Ghana outdoors

Good news out of small and major disasters

2010-04-19T08:05:00.005Z

My computers have been giving me a lot of headaches over the last few weeks but while scanning my various backups I discovered a gem I didn't know I still had: all the pictures I used for a website on Ghanaian aboriginal dogs (subscription lapsed years ago). What a treat!

They are all here: http://tinyurl.com/Avuvis.

Some of the dogs are mine (the two red ones in a European setting, from the 2-year stint I did in France 6-8 years ago), most are encounters I made in 2004 around Batsonaa, a suburb of Accra, Ghana.

A friend in South Africa told me about an interesting initiative. Read about it here: http://tinyurl.com/Funda-Nenja.

Teaching less fortunate kids to handle their dogs as a way of introducing them to the human and social values of compassion, gentleness and care is a brilliant idea, one that should be replicated elsewhere, to help make our world better.

To those who would find this endeavour shallow or useless, or that one should concentrate on human beings rather than dogs, I'll say: Kakrabia nsua. Every little helps. Our world does need compassion, gentleness and care. A lot.

Oyez! Here comes the younger generation

2009-02-22T17:51:00.006Z

Nature never ceases to fill me with wonder. 5.30pm is when my patio is at its noisiest: you can hear birds chirping and wings fluttering frenetically for about five minutes. If you are lucky (or on the lookout), this is what you can get a glimpse of:

You may not remember them, but they are featured on this blog (or their parents) already. Click here to be introduced to the older generation.

Please remember to visit this blog again in the next few days; I intend to publish pictures of these youngsters outside their nest. Better still, click on "follow this blog" in the upper left section of this page and be informed each time it is updated.

Nature defies imagination

2009-01-02T07:21:00.007Z

The more I looked at the dozens of pictures I took of this bat colony, the more they seemed to blur into abstract works with a distinct kind of Japanese art quality. Bare branches twisted so much as to appear the work of an imaginative painter rather than true to nature...

... tightly knotted parcels hanging under the branches, like as many clever origamis...

... and throughout, a study in delicate shades of black (bat)-brown, bark-brown, and yellowish brown from the bats' bellies.

Nature is so amazing. Man never invented anything more sophisticated, not even the most brilliant painters.

Bat colony

2009-01-02T06:53:00.008Z

Yesterday I took advantage of the quiet after the New Year's celebrations (and hence the exceptional absence of traffic jams) to go and take dozens of pictures of what is the biggest bat colony I've ever seen.

It is truly amazing to see these dense clusters of sleepy or sleeping bats hanging head down from virtually every branch or twig of a long avenue of mainly huge old neem trees.

Sometimes it's a bit difficult to ascertain which tree they dwell in, considering that some seem to have given up growing leaves, the bat population apparently taking all the place... and then some.

They even hang on to bigger branches and trunks.

Some clusters are so dense one wonders how they can sleep at all (and what exactly they are hanging on to: invisible twigs? fellow bats?).

I find it so fascinating that they would live in colonies of thousands, probably tens of thousands. The mind boggles and I just couldn't begin to imagine a way of assessing a range. A lot!

Googling as usual, I discovered that there is a huge colony of bats in Kumasi, supposedly about 400,000 of them. They are called straw-coloured flying foxes and their description make it likely that those in front of 37 Military Hospital are cousins of the Kumasi ones. Below are a few excerpts of the article you can read in full by clicking here:

Flying foxes (a type of fruit bats) are key pollinators and seed dispersers. The fruit of the Iroko tree makes up 88.9 percent of the diet of the straw-colored flying fox during its annual migrations. Aware that Iroko ranks as one of Africa’s most valuable and threatened hardwood trees, I realized that seed dispersal of such an important tree would provide strong economic incentives for the conservation of Ghana’s traditionally persecuted straw-colored flying foxes.

Happy reading! I hope you'll enjoy discovering the fascinating world of bats as much as I did.

A very happy New Year 2009 to all of you!

2009-01-01T14:43:00.003Z

Out with 2008, it's folded and packed away for good now...

This morning I went to the Military Hospital to take pictures of a huge bat colony. I cannot begin to imagine how many they are, but I would say several thousands. Tens of thousands maybe. Very, very impressive. I took a lot of pictures, about 50, but finally decided to post only one, as a symbol of the end of last year. Folded, closed, over and done with.

Here comes 2009, full of hopes and new beginnings!

Back home, I discovered that in the one tree growing in my diminutive patio, there was one very visible nest (I am aware of several, but only this one is easy to see). I took a picture and when I zoomed on it on my computer, I was surprised to realise there was at least a bird in it. (yes, bottom left, can you see its head?) Here I had my Happy New Year metaphor all written graphically for me by nature: old things folded, new things emerging.

Happy New Year to you all! I'm delighted with nature and its surprises and it seems very much that I'll keep deriving a lot of happiness from these chance encounters with the many exemples of perfection, quirks and mysterious occurrences it offers daily to anybody paying a little attention.

Don't miss the details!

2008-12-28T10:15:00.006Z

To me, happiness is not as much having something hugely positive happen to you as being able to marvel at the smallest everyday moments of perfection.

No matter how common a sparrow can be, it still is a wonder when you look it from very close... or when you are lucky enough to have a camera that allows you to see better what could escape your notice otherwise.

Start going out and looking for the tiny miracles in your everyday life and environment. You will never see things through these former blasé eyes of yours.

You may want to ask: who is this artisan who crafted so many different animals, plants, etc. so cleverly?

Jurassic Park, cont'd.

2008-12-28T09:58:00.005Z

Lizards come in various sizes and colours. I am not sure about the explanation, whether the more vividly coloured ones are males and the drabber ones females or two different varieties, but here is another example of what can be found here:

Thanks to any reader who could help me answer these questions and identify my prehistoric neighbours.

Jurassic Park in my yard

2008-12-22T04:25:00.003Z

I cannot help marvelling at how much can be discovered without even going out of my gate. I don't know much about lizards, geckos, or whatever they are called, but they look so ancient I wouldn't be surprised if they predated man on earth and would last long after our folly precipitates our disparition.

They come in so many different sizes and colours... Some are even colourless! I suppose they are albino but their eyes are black, so maybe they are not, after all. One of them runs away each time I open a specific cupboard in my kitchen. Geckos eat insects, which seems quite useful considering they are everywhere in huge numbers.

One of their most intriguing pecularities is their sticky feet, which allow them to walk on tiled walls and smooth ceilings without falling (well, I've seen geckos landing on my bed or table unannounced, but maybe they were just having a little fun at my expense). After much pondering, observing and putting under various magnifying glasses, it appears that scientists have discovered how this is possible: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/781611.stm.

"It seems the little lizards have a network of tiny hairs and pads on their feet which produce electrical attractions that literally glue the animals down."

Wow.

Whoever believes all life form on earth and elsewhere is pure coincidence and random arrangement of matter seems a trifle off-beam to me. I just cannot believe there is no Master Architect to all this.

Another walk-on in my domestic Jurassic Park re-enactment is the cockroach. I see quite a lot of this species around. Somehow, my ability to marvel doesn't extend to it. Whoever did the casting quite overdid it in the cockroach department. Or maybe not. It may just be that I am unable to look at the overall picture and tend to focus too much on a very limited area, say, my kitchen at night.

Nothing special? You're right, and that's the beauty of it!

2008-12-05T07:18:00.014Z

A Ghanaian friend visited this blog and told me "I like your pictures, but the dogs are nothing extraordinary, though". He is perfectly right. His untrained eye identified immediately the typical local dog.

Here, local dogs are largely ignored, because they are the ordinary. They roam the streets, although most are loosely attached to a compound or a family. Imported Western breeds are highly prized, praised and priced. They are kept behind walls, and seldom seen outside, certainly not romping freely in the streets. They are status dogs, and their owners believe they are the best dogs in terms of ability to protect their possessions, behaviour, character, aesthetics, etc. People are baffled when they discover that our little African dogs attract attention and interest in other parts of the world. On other continents, they are deemed exotic, and indeed, they are. Consciously or not, people who are interested to own one of these African dogs want to own a living testimony of what they picture as a largely unknown, mysterious, ancient and wild continent.

Those who know a bit about how Western breeds were obtained are interested to know more about how dogs were before this normative frenzy took hold of the dog fancy. In the Western way (or is it just human?), "knowing" goes hand in hand with possessing. I've observed this with a group of dog fanciers, who took great pains to travel to Africa, select local dogs (based on their own criteria, which I'm not sure they realised was already the first step to creating a new standard) to bring back to the US and breed.

Sadly, what led to the degeneration of Western breeds, as we know them now, and to the eradication of Western landraces is what is being done again now with "primitive" dogs: import a tiny group of a specific type, breed and inbreed them, discard (put to sleep or neuter) all those which don't fit the desired appearance, and in 3 generations, declare a new "breed" has been discovered --or, rather, an ancient breed has been re-discovered-- and/or register for trademark protection. Somewhere in the process, one or several of the fanciers will have pronounced the "breed" in danger of becoming extinct and/or terminally mongrelised in its natural habitat, justifying the extraction of specimens from their land and the setting up of a "reasoned" breeding programme.

It may be gratifying and romantic to believe one is saving an endangered species by shipping an African dog to another continent, but at the risk of appearing shockingly pedestrian, let's state some basic truths: Avuvis (and other sub-Saharan landraces) are by no means in danger of extinction. They are everywhere, and thriving. They don't seem to be in danger of mongrelisation either. Western breeds are not very numerous here, Western dogs are kept behind bars and walls, and are only found in big towns and cities.

A land-race is adapted to its environment. Uprooting it is denying it its very raison d'être. Starting a new line elsewhere and selecting dogs according to (non-African) normative criteria is tantamount to destructing everything that makes admirable this testimony to adequation between environment and living beings.

Dog fanciers may want to create new and original breeds. The market wants novelty, and this line of reasoning makes sense from a business perspective. What the breeders shouldn't do is luring people into believing they (breeders first, but also buyers of their products) are doing African dogs a favour. They are not. They are offering their own interpretation of an idealised image of the wild and unknown Africa, after domestication and trimming to a rigid standard.

Investigating birds

2008-12-03T10:58:00.007Z

My patio is teeming with life... It is amazing how many pictures of fauna and flora I can take without even leaving my compound.

These are among the commonest birds here:

Made bolder by what I think is an earlier success (see my "Red-throated visitor" post below), I decided to investigate those. According to my findings, they may be Bronze mannikins (Lonchura cucullata).

Again, whoever can confirm or offer a more accurate alternative will earn my gratitude.

Lucky bag

2008-12-03T08:16:00.009Z

Last year when I was in France I bought a small bag of what was supposed to be passion fruit seeds. I was very surprised to discover it developed into something completely different; I suspect it was rather sensitives (Mimosa pudica, which is also sold by Vilmorin), which are now flowering.

I read somewhere that Mimosa pudica grew to about 2ft, but it's probably valid only in temperate climates. One of mine is now around 12ft high and it's not yet one year old.

I also read that the flowers were pale mauve or violet, but these ones are definitely white. Maybe the soil where they grow has a bearing on their colour.

I'm a little disappointed. Granted, growing sensitive plants is fun, what with their leaves folding up when you tickle them, but I wanted passion fruit first to intertwine with and cover the bars, and second, for the fruit itself, which I find delicious.

Red-throated visitor

2008-12-03T07:55:00.007Z

Since I bought a new camera early last month, I've been on the lookout for three specific birds. One was a bright red and black bird, another a yellow-greenish bird, which are both still eluding me, and the third a faded red-throated bird, which finally obliged this morning.

These pictures were all taken from my office into the tiny patio. I am not sure all are of the same bird, since they were two to dance in the patio this morning.

The pictures were a bit tricky to take, since I didn't want to frighten them although I had to open the window and zoom in on them, all this while they were less than 10 feet from me.

I'm quite pleased with the result. I still haven't seen the bright red bird, or another yellow-greenish one that I find interesting too.

I don't know much about African birds names. Based on http://www.oiseaux.net/birds/ghana.html, it seems however that this one could be a bar-breasted firefinch (Lagonosticta rufopicta). I would appreciate it a lot if a reader could verify this, help identify it or recommend a website or a book.

The fine art of natural balance

2008-12-02T15:24:00.007Z

Another chance encounter... I caught this dog strolling past my gate and was lucky enough to have the camera handy. When I was ready to push the button it was considerate enough to assume a conventional dog show "stacked" position for me.

I find it perfectly balanced, a typical Avuvi, probably born mid-year. It will be very interesting to see how it develops.

Floppy ears are by no means unusual in Avuvis, although lots of them have erect (yet mobile) ears.

I especially like the spring in its step. A very fine specimen, ambling widely instead of trotting. This means it will be able to cover long distances without getting tired. Having both types of dogs at home, ambling and trotting, I can verify it regularly: the one I have to carry or to allow to rest when we go for a long walk is the trotting one. Although it makes it more "puppy-like" and maybe more appealing to some fanciers, I don't think it's the best adapted to fending for itself.

Copyright notice

2008-11-29T09:13:00.006Z

It may seem paranoid but here goes... Please note that all the pictures published on this blog were taken by me and that I retain all copyright on them. If you want to copy and use them for any purpose, please be kind enough to ask for my permission and submit the text you want to use in connection with them.

Thank you!

Copyright E. Occansey, 2008

Dogs...

2008-11-29T00:40:00.004Z

If you were to read only one book about dogs as they were and are naturally, please do read "Dogs: a New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behaviour, and Evolution" by Raymond and Lorna Coppinger. Here is a link to the Amazon page: http://tinyurl.com/dogs-coppinger.

Here are a few pictures taken this very morning:

I think these could be dam and pup. They live in the same compound and I saw this bitch much more rotund than now a few months ago. I think the puppy may be 4-5 months old.

The picture was taken from my bedroom window, and the dogs were about 70 yards from my house. The red and white colours are by far the most frequently occurring colours in local dogs. There are black and whites and tricolour dogs too, but I would be surprised if they were more than 10% of the total population. Until a few weeks ago, I had never seen a brindle Avuvi. I saw one recently, but I'm so surprised I did, after many travels in and to the region over more than 30 years, that I wonder if this specific one could have had a non-Avuvi ancestor.

Avuvis don't have a tightly curled tail like the Western fabrication called Basenji. Their tails can be moderately curled, or not. They can be quite long, but I've also seen tail-less puppies (obviously not cropped) and medium-length tails (about 8in long).

Welcome to Ghana outdoors

2008-11-29T00:17:00.002Z

For a long time I have felt handicapped by the lack of, then by an inappropriate, camera. It's been all the more frustrating that I'm back to my beloved Ghana and feeling very much in the mood of taking pictures.

Earlier this month, I got a Fuji FinePix S8000 fd. I'm very pleased with it. In particular, my previous camera was less than satisfactory in terms of zoom and macro. No such complain with this one, I even have a 'super-macro' feature that allows me to be less than 1/2in from the subject and get a perfect picture.

I've long been interested in dogs. More specifically, aboriginal dogs. Not "purebred" Western fabrications but natural, local, naturally adapted to the climate, available food and parasites. "Environmentally appropriate", to say it in a fashionable way, but what it really is all about is that nature did much better than any of us poor mortals could do, alone or in groups.

This blog will therefore show quite a few pictures of dogs, Ghanaian dogs, "Avuvis" (avu = dog, -vi = small in the Ewe language), but also birds, plants, ... Anything I see when outdoors and find pleasant enough to push the button.

These birds are very small, maybe not more than 3in from head to tail. They are everywhere here, including in the one tree gracing my diminutive patio. They seem to be almost as light as butterflies. Seen from afar they look just black, grey and white but with the zoom I realised that reality is much more complex and delicate, as it often is.