Dassie dung data danger

I blogged before about the crystallised urine and poo from dassies, the large guinea-pig-like creatures, being used in perfumes. Well as if that isn't weird enough, a battle of words (and possibly resources) has broken out between"foreign" perfume manufacturers, who are placing orders for TONS of South African dassiepis (sic), and cash-strapped researchers at the University of Cape Town who regard the middens of dassies as invaluable sources of information about biodiversity. These dassie toilets - some of which are half a metre deep and go back forty thousand years - contain the pollen of plants that passed through the dassies of the time, and according to the scientists "you can work out migrations of species and climatic conditions - it's an essential archive to help us understand better the impacts of future climate change". So what's it to be - dassiepis dabbed behind your ear, or scrutinised under a microscope to help save the planet?

Space invaders

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I've never been particularly interested in gardening, but when I moved into my flat I bought a few pot plants for the balcony, just because it looked so empty. This summer has been extremely wet - storms nearly every day - which has meant that I haven't needed to worry much about watering these plants, they've grown like mad things all on their own. The pots have also been invaded by a variety of other species. I rip out the bigger weeds when they start to outgrow the original occupants, but each pot now sports a rich undergrowth which is too much trouble to get rid of.

I've never seen birds paying any attention to my pot plants, so all of these visitors presumably arrived through the air - which just goes to show how efficient plants are at propagating themselves - one has even taken up residence in a crack in the side of the building - and this is a new build. But on the other hand I was watching a DVD of the BBC Life series the other evening and David Attenborough pointed out that plants have been around for half a billion years - so they know a thing or two about moving into available spaces.

Muti killings

A big story in the SA media at the moment is about the disappearance of an eleven-year old girl from her home near Pretoria on New Year's eve - her mutilated body has just been found. Police are investigating possible links to at least three other disappearances. These things happen all over the world, of course, unfortunately, but in this case the motive for this unimaginably despicable crime appears at least partly to have been for muti killing - that is, the harvesting of body parts for use in witchcraft. The news stories say that a suspect has been arrested who is already known to have sold human body parts to a sangoma - a traditional healer; body parts are considered to be extremely powerful, apparently, when used in witchcraft rituals of various kinds.

These African words aren't translated into English in the media - they're part of the SA vocabulary, as the practice of muti using body parts is well known across Africa, and related crimes happen fairly frequently. Journalists universally condemn the practice - but I heard on a radio phone-in programme the other day, chillingly, that the police find it difficult to investigate these crimes because it's considered "bad luck" to even talk about muti, let alone help the police in their enquiries.

Happy new year!

Back - I had a wonderful holiday in Italy, thanks, how was your holiday if you had one? - now I'm back to work and to a very rainy South African summer - not hot at all, so far, but no snow either so it could be worse. I still have to tune in to my SA persona, it feels odd to be split across continents again.

Above: Smart like a Christmas tree; one of the best cappuccini in the world; Roman sunset.