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...