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!