Wow.... So this is it! This is really it. I'm leaving Africa in 2 days time, and other than Monday morning project (which I can manage to go on thanks to having an evening flight booked!) I am officially finished with volunteering for the year. My final project was Kids Club which was very nice, and good fun with my favourite kid (but of course we don't have favourites!) doing her favourite thing of running around me roaring that she's a lion and she's going to eat me! SO CUTE!

So how's my week gone? Hectic, fun, and sad pretty much sums it up! I can't help but be upset that I'm leaving which is stupid because I haven't left yet so I might as well enjoy it, but no... Every time I see anything, a little voice in my head goes "That might be your last one." which generally just makes me sad rather than enjoying seeing it! The best thing is that on Monday morning I'll get the chance to do one last bit of elephant research, so I'll be ending on my favourite project.

Sunday night I went out on night drive, and while there were no hyenas, I got a new sighting! SERVAL! It was a terrible view, and no photos, but it's the only sighting I've had. It was so much smaller than I expected, and so pretty. Beautiful little animal.

SURPRISE ATTACK!

Monday projects were the usual Bird Survey and Game Count. Bird survey we went to Chamabondo (no cheetahs!) and added to the data from the previous Friday. I've already decided that when I get home I'm going to try and get more into my birds there. I really enjoy bird surveys here, and certainly they're the fastest way to improve my knowledge - there's a reason I'm one of the best at identifying the birds here, and it's simply because I've done the most bird surveys! Game Count was less exciting, as we were back on Chamabondo (no cheetahs!) and it's just not a great area for wildlife in the afternoons at this time of year! We recorded warthog, zebra, impala and kudu which was a pretty good number in comparison to sometimes, but still doesn't make for the most exciting game drive.... Wow I sound spoiled! Wouldn't be complaining if I "only" saw warthogs next week!

Giraffes on the Hill

Tuesday was Elephants and Giraffes in the morning, then Elephant ID Training of the new local intern in the afternoon. It was also my BIRTHDAY! :D I was starting to get scared when we were over halfway through our session and I still hadn't seen any eles, but then 12 showed their faces and so I did get to see them. Unfortunately, the reason there were only 12 is because there was a herd of minimum 80 in Zambia, so clearly they'd arranged the Birthday Party, but got the wrong location...! The afternoon I was teaching the new elephant researchers how to do the IDs, and I'll admit that thinking back to when I started doing them does make me nervous... I wasn't allowed to do it alone for over a month after I arrived, and even then only because the Zambian researcher was off to get married - I'm leaving them to it after 2 hours training each! Eek! We went out to In-Da-Belly restaurant (for those who didn't get the pun, the local language here is Ndebele) for dinner that night, where I had Kudu steak (I'm a really great vegetarian aren't I?!) and chips which was fantastic! They had a local dance group in performing while we ate, and they dragged me up first to dance with them, and then so they dance around me singing a Happy Birthday song which started off lovely, but then changed to "How old are you now? So old now. You are old now. You are old now."..... Thanks.....! Dinner was followed by far too much cake (birthday necessity!) and then home. Such a wild 21st party - I was in bed, totally sober at 9:30pm!

Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation

Wednesday started off with sunrise shoot (the main reason I was in bed quite so early!) down by the river and it was just beautiful. Not the true dry season sunrise that is steadily making it's way back, but a really bright sun over the water, straight downriver from where we were. Also found a baby crocodile who managed to be both very cute and very menacing simultaneously! Went to Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation Survey for the last time after sunrise, once more checking cameras and lights at the 9 homesteads where they are set up. As usual, the lights seem to be doing their job effectively, so no lion visits, but one guy did point out where 2 lions had killed a hyena on his property midweek! We got back earlier than expected, so my already long day became even longer when I went to join what I thought would be my last session of Kids Club at the Rose of Charity Orphanage in town. We took some big "21st" balloons with us which they found great fun, and I spent one more afternoon playing volleyball with the kids, and then some football. We left a bit early as 2 of the volunteers were going to join in with a local football training. Rather than just sitting around watching them for 2 hours, we were welcomed into a netball match with a whole load of local women. Now I haven't played netball since I was at school, and I've done pretty much no real exercise all year.... These women train for an hour every day! They're so good! I think we provided as much entertainment at our uselessness as we provided any show of possible skill or athleticism, but they seemed to like having us there and invited us back again! A very enjoyable afternoon all round, apart from the fact that between 9 of us running on sand in the afternoon African sun, we had half a bottle of water.... Whoops! All in the pool when we got back!

Sunrise over the Zambezi

Thursday was supposed to be Hyena Tracking in the morning but the hyenas have left the park again, so while the other researchers stayed behind and did admin stuff, I used the time to go and do my last lion walk with Lekker and Lala. They were pretty lazy, but that meant lots of handsome photos of Lekker. He's such a beautiful lion! We came back to their enclosure and gave them the grass ostrich that the volunteers made the previous day. As usual, they did the token "What's this? Oh I pushed it over." and then ignored it again. The afternoon we had another elephant and giraffe session, and as this should have been my last one, I was again getting worried for most of the session that there was no elephants to be seen, and that my last ever elephant research would be a no-show, but then right as we were starting to speed up in order to get home on time, we saw them. It was a big herd - minimum of 32 individuals - but they were so far back in the bushes we didn't get a great view of them. Never mind, they were there.

Lions trying out veganism

Beautiful Lekker <3

Lala. I love catching lions just as they finish yawning - they look so angry!

Friday (really starting to get scarily close to the end of the week!) was supposed to be Occupancy Survey but there's a problem at the ranger station and we were FORCED to do another Elephant and Giraffe Research session.... How unfortunate! What really was unfortunate was that the Game Viewer was broken and spent the morning getting fixed, so we had to take the big Hyundai instead, which isn't great at rough roads. Thanks to this, we didn't get to go to Chamabondo as we'd hoped to, and we later found out that there was not 1, but 2 leopards seen there while we were out on Zambezi Drive instead! NO! However, we did find some elephants (actually not in the park, but just on the way in the morning) and giraffes so it was a good morning. The afternoon was my last Game Count, again on Zambezi Drive, and we totalled 5 species (giraffe, waterbuck, warthog, impala, hippo) so it was a nice drive. Party in the evening as a joint birthday-and-last-night-out celebration for me and our volunteer coordinator, which was really fun.

Zebra-de-doo-dah, Zebra-de-ay!

And now for today! We were supposed to have a litter pick today competition today, but yesterday there was a big fire at the dump site so we would have nowhere to put the litter we collected other than just leaving it nicely bagged back where we found it! It was pretty horrible yesterday - the whole of town and the park was just choked with smelly thick white smoke that will have been a combination of rubber, tar, plastic, asbestos, and many other delightful things that should definitely not be inhaled... This is Africa! Instead of the litter pick we went to Kids Club and had one more morning of playing with the children. I spent most of the time painting the kids' fingernails, and reading books with them which was very sweet, and a lovely ending to my volunteering stay. Following that, I've spent the afternoon packing (NO!) and will head to the Falls for one last visit tomorrow.

And that's it! That's all I have to say. If you have any questions about how to get involved yourself then feel free to contact me, or go to the ALERT website (www.lionalert.org) or the African Impact Website (www.africanimpact.com) for more information. I highly recommend volunteering out here (bearing in mind we've had volunteers from age 14 to 76 so no excuses there!), and African Impact offer so many amazing projects all over the continent working on several different species, and in many communities. The work being done is vitally important to the lives of these people, and volunteers are a huge part of that. Similarly, if you don't have the time or money to travel, but would still like to help, then every donation helps and is hugely important to the continuation of the work. To donate to the projects that I have been on, then this can be done through the ALERT website, for others go to the African Impact website and search the projects. The 2 major charities that African Impact support are ALERT and The Happy Africa Foundation, which is a more community-based one. Thank you to everyone for all of the support that I have received this year, and I promise you now that I'll let you know WHEN I'm coming back (because it's definitely not an if!).

Until next time, This Was Africa <3