My first week in Zimbabwe! I can't get over the idea that I'm not in Zambia any more, though that could be because I'm less than 6 km from where I used to live! I miss everyone over that side so much, but the people here are just lovely too. Not to mention we have puppies here!

ATTACK!!

My first week hasn't included a huge amount of work, but has been great fun. I spent Tuesday morning starting with my Temporary Employment Permit application, which here means everything from 1000 forms to fill out, to getting a chest x-ray to prove I don't have TB! The afternoon was somewhat more interesting - we went out on my first session of hyaena tracking in the Zambezi National Park. Didn't see any hyaenas, but it was fun to see how it all works. 2 of the hyaenas, 1 from each local clan, are collared with GPS trackers which give out a signal every 6 hours. We drive as close as we can, then walk to the point where they were last detected, taking the telemetry with us to detect which way they went from there. We also set up a couple of camera traps, which we were able to check later in the week. Got some photos of hyaenas on them!

The nap attacked.... and won....

Wednesday was a new activity - Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation survey. We go to each residence around where there are camera traps set up, and flashing lights on the bomas where they keep livestock to deter predators, and check the traps and make sure everything is working. It was really interesting, and good fun, though a lot of driving for very little time off the car! One of those activities that I'll enjoy more as I get used to it and understand better what I'm doing.

Thursday was my best day of the week. Due to a vehicle situation, we had no car to go on projects with in the morning, so we went to the Snake Pit instead - a place in town with loads of snakes in tanks and information on the different species. Held 3 of them too: Burmese python was my favourite, but also the corn 

Me with the Burmese Python!

snake and the tiny little egg-eater snake. They had so many toxic ones...! Puff adders, green mambas (neurotoxic), black mambas (neurotoxic), vine snakes (haemotoxic - they cause the blood not to clot), gaboon vipers, and SO many cobras! There was one really grumpy Egyptian Cobra that hated anyone passing by, and struck at the glass so many times, kept making us jump. We also saw a boa constrictor being fed - not pleasant watching rats get suffocated! The afternoon was back to work, but this meant my first Lion Walk! It was so much fun! The lions are beautiful and so small compared to the 

Boa Constrictor

ones I'm used to in Livingstone. The weather was quite cool and cloudy, so the lions were really active, jumping around all over the place! I was walking Lila and Liuwa, 2 females both 15 months old, and Lila was especially jumpy - kept leaping on Liuwa for no reason! So much fun to watch!

Lila!

Cuddles with Lila!

And also with Liuwa!

The first elephants I saw in Zimbabwe!

Friday we had another awesome day - essentially lots of game driving! First game drive was just that - we were given a free drive by a local Big 5 game park in return for letting them take loads of photos of us for their advertising. We saw giraffes, kudu, impalas (of course), a tortoise, a male black rhino which was awesome, and most importantly, a LEOPARD! It was the worst sighting of one ever - about 200 m away, and only for like 2 seconds - but there was a leopard!!!! I was so happy, and it was beautiful. Made my day! We got back from the game drive with literally about a minute to spare which meant I was able to jump in the car on game count too.We do game count twice a week in the park, recording everything that we see in order to determine an approximation of the exact species in the park. The most exciting thing we found was lion footprints, but no lion. We also saw impalas, giraffe, baboons, vervet monkeys, and warthogs. We have to also put in a breakdown of all the ages of animals we saw. We had to do that on elephant, buffalo and bushbuck research too, but that was only 3 species, and only elephants did we do a full breakdown of calf/juvenile/pubescent/adult rather than just young and adult. It's going to take me a long time to get to the point where I can tell the breakdown for every species! Life is awesome! Unfortunately Saturday was a slightly different story - we were supposed to have another game drive but when I woke up I was so dizzy I couldn't walk in a straight line, and that lasted until nearly lunchtime... Moving car was not a good plan! Serves me right for not drinking enough really! The good news though is that the cold I've had all week may finally be on its way out! Yay! Fingers crossed for next week...

Bye bye Bisa!

Final week in Zambia! :O I cannot believe it - this place is just amazing and I will be so sad to leave it. 6 months has gone unbelievably fast, and I'm sure the next 6 will too. I'm certainly gutted that I have to leave Livingstone, the staff here who have become such great friends, and the Elephant project, but equally I'm so excited to go to Victoria Falls and start discovering again! The hyena project sounds fascinating and challenging, not to mention I'm excited to go to the Zambezi National ark where I'm far more likely to get a sighting of predators (Mosi-Oa-Tunya doesn't have any since it's so close to human settlements and really small) including jackals, hyena (obviously!), wild/painted dog, cheetah (if I'm very lucky!) and leopard (again, if I just happen to be in the right place at the right time!). This final week has been both fun and very sad. I had far too many goodbyes to say, and our researcher was sad for a lot of the week and simply refusing to mention the number of days. When I actually left on Monday (sorry this isn't quite on time - writing from Victoria Falls!), there were many tears, presents, and a lot of hugs! Watching the clock in the afternoon ID session was not pleasant, knowing that I only had 90 more minutes here......... 60....... 40... 30... 20... 10.. 5. Time for the off! And then when I got back it was a rushed goodbye to my 2 Zambian mothers (our cleaning staff at Serenity who have spoiled me rotten and taken such great care of me for the past 6 months) before heading straight to the border. Now that I'm here, obviously it's going to take some time to settle in, but I'm all unpacked and everyone seems very nice. I have a painting hung up on my curtains of my favourite elephant from Zambia. Sierra watches over me and brightens up my room here so I don't forget her or the amazing people across the river <3

Saying goodbyes....

My present at Kids Club - a colouring of Sierra <3

Anyway, soppiness aside (mostly) I have had a good week. A lot of IDs, a few sessions of Dambwa research, one research drive through the park, and 3 sessions of community - Conservation Education at Mukumasaba on Wednesday, Book Club at Twabuka on Thursday, and Kids Club at Maunga on Saturday. Con Ed this week was all about flowers and we were amazed at their knowledge! We did a similar session with the last group of Con Ed kids at the same school, and they couldn't get their heads around it at all, and definitely didn't seem to have any prior knowledge, so we were expecting it to be very difficult to explain. However when we started going through naming the parts of a flower (petal, sepal, stigma, style, ovum, anther, stamen) they were able to answer instantly, and we got to the end of that activity far quicker than expected! Probably a good thing since the next activity, which was aimed at teaching about pollination, turned to instant chaos! The idea was that we would have 10 kids acting as flowers, and 3 as bees, and that the bees had to pick the most attractive flowers based on their assigned physical attributes (first round was bright colours vs dull colours, second round was number of sweets that the flower held to act as nectar). However, our bees didn't really understand that they were only supposed to visit certain flowers, the flowers were giving "pollen" away from the stigma (the equivalent of being fertilised then unfertilised!) as well as the anther so that made no sense and only served to confuse them more, and when it came to the "nectar" round, several of the flowers ate their nectar rather than giving it to the bees which totally defeated the object! Wasn't really any other way to do it though that we could think of.... Book Club was also successful this week. Back at Twabuka school but with a group of older children, we switched roles so this week I was doing the word activity while others did the reading tests. We were using harder words than last week (things like "generation" and "running" as opposed to "cup" and "ruler"). I would read one out, they would write it down and hold it up, and then we would have a volunteer come and write it on the board and the others would say if they agreed or not. Mostly it went very well, with at least half the class getting every word correct. However, the word "ceiling" had them totally stumped, possibly largely to do with the fact that they hadn't heard it before! What was quite fun was teaching them the "I before E, except after C, when sounded as EE" rhyme. I know it helped me a lot with my English spelling so hopefully it will help them too! Kids Club was all about how to be a good self-manager. After the usual initial playing, we headed inside and I helped the community volunteer out with her lesson using different positive and negative self-management words (motivated, on time, enthusiastic, organised, planned, confident etc vs lazy, late, lost, messy, confused). They did understand and by the end they knew the words better than at the start, but it was quite hard going to get them to talk to us again, and they seemed fairly bored at times... I think we did well to keep them engaged, even if that did mean cutting a couple of her activities short.

My last photo of LE3

Dambwa was good fun this week, partly because I was there a lot, and partly because we had some really great sightings! I kept thinking it was the last time I was going to see them, then being able to go up and see them again! I did my last feed and clean session, and did 3 sessions of Dambwa Research. The first one was supposed to be my last, but due to the wet roads being impassable in places and the lions not being close to the dry ones, we couldn't find them. I was rescheduled to go again on Tuesday and Saturday afternoons, and were successful on both of those. The lions found us! We would know roughly where they were based on the telemetry signals from the adults' radio collars, but actually spotting them was impossible until they came out to say hello! Saturday they just walked around us and then continued on their way to Main Gate and their favourite place. Tuesday however they got rather too close! We were parked right up next to the electric fence so couldn't move easily, when they appeared out of the bush next to us and stared us down from only 2-3 m away! I still, even after 6 months, haven't managed to get over how stunning RS2's eyes are! So pale and menacing... Having him look you straight in the face when you're sat at his level is both terrifying and amazing! I was in the front seat of the car so lower down than usual putting me right at their level. As soon as they had checked us out and laid back down a few metres away, we quickly repositioned the car so we were no longer trapped! A pretty awesome way to finish my 6 months of research!
I had my last Snare Sweep this week, and again the park was looking particularly beautiful. We saw a big herd (or big for Mosi-Oa-Tunya anyway!) of Wildebeest on the way, and then once out the light was stunning coming through the grass again. We also saw giraffes, baboons and puku which was nice. My last time in the park... It was beautiful <3

Snare sweep getting quite overgrown!

The end of my last Zambian Snare Sweep

My penultimate week in Zambia - yikes! It's been another good one though, with a new activity that I've never done before - book club at Twabuka Primary School. As the first week back with a teacher (new guy is brilliant - the kids love him and he's great fun to work with) this is the first time since about November that there has been Book Club happening. We go into 3 schools each week (Twabuka, Natebe, and Maunga) and teach them how to improve their English and reading skills through word games and easy books. This week was the first time this academic year that we've been, so we started with a reading test in order to determine their current reading level, and they'll be tested again at frequent intervals through the year to see if they are improving. I spent the session testing them one at a time, while the others worked with the remaining students, playing word games with them. There was a big variety in the standard which was interesting to see among students who have always been taught together.

Studying tracks on Bush Walk

I also had a second new activity this week - a bush walk through the national park surrounding our offices. I've had the chance before but have never been because I felt I'd be more useful doing IDs, but this time I decided I'd tag along. It was really good, and I learned a lot of new facts which were cool. Not sure what my favourite was - lots to choose from! Elephants brush their teeth by eating palm leaves and spitting them out. Mupani trees are able to communicate with each other through their roots, allowing them to produce a substance which makes them taste bitter to prevent herbivory. Marula trees produce fruits which when eaten, the animals get drunk. We also found a tree with literally thousands of giant hairy caterpillars on it. They're irritant as well - they touch you and you come out in super itchy bumps. Worse, there's tiny ones all over our office! We're totally infested... They get everywhere... and we've now discovered that their hairs are also blown around in the wind so we get the bite-like rashes even without touching them! Yuck! Hopefully they'll be gone soon... Or I will be! 

Bush Walk View!

Grass heads

SPIDER!! (This guy was about an inch long excluding legs!)

Just a pretty flower with the dew

We had one session of elephant research, but we saw no elephants. Some of our dung were totally drowned, and I was sent into the deep puddles - sometimes being the only sensible wellie-wearing person backfires, especially when one boot has a hole in it! Continued to "speed" through the September ID sightings. We're getting through them fast, but that's only really because the photos are so bad that we can't confirm anything, so just delete them before wasting time searching for ages, only to decide we can't be 100% sure anyway!

A friend we met during Ele Research

Kids Club was somewhat chaotic this week, though better than last week! Natebe's turn to do the ALERT Olympics this week, where they are normally much better at English, as there are older ones able to explain to the younger ones in Chitonga (the local language). Of course it was the week that we had a complicated lesson to run that no teens turned up at all! Ah well, it went better than expected considering how few older there were. We were only in 4 teams this week, doing skipping, the cup run, standing jumps, and the chitenge stand. We tried to make more of the point about team spirit - not laughing at each other, and cheering each other on. There was a definite issue with communication, and although we tried to improve their talking so that they could improve their scores, they didn't really get it. However, it was very good to see that the winning team was also the one that got the highest team spirit score! A good teaching point, especially as the main reason for their high score was that their oldest boy was explaining everything to everyone. I also got adopted by a little boy who was SO cute! Literally just clung to me the whole time... Will miss Natebe - my favourite school. 

My adopted son from Natebe!

Con Ed 

Conservation Education was good this week. We were going through our experiment from last week where we put 4 plants in different conditions. This more just became a good lesson in experimental design as opposed to the planned lesson in photosynthesis. Firstly, the plant which was supposed to have no water was left with the others... outside in rainy season! Secondly the plant with no light was being kept under black plastic, so that one ended up with no water either, so we couldn't prove which factor was the limiting one. Finally the one without carbon dioxide was simply placed inside a clear plastic bag, which meant that there was some carbon dioxide already in it, and it wasn't totally air proof. Also, of course having only left it for a week there wasn't that much of a difference between the plants anyway. So yeah that didn't really work, but they still seemed interested so hopefully they took something from it about photosynthesis and designing scientific experiments!

Dambwa Research

Lions in a tree!

Lion activities included feeding and cleaning, and a Dambwa Research session. Probably the best lion part of the week would have to be on our way out of the release site, when we looked across to the enclosures and saw 2 of the enclosure females from the 8 right up in a tree! When it came to feeding, I had to hang back for the first session since my tennis elbow still hasn't sorted itself... The second session it was just 2 of us, so then I joined in and was glad to find that I was ok. We fed a LOT of lions, so lots of meat to lug around!

Snare sweep was not especially successful in terms of finding snares. We only got 3 between us. We did however find several cool spiders, and there was a beautiful light through the trees and the grass heads, making it a very nice morning even if slightly disapointing. The number of snares has definitely decreased recently, and we are sure it's almost entirely to do with the Zambian Wildlife Authority really clamping down on it. A group of scouts have moved back into the park, living there full time and doing daily snare sweeps. They've also become a lot harsher on any poachers that they catch, acting to prevent them from doing it again, and deter others from trying it.

So all in all a very busy week!

Playing cards when we got stuck at Dambwa into the evening!

Sunset from Dambwa on Saturday

A random fly!

Impala on our drive to the office

Sunset from Waterfront

The Puff Adder....

Hello! I'm quite glad to be posting this week if I'm honest - I could very easily have not come back from Snare Sweep on Friday... Pretty sure my heart lost about 10 years of my life! Walking through the bush is easily our most dangerous activity, which is why we have a wildlife officer with a gun with us to scare off any animals that may come too close. However, she was unable to stop me from very nearly standing on a puff adder, one of the most dangerous snakes here! She and our volunteer coordinator had already walked through that part too making it even scarier... I'd also reached the point of my step that I couldn't turn back, so was only able to shift my foot to the right and hope that it wasn't bigger than it looked and I was aiming for the tail end! I didn't stand on it, but I very nearly did! We moved on again, but had to stop about 10 minutes later when I did stand on a second snake, which we aren't sure what it was, but we think it was some kind of grass snake thank goodness! After that I got so jumpy that I stopped looking for snares, literally just looking up from my feet to avoid walking into trees, and I had to keep myself from screaming when a butterfly landed on my shoulder!

The elephant photo I'm most proud of identifying...!
Actually didn't even use the folders!

Near death experiences aside, I've had a good week. Monday and Thursday were days of elephant IDs, sorting our way through photo after photo, deleting 6 elephants from our database, adding a load more, and getting through a decent number of sightings. Still not going to finish August before I leave for Zimbabwe though! Thursday I was doing them by myself, which used to be a chore that I really didn't enjoy, but I've reached the point now that I was doing them all day with barely a lunch break, and was still disappointed at the end of the day when I had to stop and put the laptop away! 

Elephant IDs on Sunday afternoon at David Livingstone Hotel!
This is how to do office work!

Playing catch at Kids Club

Saturday was a particularly good day this week, with Kids Club first and then Dambwa enclosure maintenance in the afternoon. Kids Club was insane! We were doing an "ALERT Olympics" with the kids which just went nuts from the start, but considering how well it could have gone I think we did very well, especially when we had no one with us who spoke the local language...! We split them into teams, trying to mix together ages and genders, but of course they all wanted to be with their friends so we kept having to separate the groups as they all reorganised themselves into friendship groups which would have left all the tiny non-english speakers in one group and the teenage boys as the easily-going-to-win-everything group! We eventually mixed them up, and got them into the different activities, but again every time they moved which activity they were doing, the groups lost and gained a couple of kids! The 5 activities were: 1 person make animal noises and actions and everyone else guess as many animals in the 2 minutes; run as fast as you can balancing a cup of water on your head; standing jumps as far as you can as a team; skipping as many times in a row as possible; and folding up a chitenge (a piece of cloth that the women here wear when cleaning, cooking, carrying babies etc.) and seeing how many times you could fold it and still fit everyone in your team on it. The kids really enjoyed it, and they were definitely improving at cheering each other on and not putting each other down as we went along. By the end we had a tie for first place, so we quickly came up with a relay race where they had to go in pairs carrying a ball between the 2 of them without using their hands, and set the 2 winning teams against each other. It was great to see the younger ones win, and also be the ones who were much better at cheering the others along. We had put in a score for each team on each activity for how good they were at helping each other, so it was very satisfying to know that the winners were the most supportive group! They got so excited when they won too!

The Olympics Decider!

Zebras in the park

Saturday may have been good, but Wednesday was definitely the best day of my week. I started with IDs and got through a decent number, then we headed out for elephant research in the mid morning session. With no dung to survey that day, we were basically just having a game drive through Mosi-Oa-Tunya! Having seen no elephants since early December, the researcher and I were focussed on looking for the bushbuck we're monitoring, and didn't even believe it for a moment when our new intern spotted the herd of elephants across the river! Once we saw them though, we were out the car with the binoculars and kit faster than ever! There were 23 in total that we could count, and while they were too far away to see any identifying ear notches, we still got very excited to recognise Squank (M40) from his crazy tusks! We watched them for 15 minutes, playing in the water, rolling in the mud, dust bathing, and play fighting. Best feeling ever... I'd forgotten how much I love watching elephants play! We did have to go right down to the water's edge to see them though, so we were having to also keep an eye on the river to make sure there were no crocs stalking us! We saw one massive guy, but he was basking on a bank about 30 m away so no worries there. We raced back to the office (only an hour late!) and headed to Dambwa to pick up the others for Conservation Education. We arrived at the school to find even more students than last week - maybe 40?! It was fantastic to see so many, and again they all seemed really interested and wanting to learn. We were teaching them about photosynthesis, and we've set up an experiment at the school with 4 Zambezi Teak trees to prove that plants need light, water and carbon dioxide in order to photosynthesise. This will not only help their understanding, but should hopefully also help them with their understanding of setting up a scientific experiment. For example, none of the group that I had previously understood the point of the control plant which was having nothing done to it. It was a really good day, and finished off by a sunset swim with cocktails at the David Livingstone hotel. Wednesday was an awesome day!

Sunset swim at David Livingstone

So that's all again, and fingers crossed next week will involve no near death experiences!

Rainbows on the way home

Oops! The car is stuck again....