Wild at Heart

We saw wild dogs during one of our field days!:) It was great until all the game viewer vehicles with tourists arrived - the guides had absolutely no respect for the dogs, instead of stopping at one spot and allowing the dogs to move naturally to wherever they were missioning too, they followed them up and down as close as possible to allow the tourists to see as much as possible. And one of the adult males was limping which isn't good, hopefully the injury isn't too bad. Then on our way out yesterday, a herd was on either side of the road, with an adult female browsing on one of the trees next to the road - instead of driving by slowly, an idiot driver decides to park right next to the cow and rev the car! WTF. No common sense has followed me from Botswana. This continued for about 10 minutes, during which a traffic jam was created because of this idiot. During his revving stunt, he chased away a few younger elephants close to the road, preventing us fro...

Matambu - one of our collared elephants. It's amazing watching him use his other senses to navigate around - he's blind but has the most gentle personality Wish I could help keep them safe  It felt like he was looking write into my heart So much has happened in the last month! I resigned - after getting an offer closer to home with (hopefully) less drama where I can actually gain experience in the field, I decided it's now or never. I didn't want to wait till things finally settled down and things became more organised - there were just too many variables working against it and the project was definitely no ones priority except mine. So here I am, back in good ol' South Africa, doing field work for a post-doc elephant researcher. It's just lovely, I get to go to the field every second day to record rumbles of collared elephant bulls while also taking ID photos of all the individuals we see. It's very different to Botswana - of course not...

So as usual I haven’t been updating my blog for a while now and A LOT has happened since. After all the drama unfolded I started having doubts about staying on…I finally heard back from my boss who asked for a breakdown of what I did with the previous group – good of him to only ask now, in any case I told him and he sent his feedback with a couple of suggestions. Which was great and all except for the fact that not all his suggestions tied into what was advertised for the program. He really didn’t seem to understand that the people came to study animals not come to a place where no water was being pumped therefore no animals were around. And then he has the nerve to tell me that I should see the vehicle situation as a challenge! Uhm excuse me, but people didn’t pay thousands of rands to hear that sorry, the business didn’t properly account for vehicles so let’s all hold hands and be merry”. How about he comes out, look 7 adults in the face and try explain that “every new business...

     Drama drama drama. Of course, I mean we’re in Botswana right?! With Mankwe burning down – things had to be shifted around a lot, and of course that included my group. We were first based at Mankwe – slightly awkward for me since I didn’t know the area, and it added so much driving time to our already long transects. We were originally only to stay for about a week until the new tents arrived from South Africa which were to act as temporary dining and lounge areas at Mankwe. The week flew by (because 20km long transects are just so much fun) and we were finally able to move back “home”. Here naïve me thinks we are back at Tuskers for good, only to come back from the island to hear that our bags were packed by the staff and moved back to Mankwe because guests arrived that night at Tuskers. So. Much. Joy. First I have to deal with a French lady getting all hyper with me, I ask her to please wait for me to finish my sentence and find out what’s happening because as ...

So much has happened since I last wrote -  (August) - My first group arrived and although it wasn't perfect (too many TIA *This Is Africa* moments) I met some amazing people,  had a few great sightings, got kind of lost in Moremi, got to see a lot of ellies in Khwai, ate too much bread, still hate town day, got amazing earrings from one of the volunteers – they’re ellies and I love them!, had a great night of drinking too much wine, oh and Mankwe’s dining hall, bar and lounge burnt down so all the guests were moved to Tuskers.  Worst 9 days of my life. Started off with very unhappy, rude guests and staff testing me at every turn.  I was running around like a headless chicken trying to get everything ready before the guests arrived. Imagine me all red in the face. It’s not pretty…anyways fast forward 9 days and the manager from Mankwe finally arrives so that he can take over and I can finally concentrate on my projects! Met Christiaan to talk about well, EVERYTHI...

22 June 2016 Just another day filled with too much staff drama – this time it’s the arrogant new guide who considers himself part of “senior management”. Management my ass. The only he manages to do is to raise my blood pressure. Since he claims to have so much experience with running a lodge, I can’t imagine why he’s still a guide. What a chop. A chop who still lacks common sense. For example (I’m going to have a quick rant in case you’d like to skip this part), one would think that it’s pretty obvious to write down which drinks he takes for the guests on game drives or which apparent “complimentary drinks” he helps himself to – but no, no one told him to do it, and he feels that he should not have to ask how things are done. Now I’m like – ok so if you don’t know how to do something, you won’t ask?! Told him unfortunately life works that way, if you don’t know something you ASK! Otherwise you’re going to have to suffer the consequences for doing something incorrectly. I cou...

18 June 2016 The guide was supposed to be back yesterday after dropping off the journalists as well as our GM in Maun, but he hasn’t arrived back yet. And just my luck that my airtime is done again! Prepaid phones are going to be the end of me. I’ve already practised the lecture I’m going to be giving him about using company cars on his free will without even letting me know or asking permission. Even if the GM gave him permission, I’d appreciate it if he would let me know as well since it’s the camps vehicle. The good ol mechanic finally arrived yesterday to install the pump for the camps waterhole. But of course it can never be as easy as that – first the borehole was covered with a layer of mud – who would have guessed after it not being used for 2 years that mud be accumulate. When he finally broke through the mud, it appeared that there was no water. Goodness. I don’t think he actually knows what he’s doing. Marinus said he’ll come look when he comes next week. It’s a ne...

17 June 2016 During the night, we were lucky enough to hear hyena, lions, an ellie close to my tent as well as the leopard rasping somewhere close by. During my morning stroll to the kitchen to put on the kettle, I found leopard tracks throughout the camp and another set from a different direction. The boy was definitely inquisitive and we assume the other one is from the female who gave birth to her cubs in the camp a few years ago. It still feels surreal that I saw a leopard yesterday. I can’t wait to experience my next unexpected sighting. A lion would be nice. We keep hearing them and seeing their tracks but no sighting yet. Doesn’t help that I don’t have a vehicle hear to follow the sound in the mornings. Nothing exciting happened at camp, except us having to scrape off old paint from the verandas so that we could repaint it as soon as I get the new paint I bought darkened. See that’s why I don’t like buying building supplies with company money – the sample shows it to b...

16 June 2016 After sending our GM, guide and two journalists off to Xobega island for two days, I resorted so reading about animal behaviour and identifying the birds at the waterhole. Definitely going to do it tomorrow as well. It’s just so peaceful with no one around and I get to do what I want for a change. No small talk!! And I took an afternoon nap – wasn’t the best since it was stinken hot, but it was still good not having to think about anyone else. Even baked cinnamon rolls yesterday – BAD IDEA!! What happened to carb free days?! Even had freshly baked bread rolls when the guests were here…I can’t say no to that. And I didn’t eat last night’s roll. Does that count? Guess I made up for it by chowing all those cinnamon rolls today…I could actually have another now that I’m thinking about them. Going to give them to the staff tomorrow so that I can’t be tempted anymore. But the best part of today – casually sitting at the waterhole sipping my coffee when I see a male leo...

14 June 2016 Another town day, but this time I was picking people up and saying goodbye to Lou. We left early enough from camp so that I was able to get to Beef Boys as well as allowing Lou to shop for curious and buy her a decent cup of coffee while we waited. We later found out that the lady who sold us the goods well and truly ripped us off. Another pet-peeve – when people take advantage of tourists and increase the price with 100%. Never taking anyone to that shop again. I stayed with Lou at the airport to make sure there weren’t any problems while our guide took the agents (who were actually journalists sent by our marketing team) to a restaurant to have lunch while we waited for our GM to arrive from Kasane. Luckily I did stay! Because the people who were supposed to buy her a ticket had a problem with paying in Pula’s but never thought to let anyone know – so her ticket was booked but not paid for. Common sense again! so after waiting for about 45min for them to fix the pro...

13 June 2016 Dreaded town day – not only did I have to buy groceries, but I also had to look for a replacement chef since ours decided to take unpaid leave without permission. Lovely. The replacement chef who the camp usually uses was able to help out, but she was only able to come to town after 4 since she was on a cattle post outside town. A cattle post is where the family lives if they have cattle, it’s outside of town in the middle of nowhere with the most inaccessible roads. At least it gave me time to do things in town without having to run around like a headless chicken like I normally do. But guess what – when 4 o clock came, she couldn’t get a ride from her cattle post to town = basically stayed in town for nothing. So picture me panicking about what to do – the office lady from the other lodge, hands me a CV to check out, I have to psych myself up in order to phone her but I have no idea what to look for in a CV. After phoning her and kind of rambling on, I tell her...

10 June 2016 To say that today was interesting would be an understatement – but the highlight was definitely seeing my ellies again. They’ve moved more east of the camp since there are still a few natural waterholes with a little bit of water left compared to the dried up ones close to camp. Even though we’re pumping the overflow of the camps water into the pan in front of camp, it’s extremely salty and doesn’t attract the herds it used too. Hopefully the mechanic comes sooner than later to put in a pump into one of the “fresher” boreholes so that we can pump the pan with more water. Since the new guide has to learn the roads, we’ve been driving around a lot. Again. Now I’m a pretty patient person but he drives slower than what a tortoise walks and he has absolutely no common sense. For example – we arrive at a part of the road which is basically blocked by thorn bushes on both sides – so what does he do? He switches the vehicle off, climbs out to investigate what to do next. B...

It's been a while since I've thought about writing down anything about my conservation adventures, which is terrible I know, and it's not that I haven't had stories to tell so I'm rather going to summarise everything that has happened until now instead of thinking of an excuse. 1. I was lucky enough to be able to see rhinos, elephants and lions almost every week while working with ACE on the Game Ranger Experience program offered in Hoedspruit. The guy I worked with was a special case of crazy, calling me Angel after only knowing each other for a few days, but he had a good heart and I learnt a lot from him. 2. I finally get to Botswana and then the fun starts....or more like first the frustration with working with human beings, their plain lack of common sense (you'll soon realise I rant a lot of this) but also their loving nature. (insert the start of my Botswana adventure) 9 June 2016 10:42pm After endlessly rolling around, trying to fall asleep, I...