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| Monday, 3-Apr-2006 12:00 |
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At home and in the field
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So… this is the first time that I’m actually sitting down to write a weekly update about the last seven days! And I would have even posted it on time… IF… there had been an internet connection! But the phone lines have been down since last Friday so who knows when I’ll actually get around to posting/emailing this in…
So… this is actually the first example of how the updates were supposed to work for the last couple of months and will hopefully continue to work… fingers crossed…
What’s happened in the last week? I dashed off down to Skukuza for a meeting on the Monday then spent two days glued to my computer working. Thursday I ended up cleaning house and sewing patches onto my bush trousers (which were becoming indecent…). Thursday evening I joined John & Jakes and some other people for a braai on a private reserve and then sparrows Friday morning saw us going out into the field for a few hours, in the afternoon I was home sleeping, and in the evening Georgette arrived. Saturday was spent shopping in Acornhoek (madness!), going out to lunch at the Silk Farm and a braai in the evening. Sunday was therefore spent recovering and working and that brings me to today!
That’s the brief version  For a few more details…
Monday
I had a meeting in Skukuza (Kruger National Park) to discuss vegetation monitoring methods. I’m trying to combine several different approaches in my waterpoint assessment so I went to speak to the Kruger expert. It was a lot of driving… 5 hours in total… for a 2 hour meeting but it was well worth it. I got to see an elephant and a giraffe (they look so enormous from the point of view of a Tazz) on the drive and then ate my lunch under a tree whilst watching a mini tidal wave, with a hippo beneath, moving up the river. I also took some time to have an ice-cream and a chat before driving back as well which helped I’m sure!
Tuesday & Wednesday
I have to have my proposal all ready and finished by June so there’s a lot of work to do. In May I’m heading out to the field to get some preliminary work done and therefore need to have a really good idea of what I’m going to do and how I’m going to do it! The weather was really grotty so it wasn’t hard to be stuck inside working… Tuesday it rained allllll day. On Wednesday there were a few gaps in the clouds and I managed to snap the first three photos through my front door.
Wednesday afternoon I also managed to check email for the first time in a week (and that’s the last time I was able to connect to the internet…). Just thought I’d take a little time to let you know my internet situation… it’s not really “normal”… One of the other houses has a phone line coiled up and hanging on the outside wall and there’s a little cupboard thing with a phone in. If you want to check email you pick your chair and your laptop and you go and sit beside the cupboard and plug in to the phone… with the impalas and the squirrels and the sunshine… Not your typical office environment!
Thursday
Sometimes the brain decides that it’s just had enough! On Wednesday afternoon I found out that I was going into the field Thursday lunchtime so I spent the morning faffing around and getting ready. Thursday lunchtime I found out I’d only be joining the guys in the evening so I decided to fix my trousers instead of working! At 4 o’clock I met up with John & Jakes at a private reserve about a half hours drive from home.
John and Jakes work for/with Mike, one of my PhD supervisors. They’ve been doing vegetation monitoring in the private reserves for donkeys years and know the grasses and the trees like the backs of the hands. It was an opportunity for me to see how their method works and also to start learning some plant names! The plan was to start early on Friday morning so we met in time for sundowners and a braai before an early night’s sleep…
Friday
Early? More like middle of the night! We were before the sparrows! It was still DARK when my alarm went off! I watched the sunrise whilst eating my breakfast… my body was not designed for this! In spite of the complaints it was quite nice to be out in the field before it was too boiling hot. After days and days of cloud, the one day in the week I’m in the field it decides to be bright and sunny…
It was a morning of learning a lot – we did two plots, on one I did woody plants with Jakes and on the other I did herbaceous plants with John. I about doubled my list of species identifications! As seems to be usual in this part of the world, the bushes were full of spiders.
The kite spider was a new one for me, it actually builds a web (and sits there dangling at face height waiting for you to walk into it… I didn’t, Jakes did… and he’s also arachnophobic…). Looking at its shape I would have expected it to do things a little bit differently than just build a web like any other bog-standard spider. But then perhaps that’s because I think it looks more like a Japanese cartoon character than a spider…
Friday afternoon I collapsed on my bed in an exhausted heap and caught up on some of the sleep that I’d been deprived of in the morning. I got up and showered just in time for an impromptu drinks gathering to welcome Georgette who’s just moved back here.
Saturday
A note to self and to anyone else who may need the information: shopping at the end of the month anywhere in “rural” South Africa is crazy (I learnt that in Springbok), shopping at the end of the month in Acornhoek is absolute utter and total madness! It was a case of having to grit my teeth and go because I didn’t have anything for the braai in the evening but it wasn’t a fun experience! The queues… I went with Georgette and Telly which did make it a lot more bearable 
After shopping we were supposed to meet some other people at Garden of Eden for lunch (or just waffles and ice-cream) but we got there to find it closed. We figure that we’d got to the Silk Farm instead rather than coming home empty handed! Georgette and I split a lemon meringue pie and an Amarula brownie with ice-cream. Now that’s a version of brownies that I haven’t tried to bake yet… it tasted good…
In the afternoon I made bean sausages for the braai (yes I am vegetarian!) and then it was more socialising all evening. Most of Telly’s family was here and there were a few people up from Skukuza and pretty much the full “local” crowd so the braai was rather enormous… so much meat! (And so much leftovers the next morning…).
Sunday
I slept late but was still the first person to wake up! Had a lazy morning doing not much at all, sitting outside chatting and drinking tea. In the afternoon I figured I should probably do some work so I spent some time on the papers that I still haven’t finished from my MSc. Sometimes it feels like I’ll just never get rid of that project! I had to respond to the referees’ comments on one of them and that took most of the afternoon.
I finished the week with an evening of drawing and listening to “bad” music…
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| Friday, 31-Mar-2006 12:00 |
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The Elephant Bull
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The end of the month.
The end of another month.
The end of the first quarter of the year.
Now that sounds scary… time is simply flying by this year, I can’t quite believe how fast it’s going!
This set of photos is a bit of a random collection…
The first one is from the termite mound sampling in the communal areas. I sat down to take a break and realised that the plants all around me had these funky green caterpillars on them. Don’t know what species they are!
The second photo is from a game drive into Kruger. On the last afternoon of the field trip, as a bit of a “well done” gesture, we all went into Kruger for a few hours of game drive. I got to have my first (and hopefully, fingers definitely crossed, last) experience of jeep-jockeying a group of “tourists” who only want to see lion. They weren’t interested in buck, they certainly weren’t interested in birds… but this elephant did cause a bit of a stir…
We were driving along behind the bakkie (in the photo) when they stopped to watch an elephant who was feeding quite close to the road so we stopped as well. A few minutes later the elephant decided that he wanted to get on the road and made a rather decisive move towards us… Kaera (driving the bakkie) pulled forward and I went backwards to give him some space. He threw a little bit of a tantrum and chucked some dust around and then decided to eat the trees right on the edge of the road.
A couple of other vehicles then pulled up and all they saw was an elephant feeding in the road… so one (stupid) guy tried to get past… now an elephant takes up more than one lane when it’s standing in the road feeding… So when the guy got too close the elephant twirled around with ears flapping and the guy reversed…
After several many minutes, the elephant started moving off into the bushes. The (stupid) guy then put foot and came racing past and drove off in a cloud of dust after grinning at us like an idiot and making some farcical comment which I didn’t even bother to remember. As the elephant moved further off the road he went behind some trees that meant that we could no longer see precisely where he was… not really a good situation to be in!
So I figured Kaera et al. would keep watching till the elephant moved quite a ways off… so when they left I though I could try get past… hmmmmmm… I drove up slowly slowly, gradually inching my way past the big bushy tree that was obscuring my vision of the elephant. As we came past the tree I realised he was still rather too close to the road, but I’d also gone so far that I was committed…
He seemed to be feeding happily so I continued inching my way past, on the faaaaar side of the road to him. All of a sudden, elephant turned around, elephant fanned ears out, elephant put trunk up… Helen pressed the accelerator!!!!!! It was quite an adrenalin rush that’s for sure!
Later on in the drive we did actually see a lion, but it wasn’t nearly as exciting… the grass is really tall at the moment and the lion was sleeping on his back under a tree. All you could see was one forepaw pointing up through the grass.
The third photo was a much calmer interaction with a herbivore… I opened my door one morning to find this little guy munching the weeds in my “lawn”. “Lawn” being the “mown” grass that surrounds my house…
The last three photos are from my first trip to the Caravilla sunset spot. There’s so many trees in this place that you’ve got to get up to a high point to see the sunset. Luckily there’s a spot along the fence line where there’s a good view. Eddie took Vusi and I along the other Sunday evening for drinks and a few photos. Vusi had never been before either (which was shocking because he’s been living here a year and a half!) so it was the first time for both of us. Definitely a sunset worth watching and a good way to end the weekend.
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| Wednesday, 29-Mar-2006 14:36 |
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More than just termites...
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We may have been looking just for termite mounds but we found an enormous mount more whilst we were bushwhacking and searching for the mounds… These are just a few of the photos from two days of sampling in the protected area.
There was some quite hectic vegetation – grass that was taller than me and bushes so dense we had to break branches to get through – but the rewards were worth it. When you’re out in the field, even when you’re looking for something in particular, it’s amazing how much ‘other stuff’ you see.
The Golden Orb spiders were unfortunately a common sight… I’m arachnophobic. Their webs are enormous, the spider itself has a body of a couple of inches long. I tended to walk at the back of the group so the guys could find and avoid the webs before I got there ;o)
The terrapin was rather a cool encounter. We were working across a river from where we were having meals so had to cross every lunchtime to get home. Most of the times we crossed (with the smell of leopard in the air…) there was a terrapin in the water. Really cool  )
The grasshopper with the blue legs I found when I was photographing the fuzzy flower in the photo next to it. I thought the blue legs were rather cool! I was told its name but have now forgotten it… too many other things to remember!
This is going to have to be kept short… I have a meeting to get ready for and a lot of other work to do. With a week off for the Kruger conference and another week off for the TAing there’s a lot to catch up on…
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| Friday, 24-Mar-2006 12:00 |
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From my "garden"
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Purple flower
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A rather large grasshopper
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Orange fungus
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Another week gone… I can’t quite believe how fast this year is flying by. Although I’ve been at home for the last week, I only been sleeping in my house. Most of the time has been spent getting to the place where I’m now living. Things got back to normal today so now I’m sitting listening to the Eagles and trying to catch up with all sorts and everything
Half an hour after I got home from Kruger a field trip of 3rd year students arrived from Wits. Wits has a system whereby the post-grad students TA (teaching assistant) the undergrads for labs and field trips. There’s a certain amount of hours you have to do each year so this was a great chance for me to get a whole bunch out the way.
There were 11 students on the trip, 2 lecturers, 4 TAs and, probably the most important, a cook… a vegan cook…  The students split into three groups and then each group did a mini-research project in a week. They had to do everything including background reading, developing a research question, deciding a method, doing field work, interviewing people in the rural community, data analysis and at the end, a presentation of what they’ve found.
On the afternoon of the first day we had an “introductory” walk for a couple of hours. One of the lecturers was pointing out the key tree and grass species that we had to learn – most of the groups were working in different landscape types so needed to be able to distinguish between them on the basis of the vegetation. It was a walk of many firsts for me… I’ve never actually worked in the savanna before so I had to quickly learn all the plant names! It was my first introduction to a catena as well (though I heard a lot about them at Kruger!).
I worked with a group of three guys, looking at the distribution of termite mounds in a protected area vs. a communal grazing land. It was the project with the most bushwhacking but it meant that I did start to recognise some plant IDs (which will be rather useful for my PhD…). We spent three days pushing our way through the vegetation looking for termite mounds, mapping them and measuring them. The guys were pretty sorted so I just trailed along behind them with my camera
Alongside all the hard work – grasses taller than me, bushes so dense we had to force our way between them, high temperatures and high humidity – we ate unbelievably well. One of the TAs is a vegan and her boyfriend is a chef and somewhere along the line the great idea of having him along to cook was conceived. I had forgotten to tell anyone that I was a vegetarian so was a bit apprehensive about the cooking before the trip started… it was a very nice surprise! And I ended up eating far too much…
These photos are from the first “introductory” walk… more photos from the bushwhacking will follow
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| Tuesday, 21-Mar-2006 15:38 |
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A week and a half at "home"
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So… back to the animal pictures I’ve finally moved out of Jo’burg, back into the bush and am feeling much more at home! The adventures started pretty much as soon as I arrived: a braai, a lunch out and then off to Kruger for a week. Now I’m back at home but assisting on a Wits field trip so things still aren’t back to normal…
The first photo is actually one of my last ones from Jo’burg. Most evenings we’d have these really weird bugs zooming around our heads with very bad flight control. One of them ended up crash-landing on the stove and I managed to get a picture. It’s a mole cricket, one of the weirdest looking cricket’s I’ve ever seen!
The second photo is a fly sitting on my window, taken my first full day in my new house I thought the metallic green colour was really cool and spent quite a while tracking it up and down the window waiting for it to land in a place where I could actually get a photo. There were some rather odd-looking results…
The third to eighth photos were taken between Orpen Gate and Skukuza in Kruger National Park. I went in for a conference from Monday to Friday last week. Last year I took a lot more photos (confereces: Kruger 2005) but this year my camera wasn’t as new I took the opportunity of free access to Kruger though and went the slow route combined with a game drive. The fast route home took me 2.5 hours including shopping, the slow route there took me 5 hours!
I saw loads of impala and baboons and a fair few zebra. I saw my first elephant from my car (it’s amazing how much more enormous they are when you’re sitting in a little Toyota Tazz!!!!). I also got a glimpse of a pride of lions just before Satara as well. That was rather cool but there was already a crowd of tourists stopped so I decided not to linger. The giraffe was quite a fun session. There was one giraffe eating a bush right beside the road, providing several amusing photo opportunities. I was sitting there clicking away until a tourist vehicle arrived and all the giraffes moved off into the bush
The waterpoint photo gives an idea of the sort of area I’ll be working in for the next three years (more on that at a later date) and the squirrel is just like the one that has been trying to break into my house. They’ve gotten even cheekier now though… when I arrived back home on Friday afternoon there was a squirrel roadblock… he just sat in the middle of the road and wouldn’t let me past!  Eventually I resorted to revving my engine and he slowly sauntered out of the way… hmph.
The last photo is of the gecko that lives above my doorway. He’s one of the biggest fattest geckos I’ve ever seen… obviously a good territory!
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| Monday, 6-Mar-2006 12:00 |
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The last of Jo'burg...
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The time has come the walrus said… Finally and eventually the time has come for me to leave Jo’burg… yay!!!!!
I’m actually writing this whilst sitting in my new house but the news is all of Jo’burg so you’ll have to wait till next week to find out where I am I’m no longer uploading these but am sending them in by email so if something doesn’t look quite right I don't know yet!
So… a few random photos from events not really linked. The first three are from a pizza party that Francesca and I had several many weeks ago now. Fran made pizzas and pasta for loads of people and I made brownies for pudding. It was mostly people that Fran knows but I managed to get the chance to catch up with Tapiwa and Tatenda as well.
Tapiwa, Tatenda and I were at school together in Zimbabwe nine years ago… along with most of the rest of our class they’re now in South Africa. They’ve been in Jo’burg for a while (I saw them last year: see Conferences, Kruger 2005) so it was cool to get the chance to catch up properly.
The last two weeks of my time in Jo’burg was spent with some friends of my parents. They spoiled me rotten and fed me well and I finally got over all the stomach issues that landed me in hospital in February. We ate outside all but one night and there were some really cool moths that kept appearing. I also managed to get in a large amount of “pet therapy” they have two cats and a dog… Jeeves is an old black cat, Bertie is a young stripey cat and Emsworth is a beautiful Ridgeback.
And now I’m sitting in the bush, I’ve got impala in my garden and a squirrel that keeps trying to break into my house… but more on that next week
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| Sunday, 5-Mar-2006 12:00 |
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Matatus
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Taxis and buses in Kenya are colourful affairs... these were taken whilst driving (whilst moving... someone else was driving!), hence the lower quality
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| Saturday, 4-Mar-2006 12:00 |
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Mummy and Daddy's Flat (Kenya)
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For those of you who are eternally asking what it looks like (it's a penthouse... )
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| Friday, 3-Mar-2006 14:23 |
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Last day at Olarro (Kenya: 27/12/05)
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A trip to go rock climbing, Masai cave paintings (cattle records) and some pictures of around the camp...
more at some point one day...
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| Thursday, 2-Mar-2006 09:05 |
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A day in the Masai Mara (Kenya: 26/12/05)
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So many photos... so many animals!
More text to come!
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That's a heck of an update! I read the whole thing and felt like I was snooping into your diary. 
