Not much has been new here at CARE this past week. It was my friend Mandy's 26th birthday on Thursday. A few of us went to town and had a nice little lunch at Spur, this South African Mexican/native American themed restaurant, complete with a happy birthday song and drum by the waiters. Then we did the weekly communal and personal grocery shopping at Pick N Pay. I was able to add a few pictures to my posts in town also, hope they help! It's always fun to ride in the bed of the truck (it's perfectly safe) on the way to town keeping an eye out for any elephants (of which we saw two). Apparently last night there were hyenas making a lot of noise close to our house, but I was asleep by then. A few days ago there were a couple male elephants right down by our river. One of them broke our water pump inn the night, but we got it fixed.
Most of my mornings have been taken up with sorting mangos. We have tons and tons of mangos from local farmers, and every morning, sometimes twice a morning, I sort through the crates of mangos sorting them into hard and soft. They have to be soft/ripe enough for the baboons sink their teeth into and eat. But mangos straight from the farm are often super dirty and sticky. So sorting them can be nasty work, even more so when your crate has a family of mice living in the bottom of it. It's always demoralizing when you get a crate with only like two soft ones in it. Sounds fun doesn't it??
The rest of my days have been spent in with the babies, who are growing rapidly, and reading in my spare time. I've taken to re-reading the entire Harry Potter series and am currently on number five. Books 1-6 are here and we've desperately asked the next volunteer coming to bring the 7th (and best) one. It's still ridiculously hot here, although right now it's cloudy and there's a nice breeze, so that I've been working on my tan. Sometime this week I plan on making my well-received Apple Puff Pastry desert here. It's going to be hard work without my handy tools, like a peeler and corer, but I'll manage. Yesterday Danny found a black mamba snake (the deadliest in the world) hanging around near his room. He and Stephen quickly found a gun and shot it dead. Danny took us to see it afterwards and man was this thing big. It was about 6 and a half feet long! It was a nice grey-ish color, but with a jet black mouth (the name comes from when it opens it's mouth and you can just see black when it comes at you). I don't mind snakes, but I never NEVER want to run across one of them alive. A bite from a black mamba will have you paralyzed in about 15 minutes and dead shortly thereafter. They also have this crazy ability to rise up or jump a few feet into the air.
Also this week, Danny taught a couple of us some tracking techniques. He showed us different spoor (tracks) in the sand down the beach. He showed us how to tell which direction they were going and how to use your basic common sense when tracking. He also showed us what plants we could eat and a plant to make a needle and thread with, and how to make a simple animal trap that many poachers in the area use. Then later that evening Danny set up a trail for us to follow, complete with his tracks and fake blood. It's does involve just a lot of common sense and keen eyesight. Pretty interesting stuff.
That's all I've got for now. I'll come up with something more interesting to write soon!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Kruger National Park
Tuesday and Wednesday Adam, Danny, and I went to the Kruger National Park. It's humongous, something like 200,000 hectares or something, with roads only accessing 10% of the land. Just imagine all the cool stuff that is probably happening all the time in that other 90% of bush that no one knows about!! We left CARE at 4:15am and set off to the Orpen gate entrance. For two days we went on game drives for hours. The landscape was amaaaaaazing. It was low flatlands with some bushes and trees for miles, very classic Africa, exactly what you would picture. Most of our time was spent looking for cats (lions, leopards, or cheetahs) but to no avail. It was sorely disappointing, but I guess I'll just have to go back! Danny knows an incredible amount of information on everything in the park, all about the animals and birds, plants, soil, tracks and scat, etc. He's a true bushman.
We didn't see any cats, but we saw tons of impala, zebra, buffalo, giraffe, elephants (huge herds of them), wildebeest, kory busters (birds), eagles and hawks galore, vultures, and a whole bunch of other birds. My favorite I think were the hyenas. We spent the night at a campsite and at night the hyenas came right up to the fence when they smelled the cooking food. Adam and I got right up in their faces to take some pictures. I got a pretty good one with it's mo
uth open so it looks like it's cackling (it was yawning). Fun fact about hyenas- they are actually a part of the cat family. That night we cooked up a braai (barbecue) and had some great meat. Adam and I wanted to try something exotic so we, don't judge me too much, had some giraffe steaks. The meat was actually pretty good, a little tough and it had a sort of fishy aftertaste. I did feel a little bad eating it though, especially when there were a bunch of giraffes outside our campsite in the morning.
The second morning was also awesome as we came to this open grassland and saw another hyena (rare in the daytime, we thought there must be a kill nearby, but couldn't see it) just walking around near two kory busters (huge rare birds). A little ways away there were buffalo and zebra and wildebeest and elephant herds. It was again just like you think Africa looks like. It was super neat to see all the animals in one space. We spent most of the second day looking for those damn cats and wild dogs, but were unlucky. Next time.
I was sad to leave the bush actually. I could do that every day. Danny agrees and says not to tempt him by talking about it too much. I'm definitely going to plan another two day trip in a month or two. Today is St. Patricks Day, so naturally we are throwing a little party. Everyone is wearing green and we got some supplies to play classic American drinking games that we all miss so much. it should be a good time. It's nice to have little things like parties or nights out or games to break up the monotony of the days here with the baboons (who are still doing well). I can't believe I've been here over 2 weeks already. Time is flying, even though I feel like I've been here forever. That's about it for now! I've gotta get to my next baby shift...
We didn't see any cats, but we saw tons of impala, zebra, buffalo, giraffe, elephants (huge herds of them), wildebeest, kory busters (birds), eagles and hawks galore, vultures, and a whole bunch of other birds. My favorite I think were the hyenas. We spent the night at a campsite and at night the hyenas came right up to the fence when they smelled the cooking food. Adam and I got right up in their faces to take some pictures. I got a pretty good one with it's mo
uth open so it looks like it's cackling (it was yawning). Fun fact about hyenas- they are actually a part of the cat family. That night we cooked up a braai (barbecue) and had some great meat. Adam and I wanted to try something exotic so we, don't judge me too much, had some giraffe steaks. The meat was actually pretty good, a little tough and it had a sort of fishy aftertaste. I did feel a little bad eating it though, especially when there were a bunch of giraffes outside our campsite in the morning.The second morning was also awesome as we came to this open grassland and saw another hyena (rare in the daytime, we thought there must be a kill nearby, but couldn't see it) just walking around near two kory busters (huge rare birds). A little ways away there were buffalo and zebra and wildebeest and elephant herds. It was again just like you think Africa looks like. It was super neat to see all the animals in one space. We spent most of the second day looking for those damn cats and wild dogs, but were unlucky. Next time.
I was sad to leave the bush actually. I could do that every day. Danny agrees and says not to tempt him by talking about it too much. I'm definitely going to plan another two day trip in a month or two. Today is St. Patricks Day, so naturally we are throwing a little party. Everyone is wearing green and we got some supplies to play classic American drinking games that we all miss so much. it should be a good time. It's nice to have little things like parties or nights out or games to break up the monotony of the days here with the baboons (who are still doing well). I can't believe I've been here over 2 weeks already. Time is flying, even though I feel like I've been here forever. That's about it for now! I've gotta get to my next baby shift...
Friday, March 11, 2011
Baboons at Last!
I've officially been at CARE now for 10 days (is that all?) and it's been wonderful. And hot hot hot. Today is supposed to get up into the high 90s. All the people here are super cool also. There's about 15 of us here now, all but 1 are returning volunteers and are here for a long stay of months and months. I've even met a few before so it's been nice catching up. In the past, I've come in the summertime (northern hemisphere summer) when schools are on break and there are about 20-25 people here and most are only for one month. So this is a nice change of pace because these people will be around for my whole stay. But enough about the people...
Baboons at last! It's been delightful getting back to being with crazy monkeys and crazy monkey people. Two to three times a day we sit in with the babies in 1 hour shifts, two people per shift. There are 18 little guys and gals running around. We are there to make sure they're behaving basically. We pull them apart if they're fighting, scold the naughty ones, and comfort the victims. We also provide more jungle gym equipment and a nice lap on which to take a nap (and more often than not, pee during it). Suffice it to say that we are veeery dirty (and rather smelly) most of the time, but we only complain until it all dries. I've learned all of the baboons' names now and am starting to work out their personalities. Babies' names: Elton, Becks, Tromperton, Blake
, Miles, Colby, Toughie (a personal favorite already- he sleeps on me, bottle in mouth, all the time. Too cute.), Yappy, Remi, Carla, Bianca, Breezy, Gracie, Eli, Will, Alena, Amber, and Joshua. They are actually a pretty mellow group of kids compared to some I've been with in the past. I've jumped right back into lipsmacking (baboon for hello), play-facing, and grooming. It's been awesome. The rest of out days are spent making bottles of milk and food for the babies and some larger baboons. If anyone had ANY baboon questions, I know I got some before I left, no matter how silly, please let me know and I'll try to answer them!!
This week Africa decided to haze my return by wreaking some havoc on my digestive system. Without going into more detail, let's just say I had a couple of rough days. But they gave me some medicine and it seems to be helping out a great deal. I've been feeling a whole lot better today! I also saw my first (this time) giraffe today! It was kind of far across the river but still, it was pretty neat. It's fun living in the bush with wildlife!
I think that's it for now!
Baboons at last! It's been delightful getting back to being with crazy monkeys and crazy monkey people. Two to three times a day we sit in with the babies in 1 hour shifts, two people per shift. There are 18 little guys and gals running around. We are there to make sure they're behaving basically. We pull them apart if they're fighting, scold the naughty ones, and comfort the victims. We also provide more jungle gym equipment and a nice lap on which to take a nap (and more often than not, pee during it). Suffice it to say that we are veeery dirty (and rather smelly) most of the time, but we only complain until it all dries. I've learned all of the baboons' names now and am starting to work out their personalities. Babies' names: Elton, Becks, Tromperton, Blake
, Miles, Colby, Toughie (a personal favorite already- he sleeps on me, bottle in mouth, all the time. Too cute.), Yappy, Remi, Carla, Bianca, Breezy, Gracie, Eli, Will, Alena, Amber, and Joshua. They are actually a pretty mellow group of kids compared to some I've been with in the past. I've jumped right back into lipsmacking (baboon for hello), play-facing, and grooming. It's been awesome. The rest of out days are spent making bottles of milk and food for the babies and some larger baboons. If anyone had ANY baboon questions, I know I got some before I left, no matter how silly, please let me know and I'll try to answer them!!This week Africa decided to haze my return by wreaking some havoc on my digestive system. Without going into more detail, let's just say I had a couple of rough days. But they gave me some medicine and it seems to be helping out a great deal. I've been feeling a whole lot better today! I also saw my first (this time) giraffe today! It was kind of far across the river but still, it was pretty neat. It's fun living in the bush with wildlife!
I think that's it for now!
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Monkey Camp
Hey guys,
I made it to CARE just fine. My overnight flight had good movies so I watched 127 Hours and The Social Network (yes, again) and Unstoppable which was actually really good. An entertaining Denzel afternoon flick.
It is suuuper hot here since it's the end of summer and I'm wishing I brought more than one pair of shorts haha. It has to be like 90 degrees, but a nice dry heat, not remotely as humid as Iguazu. It should start to cool down though in a couple of months. There are about 15 or so kids here and most are here long term for months and months which is nice. A lot of things are different. There's really only one group of babies we sit with throughout the day (last time I was here there were three groups). There is a second group of older baboons that only get sat with twice a day because they are being weened off of people, which is sad because I like the larger ones. They tend to be a bit more rowdy and fun. These younger ones I've found already to be a bit on the slow side. So there seems to be plenty of time to do lots of reading!
Anyways, that's about all the news I have. I'm working on making friends, staying cool, and learning babies' names.
I made it to CARE just fine. My overnight flight had good movies so I watched 127 Hours and The Social Network (yes, again) and Unstoppable which was actually really good. An entertaining Denzel afternoon flick.
It is suuuper hot here since it's the end of summer and I'm wishing I brought more than one pair of shorts haha. It has to be like 90 degrees, but a nice dry heat, not remotely as humid as Iguazu. It should start to cool down though in a couple of months. There are about 15 or so kids here and most are here long term for months and months which is nice. A lot of things are different. There's really only one group of babies we sit with throughout the day (last time I was here there were three groups). There is a second group of older baboons that only get sat with twice a day because they are being weened off of people, which is sad because I like the larger ones. They tend to be a bit more rowdy and fun. These younger ones I've found already to be a bit on the slow side. So there seems to be plenty of time to do lots of reading!
Anyways, that's about all the news I have. I'm working on making friends, staying cool, and learning babies' names.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
London
The last stop on my little vacation is London, where I am now. It's been a hectic few days here. I'm staying with my friend Charlotte who went to harvard- Westlake but we met at Tufts. She's studying here for the year. On Friday I took a nice little walk around the neighborhood and then went to the British Museum which has tons of classics stuff, including the Rosetta Stone and a bunch of the marble friezes from the Parthenon, which are controversial because the Greeks think this British guy named Elgin stole them way back when and that they should be returned to Athens. Regardless, they're pretty damn cool. I spent a couple hours looking in the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian rooms so didn't make it to any other exhibits.
Saturday was Charlotte's birthday so we went to her favorite Saturday market, Borough Market, which is in an old train station type place and is filled with food stalls and vendors. It was very cool. We walked all around trying the free samples of jams, salami, bread, olive oils, and cheeses, had lunch and desert, then took a long walk around the city back to her flat. Our stroll took us past the Eye of London, Parliament and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Trafalgar Square. It was a nice quick tour of the sights. We then went to dinner at Wagamamas with her brother William who is doing his junior year abroad here. Use spent the night our with a whole bunch of Charlotte's friends here at a club, bit it's the adventure afterwards that is most funny (but maybe you just had to be there). The club closed at 3, but we hung around for about 40 more minutes because Charlotte's friend Hayley had lost her camera, credit card, and ID. We caught a bus around 345 hoping to head for home. The bus stopped running for what had to be around 20 minutes while too many people were trying to get on. When if finallllllly got going, I looked out the window and said "oh look, there's that cool bridge" meaning the Tower Bridge. Turns out we were definitely not supposed to cross the river to the south side of London. We had gotten an a bus going the completely wrong way. We quickly hopped off the bus at the London Bridge and waited until about 440 am for another one going back to exactly where we had started an hour or so earlier. After that bus and a long walk in the cold, we finally reached Charlottes flat around 530 am. After some laughs and some snacks I was determined to go to sleep before the sun came up, so we finally went to bed at 6 am, by far the latest I have been up in years. It was a pretty funny late night adventure.
Sunday was spent walking around in the rain and relaxing until the Academy Awards. Charlotte and I loooooove the Oscars, all of our movie going and discussing culminate in this ceremony. And I had seen 9 out of the 10 Best Pic nominees this year (Chatlotte had seen all 10) so we were nice and opinionated. We had a few Americans over to watch the red carpet which started at 11pm. The show started at 1 am London time, but our link to the streaming show want working. Just as everyone gave up and went home, one of Charlotte's friends on Facebook sent her a good link, thank god. And thank you Facebook. so once again we were up until 5 am. Ugh. I was pretty pleased with the Oscars. The acceptance speeches were all pretty good and entertaining, aside from Natalie Portman's which I felt just rambled on thanking too many people. I really wanted The Social Network to win best Picture and the fact that it did not put a damper in our whole morning. At the very least it should have split the director and picture prizes, giving one of those to David Fincher. I also very much enjoyed James Franco an Anne Hathaway as hosts, although I felt that Anne did much more than James did. He's a weird guy so I didn't mind too much his blank stares sometimes, but I think his role was to be the straight man and let Anne crack the jokes. Apparently he was also simultaneously filming parts of the show on his iPhone in his pocket. The autotuned songs from Harry potter, the social network, and Eclipse were great. Charlotte and I have watched that video montage quite a few times now. I think they were pretty successful in making the show appeal to a younger audience. I also beat everyone here in regards to our personal ballots with 16 correct guesses, obviously I fell short with the Kings Speech's late night (undeserved) wins. Of course, my top 3 favorite movies of the year were The Social Network, Inception, and 127 Hours, in no particular order. I was also pleasantly pleased that most people wore beautiful dresses, with my best dressed award going to Mila Kunis from Black Swan.
Okay, enough about that.
Monday I hung out with Lydia, an English girl I worked with last year in Argentina. It was super fun to see her again and to talk monkeys. Today has been spent re-packing (hopefully I'll fall underweight!) and eating. Which reminds me, it's time to go get some lunch. I'm off to South Africa this evening (I reapply hope they have good movies on the plane! And that I can sleep) and hopefully I will be able to update this again soon! I can't wait to get back to (playing with, feeding, raising, and yes getting pooped on by) some baboons!!
Saturday was Charlotte's birthday so we went to her favorite Saturday market, Borough Market, which is in an old train station type place and is filled with food stalls and vendors. It was very cool. We walked all around trying the free samples of jams, salami, bread, olive oils, and cheeses, had lunch and desert, then took a long walk around the city back to her flat. Our stroll took us past the Eye of London, Parliament and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Trafalgar Square. It was a nice quick tour of the sights. We then went to dinner at Wagamamas with her brother William who is doing his junior year abroad here. Use spent the night our with a whole bunch of Charlotte's friends here at a club, bit it's the adventure afterwards that is most funny (but maybe you just had to be there). The club closed at 3, but we hung around for about 40 more minutes because Charlotte's friend Hayley had lost her camera, credit card, and ID. We caught a bus around 345 hoping to head for home. The bus stopped running for what had to be around 20 minutes while too many people were trying to get on. When if finallllllly got going, I looked out the window and said "oh look, there's that cool bridge" meaning the Tower Bridge. Turns out we were definitely not supposed to cross the river to the south side of London. We had gotten an a bus going the completely wrong way. We quickly hopped off the bus at the London Bridge and waited until about 440 am for another one going back to exactly where we had started an hour or so earlier. After that bus and a long walk in the cold, we finally reached Charlottes flat around 530 am. After some laughs and some snacks I was determined to go to sleep before the sun came up, so we finally went to bed at 6 am, by far the latest I have been up in years. It was a pretty funny late night adventure.
Sunday was spent walking around in the rain and relaxing until the Academy Awards. Charlotte and I loooooove the Oscars, all of our movie going and discussing culminate in this ceremony. And I had seen 9 out of the 10 Best Pic nominees this year (Chatlotte had seen all 10) so we were nice and opinionated. We had a few Americans over to watch the red carpet which started at 11pm. The show started at 1 am London time, but our link to the streaming show want working. Just as everyone gave up and went home, one of Charlotte's friends on Facebook sent her a good link, thank god. And thank you Facebook. so once again we were up until 5 am. Ugh. I was pretty pleased with the Oscars. The acceptance speeches were all pretty good and entertaining, aside from Natalie Portman's which I felt just rambled on thanking too many people. I really wanted The Social Network to win best Picture and the fact that it did not put a damper in our whole morning. At the very least it should have split the director and picture prizes, giving one of those to David Fincher. I also very much enjoyed James Franco an Anne Hathaway as hosts, although I felt that Anne did much more than James did. He's a weird guy so I didn't mind too much his blank stares sometimes, but I think his role was to be the straight man and let Anne crack the jokes. Apparently he was also simultaneously filming parts of the show on his iPhone in his pocket. The autotuned songs from Harry potter, the social network, and Eclipse were great. Charlotte and I have watched that video montage quite a few times now. I think they were pretty successful in making the show appeal to a younger audience. I also beat everyone here in regards to our personal ballots with 16 correct guesses, obviously I fell short with the Kings Speech's late night (undeserved) wins. Of course, my top 3 favorite movies of the year were The Social Network, Inception, and 127 Hours, in no particular order. I was also pleasantly pleased that most people wore beautiful dresses, with my best dressed award going to Mila Kunis from Black Swan.
Okay, enough about that.
Monday I hung out with Lydia, an English girl I worked with last year in Argentina. It was super fun to see her again and to talk monkeys. Today has been spent re-packing (hopefully I'll fall underweight!) and eating. Which reminds me, it's time to go get some lunch. I'm off to South Africa this evening (I reapply hope they have good movies on the plane! And that I can sleep) and hopefully I will be able to update this again soon! I can't wait to get back to (playing with, feeding, raising, and yes getting pooped on by) some baboons!!
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