THE ZANZIBAR RED COLOBUS...

I’ve been extremely blessed to be staying at a friend of mines fantastic guesthouse whilst in Johannesburg aka Jozi and they also found me a pretty damn fine wall to paint.

It was a late start on the wall, after an afternoon of running around fabric shops in the city collecting some new fabric snapshots. By around 2pm I started laying down the foundations of the painting.

A Zanzibar red colobus, (procolobus kirkii) have been registered as endangered for 26 years, since 1986. They are rapidly declining in numbers and it’s not the only colobus suffering from the same sad plight. This species is endemic to Zanzibar Island where it occurs at elevations of 0-110 m. They may once have lived on the mainland, but are completely extirpated there now. Red Zanzibars are now found mainly in the South Eastern part of the island in Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park. In 1974 approximately 14 animals were introduced to Ngezi Forest Reserve, Pemba Island, where the species is believed to persist in small numbers but has never managed to sustain itself successfully to rebuild numbers.

Today’s population is estimated at 2,000 individuals but is decreasing rapidly mainly due to deforestation but occasionally as a result of hunting, sport and supposed pest control.

By the time it got dark, I was only half finished the wall so returned the following day to continue and decided that I wanted to introduce a second endangered guy to the wall; an Amatola Malachite or Basking Malachite. These insects are also decreasing rather rapidly, with no more than 1000 adults left. Unfortunately when the farmed cattle arrive at the river banks, they trample these little guys to death and they only live in a few sites, ten sites has recently decreased to two and the future of these beautiful insects is unknown.

lots of love to the elfin for continuously fixing my scrawls and making them legible...
im off to safari today so the next blog is all about what i find...iv been waiting to go on safari since i was about seven years old...bittttttt excited....

one love

AN EGYPTIAN VULTURE IN... HILLBROW JOHANNESBURG

So thanks to Disney and other screen presentations, we as the general public have a strange relationship with the vulture.  My first encounters with them were in South America and I was fascinated by watching them circling above in mass, tornado like cones. That was over 12 years ago now and unfortunately all species of vulture have experienced a rapid decline in numbers, 35% each year in fact, since 1999.

Africa is home to three very endangered vultures, one of which is the Egyptian. They cover a greater area than Egypt, finding homes in India, Eastern and Central Africa and also Europe.  There are a few reasons for their decline; the absorption of veterinary antibiotics which suppresses their immune system, declining habitat, urbanisation, a shortage of carrion, which they feed on and a whole host of other problems which they are fighting a losing battle against. The latter has a major knock on effect in the ecosystem, as if the carrion increases but the vulture population continues to decrease, then disease will inevitably become more widely spread. Vultures are imperative for cleaning up the lands death, which is not limited to animals, according to the religious practice of the Parsi people, their dead bodies cannot be buried or burnt because the corpses could pollute the Panchabhootam (earth, water, air, ether and fire). So their bodies are left in a high-rise ‘Tower of Silence’ to be consumed by the scavengers. Vultures were the first scavengers on Earth and are vital to a sustained ecological balance.

I painted this piece with a couple of graff writers from the Demolition Squad. Painting with writers is great because it changes the way that the composition of the piece works. The walls are always much longer and often not as high. We painted in an area, that like most graff or street art related areas in a city, are run down and full of lots of community involvement. This wall was no exception, we had only primed the wall when a lady with her yappy toy dog turned up demanding that we didn’t paint evil things. Over the next hour we heard this from another three or so people and we started to feel a lot of hate. This soon changed as the day progressed and the piece evolved, we eventually won the community over…

Much love to my new Jozi homies, hopefully I’ll get another piece done with these guys before I return to Capetown next week…

the guy taking the photograph above is a sick photographer... 

here is a link to his website...i urge you to take the webtrip over and have a look...hes also coming over to london in a couple months so im sure that we will be painting a few pieces together in london soon...

http://sheldonwins.tumblr.com