Interlude

Ok, part 3 will be along soon, I promise.  I also have to write up my last few days in Ghanzi and my trip to Moremi (thanks Andrea & Gavin!)  But right now I am once more sitting in the Jo'burg airport, killing time.  I'm getting a bit too good at this, I fear.  But this time I'm just off a 1.5 hour flight, with only like 10 hours to follow.  I'm much more cheerful.  I also have all of my Africa kitsch souvenirs so I'm pretty pleased.

I did learn the hard way that converting pula to pounds is pointless, so I ended up blowing the last of my pula on books which, really, is fine with me.

I haven't even left Africa and already I miss it.  Most of all, I miss the people.  I miss all of my CCB friends, Gavin, Andrea, Jane, Phale, Max, and DT who are some of the best people you'll ever meet and gave me the experience of a lifetime.  Thanks guys & gals!  I even miss the Afrikaans farmers that I got to know.  Because really, if I don't come back next summer (not terribly likely unless someone out there wants to pay my way?) I won't see any of you for a long time.

And I already miss my fellow volunteer Caoilfhionn.  It's amazing how close you can get to someone in a month.

BUT on the flip side, I can't wait to get to London and catch up with some family and find my lovely friend Marie.  It's the summer Jessica and Marie mob London and it will be fantastic.  I can already tell you I won't want to leave London.  But places I love, like Ghanzi and London and even Phoenix, I never want to leave.  I never mind leaving Davis because I've always known Davis was a temporary thing and I'll get my fill over four years.  It would probably take me at least a year to get my fill of Ghanzi and a couple years to get my fill of London, let alone England.

Anyway, just wanted to let y'all know I am alive and well and on my way to the shining lights of London town and that I owe all of my lovely readers at least two blog posts.  Because I have to tell you about the elephants!

A Blog in Three Parts: Gaborone

June 27, 2012

Gaborone or Gabs, as it’s affectionately known as, is Botswana’s capitol city.  It’s a good sized city.  It’s definitely a city, though.  Although the occasional herd of goats crosses the city streets and there are some ridiculous roundabouts, it’s still just a city.  Some cities have a flavor and are delightful.  Gabs is still in that up and coming stage and it’s pretty much like any up and coming small city.  But it does have all the recommendations of a city, including malls.  As Gavin and Andrea put it, “There’re three malls.  We have to move.”

Really, I’m selling it short.  It is a nice city, but for this country girl all cities are kind of the same.

Gabs is a full day by car away, about eight hours if you’re doing well.  You pass through the other sort of landmark cities of Kang and Jwaneng.  Kang is distinguished by its charming truck stop and Jwaneng by the thriving mine that feed it. 

What really made the trip special was staying at the other CCB camp in Mokolodi.  Mokolodi is an incredible game reserve just outside of Gabs.  It’s absolutely gorgeous.  It’s home to CCB, an education center of its own, and a restaurant with food that’s genuinely good.  (They had excellent calamari).

It’s also home to a pair of spotted hyenas that almost tame.  If you sit quietly and don’t look at them, they’ll come right up to the fence and sniff your fingers.  And since they’re captive hyena, they’re absolutely lovely.  They’re well-cared for and it shows.  I can’t wait to post their pictures.

Mokolodi also treated us to sights of the ubiquitous kudu and impala. But more fun from my perspective was seeing the go-away birds, zebra, and at last steenbok.  Steenbok are a favorite cheetah food.  Mokolodi also has monkeys.  Vervets and baboons, which I wasn’t expecting to see while I was here.  Yet there they were, every morning, jumping on tin roofs and swinging through trees.

Best of all though was the reptile exhibit, although it might have been surpassed by the orphan vervet monkey.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The reptile exhibit is home to spitting cobra, rock python, puff adder, a hawk, an owl, a crane, and three vultures.  But best of all, the most delightful snake lady.   She showed us all the birds, talked to us about the snakes, antagonized a cobra so he’d show us his hood (with a snake stick), picked up puff adders (also with a snake stick), and let us hold one of the rock pythons.  Caoilfhionn and I both got to cuddle the rock python juvenile (still about a meter long).  Absolutely awesome.

Mokolodi also has an orphanage for the various animals on the reserve.  At the orphanage were a whistling duck, a pair of birds that I didn’t recognize, a barn owl, and three vervet monkeys.  Two of them were older and had absolutely no interest in people, but one was clearly orphaned quite young and loved people.  His name was Blue.  If you offered him a finger he’d take it and hold on gently.  He was in love with my  watch, my zipper pull, the lace on my sleeves, and Caoilfhionn’s hair.  He was the most darling creature.  I have hundreds of pictures of him because he was just so cute.

Anyway, it was a three day trip all told, although we only spent one full day in Mokolodi.  Another CCB staff drove us back on Wednesday so that we could make the Ghanzi Show.  We had some excitement trying to drive in the dark with cattle, donkeys, goats, kudu, and various other antelope thinking the road might be nice for a nighttime stroll.  But we came back safe and sound.

Next Episode: Ghanzi Show

A Blog in Three Parts: Kacgae

June 25, 2012

This past week has simply flown by.  I don’t know where it’s gone.  But I’ll try and do a recap for you.

Last Sunday was a trip to a small village about two hours away, called Kacgae (as best I can tell it’s pronounced cog-GUY or maybe cockeye).  Anyway, it’s a bit of an uneventful drive away.  It seemed to be mostly San  people, but I could be wrong.

The double cab was still in the shop, so Max and Phale took Caoilfhionn and I in the two single cabs.  I got the pleasure of listening to Radio Botswana 2 and the return of the power ballad.  I also managed to get two hours of reading in the Kite Runner (which was fantastic, I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get around to reading it).

We turned off the two lane highway onto a relatively wide, moderately maintained dirt road.  There were a surprising number of goats wandering about.  The thing about Kacgae, is that kind of sneaks up on you.  One minute you’re driving through the veld, the next there are houses and a school sort of lurking behind some of the larger acacia.

It was a Sunday, which apparently meant that there was a soccer game on and the entire town was there, including the people we were there to talk to.

Now, you might be wondering, why were we there in the first place?  Well, one of CCB’s major goals is reducing human-predator conflict and they’d received a grant to build 10 predator proof corrals (or kraals as they’re called here) in this village.  The village had the task of choosing who would receive the kraals.  They went by a lottery system so the 10 families were from all different backgrounds and levels of wealth.  A few months back, the CCB crew went out and put up the wood and wire fences that form the base of the predator proof pens.

The job of the families was to put up acacia all around the kraals to keep the predators out and the guardian dogs in.  A few of the families did, most didn’t.

When we made it out to the soccer pitch, we sent someone in search of the people we were looking for.  There were two full teams on the pitch, in uniforms with shin guards and everything.  I was a little surprised, since most everyone was in nearly indecent castoffs.  Then I saw them closer and realized that the soccer uniforms were treated with love and respect, but they were still showing some serious wear.  Made me think about just how nice some of my “worn-out” stuff really is.

Anyway, we tracked down our families and Phale debated with them for quite some time (all in Setswana so I didn’t understand a word) while the little kids stared at Caoilfhionn and I, trying to get us to wave and give thumbs up.  Caoilfhionn was trying to be serious, but I obliged them.  They were freaking cute.

After that, we got a group organized and went about hacking down blackthorn, which is a native invasive species.  We took branches as big around as your forearm (even you big guys) and hit them hard against the fence so that the thorns would latch onto the wires and onto the other branches.  There’s a knack to doing it without losing all of your skin the process.  I have not mastered it.  At first Caoilfhionn and I actively helped, then we settled for dragging branches.  At some point, we had enough helpers that Caoilfhionn and I were politely told to stay out of the way and let them do all the work.

At the end of the day, we’d done five kraals.  Max had done a similar number on his own.  It took prodding to get them going but once they were, the villagers were unstoppable.

Next Episode: Gaborone

A "Quiet" Week

June 16, 2012

Boy I’m glad I didn’t promise you all regular updates.  I’d have been made a liar this past week.  Compared to last week, this week has been remarkably quiet.  No more exciting, close calls with mambas and no cheetahs in the middle of the road.  Not that it’s been dull by any means.

This week there was a herder training where local herders came in to learn how to minimize human animal conflicts.  They had some interesting solutions.  Many of them focused on not getting paid enough to protect their animals from predators.  They brought up that it is dangerous to step between a predator and his prey.  Money is very different here, but the herders get paid about minimum wage for Botswana.

They also mentioned the herders need to be skilled in looking at spoor (animals tracks and sign) to determine what kind of predator is around and if it has designs on the herd.  And they need to be skilled in caring for their animals.

Also present were a rancher, a vet, and a traditional San healer.  I’d have loved to have chance to speak with them more, but the day was packed for all of us.

I also got to practice my goat wrangling by helping the CCB team to vaccinate, ear tag, and dip their goats.  I can still give SQ injections, yay me!  In all honesty, though, the little Boer goats are adorable.

Most of the week was spent preparing for the herder training or in spot checking.  Each cheetah’s spots are like a finger print, so you can tell them apart based on that.  Spot checking means looking at all the pictures from the camera traps and deciding if it’s the dominant cheetah in that area or if it’s someone else.  If it’s someone else, have you seen them before?  So, I can identify at least five cheetahs on sight now.

Other than that, we also visited the San craft stores in Ghanzi and D’kar, where they display the magnificent art and crafts of the San people.  They have the most beautiful, colorful art and make crafts out of ostrich egg shell, recycled paper, metal, and other fantastic things.

Caoilfhionn and I also had introduction to cheetah scat testing.  We dissected the scat for any hairs, bone, or vegetation.  Then we isolated 10-12 hairs, shoved them into a Pasteur pipette using thumb forceps, drew up enough beeswax to cover them, then let the wax harden.  After that, we cut cross sections using a scalpel and glued them to a slide.  When they dried, we looked at the cross-section of the hair and tried to match it with the local animals that cheetah eat.  It was interesting.  Reminded me that I love lab and field work, but that I’d really rather be outside.

But other than that, it’s been a pretty “quiet” week. :D

Rugby, Cheetah & Afrikaans, Oh My!

June 10, 2012

Yesterday was a fantastic day.  Truly.  No sarcasm for once.  We started off the day visiting the nearest neighbors, half an hour on sand roads away.  These lovely people let us watch the Ireland vs. New Zealand rugby match and the Wales vs. Australia rugby match.  In and around the games was loads of marvelously delicious food.  From waffles to warthog (yes, Pumba) sausage, everything was absolutely divine and our hostess joked about being a domestic goddess in her retirement.  Man, I hope when I retire I can do the same!

I discovered I may not care much for most sports, but rugby, rugby I enjoy.  It might help to sit with a New Zealander and an Irishwoman, or maybe it was the company in general.  Regardless, it was a ton of fun.

One more rugby match went on yesterday, South Africa vs. England.  Privately, I cheered for England (gotta respect my roots!) but everyone here cheered for South Africa.  They won.  We watched that rugby match at the only pub I’ve ever been to with a ten minute drive down a single lane dirt road and a gate to go through.

But the highlight of the day, far and away, was driving out to pub.  Jane was chatting with us when she slammed on the brakes and yelled, “That’s a fucking cheetah!”

She was right, there were two cheetah cubs standing on the road.  They watched us for a minute before crossing and fading into the veld.  Here I was expecting not to see a cheetah the whole time I was here and there were two of them, completely unexpectedly.  You’ll have to take me at my word when I say they were gorgeous, because I left my camera here at camp.  So no pictures except in my head.

Well, with a sighting like that, the night could only get better.  We watched the last rugby match of the day at the pub and I got to sample gemsbok (sustainably harvested from the game farm that owns the pub).  Also, very tasty.  Ran into some American students there, too, from University of Texas.

After that, Jane, Caoilfhionn and I headed for the Afrikaans Winter Dance.  Now, it is winter here and it’s freaking cold at night.  (And today, the wind is just vicious.)  It was a fairly laid back party, a lot of chatting, a fair bit of alcohol flowing, and a bit of dancing.  The Afrikaans here do this marvelous semi-formal two step called sokkie sokkie.  It looks amazing and the speed at which some of the couples could do this was insane.  I watched and was amazed at how well they did.

Anyway, we stayed for hours and I met some of the loveliest people.  They were very polite and very friendly.  Most of the Afrikaans in Ghanzi are cattle ranchers or manage game farms so CCB works with them on that.  For all that predators cause huge problems for ranchers, they didn’t give us a lick of grief for working to help cheetahs.  Actually, Caoilfhionn and I spent the night assuring them that no, really, we did not need another drink.  Thank you, but really no.  The farmers up here can be quite persuasive when they try, let me tell you.

Everyone wants to see Ireland, so Caoilfhionn was quite a hit, but apparently California and Las Vegas are also equally popular so we both got asked lots and lots of questions.  Caoilfhionn traded Gaelic phrases for Afrikaans phrases.  I can say a few things now.  My favorites: Hallo, Baai, Dankie.  Hello, Bye, and Thanks.  Oh yeah, words I can handle!  But I can also manage “Hoe gaan dit met jou?” which is "how are you".  Honestly, I think I might learn Afrikaans just because I think it’d be fairly easy to pick up.  (Really, I should finally learn Spanish, but…)

Anyway, marvelous day, perfect cheetah sighting, superb company, interesting sports, and so very, very much fun.

*Note: I’m not giving out any of the names beyond the CCB folks just as a sort of cautionary thing.  I don’t intend to say anything inflammatory, but I don’t want any issues coming up because of me.  But I want to reassure you that I did meet real people and I remember their names ;-)

Cheetah Chins & the Dreaded Mamba

June 5, 2012

It’s been an exciting couple of days over here.  Even on Africa Time, we’ve done a lot.  Oh, hello Gavin & Andrea!  Apparently some less than positive consequences from the last blogger so they’ll be keeping an eye on me.  Anyway, onto some politically correct fun stuff.

Yesterday we went searching for the radio collar and its attached Critter Cam.  With the help of two marvelous Naro San (the native people of this area) trackers, the willing cooperation of one of the game ranch managers, and an aerial antenna with extension poles, we recovered it in one day.

Granted, it was one day with about 5km of walking, but still, we found it.  We walked one area with no luck.  We’d about given up for the day and the knee Annabelle took out was reminding me that it wasn’t 100%.  We were in the car on the way back when we found a high spot.  We stopped, Andrea hooked up the radio antenna and we listened with baited breath.  Lo and behold, a beep!  We’d been listening all day for that stinking beep and there it was!  All of us were excited, Andrea, Caoilfhionn, me and both trackers.  Excited enough we nearly left the GPS in the truck.  Now, the trackers knew exactly where we were, but the veld here is fairly uniform and there’s none of the helpful mountains we have in Arizona, so a GPS is a good idea.

Anyway, the trackers took charge of the antenna and attached radio and followed the beep.  For those unfamiliar with radio collars, you can use you’re an antenna to find directionality, the way of the loudest beep.  Forget the Tao de Ching, the Tao of beep is king in wildlife.  It wasn’t a straight path, but we found it.  And by we, I mean one of the San trackers.  To celebrate, Andrea made two delicious pizzas and we settled down to watch the Critter Cam video.

Well, there’s lots of video of the veld and a cheetah chin.  Yup, hours and hours of cheetah chin.  I am now very familiar with one cheetah’s chin.  There are about 30 hours of Critter Cam footage from three different cheetahs and I’m told that watching all of those hours, frame by frame, is one of our duties.  I will be very familiar with cheetah chins by the time I come back.

In terms of fantastic sightings, we saw loads of kudu, impala, warthog, and gemsbok which are pretty common, some more eland, less common.  And yesterday, trudging through the veld, we saw a herd of zebra.  Now to see that ever elusive cheetah!

Today we took down some of the equipment used to collar the cheetahs and checked the camera traps.  Well, we were all quite absorbed in the camera trap and when we finished that, we turned to the next bit of equipment.  Jane was yelling “Run!” before I really understood what I saw.  Then she said “Cobra!”  Well, bad knee or no, I ran.  I have no desire to meet an angry spitting cobra face to face.  None.  See one, yes, meet an angry one, no.  Because what my poor eyes finally made out before I fled, was a very, very large snake who had reared up.  When a snake rears up, that means get the heck out of Dodge.

Well, Phale (pronounced pol-LAY) went to investigate why we were all upset.  I went in for a photo, staying further than spitting distance away.  Phale was not so cautious.  He got close enough to identify one gigantic black mamba that was climbing the tree we were supposed to be working under.  I have a fantastic picture of the mamba in the tree with its front lifted up trying to climb higher.  It was about 2.5 meters long, probably 7-8 feet.  It was huge.  I also have a great picture of its tracks to the water and then to the tree.  It passed within less than 2 meters of us and we never saw it. Makes you wonder how very much wildlife you just don’t see even when it’s right there.

Anyway, I’m trying to keep these, short, light and to the point.  That and I’m tired so, I hope you enjoyed!

Ghanzi At Last

This is a two post kind of day.  One, I wanted to post that last one from sitting in Gabarone (pronounced ha-ba-RO-nee with a glottal stop at the ‘b’ and no, I still can’t pronounce it right).  And two, I want to share today.  I have limited bandwidth, so we’re operating on a text only basis before you get too excited.

Last night I came into Maun (pronounced ma-UN with the that weird swallowing the UN thing) to meet Gavin and Andrea, the heads of CCB in Ghanzi (HAHN-zi).  They were waiting for me (thank guys!) and were understanding of my lost luggage (long story, we’re reunited now and I remember why I gave up on check baggage).  We went back to the most charming backpacker’s camp.  I’ll post pictures, eventually.  I got to meet fellow volunteer Caoilfhionn (kwi-LIN) and got to sleep on a bed!  Never discount the joys of sleeping on a flat, even surface. 

Come morning, I had to joy of a warm shower and a hot breakfast.  I also met Greg, who works for National Geographic.  Well, later I found out he also invented the Critter Cam.  I didn’t even have a chance to go all fan-girl on him because he left for the Delta when we rescued my luggage.  After that, we began that journey from Maun to Ghanzi (a few hours) and I learned more about Botswana from Gavin and Andrea.  That will probably be at least one post later.

We saw warthogs and ostriches on the road, and I’m promised that warthogs wander near camp often so there should be lots of pics of them when I can post them.  We also saw, goats, cattle, and donkeys by the dozen and a few horses.  All in all I was satisfied with that for one day.  I mean, I’m here for a month!

Well we went out this afternoon to see if we could find the radio-collared cheetah whose collar is set to fall off tomorrow morning.  We didn’t catch a blip of him, but we did see kudu and impala who are apparently quite common, more warthogs, but the sighting of the day was hands down the three giraffes.  Gavin was telling us that we hadn’t seen anywhere near the normal number of wildlife when lo and behold, we spot a giraffe.  Then we realize there are three of them.  We stopped the car to snap pictures and gawk at them.  Just after that, a herd of eland cross the road in front of us.  Both things that apparently quite uncommon.  As in it was the first time Gavin had ever seen them on this park.  Then on the way back to camp, we saw a brown hyena in the road.  That was only the third time this year a brown hyena had been spotted.  So although the kudu and the impala were shy today, I am totally ok with that.

So even if I still haven’t seen a cheetah, I saw giraffes, eland, and a brown hyena.  All in all, I call today a win.

I’m staying in a darling little camp with all the amenities (hot water, stove, fridge, bed, electricity and internet!).  Right now it’s empty, just Caoilfhionn, Gavin, Andrea and I.  Caoilfhionn and I each get our own bedroom although the kitchen and bathrooms are communal areas.  Quite frankly, I’m just thrilled to have the above listed luxuries.  And to have any internet whatsoever.  Anyway we have a moderately early morning tomorrow trying to track down our cheetah and his radio collar with attached Critter Cam (I might be a lot excited to see that footage).  This means a lot of hiking through the bush tomorrow most likely, so good night friends! 

Language, Flights, & Africa Time

This is from yesterday, when I had no internet:

June 1, 2012

Today for the first time I flew on an airplane not operated by a US or British company.  It was different.  For one thing we got one of those darling half sized planes where the large carry-on items had to be loaded in baggage areas.  For another, I was the minority.  I was the only white female on the plane.  There were a handful of older European men, a handful of African women, and a plane full of African businessmen.  It wasn’t an awful feeling, just different.

One thing really amazes me here though, so many people can go from speaking their native tongue to English and back without skipping a beat.  I also met a woman who spoke at least three languages fluently (German, English and something African).  I want to be that cool.  How badass would it be to switch from English to Spanish to French to Arabic without pause? 

The other huge difference I’m noticing is that time is considered very differently here. For those of my friends from Nowhereville, USA, you know those old timers that set around and figure things’ll get done eventually?  Everyone here is like that.  Even the businessmen are patient.  It’s incredible.  For instance, my flight from Jo’burg got in over an hour ago and my flight to Maun leaves in about three hours.  Check-in still isn’t open.  So I’m killing time again.

Another thing, the workers (at the airports at least) are always singing or humming or drumming their fingers.  Music just seems to flow from them all.  And the ones that are from the same area seem to all know each other and exchange greetings and news, switching between native and English at will. (I will not get over this soon.)

Now for one more thing, the food.  Admittedly all I’ve had in the way of food so far consisted of standard plane food.  On BA, we had pasta, muffins, a lovely chicken curry, and a traditional English Breakfast.  On Air  Botswana, we were given three little plastic packets.  Well, me being curious and fairly hungry, I consumed all three.  There was a pack of Ritz meets Cheez-its, and two more interesting packages.  One was Marula berry nuggets which were quite tasty although with that much sugar it’s hard not to be.  The other was Botswana’s beef jerky, botslingo, which is not at all the same as we get in the states.  For one thing, it tastes funny (duh!).  For another it is considerably drier and fattier.  But still all in all very tasty.

Africa Time:

In South Africa this morning I got a taste of Africa Time.  I killed hours and hours in the waiting area this morning and thought I’d experienced this “slowness” Africa moves at.  I was wrong.  Compared to Gabarone, Jo’burg moves at warp speed.  When the volunteer coordinator warned me that delays of several hours were common, I thought, “Surely not.”  And the trip was going so smoothly I foolishly believed, “Not me!”  Ha.  Hahahaha.  Lies.

My flight was to leave at 5, but now it’s not expected to leave until 8:30 pm.  Now that’s a big difference to an American.  Here it barely warrants a phone call.  Now, usually I’m a go with the flow kind of gal and I would be here to, if there was something to do.  Alas, there is not even public wifi.  For a person attached at the wrists to her computer, that’s not fun at all.  So I can’t post this, I can’t check Facebook and can’t reassure all of my worried friends and family that I am alive, I am safe, just bored out of my mind.  I am trying terribly hard to remember that Zac Brown song and that I ain’t in no hurry.  But this fool always worries and I want to be there already.  It’s all I’ve been saying all day.