Hope?

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 has teething problems”. It’s easy for him to say that because he’s not even allowed in the country so he can’t be bothered how it’s dealt with as long as I make a plan. Thanks for the support boss! Luckily I had two volunteers left who were great, especially the one who basically adopted me as her second daughter. After Martin came to try sort things out and talk to Christiaan, she decided to stay on for another 3 weeks instead of going to a vet program in South Africa.
The day Christiaan came out to show me how to do plant transects (best ever), we drove to one of the last remaining pans to put up camera traps. First we spotted a lot of vultures on trees in an area, found a kudu carcass deep in the bush and then to top it off we spotted the 4 lions responsible for the kill at that very pan. What luck. They weren’t even too skittish so we could get a few good photos of two of them.

After we arrived back from camp, Martin, Christiaan and I sat down to discuss the situation of the program. Because although things were fine now, the same situation was going to happen with all the upcoming groups and that was not going to be good for anyone. It was decided that Christiaan was going to ask a few of the concession holders he knows if we could do elephant counts on their concessions instead, as well as do a 8 day camp trip with his researchers along the Namibian border, doing spoor and herbivore transects.

Then I also hear the next day that my GM decided that I needed help and brought his friend in to help with the next group. Now this would have been fine if his friend had research background, but of course that would have been too easy. So why is he coming along you ask? Well apparently he is great to have along, he has done a lot of transects, and will be able to help me with things around the camp. Because I need that how exactly?! I’ve been managing fine without anyone helping me with the volunteers – I just need help with the boss back in SA! In any case, let’s see how it goes I guess. 
Between all the drama I at least got to see this beauty

He was originally dosing under a tree but suddenly jumped up in search of his brother who he found a few hundred meters away
 
Elephant waterhole count prettiness

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