DAMN, I locked in on this one.

Mark Owens, from Chapter 32 of One of Us

For almost 50 years, Brazilian-born New York–based artist Lydia Okumura (b. 1948), like her contemporaries Dorothea Rockburne and Robert Irwin, has explored the realm of geometric abstraction by challenging our perception of space in her sculptures, installations, and works on paper. In the 1970s, as a young artist in her native São Paulo, she was introduced to Conceptual art, Minimalism, Land Art, and Arte Povera through the Japanese art magazine Bijutsu Techou. These movements, along with Brazilian Concretism and Neoconcretism, influenced Okumura’s dynamic work in which she uses simple materials such as string, glass and paint to balance line, plane and shadow.

We're a thousand miles apart, but you know I love you

(Everything changes, but you)

You know every single day I'll be thinking about you

Book review - Cry of the Kalahari by Mark & Delia Owens

Many of you probably already know Delia Owens as the author of Where the Crawdads Sings. It’s a book that I liked a lot, so I decided to read this book as well. It’s a memoir of the 7 years she and her husband Mark spent completely isolated in an uninhabited area of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve called Deception Valley studying wildlife. I enjoyed this book as well and learned a lot about the animals there. However, when I looked up Mark and Delia Owens to learn more about them, I found out that after this book was published they were involved in a very problematic incident in Zambia, and are still wanted for questioning over a murder that occurred there. I’m going to describe the book first and then describe what happened later. 

The book has chapters supposedly written by Mark and supposedly written by Delia, but the tone of all are the same so it doesn’t really have 2 separate voices. It begins in 1974, when Mark and Delia first went to the Kalahari with very little of their own money and no one funding them. As the years passed by, they wrote letters to universities and zoological societies with their findings and secured grants that allowed them to buy radio tracking collars and a plane, but in the beginning all they had was a truck and their journey into the desert was quite dangerous. 

Despite the truck breaking down, wildfires, losing their water supply due to a hole in the storage container, and almost running out of fuel many times, they managed to persevere there. Their main animal of study was the brown hyena. Very little was known about them compared to the larger spotted hyenas of the Serengeti. Their behavior was very odd, as they were thought to be solitary, but constantly left scent marks that other hyenas would find. Eventually, Mark and Delia discovered that they were not truly solitary, but the reason why remained unclear for a long time. In their own words:

“..after several months, a sketchy picture of their social organization began to emerge. We were sure that the 7 hyenas in the area were not solitary animals but members of a clan. Through muzzle wrestling and neck-biting contests, each had gained a particular rank in the social hierarchy, which was displayed and reinforced in greeting. Ivy, the only adult female of the group, was dominant...

Usually, when 2 hyenas met on a path, they would confirm their status through greeting, then separate. Neck-biting followed only when the status was not established, or when a hyena tried to rise through the ranks...

Lions, wolves, and other social carnivores usually sleep, hunt, and feed with at least some members of their group. But though the browns lived in a clan, they usually foraged and slept alone, only meeting with other group members occasionally, while traveling along common pathways or a kill. They have a limited repertoire of vocal signals, and none with which to communicate with over large distances, as do the spotted hyenas. This may be because the dry Kalahari air does not carry sound far, or perhaps because the territories are too large to transmit and receive even loud calls effectively...

This lack of a loud voice might seem to present a problem for animals who roam separately in jointly owned territory... However, the hyena’s well-developed system of  chemical communication through scent marking - pasting, as it is termed, probably takes the place of loud vocalizations...

So, the brown hyenas were a curious blend of social and solitary: They foraged and slept alone; they fed together at large carcasses, but carried away the remains for themselves at the first opportunity; they did not use loud vocalizations to communicate with each other, but did leave chemical messages. And, at least for a while, the females allowed the youngsters to follow them when they searched for food...

Despite the fact that they always foraged alone, brown hyenas, we now knew, we social - and quite social at that. But animals associate for adaptive purpose, not because they enjoy being together. Lions, wild dogs, wild wolves, primitive men, and spotted hyenas hunting in a group are able to kill larger prey than can a single individual. Brown hyenas were scavengers, for the most part, and they rarely hunted. But since they did not hunt together, why did they live in a clan and share large kills left by lions? Why did they need each other? Why did they socialize at all? There was a single answer for all these questions, as we were to discover.”

Aside from hyenas, the authors also made important discoveries about Kalahari lions and how they are different from Serengeti lions. The Kalahari is a much harsher environment, and therefore there is more mixing of lions between prides, and in droughts the prides often disband completely so the individuals can spread out over larger territories. 

The level of detail the authors went into about all of the animas was amazing. The overall tone of the book was pretty calm. The authors focused almost exclusively on the animals, and I found the book to be a pretty relaxing read. Which makes what I found out about the authors more surprising.

‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘

So after this book was published, the 2 of them got kicked out of Botswana for criticizing the government too heavily. There was really no indication of this until the last chapters, when Mark and Delia explained the issue of the thousands of miles of  fencing meant to curb foot and mouth disease causing the deaths of thousands of antelope when they had to migrate to water during a 2 year drought. They said that the government was in general good about conservation given the abundance of wildlife reserves in the country, but they had to take this issue more seriously, and it would likely upset the cattle ranchers and ultimately not much would be done. They said that people warned them that they might get kicked out if they pressed the issue too hard, but it didn't sound like they believed it. But anyway, it did happen, and for their next research project they went to Zambia and studied elephants.

While there, Mark became heavily involved in anti-poaching campaigns. Delia apparently separated from him during that time due to his excessive risk taking. But ultimately they got back together, and published the book The Eye of the Elephant, which was another success. While they were in Zambia, ABC also did a news segment on them called “Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story.” During that documentary, a poacher was shot and killed, and they aired this. The cameraman who shot the murder claims it Chris Owens, the son of Mark Owens and Delia’s stepson (who was never mentioned at all in the first book - sounds like Mark abandoned him those 7 years), who delivered the fatal shot. Several people have also accused Mark Owens of later dumping the body into a lake off an aircraft. It was never found.