Namibia!!

Tuesday, July 12

Well, here I am on a farm / wildlife sanctuary in what feels like the middle of nowhere, Namibia, but is actually only a 40 minute drive from the airport. I have no idea when I will be able to upload this, or how good the connection will be then, so will just stick to text for now. Today is Tuesday, and I have 45 minutes until dinner at 6pm. Let me start at the beginning.

I arrived very smoothly last night. From the air it looks like Namibia is solid hard mud, but as you get closer you can see there are trees, but they are mud colored too, and the ground is mostly covered in grass, but it is also mud colored. But there are little mountains and dunes everywhere and it's actually very beautiful. A guy was there to meet me, but he didn't speak much English so we listened to the radio in Afrikaans for the drive in. Then they showed me to my bed.

It is a tent. Not what I was expecting, but the tents are actually as nice as the rooms, more private, and a lot more quite. I have a proper bed, great bedding (but it's still super freezing and my sleeping bag was a great purchase), and a really nice roommate from Ireland named Nikki. She has six tattoos and about twice that many piercings.

Most people here have a tattoo or two and I think collectively we average three piercings in addition to normal pierced ears. Most people are 18-20, but a few are my age or older. It was a bit of a shock last night, but I'm over it and enjoying most everyone's company. Many from Europe, one from Canada, and a few from the US.

Arriving was a bit of a shock, and I must admit I wasn't sure what I'd gotten myself into last night. After getting to my room, the lady told me the lantern was broken so I just dropped my bag and followed her back to the food area. It was like arriving at camp. And I hated camp. No real introductions, no information on where to get a mug for tea, etc etc. But a few people took pity on the new girl and showed me the basics. The food was very basic but good. It immediately got freezing cold. Freezing. Literally I think. We huddled around the Bon fire and I watched some of the others roast marshmallows that they bought the last time they went into town. If you want anything other than the meals, water, and tea, you have to buy it from a store here open twice a week, or from town on Sunday. It's pretty rough watching everyone else drink beer and coke and eat chocolate for dessert when you have nothing! I made sure to get my name down on the list for next Sunday (a whole week!!).

Sleeping last night was also pretty tough....I think I have the world's narrowest sleeping bag. Can hardly move in it! And so cold I bad to keep my head in it all night too. But we go to bed between 7:30 and 8:30, and I stayed in there until 6, so I imagine I must have slept quite a bit! We go to bed so early because it gets so cold and because there isn't much else to do. And as I learnt today because we work pretty hard all day.

Today I was put into my group, joining three other girls. Our first activity was enclosure patrols which was a great first thing to do because we basically walked around a chunk of the property checking the lion, cheetah, and leopard enclosures to make sure there are no holes and that the electricity is working. We also spotted giraffes and zebra which was a big deal to the others, but I've kind of seen a lot already! 10:00 is muffin break which is apparently the highlight of the day. They were pretty good I guess. Next we had to carry rocks out of the junior baboon camp. The baboons were supposed to be out for a walk but they escaped and came back early so we had to book it out of their cage because they were over excited. It was pretty tiring though. After an hour and a half for lunch we were onto wild dog time which was pretty cool. We drove water and food (raw meat) to their camp and threw the food to them. Wild dogs are super endangered so it was cool to see. Then we threw whole chickens to some of the cheetahs. After that we had to clean the rabbit and chicken enclosures. You're getting the idea that it's quite a bit of work here and also quite a few animals! I just had a shower and now it's time for dinner!

Wednesday, July 13

I slept soooo well last night. I got an extra sleeping bag so with all the different covers I was able to open my sleeping bag and stretch out more. Today I'm more settled in, but still I don't think I would recommend this to anyone I know. It's just a bit roughing it and a bit too much work! But everyone says their first few days were not great and now they love it. We will see. This morning my group was on "project work" which is code name for "hell". Right now there is more project work than normal for two reasons. They have too many volunteers, and not enough normal activities, and this weekend is Open House which is a big fundraising day and they are expecting over 700 visitors and so there is lots to do. Most of the projects seem to involve fixing the roads by shoveling sand. It wasn't as bad as it sounded, but it wasn't quite a party! Lunch was good - burgers - but all the food is rationed out which I find quite strange.

After lunch I had my "induction." I'm not sure if that is a mistranslation of "introduction" because that's basically what it was. A lot of the history of the place, information on the animals and releases, some safety guidelines, an overview of the activities we do, and advice to check our sleeping bags for scorpions. That one would have been good to know on day one! They also told us that if we had any special skills to let them know....so thinking of how pointless my efforts seemed at road work, I told them about my abilities on the business end, and it seems I will be helping the marketing manager whenever I don't want to do any activity. So perhaps that means no more road work or enclosure cleaning. I really do think it would be a better use of my volunteer time here anyways. It also sounds like this work will have the added benefit of getting onto the Internet here and learning the closely guarded wireless password...which means I could upload blogs waaaaaay sooner than I thought! Fingers crossed! (I will still get to do the food preparation, baboon walks, cheetah walks, game counts, etc though, of course!)

Thursday, July 14

Success! I have weaseled my way into the wireless password by researching email newsletter marketing providers for the marketing director. After doing a break even price analysis on all the different options she concluded I am the perfect person for the job so I guess I can continue to get out of project work (today I got to skip two hours of raking). Thought I had uploaded this, but guess it didn't go through.

Today was a fantastic day. This morning our group was doing research which is definitely my favorite activity so far. First we helped train one of the cheetahs to walk in a straight line over wet sand, because on Monday they need to get 25 photographs of her back left foot for a software project that lets them identify cheetahs by their prints....kind of like fingerprinting. Flo, the biologist in charge of research projects, is great - super enthusiastic and explains everything. After that we went out in the truck on a game count - we have to spot animals and record what we saw, where, and when. Then we arrived at the next farm over and went to check on four of the cameras they have set up there, which have a motion sensor and take pictures hopefully of cheetahs and leopards, but sometimes birds and porcupines. We didn't get any good pictures on that trip, but we had to change some cards out anyways.

During lunch break our team leader Miguel took me to meet the baby baboons so maybe I would stop being afraid of them. I'm still wary, but they are tons of fun. They come up to you and put their arms up and you can pick them up, or just give them your hands and they will swing onto your shoulder, or they will come hug your leg...or they will jump onto you from someone else's shoulder....there is quite a bit of hair pulling because they see it as another way to get to the ground. It's amazing to see how comfortable the more experienced people are with them. Looks like tons of fun! I will keep practicing, and signed up to sleep with Rudie, the baby, on Monday. I hope I don't chicken out!

By 7:30 tonight everyone was headed to bed....warmest place on the farm! Time to power through a few more pages of Mandela's memories. That book was a great deal....occupying lots of reading time!

Here are a couple of pics of the babies. The guy with them is my team leader Miguel.