It's been Elephant Week! We aren't really sure why they're still here, but they definitely are. More importantly, they have started forming very large herds again - we've identified several small herds all together more than once. We would expect them to move back to Zimbabwe about now, as this is what they have done every other year, so it's becoming quite a talking point at the office as various theories are thrown around for why they are still here. The general theory for their usual movement away is that the leaves here are all just coming out now as the rains arrive, and that when fresh the leaves do not have a high enough fibre content, but that doesn't really explain why it would be different this year. Anyway, for whatever reason the elephants are apparently not in as much of a hurry to leave as we expected them to be, so we've been getting some fantastic sightings! We saw minimums of 74 on Thursday, and then 43 yesterday! Certainly not a bad last week for the other research intern, though of course still sad to see him go. Again I really enjoyed the Thursday sighting because we got a really good view of them, and was able to recognise about 15 different elephants as they crossed in front of me, from only their left ear! Combined with the lack of tusks in the case of Sierra of course... The really annoying part of Thursday's sighting was how people behaved in reaction to the elephants crossing the road - how can anyone think it's acceptable to, in a national park of all places, see a herd of elephants crossing the road, and deliberately accelerate their enormous articulated lorry towards them and lean on the horn as hard as they can?! Seriously, can someone explain this to me?! Of course the elephants scattered so that half the herd were on one side of the road and half on the other... and then smaller cars very helpfully blocked their path by stopping to take photos...! You are in the National Park therefore by law you must stop somewhere that gives wildlife plenty of space, and allow them to do their own thing at their own pace. HOW IS THAT DIFFICULT?!?!?!?!?!?!?! 

Hunting down the Trees Plot

Idiot guy...

Trees this week was especially funny. First of all, despite the plot being as far from the office as we go, thanks to the research vehicle being down we had to wait for the Book Club volunteers to be ready before we could leave. Then, again because we weren't in the Land Rover, we struggled a lot to actually get to the plot. We can't entirely blame the Ford though - it turned out that the roads marked on our map that go to the plot are totally non-existent! So there was a LOT of off road driving to finally get to 1 km from the plot, at which point we gave up and just scrambled our way through rocks and scrub to reach the plot! Having left at 7:30, we started actually doing tree research at 10:45! Thankfully, it was a ridiculously easy plot when we finally arrived, so we were then done by 11:20 despite messing around quite a lot as we went. It started to thunder just as we were packing up our measuring strings, and the rain began to spot about 10 minutes after we got back on the truck. I can't say it was "spotting" for long - we drove for a good 20 minutes unable to see more than 10 m in any direction because the rain was so heavy! The rest of the way back was just very wet...! We had a 3 inch deep puddle in the bottom of the car! Now I was ok with this - I quite enjoyed it to be honest - as I had been really over-prepared (or so I thought until the rain started!) and brought both my raincoat and waterproof trousers with me. However, none of the volunteer, the other intern, or either researcher, had bothered with anything waterproof! Couldn't help but feel smug at that point... The good part of having the Ford instead of the Land Rover was that we could at least put our bags into the cab with the driver to keep those dry! I was totally drenched by the time we got back to the school over an hour later to pick up the nice dry volunteers from Book Club, so you can only imagine how wet and freezing the guys without waterproofs were! I was very glad the rain was much lighter at that point because I was already cold, and we were giving 2 girls a lift home and they had nothing and looked freezing so I gave them my coat to keep them dry, and I just froze for that part of the drive! We very nearly didn't make it home, as by the time we got back to Dambwa the road was a mixture of mudslide and lake! Our driver (since upgraded to "Captain") somehow managed to pull us through, to many cheers of praise and thanks that it was him who happened to be driving that day! The last part of the drive was quite fast, and this time rather than giving my coat away, I ended up kneeling backwards on my seat with my coat open, attempting to act as a windbreak for the freezing and soaked guys behind me! It was a fun drive!! 

Meat Prep

I've done quite a bit of lion work this week too, though I've only actually seen them once! On Wednesday I was supposed to be doing a double elephant ID session by myself, but thanks to load shedding (scheduled power cuts that never happen on schedule!) we had no power and the laptop had no charge. With nothing else to do, I went and joined the guys doing meat prep, weighing and chopping up meat slabs for 12 lions. I then went up to Dambwa with them to help with feeding and cleaning. I love watching the lions eat - they get so excited and then make wonderful "happy eating" noises. We actually then had Wednesday afternoon off as all of the staff had a meeting, so we went home and played Monopoly! (Apologies to all Monopoly fans when I say that it really is as dull as I've always heard and I think it will be a while before I'm bored enough to try it again...!) Thursday I ended up roped into meat prep for a second time instead of doing IDs! This time I was about to start when our volunteer coordinator came over and asked for some help getting a dead cow off of the truck. She'd died overnight in labour when her calf got stuck, so she couldn't be used for human consumption, so the guy had brought her to us for lion food. This meant she needed cutting up, weighing and then freezing, so guess what? We didn't just move her off the truck... So I've now done a full cow chop! I somehow managed to avoid to get totally covered in blood, but some of the others looked like they'd just murdered someone! 

Meat Prep

The other part of my week that has to be mentioned is nothing to do with work. Our lions researcher is American, and as part a tradition started by her predecessor she treated us to a full Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday! It was SO good! She'd taken the day off on Wednesday, and then had Thursday afternoon off too, so had by herself had managed to make butter chicken, breaded garlic chicken, green bean casserole, bread, cheesy mashed potato, sage and onion stuffing, gravy and corn on the cob, followed by an amazing brownie with ice cream, for 12 people, and there was still some left over! We were all so stuffed at the end we just didn't move for a good half hour afterwards! It was a really good night, just enjoying food and talking and laughing together. The current group is particularly lovely, so very enjoyable to just spend time chatting and playing games with them.

Being watched by 2 young giraffe

And that's it, so until next time have a good week everyone!