May 14 - June4. A 21 day active learning experience located at two world heritage sites in rural Zimbabwe. The course follows the ecological and social challenges of balancing rural lands for wildlife, plantation agriculture and subsistence herding and farming on Zimbabwes communal areas.
We visit ancient rock art paintings by hunter gatherer bushman and ruined brickwork cities by the settled Bantu societies and kingdoms that replaced them. There are visits to (or visits at camp from) safari guides, hunting guides, adaptive management bush scientists working in communal areas, a small gold mine operator and a unique woven furniture export business owner using ground vines cultivated by subsistence producers in communal areas. Students live for 10 days at private wildlife refuges; 2 days at a large integrated plantation export operation; and 1 day with a family in the communal areas. A service learning day will be spent at a national park working on fence project to protect endangered rhinos with local African counter-parts. Evening lectures and short readings delivered before arriving take place at an overlook camp site in the Motobo Hills and in Hwange National Park that cover activities the same day. There are also interpretive wildlife tours by our hosts at each camp site. Ecological and Development issues concern millennial trends in deforestation, the rise of row crop agriculture and associated population increases, problems of land tenure and property rights, peasant economies, eco-tourism (benefits and controversies), post-colonial legacies, and challenges of nation building in African societies during the rise of democratization across the continent. The course begins in Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa with a visit to the globally renowned Story of Man Museum before proceeding to Zimbabwe. The program ends with a group farewell at Victoria Falls for two days before returning to Johannesburg and flights home.