Zambezi: My African Adventure

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!