Day 14 – Saturday
7th July
Was bad and skipped lion walk this morning – we didn’t get
to bed ‘til almost midnight so the chances of me getting up at 6am were pretty
much non-existent! Once everyone eventually emerged, three minibuses full of
vols went into Gweru on the weekly trip to shop and as me, Neeru, Sunface,
Sarah and Enid did, eat pizza! There’s a chain of fast food restaurants called
Pizza Inn (there’s also Chicken Inn, Creamy Inn (ice cream!) and Bakery Inn)
which doesn’t sell the best pizza ever but in comparison to some of the food at
AP it is amazing: and made a nice change from rice, potatoes and dodgey meat!
We also picked up some cheap alcohol – 6 alcopops for $9 plus a huge bottle of
vodka for $5.69 – madness!
Back at camp we didn’t fancy
lunch after stuffing our faces with pizza so just hung around until 2:05pm for
a very easy, effortless activity of a game drive. It was pretty cool – saw the
only waterbuck in the park (who we’ve named Wilbur), tsesbok, impala, zebra,
wildebeest and giraffe; so definitely worthwhile!
On return we quickly
purchased some ciders, grabbed some crisps and me, Neeru and Sarah headed to
the stables to watch the weekly Polo X match. Jonathan (Joe, son of Mr.
Connolly) gave us a lift in the back of his open back Jeep, but with all the
stuff in the back, including Chundu the Weimaraner, we had no choice but to
stand up: this is my new favourite way to travel! We were clinging on for dear
life as Joe raced along the dirt track up to the Polo X pitch. How Chundu managed
to stay on board I have no idea! So after this little adventure the three of us
plus Lorna watched the game from the Jeep while drinking cider, eating crisps
and making Chundu dog wear a cap which he looked very underwhelmed by!
Post-Polo X match we returned to camp and continued drinking! I organised a
drinking game which we had to teach most of the Norweigians … and Enid! And
then Neeru introduced us to this flipping cup game which seemed to make alcohol
disappear very quickly – especially when you were on the losing team! By about
9pm there were a lot of very drunk volunteers! At 11:30pm I wasn’t feeling my
best and was ready for bed … until a disco erupted in Dan’s office and everyone
went crazy so actually ended up going to bed at 1am – fail!
 |
| Looking cool on the back of Joe's jeep, watching Polo X |
 |
| Sunface, Sarah, Enid, me and Neeru enjoying our pizzas! |
 |
| Chundu looking cool in Matt's hat |
Day 15 – Sunday 8th
July
Up in time for breakfast at 8am and more importantly in time
to say goodbye to Enid who went home this morning - losing my innuendo and
fellow posh English buddy.
Anyway life goes on –
Mackay told me my face looked hung-over this morning – charming! Despite a lot
of us looking and feeling a bit rough, the majority of the vols all went on
SCUD Day – a trip to a small village just outside the park, to learn about
social structure and culture of local people and families. We were greeted by a
woman called Virginia, who works at Antelope Park in house-keeping. The village
consists of her, her father and his two wives (one of which is her mother and
the other one who danced all afternoon – respect!) and loads of children
varying in age from about 18 years down to 1month, although some of them were
orphans they’d taken in. The kids were so excited and within a few minutes of
our arrival nearly everyone had a kid of hanging off them! They were cute and
all of them wanted to be picked up or swung or to hold hands which I was
perfectly happy to do until I found puppies - 3 adorable 1 month old puppies J While trying to take a
photo of them one of the little girls wanted to see my camera and kinda
“borrowed” it i.e. took it, took some accidental photos of chickens and ran
away everytime I tried to get it back!
So having familiarised
ourselves with the village, which consists of 3 huts and a small area for
showering sectioned off by bamboo, and having got my camera back, we were told
what we’d be doing. In this culture, women do all the work and are very much
considered inferior to the men so we had to sit on the floor and then get on
and help with collecting firewood and with the cooking all while the men sat on
a bench drinking homemade beer! We buttered some bread for sandwiches, stirred
the local speciality sadza which is made from white maize (Mealie-Meal) and
water – it tricks you by looking like mash potato but tasting like flavourless
crap. While this was “cooking” we got taught some dances and songs and watched
some of the children dance and play drums – it all comes very naturally to them
and they are all pretty talented – you can’t help but join in.
When lunch was ready the
girls had to serve the men and had to go down on one knee when they did so …
weird, and only after that could the women eat. Lunch consisted of an
unnecessary amount of sadza, with potatoes in sauce, cabbage and a small chunk
of meat … and no cutlery which was interesting (the things we take for
granted!). We had to improv. and use the sadza to soak up the sauce and pick up
the rest of the food which was messy. Meanwhile, Sheran, Jo and Andy who stayed
at camp got a full roast dinner with crackling – not on!!! Anyway, the final
bit of weird was having to kneel in front of the men and thank them before
giving Virginia’s father a small token of thanks i.e. $1 or $2: I can
appreciate why this maybe used to happen but Virginia has a job and brings in
money to contribute and doesn’t have to rely on her father … never mind the
whole thing being completely sexist, so just found it kind of wrong that we had
to more-or-less bow down to him. But still it was an experience I’m glad I’ve
had but not sure I’d do it again … although I do really wanna keep the little
beige puppy – he was gorgeous!
Fortunately had the
afternoon off once we got back so sat out with some of the girls by the lake
eating crisps which I have now promised Neeru I’ll stop eating to support her
stopping drinking fizzy drinks. Damn!
Now it’s just gone 8:30pm
and we’re sat chilling in the vol lounge with Neeru, Emily, Lorna, Amanda, Matt
and Anti-Christ the cat. Minor excitement just now of a cat fight between
Charlie and Gizmo (Gizmo lost L)
but probably gonna go to bed now – got a long lion walk tomorrow with Laili and
Lewa. We leave at 6:30am and come back about 12pm plus we get breakfast brought
to us out in the bush so I want a good night sleep to have enough energy –
s’gonna be awesome!
 |
| Torie and I playing swings with one of the little girls |
 |
| ... and one of the boys |
 |
| Some of the vols being taught a song by the kids |
Day 16 - Monday 9th
July
My 21 and ¾’s birthday today – woo!
ANYWAY … exhausted. The
lion walk this morning was epic! 6 hours went surprisingly fast. The L’s were
really playful and energetic – they stalked some impala, then Lewa decided to
let her sister do all the work and plonked her butt down while Laili made a pretty
good effort of chasing wildebeest. After a failed hunt she came back to the
group and whacked Lewa round the face with her paw as if she was saying “Thanks
for the help there … idiot!”
About 8:20am we were
walkie-talkied and told breakfast would be with us in 20minutes … which in
Africa time the rule is x3 so basically we spent over an hour sat on the roots
of a huge tree (with the L’s just laying down nearby). When it arrived our
breakfast was surprisingly good and the whole experience was quite bizarre –
sitting eating egg sandwiches and drinking Fanta while two almost 20month old
lionesses lay about 10m away. The lions had been regaining energy while we ate
and were ready to hunt again. We had a big surprise when Laili was stalking
some guinea fowl and from almost under her feet a big duiker that had been
sleeping, leapt out of the grass! Laili was as shocked as we were but she
chased it for quite a way and everyone was shouting and cheering her on but
unfortunately she hadn’t been ready for it so was too far behind. As always
Lewa decided the best thing to do was to sit down and watch. After that, the
walk was fairly uneventful but it was very nice and relaxing strolling along
with Emily, Neeru and Lorna talking rubbish for 3 hours while the lions walked
by our side – it doesn’t stop being amazing. 30 minutes from camp we stopped
for a break under a big tree that had a platform near the top and being the
adventurous children that we are, me and Neeru wanted to climb up to it, so
Mackay guarded the ladder at the bottom so the lions didn’t follow us and we
went up. However, it wasn’t especially stable at the top so we came back down
pretty quickly. The L’s and us vols were all shattered but we scheduled to do
behaviour enrichment with them in the afternoon. Ticha took me, Neeru, Ida and
Jay to the pile of elephant dung by the training ground and told us to “make a
plan!” My plan was to make an elephant out of elephant crap, sticks and leaves
(original) and which actually turned out pretty well! We had quite a variety
for the L’s to play with including a poo giraffe, a Poo-man, a poo reindeer and
a weird poo mobile thing. Sadly despite our efforts they weren’t even slightly
interested. Lewa trampled my poo elephant then lay in and hugged the poo –
crazy lion! Then to top it all we had another lion walk, although I was with
the P’s this time who were pretty hyper unlike me, Neeru and Emily who just
wanted to sit down and rest – please no more walking!!
 |
| Lewa looking alert at the start of the long walk |
 |
| Laili looking stunning, as she does :) |
 |
| My poo elephant with big brother Jaicha in the background |
 |
| Lewa hugging the remains of the poo giraffe! |
 |
| The crew on our last night together :D Sarah, Neeru, Sunface, Andy, Sheran, Emily, Lorna, me and Jo |
