Baby kudu!

Wow - another week gone by already! Feels like barely yesterday that I was writing last week's entry! Ever since my family came out here and we spent our incredible 2 weeks in Botswana, I'm struggling to not start counting down to going home. Partly because it made me miss everyone at home all the more, but also because that's been something I've been looking forward to for my entire stay in Africa, especially since I came to Zimbabwe and it suddenly felt a whole lot closer. Now, the next major milestone is.... the end.... Sounds stupid to be thinking about that already - after all I've worked out that in precisely (almost to the minute!) in 100 days, I will be  boarding my plane out of Victoria Falls. 100 days is a long time! 

White-backed vulture watching it's friends on the kudu

Monday started off with the normal bird survey. We had a slight issue with the GPS - the battery died before we even reached the park, so we had to turn around and head home to get new batteries.... what a shame - we ran into 3 big bull elephants in the road! One was Kenny, one was Arsenij, one I haven't yet had a chance to identify so have no idea.... Pretty cool to be able to recognise 2/3 of the group instantly though! Anyway, we made it back to the park, this time with a functional GPS and we counted 15 species on bird survey. Unfortunately our time ran out just before we got to the point where there were suddenly a whole big group of vultures circling and dropping to the ground. Didn't manage to count them on our survey, but we did get a great view.... and a flat tire when we went to investigate! It was a dead male kudu, but didn't see it that well. Game count in the afternoon yielded 4 giraffe, 3 elephants, 14 zebra, and a whole lot of warthogs and impala! We went through Chamabondo - an area that seems to be sometimes amazing with 50+ elephants, sable antelope, and zebras and giraffes around every corner... or have almost nothing whatsoever! 

African Road Block!

Juvenile Giraffes

Tuesday we headed back to Chamabondo in the morning for an Elephant and Giraffe research session, and saw no eles, but did find a big herd of giraffes, and even more awesome, a herd of 16 sable antelope, including a mixture of males, females and young ones! I've never seen more than 5 in a group before. They are just absolutely stunning creatures - very bold and clean pattern, big manes, powerful bodies, and horns that just go on forever! Got very excited to see them! Spent the afternoon on elephant IDs, on which I am still stuck on the high sighting from the 9th March.... only just over 2 months behind on a 2 month old project so far! 

Beautiful female Sable Antelope 

A zebra that thought it was a Sable...

Spotted hyena during night drive. Unfortunately
didn't get a shot of anything else that night.

Wednesday was a fantastic day. Started off not especially exciting - off to immigration for the last time to get my passport stamped. My TEP visa application has now been filed and accepted, so next week it will be off to Harare (a 12 hour bus journey each way - yippee....) to get my visa finally sorted. I spent most of the rest of the day on IDs (still didn't finish the 9th March sighting) and then it was actually not until 7:30pm that it got awesome - night drive time! Best. Night drive. Ever! We started off not seeing much but other cars for ages, and by the time we reached our turning point at 8:45pm, we'd seen 1 elephant by the road, and a duiker on the airstrip and nothing else... then things got good.... Almost instantly we saw a hyena at the side of the road, and then not long after saw a genet which was awesome. Moving on we came across a bushbaby, a wild cat, and then one of the vols suddenly goes "STOP!". We asked her if it was a hyena, and she was like "no, it was bigger than that".... My reaction was to just assume it was a big hyena since the only things bigger are lion, leopard, wildebeest, buffalo, and elephant.... Oh no, she knew it was a LEOPARD, she was just too scared to say it in case we laughed at her! WE SAW A LEOPARD ON THE MAIN ROAD!!!! Driving on, we got back to the airstrip and things got exciting again - first the duiker again, and then 7 hyenas all together, just wandering down the runway towards us! They didn't care about the car at all - they just kept coming like it was a game of chicken! We stopped and one of them walked right up to within a metre of the car and just looked at us.... really quite eerie, especially when another one starts whooping very loudly somewhere just out of sight.... And the best part - I so nearly didn't go this week! My volunteer coordinator from Livingstone, and the ALERT Placement Organiser from the UK were coming across, and if I went I wouldn't get a chance to see them before they moved on to Antelope Park at 4am Thursday morning... it was only the last minute thought that actually they would want t go to bed very quickly after arriving that made me decide I might as well go.... Good thing I did, since they were both still up when I got back anyway! We had a full hour and a half long chat, and I didn't get to bed until nearly midnight in the end, having got back at 9:30! Such a great night! 

The big yellow sun of Africa is trying
to make a return after wet season

Thursday morning meant another ID session, and no I STILL didn't finish that 9th March sighting....!! Only 4 elephants to go on it now - determined to finish it tomorrow (ignoring the fact that it's theoretically my day off!) . Elephant research in the afternoon wasn't much more thrilling - we saw 2 buffalo on the section of road that we nicknamed "Giraffe Loop"... and then haven't seen any giraffes on it since! Other than that, we pretty much sure nothing. Not especially exciting but that's what I love about research! The fact that sometimes you can have a drive like that, and sometimes you can have a drive like Wednesday night? That's what makes it exciting - no 2 drives are ever the same. Sunset drinks in the evening gave us a view of some more buffalo, and a very pretty bushbuck, but no elephants or hyenas like we sometimes see there. Never mind - can't ALWAYS  be on research!

At Masuwe Primary with all the kids and their shoes 

Friday was an amazing morning. We drove out to Masuwe Primary School, which is a small school in a very rural area, with a lot of very disadvantaged children. Some of them have to walk up to 10 km to school every morning, leaving at 4am in order to make it on time. In terms of the walking, many of them don't have shoes, and that was our activity on Friday morning. Our new volunteer coordinator, after she was here last time as a volunteer herself, fundraised and bought 165 pairs of plimsolls, all ordered in specific sizes for each child. Each pair needed the laces all putting in, so we laced up 165 pairs of shoes, and handed them all out individually for each kid. It was so heartwarming to do, and seeing them running around afterwards with the shoes was fantastic. Some of them were so protective that they wouldn't put them on because the ground was dusty - not quite the point! - and one little boy got so excited that he took his old shoes off, but never put the new ones on, so ended up running around barefoot carrying 2 pairs of shoes! So sweet. Game count in the afternoon was back to the days of when I first arrived - I don't remember the last time we had one which was just me and the 2 research interns from University of Zimbabwe. We saw some kudu, zebras, impala, 2 elephants, warthogs and a giraffe. Not a bad game count! We went out Friday night for some drinks again - our last night with our old volunteer coordinator. If you're reading this Amy, I've said it enough times but you were great! 

Liuwa <3

Week finished off with Saturday's activities of Seedling Project, Litter pick, and a lion walk. The seedling teak trees that we planted a few weeks ago are growing nicely, requiring us to go and water them once a week. With so many of us all there together, there wasn't enough work for us all on the seedlings, so rather than working on the seedlings, the rest of us worked on litter pick. We collected a total of 4 bin bags worth of rubbish from one short stretch of road, which was both disgusting and rewarding. It was also frustrating when we walked back over a section we'd literally just cleared, and had to pick up a crisp packet that someone had dropped right after seeing us picking them up.... Take it home PLEASE! We went for a lion walk when we were done with all the seedlings, taking Lila and Liuwa down to the river where they played and stalked each other. A lovely end to the morning. The rest of my day I spent sorting photos, writing this, and generally chilling out, ready for a long day of IDs tomorrow.

Cuddles with Lila 

Lila <3

Hope you've all had a good week, and I want to say thank you to everyone who reads this every week - it means a lot to me that so many people are so interested in how I'm getting on.