Time to Catch Up

Its been a busy week at Shamwari since our last blog post.  Lots to catch you up on, so pour yourself a cup of coffee and settle into a comfortable chair.

When we last left you, we had returned from a day of Cape Buffalo darting and transport and prickly pear destruction.  Just to give you an idea, here is what a typical prickly pear looks like.  My hand has only now recovered from the thorns.

Thursday of last week was another early one - darting another buffalo and her calf followed by a move to the new herd.  The mother of the calf didn't go down easy, and one of the rangers narrowly escaped getting gored.  Thursday night was a great night - camping out under the stars in our sleeping bags.   Baking "stick bread" over the campfire was delicious:

We didn't sleep all that much, despite the fact that the rangers had left their rifles in carefully selected points around the perimeter of our camp, with instructions to those taking turns staying up all night on guard duty to wake them if they heard anything "unusual".  Thankfully, no elephants, rhinos, hippos or lions took any interest in our camp, though thanks to our many game drives, we know there are no shortage of the same.

 

Much of Friday, as well as  2 mornings this week were spent at a daycare center in an adjacent township called Paterson where the unemployment rate exceeds 90%.   The public water tap gets shut off at noon everyday, so we installed a 5000L water tank to catch rainfall that drains off the roof so the kids will always have a supply of drinking water.  By the by, our drinking water at Shamwari is collected the same way.

The weekend was pretty chill.  We don't have any work to do on the weekends, so we took a couple of long walks around the property (the part of the reserve we stay in is about 1000 acres and is predator free).  Saturday night we took a taxi into Grahamstown - a town about an hour away that is home to Rhodes University (not to be confused with Rhodes College in Memphis).  We hung out at the local university pub, the Rat and Parrot, watching rugby on tv with a few of the other volunteers.

This week has been split pretty evenly between wildlife-related activities and manual labor - finishing up installation of the water tank, removing old fences around the reserve to prevent animals from getting snared in them, and clearing brush that is growing into roadways.  Melanie wields a mean machete!

One of the cooler days was tracking 2 of the cheetahs on the property (they have implanted transmitters), and then being able to get up close with them

This afternoon was a blast too, as we got to go out with the head ranger trainer and shoot the South African version of the American M-16, and a 12-gauge shotgun.  Once again, Melanie's skill frightened me just a bit.....

Well, that's all for tonight.  Glad to hear that America is back open for business.  We're following the Sox and the Pats from a distance, so give us something to cheer about!