Author's Note

Hopelessly, I'm taking a mental picture of you now, 'cause hopelessly the hope is that we have so much to feel good about.
- One Republic

P.S. Please feed the fish :)

Friday 24 August 2012

AFRICA BLOG - Day 23-24

Day 23 - Monday 16th July
Up at 5:45am to go on research with Neeru. Was pretty awesome as always to see wild lions so close. We followed the pride through Ngamo for a few hours so got to see all 12 lions at one time or another.
       After breakfast a few of us joined Torie at BPG to help her with her project. She has a green and red ball which she puts in an enclosure to see whether lions have a preference so that enrichment in zoos could be improved - lions are colour blind but they don't like the shade of red and also they may recognise it as the colour of blood - pretty awesome experiment. So yeh, we watched the 7 girls Amghela, Acacia, Lina, Nandi, Mani, Msasa and Lisha for half an hour then came back to camp to chill for a few hours, before lunch and horse food making in the afternoon. This was then followed by elephant herding - always cool to be casually walking amongst African Elephants.
      In the evening a group of us sat about in the presentation room and watched Bridesmaids - nice chillaxed evening and overall a pretty lazy day!
Mighty Milo, leader of the Ngamo pride
One of the girls hogging the green ball
Walking with Ami



Day 24 - Tuesday 17th July
AWESOME LAST DAY! Well last full day of activities at AP before leaving to Victoria Falls tomorrow. Started with my last walk with the P's, Paza and Penya. Fairly uneventful as they were only fed yesterday but got some nice final photos with them. We were back on Torie's project after brekkie; we were meant to try the Big 4 Maxwell, Mufasa, Arthur and Casper but we couldn't get them into their management enclosure so we tried the Big 7 Apollo, Achilles, Kwezi, Mambo, Mamba, Phoenix and Penduka. Although this was also somewhat unsuccessful as they wouldn't come out of management! While standing around getting frustrated by lions, the founder of the park Mr. Andrew Conolly came over!!! I was so excited to talk to him - such an inspiring man! Myself and Neeru thanked him for the chance to experience this world and he thanked us for coming and making a difference :) Then we talked for a while about Stage 3 Burundi agreement and those that criticise what Antelope Park do. Mr. C. quoted Gandhi saying "First they ignore us, then they laugh at us, then they fight us then we win", which I though was fantastic and totally sums up AP. Just before he returned to his house, Neeru and I had a photo with him: he put his arm round me then goes to Neeru "Sorry I can't put my arm around you!" (this is funny as he only has one arm - he had his left arm, wedding ring and watch included, bitten off by a lion several years ago) what a legend! Our meeting with him kept us buzzing even though the lions still weren't playing ball (pun intended); after 20 minutes we gave up and wandered around BPG checking all the lions had water and chatting to a few of them en route ... as you do. A lot of prides are bachelor prides consisting of between 4 and 7 adult males. We visited a group of 5 called Chengeta, Amandla, Chando, Chaka and Chabalala whose enclosure is round the back so they probably don't get many visitors. When we approached them a few of them came to the fence to greet us - as they brushed along it we could put our fingers through to scratch their mane and down their side - obviously being wary of the fact that they might turn and bite said fingers off at any moment, however it did genuinely seem like they were just greeting us as they would the other pride members. Accepted :D It's actually one of my favourite things to do here. We moved to the adjacent enclosure where Ltalo, Praise, Landela and Lokothula live (another bachelor pride) and were greeted by Ltalo whote then decided trying to reach Neeru's gloves through the cage would be a better use of his time! 2 of the younger male pride at the back of BPG were also keen to introduce themselves - Tsavo and Sango are about 3.5 years old and having stunning blonde manes. Tsavo and I had quite a nice moment through the fence - he leant against it while I stroked his mane for what seemed like ages - amaze balls.
      Anyway, seeing as we'd had quite an unproductive morning we went to help Allison take the bags of offal over to Ltalo and his crew for their weekly feed. Offal is heavy, smelly and generally gross but me and Neeru hadn't done it before so we jsut got stuck in! Particularly Neeru who took a cow fetus from the offal pile for the males (breeding lions shouldn't have fetusus so as it affects their fertility) and went to throw it to Cheeky, a lioness with FIV (lion HIV) although it fell back on her she tried to throw it over which was hilarious - rather her than me!
      Last lunch at AP was cottage pie - WIN! Post-lunch activity was less fun - about 7 of us went up to the Bomas (elephant housing) and shovelled the shit into neat piles .... hmmmm. Although on the way out me and Neeru had a photo with and said goodbye to our friend Gertrude, a legendary crazy woman who works on the gate at AP and sometimes serves soup at dinnertime and sing "Waka waka!!" and dances. It's her 48th birthday on Sunday so hopefully will see her before I leave. 
      At 4pm  we went on a cheeky boat cruise around Ngamo dam and saw the sunset - nice end to my last full day at Antelope Park. Up at 5:30am tomorrow to shower pre-setting off for Hwange National Park.
WOOP WOOP!
Having cuddles with Paza on my last P's walk

Me, Neeru and Caroline with our lion handling friends George,  Ticha, Mackson and Mackay

Tombi being cheeky

Me,the fantastic Gertrude and Neeru

Me and Neeru with the legendary Mr Conolly

Casper having a snooze at BPG

Tsavo looking very handsome


Thursday 23 August 2012

AFRICA BLOG - Days 20-22

Day 20 - Friday 13th July
Awesome day! The date did not bring any bad luck! It's mine and Neeru's last few full days at Antelope Park (before our trip to Vic Falls) so we're able to choose what activities we do. Also we're getting some activities filmed for our DVDs. So the morning started off with a P's walk followed by half hour of elephant training with Tombi who kept poking me with her trunk and pestering me to give her treats! At 9:30am I had the chance to do something I've been wanting to do since I got here - meat prep and cub feed. Admittedly I was a bit anxious about how I would react to a huge container full of animal parts! The initial smell was pretty horrendous but once the meat was removed and cold storage was shut it didn't really smell at all. We were feeding 4 sets of lions so had 4 cow legs, 2 sets of ribs and the neck and shoulders. The set of ribs had to be cut in half which I had the honours of doing and actually I strangely enjoyed it! I found the whole thing pretty cool and oddly not gory. The meat, once sliced and with added vitamins etc. was chucked in the trailer and we hopped in the cruiser to deliver it to the big cats  ... kinda like the lion version of Dominos! First stop Laili and Lewa. The cubs all need a small piece of meat with vitamin A tablets in which has to be hand fed through the cage: I got to feed Lewa hers - AWESOME! After that me and Neeru placed 2 of the legs in some trees (gotta make the lions do a bit of work for their food) and let the girls out to feed. They make the meat look weightless when they carry it and yet me and Neeru struggled to lift it onto the branch - it just shows how insanely strong they are! Next up were the P's who also had their vit. A tablets, a leg and a slab of shoulder meat. Sahara and Soriah (the pregnant girls) were next and got most of the neck and some ribs thrown into them. Finall the 4 C's - the Stage 1 night encounter lions - Chobe, Chundu, Chise, Chete who got the remaining leg and ribs. Such a great morning!
             In the afternoon myself, Sheran and Neeru worked at the stables doing food making which is always good as I get to chat to Summer and Landella dogs and my top boy Jacko horse! We concluded the day with a lion walk with the L's. Despite only being fed a few hours before, Laili decided to show off by climbing a tree and shortly after they had a really close chase with some impala - even on full stomachs they still want more food!


With the cold storage doors open!

Soriah with her ribs - om nom

Chundu enjoying his lunch

Day 21 - Saturday 14th July
Dragged myself out of bed to find out lion walks were full so went to look sad at Jealous who found space on the P's walk for me. Although it actually wasn't really worth it as there were 11 guests so we spent most the time stopping for photos. I didn't bother with breakfast either as I was saving room for pizza in town. Instead I had a shower, a hot shower which is rare here! I actually had to turn the cold tap on too! Luxury! Anyway, usual trip into town for pizza and alcohol. I'm glad it was the last time ... I feel really out of place. Also the money confuses the crap out of me: it's mostly USD's but anything under $1 is in Rand ... and I swear the amount R1 is worth changes at every place we go! About half 10 we got picked up and went to the boys orphanage for a sports day. Sports Days here pretty much just consist of playing a giant game of football. We split into 2 teams and played 90minutes flat out. Initially us girls were ignored by the boys but myself, Gunns, Caroline, Sunface, Neeru and Hilde kept trying and got in a few good tackles and eventually the ball was passed to me. I actually did quite well too and managed to dribble passed Paul and Seamus before passing it to one of the boys - I was quite proud of myself. However the next time I got the ball I missed it completely, fell on my arse and grazed my leg! It's difficult to play in flip flops OK!
             Once we were back at AP, me and Neeru went on an elephant ride with Ami for half hour. She passed me 4 rocks and a stick as gifts. I kept one of the rocks as a souvenir.
             At 4pm we set off of for the PoloX match - loads of people came to watch. Jacko was playing which surprised me as he's fairly old and slow but he did quite well. When he came off for a break I looked after him and offered him some of my cider but he just raised his eyebrows at me ... or would've if horses had eyebrows. I volunteered to ride him back to stables afterwards ... I'd had 3 bottles of cider so not sure I was in a fit state to do so but hey ho, there's no law against it!
            This was followed by the standard Saturday night drinking extravaganza which we kicked off by having a Jäegerbomb (yes I know, they have Jäegar here!), danced about for a bit then decided it was time for another shot which unfortunately turned out to be tequila.There were about 12 of us vols who all did a tequila shot - the barman had to fetch extra glasses and lemons! From then on the night was filled with more drinking, dancing on desks, drinking and general fun ... in bed at 2am. Good times.
Sharing my Hunters Gold with Jacko horse

Sarah, Neeru, me and Chutney (Emily) getting our drink on

Me, Sarah, Caroline and Torie being drunkards

Me, Geir and Ida in the office partying the night away!

Day 22 - Sunday 15th July
Hungover. Dragged myself out of bed for breakfast at 8am but it was a struggle to eat it. Nearly everyone was suffering but by 10:30am we felt we'd recovered enough to go canoe-ing down Ngamo river. Me, Torie, Sarah and Neeru chilled out, floating on the suspiciously green water for nearly 2 hours.
          Lunch deserves a mention today as there were yorkshire puddings - WIN!
          Post-lunch me and Neeru went on our filmed horse safari. Obviously I was with Jacko who was having a very slow day! I was miles behind the others for most of the ride. On the plus side we got really close to giraffe, zebra, impala, tsebok and Wilbur the waterbuck so should have some great footage on our DVD.
          There was some mild excitement at dinner when Jealous appeared at our table saying there was a huge bush fire coming towards the park so about 20 of us ran and jumped on the back of a cruiser (which definitely should only normally hold 20 people so a lot of us were hanging off the side). To say the ending was anti-climatic would be an understatement. Within a few minutes we had a flat tyre (can't think why) and then while waiting for a replacement we were told that actually the fire was pretty fare away so we had to walk back to camp - no night time fire fighting for us :(
          Since Saturday night was a bit wild, a bunch of us decided to watch a film .. I voted Toy Story 3 however I was over-ruled and we watched Blood Diamond instead. Possibly the worst film to watch when you're in Africa; don't get me wrong it was a good film but was just a bit too relevant and very depressing! Also it was ridiculously long so we didn't get to bed 'til 11pm - such rebels!
Sarah and Neeru row, row, rowing their boat

Torie and me loving canoeing

Monday 13 August 2012

AFRICA BLOG - Days 17-19


Day 17 – Tuesday 10th July
After an early night I was feeling pretty ready for the lion walk this morning and it appeared the L’s had recovered too. We had an awesome walk, with the lions hunting some impala within the first 20 minutes. The best part came about 40 minutes in when both Laili and Lewa started stalking a group of 4 zebra. Laili was being very smart and laying down in the grass when the zebra were looking then running towards them as soon as they looked away. When she was about 10m from the nearest zebra they bolted and the chase was on! Lewa unfortunately was a bit too far back to cut them off but 3 more zebra appeared from the long grass and ran right passed Laili who got within a few feet of the last one – so cool to watch – we were cheering them on! We had to rush back from the walk in time to say goodbye to Jo, Andy and Lorna. Did not expect to be so sad to see them leave but we all got pretty close in the 2 weeks we were together – there were quite a few tears! Hopefully we’ll reunite again soon. There were fried potatoes at breakfast though which cheered us up! At 9:30am we had BPG, so just shovelling shit. One of the big males (either Puma or Casper) felt it was necessary to spray me so I’m now his territory. I thought I was well out of the way but it’s surprising how far it goes! Gross! In the afternoon we made sticks. Yeh I know … but they needs more lion walking sticks so it was me, Neeru, Turi and Sheran’s job (along with Mackays house) to break the bark off branches for 1.5hours. it was quite fun actually, though it would’ve been nice if Mackay had told us the secret to doing it before we spent 90 minutes swearing at twigs.
          At 4pm it was time for the fire breaking which awesome. Basically fire breaking is the controlled burning of the grass and bushes around the main camp and Ngamo park areas so that is a real bush fire starts it’ll burn out when it reaches the areas we’ve already burned. Generally there’s not too much to do – just make sure the edge of the fire doesn’t pass the cut off point and if it does we beat it out with branches; mostly its fun just to watch stuff burn! We were out from 4pm ‘til 6pm and some of the fire got pretty big at times! We really stunk of smoke afterwards!
        Phoned home this evening too – cost me about £20 but worth it – it’s nice to know everything is good and normal back in England and to hear a familiar voice J I do miss my family but as long as I know I can get in touch whenever it’s all good.
The big guy Silwane at BPG

FIRE!

Me being a firefighter!

 Day 18 - Wednesday 11th July
Fairly bad choice of activities this morning: there were so many guests that the lion walks are fully booked. A lot of us lion crew got landed with emptying out all the BPG bags into a truck to be taken to a dump – these contain week old lion poo, uneaten offal and other varied animal parts  i.e. the whole combo absolutely stinks! 3 of us stood on the truck and were handed up the bags from another 3. The bags were then cleaned out ready to have new offal put in them for future lion feeds. Not fun although we did invent a new dance called the “shit shuffle” which brightened the mood. Everyone showered and/or changed their clothes as soon as we were back at camp! I didn’t think there’d be anything I’d wanna do less that that but our morning activity snare sweeping. Our guide (Kailos) took it way too seriously! We all had to walk 5m apart in silence so that we could listen out for dangerous animals such as elephants or buffalo, neither of which we have wild at AP. We also had to look out for hunters that wanted to shoot us … also highly unlikely. Obviously removing snares is important but it was so dull!
        However the afternoon totally made up for it. Several lions were being darted and moved around and all vols were given the chance to go and watch. Basically Swahili is in an enclosure with her sister Sahara and another lioness Soriah, both of whom are pregnant with cubs due in the next few weeks, so she needs moving to another enclosure up at BPG. This then meant that to make space a group of 3 lionesses Paka, Lola and Leelee had to be moved to Gumtree enclosures where they’d be joined by a male Puma who will hopefully mate with them. Keeping up?
         Anyway, Leanne the lion manager came to dart the lions with the long pole thing. It was fascinating to watch, I loved it and learnt so much! There were two failed attempts on Leelee and Paka before a meat bribe allowed Leanne to inject Paka who was then driven up to Gumtree. We were stoof around waiting for Paka to wake for about 10minutes and when she did, she was like me after too many ciders! Pretty funny to watch! Once she was a bit more stable we went back to dart the other two. I got a little stroke with Leelee when we returned when she came and brushed herself against the fence and I tickled her neck – as you do with the king of beasts! The second transfer of these two lionesses went smoothly, I actually helped a bit when Leelee’s temperature rose above 40°C so I grabbed a water drum and took it into the enclosure to the handlers – saved! A few of us stayed to watch Lola and Leelee wake up then returned to camp about 6:15pm.
        The plan after dinner was to watch films in the vol lounge … this went slightly wrong as me, Sarah and Sunface spotted one of the horses, Prince, chillaxing and eating grass by the vol block. He then ran off to reveal that the rest of the 20 horses were down by the lake. Obviously the job then became a bit too big for us so we called Andy … he seriously needs to keep a better eye of his horses!
An unconscious Paka
Coming round at Gumtree
Sleepy Lola

Day 19 - Thursday 12th July
Thanks to the morons at Bulawayo Airport who only gave me a 20-day visa, I had to go into town today to renew it. Fortunately, I had a girl called Brenda with me who is local and recognised as it was pretty intimidating and often in cases like mine they expect some sort of monetary bribe in exchange for the visa – times like this you remember you’re not in England anymore!
           So anyway, I then spent the rest of my day at the drop-in clinic with the community volunteers so I got to see how Sarah, Sunface and the others spend their days. It was pretty good – we were cooking beef stew and sadza for the homeless boys and other people at the clinic and we played some football and volleyball so still a pretty good day – especially as they baked an epic chocolate sponge cake for us vols.
            Lack of lions during the day was made up for by the walk in the afternoon with the P’s. It’d been 2 days since their last feed so they were pretty lively. About half hour in we encountered a huge herd of zebra – Paza led the stalk with Penya following for about 10 minutes with the zebra gradually walking away. Eventually Paza began to chase them but she hadn’t banked on the stallion turning around and charging her! It chased her for about 100m and I’m pretty sure it bit her on the bum! We all had to run to keep up – so awesome! Paza wasn’t too keen to continue after that but back-up lion Penya decided to try her luck. She must’ve tried to sneak up on Mr. Zebra about 7 times but every time got chased off – so hilarious to watch!
           Absolute treat in the evening too – VEHICLE STALK! The idea of this is we get dropped off in the middle of the bush and Dan drive off in the cruisers.  We then have to find our way back to the cruisers without getting spotted by the red spotlight. Me and Neeru had the genius idea of holding onto the back of the truck as it drove off but we chickened out as it drove off but we chickened out as it picked up speed and jumped off! Once the vehicles were gone you could barely see anything; the Moon wasn’t out so the starts were our only source of light! We ran for the first bit and sort of stayed in a group but as we got closer we had to get lower so that we were crawling the bush, trying to avoid thorns which was near impossible! Unfortunately Dan has taken note of what everyone was wearing so I was maybe the 5th person to get out as Dan recognised me in my grey trackies – FAIL! A few people managed to make it though – we played a second game but I fell over a rock and got stuck in 2m high grass (God knows what creepy creatures were there with me) so surrendered pretty early on ! Not sure I was born to be a lion.

Matt, me and Sarah ready for vehicle stalk

Sunday 12 August 2012

AFRICA BLOG - Days 14-16


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

Friday 10 August 2012

AFRICA BLOG - Days 10-13


Day 10 - Tuesday 3rd July
In physical pain! Partially from the workout yesterday and partially from this morning’s horse riding! I rode on a cool horse called Jacko – he was a bit lazy and needed the crop but was otherwise pretty well behaved – we definitely bonded! We learnt to walk and trot and we tried to canter but Jacko was far too lazy. It still bloody hurt by the end though! After lunch we went on a horse safari around the park. This time I rode Hwange – a younge stallion who was more obedient but apparently hates other horses so I had to stay at the back. Definitely got dibs on Jacko for the overnight horse safari on Thursday.
                Since we’re in so much pain the obvious thing to do next was play football with Sarah for an hour (I managed to kick the ball into my own face and we ended up in hysterics for a while!). I’m pretty knackered, bruised and achey now and hungry for dinner … it had better be something nice!
Me with my favourite boy Jacko <3
Me on Hwange before the bush ride

Day 11 – Wednesday 4th July
Independence Day for the Americans here so there’s going to be a bit of a party tonight.
                Day started with a P’s walk – Paza tried to go for me again. She really is a very special lion!
                This morning me, Neeru and Sheran had BPG cleaning, not especially exciting but fun anyway. At 12pm all of us vols got to watch the Big 7 males (Apollo, Achilles, Mambo, Mamba, Kwezi, Phoenix and Penduka) get fed which was craaaazy! The less dominant ones nicked a bit of food quickly and ran off with it but the top 3 dominant ones (Apollo, Mambo and Mamba) lay on the offal growling at each other for ages and fighting over the food – awesome!

                In the afternoon us 3 plus Lorna went off fixing boundary fences. Although courtesy of “Africa Time” (you quickly learn that ‘now now’ means in the next 10minutes, ‘now’ means in the next hour and ‘just now’ could mean anytime in the next few weeks!), we didn’t get started ‘til about 2:45pm when we should’ve gotten going at 2:05pm. Wasn’t especially excited about it but it turned out to be hilarious. The fence didn’t need much fixing so we just drove along a really unkempt part of the track looking for parts of the fence to fix and ducking and diving onto the seats of the cruises to avoid being hit by branches. At one point the branches were so low we had to lie down which of course we were all hysterical at.
                Finally at 4pm I walked with the L’s – haven’t been with them for a while so that was cool, although they didn’t hunt anything even though impala were really close – stupid shumbas!

Chillaxing with Casper, a very handsome lion at BPG
Mambo (or maybe Mamba, I'm not sure) enjoying some lovely intestines for lunch :)
Laili and Lewa having cuddle times on their afternoon walk
On the look out for game with Lewa

Day 12 – Thursday 5th July/Day 13 – Friday 6th July
BEST DAY SO FAR! So I stumbled half sleep out of my room about 6:05am and straight away Dan shouts “LISA! How are you? Hurry up the trucks leaving!” … wha? Apparently I was going out on research and the truck leaves at 6:15. This involves going out with Rae to the Stage 2 release site to see the Ngamo pride which consists of 15 lions - Milo the male, his missuses Kenge, Kwali, Narla, Narnia, Ashanti and Phyre, the first born cub Wakanaka who is 17 months, two 9 month olds called Kora and Karnissa and finally two 8 month olds called Anulpa and Amadi. It was incredible to be so close to probably the nearest thing to wild lions I’ll ever be – the cubs have never had human contact so are pretty much completely wild. They mostly just lay around sleeping; the cubs played for a while then the whole pride joined together which apparently we were very lucky to see. We then just sat and watched the cubs suckle and the adults chill out for a while.
Wakanaka - the first born cub to the Ngamo pride who is now 18months old
Anopa and Amadi suckling
The stunning lead male, Milo
 After breakfast we did enclosure cleaning that had a bit of rush to pack everything for overnight safari, which was the absolute highlight of my 2 weeks so far. There were 10 of us volunteers, plus Matt the Animal Planet cameraman, the stable guys Andy and Joe and their dogs. I got the lovely Jacko horse again so saddled him and put his harness on and we all set off around 3pm. It was amazing and Jacko was really good: trotted and even cantered a bit when I wanted him to – I got praised for my good control of him – I AM HORSE MASTER! Haha! Anyway, we got really close to zebra, impala, kuda and I finally saw a herd of wildebeest which we chased around and may have caused a slight stampede! We got to ride through water too – sweet! We stopped for a break half way to the “campsite” and me and Jacko shared a coke … seriously love that horse – Andy said he’d sell him to me for $400 … tempting! We rode into the sunset which was an awesome sight and arrived at the camp about 5:30pm. It was so much better than I expected – they had camp chairs set up around a fire, a full on dining table set for 12 with lamps, plates, glasses etc., and finally mattresses and our bedding ready for us to sleep on. We made up a little paddock for the horses and put their coats on for the night. 
                Dinner was incredible! Mr. Conolly’s (the founder of Antelope Park) own chef cooked for us. We had fish on a salad bed with white onion sauce for starters, stuffed beef and chicken in a salsa sauce with homemade potato wedges and vegetables for main and a yummy banana cheesecake for pudding. Totally worth the $80 we paid!
                Post dinner we all sat around the fire listening to music and drinking beers under the millions of stars until midnight.
Woke up the next morning having slept surprisingly well considering there was no tent and it was freezing cold! I did have thick socks on, 3 jumpers and a hat … and a duvet and a blanket so I was prepared! We were awoken by the sun rising at 6:30am to find that the horses had gone! Andy had let them out to graze but they had other ideas and wandered off into the bush! Joe went off to find them while we sat down and were provided with a full cooked breakfast with coffee and toast which distracted us while we waited for one of the guys to go and fetch a cruiser to take us back to camp. Kinda felt robbed of our second day of horse safari so may try and go again next week. I was also quite saddened that Jacko left – I thought we were friends! Regardless of this little hiccup it was still the highlight of my trip so far.
                Once we were back, a group of us went to do another workout by the pool – seriously hard work! But fortunately I had the rest of the day to relax, which we certainly did!  Well until the big BBQ/bonfire out by Bush enclosure at 5pm – everyone went and we chatted and drank plenty of cider, as usual! Neeru and I chatted to Jo and Andy , who’re leaving Tuesday (bad times) until they went back to camp and then to Geir one of the Norweigian guys but by 9pm though I was almost falling asleep on the rocks! I think me and Enid actually completely fell asleep at one point – Lorna had to wake us up when it was time to leave. Although as per usual here this was easier said than done: just as we’d all climbed into the back of the truck wrapped in our blankets due to the serious cold we heard the engine rev … and die. After a couple of attempts we accepted the truck wasn’t going to start so we all hopped out and tried push, however a combination of driver Dan being drunk and the truck being on a hill resulted in our efforts failing miserably and so the decision was made to walk back to camp. That’s something you don’t expect to see wandering through the Zimbabwean wilderness – a group of 20+ drunk and tired volunteers all wrapped in blankets!
Back with my homeboy Jacko, sharing a coke :)
Riding into the sunset - incredible!
Sarah, Mai-lynne, Enid and me at the bonfire
Neeru, Enid, me and Emily (Chutney) after a few to drink!