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Outside Magazine March 2003

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DESTINATIONS SPECIAL: The Scouting Expedition
A Trip is Born (Cont.)


	Packing up near the confluence of Lugenda and Ruvuma rivers. (Joshua Paul)

Day 11, mile 295
BEAUTIFUL INSELBERGS—"island mountains"—thrust bluish in the distance over palm-lined stretches of sandy shoreline. Rapids grew infrequent and far easier. I now had the safety net of Clinton's kayak, if I needed it, which I found much easier to handle in big rapids. Clinton, by contrast, had instantly flipped in my tandem with Steve—to my secret satisfaction.

We drifted past a Makua fishing family. They stood on a sandbar, their thatched shelter and drying racks staked behind them, and stared at our bright plastic boats. How much of the world's resources we use, I thought, and how little they use. And yet we are asking them to preserve their forests and animals for us.

Twenty thousand or more Yao and Makua reside in mud-and-thatch villages in the Niassa Reserve, raising crops or netting fish. A huge question facing the reserve is what should be done about these people. Do you expel them, as in many African national parks? Or do you encourage them to stay, and offer a "vested interest" in conservation—jobs in anti-poaching units, a piece of safari income, hunting rights, or meat quotas?

Elephants, for example, are a tremendous nuisance, stomping fields and eating crops. According to Rolf Baldus, a former conservation adviser to the Selous Game Reserve who has worked among villagers in Tanzania, "the people say, ÔWhat we know is that countries where there are elephants, they're poor, and countries where there are no elephants, they are rich. So why don't you come and take all these elephants?' You have to convince them there is some monetary value to having these elephants here."

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