22 July 2024

The Remarkable Giraffe Weevil of Madagascar

No, this isn’t the monster from a new Ridley Scott film – it is something that our very own Ark in Space, planet Earth, has thrown up.  Called the Giraffe Weevil for reasons that take no soon-ness to become obvious, it lives in Madagascar where it has carved out its own small niche.  The male has evolved this gigantic neck to fight off rival suitors for mating rights. Perhaps a little OTT but the Ark in Space has the story together with a very cool gallery of photos. If you are wondering why you have never heard of it before, that's because it was only discovered in 2008.

Image Credit Wikimedia

4 May 2024

Welcome to Flamingo City

Over at The Ark in Space they have been somewhat overrun by millions of lesser flamingos! These graceful birds flock to a number of Kenyan lakes each year to feast on nature’s provisions. In the mean time they give us one of the most spectacular visions the natural world has to offer. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Flamingo City!

Image Credit Flickr User Rainbirder

9 April 2023

The Ennedi Plateau: Secret Stones of the Sahara

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Rising from the sands of the great Sahara Desert, the Ennedi Plateau is a revelation.  Situated in the north east of Chad and surrounded by sand on all sides, this extraordinary, other-worldly place presents vista after vista of stunning rock formations.
Ennedi is little visited – there is nothing you could realistically call a road for many miles. The plateau is frequented only by local nomads and a handful of foreign visitors in their 4x4s.

Yet even though the landscape resembles somewhere the crew of the Enterprise might find themselves on an away mission, these rocks – as you will see - hide something perhaps even more astonishing.

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28 December 2022

Gedi – Kenya’s Hidden History Revealed

The thirteenth century was one of turmoil. The crusades were in full swing, the Mongol empire under Ghengis Khan swept forever westwards while Marco Polo turned his own eyes towards the east.

Meanwhile in Kenya, East Africa, a group of enterprising people began to build a settlement which would endure for over three hundred years. Gedi, a sophisticated coral-brick built town belies the perception many have about this part of Africa - and its architecture - before the arrival of Europeans. Take a look at Kenya's hidden history revealed.

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17 February 2022

The Hyrax - The Elephant's Cousin

Meanwhile, over at the Ark in Space they have cranked up the cute quotient to the max with a feature on the hyrax. This rather lazy looking example is doing what the hyrax loves to do the best - sun bathe!  Although they may look like an over-sized guinea pig, their closest living relative is in fact the elephant.  Sounds bizarre, perhaps - but there's nothing quite as strange as real life!

Image Credit
Image Credit No1

13 June 2021

Namaqualand – South Africa’s Daisy Sensation

Namaqualand is dry for most of the year, an arid almost desert landscape which extends along South Africa’s western coast for 600 miles. Yet when the rains are good, something like a miracle happens.  Water, the driving force of all nature, soaks in to the parched earth.  An uncountable host of flowers materialize as if from nowhere, creating an extraordinary eruption of color, transforming the countryside and dazzling the eye.

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26 May 2018

The Bat-Eared Fox – Did You Ever See a Fox Fly?

Around 800,000 years ago a species developed on the African Savannah, a canid but quite unlike any other. It was small – with a head and body length of only around 55 cm, tawny furred and with black ears. It is the ears which really make this mostly nocturnal animal stand out.  On average the ears of the bat-eared fox are a staggering 14 centimeters in length.  Proportionally they may not be as large as Dumbo’s but this is no fictional appendage. These ears are for real. Our sibling site, the Ark in Space has the full story.

 Image Credit Rene Mayorga

11 May 2018

Ganvié - Lake City of Africa

This is not a picture of a flood. This is Ganvié, in the Republic of Benin, the largest collection of lake dwellings in Africa. 20,000 people call Ganvié’s stilt supported dwellings home.  The city, in the middle of lake Nokoué, is not a recent construct however. 

Ganvié is up to five hundred years old. Sometimes called the Venice of Africa, like the Italian city its first inhabitants set up home there out of sheer necessity.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the country was called Dahomey and was one of the most powerful states in West Africa. The major ethnic and linguistic group was the Fon and they had made a deal with the Portuguese. Rather than their own people being captured and sold in to slavery they made a contract with the Portuguese to hunt and sell tribes people from smaller ethnic groups.
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1 October 2017

Africa’s Unique Volcano: Ol Doinyo Lengai

For countless generations, the Maasai people of Tanzania have called the active volcano which dominates their landscape Ol Doinyo Lengai. The name translates as the Mountain of God.  Yet on the day Eng’ai, one of the gods of the Maasai, created this volcano she must have been in an unusual state of mind. Where most volcanoes spew lava which is rich in silicate materials, Ol Doinyo Lengai is different: very different.

Among all the active volcanoes in the world, Ol Doinyo Lengai is unique.  Its yield of lava is natrocarbonatite in nature. In other words, its mineralogical composition consists of greater than 50 percent carbonate minerals.  A carbonatite is a type of igneous rock more often enveloped in other formations and does not usually make it to the surface on its own.  It is often mistaken for marble. Although there are other examples of natrocarbonatite volcanoes in the world, all but Ol Doinyo Lengai are extinct.  If you want to see a truly different volcano, this is the one to put on the bucket list.
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26 November 2016

A Drone through Africa


This short film was three years in the making and was created by Cape Town based Cinematographer and Photographer Naudewashere.  It is, simply put, visually stunning and an absolute joy to watch.

If like me you are forced to do most of your traveling from the comfort of your armchair then this is an opportunity to experience Africa in a new way.

16 November 2014

Gondar: The Camelot of Africa

When pre-twentieth century Africa is studied in schools it is the slave trade, its awful consequences and the later colonial Scramble for Africa of the nineteenth century which tend to attract the focus of both teachers and students.

Often overlooked is the only country which successfully resisted European incursion and retained its own sovereignty: perhaps its late twentieth century tragedies of famine and attendant local and civil wars do little to persuade the casual historian to look further in to its past.

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15 September 2012

The Monument to African Renaissance – Magnificent Symbol or Colossal Folly?

At one hundred and fifty meters in height the Monument to African Renaissance dominates the skyline of the Senegalese capital of Dakar. Its scale is quite breath-taking: new monuments of this size are rare and this is the largest statue in Africa.  

Yet although it was billed as a celebration of the continent’s renaissance it has become something of a scandal in the economically distressed African republic. Unveiled in 2010, it may be a couple of lifetimes before this symbol of a desired renaissance is rehabilitated.
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28 August 2011

The Meerkat - Sun Angel of Africa

Over at the Ark in Space there is an interesting photo essay packed full of interesting facts about the meerkat. This uber cute African mammal goes under a number of names, the best of which by a mile is the sun angel.  Some African tribes believe that the meerkat will look after them and their animals if they get lost, hence the name. For more facts and a great selection of photographs which really do get 10 out of 10 on the aaaw scale, head over to the Ark in Space.

18 June 2011

The Sand Cat – Desert Cat Extraordinaire

Don’t be fooled by the off the scale cuteness quotient. This is the Sand Cat – of Felis margarita, a little known species of desert cat. In the wild it lives in areas that are too hot and dry for any other cat- the deserts of Africa and Asia, including the Sahara. This cat is one tough cookie and the Ark in Space has the low down on this ferocious feline.

23 April 2011

The Bat-Eared Fox – Did You Ever See a Fox Fly?

For nature lovers our sibling site the Ark in Space is today featuring the Bat-Eared Fox. Around 800,000 years ago a species developed on the African Savannah, a canid but quite unlike any other. It was small – with a head and body length of only around 55 cm, tawny furred and with black ears. It is the ears which really make this mostly nocturnal animal stand out. On average they are a staggering 14 centimeters in length.

This species has quite a special story and a diet you might not expect. To read more, please click on the picture or here.

13 March 2011

Suspended Animation


This is an incredibly and powerfully moving social documentary come drama. A young woman sits down and writes a desperate letter to a friend. What follows is a remarkable talking head style spoken essay on the nature and power of racism, both institutionalized by the media and channeled through the individual in its thrall.

Beautifully composed, produced, directed, and edited by Ada Elechi and shot by Megan Blackburn, this short film has the power to move simply by its grace, eloquence and understated production. There is no anger in this, or indeed judgment but it speaks volumes about the pressures under which minorities live. I was utterly taken aback by the power of this film and the beautiful way in which it was written and presented.

Alechi was born in Nigeria and lived there and in the Netherlands until she studied in the US, at Belmont University in Nashville where she graduated with a BA in Journalism. Since then she has worked for Guernica Magazine and as a publicist for the NY Writers Coalition. With a passion for documenting African stories and histories that would otherwise go unnoticed, Elechi is someone to watch out for if Suspended Animation is anything to go by.

28 August 2010

In the Land of the Dogon

In the Mopti region of Mali a group of people, numbering less than a million, retain a unique cultural and architectural heritage which they have enjoyed for hundreds of years.

To outsiders their way of life, and certainly their buildings seem odd, bordering perhaps on the bizarre.  Yet for the Dogon, isolated on their plateau, society and architecture evolved in a unique manner.

The oldest Dogon structures are to be found on the faces of cliffs and are obvioulsy defensive by design.  The Dogon were a people in fear - for good reason.  Their settlements would often be raided, and so tradition has it the men murdered and the women and children taken away for a life of slavery.

A thousand years ago the Dogon people were faced with a choice – the forceful conversion to Islam or escape to the isolated area around the Bandiagara Escarpment.  Here, around steep sandstone cliffs the villages could be more easily defended.  Plus the Niger River runs through the area, given another natural line of defense.  No surprise then that the Dogon chose flight.

It would take many hundreds of years for Dogon society to gain sufficient confidence to come down from its precipitous setting.

According to their oral traditions, the settlements started along the far southwest of the escarpment and over the centuries the Dogon people slowly extended their range north along it.  It is more likely that the Dogon society evolved as the result of several waves of people fleeing the threat of Islamization.

The cliff walls remain resplendent with art which is hundreds of years old and details the rituals of the Dogon. The occupation of Mali  by the French brought peace to the region and the Dogon were further able to expand their range.  Many of the older cliff villages were abandoned as the threats receded and child village sprang up at the base of many cliffs where there is more space.  The land is fertile and the Dogon were able develop agriculture fully.

The more the land was used then the more granaries were needed to store the seed.  A typical Dogon village is dotted with granaries, all made from mud.  This is not as primitive as it sounds – stone is simply at a premium in the region and so, necessity being the mother of invention, the Dogon developed a style of mud architecture wholly their own.

The buildings in a Dogon village all have a particular significance. The pointed roof granaries are known as male granaries.  This is where the millet and other grain is stored.  The more pointed roof you see in a Dogon village, the greater its prosperity.  Similar buildings without points are female granaries.  This is where the women store their own belongings – she is economically independent from her husband in Dogon society.



The toguna is a building only for men.  When the heat of the day is too much for any work to be done the men gather in the toguna to make decisions.  The building is deliberately designed so that its roof is low, meaning that none of the men can stand upright within its confines.  The reason for this is simple – when debates become heated, it decreases the incidence of violence because it restricts movement.

The ginna is the house of the senior male of the village, more often descended from the village founder.  He leads the extended family of the village, the ginna banga and often when a village becomes large enough for it to be split in to quarters then each quarter will have its own ginna.



The ginna lives on the first floor with his own granary on the floor above – the roof area will hold the alter of the Wagem – the ancestors.  Wagem is in fact the name of the one of the animist cults to which many Dogon adhere.

The village has a spiritual leader – the Hogon.  Elections take place between the oldest men and when a Hogon is chosen then the villagers are forbidden to touch him and he must live on his own without washing and shaving for an extended period of initiation. During this time his needs are met by a virgin who has yet to enter puberty who will make his meals and clean the house.  If your eyebrows are raised here, she is also not allowed to touch him and returns to her parents home each evening.


Once the initiation is over the Hogon adopts a red cap and wears an armband inlaid with a pearl – the symbol of his role.  His own wife (or one of them, the Dogon do occasionally practice polygamy) can then return to him but she must also leave once night comes to the village.  This is as the Dogon believe that while the Hogon sleeps he is visited by a sacred snake who gives him wisdom and washes him as he sleeps.

When it comes to the practice of polygamy the vast majority of men have just one wife.  The women only join their husband’s household once their first child is delivered and they are at liberty to leave their husbands if a child is not forthcoming.  Once the family has the addition of a child divorce is virtually unknown in Dogon society.  If a divorce is required by either partner then it will involve the whole extended family of the ginna.  As this can number in the hundreds, it is perhaps one of the reasons why divorce is such a rarity.



Although the Dogon originally came to the Mopti region to escape Islam, the religion has crept in to society (as has Christianity).  Many villages now have their own mud built mosque, which add to the architectural significance of these settlements.

The different religions sit side by side with each other and there is little friction between them – harmony is one of the most important aspects of Dogon society and is reflected in their daily rituals.  Their greeting ritual can serve here as an example.  A Dogon asks a visitor how the family is, asking question after question.  Once this is done then the whole ritual is repeated.  The answer usually given is sewa.  This means that things are good.   Other ethnic groups in Mali often refer to the Dogon as the sewa people for this reason.

Despite all the amazing sights to be seen at ground level, the one thing that stays with the visitor and to which the eye keeps returning, are the amazing cliff top housing from which the Dogon in bleaker days defended themselves from their enemies.




Mali Map Image Credit