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!
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