Saturday, June 5, 2010

A month in the life of a field guide


Hello all. I'm writing this update from Swakopmund in Namibia where I spent 3 months last year working with EHRA and its really lovely to be back! Its been great to chill out for a few days at Rachel and Joe's after an exhausting but really fun month training to be a field guide in South Africa.

The course I was doing basically trains you to become a safari field guide. The area we trained and lived in is part of Kruger National Park which is about 5 hours drive from Jo'burg. There were 9 of us on the course but only 4 of us chose to do the exam at the end. I was the only native English speaker, we had Danish, Dutch, Italian, French, German and Korean so quite a mixture. We all had really cool tents and we didn't have to share which was a luxury, as were the flushing toilets and outdoor showers, a nice change from Madagascar. Each day we'd start with either a bush walk at 6.30 with 2 of our instructors carrying rifles since we were walking in areas with lions, or we'd have class at 8am. We almost walked into some lions one day but one of the vehicles saw them first around the corner from us and picked us up. Phew!

The subjects we covered ranged from geology, astronomy, trees, reptiles to birds, animals and insects. We learned to recognize birds by call and sight, the medicinal uses of trees and what different types of grass mean in certain areas. I'm a bit of a bird geek now and since the course ended I've gotten my bird book out to look up birds I see around!

The goal at the end of the course was to sit a written exam and then have a 3 hour practical assessment. For the practical we had to drive the land rover around a section of the park for 3 hours with an assessor and some students as guests, and we would conduct a safari drive. They could ask us questions on anything we saw and we had to learn how to approach lions and elephants in the vehicle. It seemed overwhelming at first but I'm proud to say we all passed the drive with flying colors! We find out about the written part in a few weeks.
UPDATE: WE ALL PASSED THE WRITTEN PIECE TOO!

Some of the highlights of the trip were:
- Our instructor Brandon, one of the coolest people you could meet. He knows everything about the bush and had tons of great stories of when he was a game capture ranger.
- One day we were out on a drive and I spotted a lion walking through the brush around 200m away. It looked like it was stalking something so we drove in that direction. Within seconds we saw a kudu fly out of the bushes into the road, closely followed by a lion which took the kudu down. Its incredibly rare to see a lion kill in the wild and it happened metres from our vehicle! One of the girls managed to point her camera in the right direction so once I get a copy of the photos I'll post them. We watched the lionesses and a cub chow down for hours on the kudu. We were so close we could smell the stomach contents - ugh.


- There was a big rock with a flat top in the park and one night we all slept out on it. Since the lions also like to sleep there, we had to take turns patrolling the area all night with a flashlight and keep the fire going. On my watch we could hear the lions roaring in the distance.
- We got to go into Kruger proper for 3 day trips. We saw the big 5 (lion, leopard, rhino, buffalo, elephant) one day before 9am in the morning, we got there at 6am. So great to see all the animals roaming free. After seeing them in that kind of environment its very tough to think about them living in zoos.
- Every second night we'd go on a night drive with spotlights. There was a leopard living in the area and he was impossible to spot so we'd go on leopard-searching drives. We finally saw him in the last week, crafty bugger!
- We also had a day trip to God's Window and Blyde River Canyon which was so beautiful, really stunning scenery and a nice change from the bush we were living in
- Every night we'd go to sleep listening to hippos, lions, elephants all around us. There was an electric fence around the camp but the animals roam all around it each night, kind of strange to be brushing your teeth with a massive bull elephant on the other side of the fence looking at you.

All in all a really great month but exhausting since when we weren't in class or out on field trips, we were studying. I found it a little too much information to take in in 4 weeks but I certainly learned a ton which was the goal. I wish I'd done this course before Madagascar, I would have paid a lot more attention to the trees and birds around me. A good excuse to go back I suppose!



I'm staying in Namibia until Monday when I get a bus up to Victoria Falls, a 24 hour bus journey - fun! :( There I'm meeting Rob and Cara, 2 previous EHRA volunteers and we're not quite sure what we're going to do for my last 2 weeks. Maybe Zimbabwe, Botswana, northern Namibia or Zambia. Tough decisions :)

Anyway, here are the photos of the trip. I wish I'd had my good camera with me, other people got some really amazing shots of the animals but we're hoping to share so I'll post them when I my hands on them.

Hope everyone is well and see you all in Dublin in 3 weeks!

Jen
xo

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