caramelized onions and apple confit blended with a hint of calvados. Feast your eyes on a salad that marries fresh ripe figs with Kodata, Mission and Calmyra olives, melon, watercress and creamy goat’s cheese. Inhale and delight in the delicate scent of virgin olive oil simmering with fresh herbs and garlic — a hearty ragout in progress. Feel the freshness of the bread as you pull it apart. Hear the gentle hubbub of contented dining.

In a city that regularly ranks as one of the world’s top restaurant destinations, Greens is both legendary and unique. The Zen influence runs deep — but in the true Zen spirit of understatement, it is imperceptible. Similarly, the restaurant does not proselytize vegetarianism.

“Nowhere will you see the word vegetarian or vegan. That’s what we are, but we don’t talk about it,” says executive chef Annie Somerville. On the menu, they simply describe the dishes as they are. For example, crostini with warm cannellini beans and wilted Green Gulch chard flavored with olive oil, garlic and sherry vinegar.

The Food Illustrated layout of my Greens restaurant story.

Green Gulch Farm in Marin county, less than an hour north of the city, is a residential Zen community and bountiful organic farm. Year-round it provides the restaurant with seasonal produce, from chard, leeks and winter squash to flowering herbs — a myriad of fresh garden edibles tended with care.

What the restaurant can’t get from Green Gulch, it sources from an extended family of growers and organic farmers’ markets. In addition, several times a year, Somerville joins forces with Wendy Johnson, head gardener at Green Gulch, and together they run workshops on growing and cooking vegetables, organic gardening and the changing seasons.

“The Bay Area is a great growing ground,” says Somerville. “I think of it as an amazing market basket, fed by the two major rivers — the Sacramento and the San Joaquin — that flow through the Central Valley, California’s primary producing area.”

• Upriver in the Sierra foothills, farmers grow olives and grapes.

• South in the Salinas Valley, immortalized by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath, are abundant crops of lettuce, berries and onions.

• Toward the coast, the Santa Cruz and Monterey areas yield a rich harvest of artichokes and spinach.

• North of San Francisco are the Napa and Sonoma wine-producing areas from which Greens draws its award-winning wine list. In August last year, Decanter magazine listed Greens as “one of the 50 best restaurants in the world for wine lovers.”

The Food Illustrated story on Greens by Wanda Hennig with photos by Richard Jung.

Greens opened in 1979 as part of the San Francisco Zen Center, which includes the City Center, Green Gulch Farm and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, located in Carmel Valley about a three-hour drive south of San Francisco. In the winter months Tassajara functions as a remote monastery, and in summer it is a resort run by Zen students and monks. It is renowned both for its hot springs and its wonderful vegetarian food; students come from all over the world to gain experience in the kitchen.

In fact, the inspiration to open Greens came from the success of the Tassajara kitchen, which is where Annie Somerville was working. Then in 1981, she joined the staff at Greens.

“Guests loved the food at Tassajara,” says Somerville, “and we have tried to maintain the same aesthetic at the restaurant. The freshest, most flavorful, most seasonal ingredients and dishes that make sense.”

According to the Chanyuan Qinggui, (which translates as Regulations for Zen Monasteries), a 10-volume tome written by a Chinese monk known as Zongze of Mount Zhanglu in 1102 AD, the tenzo, or head cook, is one of the most important people in a Zen monastery.

The opening spread to my Food Illustrated story shows Annie Somerville, right, at Green Gulch Farm.

Zongze’s detailed teachings include instructions on attitude of mind, the choice of ingredients, their preparation and how they should be eaten. Seasonal variety is emphasized as is the fact that food should be both visually appealing and enjoyable. These teachings remain the focus of Zen cooking today.

The Greens menu changes regularly. Each day there is a different soup, every other day a different pasta. Specials and appetizers alternate every couple of weeks. Annie Somerville says that she constantly invents new dishes to keep ideas fresh, the staff excited and customers coming through the door.

“We keep changing and evolving, noting what other cooks are doing around the world, but always keeping the focus on what is seasonal.”

She particularly loves to create salads and Mediterranean-style food, using combinations of aubergine, basil, olive oil, peppers, wild mushrooms and roast garlic.

When Greens first opened on the site of a cavernous machine shop and former army base alongside the San Francisco marina, the restaurant was an integral part of Zen Center, a non-profit organization. The space was refitted by Zen Center’s carpentry crew and staffed totally by Zen students. In 1987 the restaurant became a for-profit organization run separately from the Zen Center.

Today, few of the staff (about 30 in the kitchen and 90 altogether), other than Somerville and head chef J. Kenyon, have Tassajara training.

“Change was slow, like watching grass grow,” says Somerville.

What’s changed, what remains the same, since my story was first published?

“A basic teaching of Buddhism is that you can’t rely on anything staying the same. This philosophy is a constant at the restaurant. The evolution of Greens saw more and more people from the outside coming to work here. Restaurant work is hectic and demanding. There is no place for Zen slow. Today people join us because they want to work in a vegetarian restaurant or because they’re interested in Buddhism.”

Greens is always busy. Since 1993 there has also been a take-away counter, Greens To Go, selling breads, pastries and cakes, sandwiches and salads. Eat at the restaurant in the evening, and the lights are dim and the warmth is palpable. At lunchtime, people come for the view over San Francisco Bay.

As well as being highly regarded for its cuisine, San Francisco is rated as one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Greens fuses the two attributes, with a floor-to-ceiling bank of windows offering a dramatic view across the sparkling water to the Golden Gate Bridge. A visit is an experience not soon forgotten.

Greens Restaurant, Building A, Fort Mason (Buchanan at Marina Boulevard), San Francisco, California; (415) 771-6222. The restaurant and Greens to Go are open every day. See Annie Somerville’s award-winning book, Fields of Greens: New Recipes from the Celebrated Greens Restaurant (Bantam). Also, The Greens Cookbook by Deborah Madison with Edward Espe Brown.

‘Zen and The Art of Vegetarian Cooking’ (this story) was first published in the United Kingdom, in Food Illustrated magazine, in February 1999.  Copyright © Wanda Hennig, 2010.

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Story and Photos by Wanda Hennig

Super-geek and Berkeley–based internet identity guru Kaliya Hamlin mounted her first She’s Geeky conference (they’re called “un”conferences on the She’s Geeky website, due to the fact that they’re run “open space technology” style, and more of that to come) in October 2007.

They grew from her observation that while women are encouraged to enter the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — once women leave school and enter the workforce, they don’t have much of a support system.

She noted that the average tech conference might have a handful of women. She’s Geeky grew from Hamlyn’s desire to gives women in technology “an opportunity to get together and discuss the unique issues they face in their respective fields … to provide a space for women geeks to create enduring communities … and to foster collaboration and innovation among peers,” to quote from the She’s Geeky website.

Kaliya Hamlin gets things going.

This past weekend, the fifth She’s Geeky conference, held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (same place as the first). In between, there have been East Coast versions of She’s Geeky, in New York City (December, 2008) and DC (November, 2009).

The first She’s Geeky drew around 200 women.

This past weekend, 300 women came to the event, facilitated by South Africa–born Heidi Saul.

Some made the trip from the East Coast and I met women from Nashville, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle and DC — and all over Northern California. Hamlin’s mission is to take She’s Geeky to women where they are around the United States, rather than have them make the trip.

So what is She’s Geeky and the un-conference?

Let me describe, in brief, the format.

You arrive. You get your biodegradable name tag. You sit on one of the chairs arranged several rows deep in a circle. You order coffee or mocha of your choice (from the only man in the place) and help yourself to bagels, muffins and other breakfast snacks (sponsored).

Then Hamlyn does the rounds with her mic and you introduce yourself with the words “I’m geeky because ….”

Read on and you’ll see.

To summarize from Hamlyn, who set the scene and got the ball rolling on each of the three days:

Open space technology principles we’re using are these:

• Whoever comes are the right people.
• Whatever happens is the only thing that can happen.
  
• Whenever it starts is the right time.
• When it’s over, it’s over.

• If you’re not learning or contributing, use The Law of Two Feet. If a session is not interesting to you or you’re not getting something out of it, go to another session. Don’t sit there wasting your time. It’s your responsibility to get what you need to get out of today. So put the topic you want on the wall.

• Butterflies and Bumble Bees are the people who leave sessions and go to more then one. So, if someone leaves your session, it doesn’t mean they don’t love you.

Then Hamlin urged those of us willing, able and enthusiastic, to come and “write on a piece of paper a topic you want to offer or a topic you want help on.”

• Make it clear whether it’s something you offer or something you want to get information from. Then each person will read out what they’re offering or want.

• And then you put up session at the time you want to give it and if someone wants you to change the time, they can ask you.

• Many of us are in deeply technical fields that have their own language. I invite you to remember that people are coming from diverse communities. Also, if you expect people to know something, like PHP, feel free to ask for that when you offer your session.

• No subject is too silly. And you can be creative.

A smattering of the 100 or so sessions offered over the three days:

• I am going to do a session on augmented reality.

• Mine is on switching geekdom. I want other people to tell me how they’re doing it.

• I’d help brainstorming topics on privacy / invasion for a conference I’m presenting at.

• Security basics. What you can do to secure your computer, data and software.

• We’re going to do current tools, coming trends and technology. A brainstorming.

• I’m going to do a session on image editing in Gimp, like Photoshop but free.

• I’m going to do intuition in business. Do you have it. Right brain. Left brain. How to give it, how to get it.

• I’m asking who is the administrator of your permission system?

• Women-designed social networking. What would be different if women were designing them instead of men?

• Going mobile and the implications of living a mobile lifestyle.

• How to realize your confidence. I am badass; you are badass. Empower-pointing yourself.

• I did beekeeping yesterday. I’m doing it again today. I brought honey to taste.

• How to answer people who can say “I can help you get higher in web rankings”.

• Forget the moolah — these are the real capital of the future.

• The iPeriod. Learning tools for managing your girls stuff. There’s a bunch of apps in the stores for your cycle, fertility tracking, etc.

• How to use google forms to use data and forms for practice. (From Oakland and TechLiminal geek, Anca Mosoiu)

• Game culture, working on a game, development of a game.
• Guide dog geeks.

And so on and so forth.

Geek Disclaimer (The personal stuff)

I was married to a geek, in South Africa, back in the days when I worked in a newsroom and wrote stories on a typewriter using carbon paper and, well, he worked on a mainframe and fed in cards and I had no idea what in the world he was doing, but he’s still doing a version of it now, 30-plus years after we divorced.

And my stepdad, Eric, also in South Africa, is a longtime geek who taught himself a programing language called Clarion back when god was a boy and I was a good deal younger. He still writes programs using Clarion.

Back then, I had no idea what he was doing and no interest. My mother felt the same way.

She's Geeky job board.

He used this to his advantages by writing programs for idiots and fools. My mother and I were the idiots and fools. And no, he did not call us idiots and fools. He’s a well-mannered dude. But we knew, because he would test them on us.

His aim was always to write things that did not require a manual and that were intuitive. If we got it, he knew he had succeeded.

I thought it pretty funny, under the circumstances, that I was headed off to She’s Geeky, and sent him the link.

He had the humor and grace to reply: “I had a look at the site and it seems that you are going to have a very interesting conference. I think you have done amazingly well with your online stuff, and you are certainly leaving me behind!”

Which is not strictly true. But it does make me believe that if you have an interest, follow it; and don’t let anyone tell you you can’t be geeky; and it’s never too late to enter the queendom of geekdom.

See you at the next She’s Geeky!

A few more She’s Geeky links and facts:

See What is She’s Geeky?

What is core to She’s Geeky?

What are some of the benefits of attending She’s Geeky?

What’s the history and background to She’s Geeky?

Where did the She’s Geeky name come from?

Are you a geek? If so, leave a comment. If not, leave one anyway!

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Story by Daryl Balfour
Guest Contributor
Photos by Daryl & Sharna Balfour

Tiger Julie cares for her cubs, five hours old when Daryl Balfour took this shot.

I spent two hours in a tiger’s den this week, watching her nurse five hours-old newborn cubs — including the first white cub born in the wild in more than 50 years.

The tiger was an 11-year-old female called Julie, born in a North American zoo but rehabilitated into the wild at a South African tiger sanctuary established by maverick conservationist John Varty.

Varty’s Tiger Canyons, outside Philippolis in the Free State, saw its tiger population rocket from 12 to 17 overnight — more tigers than are reputed to remain in the renowned flagship tiger reserve of Ranthambore in India!

I had been monitoring Julie alongside Varty for almost two weeks, familiarizing myself to the tigress as she neared the end of her three and a half month gestation period. Albeit hand-reared, Julie has lived wild in the Tiger Canyons reserve for several years. Her mate Saetao, two sons Tiger Boy and Shy Boy, and foster-daughter Savannah — a lioness — are completely wild and free ranging, and according to Varty would have no hesitation in “taking us down” should they encounter us on foot.

However, earlier on the day she gave birth, tigress Julie welcomed me to her world with a moving show of affection and acceptance.

Having eyed me warily as I walked alongside her mentor John Varty for several days, Julie stood up where she lay panting heavily, her belly bloated and distended with what would later transpire to be five tiny tigers, walked to me and rubbed her head over mine in a typical big cat greeting ritual, licked my face then rolled on to my lap as I sat transfixed on the ground. With this gesture I understood that Julie had welcomed me into her life, and subsequently into her den.

Tiger Julie and her cubs, including a white tiger cub, attends to them five hours after they were born.

It was the most wonderful moment in my 23-year career as a wildlife photographer — but one that would pale in less than 24 hours, when Julie accepted me inside her den alongside her only-hours-old litter.

As I crawled into the den in the early hours of Monday morning and knelt alongside Varty, tigress Julie raised tired eyes to meet ours, and gave a simple brief “chuff” — the typical tigers’ communication vocalization. Awed, John Varty and I saw five tiny cubs squirming at her side — including one white cub with black stripes alongside the four of normal coloration. All, including the mother, appeared to be in fine health, and already competition for the four teats the tigress has had begun.

“Seeing those tiny cubs was the most magical moment of my life,” says Varty.

“If she raises the white one it will be the only free-ranging wild white tiger on earth. But first it must survive. Tigers have only four teats and it will be a struggle for her to raise five cubs. Realistically I can hope for three of the litter to make it, so the odds against the white one reaching maturity are stacked against it.

“Fortunately tigress Julie is a wonderful hunter — she has accounted for more than 80 blue wildebeest and 60 blesbuck alone that I know of, so the cubs are in great care.

“But we will not interfere and will let nature take its course. If she abandons any of the cubs, or they fall behind in the struggle for milk from their mother, so be it. My goal is to raise wild tigers, and I want these cubs to be raised and integrated into the wild without human interference,” he says.

Portrait of Julie at Tiger Canyons, South Africa.

Varty, a controversial film-maker and conservationist, and co-owner of the world famous Londolozi Private Game Reserve in the Sabi Sand Wildtuin adjoining Kruger National Park, believes the future of tiger conservation lies in projects such as his, breeding tigers in fenced reserves where they are afforded full protection from the threats of human encroachment, yet are able to lead natural lives, hunting and fending for themselves

Wild tiger populations are in crisis worldwide, with populations plummeting from more than 10 000 a decade ago to fewer than 1 000 today. Several reserves in Asia have recently admitted they have no more tigers.

Ironically there are more than 45 000 tigers in captivity in zoos, private collections and assorted showgrounds around the world. Even disgraced former world heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson has a “pet” tiger! Michael Jackson owned one too.

Varty points out that wild tigers in Asia are struggling to share living space with almost half of humanity — about 1,7-billion people in China and 1,3-billion in India, the last remaining strongholds of the huge striped cats.

Will Tigers Survive?

Seatao, Julie's mate and father of the five cubs.

The chances of the tiger surviving the next 50 years in these places seem slim, given the current rate of decline. Tiger body parts, everything from internal organs and bones to the claws, skin and even the whiskers, are sought after in Chinese markets and command premium prices. Although illegal, the trade in the Cites Appendix 1 tiger and tiger commodities is flourishing. And Varty believes the home range-states of the tiger are less able, inclined or motivated to conserve their remaining stocks.

Tiger eco-tourism in Asia is not nearly as developed or sophisticated as eco-tourism in Africa, and with his Londolozi model to work from — one of the most successful eco-tourist developments in the world — Varty believes more tigers should be placed on properly managed private land as soon as possible.

Why and How Varty Established Tiger Canyons

Julie and her cubs. Will all five survive remains a question.

To this end John Varty, or JV to those close to him, set about buying degraded sheep farms in the Karoo. Unlikely tiger habitat one might think, and I did too, until I ventured, with some scepticism, to Tiger Canyons recently.

Since moving the alien sheep off the land and closing countless windmills the grasslands have proliferated and springs that had not flowed for generations are now productive year-round. The rugged landscape, split by ravines and canyons that provide pools the tigers love to wallow and swim in (tigers are the most water-loving of cats and frequently take to the water).

It may not be the dense jungles of India, but then Varty points out that tigers live or have lived in pretty diverse landscapes in Asia too, from the desolate and icy wastes of Siberia, to the Caspian desert, the deciduous and evergreen forests of India, the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans and the bamboo forests of Nepal and south China.

The tigers at Tiger Canyons have adapted perfectly to the Karoo landscape — and as JV points out, they are fenced off by a 3,6m electrified fence that keeps them separate from humans.

“In India tigers compete for living space with 320 people per square kilometre. In China it is 130 per square kilometre. And those figures are about four years out of date.

“Here where we are near Philippolis it is the least densely populated place in South Africa, with fewer than 2 humans per square kilometre. I believe that what the tiger needs for its survival more than anything else is land, stocked with prey species, and protected from human encroachment. And with the population growth we see in India I don’t think they will ever get more land there,” he says.

Tigers in Africa?

Julie's cubs ompete for milk, as tigers must compete for habitat. Will they survive?

The idea seems fanciful; but not necessarily so. Some influential palaeo-anthropologists believe fossil records indicate tigers may once have roamed Africa too, and that they dispersed from this continent much as did primitive Man. Conversely lions, leopards and cheetahs also once roamed widely across Asia, so the thought of tigers in Africa may not be a flight of fancy after all.

After several visits to see tigers in Asia over the years, Varty realized the species was in a parlous state. His discussions with conservationists fell on deaf ears, he says.

A man of action, JV describes himself as a conservationist who prefers to do things rather than sit around talking about them — an approach that has both won friends and made enemies. He has no PhD and does not aspire to one. Eleven years ago he began buying derelict and run-down sheep farms in the Karoo after a search for suitable land as well as a province with conservation legislation that would allow his project, which the Free State provided.

He then sourced two 8-month-old tiger cubs from a zoo in North America, enlisted the help of big cat handler Dave Salmoni and set about rehabilitating them.

A six-and-a-half-year journey later those two tigers, Ron and Julie, had learned to fend for themselves. The story has many parallels with the story of Elsa of Born Free fame, the lioness hand-reared by George and Joy Adamson in Kenya and subsequently returned to the wilds there.

Jule and one of her five cubs.

Today tiger Ron also lives a free and wild life at Tiger Canyons, and sired three cubs earlier this year with another tigress named Shadow.

Shadow roams wild too, and is a masterful huntress. She is raising her and Ron’s cubs in the wild, with little human contact at all.

In January 2009 Julie also gave birth to three cubs, but abandoned them at birth, possibly because her previous litter, born three years ago, had not properly dispersed.

One of those January cubs was a rare white tiger. Varty debated within himself at length on the advisability or otherwise of rearing those cubs himself, eventually taking them into his care. The three, Shine, Zaria and a young male named Sundarban, are today seen as ambassadors for Tiger Canyons, accompanying guests on guided walks, but will soon begin their own rehabilitation into the wild.

Advocating Contact and Tiger Conservation

I have spent many hours over a two-week period interacting with these young tigers, walking through the rugged canyons with them and swimming alongside them in its deep pools. Again, this was something I approached with skepticism — believing that close contact with wild animals, or animals that should be wild, should be shunned and avoided.

But a few hours in the company of these cats has changed my outlook. I believe much can be learned, and I felt privileged to be accepted by these tigers.

At 10 months they are already as big, if not bigger, than a full-grown male leopard. Should they wish, their claws and jaws could rip my human flesh like paper. Yet their play, robust as it is, is done at an intensity perhaps only 40-50 percent of that they use on each other.

And when the young white female, Shine, became a little over-robust with me, she later showed her concern by approaching and tenderly laying her head on my shoulder, chuffing her apologies. The ability to approach and interact with big cats in this way was both educational and inspiring, and I quickly became an advocate for tiger conservation.

Few Tourists

Daryl and Sharna Balfour, wildlife authors, photographers and conservationists.

The few tourists that make their way to Tiger Canyons and get the opportunity to view tigers in the wild, or walk with these three soon-to-be returned to the wild youngsters, certainly leave in awe of the most majestic of cats. Not one of them, says Varty and his assistant, Jade de Klerk, have ever expressed opinions other than positive.

“Nobody has ever said tigers don’t belong in Africa. Many believe too that perhaps Africa offers the best long term future,” says JV. “Everybody leaves here concerned about the plight of the wild tiger, and determined to do something to help save them.”

Varty is currently negotiating for more land for tigers in South Africa, and these three fast-growing cubs could be a seed population in another, new tiger reserve.

Says JV: “I don’t want to own tigers. I have 17 here already, and that is too many. We need more land for tigers urgently. I want to create tiger reserves in private hands. I need people who are prepared to buy and fence land, and stock it with prey.

“Large areas properly fenced and secured, stocked with  enough prey species, where tigers can be introduced and live wild lives. I will give them tigers once they have that. Who cares if they are in Africa, or anywhere else for that matter. Perhaps, some time in the future, we will be able to reintroduce wild tigers back into the wilds of Asia. We have shown and are showing what is possible with enough time and effort.”

What is illuminating though — and scary — is the fact that the Tiger Canyons population is probably the only body of wild, free-ranging tigers anywhere in the world that is actually increasing in size. This in itself seems reason enough for conservation organizations to get behind the Varty initiative, or at least come see it close-up as a model for the future.

Varty points out that there are some 26 different “tiger conservation” organizations or associations worldwide. He believes much of their efforts, and funds, are wasted and poured into lost causes.

“I don’t believe we can rely on governments to save the tiger. I don’t believe the tiger can rely on bureaucrats. What is needed is more private land, fenced and stocked, where tigers can live free and unfettered. If in the future, and it could be the very near future, tourists have to come to Africa to see tigers, so be it.”

Loss Of Habitat is Tigers Biggest Threat

Books by Daryl and Sharna Balfour. Screen shot.

He says he does not like seeing wild animals behind bars or fences. He hates zoos and finds them to be anachronisms in the modern age.

But the reality is that humankind needs to be fenced out of reserves, something that has not been done much in Asia. The biggest threat to tigers, he says, is not necessarily poaching alone but the loss of habitat, both for tigers and their prey.

Tigers, and all wild animals, have to compete with earth’s growing human population, and they are not competing well.

My own initial skepticism about JV and his tiger project has been turned into respect and admiration. Here is a man who is flying in the face of convention, a man once described as a “khaki-clad playboy” and a controversial, egocentric, maverick pseudo-conservationist.

He is far from that. Money and the trappings of wealth don’t impress him. He drives a battered old pick-up truck. His home is ramshackle and rundown, his clothing tattered and torn through a life in the wild.

The reality I learned is that JV simply does not care what people say or think about him. JV cares about tigers. And leopards, lions and cheetahs. And he is going to use his experience, his worldwide network of friends, admirers and contacts to do something about it. Come what may, and no matter what people think or say about him.

I salute him. And I pray his tigers prosper.

Story: ©: Daryl Balfour; 2010; Photos: ©: Daryl and Sharna Balfour

Daryl and Sharna Balfour are wildlife authors and photographers who have spent the past 23 years traveling the wilds of the world in search of wildlife subjects. Daryl also organizes and leads custom safaris. To purchase rights to republish this story and to contact them, please link to their websites, Daryl Balfour and wildphotosafaris. Contact John Varty’s Tiger Canyons through the JV and the Big Cats website.

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By Wanda Hennig

Dancing woman borrowed from Moss Beach Distillery.

Can this really be me writhing around the floor in a large, darkened room with a number of other should I call us crazies? I have my eyes glued shut but I know the others are out there because I can hear grunts and whines and hisses and the odd blood curdling yell. I have never been to anything like this before. I am here to “inflict” this experiment on myself; to “expose” myself to this ordeal. I know this is why I am here, because it is what I write in my journal at the end of the day.

I am also here feeling guilty that I am selfishly spending my hard-earned money on myself and something that most of my friends would consider whacky.

I am here feeling I should rather be sitting at my desk writing, like the sensible woman I like to pretend I am.

And I am here out of sheer curiosity, to see how a workshop described as “dance therapy”, where you don’t need ever to have danced, can fulfill its promise and release my “innate creativity.” If I have any of this, I want it liberated. But I am only grudgingly hopeful. I feel that if ever there was any (creativity) in me, after several years of single motherhood plus giving my workaholic tendencies free reign and grinding out a myriad of daily chores, it has gone away.

For good.

Which is dire straits for someone keen to switch from feature writing to writing novels. My eyes are glued shut because we have been given the option of keeping our eyes shut and I am going to keep mine shut this entire weekend, because if they are shut, I am invisible, and nobody can see me make of fool of myself.

Right?

Right.

What is it?

The first session, as I say, we writhe. At least, I writhe. I have no idea what the others are doing and I don’t want to know because I don’t want to be intimidated. I am convinced our workshop leader, a psychotherapist who works through the medium of movement, was humoring me when she said “just feel the music and move  anything you do is okay.” I am sure that they are all doing it right. It is bad enough that they are all making noises and my mouth is glued tight as my eyes.

She says to let our negative spots touch the floor.

She tells us to grow tails and long manes of hair and toss them around.

I notice that I am enjoying my body’s stretchings, and realize that it is the first time I have been in touch with it for some time.

I know I don’t listen to it when I overeat until I ache and lug around a heavy camera bag, telling myself that I am tough. I decide the tension between my shoulder blades as I writhe must be arthritis or rheumatism and the voice of logic and reason urges me to stop these silly games and go home to the familiarity and comfort of a book, a bottle of wine, and a friend.

I shut out the voice by writhing harder, until my shoulder muscles feel bruised. Somehow, I make it to the end of the class.

I return on Day 2, wondering what I could have done to deserve this.

First, we are told to use our imaginations, yield to the music, and make like an animal. I contain my urge to make like a dodo and die. I close my eyes and wait for the music to transport me.

Mike's farm, Cramond, South Africa.

I become a dumpy mountain elephant lumbering through a jungle. I wish I felt more exotic, like the screeching and thumping animals I hear around me. But I am encouraged that I am at least something.

When we finish playing Jungle Book, our workshop leader reads us a paragraph about an imaginary town made of porcelain.

She says we are going to close our eyes and let the music take us on a journey to this imaginary town. I almost gag, swallowing my doubt. But, I find myself dancing.

I am, at first, in a valley, from where I make my way up to a village of iridescent, dome-shaped structures, pearlescent and sparkling in the sun. I don’t see a soul, but I am being drawn by the melodious strains of a woman’s voice to the big, low-slung structure in the middle of the village that has no doors or windows. But I know, if I feel the walls, I will touch the right spot and a secret door will let me in.

It does, and I step into a cavern that is rich and baroque, with gem encrusted walls. I follow the voice down a passageway, feeling the jewels on the walls, and mildly marveling as I go. And then I emerge, in a circular room, where I find myself stumbling between big straw baskets filled with jewels. On a king-sized bed, reclining on satin sheets and clad in a delicate nightdress, is the beautiful woman of the voice. Handmaidens fan her, feed her grapes, and pass her a goblet to drink from. I run my hands through the jewels, admiring their lavishness, and note that I have no desire to take them.

Framed view, New Zealand.

Then I join the handmaidens in a dance until, curiosity satisfied, I skip and dance out into the sunshine and back into my life.

We are asked to share our experiences with a member of the group. I choose a woman who seems to believe she is a tree, and I tell her that I cannot believe my boring, mundane mind has just taken me on this vivid little trip into a dreamlike, fairytale world that I never knew existed in my head.

I note that my skeptical inner voice of logic and “good sense” has been replaced by interest. I wonder what will happen next, in a dance that I hear is supposed to be my life story.

My eyes are shut and there is music, and guided on this visualization by Tossie’s words, I watch myself start out as a fetus that swims, on a long and solitary journey, punctuated by transient connections with people, some of whom I never knew or no longer know.

The journey is rambling and convoluted and takes me to small pool in the middle of a big, bare field, where I swim round, and round, trapped in a well of emptiness that feels just like the place I have been in my real life with the man I have been seeing. I want to pull myself out and run away but I am caught, so I curl up on my haunches on the floor, and wait for the dance to end.

Gilroy, California, appleworm.

On Sunday, I arrive eager and curious.

I don’t know where I will go today, but the trust I have developed tells me it will be somewhere special.

We are told to close our eyes and to move in a repetitive way that feels like strength.

We are told to adapt this movement and not use our arms; to adapt it further, and not use our legs. I hear that I am going back to a most primitive form, where there is only spine. The words feel like they are coming from far away and I get a sense that I am watching them interact directly with the images and pictures that are emerging, like I am a spectator, hearing dialogue and watching a movie.

I hear that the less body I have, the more I will be able to see, and I watch myself become a green stick figure with an eye on top, attached to a twig that sways above a gently bubbling marshland that looks like one of the mud pots at Yellowstone. I see a outgrowths of contorted leafy plants. Things that look like dragon flies swoop over them and frogs plop. My place is warm and primitive and bathed in a muted, verdant light.

Grand Canyon, United States.

Then, from a faraway place nearby, I hear that we are losing our spines, and with a change in the music, I watch my surrounds become a moonscape, and my self transform into a plant with many tentacles. Each tentacle waves an eye. Each eye observes everything around.

I have an eerie feeling that this is where my life began and that I am watching a million years pass by.

After observing for a while, I heed the urge to change from spectator to participant and watch myself transform into something a little alarming. Leafy snares grow beneath my eyes and, like a Venus’s flytrap, I interact by ambushing and consuming anything moving within my range that takes my fancy. I know that I am large, because I devour a vaulting spaceman as he glides by, having left his spaceship some way off.

Curiously, none of this seems macabre or even slightly deviant. There is no blood or guts. I just flap my traps and my victims disappear. I realize that I am a revered plant, when creatures without substance that I recognize as the beings of this place come and gaze at me in awe.

What a life! Here I sit, waving my eyes, which are also my mouths, hooking in moving targets at whim, while scrutinizing this strange and prehistoric world that is mine.

At some point, I become aware that I can stay where I am for the rest of my life, or I can move.

Pond on olive farm, New Zealand.

Curiosity conquers comfort. I have no idea where I will go. I pull up my roots (which I discover were not made for walking) and start a slow, laborious trek across the landscape. I feel that I am searching for a creature like myself. I understand that I will not find one.

I sense it doesn’t matter. I carry on, interested to see what I will find instead.

The music changes and I hear that I must transform into an eye, which I instantly become. A big, beady, bloodshot eye, set in the ground, peering at my life, which has materialized above me and all around me in a series of concentric circles, each one comprising a different aspect of my world.

Closest to me are some good friends. I feel bonded and connected to them. A little further away, I see my world of work, my focus in real life. But now, work has been pushed away to give space to the friends.

I realize that in real life, I have been neglecting these friends. From among the friends, I see that I must push out the man I see glowering at me from the sidelines as he is a destructive force in my life. His brooding presence sears into me, distracting me. He represents restriction and obsession, blinkering me from the spaciousness of life.

Beyond my world of work, I seem to be looking out over many universes. I have a sense of things graduating to encompass all the countries of the world, a world filled with people and activities and people’s lives.

Beyond the world, there is space with the planets and the stars. I can see everything and I am part of everything.
And while experience a deep knowing that I am part of everything, I realize that I can only connect deeply with certain things.

Geyser, Rotorua, New Zealand.

I get a sense of all the countries I have said I want to travel to. I realize if I don’t make choices, I will never get to any of them. And I connect to a truth that all of life is like this. I must select and engage and connect with chosen people, places, and activities, otherwise I will always be an outsider. Remote. Joyless. Unfulfilled. The world a blur of possibilities, none of them achieved.

My message is that while I am part of the whole, only by engagement and involvement will I experience essence and meaning in my life.

When I hear that we must grow back our spines and begin the return journey to our bodies, I reverse the stages of my devolution and return to my human form.

When I hear that I must dance my life structure, my body heeds the command.

I want to make myself into a dancing animal, but I am not in control. I can only watch as I become a fetus again, straining and stretching into life.

I hear that I must dance how I feel and words come to me. And then an image. The words I hear are “strength”, “leader”, “vital” and “life force”. The image is that of a goddess.

I try to reject goddess. It seems incongruous. Goddess to me means sex goddess, pretty, decorative and weak. But I am not in control.

Goddess persists.

As I move, I feel that this goddess is strong, powerful, and energized with life force. As I embrace and dance this goddess of strength, I experience a shift. Suddenly, it is admissible to be soft, sensual and feminine. It is okay to accept this side of me, the stereotypes that as a “modern” woman and a feminist, I have felt pressured to reject.

It is okay to be woman. Relief floods through me. I can be woman with whatever womanhood includes. In this moment, I know that it is enough to be myself.

I emerge from the dance

• aware that I have let stereotypes, habits and generalizations box me in,
• aware that self-constructed prison walls have limited my thinking, my options and how I behave,
• aware that the effort of knocking down a wall can open up a whole new world,
• aware that I cannot dance. And so what? The experience unlatched a lock on my creativity, which I can now continue to explore, aware that action induces change. Do if first. Think about it later.

This was my first truly revealing experience with visualizations (and why I believe in their power and use them as a coach).

Copyright © 2010 Wanda Hennig

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By Africa correspondent Graham Linscott

Photos by Wayne Matthews

TEMBE Elephant Park, a wilderness in the remote north-east of the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, offers visitors the opportunity to step back 200 years into unspoiled pre-colonial Africa.

It also offers the opportunity to spot southern Africa’s largest tusker, a giant bull elephant named Isilo who is about 65 years old and leads a herd which has migrated since time immemorial between Maputaland, as the region is known, and Mozambique.

As southern Africa’s largest elephant — the scientists agree on this — Isilo is almost certainly also the largest in Africa and therefore in the world. He has two relatives who are not far behind him in size.

The picture of Isilo (click on “View With PicLens” see him bigger, below) is taken from a cunningly constructed hide near a waterhole. Otherwise nobody would get close. The Tembe elephants are very shy. They disappear into the forest like a flash. Well, a lumbering flash but it’s so damn quick — one second they’re there, next they’re not.

[View with PicLens]

From one extreme to the other: Tembe is also home to one of Africa’s smallest antelope, the tiny suni, which is about 10 inches high at the shoulder and lives in the undergrowth, feeding off leaves that have dropped from the trees.

The suni is not much bigger than a small rabbit. They live in the undergrowth. They don’t eat grass, but live off the leaves that drop from the bushes. They require leaves with the exact chemical content that caused them to drop. You can’t pluck leaves from the bush and feed them. They can’t eat leaves that have been lying on the ground too long. It has to be the leaf as it drops. It goes without saying that you can’t keep the suni in captivity.

World’s Largest Web-Spinning Spider

Tembe now has another distinction. Scientists recently (October 2009) discovered that it is home to the world’s largest web-spinning spider.

The nephila komaci, the world’s largest web-spinning spider: alive and well at Tembe. Photo courtesy Tembe.

Nephila komaci had been thought to be extinct. But scientists of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural  History and the Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts confirm finding it at Tembe.

The female has a leg-span of five inches (the males are much smaller) and she spins a web three feet in diameter.

Giant elephant, tiny antelope and giant spiders — between this triangulation Tembe has lion, leopard, rhino, buffalo, zebra, giraffe, the complete range of antelope indigenous to the sand forest/grassland/wetland habitat and more than 340 bird species.

Old Ivory Route

Tembe lies on the old Ivory Route between Mozambique and the Zulu people. To visit is to experience primordial Africa because so little has been disturbed. Its unique character is protected by its remoteness and by the comparatively low-density tourist traffic.

Staff at Tembe Elephant Park.

The luxury lodge in the park — 50 percent owned and fully operated by the Tembe tribe — caters for 30 people at a time in double permanent tents with hot water bathrooms en suite. (Semi-luxury tents are also available).

The rustic Lodge has a swimming pool and barbecue area and offers sumptuous meals, venison dishes prominent on the menu. It also offers the unforgettable bush experience of sitting by a campfire  under the stars.

Game Drives and Scuba

Game drives with an experienced ranger go out regularly (at no extra cost) and excursions are arranged to the scuba diving reefs on the coast, as well as other wilderness attractions outside the park.

Home comforts in the bush at Tembe.

All needs are catered for and tariffs include accommodation, meals, teas, coffee, two daily game drives and transfers to and from the waterhole game hide during the day.

How to get there:

By road: Tembe is a four-hour drive on a tarred road from Durban. You will be met at the entrance gate to the park, directed to the secure parking area where you can safely leave your vehicle for the duration of your stay. From there, you will be driven in a 4×4 to the lodge.

The game-spotting vehicle at Tembe.

Visitors requiring transport from Durban will be met at their hotel or preferred pick-up point and driven to Tembe in a luxury air-conditioned vehicle.

By air: A return air service is available from Virginia Airport, just north of Durban, direct to the airstrip at Tembe or to the neighboring Manguzi airstrip.

To watch the elephants in real time: www.elecam.org

For bookings and more information, visit the Tembe Elephant Park website.

Story ©: Graham Linscott
Photos Wayne Matthews

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Lunch Maori-style at Te Puia, Rotorua, with Patrick Tamati and Te Taru White.

8. Rotorua menu blends Maori hangi, haka, Swoop and Zorb. Eat, play, love, New Zealand

(With video and slideshow)

7. Xtremely hot Maori lunch cooked in lizard cauldron (2). Video. Eat, play, love, New Zealand

(With video)

6. Xtremely hot Maori lunch cooked in lizard cauldron (1). Slideshow. Eat, play, love, New Zealand

(With slideshow)

5. Tiger Moth flights to freedom and romance woo lovers. Eat, play, love, New Zealand

(With slideshow)

4. Matchmaking Flight: Who went? Why? Having a ball. Eat, play, love, New Zealand

(With slideshow)

3. Jason ‘The Bachelor’ Mesnick’s Mile High dating tips – video. Eat, play, love, New Zealand

(With two videos. Jason and Molly give dating tips and Mike talks about bad dates.)

2. Matchmaking Flight send-off party at LAX, with Bachelor, sizzles. Eat, Play, Love, New Zealand

(With culinary travel video featuring Jason and Molly.)

1. World’s first Matchmaking Flight ready for take-off. Eat, Play, Love, New Zealand

(With video and slideshow)

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Peter Hendriks and Ivan Krippner ready for a Tiger Moth take-off, Wanaka, New Zealand.

My first journalism job was on The Daily News in Durban, South Africa and — wait for it — we used typewriters.

We’d layer four short sheets of paper — long enough to type maybe three paragraphs, at a pinch — separated by three sheets of carbon paper, and roll them into the machine. God alone knows what the parts of the typewriter were called and by my second newspaper job (on the Sunday Tribune, also in Durban), basic computers were coming in.

Back to the typewriters and those days of yore, you’d compose your first graph (sometimes two of them) on page one, spool it out, and then call “Copy!” to alert the person assigned to pick it up and leg it around.

Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney gear up for the Matchmaking Flight at LAX.

As far as I remember:

• You kept the bottom copy, which was usually illegible;
• one copy was taken to the news editor’s inbox;
• one went to the syndication desk (the syndication editor sent this page shooting up a tube to the telex department or whatever it was they used in that pre-fax, pre-computer era when blogs and Twitter weren’t even the product of a science fiction writer’s dreams);
• and one was given to the deputy news editor who edited it by hand, worked on it with you as needed, and passed it on to copy chief.

Thinking about blogging today — specifically travel blogging — the memory of using typewriters came back.

1. Then, you had to think fast and clearly, write it down — and let it go. You were working to deadline and had strict time constraints. This is what you want to aspire to with your travel blog.
2. And you want to write like you would for a newspaper in that one or two sentences per paragraph is preferable. With both newspapers and blogs, it makes for easier reading (scanning).
3. 

   Air New Zealand love goddess Cheryl Pasko at the pre-flight party at LAX.

   Remember, you can go back and edit your blog. Sure, you are aiming for perfection — but not at the expense of action. Unlike when you make an error in print that nobody picked up and it’s there to haunt you for life, guaranteed, someone will spot your online error and be quick to point it out. For example, I called Auckland “Adelaide” in a New Zealand post on my examiner.com link (see the comment section). How and why? Darned if I know. But within two ticks I had a direct Twitter message, a comment on the end of the post, and a note from a Facebook friend saying that: “If only you’d taken Geography at school and not Latin …”

4. The reach of what you write is potentially anyone on the web. So quality is better than quantity and length does not correlate with reach and impact.
5. You can write shorter and more in-depth at the same time. How? By linking.
6. You can do your research while you write. Open up a second, third, fourth Firefox or Safari window and google as you go. Link to your citing sources. It’s good for your readers and good for your google ranking.
7. If you’re blogging for yourself, you have the power! You can see a story, decide on the angle, write it and post it.
8. It’s easy to make your blog into a multimedia post. Take pictures, edit them, use them. Use a Flip camera and make a video. Post the video on You Tube and link to it. (What is a vlog? A blog that uses video.) Use your tape recorder and make podcasts. [Check out story, video and slideshow in combination at Rotorua menu blends Maori hangi, haka, Swoop and Zorb. Eat, play, love, New Zealand.]
9. You can do your work from the road, so long as you have internet access and can build in the time. If you’re traveling privately and paying for internet time, you’ll probably need to budget your time. I vote for a worldwide Free Wi-Fi movement.
10. You will post to your blog on your site and then post the link to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. If it’s work-related, post to Linked In. Then there’s Digg and a bunch of other social networking sites. Before you set off on your travels, consider setting up automatic linking and feeds. For your google ranking, use keywords when you link and never “click here”.

And don’t get me wrong. I love magazines and print journalism. But being realistic, that market is going the way of the typewriter.

So — upward and onward to the blog market.

See Part 1 of Sex, Social Media and New Zealand.

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