Bullet point, action-packed, goodie-filled blog!

Everything in Botswana is either non-existent or huge.

Non-existent: 

• Milk - this one doesn't count for the whole country - this is in my experience only. When you really gotta have that hot choc, you seriously consider buying a goat.

• Tarred roads - actually, I have seen some a few hours away.

• Bridges that make you feel safe in Moremi Game Reserve

• This tortoise was almost non-existent. This guy's thanking his lucky stars for Mich's sharp eyes. He hissed at us a little. Think he didn't like me grabbing him and placing him a photo-op position. Well, little guy, deal with it. 

• Doors in the loos and showers at The Old Bridge Backpackers in Maun.  What a beautiful place. You drape a rope across the doorway to show that the loo is occupied, and keep your knees bent in the shower to avoid swallowing the creepers hanging over the reed wall.

• Any cheese flavoured crisps. The favoured flavour of the national population is...wait for it...Pickled Onion!

Huge:

• The elephants standing in the middle of our roads, crushing our sage plants & trumpeting at us (giving us the fright of our lives).

• Emily's fund-raising Human Foosball Tournament!  Almost the entire population of Maun, getting ridiculous, kicking shins, trying very hard to be THE BEST TEAM EVER!  We didn't win. But we gave it our best shot and that's what counts. It's just a game, really. 

• The church service at Maun's All Nations Village Church - a really fun but LONG service, with songs that leave your arms and hands aching from all the clapping and dancing.

• The Most Amazing Extra Large Chocolate Hot Cross Buns from Maun Spar - this, plus yummy (free!) coffee, made the best breakfast. These things were like, bigger than my face. Like a big moon-shaped face. Actually, like a big hot-cross bun shaped face. This is getting silly.

• Mega-holes in the road, just waiting for you to get stuck in. So what if we need to radio for help? You know, even Bear Grills needs a little hand sometimes. Sometimes.

Exciting news!

Jamie wobbles has the most amazing job in Durbs, starting on Monday 15 March!

Well done my Jamie love, I'm so proud of you.

Is that a growl, a rumble, or thunder? I don't care. I'm getting in the car.

First of all, I have to say - the cool photos in the last blog (you'll know them if you just glance once) are Michelle's. She took them, she gave them to me, and I stole them for the blog. She knows it, and I know it. But I did it anyway. All credit to you Mich, your photos are WAAAAY better than mine :)

So Sunday, which would have been my day off, was instead filled with inward screaming as I watched my mac laptop disintegrate further and further into...a piece of metal that opens and closes, and makes a cool sounding 'bong' when you press the power button. That's all. Oh, and a flashing question mark in the middle of the screen, which sometimes changes into a smiling computer-shaped face, although why on earth he's smiling I can't imagine. It's just not funny. It flashes half-heartedly for a little while, then just gives up and switches off completely.

Thank goodness for the big old computer in the office, with a screen image that jumps up and down, and is even now making me just a little queasy. Kinda like that flight the other day. Anyway, I've been having computer nightmares lately, full of beeps and bongs and flashing screens, so I'm not gonna talk about it anymore.

We've taken to watching old episodes of Friends on Michelle's lovely laptop after dinner - normally with some PFMs, choccie (if we have any to spare), and hot chocolate. It's our indulgence. Yes. And we deserve it too, because this week we've been eating lots of carrots and pears for lunch, instead of last week's cottage pie. Anyway, last night, as we were getting our dose of Friends (Rachel and Ross finally got it together! Well, for the first time, you know)...I heard this weird loud scraping scratchy noise on the canvas (which is our wall) - I looked over, and saw the unbelievable. And this is gonna freak you out, but don't scream. I saw...CLAW imprints on the canvas, scraping down the wall in a long streaky, claw-like line!! **SCRAPE!!** Mich didn't see it, and we spent the next while completely freaked out (well, I did), trying to work out what on EARTH that was trying to get into our tent, and why on EARTH an animal would do that, and WHICH OF US is actually gonna look outside? Mich was the brave one, and as she was peering, Emily and Ros jumped out from behind Stanley and we got the fright of our lives!  We laughed until our stomachs hurt, and felt thoroughly embarrassed. Well, I did - Mich never did think it was an animal. I felt embarrassed.

All in all - Face doesn't have malaria, and he's right as rain. Andrew and Steph have been stuck in the mud enough times to drive a man insane. Even one as tough as Andrew. They spent the night in their vee-hickle (not a car, mind you), stuck in the mud, swatting mozzies and collecting drinking water from leaves. Bear Grills style. Minus the cliffs and eating snakes. We had apple pie this week...twice! Steph gave us some fancy American dark chocolate. That's our news. Big weekend coming up, so keep reading! :)

 The office

There's a storm rolling in - one of many!

Stanley getting some juice - he just oozes cool. Like Goose.

The boys - Moses and Tsitsi helping us give Stanley his juice. They're always full of smiles, but you know, gotta look cool for the camera!

Over and out ***

First bit of real hard work

Hey guys,

Just had to write a quick blog, cos the past few days have been amazing. We've been working hard this week doing lots of vegetation transects, and pushing it until we drop.

This involves Michelle walking 50m into the bush, which, in tall grass and thick trees, is sometimes too far - I get nervous when I can't see her, and imagine her being munched by something. She's started singing while she's walking, just so I know she's still alive. Sometimes the singing stops, but so far that's just cos she's forgotten the words. I stand at the other end of the transect (close to the car, yipee!), or sometimes sit (when we remember to bring the chair), and scribe for her. I'm slowly learning the grasses and trees again - Shmitia (I spelled it wrong the other day and crossed it out VERY fast), Dychrostachys, Stipagrostis... and so it goes.

The last thing to do at a site is collect the soil samples - the most strenuous bit, and the bit when we move slower and slower until we get to stop under a tree and munch on some food. This bit is always great - the kitchen's here are fully stocked, so we've been having roast beef sarmies with mustard, cheese, gherkins... and today was cottage pie, grapes and pears. :)   When we went into Maun the other day, we bought ourselves some bags of toasted marshmallows. So each day, when we come back, we are each allowed one marshmallow. We've named them PFM's - Post Field Marshmallows. They keep us going.

Yesterday Face (yes, that's his name - stories about him later) told us about Goose, the leopard, sitting with a kill off one of the roads, and gave us his coordinates. So, being the cool trackers that we are, we tracked him down. Well, actually, Michelle tracked him down :) We got right up to his little copse of trees, and found his kill hidden in a tree, but couldn't see him anywhere - eventually I spotted him under some thick Acacias - if we hadn't been like 2 metres away, we would never have seen him. And if he hadn't been collared, we could've done a transect right there and not seen him until it was too late. Well, too late for Michelle - I'd be in the car by then. He was beautiful, and so cool - not skittish at all. He just walked in front of us to change trees, did some yawns, flicked his ears, and went on being cool Goose.

Face also told us about two male lions, Doohan and Mike (what kind of name is that for a lion?), that were sitting just outside of Savanna Camp with a kill. We found them too, and their kill... the punks killed a giraffe! Just two of them, taking down a giraffe! It was pretty impressive.

"Do you see what I killed?"

It doesn't end there - Michelle decided that today was gonna be my day for learning how to 4X4. As we were driving out this morning, I stopped to contemplate a wet and tricky part, and Michelle said "Ah, Kelly - are you seeing this?" I looked up to see a massive pride of 14 lions just strewn all across the road RIGHT in front of us - all looking up and looking quite menacing. This pride has been walking through our camp in the night and early in the morning - we've heard them a lot very close to our rooms (but by now I'm just sleeping through it). Also lots of elephant feeding right outside our room most nights - we just keep praying that they don't walk through the canvas walls! :)

Anyway, i could give a long list of animals we've seen and stared at for ages, but that would just take forever :)  Besides work and animals, we're watching a lot of movies in the evenings, drinking lots of hot chocolate and coffee, and chatting until we can't keep our eyes open anymore.

I miss all of you so so much, and it's only been a week.

Some new pics (First week)

Hello! 

It's been a great week so far - no field work yet, with all of the car probs we've had, and now since our's is the only vehicle in camp that actually works, it's being used for everything else. So hopefully we'll start on Monday, but we've been enjoying ourselves exploring the concession a bit, and doing lots of chilling and swimming! :)

Here's some new pics.

Lunch at Hilary's on our Thursday trip into Maun, with Michelle and Hilary. The most delicious homemade lemonade and butternut soup!

Stanley in his natural environment. This is our trusty TDI that I'm slowly learning to drive.

Pilot Chris and Tracker Andrew with the 4-seater - we went up tracking the predators with them on Saturday morning! I was trying to think about not losing my breakfast.

Wild Dog Camp kitchen - these guys have the coolest place. Andrew, Face, and Stephanie live here, and we popped over for tea with them after the flight, just before we tracked down Darkness' lion pride. Not bad for a Saturday morning!

first days

Yesterday was the start of the little adventure!  Michelle and I met up in Joburg airport, and fly across to Maun via Gabarone.  We were told that our plane was just stopping in Gaborone, but when we got onto the plane, the air hostess who took our passes said "You're going to Maun?  How are you getting there?" 

So in Gabarone we eventually figured out that we had to board this little 20 seater plane to Maun, where we grabbed cokes from the pilot's cooler box during flight. Everyone is super chilled here, with the biggest smiles on their faces, as if to say "Yup, we know we live here. It's awesome."

Maun is super tiny, but I bought a sim card that works, some air time. We picked up our massive landy (that one of the camp managers had brought up for us and left at the airport - so safe, keys in the ignition, doors don't lock) and off we went down the long road to the game management area.  We gave a lift to 2 guys that work here, one Tsitsi, and another who's name i can't remember - SO glad these guys were with us, because we got one flat on the tar road, and then the spare went flat once we were in the management area at sunset.  Thankfully all the vehicles have radios  (cos cell phone signal is non existent unless you're standing right up against the cell phone tower) - so we radio-ed in for help on our first day in!   Sven came through to help us with two wheels stolen off a car from the camp next door (the wild dog camp).  Anyway, long story short, most of our tyres are messed up, we got in last night at about 9, and we have to chance the trip back into maun on Thursday to get some more tyres.  We had a quick dinner, met everyone, and crawled into bed.  I couldn't stop thinking of scorpions, and it took me forever to fall asleep...

Since we couldn't exactly explore the concession today (with a landy standing on jacks in the workshop), we spent the day exhausting ourselves with unpacking all the equipment and luggage, scrounging around for cardboard boxes to fashion into cupboards, and making our rooms a little more homey.  Jamie made me the most amazing calendar, featuring his many handsome faces, and it was the first thing I put up.  :) I even went as far as to hammer in some nails and make a little cardboard shelf for my girly things!  it's attached forever, but it's awesome, I'm sure no-one would ever want to take it down.  that was Michelle's amazing suggestion. :)  We found a rusty old tressle table and scrubbed it down nicely for Michelle's desk - gonna keep looking for one for me, but my room's looking fab already!

We're being super chilled now, had a yummy lunch (food's good here!), and about to have a swim in a bit.  You can't see the bottom of the pool with all the murkiness, and Michelle says you get lionesses drinking from that pool at night!

It's not easy to skype in the office, as jamie and I found out.  We can chat easily just typing notes, but as soon as you switch on the video, it dies (internet too slow here).  Chatting with the microphone works ok if it's quiet in here, but there's often people working in here, so it might have to be an early morning thing.

It seems that there is a fundraiser planned for the buffalo project, on my birthday, 6 March - Emily is planning to have a human foosball tournament in Maun, getting a bunch of teams together, having a braai, and mainly having a good time.  So we're thinking about going - that would be a pretty cool way to spend a birthday in the bundus, I reckon!  

Keep me entertained!

So, home dogs...

I need your suggestions. If you don't want Crazy-Kelly when I come home, I need to take something to keep me entertained. A challenge. A project. An escape from the hum drum life of Sundays off. My first choice was to read Lord of the Rings again, but I gotta keep my street cred. Suggestions?