June 13th. The time is passing FAR too quickly.
Today, we had road clearing with Jamie at 7:30. It was sooo cold, I’m pretty
sure my fingers could not use any tools yet! We moved out to the area where we
have been working, but we have been clearing it from both sides, so we finished
it off quickly, and had to move the truck. We moved through a lot of the road,
clearing it quickly with so many people! It warmed up finally, and my
panga-swinging arm got a great workout. We starting hearing a helicopter, and
on the radio, they were talking about darting an elephant. So Jamie started to
pay attention to the radio to see what was going on. She figured out that they
were going to be darting one of the females who has a collar to fix the collar
position. We wanted to go watch, cause that would be the coolest thing ever! We
couldn’t get a hold of Lukas on the phone or radio, so we quickly drove home to
ask around 10. He asked the head researcher, but she said we weren’t allowed to
observe the darting because it was funded by a private group and they wanted it
to be a closed situation. There were already four vehicles, with the vet, the
reserve managers, the man and family that funded the collars, and the research
team. There was already too much stress on the elephant herd as it was, because
they hate helicopters. The ellies know that helicopters mean shots or darting
because that is how we do the contraception injections. But, since we weren’t
allowed to go observe, we headed back to the road clearing. We were supposed to work from 7:30 to
10:30, so we headed back out for another half hour. By then, after the
excitement of the possible darting, everyone had kinda lost our steam, so we
were glad when time was up. When we returned home, we were supposed to do
maintenance. For the past few weeks, that has meant digging out the volleyball
court, or bringing loads of sand from the river to cover the court. But Toko
had taken the Nissan, so we got to dig out the swimming pool instead. The
ground is so hard-packed, that it was like digging concrete. We took shifts,
using the pick to loosen the rock-hard ground, then shoveling it out with the
spades. We worked on that from around 11 to 12:45. A few of the girls went to
go get lunch ready, so we figured we would work til 12:15 and then eat. But
apparently, the lunch took longer than expected to prepare, because they didn’t
call us for lunch. Eventually, Justine, Judith, and I were the only ones left
shoveling, and we decided that our work there was done! I went to take a
shower, because lunch wasn’t ready yet. When I got done cleaning up, fresh
French toast and bacon were just hitting the table. Hit the spot, after all
that hard work. We all ate and relaxed on the picnic table. I helped the girls
and Lukas clean up the kitchen, then showed some of the girls how to do their
data entry on the data computers. The drive was set to leave at 2:30, but
everyone was thinking it left at 3, so it was a bit late. I stayed home to work
on my research in the nice quiet camp, because tonight was a buffalo monitoring
drive, and I have been on a few of those. I gave Lukas and Jamie specific
instructions NOT to find a leopard without me. I sat on the porch for a while and enjoyed the birds and nyala with my computer and my coffee. :) I got to work on my project all
afternoon, which was great. I got a lot of work done with mapping, and had a
nice relaxing quiet evening. The gang got home around 7, and, lucky for me,
they didn’t see a leopard! :) They did see a hyena, which is super cool! And
apparently, they couldn’t find the silly buffalo, which stinks. The buffalo
camp is really big, so its hard to find them sometimes. But they did see baby
porcupines as well! I worked in the lounge until the girls called us for
dinner, which was macaroni bolognaise. It was really good, and they did
something different with the spices and veggies, which was great! :D We all sat
around the fire for a while and talked, and people slowly moved off to go to bed.
We have two drives tomorrow at 6:30, because we have two trucks. One is going
for a rhino walk, and one is going for predators. Technically, my group is
going for rhino, but because of my project, I can opt to hop on the predator
car instead. I am not sure which I will go on yet, so we will see what happens
in the morning. I stayed up far too late hanging out and talking, so tomorrow
will be an early morning!
Pretty little cape glossy starling in the yard!
No comments:
Post a Comment