Site Guide Week 4 and a half (last week)

Well howdy y 'all!

I"m back to report on the happenings that have happened up until now, where I am at the end of my first short course.

I did some more welcoming on Monday and we had some more class on Tuesday.  On Wednesday morning, we arrived at the academy and we were informed that we'd be doing game capturing for the rest of the week.  We headed into the bushveld to help Thaba Manzi set up the boma which wasn't hard work but it's all about precision.  The poles first had to be planted, the wires had to be attached on the bottom and top of the poles and then the sails had to be hooked onto the wire.

We had to report on duty at 5:30 A.M. on Thursday, it was still dark and cold, not the best time to have teenagers awake since we're pretty grumpy because we couldn't get in a full shift of sleep but this morning was different, the excitement was thick in the air.  On this day, the first day of actual capturing, we caught gnous (Blou wildebeeste) and Zebras.  At first, I mostly didn't see much since I was at the furthest gate from the truck.  We had to listen for the helicopter's siren and once he let the alarm scream, we had to run at full speed to close the sails.  A very important part of the job is to NOT BE SEEN by the animals, otherwise they would show us what reverse gear looks like.  After the first few catches, the students had to switch, which meant I could go closer to the truck, which meant I could actually see the animals.

There I had a real close encounter with a gnou, whom decided to turn around and gun for the group I was standing with.  The one guy jumped behind the sail by going right, the other one by going left and the one Thaba Manzi worker actually jumped under the sail, leaving the boma entirely.  I froze, I stood there with a branch in my hand and real big eyes.  Luckily, he took a left turn (as Bubba J would say) and ran past me.  I also bought my first piece of land when running with the sail, I tripped over a random stem sticking out of the ground right after another guy fell over the same stick.  He recovered by bouncing off the ground like Kung Fu Panda and I recovered by doing a Chuck Norris like summersault on the ground.

The Friday, we had to be there again at 5:30 but this time the excitement had died out and we were all just tired but once we were back in the field and the first chase came in, the adrenalin was pumping again.  We caught Zebras, Blesbuck and Gemsbuck.  Once the Blesbuck were in the second last box, we closed the curtain and I was peeking through a hole in the sail and one blesbuck saw me and tried to storm me but I just closed the hole as well as my eyes and it ran past, blessedly.  Had an off weekend, which I used to sleep, as in, the whole weekend long.

The front of the boma, leading into the truck.

Footnote: Animals (mostly male) had to be taken out so new one's could be brought in since severe inbreeding was starting to appear or in cases like the zebra, there were too few females with one male, so the males had to be thinned out.

Week 5, which consisted out of our 2 last days here at Site guide, they were used to round off any remaining work, writing tests and being assessed by Cobus, our local animal genius.

Next chapter? Species care at the Wildlife Centre, where we'll be moving after lunch.  I heard our first task will be to clean the Avery.  Uhm, sounds exciting...

Site Guiding (Week 3)

The speed limit on Sondela

This week we had class...  Not much to tell you about it but a bunch of photos to show you, that I took on the game drives.

Salaminah and Klaas

My legs, I had to add one random photo.

Arno and Morne, pretending to think.

Female golden orb.

A puffadder.

Elani, the only other girl in the course with me.

Klaas showing the group something.

Just the beautiful bushveld.

Set your attention to the beautiful eyes.

Boomslang caught in CVP

Snouted Cobra, very agitated.

Watch closely, the cloud is in the form of an arrow.

A mongoose, really close to me.

Yes, that is MY bum and my food their eating.

Do I look scared?

Can you tell what's mud and what's human?

The boys in our group.

Female golden orb caught by Christene because I was to scared.

The curious case of Giraffa Camelopardalis.

Dung Beetle, busy working with food.

Me and 7 of the dirtiest kids ever and one with a grudge.

Maroela story & MTM song

We were told to write a myth about how the Amarula drink was invented with the Maroela tree's fruit, this is my story.

One day, in a Bushman village, one of the woman in the tribe was in a hysteria, her husband had headed out to go hunting 3 days ago and he hadn't come back.  The head elder organized a search party.

The group of men, who formed the search party, found the woman's husband under a Maroela tree, passed out.  They picked him up and carried him to the village, on the way there, he woke up and he was giggling and talking in riddles and looked like he was having a lot of fun.

The men were jealous and wanted to be as happy as the crazy man, they thought that eating the Maroelas was the trick, it made them a little happy but not as happy as the man was.  They decided to cook it with milk and it made them as happy as the crazy man but only for one night.  That's where the Amarula drink originated from but something the Bushman never realized was that the crazy man hadn't actually consumed the Maroela, it had fallen off the tree onto a soft spot on the man's head.

On our meet the management evening we had to sing a song and I would like to share this song with you:

(Stand by me melody)
When Mel has come
and Chef's face is dark
and Heidi is the only light we see.

Oh, we won't be afraid
Oh no, I won't be afraid
Just as long as you have... your blackberry. (inside joke)

Oh Gerbie, Elsie, stand by me ooooh
David stand by me, oh stand, stand by me, stand by me.

...Continue...

(California girl melody)
I know a place, where the sun is really shiny
Warm, wet and wild
there must be something in the water
something in the juice.
Meeting under the maroela trees... And then
Boys break their necks try'na creep a little sneak peak at guests.

You could travel the world, but nothing comes close to Sondela's toast
Once you've been here with us
You'll be falling in love
Ooohohohohohoh

Sondela's farm is unforgetable
Daisy kudu
Service is tops
Sun kissed veldt so hot we'll melk your popcicle
Ohhhohohohoh

Tone, tan, fit and ready, turn it up coz it's getting heavy
wild wild west coast, this is the place we love the most.

So that was just a few random things I wanted to mention, I'll be posting updates of the last 2 weeks shortly. Watch this space

Site Guide Week 2

On Monday, the students that were off duty the weekend, were still off duty so it was just me and Elani.  Things were pretty unorganized so we didn't have much to do before lunch but we did take the Resource Guardianship students out to check fences and wild life.  After lunch, we worked at the game drive table during welcoming.  Usually the guests just walk by the table but we created a game and the guests were actually interested.

On Tuesday, the three boys in our group were back so we had class again, but this time at the Caravan park. We talked about trees and all their uses (no, it's not only used for fire wood).  Wednesday, Klaas took us to the Tambuki camp site, there we were taught about Egology (the way living and non-living organisms exist together within nature.)  Thursday we went back to the Caravan park (CVP as we call it).  There Christene taught us about reptiles, she's the best person to talk to us about this subject since she is a qualified snake handler.

On Friday, I went on a game drive with the guesthouse guests, along with Antonet (second year student). I talked and she drove but we had to call in help, as the cruiser refused to start after we stopped to watch the giraffes at the water hole.  I also did my assessments and was declared competent in reptiles and ecology.  At lunch I clocked out to take my well deserved weekend off.  Be back on Monday!

This is our group (one student missing):

Site Guide Week 1

21-27 February 2011
I'm back to tell you what course I started with and how the first week has gone...

I started with site guiding which means I am doing the game drives on Sondela.  We started the week off, by receiving our first (very thick) stack of papers that we had to study, it was about Mammals.  At first all of the bucks looked the same and I was having a hard time getting all the study material into my head.  The next day we wrote test and as you can guess, I didn't pass, not even close.  We received our papers about birds and wrote test the next day and here, I passed, how? I don't know either.  On the same day, we had to choose a bird and give a presentation about this bird.  I asked to go last because I wanted to prepare something really good and with my luck, right before I had to do the presentation, our principal, Diederick walked in.  The pressure was on!  In my eyes I did it really well but I still had a lot of faults in the previously mentioned's eyes.On Thursday our facilitator(Salaminah) and second year manager(Antonet) were kind enough to create a simmulation where they took the seats of a broken cruiser and placed it in the Academy's boma with target practice posters all around us.  We had to do the pre-trail briefing and then explain one animal.  Salamina and Antonet both said that I had a spark in my way of talking to the guests (which in this case, were my fellow site guide students).

We also had a day where we went on a walking trail and learned about the grasses and trees, I am absolutely amazed that my brain has been able to absorb this much information within one week.  I am now more confident about my way of talking to guest and my knowledge about animals.  On Friday, three out of the five site guide students went home for the weekend and only me and Elani stayed behind to work.  I worked a while at welcoming which I truly enjoy and I went to the main gate to help sign the people in.  The drive back was long and freezing, since I drove the cruiser without windows or doors and I had no jacket.  I am the only one of the five of us that has my PHP which mean I can drive the cruisers with people on them.  I only went home at about 21:00.  On Saturday I did three game drives with Klaas and on Tractor game drive with Michelle.  Only went home at 20:30 because I had to do the night drive where Klaas had me talk to the people, we saw an Aardwolf doing his business in the open, the kids enjoyed that.  On Sunday, Elani and I were allowed to do our own Tractor Drives, I made one mistake but I fixed it by making the people laugh and telling them really interesting information.  Luckily, I went home at 17:00.

This is the maingate...

Elani and myself on a game drive..

Two Giraffes we saw on the game drive...

 A Nyala, it's truly difficult to tell the difference between it and a kudu but I'm getting the hang of it...

The simmulation that was created, it was fun!

In conclusion, the week was one I would trade for anything, I never thought I'd be able to tell the difference between a 'Gemsbok' and a Hyena but now I can and I can tell you things about them you don't know.