With this almost permanently grey skied, very wet new year, and water never far from mind, it’s time to take up the gauntlet and face familiar challenges, the first, being the continuing wetland crisis.
Column by Rosie Mitchell
I was rather taken with a recent headline in another Sunday paper, Wetlands swallow up Chitungwiza houses, sent on to me with the email subject line “The wetlands fight back” — an equally appropriate header.
While not dismissing the plight of the residents concerned without compassion, it has to be said that this occurrence was perhaps timely, drawing attention as it does both to the unsuitability of our precious, life-giving vleis, which free of charge store and filter our drinking water, for building, and to the fact that the relevant stands were “irregularly acquired”.
Structures collapsed, houses may very well soon follow suit. Several toilets collapsed too — again, highlighting the foolhardiness of construction in the wetlands, for this is an all too common occurrence and is one of the ways our ground water is becoming contaminated with sewage.
Thankfully, due to much higher media attention last year, the fate of our city wetlands is now becoming an issue of greater concern for far more residents and relevant organisations. on Tuesday I’ll be attending an all-day event on the wetlands crisis and issues around it, run by the Humanitarian Information Facilitation Centre, which also organised a media tour of wetlands under onslaught late last year.
So, this good fight continues in earnest in 2013. Please join it, making your objections to illegal agriculture, dumping and construction in your nearest vlei felt by Environmental Management Agency and the council, in writing and in person!
Another familiar challenge that resumes is the Two Oceans Half Marathon and 22km Trail Run in Cape Town at Easter.
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An unexpectedly high number of runners turned out for the Harare Athletics Club’s first event of the season, a 15,5km run with 8 and 10km add-ons through the hills of Helensvale, with two explanations. first; post-festive season resolutions to take control of one’s health, lose weight and get fitter, and second; the countdown to Two Oceans — an annual event of over four decades comprising a 56km ultra marathon, more recently, the Half and most recently, the Trail Runs.
HAC itself also has a very long history, founded as it was back in 1949 and with the phenomenal growth in running globally as a recreational pursuit of great benefit to health and happiness, membership is on the rise. We have finally got around to joining, too! Ten thousand places in the Two Oceans Half Marathon for those who’d run it before, opened back in November, and sold out in just four and a half days.
The remaining 6 000 entries opened to novices on Tuesday and sold out in a phenomenal two and three-quarter hours! It seems this premiere race in the “Mother City”, which draws runners from all over the world, may be heading towards going the route of the London Marathon, where entry is by ballot and unless you are lucky enough to get drawn, you must join a registered charity team and raise a significant amount of money to be able to run.
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Squeezing in the necessary training has become particularly challenging in these weather conditions and we are resorting to many sodden runs in the rain to keep it going!
Sponsor, Old Mutual, has a website called Do Great Things, where you can access detailed training programmes tailored to each Two Oceans race and your goal time, and friendly virtual coach, the ultra-runner Norrie Williamson, who, we have discovered, replies on the forum to requests for advice at lightning speed, and who is likely to be in Zimbabwe next month. This facility is well worth drawing on, so follow the link on the Two Oceans website and sign up.
It’s a good time of the year for snake spotting.
Out training in the rain, I was delighted to add a new, rarely seen species to my list; the Common Purple Glossed Snake, a very shiny, unaggressive burrowing snake, which though venomous, is not considered dangerous.
In appearance, it is quite easy to mistake the much more aggressive, also venomous Stiletto Snake (or Burrowing Asp) for this one — though I quickly drew the conclusion it was not one of these, from its length (it can grow much longer, and this was just over a metre) and its passive behaviour!
Having once met a more diminutive Stiletto Snake in the vlei, and been entirely startled by its aggression, behaving not at all as I expect and experience from snakes, by swift withdrawal, but rather, by aggressively moving towards me, its identification is well-etched in my mind!
