Botswana: Mokolodi week four

Caro: The last week at Mokolodi passed in a flash. We focussed on finishing the work we’d started in the sanctuary. But we also got involved in: supporting an orientation camp for a group of Canadian university students who are volunteering with HIV charities in Botswana as part of activities arranged by WUSK; a day of first aid training; helping establish the Mokolodi blog and guidelines for its use; climbing Magic Mountain with Lincoln and Tracey (and checking the perimeter fences that run along it) and assisting Kyle in her attempt to castrate a hyena.

The group of twenty WUSK volunteers arrived on the Friday and had a few hours free-time, so Tim and I gave them a tour of the sanctuary, the volunteers quarters and the permaculture gardens. They were a really enthusiastic bunch, with lots of questions, so we enjoyed showing them what we’d done.

On Saturday we joined Jess and Lincoln to take the WUSK group rhino tracking – but we were unsucessful. That night John had asked us to supervise their dinner and activities because the other EC staff were all tied up with events including entertaining a group of potential fundraisers who were visiting Mokolodi.

WUSK had some interesting guests, including some other Canadians working with NGOs in Gaborone. After dinner there was singing around the campfire – I even got called on to lead a woeful rendition of Waltzing Matilda – but it was a marked contrast comparing the fairly muted vocals of the Canadians to the enthusiasm and volume of the Batswan.

On Sunday we elected to focus on the Sanctuary rather than join the group for a second attempt at the rhino. Which was lucky because they managed to get bogged and then, 5 minutes after pushing the truck out, they got a flat tire! They came back 5 hours later pretty muddy and hungry – but thrilled to have found rhino and managed to get very close to them. Sunday evening we played poker with the Zims. And they were starting to really come to grips with the game, which increased the fun for all.

On Monday, we joined the rangers and EC staff for First Aid training. We paid our own way – but decided that it was a good opportunity, worth doing while we had the chance. And it was great fun doing it with a big group of people we know.

Tim and Lincoln show their CPR style

It was very fast paced – trying to squeeze a lot of content into one day. But I think we both feel better placed to help in an emergency now. And we’re now allowed to operate the defibrillators on planes!

We gained a better (scarier) understanding of the Batswan emergency health system. Basically, it seems that the state provided ambulances in Botswana are more like glorified taxi services than what we in Australia/UK expect from an ambulance. There are only three paramedics in Gaborone (maybe even Botswana, I didn’t get to clarify this) and they are all employed by private ambulance services (which have aircraft, so they service the whole country). So the public ambulances can collect you and they have some first aid training. But they don’t carry much in the way of drugs, and they don’t have equipment like defibrillators. It seems that most of the large organisations subscribe to one of the private services and provide it to their employees. But the remaining population are a lot more exposed! And Botswana is a huge and remote country – a population of 1.8m spread over an enormous piece of land. So the message that was drummed home to our group is that after our training, we were likely to be as good as it was going to get, at any emergency we may stumble across in Botswana.

The chap who taught us works as a paramedic (not only a trainer) so he was constantly drawing on stories from his own experience e.g. the difference in injuries between drunk and sober drivers (Botswana has a huge number of accidents caused by alcohol); and anecdote about workers drilling a pipeline who discovered that mambas were attracted to the drilling and were being bitten in large numbers – to the point that they refused to drill until snakes had been driven away each day; a large group of high school students who had drunk pure alcohol from the school science lab (most of whom had died); and shootings, often passion killings, which Botswana is seeing increasing numbers of. In the past many Batswan have had lovers – which they are fairly frank an open about – they call it “keeping a small house”. But with the problem of HIV, many are taking the chastity and monogamy message very seriously – and lashing out when they discover their partner is sleeping around.

On Tuesday we joined Kyle, Lincoln and Dirk (a CCB volunteer from Germany, due to start training as a vet) to castrate an hyena. Mokolodi has a pair of spotted hyenas, siblings whose mother died when they were young, so they supplemented their diet by begging food from a campsite. Which was fine when they were small and harmless – but not so good when they turned into full sized predators. So they were brought to Mokolodi and they live in one of the cheetah release pens (several hectares large) within the reserve. And because they’re domesticated, and siblings, it’s not appropriate for them to breed. So castration it was to be.

We drove down first thing so we could get the job done early, while it was still cool. We set-up a gurney and a drip, and then set to darting the hyena. Once that was done our job was to ensure the female stayed away from him while he was unconscious, and to help carry him to the gurney. Unfortunately the first dart failed to release properly – it stuck in the barrel. After that they were skittish and despite all of our best efforts (too convoluted to go into – but we tried all sorts of things) we had to admit defeat.

Wednesday morning we joined Lincoln and Tracey, a new ranger who started around the same time we did, to climb Magic Mountain. It was a good 90 minute walk up a fairly solid incline. We walked along the fenceline to check for problems (the entire 30+ kilometres of the Mokolodi fence is checked every fortnight) but all was fine. There was a scramble up some rocks at the end and then a great view. We had a competition to see who could spot what animals from afar. Lincoln was best (of course!) and top spots included eland (which was hadn’t seen before) and a big group of giraffes and zebra. The walk down was slippery but we made it without injuries. Along the way we could smell the most beautiful fragrance, which it turned out was bush tea.

We went with Lincoln to feed the cheetahs and the hyenas, which we had done a few times over the month. But today was different. Lincoln had decided to add some new skills to our repertoire and so it was our job to kill the chickens. After lunch M’marapelo (who along with Theresa, looks after the sanctuary day-to-day) showed us what to do and we prepared 6 chickens – M’mamarelo did the first three, Tim did two, I did one – or perhaps more accurately, I stretched it out on the ground, but the knife was quite blunt so I got M’mamarepelo to actually make the cut the make sure it was instant and the chicken didn’t suffer. It was hard to do and I’m glad I don’t have to do it every day. But I think we both are glad to know we could do it in future, if called on to. M’mamarepelo told us in Botswana it’s good etiquette for guests to kill the chickens when visiting friends. So at the very least we’re skilled up to be good guests when we’re next in Botswana.

M'marepello, who taught Tim and I the essentials of killing chickens

Feeding the cheetahs is lovely. Duma and Letotse (their names mean cheetah in African languages) very gently take the chicken from you (some days it’s donkey meat) and settle down to eat. It takes them about twenty minutes to finish (pretty much every skerrick) and then you can stroke them. They purr just like domestic cats – but at about ten times the volume. It’s incredible to hear.

Later that day we hitched a lift into town with Tabo/Kenny (the new EC guide, who we’d met previously because he also does the drumming sessions) and bought a pile of drinks, sausages and charcoal. Then we headed home to throw a spontaneous braii for the household. After a slow start (it poured rain for an hour so we thought we’d have to cancel – but then it cleared so we carried on) the evening was a great success. All the household (Only, Brighton, Jonathon, Brian, Dirk, Katie) joined us, as well as Lincoln and Tualo, our neighbour who lives in the perm culture garden next door. The Zims even missed the Champions Cup football game to join us, which was a huge compliment (they love their football those guys!).

On Thursday Lincoln made an effort to make sure we had a great last day. He took Tracey, Kenny and us for a drive around some of the more remote areas of the park – we were checking fences and also reviewing signage and it was orientation for Tracey and Kenny – but it also gave us a chance to spot some of the more elusive animals in the park – duiker, stenbok and eland. On the way back we planned to do some rhino tracking – but we ran into some of the other staff who tipped us off to where they’d just seen the dominant male rhino, so there was no need to track him .

It turned out that another baby rhino had been born in the park that morning, to a rhino called Mother of Pearl (yes, she has a baby called Pearl) And it wasn’t an expected baby. The rangers grew suspicious/curious when they’d found the 2-year old baby rhino with a different group of rhinos. Because rhinos push their babies away when they give birth to the next baby, it appeared that Mother of Pearl may have given birth. They went looking for her and when they found her, sure enough, there was a brand new baby. This one wasn’t expected for another 6-12 months so it was a great surprise (White rhinos are still very few in number so every new one born into the world is a bonus).

After some work on the Mokolodi blog and putting the finishing touches on the sanctuary, John took us out for a farewell meal. We went for Portuguese and it was great to order from a menu (!), drink a nice bottle of red and spend some social time with John outside the world of Mokolodi and the EC, where there are always distractions. He had good tips for our Africa travels and we had a lovely night.

We were home from dinner around 9.30pm – in time for one last poker night with the house (yes – we had created poker monsters!). By midnight we called a night on the cards and headed up to start packing.

Our flight was at 10am and so, on Friday morning there was just time for a quick round of farewells before we were back in the car with John and headed back to the airport where he’d collected us from just five weeks earlier.

And then the next chapter – the overland trip – began…

Botswana: Mokolodi week three

Day 15: (Mon 20th April) – (Caro) A new group of kids arrived today for the second week of Boitumelo Mo Nageng camp. But Tim and I keep our heads down at the Sanctuary, making slow but steady progress.

The Mokolodi Nature Reserve has a football team which plays against a team from Mokolodi village every Monday. Today we headed along as supporters for what turned out to be a great evening. One of the safari trucks picks up the staff who live in the village (about 15-20 of them) for work each morning and drives them home again in evening. The drive takes about 20 minutes through the reserve – so they can spot game like giraffes and zebras on the way home. Must be one of the better commutes on the planet!

On Mondays, the football team and spectators tag along as well. This means the vehicle, which is intended for around 25 people, ends up with around 40 onboard. The truck has open sides – so there are people hanging off at every angle, and 8-9 people squeeze onto rows of seats intended for around 5. It looks hilarious and it isn’t comfortable – but everyone is in high spirits so it is a jolly journey.

We parked on the park perimeter and walked into the village, where a football field is carved out of the dust. And then we watch two teams, neither in uniform, play pretty skilful football until the sun set (very beautiful) and it was too dark to play any more. Then we left all the locals to their dinners and beds, and we made our way back through the park.

Day 16 and Day 17: (Caro) We had less to do with the children this week – but we still joined them for evening activities: drama night, campfires etc. Mainly Tim and I worked on in the sanctuary. I spent a lot of time scrubbing mould and mildew from the rendered walls of the cages, returning them to a terracotta red from the grey/green shadow they had acquired. It was a pretty unpleasant job – I spent a lot of time eating dust and trying to keep it from my eyes.

Mokolodi had a call from someone with an injured Warthog, so Tim spent some time with the builders learning how to mortar and brick so that he could finish bricking in the wire mesh at the base of the fence in the largest cage. Tim was very proud of his workmanship but I won’t be planning to build our own home any time soon! The warthog never eventuated – but at least the cage was done.

Day 18:  (Caro) Tim and I were supposed to be assisting with the nature walk. But the camp councillors decided it was too cold for the walk (trust me, in the UK people would have been scantily clad in the park!) Not to worry, we had something else to look forward to. The lady who has run the conference venue (Worlds View – very nice outdoor venue on a hill in the park) here for years is leaving, and to mark the occasion she threw a party at the Worlds View.  Everyone put on their glad rags and after a slow start, quickly the whole affair became raucous, and everyone danced the night away.

Day 19:  (Caro) We had to be up bright and early for rhino tracking with the Head of Conservation, Lincoln. We could have had at least another hour in bed though – because somewhere in all the fun of the party, the keys to our vehicle had been mislaid. Once they were found we headed into the park – and found mother and baby within minutes. But she immediately startled and they ran away before we could establish the sex of the baby.

A couple of hours of tracking later (yes – we followed their tracks for several miles – at times literally following nothing more than the sense that the grass had been pushed down a certain direction) we found them again – and yet again they raced off without us getting a good look. So the baby remains an it… The park manager, Neil, has said that Tim and I can name the baby if we can sex it. Whether Neil sticks to that offer I don’t know – but I hope we can find it before we leave…

Friday night was spent teaching Brighton and Only to play poker. We made our own poker chips/cash so it was a cheap game. But I fear we may have corrupted Brighton, who’s eyes lit up as he slowly amassed (fake) money over the course of the evening.

Day 20:  (Tim) Yesterday we finally booked our Okavango trip (we decided to visit Gunn’s Camp) so today we had to buy out flights – which in Botswana have to be paid for in person – you can’t pay online! So we needed to head into central Gaberone and very kindly, John arranged a lift for us with a friend of his, which made life a little easier. We managed to make arrangements for the Okavango and buy our flights to Nairobi, have a coffee break, buy food and booze and make it back to camp in time for lunch.

An afternoon of work and a great dinner (from the somewhat guilty kitchen staff, who had accidentally forgotten to make us lunch).

Day 21: Our Okavango adventures begin – see the next post – coming soon…

Botswana: Mokolodi week two

Another week has gone by, what seems pretty quickly.

Quite a hard slog working on the sanctuary for  3-4 full days, with the latter few being a little slower in pace.

Day 8 (Monday 13th April): (Tim) Easter Monday, albeit it didn’t really seem particularly Easterish.

We spent the morning doing some orientation for the next fortnight of camps, called “Boitumelo Mo Nageng” (roughly translates as “joy in the bush”). It’s a camp for orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC). In a country in which circa 30% of the population has HIV, the numbers of OVC are quite high. The basic brief is that this camp is all about bringing laughs to kids who don’t always have a lot to laugh about, while teaching them some life skills along the way. A very nice idea, run in partnership between Mokolodi and SAPSSI (Salvation Army Psychosocial Support Initiative).

Then we cracked on for most of the day with the Sanctuary refurb work.  In the evening, after eating at the EC we got home and found Brian and Tualo cooking a Braii. Brian is originally from Manchester, and for the last three years he has worked as a designer for Cheetah Conservation Botswana. Tualo manages the Permaculture Garden – essentially an effort to produce organic plants on the reserve.  Quite comically, Tualo is a big rasta fan, so early evening music is pumping out and frankly Tualo is likely to be just a little bit stoned!.  Anyway, we  needed to use up the sausages we’d bought for a braii earlier in the weekend that didn’t happen – so we cooked up the snags, and had them with spuds.  We couldn’t buy alcohol here on Easter weekend, so had to make do with softies. Two dinners in one day is a little greedy, but the snags were yummy so it was well worth while.

Day 9:  (Caro) The new group of kids arrived today and we found that they were more challenging to engage and communicate with the deaf kids last week (who were always eager to “speak” with us). After a lot of attempts to engage the three 12-year olds who couldn’t fit on a table with the other kids, so were forced to sit with us, I finally cracked them when I said “I’m sorry I’m only speaking English. I can’t speak Setswane”. To which one of them replied – “Well why don’t you learn?!?” That broke the ice, and proved they could speak English (we weren’t sure – even though it’s the official language, we’ve found confidence with English is often shakey). So from then on this girl, called Windy, translated for us and encourage the others so the mood warmed up. Over time we realised the initial silence and icy behaviour was more along the lines of awe than coldness – because they were very sweet. I was very flattered when Windy came up to me at the fire that night and stroked my hair and said, “Your hair, it is beautiful. Beautiful!” Oh, if you could hear the way she said it, it was so lovely. ‘twas one of the nicest compliments ever!

Day 10: (Caro) After a day in the sanctuary we headed up to the reptile park to hear Paul do his snake presentation to an Oxford county schoolboy cricket team who are touring Africa playing cricket. They all enjoyed themselves which was great to see.

In the evening we joined the kids for drumming. Despite being great singers (these kids sing all the time) and amazing dancers, these kids didn’t have rhythm nearly as good as the deaf kids last week. Which says more about the incredible rhythm of the deaf kids, than the lack of rhythm in the others.

Day 11:  (Caro) Today Paul invited us up to watch him feed the crocodile. He likes to make it work for his food, rather than drop food in the cage for it to pick up at it’s leisure. So we got to see some action as Mr Croc chased Paul (who had the food) and gnashed his jaws a bit.

Then it was time for a nature walk. Tim and I each accompanied a group, acting as the responsible people at the back of the walk, to keep the kids on track. There was an amusing moment when one of the guides was talking to the kids about termites, and compared their light sensitive skin to “our friends who always need to wear hats – albinos” – at which point every head in the crowd swivelled to look at me. I truly must appear quite a freak to these kids.

Day 12: (Tim) Annabel, our fellow volunteer, had finished her time, had was flying up to Kasane and onto Vic Falls.  Caro and I decided we take the chance to grab a lift in Gabs, and take a well earned day off (we’d been ‘working’ for ten days straight).  The main thing we wanted to try and do, was sort out a trip to the Okavango Delta.  So KK (Deputy Director of the Education Centre) dropped us in to Riverwalk shopping mall, where we were under the impression there were several travel agents.  After a slightly disappointing brunch, we found the one and only travel agent in the mall, and told them what we wanted to do.  Essentially 4 nights in the Delta itself, with a couple of night out on a Mokoro trail (a Mokoro being a dug-out canoe).

We were barraged with attention from taxi drivers and combi vans (which run on numbered routes) but we disagreed about how much we should be paying and whether they were safe (in a country with an appalling road safety record), so we wandered from Riverwalk into Gab centre itself.  Not that far really, but we didn‘t have a map so relied on instinct. And it was hot!

Walking along we were beeped by a car. We thought nothing of it, assuming it was a cab, and walked on. But the car did a u-turn and pulled in alongside us. It was ‘Dingo’ aka Dennis from the SAPSSI team.  He offered us a lift but we decided to walk on – especially since he assured us we were heading in the right direction.

Once we hit the centre of Gabs we stumbled onto the tourist info office, and discovered that many of the agents are best contact by phone rather than face-to-face.

We decided to walk to Game City (shopping mall nearest to Mokolodi) – walking was not the best idea as it was a) a pretty long way b) hot c) took us through the impoverished area of town, and unfortunately therefore a lot of attention and a slightly iffy crime situation.

Fortunately for us, after about 45min walking we heard more beeping which turned out to by KK, heading back from town a second time in the day. We were grateful for the lift. And Gabs was starting to feel like a small town, running into two people we knew in one day!

Got to the Spar for our food shop, Liquor land for the booze – managed to find wines for Simonsig and Spier (both from the Stellenbosch region, both wineries we’d visited in 2006)

Headed to O’Hagans (An Irish bar, Botswana style!) and tucked into steak and chips  – we had a craving for the chips.  I managed to nail a few beers pretty quickly, and we caught a taxi back to Mokolodi.

Day 13:  (Tim) The kids were off today (Saturday) and we were caught with the need to push out some Delta enquiries in-between a little bit of work on the sanctuary.  It has to be said that the meals today were a highlight.  As the kids and counsellors had gone for the day, we found the kitchen got a little adventurous.  For lunch we had sausage and chips! (After a Friday gorging ourselves on chips – and the memory of Annabel craving them but never getting them, it was great to have them!) We even got a can of coke as well.  In the evening it was chicken again, but very tasty, and we cracked open the Simonsig Chardonnay – bliss!  After dinner, we polished off the bottle doing more Delta research.

Day 14: (Caro) Another day, another sanctuary mission. We plod on! A highlight was giving the monkey a banana. He tends to get a lot of corn and apples and the odd dog food biscuit. So he was very excited to get a whole banana to himself. He leapt around with excitement, and ate every morsel, including running his teeth down the skin to get every skerrick.

Botswana: Mokolodi week one

Tim: Well, our Botswana adventure is turning out to be rather different from our expectations. That’s not to say it’s bad, in fact, quite the opposite. The only gripe we have is the way the project was described and presented to us by Frontier (the organisation who runs and promotes volunteer projects) – anyway, our gripe lies with them, it’s not for the blog!

In short our expectation was that we would be working with researchers (poss PhD students) who were doing, among other things, work in areas such as human wildlife conflict i.e. how to educate Batswana farmers (someone from Botswana is not a Botswanan, they are singularly Motswana, and collectively Batswana), radio collaring and tracking cheetahs etc. We were never 100% sure what the work would actually entail, research wise, but you get the gist of what we were broadly expecting. We also believed that this project would be taking place in the Tuli Game Reserve in the Tuli Block, which is in the eastern part of the country.

Where we are in fact is 15km south of Gaborone (phonetically Haberonie), on the Mokolodi Nature Reserve. Mokolodi is set on 5,000 hectares of land, with animals ranging from White Rhino (not actually white, it derives from the Afrikaans word Whit, which indicates wide lipped – so the White Rhino has a squareish face with a wide lip, whilst the Black Rhino is more pointy in the mouth, and I think generally pretty dark in colour), Giraffe, Kudu, Impala, Hippos, Wildebeest, Crocodiles, Cheetahs, Hyenas (brown and spotted), Ostrich, Vervet Monkey, Elephant, Python, Black Mamba, Puff Adders, Peregrine Falcon…the list goes on. Not all of the animals are ‘wild’ or savage (French pron), some are habituated: part of the reptile park, sanctuary or breeding program.

Mokolodi used to be a cattle farm in the 70′s. Back then, a number of farmers who couldn’t make the farming work, donated the land to the children of Botswana, and the reserve was born.

There are two core facets to the reserve being Tourism and Education. Tourism is pretty obvious, the Educational side is run along the line as a not for profit venture, offering mainly children from deprived background to learn about wildlife, conservation and the environment at extremely cut down prices, or in some case full or partially funded by subsidy from certain charities (including TUSK www.tusk.org).

When we got here, we slowly learnt from John Aves (Education Centre Director) that the type of work we could get involved in was pretty varied. Specific options were:

Education centre – working with the children, supporting activities such as game drives, art & crafts

Conservation – working with the very small conservation team who manage the upkeep of the park, bringing in any infirm animals, maintaining roads and fences, tracking a newly born baby rhino.

Sanctuary – working in the sanctuary to plan and lead renovations and care for the animals

Other areas of the reserve, not really up for consideration were, the Cheetah conservation work, because it’s run by another organisation: Cheetah Conservation Botswana (CCB), and the Reptile Park.

I could bore you (if I haven’t already) with the thought process we went through to choose what we wanted to throw ourselves into, but I won’t. Suffice to say, we quickly realised that the sanctuary was the area with no real owner, therefore making it easier for us to get on and do things. At the same time however, we elected to get involved with the Education Centre (EC) and the conservation work wherever we could.

So, our first week reads like this:

Day 1 (Monday 6th April): Arrive and get settled in

Day 2: Morning – Help the EC with a group of 30 odd 4-6 year olds, and take them on a game drive (great start really!). Afternoon – 4-6 year olds leave, and a new group of 40 children from Ramotswe Centre for Deaf Education arrive. On the first night we meet them and they teach us how to spell our names in sign language.

Day 3: ‘Morning – Generally killed a bit of time whilst we figured out what exactly the next 4 weeks had in store. Afternoon – The guy who manages the Conservation of the park (the balance of animal and plant species etc.), Lincoln, took us out to feed the cheetahs and hyena who are kept in semi-captivity (huge cages, several hectares in size) because they’re not capable of surviving in the wild. The cheetahs were just six weeks old when a farmer shot their mother for preying on his stock. They were bottle fed and because they were never taught to hunt by their mother they wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild. They’re fed chickens and donkey meat. Caroline was able to walk into their pen holding a chicken by the feet in both hands. Duma and Letotse gently took one each and sat down to eat. We then cleaned up the remains of yesterdays meal. They’re lovely cats so it was a great experience.

Day 4: Morning – Headed out with Lincoln to help fix some fences in the park which had been damaged by torrential rain during the wet season. On the way back we saw three White Rhinos. Afternoon – walked round the sanctuary with Lincoln and got his ideas on what needed to be done. Helped Paul, who runs the Reptile Park, with his snake talk and found out that a) 8-foot long pythons are heavy b) they’re not too keen on being held and c) when they are held they piss themselves (their urine is both liquid and solid, their solid urine looks like eggs but is still urine)

Day 5: Morning – Headed out with Lincoln, also accompanied by John (Aves) and Annabel (our fellow volunteer) to go baby White Rhino tracking. We didn’t find the group it’s with (it’s sex is still unknown – finding out was part of our mission) – but we did have a good time tramping round some isolated bush land while keeping a keen eye out for snakes; avoiding the mob of wildebeests that were charging around; dodging thorn bushes and finding an ostrich egg which had been stolen by a hyena then abandoned. Afternoon – started work on the sanctuary. The work includes things like pruning and clearing leaves from the roofs, digging up old hard ground, filling holes, spreading new sand, tightening shade cloth and wire, fixing holes, replacing rusted sections, moving doors and swings, finding logs to replace perches, and creating stimulating feeders for animals – things that makes them use their brains and work for their food etc.

Day 6: Morning – More sanctuary work, Annabel was helping now. Afternoon – popped (2hr round trip – involving lots of walking and buses) to the shops for some supplies and more sanctuary work.

Day 7: Sanctuary work, then the evening spent playing cards with Annabel, Kate (a Motswana Ranger who lives with us) Brighton and Only (Zimbabwean guys doing building work at Mokolodi who camp next door to us and watch European football games most nights on the TV at our place).

So. A week down, and it’s all looking pretty good. We reckon we can sort the sanctuary out in another 3-5 days, and then there are some other things we know we could get involved in.

Highlights for me in the first week has been working with the deaf kids, seeing the rhinos, and doing some old fashioned hard graft.

NB: Our broadband connection here is a little slow, so it’s unlikely there’ll be any pictures or video footage up just yet. We’ll write more just now!