Kodak Moment

World, meet the "Kodak Vest Pocket Autographic Camera"  Produced by Eastman Kodak from 1912-1926, it features a Kodak Anastigmat f 7.7 lens. This model was made Jan 1913 and so is 99 years old. It came all the way to me in Zambia from an antique shop in Michigan.  Can I embarrass the Winters with a very huge and public THANK YOU?!!  Thanks, guys.  Clearly, I'm smitten. 

 This camera has 4 shutter speeds:  1/25, B, T, and 1/50; and 5 f-stops: Moving objects f/7.7, near view & portrait f/11, average view f/16, distant view f/22, and Marine, Clouds and Snow f/32.

 Charles Linberg carried this camera with him on his flights, as did George Mallory and Andrew Irving on what may be the first summiting of Mt. Everest -- 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing's documented climb.  Many of their personal effects were recovered but Irving's body and the expedition's KVP camera was not.  If it is recovered - there are efforts underway to fund a controversial climb to recover Irving's body -  his camera may be the evidence needed to prove if Mallory and Irving were first to summit.

Compact and portable, advertised as the "soldier's camera" during WWI, it's utility has outlasted our point-and-shoot nikon by nearly 100 years.

Now, to find some film. 

(It takes Efke R100 127 from Fotoimpex...just in case you are out and about in Berlin)

Elephant Quarantine

We took a little trip yesterday to go and see 3 baby elephants.  The three are in quarantine at a lodge just outside of town until they are fit enough to be transferred to an elephant orphanage in Kafue NP, part of the David Shephard Wildlife Foundation Elephant Orphanage Project in Zambia who work in tandem with Game Rangers International and ZAWA, the Zambian governmentWildlife Authority

7 month old Musolole and his keeper

Kavalamanja (1 year 7 months, rescued from the banks of the Zambezi River in September) and Maramba (1 year 5 months, rescued from outside Livingstone) get their bottles....the 2 litres of milk went down in about 2 minutes! Both were found by their mothers, killed by poachers for their tusks.

O gets to hold a baby bushbaby (also called galagos), a small, nocturnal "early" primate.  He, Gizmo, is so unbelievably cute and his fur so soft he hardly even seemed to be real.

Clearly.... he is a primate!  Here, Gizmo is clutching his surrogate momma, a stuffed teddy bear. 

Musolole (7 months old, orphaned at Siome Ngwesi at the Namibian border) is recovering well from injuries and is slowly but surely putting on weight.

Kavalamanja, making a go at opening the gate.  The babies have the stables as 'home base' and have a large area of the miombo woodlands set aside at Lilayi to explore.