Zambezi: My African Adventure

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!