South Africa #3: First Day of Work

Monday was my first day of volunteer work. I was anxious to get started but also a little nervous. The day began at 8am with an information session for all the new volunteers, which lasted a couple hours. There are five brand new volunteers at the moment, including me. In addition to the two I met on Saturday there is a girl from Canada and an older lady from the US who is Canadian. Three of four other volunteers are with another project that focuses on photography. The Mexican girl and I are both working with the Research and Conservation project. During our introductions, all of us were asked to say what our favorite African animal is. I hadn't really thought about that before, as I didn't come here because of any animal in particular, but I came to the conclusion that mine is the elephant since I would be most upset if I didn't see any elephants on this trip.

After that, we met with all of the Research and Conservation volunteers. Right now there are 10 of us, but that number will surely change at the start of next week as people will be coming and going on a weekly basis. We sat through a couple more information sessions to learn about the animals that we will be observing, how to identify them, the kind of data we are capturing, how to record the data, and what the data is used for.

We also were able to volunteer for some additional tasks related to our project and the program overall. (The volunteering never ends!) I volunteered for a few tasks involving elephant data and to monitor the rain gauge. As of yet, I still need to learn how to do all of this. Seems like there isn't enough time and manpower to get everything done.

The daytime temperature was very hot, the sun was shining bright, and it felt a bit humid. Perfect conditions for our first game drive that afternoon! (Side note: I wasn't expecting it to be humid at all here, so that has been surprising to me.) We visited one of the newer private game reserves in the area. The land used to be owned mainly by cattle ranchers and was purchased to be converted back to land for the African animals to roam free on. I was relieved to learn that lions are not present in this reserve, as this made the experience of my first game drive seem a little less daunting.

There were two groups of us, but we were in the vehicle that did not have a canopy, so the sun beat down on us. All of us volunteers sat in the back of the truck, which had three rows of seats up high.  As we drove from the lodge to the reserve, which took 15 to 20 minutes, the whole thing quickly became a new experience for me. We drove pretty fast, so the wind whipped right at us as we barreled down the road. It was a struggle to keep my eyes open since the wind just raced into my face. Even my glasses didn't seem to break the wind at all.

After entering the reserve, the first major animal we came across was a giraffe. All of us volunteers in the vehicle were new, so we were in awe of seeing a giraffe in the wild. We stayed there for a few minutes taking pictures and just watching it.

Once we got moving again, it wasn't too long after when we came across a herd of buffalo, including a baby.  And then a little ways down the road we saw five zebras. (Here, that's pronounced like the name Debra with a "Z" instead of "D.")

The drive lasted 1.5 hours and the sun started to set as we finished.  Along the rest of our drive, we saw some more giraffes, as well as kudu, nyala, antelope, and bushbuck. We also saw a warthog and bushpig hanging out together. We were told that it is very rare to see a bushpig, and also very weird for a warthog and bushpig to stay together. It was like they were best friends. Hopefully this will just be the first of many unusual and special sightings during our game drives.

My data task during the drive was to keep count of the different type of animals we saw, marking one tick for either an animal alone or in a group. Most of the animal sightings were spread out so it made collecting the data easier, not that it was a hard task to begin with. But since it was my first game drive, I tended to reach for my camera rather than my pencil each time we came across an animal.

Note: As I continue with my posts, there is some information regarding the animals or general activity within the game reserves and photos that I will need to leave out for the protection of the endangered animals. I wish I could share all the details about my experience, but conservation needs to take priority over good story telling.