Thursday, 1 May 2014
1st May
The sun has set on my Kalahari adventure. I didn't see a cheetah, I really didn't expect to. I've been content to see hundreds and hundreds of photos taken at marking trees enough to convince me, not that I needed convincing, that these gorgeous animals need to be protected and cherished if they are not to disappear. The biggest problem by far is what they call human/predator conflict, mainly the issue of cheetahs being shot, trapped or poisoned by farmers who believe or choose to believe that cheetahs are taking their livestock. That's why CCB monitors the numbers of potential prey as well. The more easily available prey, the less predation on livestock and the less threat to cheetahs
I've been privileged to meet and work with this small team of dedicated and hard working individuals who live in this harsh, spartan environment all year round through extremes of heat, cold and flood. Max has lived like this for five years, Jane for four, Phale for three and Rick for one and has just signed for another year. The huts have no cooling and no heating, before I came they'd had no hot water for ten months. Dust and dirt are a constant, in the kitchen add grease and flies, the shower/toilet block is dilapidated (but due to be refurbished soon). And yet they maintain high standards of research and monitoring, they drive long distances to check on marking trees and cameras, they keep detailed records of their findings and Jane has compiled an amazing photo id of every cheetah they've seen on camera.
It's impressive and I admire their dedication and tenacity.
For me this has been the most fantastic experience ever. Having thought about it for so long there were moments bumping along a track or walking through the bush with Murphy when I thought "My God I'm really doing this!" I've coped with the heat, dust and flies, the long days, the solitude, the spartan conditions, the rigours of tracking and bush trekking, the creepy crawlies. I've had no television or radio for a month, I've worn no make up for a month except sun protection, I've worn the same clothes for a week at a time, I've amused myself through the long evenings and quiet weekends, I've had a lot of chocolate. I stepped out of my ordered self indulgent comfort zone and I survived and had an amazing experience. I've always loved wildlife and being this close to nature has been a dream come true.
So, cooking on a calor gas ring, wearing the same clothes for a week, toilet the other side of a field, no hair appliances - I'm ready to try camping!
Thanks to CCB for a wonderful experience, thanks to Harold and Geraldine Hester for their hospitality and for giving me the added pleasures of bird spotting and star gazing, thanks to those of you who kept in touch by email, text or What's App it meant so much to me to hear from you out here. The chirp of my phone when it came in range of wifi was so welcome.
Finally, (sorry this is getting like the Oscars) if you enjoyed my blog please all club together and send me somewhere else... no seriously.
If you enjoyed my blog then it is thanks to my Technical Director and very great friend Nigel Nicholson who spent many many kind and patient hours with this technodunce setting up the blog and email on my phone, showing me how to do posts and upload photos. Thanks Nigel I couldn't have done it without you, dinner's on me.
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
30th April
I'm now arrived at Gaborone with Harold and Geraldine so I can safely tell you a bit about Ghanzi. If it was the wild west of America and not Africa it would be a one horse town, well make that a donkey. Like Gaborone it's a mixture of grandiose new buildings (always Government) and lowly shacks and everything in between. Most houses are built of breeze blocks with a corrugated tin roof and they're generally just square in design. Some have a solar power system and a satellite dish and others have a bowl of water in the yard and cook on a wood fire.
People really only pass through Ghanzi on their way up to the Okavango Delta or down to Gaborone so there are no lingering tourists yet there's a state of the art tourist office with a beautiful thatched roof which has been empty since the day it was built. There's a Spar supermarket which is quite good and two Choppies supermarkets, three hardware shops, three filling stations, a very few clothes shops and one pharmacy. Oh and the Kalahari Arms which is the only place in the whole of Ghanzi you can get a cup of coffee. The nearest book store is 750 kilometres away. I saw no make up on sale anywhere and Nivea toiletries were kept behind a special counter and twice the price.
I took a photo of Reggie house which is fairly typical. There are thirteen living in a three room house and his grandma has a room to herself. This is because elders are always respected here. I had a soft spot for Reggie because we were paired up for my first couple of days and he was unfailingly friendly, polite and respectful (to his elder!) which went a long way with me. He's a bright boy, speaks English, Afrikaans and Setswana and enough San to converse with the bushmen.
Next to the Spar is a shop called Topline which had some quite nice clothes. I bought a jacket there ( oh come on, I haven't gone completely native). Talking of clothes, these lovely ladies are wearing the traditional dress and headgear of the Herero tribe and I'd seen one or two each time I was in Ghanzi. They look like extras in a BBC costume drama and they told me it takes them two hours to get dressed
With my new Kalahari bush routine it's been taking me all of two minutes..
Final blog tomorrow.
Sunday, 27 April 2014
27th April
Typo - ah this naughty phone. I started my walk at 8am, well of course you knew that because I'm tucked up by 7pm most nights soon as it gets dark.
27th April
The mornings have been chilly again but at 5pm yesterday the temperature in my hut was 38 degrees. So I decided to start my Sunday morning walk at 8pm. I found some quite nice bacon in Spar so the promise of a bacon sandwich was my reward. I've promised Murphy for the last two weeks that this Sunday we'd walk all the way to the bush camp. I didn't take my binoculars because I just wanted to enjoy the walk, my last in the African Botswana bush. With my newly trained tracker's eye I could see my footprints from Friday and Saturday, almost synchronised so I must walk always at the same pace although I don't always start from the same point. I could also see small hoof prints, probably warthog, larger ones, probably kudu. I do look at the bush which stretches away to infinity on both sides but I've never seen anything here, although I'm told eyes are undoubtedly watching me. Often there are no birds about so for me it all happens on the ground. Apart from the visible insects like the ubiquitous corn cricket which rears on its hind legs and shakes a fist as I walk past, I find all the little tracks of birds, snakes and geckos fascinating. Yesterday and today I saw fat semicircular tracks of a big snake although apparently they flatten themselves to get traction and aren't as big as all that. The tracks were six to eight inches across so even at half that size I wouldn't want a close encounter.
I enjoy the walks with Murphy, it's the five thousand uninvited flies which tag along that are the problem. These are like small house flies and they're on you all the time and much more annoying than mosquitoes. You don't want to see the kitchen. I was thinking today that of all the useful things I brought, a fly whisk would have been the most useful. Using my new bushman skills I broke a branch off a shrub, being careful of the thorns, and used that. We made it to the bush camp and I looked in the empty swimming pool. Last time I looked, a month ago on my first day here, there was still rainwater in it and it was chock full of frogs. Well you know me and frogs, I took a photo of hundreds piled up on the steps but it's on my camera rather than the phone. Today there was just a few left maybe half a dozen. They are African bull frogs and can get huge and they bite apparently. Fascinating stuff...
On the subject of things that bite and sting, the scorpion I saw in the shower block was a tiddler compared to the one that walked past the office door on Friday. It was left to fearless Jane who squashed it with a can of fly spray. I felt rather sorry for the scorpion but they are dangerous and whilst not fatal to humans it would be to any of the much loved camp pets, there are two cats Tigger and Gizmo as well as the two dogs.
I am leaving here on Wednesday so I will probably leave my final blog until I'm in Gaborone where Harold has Earl Grey tea waiting for me. How very civilised...
Saturday, 26 April 2014
26th April
I've had a nice lazy Saturday so far, really needed it after two weeks solid clearly not used to this work lark. I have however maintained the tradition of the mid morning tea break when in the office. Eight til one is a long stretch without a cuppa and although it may have prompted some wry smiles from my non British colleagues I notice they have now joined in. This doesn't apply to tracking mind you, we would often go from 6 am til 1 pm without a tea break (or a comfort break come to that) but I managed. I found some Earl Grey teabags, Liptons not Twinings so standards are being maintained.
I've done some interesting stuff in the office this week. Firstly I input all Phale's tracking data which I had written on the sheets. How cool was that? Then for Jane I went back over all the camera images for 2011 and 2012 at two particular trees noting down all the animals seen not just cheetahs. It was fascinating and sometimes the first time of seeing an animal or the first time up close. Sometimes really close, just an eye or a rump especially the warthog. Be honest, it's a face only another warthog could love and clearly they do because they were far and away the most numerous. There were lots of cheetahs, all the antelopes, jackals, a brown hyena carrying an expensive camera, wildebeest, a wild cat, porcupines AND my burrow buddy the aardvark. It's quite tricky because if a warthog triggers the camera ten times in thirty minutes that only counts as one sighting. Once it goes beyond thirty minutes that's a new sighting, so I have to carefully watch the date and time. At some trees there are two or three cameras so even trickier to monitor the dates and times to make sure a sighting is only recorded once.
When I went out tracking with Phale although we lost two cameras there were still some photos and I'm sending you some. I also spent time this week identifying cheetahs from those photos. Their spot pattern is unique to each one and it is possible to tell them apart once you find something to focus on like a particular shape or cluster. Jane has a photo database and I was comparing with that, like doing mug shots at the police station. I think I correctly identified them as two brothers she calls The Brothers Grimm or BG2 for short. All the regulars have names. By the end of the afternoon I had spots before my eyes but it'll look good on my CV. Don't ask me to do it when they're going at 75 kph though. Did you know a cheetah can out accelerate any car 0-60 mph?
So office bound this week but interesting stuff.
More later...
Wednesday, 23 April 2014
23rd April
It is customary for CCB to treat volunteers either to a game drive or a bush walk and as my days tracking are effectively game drives I opted for the bush walk at Thakadu game farm which is about 45 minutes away. On the way we cleared away long grass from a camera trap otherwise when it waves around it triggers the camera and wastes batteries. Within minutes of getting to the game farm we saw a beautiful male impala right in front of us. From standing it leapt over a five foot fence like a harrier jet, straight up and over - magic. A minute later we saw a warthog, not beautiful, and a tortoise about the size of a dinner plate. The lodge house is very rustic and looks out over a pan which is floodlit by night. A man called Douglas whose family came from San bushmen but in Zimbabwe led us to a small village where we met a family who were very friendly and greeted us hand on shoulder. They speak in the strange clicking language and with Douglas interpreting we asked about their lives and they showed us the plants they use for medication, for energy, contraception, headache, backache, sore joints etc. They showed us how to make fire and we all had a go (I was the only one to produce smoke). It was very interesting if a tiny bit stage managed. Without getting into the politics of it theirs is not a different world and they can't survive in ours any more than we could survive in theirs. In our group there was me and Rick and three other ladies, one from the UK and two from the USA so we all got on really well and had dinner together back at the lodge . The three ladies are all working in Africa and have very interesting jobs. I particularly liked Peggy from California who is a couple years older than me and works for the Peace Corps here in Ghanzi advising on health care matters. Aids is still a big problem here and the mortality rate is high especially among young people. There are huge hoardings in the town listing where you can get free condoms.
We had a very good dinner, I had eland fillet chargrilled with mashed potatoes (on the menu as mush potatoes) and Kalahari truffle sauce, like a rich mushroom gravy. Peggy and I really hit it off and she's invited us to dinner at her home on Saturday with another English friend.
We got back about 9pm and when I went to the shower block/toilet there was a huge black and white spider on the wall behind the cistern. "Oh my God" I said. Then I saw the scorpion on the wall behind the cistern."OH MY GOD" I said. There was no one to tell so I scarpered off bed and now double and treble check my shoes. I wanted to see one as it's my star sign but I don't want it looking over my left shoulder when I'm on the loo. TMI? Sorry...
Sending a photo of me hopefully, tried for ten days to get it to rotate and compress. It just doesn't want to so please rotate it yourselves.
More later..
Tuesday, 22 April 2014
22nd April
Having visited so many of their establishments over the past few days I feel I must put in a word for the poor much maligned aardvark. Look him up -I think he's Africa's answer to the duck billed platypus (Rick thinks that's the wildebeest but I rather like them now they're actually quite elegant). The aardvark is apparently not common, well either that's wrong or the few that there are can dig holes every ten metres over a 7500 hectare farm. They can in fact dig a metre in five minutes and their discarded burrows are used by seventeen different mammals. I can imagine jackals and porcupines standing around saying "Nah don't bother mate, he's bound to finish another one in a minute". Enough, I hear you cry..
On Sunday tracking we did something different, for me at least. They found cheetah spoor at about 9.45am and we tracked it through the bush for two hours, the idea being that they might find some scat or a new marking tree. We probably covered about three kilometres some of it round in circles trying to pick up the spoor. It was ferociously hot even at that time of the morning, cloudless blue sky and no shade anywhere. I kept up and I was looking for spoor but also had to watch where I put my feet so I didn't fall down a hole or trip over a creeper. I was
also watching out for the murderous vegetation, the knee grabbers, the sleeve rippers, the face slashers and of course the giant spiders. Phale walked right into a web. It didn't seem to bother him but I think I'd have had the screamers. As it is I had to duck under it there was no way around. Eventually they lost the trail and we turned back, I admit I was relieved it really was hot out there and nearly midday by the time we got back to the truck (using GPS).
I have to say that these safari trousers may be able light comfortable and easy to wash and dry but they are no match for the bush. They may be ok for sitting all day in a safari wagon taking photos but they provide no real protection. There's a particular plant when you push past it fires dozens of quills about an inch long and they stick straight in and your legs look like two porcupines. If you don't stop and pick them off they quickly work their way in and hurt like hell but I didn't dare lose sight of Phale so it was an uncomfortable trek back. We had a lunch break at a nice shady pan and the afternoon was pretty uneventful until about ten to five when a whole herd of mixed wildebeest, gemsbok and zebra crossed the track up ahead. We counted 20 wildebeest, 15 zebra and 5 gemsbok it was a fantastic sight and a few minutes later we saw another group of six zebra. Talk about saving the best til last, it was wonderful.
So a very long day, twelve hours tracking. When we got back in view of Easter Rick had bought three roasted chickens and we had that with rice and mangetout and onion gravy around the camp fire, me, Rick, Phale, Cho, Manga and Reggie. The trackers also made something called pap from maize flour and a cross between polenta and wallpaper paste. It has been my misfortune twice to have to clean the pan which takes a good half hour. Still it was a lovely end to the day and an Easter Sunday like no other.
More later...
Monday, 21 April 2014
21st April
Time for one more update before lunch. We had to wait Thursday and Friday because there was hunting going on at the game farm so I was happy to go over the weekend. Between here and Ghanzi at about 6.30am I spotted and identified a caracal trotting across the road in the half dark, bigger than a domestic cat, tawny coloured with big tufted ears. Every day Phale asks me what I want to see and I always say Zebras (must be the subliminal Investec logo) and blow me before 8.30am we'd seen Kudu, Impala, Gemsbok, Steenbok and three Zebra. It was the roughest rockiest day yet and at one time a late call pitched both guys off the bonnet. We only saw one cheetah spoor but masses of brown hyena and both black backed and side stripe jackals. At about 11 am blue wildebeest started to cross the track about 50m ahead. We started counting and there were 26 in all, not quite the Serengeti but still very exciting. We also saw a lot of ostrich that day.
I asked Phale what was his favourite part of the job and his exact answer was "Mingling with the poo". That immediately made me think of Chris Packham on Springwatch who is exactly the same. It must be a man thing that transcends culture and continents. On the way back we met the operators of the game farm who live of course miles from anywhere. The wife Anne and her daughter Megan came and spoke to me, very friendly as always here. Anne recognised me from my photo (with Murphy) on the CCB Facebook page! She told me there's a pair of giraffes with a calf on the farm. That I would love to see but we have finished there now. Phale has gone today but I had cleaning and laundry to do and this afternoon Rick and I are doing a bush walk at another game farm called Thakadu so I'll have something different to tell you about. I've got one more day of tracking to tell you about first though.
More later..
20th April
It's actually 21st but there's too much for one day. On Wednesday I went tracking with Phale again. He had to see his bank first so he parked me at the Kalahari Arms, the only posh place in Ghanzi and I spent a very pleasant hour having coffee and muffins. Since finding out which animals are around here I've been studying a field guide and since tracking on the game farm I've been cramming for the Know Your Antelopes exam. I can now identify most of them on the page but when they're galloping away from you through 50m of dense bush it's another story (unless there's a white toilet seat on the rump). However I did spot and identify five black wildebeest as opposed to the blue (actually dark steel grey) from the day before. The black are slightly more upright have bigger horns and a stiff mane on the neck. We also saw two pairs of Gemsbok and two pairs of ostrich but much else.
I must be toughening up as a second day of lurching into aardvark burrows didn't faze me at all, and boy did we lurch. Some of the traffic directions were a bit slow coming but in faith the tracks are sometimes so overgrown before you know it you're up to wheel arch in a burrow and trust me the wheel arch on a Toyota Hilux is DEEP. Talking of which virtually every 4x4 out here is a Toyota they've cleaned up. I happened to see a copy of the Botswana Guardian and there's a big hooha because the Botswana Democratic Party has ordered 63 specially adapted Toyota 4x4 at a cost of nearly £2m but won't reveal who has funded it. FYI I also learned that man bags have just made it to Botswana.
But I digress. Towards lunchtime we tracked some cheetah spoor a short distance to the other side of the pan we were at before and found scat on an old marking tree not thought to be in use so no camera in place. The trees they use are normally dead fallen trees so they are horizontal. Cheetahs have non retractable claws which makes their spoor distinct from any other predator and helps them climb on marking or look out trees but they can't haul themselves up into high branches like leopards. The claws also give them grip to reach their phenomenal speed but not in this area there are real open spaces. Anyway that was an interesting find and no doubt the PC World batteries will be doing their stuff there at some point. Losing two cameras in two days is a blow, they're at least £200 each and more if they are in a hyena proof steel case
In the afternoon we had to drive through several flooded pans and because he had wellies on Manga had to wade in to test the depth so Phale could see where to drive through. One pan was enormous and it was a bit hairy driving through but I had faith in Phale and respect for Toyota which is obviously the vehicle of choice in this harsh terrain. So another very interesting day and three more to go..
More next time..
Saturday, 19 April 2014
19th April
Been tracking all day today twelve hours and again tomorrow so have lots to tell but will have to wait until Monday now unless we're back early tomorrow. We had to make up for lost days last week when they were hunting at the game farm.
More later..
Friday, 18 April 2014
18th April
It's Good Friday and I worked this morning but have been able to spend some time sorting out photos so I thought I would save some good ones for my next update and send you a rogues gallery of the bad and the ugly. As we couldn't track yesterday or Thursday we're going out tomorrow so I'll update on Sunday.
Happy Easter everyone, keep in touch.
Thursday, 17 April 2014
17th April
Typo - I do know and have always known the difference between weather and whether but sometimes this phone manages to slip one past me. Sorry.
17th April
So - last Friday... Don't get me wrong I don't mind doing spreadsheets, I'm happy to do anything that helps but as the third day of data input loomed I was happy to hear Max ask if I would like to help him vaccinate the goats. Max is Community Outreach Officer and he liaises with the local farmers on ways to improve their husbandry as well as ways to avoid conflict with cheetahs by providing livestock guarding dogs . These are not the camp dogs, they're specially trained and we don't fraternise with them (which is hard for me). CCB keeps a very successful herd of goats which started at 16 about five years ago and now numbers 84 (was 85, strike one to the leopard). Keeping a herd gives them more credibility with the farmers and demonstrates in a very practical and tangible way how livestock guarding dogs can help keep their wealth intact and growing. In Botswana wealth is very much tied in with animals, weather cattle or goats. Anyway the herd here is looked after by DT and Reggie . The kraal is near the gate and we started by herding them all into a small enclosure at one end and then one by one they were caught, vaccinated and the then released into the main pen. I did a bit of catching, some holding and some actual vaccinating but mainly I shoved them through the gate while keeping the others in. One escaped but luckily Reggie spotted the number on his ear tag, no.59, and he was done at the end . It took two hours and all the time I was getting the attention of two young ones who were hand reared and very affectionate with people. It was the most fun I've ever had with goats.
After that I went with Jane to monitor a couple of camera traps . The first was a three hour round trip on the bumpy tracks and we saw some kudu, ostrich and a waterbuck which I would recognise again because it looks like it has a white toilet seat on its behind (Sorry, rump).Along the way we saw dozens of beautiful bee eaters swooping around like airborne jewels. When we got to the camera and Jane opened it there was a real "Oh ****!" moment when she realised she hadn't switched it on last time so it had spent a month doing nothing. Ho hum... Luckily a second camera at the site showed that actually there had been no sightings at all so that was a "Phew!" moment. In the afternoon after a very late lunch we checked another camera near the bush camp so not far away and that also hadn't recorded much of interest . However the batteries are routinely changed and the camera reset. So in this remote corner of Botswana the conservation efforts of CCB are being supported by rechargeable batteries from Sainsbury and PC World in Exeter and I put them in. Isn't that a lovely thought?
(Oh God, did I switch it on...?)
More later...
Tuesday, 15 April 2014
15th April
The half way point. Sun back again today so nice warm shower after another day tracking. I got up at 5am to go tracking again with Phale so I'll tell you about that although I still have to tell you about Friday. The Internet was down all Sunday and Monday so I have been feeling out of touch. As we were going to be about 40k away we picked up the trackers Cho and Manga at their village which is about 20k the other side of Ghanzi and called D'kar. Sadly Cho didn't have his bunny hat on today but was wearing an on trend striped trilby, with aviators natch. We were on a game farm which has animals not necessarily indigenous but able to survive. They are bred for meat, licensed hunting and tourism but these places are vast and there's lots of cover. Anyway we found some cheetah spoor but not before the truck had plunged into an aardvark burrow so hard it pitched poor Manga clean off the bonnet. After that they added traffic directions to their skills to help Phale avoid the many burrows which they dig in the track because it's soft sand
Back to cheetahs, at the first marking tree the camera had been chewed probably by a hyena but the chip was ok. At the second tree the camera was missing altogether which was such a shame as there was lots of scat and there would have been some good photos. Hyenas again probably they have immensely strong jaws. Four of us looked for half an hour but didn't find it. The next two were fine and Jane has since shown me some lovely images which I'll upload when I can. We had a lunch break at a pan which is a natural shallow bowl in the terrain which fills only when it rains and is then a watering hole.
On the way back I saw two pairs of Gemsbok a very striking antelope, two wildebeest, two impala and two ostrich. I saw some Friday as well and took a photo but they were legging it as only ostrich can so it wasn't very good. At the entrance to camp a couple of warthog were drinking from the goats' trough, so all in all a very good day.
I'll send you a taster for Friday which involved the goats.
More later...
Saturday, 12 April 2014
12th April
This is the third attempt at today's blog. Good job I've got time on my hands it's so frustrating.
Saturday again and very quiet with Jane, Max and Phale away for the weekend, Reggie at a wedding and the trackers all gone for the time being. Torrential rain last night from 10pm onwards and colossal noise on the corrugated tin roof so not much sleep. Today is cool and cloudy with more rain forecast. I've been into Ghanzi to get groceries, done my washing and now hopefully blogging.
I had a great day Friday but I'll save that for another post. I just want to follow up on the tracking day last Tuesday. I'm desperate to send you the photo of the cheetah poo but I can't seem to squeeze it through the airways. Something has gone awry with the photos yet again it's driving me bonkers.
Towards the end of that afternoon we walked about five minutes into the bush (through murderous vegetation) to a known cheetah marking tree where they come to scent mark and sharpen their claws. It's a calling card for them and others and CCB has camera traps at all the known trees. Phale retrieved the chip and changed the batteries and in fact there were some nice photos of cheetahs one of which I'll send you . Male cheetahs, usually brothers, often stay in pairs or bigger groups called a coalition and t pair in the photo are both male and prove they really are around here. When I first came here there was a plan to capture and collar six cheetah in conjunction with the RCVS in London buy sadly now for various reasons that's been put off until June. It would have been a fantastic experience for me but I've seen the spoor and the scat and that's more than most people. My mammal count is going up slowly which I'll tell you more about next time and when I can I walk around with my binoculars so I'm beginning to recognise a lot of the birds here.
In the bush there are enormous spiders which make thick messy webs about six feet across and usually strung between two bushes or even across the track. The web contains the remains of all the poor critters which have been caught in it and I have tried to take a photo but to be honest I don't want to get that close. I'm getting used to the bugs now and luckily I haven't had any in my hut since the first day when I evicted a large and strangely flat spider, however I never get out of bed without shining my torch across the floor and I always check my shoes. The cooler weather seems to have got rid of the mosquito site, in fact after the first flurry of bites I peaked at about 35 and didn't get any more. I think they decided the Beaujolais far from being Nouveau was actually a bit Ancien so they left me alone. Actually I felt faintly insulted but at least my arms no longer feel like Braille.
I've got some nice photos including some of me so that's my next task. More later...
Thursday, 10 April 2014
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
9th April
Can you believe I've been here over a week already. The temperature has generally been around 30/35 degrees but this morning I woke up freezing as my little clock was registering 10 degrees. When I was reading in bed (by torchlight) at 9pm it was 27 degrees so a bit of a shock and of course my fleece was at the bottom of my tin trunk/wardrobe. To make it worse the shower was cold, as the solar powered tank had lost heat during the night.
I got up at 5am yesterday to go tracking with Phale (as in Parlay) who is from Botswana and has worked for CCB for three years as a researcher like Jane. Tracking consists of driving slowly along rough overgrown tracks with the two trackers sitting on the bonnet looking for spoor or scat. When they see something they signal to stop, hop off and study it then come back to Phale and say something like brown hyena or black backed jackal, one male or two females or whatever. Phale checks the GPS coordinates reads them out and I record it all on a sheet including distance travelled between each sighting. This goes on the whole day usually about eleven hours sometimes seeing nothing. The guys are sat on the bonnet braced on the bull bars, it was hot enough inside the truck they must have been fried. Strangely they still wear long heavy overcoats and one wore a very fetching pink knitted bonnet with a white rabbit on it. His name was an unpronounceable series of clicks so we called him Cho.
At about 7.30 great excitement - a heap of cheetah poo, not quite steaming but very fresh. It was still soft, I felt it (through a CSI type plastic bag) and yes you have to see it people that's the reason I'm here.
I also saw some kudu - antelope about the size of a horse grey and white with long straight but spiral horns. I was looking at the small stuff too, more weird and scary insects, dragonflies, tiny green frogs who chose an unfortunate moment to cross that particular track and a lovely little leopard tortoise no bigger than my palm. Still looking at birds I saw right beside us a Kori Busted, a magnificent bird in the style of a heron but much bigger. They prefer to walk and this one was walking only a few feet away.
So it was a fascinating day but not something I would want to do two days running, it was exhausting and bone - shaking.
Getting dark so that's all for now. More next time...
Monday, 7 April 2014
7th April
Hmmm.. not at all sure the photos have worked. I am apparently definitely tracking tomorrow so I'll look at it again on Wednesday.
7th April
At last a new sighting !!!!! Possibly a new and important sub-species... Oddly enough it was in Choppies Supermarket in Ghanzi, you know how it is you've never been there before, you're not really looking and there it was right beside the till -
Cadbury's Dairy Milk Cashew & Coconut. I'm quite sure I've never seen it before and you know I pride myself on my research in this particular field. Anyway I trapped a specimen and rushed it back to camp to the temperature controlled environment essential to its survival in this climate. After extensive tasting, sorry testing, I concluded that it was a viable species and I should set up a programme of tracking and trapping during the remainder of my stay here..
You can tell it's been a quiet day. I got up at 5.30am again to go tracking with Jane but she had a bad back so we didn't go. The upside is that I took a lovely photo of the sunrise which you will hopefully see if I can upload it from the laptop which I'm working on now. The technology is giving me some grief. I've downloaded an app on my phone called Image Shrinker but I can't see how it works. I've uploaded some more photos onto the laptop and compressed them but I don't know where they've gone. I don't like to keep asking, I'm trying to work it out but bear with me.
So it was spreadsheets again today but very interesting as I was intering all the data from Jane's days out with the San bushmen trackers. I should explain that this is not the savannah, there is no big game here like lions, elephants, rhinos or herds of wildebeest. This is the bush and the game is smaller, like kudu and duiker (small antelope), warthog, brown and spotted hyena, jackal, caracle (a small cat), leopard and cheetah. They even saw an ostrich or two, that's one bird I haven't got on my list, I think I would have noticed. Not all of these are visual sightings, the evidence is mainly spoor (footprints) and scat (poo)which they look for both from a vehicle and on foot. I'm hoping to go tomorrow and another day, it's a long day from dawn to dark and often trekking a long way on foot but my best chance to see some wildlife away from camp.
Talking of vehicles, when we left the dinner party on Friday and got back to Jane's boyfriend's car, which we'd left about halfway, he had a flat tyre. By this time it was about 10.45 pm so Rick illuminated the scene so Karl could change the tyre but he couldn't get all the wheel nuts off so we had to leave it there and return in the morning. At the same time, Keven (the host) came along with a big compressor and put enough air into the tyre so Karl could make it into Ghanzi for a repair. I mention all this because I was wondering on the driveway to hell what would happen if you broke down. It is pitch black, literally miles from anywhere, surrounded by dangerous predators and snakes and cell phone communications are awful. It's a standing joke that you can never finish a conversation because the signal always goes down before the end. The answer is you have to be very self sufficient and dependent on your friends and neighbours. This is not a place for the faint hearted. When Karl was a boy he was left alone in a broken down truck for two DAYS while his father went for help.
More later... let's see if I can find a photo or two, no promises.
Sunday, 6 April 2014
6th April
On Friday night I was invited to dinner along with Rick and Jane at the home of Kevin and Merle Grant who farm the land on which CCB is situated. They are the nearest neighbours but it still took 45 minutes to get there of which 30 minutes was on their incredibly bumpy "driveway"
It was a lovely evening, they were very friendly and welcoming and great food. Kevin is a member of Birdlife Botswana (Harold is President) and trying to raise awareness for the plight of the vultures which are in serious decline in Africa. Among other interesting guests was Jenyva Turner, Head Keeper from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado
who is supporting a vulture conservation group called Vulpro in South Africa. Jenyva (like Geneva) gave a talk in Ghanzi the following day which was well attended by local school children and some local farmers. I took some photos which I'll upload when I can.
I had no idea vultures were endangered but they are because of poisoning aimed at other species, collisions with power cables and toxic medication in the animals they scavenge, also lead shot. As nature's garbage men they play an essential role in cleaning up the environment and preventing the spread of disease . In India the decline in vultures has led to an explosion of rats and feral dogs.
So, cheetahs and vultures both endangered..
Serious stuff for Sunday lunchtime.
I'm off to find a shady spot to read a magazine
More later...
Saturday, 5 April 2014
5th April
The problem with photos here is that the bandwidth is too small so with Rick's very patient help I had to transfer them to a laptop, compress them and transfer them back to my phone. It took ages so I am hoping to find an easier answer.
I was up at 5.30 Friday to go tracking with Jane but at 5.31 it started to rain so we couldn't go as it quickly washes away tracks. So when I reported for work they said those magic words anyone volunteering in the African bush wants to hear "Can you do an Excel spreadsheet?"
Reader, you know that I cannot set up an Excel spreadsheet to save my life but luckily I just had to update actually a lot of data on cheetah sightings so it was quite interesting and I didn't mind at all. I did some other office work on the upcoming bush camp and the inventory.
My ground squirrel tally is now two but apart from geckos, bugs and birds not much else. Oh I did see a snake which crossed the path in front of me but it was only a grass snake although a lot bigger than ours. The bugs here are huge with hard wing cases and at night they crash into the metal and wood structures which sounds like a rifle range (machine guns? rifles? it's dangerous out there). The dung beetles keep trying to roll off with a nugget of food from the dog's bowl, easy mistake and but probably not one their offspring would appreciate.
Last count 32 mosquito bites despite five different kinds of spray, I knew my fresh European blood would be Beaujolais Nouveau out here...
Friday night and Saturday were very interesting. More next time.
Thursday, 3 April 2014
3rd April
Well here I am, one of the few people actually in a position to compare the meerkat (of which more later). The camp consists of a number of wooden huts which are accommodation, office, kitchen, vet clinic etc. Everyone is very friendly, I was met by Rick McKenna a soft spoken American from the East Coast and he works with Jane Horgan who is a fearless Aussie. They run bush camps here to teach children about wildlife and the environment and for the last two days I've been helping do an inventory of all the beds and other equipment there as they have one coming up. It's a bumpy ride to the camp but each trip is a mini safari, although so far I've only increased my bird tally. The only mammals I've seen are the camp dogs and a ground squirrel which looks like a cross between a chipmunk and a meerkat.
My shed turned out to be a double shed with a double bed, palatial luxury although I still only have a single mosquito net but it works. My wardrobe is a tin trunk and the en suite is about 50m away but I'm managing Ok. For those of you who live in Devon the bush is like Woodbury Common on speed, the difference is it's hot and everything is trying to kill you including the vegetation. There are some gigantic insects here including a cricket that makes a noise like a machine gun nest and about as loud. Apart from insects and birds I haven't seen much but I'm going tracking with Jane all day tomorrow so that might change. She uses San bushmen who are excellent trackers and they'll be looking for cheetah spoor and scat (poo)
The camp dogs have adopted me, Murphy is an Anatolian Shepherd Dog and the puppy, I don't know really. Their mission in life is to clamber all over me and make me as dirty as possible while chewing laces. That Murphy is BIG, but he's a good guard dog at night which is a comfort. A leopard took one of the resident goats recently so I suppose he's not that good.
More next time..
Monday, 31 March 2014
31st March
Just a quick update before I fly up to Maun tomorrow and then down to the Kalahari. If you have a map I'll be near Ghanzi which is to the Western side of Botswana where it borders Namibia.
I've had a wonderful few days with Harold and Geraldine. They are very keen birders and in two days we have seen and recorded eighty birds, many very exotic ones in and around their garden. We spent Sunday morning sailing up a nearby creek which prior to mid December was completely dry . Hard to believe from the picture, and harder still to believe that crocodiles have found their way there already. We saw a six footer on a tiny island mid stream. I decided to forgo the photo opportunity lest I fell in or dropped the camera as there were no sides to the boat.
I heard from Ghanzi camp that their Internet connection had been down for ten days, so I'll update when I can.
Sunday, 30 March 2014
29th March
Remind me never to take a night flight ever again. Oh wait, I've got one on the way back..
I've arrived safely in Gaborone and spent the last couple of hours on Harold and Geraldine "stoop" which we would call a veranda. It's warm and sunny and the garden has beautiful butterflies and bright yellow weaver birds, and three impala which I've already seen.
The flight was uneventful, sleep being one of the events that didn't happen. They woke us (huh!) at 5.20am and on my side of the plane there was a spectacular sunrise, the whole horizon above the clouds was fiery orange and turquoise. When the sun came up it was fast fiery and too bright to look at, had to pull the blind down.
By the way at Heathrow the baggage check saw fit to take every single thing out of my rucksack and shoulder bag. It's a testament to my packing skills that the contents of these two bags filled four of their cat litter sized trays. They sent the two bags to forensics and took my binoculars, camera, Kindle and phone somewhere else. Eventually they thrust the whole lot back and said Have a good flight. I was very patient. I know they have a job to do. But come on guys..
Thursday, 27 March 2014
27th March
Off tomorrow, 27 degrees in Botswana with "lows" of 17 degrees. Must be why they told me to bring a fleece.
Friday, 21 March 2014
22nd March
One week to go...
The second weigh in is almost up to the 23kg limit, at least I think it is, but I can barely lift the case clear of the floor on the weighing gizmo so hard to be accurate. CCB (Cheetah Conservation Botswana) asked me this week to find them a CR-123 battery charger and some rechargeable batteries which they use in camera traps and can't get easily. This all weighs a ton so I'm having to make some hard decisions.
The mosquito net was a doddle I now know how to hang one five different ways. Repacking it was another story, like getting Kate Middleton's veil into a small sponge bag, luckily without the tiara.
This time next week I'll be at Heathrow so my next update will be when I get to Gaborone the capital of Botswana where I'm spending a few days with Harold and Geraldine Hester before heading out to the Kalahari.
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