Hi all! Apologies for the radio silence - I’ve been having some issues with technology the last couple of weeks… Laptop? Broken. Phone? Not working. 300 mm camera lens? Stuck on macro since we found the fruit bat at dinner!

Zip sliding!

Despite my technology problems, I’ve had another fantastic couple of weeks. We said goodbye to the last 2 volunteers, and gained 4 new ones who have been just brilliant! We laugh so much together it’s just the most fun ever, even when we’re just sitting around doing nothing. A really great group of people. Unfortuantely, 2 of the 4 leave again today so let’s hope that tomorrow’s replacements are equally great! We’ve spent quite a few evenings having fun together, including 4 movie nights, 2 meals out (Golden Leaf for an Indian, and Café Zambezi for crocodile ribs), a couple of evening sundowners at Waterfront, and a very nice Reflection Night which was all about what we’ve learnt, and realised, and what other things we’ve done in life that we’ve been reminded of by being here. A really nice evening. We also went to the Falls last Sunday and had a fantastic day there all together. They convinced me to do the Gorge Zipline, which was SO much fun! A Zip wire going from the Zambian to the Zimbabwean side of the gorge, finishing on the Victoria Falls Bridge! You can’t see the actual falls very well from the wire, but the view from the bridge is spectacular, and the view up and down the gorge was incredible! We went for a wander around the falls park afterwards, and got totally drenched by the spray! They look so different to when I first arrived it’s unbelievable! If you didn’t know it was the same gorge, you would never be able to tell. The falls are just beyond stunning, the only problem is that a photograph can never convey their sheer size, not to mention you’ll soak the camera if you try! 

Preparing to Zip slide!

The top of Victoria Falls

Tortoise!

My last ever Elephant research session with these 2 <3

My working fortnight has been mainly focussed on elephant IDs. The most exciting part is that we’ve finally reached the sightings that I was actually in Zambia for! I now know that the very first wild elephant I ever saw was one of M4, M59, or M134 (Qasir, Kenny and Duck), which would have been way back at 6:20 am on 25^th August! We’re speeding up with IDs again, but we’ve still got a serious problem with how on Earth we’ll ever finish in time for the next season to start… I almost don’t want to go to Zim because then I can’t keep searching! We’ve had a couple of elephant research sessions too, but no elephants or fresh dung to be found anywhere (as expected). Mostly we’ve just been driving around madly trying to get to every dung that we can for the decay survey, and then rushing back to the office, but we had one on Friday on which we had no dung to find, so were simply driving around looking for bushbuck, and then basically just having a little game drive. We found a huge crocodile in the middle of the mupani thickets twice, about as far from the river as you can get! Right where we have Snare Sweep too! Also found a tortoise (nearly ran it over) which was great fun, though again my dead camera lens really annoyed me - all my good photos of him were taken by the researcher…

Giraffe during Ele Research 

Stuck in the Release Site!

When not doing elephants, we’ve had the usual Dambwa stuff, Kids Club, and Snare Sweeps. Dambwa has been… interesting… Now that rainy season is properly in full swing, the release site has become a swamp! The cars have got stuck a couple of times, and we can’t always get to the lions. I went in on Thursday afternoon, and in trying to find the lions we got stuck, and in trying to get out, they found us! We spent 3.5 hours trying to get out (including calling the other vehicle to tow us, and having to leap back into the car when RS1 showed up!  Eventually we gave up and headed home, leaving the TDI to be explored by the lions! Didn’t get home until 7 pm… Not that many successful Dambwa Research sessions… Also done a bit of feeding and cleaning, slashing (destroyed my elbow again… I’ve now been banned from that particular job…), and I’ve finally had my Dambwa tour! Only 5 months late…! 

Finding tiny (genet?) tracks on Snare Sweep

Snare sweeps have been fun, very wet, and beautiful, but not especially productive. We only found 6 across the 2 weeks. We were slightly worried before heading out this week, having found the crocs in the thickets, huge hippo tracks and fresh dung, snakes, buffalo, hyena tracks around our bins at the office, and reports of a wild male lion behind the Nakatindi compound, but we never saw any sign of them, and were able to safely make our way through the bush without being killed!

Grandma's Footsteps - I got caught! Cheating from people just moving
and hiding behind others, and not going back to the start when
spotted moving.

The community projects have been good this week, but were not so great the week before. First week of Conservation Education we had no children - the school had forgotten to tell us that they would be sending the children home due to a meeting… So that wasn’t particularly successful, but we were dropped off in town and went for a drink at Waterfront instead. Felt like such a mature adult sat with people drinking cocktails while I had a slush puppy and was enjoying turning my tongue blue…! This week was much better - we got a group of 25-30 students, who all seemed really interested and were getting very into it. Thanks to that group, Conservation Education is now known as Chongololo (Giant African millipede) Club! Kids Club too went much better the second time around, but then it always does at Natebe compared to Maunga school. The kids are just that bit more advanced and more confident so willing to join in. The lessons this time on Fair Play and being able to referee yourself, owning up to your mistakes. The games that we played they enjoyed a lot, but I don’t think the Maunga kids understood the point of them, based on the amount of cheating that was going on!

Playing the "hit the ball between other people's legs" game.
Cheating was based on people defending their "goals"
by simply having their feet together!

All in all, another great fortnight in Zambia, and I’m really starting to get nervous and sad about leaving this amazing place. I’m pretty certain I’ll be back a few times once I move to the Zimbabwe side, especially once elephant season picks up again!

Even the roads are beautiful here!

Gardening at Dambwa

Toka tucking in XP

Time for another update and it’s been something of an eventful week! Monday was just slightly crazy with the number of things that could have gone horribly wrong. First off we had to leave late for Dambwa Research, but we made it into the site and found the lions just approaching their favourite place. 404 acres and they still hang out right by the main gate in! They very nicely paraded past us, which was very helpful in terms of seeing how their condition is looking, not to mention of course a good opportunity for photography! However, thanks to the lions now being by Main Gate, we obviously couldn’t just hop out the car and open that one, so we had to drive across the site to East Gate in order to get out… problem. How we ever managed to get through that site without getting stuck I will never know! We must have skidded around a hundred times by the time we got to the gate, not to mention some significant off-roading to avoid the worst patches! We eventually made it out of the site, and then had to drive along the edge of it to get to the Boma for breakfast. It was doing this that we came across our second problem - the release site had been pulled over during the storms so, once they found the break, the lions could just walk straight out! Definitely not good… That changed our plans for the second session a bit! We got everyone up to the site and did a rapid fix job of the fence, then I spent about 20 minutes up to my knees in leaf litter, lobbing armfuls over the fence so that next storm it doesn’t all get immediately caught back in the fence and bring it down again! The afternoon was far more normal, with a standard feeding, cleaning, and grass slashing session, but even that had one trauma - the storm had toppled an acacia in Temi and Bisa’s enclosure, again landing on their fence, so again we had lions that, had they realised it, could very easily have escaped! We left the Dambwa guys to sort that one while we the 7. Wednesday I was again at Dambwa, but a far less exciting day - no disasters overnight to contend with! The coolest part of Wednesday was actually when we got home and were on our way to dinner. We were joined by a fruit bat as a dinner companion! Being used to British bats, this guy (or girl I’ve no idea) was huge, and had a fantastic nose for producing echolocation calls.  Finished off my week at Dambwa again, this time in the garden. The garden isn’t big, but we grow vegetables (currently maize) in there which go to a combination of staff lunches, and some to the local schools so that the children have a bit more to eat, enabling them to concentrate better in class. This time it was weeding, shovelling the other plants away and leaving them to dry, to become fertiliser again for the maize. Unfortunately, one of my own issues of this week has been injuring my arm - too much slashing I think - so while I was glad to be weeding rather than grass cutting, the shovel still hurt! Going to pay for that for a while I think...

Playing cards in the park when we got stuck...

Elephants only had the one disaster for the week, though thankfully it was at least on Friday during our last session, and we had already visited the dung that we needed to get to. Doris, our not-quite-as-reliable-as-she-used-to-be research vehicle, broke down right in the middle of a ditch! Brilliant… We called the office asking them to come pick us up, and sat playing Elephant Pictionary (nerds drawing the distinguishing features of different elephants and the other has to get which it is!) until we got a call back… At first we assumed they were lost trying to find the Sussi road, but then heard that actually no they’d set off to come tow us out, and then the TDI had died too, producing smoke and sparks from the ignition! Double brilliant…! So then we had to wait for the Ford to get back to the office from Dambwa to come and pick us up (now moved on from Elephant Pictionary to cards!), but the Ford has very poor pulling power so we came back in the hopes that the TDI only needed some rewiring… It didn’t! Eventually the guys gave up on the TDI and just took the Ford to pull Doris out, so while we now have all 4 cars sat at the office, we are now down to just 1 working… Fingers crossed they get fixed quickly! Other than that, elephant research has gone pretty well this week. We’ve got ahead on our dung decay survey, and while we are still on the same ID sighting now as when we started the week, we have progressed a long way through it and are slowly increasing the number of elephants in our database. I have however checked to see how many photos we have left for August, and it seems we still have over 300 photos to get through before we actually reach the sightings for which I was actually there! I arrived nearly 5 months ago! 

GECKO!

The office! How have I never posted this?!

Snare Sweep

We had a very successful couple of mornings at the end of the week. Friday Snare Sweep we found a total of 44 snare wires in the park, and all of them very fresh - they hadn’t even had time to mark the trees. I found a pile of 7 new ones just lying on the floor, not yet set up. We think that something (maybe even us, though we think the Wildlife Authority is more likely) disturbed the poachers while they were setting up and they simply dropped the stuff and ran. We’ve had a very slow couple of weeks with Snare Sweep so this week was very successful. Kids Club yesterday was also a lot better than last week. This time at Natebe school, we were doing the same activities as last week but with different students. Natebe is slightly more advanced than Maunga, so it’s not surprising that they a bit more confident and their English is better. We started off with reintroducing STRIPE to them - they couldn’t remember what any of the letters stood for besides S for Self-manager, so we ended up playing Hangman to find the others. This worked very well, with more and more of them getting into it as we went through. We then moved onto the games section and it was so much more rewarding than at Maunga! Again I taught one group a game called Thumbs Up, while the volunteer with me taught them a game where you have to slap your hands on the table in a certain order. This time when we mixed the groups up, there was so much more participation and the kids seemed to really enjoy it, especially the hand slapping one. We came back together about half an hour before the end, going through the STRIPE skills and discussing which ones we’d used and how. We finished off by teaching half of them how to play Rock-Paper-Scissors like last week, and then getting them to pair up and play against the ones who hadn’t been taught it. This meant they had to first listen to us, then explain (and listen to) each other in order for it to work. We were then going around and challenging the ones who had been taught by each other to see if they understood. It worked really well this week, and they all seemed to both enjoy it and also improve when we did it the second time around which was very rewarding to see. 

So that’s about it again - only 3 broken fences, 2 broken cars, and 1 broken me!

Yet another awesome African Sunset <3

Hello! Somehow it seems like ages since I last wrote, despite it only being the normal week, and the week to have seemingly flown by - funny how time does that. My week has been relatively uneventful, but equally enjoyable, and how uneventful can time really be when you're working with lions and elephants?!

Rainy season is definitely beautiful... when it's not raining!

Baby wildebeest playing chase

Baby zebra during elephant research

I've spent most of the week doing elephant IDs. Now that our researcher is back from leave we have had a lot of catching up to do. I am very good at spotting the obvious elephants, but it is so much faster to have 2 people working when the photos are unclear, or the elephant has no significant distinguishing features. We are now up to 18th August - warp speed ahead and all that! To try and have any chance of catching up, the too-nerdy-for-her-own-good intern has started bringing the laptop home in the evenings... I skip forward to the sightings that we haven't started yet and just go through each one quickly, recording all the elephants that I recognise straight away (I know more of them than anyone else so can save others a lot of time) and deleting the photos of them, and the photos that we can't use, to save time later during actual ID sessions. An example - 1 sighting of 11 elephants had over 300 pictures to sort through.... I identified 8 of them, and then went through and deleted nearly 200 pictures of those elephants, leaving only the photos with the remaining 3 to pick our way through when we finally reach September IDs...! We've only been out twice on elephant research, and both times we've spent the entire time on dung decay survey, not seeing any elephants. At this point, we are fairly convinced that they've almost all gone back to Zimbabwe, with the exception of at least 1 big male who's been laying some pretty large dungs for us to survey! We've also had a couple of reports of elephants still being seen at Dry Manzi, right on the Eastern edge of our survey area. I miss seeing my elephants... 

I'm watching you!

I've had a bit less time with the lions this week than last week, but still seen them a bit. I did 2 sessions of Dambwa Research earlier in the week, in which the lions as usual mostly slept, but LE2 was very obliging and came and sat right in front of us, posing beautifully in the sunshine. Far too many photos as usual... They've also changed their favourite position this week, moving slightly more North to hang out in the thicker bushes, making research somewhat trickier! I did do one activity budget on Kela, where I had to keep changing my recordings as the researchers and handlers kept mis-identifying my lion due to the thick brush, and so I was looking first at Loma, then Leya, then Kwandi instead! Oops! Managed to get it all sorted fairly well though... Give me elephant IDs over lion IDs any day! I spent Saturday afternoon also at Dambwa, this time with the enclosure lions. We went into Selous enclosure (Kovu and his 4 girls) to clean out bones and poo, and to cut the grass in there. Namwala is especially cute in that enclosure as she has a very white little beard, and is generally fluffier than the others, and yesterday she was just sat by the fence watching us looking SO adorable we almost felt bad for cleaning out her enclosure - she just looked like she was sad we were taking stuff out! Helped to slash the grass for a bit - an activity which isn't especially tiring, just very sweaty, especially when it's really humid - and it's incredible the difference it makes! The grass is now easily reaching knee height in places, and waist height in others, so not a lot of slashing clears an area pretty fast!

Few things more relaxing than watching sleepy lions...

LE1 looking handsome

LE2

LE2 looking slightly more awake!

The Dambwa Pride

LE2's place in the sun

Kids Club on Saturday was good, but also very frustrating. First of all we were a bit late, as one of the volunteers was ill so we had to drive right the way back to our home at Serenity to drop her off before we could head out. This meant that when we got there, we only had about 20 minutes to play with the children before we had to start our lesson plan, but we still got in a kick-around with the football, and played a bit of frisbee. We also had no staff with us, so it was only me and 1 volunteer, trying to teach a group of about 20 children who didn't want to listen. That was our problem - the children will not listen or talk to anyone who doesn't speak Tonga, the local language. They can speak English, but they just won't talk to us. The lesson plan was structured so that we would teach them a game in a group, then mix up the groups and they would teach each other. The STRIPE skills they were supposed to be using were Self-manager, Teamwork, Innovation, Participation and Enquiry, with the remaining skill (Reflection) to be used at the end when we discussed the activity. However, that activity required them to talk, and of the 20, only 2 were willing to do that! The first time around, we had them in separate groups, and they then joined the same group when it came to the teaching, so for that group it worked very well. The other group however just sat and looked at each other, and even when asked direct questions (by us when we realised that they just wouldn't do anything if we left them to their own devices) they either refused to say anything at all, or would just continue their conversations with their friends and pretend we didn't exist... We tried doing the reflection part early, and then doing the activity again with 2 new games to see if that would improve things, but it didn't. The same 2 boys were again very good about explaining, this time also working together to demonstrate the game (rock-paper-scissors) to the other group, but then they all just sat there and refused to try actually playing, and while they explained it very well (first in english and then in Tonga) we still didn't get any kind of reaction from the others to tell whether they understood or not. The other group didn't even try to explain their game... So all-in-all it was just extremely frustrating, as we continually came up with new ways to try and get through, and they just flat-out refused to talk to us. Better luck next week I suppose - the Natebe kids are generally easier to work with than Maunga anyway, and hopefully next week we might have someone who can speak to them in their own language...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and that 2017 will be a good year for all.

RS2 - silly boy!

So what's been happening for the past 2 weeks? A lot of lions, a lot of elephant IDs, and a rather significant amount of celebrating! I've done 4 mornings of Dambwa Research which is always fun. One of those was Boxing Day morning, so having not gone to bed until nearly 1am, we then left for work at 6am... that was an amusing research! Partly just watching everyone else try to stay awake while we watched the lions sleeping! We also had a research session in which we dropped another scavenge for the pride, but this time was somewhat less exciting than last time as we couldn't go into the site (too wet - we would have got the car stuck!) so had to watch through the fence. Very different activity this time though - while last time it was just grab a piece and munch then go looking for another, but don't really interact with the others, this time it was all about fighting for your share! RS3 and RS3 were smart and just grabbed a piece and vanished, but the others were in a constant battle, mainly with Zulu. The big man was so busy chasing everyone else off of the meat that he barely ate anything for ages! He was so aggressive it was quite scary to watch at times, particularly when he totally bowled over LE1 and went for him, throwing him against the electric fence (thankfully I think LE1 was lucky and got away without being shocked). This then made the following research session very interesting, as Kela (who had got only a small share of the food and Zulu had been especially aggressive towards) was sat several hundred metres away from the rest of the pride. We didn't see her for the entire research session, and had to go and find her to just make sure she was alright. Fortunately, there were no signs of scratches or bite marks on her, and she was back with the pride the next day, so they clearly hadn't kicked her out, but she'd just wanted some alone time. That wasn't all though, while we were off looking for Kela, it would seem Rusha also decide it was time to be by herself for a bit, and she just got up and wandered off. It was only when we got to the other side of the release site and were about to let the lion handler off of the vehicle onto the ground that we saw her just wandering along! She came right up to the gate and then on further and further from the pride. However, again when the researchers went in the next day she was back with the group, so goodness knows what mischief she was up to! As well as Dambwa Research I've also done several afternoons of feeding, cleaning and enclosure maintenance. Feeding and cleaning has become much more difficult (and dangerous!) as the grass is growing unbelievably fast in the enclosures. There is a definite difference in height literally just overnight! However, with dangerous snakes around (one volunteer saw a puff adder) we can't just go wading through tall grass to look for poo and bones. Instead, we have to cut the grass back in certain parts of each enclosure, and then just only clean those bits. Without a lawnmower, this is easier said than done! We use swipe blades to slash the grass down to ground level, and then simply repeat the section every few days as the grass immediately grows back up again. Slashing is actually really good fun - active but also really rewarding as you can see the difference you make instantly. Does give you some good blisters if you do it for too long though! 

LE3, his mane is slowly improving...

The big man Zulu

Rusha off for lonely stroll

When the nap attacks, Zulu must obey...

Madoda at grub time!

Beautiful butterfly in the release site

Elephant research the last couple of weeks has not been especially exciting - 2 sessions of driving through the park catching up on dung decay survey, and the rest has been IDs. We didn't even see any bushbuck while we were out! IDs I'm steadily enjoying more and more - now that I am good at making the comparisons, spotting the similarities and differences, and can recognise more and more elephants, I'm able to spend less brain power thinking about that, and appreciate more the patterns that emerge over where they are, and which elephants are doing what and with who. It never gets old being able to recognise individuals instantly. I did 62 photos in a row the other day without needing to pick up the folders! Obviously many of those were multiple photos of the same elephant, but still I was definitely proud of that one! 

Ground hornbill with a snake

Baby impala are so cute!

Balancing on Paper game

2 more weeks of Kids Club have been good. Maunga school is especially rewarding to go to as there always lots of kids and they get so excited about everything! This time we had a football match of Zambians vs Mzungus.... can safely be said that we lost badly! We then pinched our driver back and made it Wildlife Encounter vs Maunga School, and that we did better at.... We played some other games including ladders and duck-duck-goose that the little ones (and the dogs that just appeared out of nowhere!) could join in with, then we gave them a couple of teamwork exercises to do. Unfortunately these worked less well, as they just weren't that interested and weren't bothering with the "work as a team" part! First we tried a game where it was a race between 2 teams to pass a balloon along the line between their knees, which some of them got, and others just stood and did nothing no matter what encouragement we gave. Second we played one of my old Brownies games, where in groups of 3 we gave them a sheet of paper and they had to stand on the paper without any of them touching the ground. This they did, but then as soon as we told them to fold the paper in half they just refused and said it was impossible, even once we gave them some suggestions of how to fit more. It worked better the second week at Natebe School, and we made it to 6 people on one sheet of A4 which we thought was quite impressive. Then we brought out the balloons.... Wow! Natebe not so much, but the excitement at Maunga about balloons was just incredible! Any child gets excited about a balloon, so children from poor rural areas end up running around screaming! They absolutely loved playing with them, and we brought the whiteboard pens so they could draw on their balloons too which went down a treat. A really enjoyable morning for everyone, even if it is less useful to the children now that we don't have a teacher so it is more games rather than learning. Having said that, our new teacher should be arriving very soon so Kids Club will regain some structure, and we'll be able to restart book club too. 

Zambia vs the Mzungus!

And that brings me to Sundays! 2 weeks ago after I posted last, I headed to Victoria Falls with the 2 volunteers. We had a lovely afternoon just wandering around, getting drenched in spray, and taking far too many photos! The plan was to go again this afternoon and bring in the New Year at one of the Natural Wonders of the World, but a combination of rain, no sleep, and hangovers is making that plan a bit less inviting! Last Sunday was, of course, Christmas Day. We started off with scones for breakfast, then headed to church with one of the lion handlers. I have to admit, it wasn't the Christmas Day Church Service I was really expecting or wanting in order to feel the spirit of Christmas... There were no carols, no mention of the nativity and a lot of really quite aggressive shouting. Let's just say I don't think "Silent Night" is a common sound from that church... Still it was interesting, and everyone was very welcoming and there was a section in the middle where the women were all singing and a dance which we were able to join in with and clap along to, so it was still enjoyable. We headed home for lunch, then went up to our boss's house for the rest of the day. We had a wonderful afternoon just playing cards, chatting, eating and drinking, before having dinner, a (rather offensive but equally quite funny) quiz game, and Secret Santa. I got a little herd of 5 wooden elephants which are very sweet, and now sit on top of my cupboard in my room. A very Merry Christmas all around, even if it can't replace a good old Mylne Christmas at home.

Christmas dinner

Victoria Falls

At the Falls

The falls slightly more full than last time I stood here!

At the top of the Falls