This gets infinitely better in you have a Grapetiser in your hand. Especially if it’s free.

Hey hey!

Another day, another blog. Not many more though, mind! So read up while you can.

We've had some pretty rainy and miserable days this week, but in between the storms we've managed to get a whole lot done. We spent 3 days working in the neighbouring community, Sankoyo, where we were surrounded by inquisitive kids & mums, goats, donkeys, and lots of Mopane. The drive out there is pretty long (anywhere between 2 and 3 hours, depending on the stability of your wheels and the wetness of the road), so you really have to think of it more as a game drive than anything else. Which it is – we’ve seen hyena, jackal, elephant, giraffe, buffalo, kudu, impala, zebra, warthog, a ton of birds, and I’m sure plenty more that I’ve forgotten for now. Of course I’ve forgotten – my brain is fried. It was my day off, remember? I spent it watching 2 movies, drinking WAY too much coffee, and stomping around in my gumboots in the constant drip drip of rain. The kind used for torture. Anyways.

On one of our trips into Sankoyo we saw the most amazing beautiful thing – ginormous flocks of Red Queleas all over the road and in the trees alongside. And when I say ginormous, I really mean it. There must have been hundreds of thousands of them. Teeny weeny little birds all flying together in waves, pausing just long enough on a branch for you to make out their shape, and then in flight again. It’s difficult to think of them as individual creatures – they just move as a whole. Like that school of fish in Finding Nemo. You know what I mean. I have pictures, but you can’t get a good idea of what it was really like from the pictures. Maybe I’ll show you the videos when I get home :)

Well, the excitement continues…on our 2nd day of work in Sankoyo, we saw some zebra on our way back to camp. Wait! There’s more! One of these zebees was collared. This means that somebody, being Hattie, was working on zebees in the past and needs to get all collars off. They’re expensive, plus they’re not super comfy for the animal, so the practice is to radio fellow researchers when you see a collared animal like this, so that they can organize a vet to come out and dart it. And that is precisely what we did. We needed to stay with the zebra until everyone got to us, to make sure we didn’t lose it. This was made difficult for a few reasons. One – zebra move while they eat. A lot. Two – these ones get freaked easily. Three – Maun is hours away, and the vet was performing operations. Four – it was crazy hot on the back of the TDI, and I was on the back. Well, the next 2 ½ hours of life were not all that great, but finally everyone arrived. They brought cokes and Easter eggs. :) Rob the Vet was super efficient in darting the zebra, but the poor things got such a fright that they ran like MAD the moment they heard that POP! Well, it got dark, and we spent a good 3 hours in 3 cars with lots of spotlights and torches and people searching everywhere possible for a mommy zebra lying unconscious in the grass and her little foul standing nearby, looking forlorn. Well, every pair of eyes belonged to a silly impala, and we never saw the zebra again. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine – a pretty unsuccessful time altogether, but lots of fun anyway :)

Whew, I can think of lots of funny and strange animal stories to tell.  But I think I’ll save some instead of getting them all out here. You’ll just have to wait. On Friday we officially finished all of our field work, and on Saturday we finished sorting out all of Mich’s soil, packing it all into boxes ready to be sent to Maritburg. What a feeling! Very satisfying! It was fitting that we should have a celebration, and we did it with style.

Emily planned a most marvelous quiz, and last night we went over to Dog Camp for our quiz night and a braai. We had great fun teasing each other for our silly answers, some getting pretty competitive, and just enjoying everyone’s company. Musi was in charge of the braai fire (and what a good job he did), while Face and Olf entertained us with some dancing. They just couldn’t stop. The rhythm got them. Emily made us a delicious cake, Rob grated some carrots, Femca mashed some sweet potatoes, and we had a feast on our hands.

I'm not sure when I’ll get a chance to write another blog - we leave this camp (HQ) on Thursday, to stay with the guys at Dog Camp for a few nights, before I fly home on the 4th! It’s very exciting – as I was excited to come here, and have loved it here, so am I excited to go home and move on to a new part of my life.

By the way, one of my new favourite things to do – sit on the back of a bakkie, looking out at the world as it moves on, listening to only the best of tunes on my wonderful kPod, with the breeze in my hair. This gets infinitely better in you have a Grapetiser in your hand. Especially if it’s free.

Last 2 weeks in the Okavango - it's happy sad. Sad happy.

If you ever need a break from the craziness of city life, this is the place to visit. No jokes. I have never been so super ultra relaxed.

Important things to remember:

1. Maintain a comfortable body temperature. This is done by: a) immersing oneself in a swimming pool at least once a day, preferably more often and; b) coordinating time spent in air conditioned office with the schedule of the camp generator. No power = back in pool.

2. Maintain a consistent supply of drinks. These must be ice cold at all times, and suitably thirst quenching. No diet drinks will do.

3. Never eat before a camp braai. There will be beef fillet, and you will miss out, and then you will cry big crocodile tears. And no, we will not leave you anything.

4. Remember to set alarms for important movies to watch. For example, 'He's just not that into you' is on tonight at 8pm. To be coordinated with air-conditioning and dinner time.

5. Do not, I repeat, do not exit your tent if you hear strange noises outside. Best to stay indoors and read on your bed with high speed fan.

6. Do not let the brights lights of Maun lure you into buying things you cannot afford. Seriously, 3 packs of marshmallows, 5 slabs of chocolate, and 3 big bags of chips, is enough.

7. If you think that you will not need your camera, you are mistaken. You will see a leopard lounging in a tree. And you will have absolutely no proof of this.

8. If you think that the walk between the office and the kitchen will be fine in the middle of the day, you are mistaken. You will cross paths with an elephant. Your chances are not good.

9. Not matter how hot you are at night, the above rules for maintaining body temperature do not count. At night, you cover up. The trick is - the thicker the layers, the fewer mozzie bites you'll have to scratch in your sleep.

10. I'm leaving number 10 open - I still have 2 weeks left, and I'm sure there are still more lessons to be learned.

On Monday we drove into Ma-ooon to fetch Mich's soil samples from last year and renew our visas (which was a surprisingly painless process, always awesome). Ooh, on the way, we saw...wait for it...Goose!  Remember him?  Goose, the cool leopard!!  Just walkin on down the road, like he owned it. Hardly paid us a bit of attention. Scenting a little there, sniffing a little impala here, jumping into a tree there and lounging on a branch, easy  as pie. Some tourists drove past and we quickly pointed Goose out to them. Ooh, la la, blah blah blah! Snap snap. And that was it. Not even 2 minutes looking at him, and they were off - nothing left but a cloud of dust. Foreigners!  If only they knew!  That was a first for Mich and I, a leopard in a tree! A perfect view!  Anyway, can you tell this annoyed me?  Whew.

Since I had sweet cash on me for this trip into Ma-oon, I went a bit nuts. Well, not really. But it felt like it. I bought the most delicious non-schwarma-tasting crispy tasty beef schwarma I have ever had, from The French Connection. Maybe that's why it was non-schwarma-tasting. The French have never been known for their schwarmas. But it was good. I had schwarma all over my face. Well, after plenty of eating, shopping, and generally having a good time, we were on our way home. This could have ended very badly. Let's just say that we pulled over after hearing strange noises in the car, only to find our front left wheel almost off - attached with one wheel nut. One. God really was protecting us that day, that could have been such a nasty accident. Actually, He has been protecting us this whole time - if I think about the sticky situations we've been in.

Well, once we stopped shaking and realised that we were alive and that was all that mattered, we felt pretty cheerful. We called our rescuer Sven for help, pulled out a long cushion from the back of the Landrover (Stanley, remember?), and settled down to relax in the shade. Mich had magazines, and I had a cell phone with kick-ass games. It was great. After a while, a bunch of kids ran out of the Mopane trees (where they had been swimming in the river) - running up to us with the kind of grins that made us feel like giant lollypops or something. Or, in their case, Simba chips! Peering in the car - "You have Simba!  We want it! Simba!" They spent a good while with us, sitting on our laps, being cheeky and naughty and silly and funny and altogether lovely. I had the best time :)

We were rescued by a few people, and it all turned out great. So this week we've been doing bits and bobs of work with Rob (a visiting volunteer from the UK) and planning our work in Sankuyo. This is the local community where we'll be working next week, and we visited them last week to chat to the chief. Well, I say local community -it's really a 2 hour drive away, but that's local here :)  We've sorted through a ton of soil samples, had a lot of cool chats and relaxed lunches and dinners, and I've just finished my Michael Crichton.
NEXT! Genetic engineering takes over the world!  Transgenic apes and flashing purple leatherback turtles!

Jackals at Jackal Pan - wow, this was a real treat!  They were so calm and chilled, just lying down in the sun.


Heard on repeater radio: 
Emily: Guys, just to let you know, there are lions in the road.

Femca: Oh really? I thought there might be but I wasn't sure. How many are there?
Emily: Well, I counted....
Sven: Lion Shmion, let's go get some ice cream

Well, dinner time's coming up, and that important movie is on telly, so it's over and out from me.

Later, home dogs!!

Living in the bush

Hey all!

How's it going? What's happening yo?

We've had a pretty darn interesting week - I so wish I could share it all with you, but I've taken tons of photos, and I'm sure we'll have lots of chats when I get home - there's just so much, it's difficult to describe what life is like out here. But, for your enjoyment, here are a few tidbits of stories:

On Monday, riding around the concession looking for new sites, we stumbled across a hyena den - I don't mean actually STUMBLED, Mum - we were in the car :)  There were a few adults lurking around, and Mich saw a flash of a little pup running into the den to hide away from us scary people. We came back later that night for a 'stake-out' - sounds cool, doesn't it? With Ros and Emily in tow (on the back, hee hee), we waited for something to happen. We were hoping for a cute little family scene, pups rolling in the sand, tumbling over one another, while the folks look on with proud and slightly amused looks on their spotty faces. We sat there waiting for a while, sipping on wine we found in the fridge, staring at this den hole. Three adults came prowling out from the bushes behind us (back from foraging, but I didn't see any foraged bits anywhere - maybe they were feeling lazy), and they all took their turns in STARING at us - pretty freaky. One came right up to the car, I mean like 1m away from Emily and Ros's toes dangling off the back of the landrover. After some serious death stares, the sun went down (boo!), and we managed to see a little teenager hyena come out of the den and stare at us some more, before it got seriously dark and we gave up seeing anything. On the way back home, since we were having a night drive, we decided to do it properly, with Em & Ros standing on the back with the spotlight spotting a bunch of stuff for us: more hyena, 3 African wild cat, 15 chameleons, elephant, wildebeest, giraffe, and a lot more that I can't remember, cos by that time I was seriously sleepy. :)

 The local folks here are SO friendly! Can't tell you how many times we've seen guys taking people on game drives, stop and chat just be generally awesome. It's very easy to feel welcome here - it doesn't matter if you don't know people's names - you see someone once, and that's all it takes to make a friend. Awesome.

Last night, it seems that the whole population of the concession converged on our camp - we had a great night braaing and chatting and eating so much - Emily and Ros have been cooking up a storm last night and this morning. Won't go into details, but there was a lot of cheese involved, and it looks like we're having home made caramel/chocolate shortbread ice-cream for lunch. WOW!!

 This is a pair of mating steenbok we found - very seldom seen, and just too adorable for words!

Last night, while we were waiting for dinner and drooling at all the amazing smells coming from the kitchen, Sven called us outside to see a honey badger right outside the kitchen. he didn't really care much about us, but was very focus on licking up a patch of cream that Emily had tossed into the bush. His nose was all covered in it, the little piggy. We thought he was just too cute, until he glared up at us as if to say "Back off, it's my cream!!" Then we remembered all the stories of people being bitten and attacked by vicious honey badgers, and slowly backed away. Whatever you say, Mr Badger!  Sven always finds these amazing things, chameleons and giant stick insects and black mambas...but I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now, cos I just found a baby mole snake outside the office this morning. :)  Not poisonous, don't worry - but I found it, and that's just awesome.

Ok, at the moment the office is full and my brain is no longer in writing mode - will update soon. :)

Love
The Kelminator

Thunderstorms in the swamp

Happy Happy Easter!

It's pretty difficult to celebrate Easter out here in the bush, except by trying to spend some time alone praying and reading my Bible - this is when I really miss home and fellowship with family and friends. Mich and I agree - being away from home for a while definitely makes you appreciate what you have :)

Last Sunday was Sven's birthday braai, and we got to meet a bunch of his cool friends from Maun. When the thunderstorm came and soaked us through, we didn't let it get us down - we sped off down the road (through a river, I might add) back to Dog Camp for coffee and birthday cake!  Ah, bliss! That was Steph's last day with us, so we had to say a sad goodbye to her. Monday was the MTC Christmas Party in March - wow, they have the most stunning camp!  So beautiful! We walked around in awe for a bit, snapping away with our cameras like mad, while we were treated like absolute stars by all of the lovely and friendly folks there. After lunch, the entertainment began (100m sprints, tug of war, egg races, and all kinds of tomfoolery), and we spent the better part of 2 hours kicking back with as many soft drinks as we could hold, watching the games. Ya ya, we were lazy not joining in - my excuse was the skirt I was wearing, but then I saw a bunch of local ladies racing while wearing the kind of dresses I would attend weddings in.

We've had a pretty difficult week in terms of stuff not going exactly as planned, but we've been working hard - every time we look at the number of sites we've done, we feel so proud of ourselves :)

Tuesday - we got stuck in the stickiest mud in the world. Cake mix, as Mich calls it. I just call it pure evil. It tricks you, you see - you walk on it, and it seems perfectly firm. Apply a bit of extra pressure (1x Land Rover, for example), and the stuff turns into quicksand. Slowly sinking deeper and deeper, we radioed for Sven and Bonnie to rescue us. That pure evil stuff took our rescuers too, and there we were - trying to stay positive and dig and jack and stick branches under the wheels, but in the end, the cake mix won. After 4 1/2 hours, Emily & Roz saved us with winches and tow ropes and Coke Zeros and lots of delicious hot sticky meatballs, fresh from camp. Goodness, I never thought I'd be so happy to see a Coke Zero! Needless to say, I felt pretty spaced out with a teeny bit of heatstroke for a bit :)

Thursday - A trip into Maun in the pouring rain, which yielded lots of amazing goodies like a new monitor for the computer I've been using, radiators and other car bits, burger pies and choc Super Moos from Mich, and shampoo (so I don't have to turn Rasta).

Friday - Spent a day recovering in the office and sorting out soil samples, while Stanley got a bit of TLC from Moses in the workshop. Moses is on leave now, and I don't know what we're going to do without him! He's just the kind of dependable clever guy you need in a place like this. On Friday night we watched the Jane Austen Book Club, so great - I love it!

Last night the heavens opened up right over Michelle's bed. Luckily, it was before she went to sleep - she might have floated away in the night. There was some seriously gushing water pouring down from the ceiling, which is basically thick foil. We have had this problem a lot. You stand in any one spot in your room while it's raining, and within about 30 seconds your skin is covered with a light spray. Well, what was going on in Mich's room was not a light spray. We quickly pulled the bed away from the leaks, so that Mich was left with about 30 squared centimeters to spread out on and fall asleep. It was a long long night.

It's better when you mush it with All Gold

I think I owe some more detail in this blog – the last one was a bit skint, no? It’s Friday night, and I’m frantically trying to remember everything we’ve done in the last while – the days kind of melt into one another after a while – a blend of hyena dreams, ticking off sites, lasagna (what’s for dinner?  Yeah, I love that stuff! It’s better when you mush it with All Gold), keeping hydrated, finishing my masters thesis (well, this draft at least), trying to keep in touch with family (Yes, internet! No, sorry – false alarm. Cell phone? Left it at the cell phone tower – two bird poos right on the screen).

Well, we’ve officially finished up our sites in Moremi – we were so excited on our last day, we left singing at the top of our voices!  Mich has this great PDA loaded with a bunch of classics – loads of Johnny Clegg, Roxette, Jon Bon the Great Jovi, Billy Joel, Dire Straits, ah…. My favourite so far is “She’s got the look” – it’s been my favourite for a while, but you just can’t resist the “na na na na na!” until your jaw hurts! 

Ooh, before I forget, we saw a cute little jackal the other day. Oh my goodness. Reminded me of little Jack Russel Woody (who we suspect is a dwarf Jack Russel – he’s just too tiny to be normal) – I just wanted to call him over, pull him into my lap, and give him cuddles. Oh, cuddles. I will call him Jackal Russel and he will be my Jackal Russel.




Things are still eating me in the night – I find a new and fascinating bite almost every day. I have an idea that it may be spiders – never seen mozzie bites that go white and bulgy – and something that gives me this idea is the collection of spiders and webs I have all over the corner of my wall, next to my bed. I have doomed and doomed, but they persevere. By the way, Michelle says stupid mozzies keep trying to bite her screen. Ah, the number of times I’ve had the blood sucked out of me here (this has nothing to do with the fact that I just read the third Twilight book in just a week). But don’t worry mum, apparently there’s only a real malaria risk when we’re in Maun. Another aside in my tumble of thoughts – this is pronounced ‘Maaah-oooon!’ in reference to the sound a lion makes. Maaa-ooon!  I’ve only heard them go ‘ooh ooh ooh ooh!’ So I’m trusting local knowledge here. 

So, National geographic came and went. Our lives didn’t change, they didn’t give me a job on the spot, and they don’t know what they’re missing. They obviously were preoccupied, but I’m sure they’ll realize their mistake at some stage and come hurrying back. Totally. The only thing that really changed is that we lost our friend Chris for a few days, and we realized that the ladies here make pizza – we realized this when we saw them making pizza for the film crew, and now we realize that maybe they’ll make for us too. Yay! 

Today, as we were having our afternoon swim (ahh!), two very friendly folks came over to the pool to say “Hello!  Hello there!  How are you!?” They were so friendly and smiley! They handed Mich an official invite and proceeded to explain – we have been invited to…wait for it…the MTC 2009 Christmas Party!!!  It’s late, but better late than never, right? How awesome!  So, MTC is Moremi Tented Camp – very fancy, how do you spell laany? Larny? Laaney? Very expensive, I’m sure. On the edge of the river, naturally. So, they’re having this amazing CHRISTMAS party on Monday, and so far Mich, Roz, Emily and I are going – party!!! There’s gonna be food, and maybe even entertainment, PLUS we get to see MTC, take pics, and pretend like we stayed there! Woohoo! Anyway, I deserve a party, cos Jess (Jamo’s lovely cousin) is having her 21st down in Durbs this weekend, and all of Jamo’s family are down there, and they’re out at dinner tonight, and I so wish I was there!!

And now, to end, a quote from Michelle:
‘You know you’ve been in the bush too long when hot chocolate and cake makes you so happy that you flap your arms like a little bird.”

Hey hey!

It’s Saturday – and I felt like writing a bit for the blog. Just cos I can. One of the big bosses, plus some peeps from National Geographic, are arriving today for a bit of lion filming. I think? I was going to try to make a good impression, but the mysterious ‘thing’ that’s been biting me in the night has obviously got some pretty nasty venom, as certain areas of my skin are looking quite diseased at the moment. I’ve tried to cover up with plasters, but...let’s just say, Michelle’s avoiding skin contact. And I don’t blame her.

Anyway, enough of that personal embarrassment. I’ve been missing home so much, and been feeling pretty down about this whole Masters thing – not being able to do work on it except on a giant TV screen bigger than Hagrid’s torso, which is often being used as an actual TV. Not Hagrid's torso, the screen. Papers I need, I can’t access on the net. No stats programs to use and absolutely no way that I’ll finish by the end of March. So I’m feeling down, and this is the song that God gave me on my kPod:

Artist : Sonicflood
Title : Everlasting
----------------
The sky will fall
The ground will give
Through it all You will be faithful
Friends may leave
They come and go
This I know
You will be faithful
You will be faithful

You will always be the same
Your love will never change
You are the everlasting
I will put my trust in You
Forever to be true
You are the everlasting
You are the everlasting

When beauty fades
And slips away
For all my days You will be faithful
When I breathe
My final breath
I find my rest in Your
faithfulness


As far as news goes, we’re almost done with work in Moremi (2 more days), and then we’ll be moving on to our burnt sites. All is moving at a good steady pace, so that’s excellent! We’ve been so spoiled with everything we’ve seen, and the beautiful drives as the Okavango is waking up and going to sleep. We’re onto Rachel and Ross breaking up in Friends (watched 8 episodes last night!). Emily and Roz are nowhere to be found, and we’ve just about given up on them ever coming back. They’re having serious car issues in Maun – who knows when it’ll be fixed? They’re spending all their days on the net in the airport, just biding their time. Sven has gone off on holiday too, so camp is so quiet!  Well, that is until National Geographic arrive. Wish Zambuk would work faster, darn it!

So that’s it from me for today!  Drop me an email when you can - always feels like Christmas when I get news from home! :)

Love
The Kelminator

Some new pics - quick blog on extremely slow bush internet

The elusive albino red lechwe, up in Moremi

Baby ele running as fast as his legs could carry him, and Mommy looking very cross. So cute man.

We spotted this serval in the road by chance - so lovely and super cool

The wild dogs that Mich found 100m outside of camp - there were tons of these guys. Very skittish, because of the lions that were just another 100m down the road.