New Volunteers

Clive arrives late Saturday afternoon with the new volunteers.  All of a sudden Alice and I are the ‘old’ pros and we greet the newbies, remembering our own journey to camp, only 2 weeks earlier.  A few of them are quite travel weary, having travelled to Namibia over a number of days and then making the 3 hour drive to camp.  We make them welcome and chat till quite late that night to the boys, who are quite happy to stay up, given they had arrived the day before and spent a night at the backpackers in town.

The new volunteers include Rory and Jamie, the ‘youngsters’ of the group who have just finished high school & deferred their place at Uni for a gap year.  Jamie plans to be here for 12 weeks before taking off to Australia, and Rory may work for awhile after this experience to explore the world a little more.  Then there is David, originally from Wales, who now lives in Switzerland & works in IT and Sue, a mother and grandmother from England, having a break from work and family.  Anna is from Germany and is in between her Uni studies in Chemistry and Geography and Kristen hales from California.  She is actually from the Bay Area and tells me her entire family has studied in Berkeley (although she herself went off to Ohio), so I have fun reminiscing about my own days there.

Alice and I join the orientation drive and although I don’t take too many photos, the giraffe, steenbok and ground squirrels caught my eye.

That afternoon, we set off leopard tracking and just as she did on our first game drive, Shakira makes an appearance on a tree.   Unfortunately, she is still quite far away and jumps down a few minutes after we pull up, so this is the best that I could do.

We drive for hours before we finally get a signal from MJ but she proves elusive tonight.  The sun is setting and she does not come out of the thick bush from where we think she must be watching us. 

Even as we decide to turn back, Rion gets a call from one of the guides to say Mufana has been found.  She apparently has blood in her mouth and is resting at a river bed.  Unfortunately, he is in quite another direction from where we are, but

Rion is determined to find a leopard for us tonight.  We drive on roads we have never travelled before, until we finally spot Mufana.  It is past eight when we stumble back into camp and we are quite thankful to find that Clive has lit the fire and cooked us dinner!

 "It is one of the blessings of wilderness life that it shows us how few things we need in order to be perfectly happy."-  Horace Kephart

Wahoo Revisited

Rion suggested that we re-visit Wahoo on Friday afternoon.  As mentioned, it is just Alice and Pam and me in camp so we were quite relaxed about our afternoon activities and quite keen to see Wahoo again.  He is the hand raised leopard I mentioned previously that didn’t quite make it in the wild, as is now fed on a regular basis.

The second time around, we know exactly what to expect and are far more relaxed about taking photos and sit back to enjoy the moment. Determined not to end up with hundreds more pictures, I focus on close ups, something I didn’t do enough of before.  I’ve included a  few of my favourites.

 

 

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.  ~G.K. Chesterton

Releasing the Wild Dogs

We wake up early on Saturday morning filled with excitement.  It is the day of reckoning for the wild dogs as they are being released from the welfare program into the rehabilitation reserve.  We drop Pam off at the main camp, where she catches a ride to the small air strip from where she leaves for the Skeleton Coast today.  Rion, Alice and I then go to bush camp to hitch a ride on one of Okonjima’s safari vehicles. 

It is fun to visit the luxury camps and have a look around!  A little different to our own digs, but most people who visit here only spent a few days at the reserve.  We are here for a month!

The wild dogs came to AfriCat and Okonjima Reserve when they were just born, with their eyes still tightly shut.  Unfortunately, their mum was killed almost as soon as they were born and they would not have survived if they had not been hand raised by Dave and Carla, the Directors of AfriCat. 

The dogs needed milk every 2-3 hours in the beginning and were wrapped up in blankets to be kept warm.  There were 7 pups originally but unfortunately 2 died at birth and another was lost along the way.  Four of the original litter have made it though, which is truly amazing, given their tragic start in life.

During their time here they have been moved from one enclosure to another, as they grew up and and outgrew the area they were in. 

They have been fed on a regular basis but it is now time to test their skills in the wild.  While these dogs have been raised by humans they are still wild at the end of the day and one must be cautious when approaching them.  Dave and Carla approach the welfare enclosure with sticks in their hands just in case. 

The gate is open and the ITV crew are ready with their cameras poised to capture this historic moment.  ITV are in the process of filming a series of programs on AfriCat and Okonjima which will air in the UK.  We can feel the excitement and the sense of anticipation in the air.  

There is a camera on the ground to capture images at eye level.  Many of the local staff and their families are here to witness this event.  We spot the people who have been just names to us before, including the Hansens, who own the reserve.  Then a plane flies overhead and we realise it’s Pam, taking off for the Skeleton Coast.  We wonder if she is looking down on us, and Alice and I wave goodbye!

The dogs run free and seem to skip with joy as they run toward the bush.  These dogs will now be monitored on a daily basis to determine if they can be self sustaining and use their instincts to find their prey.  If they aren’t able to be self sustaining, they will be given supplementary food till they find their feet in the wild.

It has been amazing to be part of this day.  The dogs come back for another look at their enclosure before running off again.  Wild Dogs – Go - Be Free!

 "The place where you lose the trail is not necessarily the place where it ends."
-   Tom Brown, Jr.

Cheetah Tracking with AJ

Clive leaves early Friday morning for Windhoek with the volunteers who are flying back home.  He makes a little speech after breakfast to say thanks for the work they have done and their contribution to the work of PAWS.  He remarks that it isn’t everyone who will get off their bum and do something for the environment during their time off and we all feel a bit emotional when the van drives off.  It is just me and Alice and Pam left back at camp and it feels  strangely quiet. 

Pam will fly off to the skeleton coast on Saturday from the little air strip at Okonjima Reserve.   We will be spending Friday morning with AJ, learning a bit more about his work with the cheetahs and observing him as he tracks Tongs, Trish and Charlie.

AJ, (Andre Rousseau), grew up in Grootfontein in a farm in this north-eastern part of Namibia.  He grew up speaking both English and Africaans at home and can also understand German quite well. 

He moved to Windhoek for high school and finished a degree in Marketing through a University at Stellenbosch, South Africa.  While in high school, he met his future wife although they didn’t get married till ten years later, when in 2008 she announced she was getting married – with or without him!

His dad worked in the conservation area and AJ grew up with a passion for the environment.  Unfortunately, at the time he was commencing his higher education there was no real future in tourism in Namibia and he chose marketing, a field that seemed to make sense from an economic perspective.

After working for Barclays Bank, he found himself back home and did a number of jobs that included working in the agriculture & farming industries. 

A chance encounter with Raleigh International, an organisation that sends gap year students to volunteer around the world, saw him also signed up as a volunteer for 6 months.  His stint in volunteering involved game counts in hides in Namibia, helping out with Brown Hyena research and taking part in a 340 km trek across Namibia over 21 days. 

The walk which was about self motivation also involved research on desert elephants, lions and other wildlife.  AJ had discovered his passion in life and realised that he would never really use his degree in marketing. 

He returned home and picked up a brochure his sister had brought home on Okonjima Reserve.  She was a chef and was looking for work in the area.  He applied for a job there but didn’t hear back for awhile and after 3 weeks of starting a new job finally got a job offer from Okonjima!

The rest as they say is history.  AJ quit the job he had just started and moved to Okonjima in 2005 to train as a guide for the lodge.  After 2 years of working at the reserve he left and went to Windhoek to guide private safaris that toured Namibia.  He was tired of listening to tourists who talked about all these amazing places in his own country and decided it was time he explored them for himself.

After working as a safari guide for almost a year, he returned to Okonjima and started working in the management side of the business at the bush camp.  He was also studying and researching cats on his own time and around the time he was poised to take over the management of the bush camp he was offered a position to head up the research arm of AfriCat as a Field Research Coordinator.  He took up this position, which was still funded by Okonjima.      

As we travel with him on Friday we get a taste of what his job entails.  We have found Charlie and Trish, two cats that have been released into the rehabilitation program.  We follow their signal till we find them relaxing under a tree.  These two cats hang out together, despite the fact they are not siblings. A stones throw away from where they lie, is a recent kill, perhaps made less than 24 hours earlier. 

Part of AJ’s job involves checking the kill for bite marks, to see how cheetah reintroduced to the wild are bringing down their prey.  He will also make a note of the GPS coordinates, the parts of the kill they have eaten, and the nature of the terrain where it has been found.  He also notes the species killed, which in this instance, is a kudu that is not more than 6 months old.

While a cheetah may not finish its kill, the leftovers will fill feed many other species from honey badgers to vultures.  AJ will install a motion sensitive camera to record what happens later on in the day, when the smell of this kill will bring other animals to the area.  We learn later on that an un-collared leopard and a honey badger have also visited this spot.  

He continues to make notes on the cheetahs.  Noting the size of their stomachs (very full obviously), their general physical condition and if they’ve had injuries, the nature of their wounds.  He will also monitor how long they will stay with their kill.  While cheetahs who have spent their entire lives in the wild will only eat fresh meat, cheetahs such as Charlie and Trish who came to the welfare program as orphans and were fed regularly for 2-3 years, will also scavenge and eat meat that is more than a day old.  

While the instinct to run after anything that moves is natural for a cheetah, the techniques of hunting and what to bring down are learnt from their mother.  These orphaned cheetahs obviously do not have all of the skills of a wild cheetah, which is why they are monitored daily to see how they cope once released.

If a cheetah is too chilled, then their chances of being released to a much bigger area such as a national park is not great.  If these cats are not afraid of humans, they could (for example) walk in to a lodge and be of harm to little children or be shot themselves because of their actions.

While Trish is quite relaxed, Charlie is very shy of humans.  If these cheetahs break up their coalition and separate, then Charlie may go on to a new home but it is unlikely that Trish will ever leave.  She is not afraid of human interaction which means she will live out her days in the reserve here at Okonjima.

It has been an interesting day with AJ.  He talks to us about the challenge of balancing tourism and conservation.   Obviously conservation needs constant funding and tourism brings these dollars in.  If we are to save the future of Africa’s Big Cats, then we cannot possibly ignore the value of tourism.

My journey through Africa brings me in constant contact with people living out their dreams and following their passions.  It is both a privilege and an inspiration to meet people such as AJ who want to make a contribution to conservation and believes that ones life work must be about giving something back!

AJ too his looking forward to a future that will see him continuing to work in the great outdoors and wishes to study ecology next.  In the next couple of weeks, both Alice and I will get a chance to work with AJ on a one on one basis and follow him around as he observes and continues to research these magnificent cats.  We are looking forward to this opportunity as we bid him goodbye. 

"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."  John Muir

Rion’s Story

Rion is Clive’s 2IC and we spend a big part of our day with him.  He drives Shez, the vehicle we travel in for our volunteer activities (such as bush chopping) as well as on our game drives.  He is quite a character, with a wonderful personality and endears himself easily to all of the volunteers.

I sit down with him to listen to his story.

He was born in Damaraland and grew up in Fransfontain where he studied both Africaans and his home language till high school. 

He started playing football around the age of 10 and discovered he had a special talent at this sport.  It wasn’t long before he was playing for the under 23 National team of Namibia and travelled to Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana for his sport, helping to win 19 cups for his country.   Unfortunately, he had to give up his love for  soccer due to financial reasons, as Namibian soccer players didn’t make much money at the time.  After a few jobs that included working for Telecom and a security company he started a career in the hospitality and tourism industry. 

He first worked at the Mowani Mountain Camp and moved from cooking meals to being a trainee guide.  In 2007, he started to learn English.  Given the fluency with which he speaks English now, (just 3 years later), I am really impressed at his ability to pick up a language so quickly. 

He loves wildlife and the great outdoors and is really interested in learning as much as he can in the guiding business.  He started studying ornithology and continued to expand his knowledge about elephants, as well as fauna and flora.  He studied at Windhoek at the Namibian Academy for Tourism and Hospitality and spent his free time at Etosha National Park where he expanded his guiding knowledge.

He moved to 3 different lodges before coming back to Mowani in 2008 as a professional guide. 

He joined PAWS in May of this year because of his love of big cats and his desire to learn more about leopards and cheetahs.  He enjoys both his work here and his colleagues and the opportunity to meet volunteers from all over the world. 

He dreams of being a birding specialist and writing a book about birds in Namibia.  He wishes to expand his knowledge about other aspects of nature and wants to study snakes and the stars next.  He also dreams of  broadening his guiding training at the Okavango Delta and being a tour guide on an overlander truck so he can explore Southern Africa and see a little more of his beloved continent. 

Rion is a man who has found his passion in life.  He tells me he loves working in nature and believes that if you don’t take care of nature, nature will not take care of you.   Rion, it has been a pleasure to meet you and I hope you continue to follow your dreams.    There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.  ~Nelson Mandela

Sundowners & Goodbyes

The two weeks here have flown by and six of the eight volunteers are about to leave us (Alice and me) and fly home.   Our last game drive ends with sundowners by Oryx Dam.  We have packed our drink of choice and a few snacks for our last evening together and we have a blast. We toasts to the last 2 weeks in each of our mother tongues and drink to new friendships and wild cats.  It has been an awesome two weeks and this is a fitting end.  Rion teaches us some African dance moves and we dance on the dry caked mud of the river bed as the sunsets over Namibia. I have got to know these girls to varying degrees but Katrina and I have formed a close friendship and we hope to meet again either in Australia or Africa.  She is my first Irish girl friend!  She lives in England currently, but plans to move back to Ireland soon to work there for awhile so she can save up to travel the world.  Perhaps, her travels will bring her Down Under or we will catch up somewhere else.  Till then, I say au revoir, safe travels everyone!  Till we meet again….

“A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions”.

Clive’s Story

It is always wonderful to meet people who have had the courage to live a dream.  Clive Johnson is a man who is passionate about the environment and conservation and the project coordinator here at PAWS (People and Wildlife Solutions) is one such  individual.

Clive grew up in England and initially studied and worked in the horticulture industry.  He originally visited Africa in his mid twenties, when he was bitten by the travel bug spending 3 weeks in Botswana. 

 

Realising that he wanted to explore the world, he continued to work in England in various roles from the wine industry and security field to being a masseur, each time saving enough to explore the world a little more.  His travels took him from Africa and South America to New Zealand and Japan but it was Africa that always seemed to draw him back.  In 2000, while doing a charity walk in Namibia he fell in love with this country and visited Damaraland a few years later (2004) to volunteer on an elephant project. 

Realising he would love to work here full time, he came back to South Africa and trained as a guide.  He then went back to England and sold everything he owned and moved to Damaraland to work at this project for about a year and half.  While working there, he met his future wife Roma a volunteer from England who was also keen to move out to Africa.

A contact informed them about Okonjima Reserve and they originally came out here to Namibia to work at the lodge.  They moved up quickly through the ranks and were soon managing the villa on the reserve.  After working in the tourism industry for 2 years they discovered they shared a common vision with the owners of Okonjima who wanted to establish a volunteer project on their property.  

They self funded this project a little over 2 years ago and PAWS (People and Wildlife Solutions) was born.  Today, the project is up and running and a wonderful opportunity for those interested in a real experience of Namibia to give something back to the environment while enjoying the wilds of Africa. 

Clive and Roma are living their dream, while  providing an opportunity for people all over the world to get a real hands on experience of life in the bush. 

They have given up a comfortable life in England and taken a risk to live a life that is different.  Clive tells me he couldn’t be happier despite the uncertainties associated with living in a country where one is not a permanent citizen.  He could never see himself in a desk job with all the paper shuffling that goes along with that choice.  I wish them well and hope this project will go on from strength to strength!  

“PAWS for thought. What have you done for your world today?”

The Mating Rituals of Leopards

We have accomplished another day of fence rolling and so we are rewarded by an afternoon of leopard tracking.  Rion will be guiding on his own today and we drive for a bit before we even get a signal.  He is determined to find the leopards for us, and we 4wheel drive through thick bush dodging thorns and scratches in search of these elusive cats. 

After much driving around we get a signal and finally locate both MJ and Mufana.  We can’t quite believe our luck but this time around they are out in the open.  They might even surprise us again.  We turn off the engine and settle in for a bit of leopard watching. We are in luck.  It is spring time in Nambia and MJ knows it.  She approaches Mufana and waves her bum in his face letting him know she is ready to do the wild thing.

The act is noisy and fast but this time we get clear pictures! They don’t seem to mind there is a car load of volunteers watching them with video and telephoto lenses poised.  They go at it like..well a pair of wild cats but it isn’t long before she throws him off her.

The leopard penis is barbed and the act is quite painful for MJ but she still keeps coming back for more.  These 2 leopards have now been at it for over a month, which is longer than usual for leopards mating.  MJ rolls around in the sand.  She is obviously enjoying this despite the pain and it isn’t long before she signals to Mufana she is ready for him again.  We watched them perform 3 times before Rion lets us know it is time for us to leave them in peace. As the cats walk off into the bush, we decide to head home but our day is not quite over.  The vehicle refuses to start!  Here we are just spitting distance from a pair of leopards and our car is stuck!  Fortunately, the leopards keep moving and Rion has a go checking a few things in the vehicle.  Unfortunately, she just doesn’t want to co-operate. 

No one is panicking just yet because we know that help is only a radio message away.  Rion calls Clive on the two-way radio and it isn’t long before he turns up to help.  The car is fixed and we head home.  We have just been witness to something very unique that not many people are privileged to see.  My time at Okonjima just keeps getting better.

 “Do you want me to tell you something really subversive?  Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more.”  Erica Jong

A Walk With the Bushmen

We spend Monday evening on a walk through the bush with Felix and Rion.  They are here to share with us the history of their ancestors, the San Bushman.  The San Bushman are some of the oldest inhabitants of our planet and today are mostly found in the Kalahari region.  Their belief systems are quite superstitious when compared with the  advancement of science today and yet they had amazing survival skills that enabled them to live off the land, taking only what they needed.

It is interesting to learn how they hunted with poisoned arrows, using different potions and varieties of poison, depending on their prey.  They set traps that did not harm the animal so if they had a big kill, they could for example let a smaller prey (such as a porcupine) free. 

They were a nomadic group of people and often the entire village would move to the location of the next big kill once such an animal was brought down.  This could be anything from a giraffe to an elephant.  They left their houses behind so the next clan to come around could make use of their huts.

Making fire is of course one of the key survival skills, and Rion and Felix demonstrate just how easy it is to get a fire going with a few blades of grass and a stick!  That day at dinner, Sarah gives this technique a go and is delighted to find that after about 15 minutes of hard work, she has a fire!

The bushman had interesting mating rituals.  A woman was given a present of arrows dipped in honey.  If she accepted it and started eating it, the man who presented her would shoot her with little arrows.  If she broke the arrow in two, it meant she was rejecting his advances but if she accepted it, then he was in luck!

It is fun to be out in the bush with the boys and here about their traditions.  We are amazed these traditions have withstood the test of time, especially that of using a witch doctor.  Most Africans here would still visit a witch doctor and believe in the power of voodoo to cure their ailments and bring them luck.  The sun is setting and it is time to head back for dinner.  We have had another lesson from the African Continent.

 ‘If you want to hit home runs, you’ve got to be willing to take some calculated risks and be prepared to strike out.’

A Shit Day!

We start a new week by picking up cheetah poo and bones.  The new cheetahs brought to the reserve go through an extensive welfare program  run by AfriCat, before those that can fend for themselves are released into the larger reserve.  Initially, these cheetahs are fed on a diet of meat on a regular basis but once they are released they are monitored to see if they are able to be self sustaining and hunt their own prey. 

AfriCat run the largest rescue and release program in the world for big cats.  I am amazed to learn that it is estimated that big cats in the wild could be extinct by the year 2050, if nothing is done to help them survive.

As the enclosures in the welfare program are quite small, (as compared to the area these cats would roam in the wild) it is important they are kept clean.  Our duties for today include picking up all the cheetah poo and the left over bones, ensuring the enclosure is free of parasites that could be harmful to their health. We are given buckets that we fill and dump into a heap.  The bones will be crushed and left out for the vultures to pick at and the poo will be disposed of.  We are in the enclosures with the cheetahs but they leave us alone.  It is actually a very relaxing morning and the poo is mostly dried up so this activity is much easier than I initially thought it would be.  We do a pretty good job of cleaning up the enclosures and pile up our bucket loads in a corner for a later pick up. We end the day by experiencing the feeding run in the welfare program.  We see the resident cheetahs, lions and leopards being fed which is quite interesting.  The animals are hungry and fight each other for the food,even though there is plenty to go around.

What I find really interesting in this volunteer program is the variety of work we have an opportunity to be involved in and the numerous activities planned for us in the evenings.  We have had another marvellous day in Namibia!

“The greatest use of a life is to invest it in something that will outlast it.”