Jorge Fazenda was a long way from home last month as he helped construct and maintain trails in the San Juan National Forest. As roads and trails technician for Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, Africa, Fazenda came to the Columbine Ranger District as part of a mutual exchange program.
“This visit is one of several opportunities we are arranging for our key Mozambican staffers who show a potential to advance within the organization,” said James Glasgow, director of operations at Gorongosa National Park. “The goal is to expose them to other cultures and working practices.”
Gorongosa National Park, at the southern end of the Great African Rift Valley, is managed under a 20-year public-private partnership between the government of Mozambique and the Gorongosa Restoration Project, a U.S. nonprofit organization.
Last year, Don Kelly, trails foreman for the San Juan National Forest Columbine District, went to Africa under the Department of Interior International Technical Assistance Program to share U.S. Forest Service trail expertise with Gorongosa’s staff.
“They have problems like illegal logging, poaching, people trying to live in their national park,” Kelly said. “The first week we were there, we had no tools because the tool shipment from South Africa was held up at the border.”
Kelly, like many others, was impressed with Gorongosa’s natural bounty, which ranges from mountain rain forests and waterfalls to open savannah, palm and fever tree forests, miombo woodlands and seasonal rivers populated by lions, elephants, crocodiles, hippos, many types of antelope and more. The park’s wildlife diversity also draws birders from around the world. Most visitors come from Europe, South Africa, Mozambique and the U.S.
Tourists access the national park by road rather than by foot, as the large predators of the Rift Valley make it unsafe to get out of vehicles; however, there are no large predators in the higher elevations of Mount Gorongosa, where there are plans to construct a sustainable trail system.
Fazenda has worked at Gorongosa National Park since 2007, staying in a park dormitory during the week and commuting four hours each way on weekends to spend time with his family in Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique.
One of his jobs is to keep the park’s backcountry roads open for photography safaris. His major challenges are the wet season and elephants.
“Elephants are hard on roads,” Fazenda said. “They take down trees during their feeding and often block our roads. We use machetes to cut up the fallen trees and to clear the roads.”
Fazenda was thrilled to fly across the globe to reunite with Kelly and work on several San Juan National Forest trail projects, including construction of a causeway over a muddy section of trail near Haviland Lake.
“The biggest difference for me working in your forest is how open it is, with the trees spaced so far apart,” Fazenda said. “Where I work, after our wet season, the grass is so high and the trees so close together, you can’t walk through without a machete.”
In addition to his native tongue of Sena, Fazenda speaks French, Spanish, English and Portuguese, the national language of Mozambique. That gave him an advantage Kelly didn’t have when the tables were turned.
“Working through an interpreter in Africa was very challenging for me because I don’t speak Portuguese,” Kelly said. “And when they spoke their native dialects, I was completely lost.”
Fazenda’s visit to Kelly’s home unit made the international technology transfer complete. Working on the San Juan gave Fazenda on-the-ground experience with using switchbacks and rolling grade dips for erosion control, shooting grades and counting paces, contouring trails around the fall line, and building retaining walls and stone staircases.
Fazenda will take those lessons back home to help tourists explore his national park. He believes building a sustainable tourism industry will improve the health and security of Gorongosa, as well as the local people who live near the park.
“Now we send our scientists to outside schools for education and our staff to other countries to learn skills, but the goal is to have people like me come back and teach our own people,” Fazenda said. “Many people don’t have jobs, so they go hunting in the park or clear the forest for agriculture. If we can educate them to conserve and protect nature, it will benefit tourists and Mozambique. We must protect our park as we protect our life.”
The two friends agreed their visits to each other’s countries were eye opening in many ways.
“I learned so much; they are such a motivated and caring people, who have so little but a lot to give,” Kelly said. “The people we met were living in mud huts with no electricity, but they brought us avocados, limes, bananas and oranges as gifts.”
“One of the things that struck me is the amount of technology in the American ‘water closet,’” Fazenda said. “I was in a restaurant restroom looking for paper to dry my hands, and I could see the paper in the box on the wall but couldn’t figure out how to remove it until I waved my hands in front of it. I’m also amazed at all the different knobs you need in your showers.”
But perhaps his most vivid memory of Southwest Colorado will be a Wild West one.
“I had never even seen a horse until I came here,” Fazenda said. “Anne Rapp took me for a horseback ride, and it was very nice for me. I don’t know how to ever say enough thanks to my friend, Don.”
“Go back and be a good leader,” said Kelly.
Ann Bond is the public affairs specialist for the San Juan National Forest.
On the Net
Gorongosa National Park: www.gorongosa.org
San Juan National Forest: www.fs.usda.gov/sanjuan
