Winter's Coming

The title for this post was influenced a little bit by my love for Game of Thrones, which will be starting again soon(!)... But of course it's also because over the last week that I've been working in Lifeskills you can definitely tell that Autumn is coming to an end. For a full three days now we've had overcast and heavy rain and I've found myself putting on socks which my feet have grown very unaccustomed to. At night the temperature drops significantly - Zoe, Kathryn and myself wander about the hostel in two jumpers, a blanket and slippers. It's probably still the same temperature as a Scottish summer, but the sudden change is enough for us to reach for a hot water bottle.

The first week back from the holidays is always a hectic one, the children have to settle back into routine and get used to the structure of school again. This week however, was made a little bit more challenging due to the fact that I was on crutches. Towards the end of the holidays I thought it would be a good idea to kick a basketball with no shoes on and this resulted in the swelling up of a ligament in my foot (go me). I was given anti-inflammatories by the doctor and told to keep weight off it for a few days which meant that I had to use some crutches that the Enrichment Centre kindly provided... Now that the swelling's gone down and it's not sore anymore I've ditched the sticks. It has given me a new respect for the children in the Enrichment Centre who have to use crutches - having to use them is extremely annoying.

One of our new projects in the Lifeskills class is building a vegetable garden. Each child will hopefully have their own patch of soil where they can grow herbs and vegetables that they can then sell to teachers or the kitchen of Mitchell House. By doing this the kids will get an idea of how business works, hopefully giving them a skill set that will help them in later years. I also think that the garden will look beautiful when it's finished and will provide the children with some responsibility which is so important for them - having disabilities often means that they rely on other people a lot for things, so being able to give them this as their own project is fantastic.

On Saturday morning Mitchell House hosted a big sporting event, schools from all over Polokwane came and played football, hockey, cricket and netball. I was put in charge of score keeping for the netball matches - I was given my own desk and everything... It was a lot of fun and the all the teams played very well.

On Monday I'm back in Juniors and I'm very much looking forward to seeing all of them again but it's going to be a tiring week!

Catching up with some sketching - finally!

Kruger Park

Sorry for the late post everyone, it took a while to write up. :-)

Days 1 & 2

Arriving at the Kruger Park Safari was very exciting. It's the first time since I've arrived in South Africa that I travelled alone, so it was also a bit nerve-wracking..

The group individuals got picked up in Joburg and Pretoria on Saturday morning. I stayed the night at this lovely guesthouse, that recently had a new building added and contained a ping pong and pool table as well as the stuffed corpses of various wild animals - including half a full grow giraffe.

I was picked up from the guesthouse at 6.10am and met the other eight travellers that would be joining me on the safari adventure. Two of the eight were from Sweden, another two from Germany and the final pair were a mother and her ten year old son, Tom, from Sheffield. It was a long drive to the campsite but when we arrived it turned out to be beautiful. We shared a tent with another person - I shared mine with a lovely German girl called Loreen, who I became good friends with over the four days.

Early, cold start!

On both days we had to wake up at 4.30am in order to get the best, full day of safari as possible. The first day was great, we managed to see elephants, giraffes and different kinds of buck and birds. Our guide was called Loyd and was fantastic, he's been guiding in Kruger for almost 20 years and knew so much about the animals.

We finished our first tour of Kruger at 1pm and then went back to camp to prepare for our night drive. At 4pm we set off to a private game reserve in our safari truck - open on all sides which meant it got a bit chilly in the evenings and mornings. Luckily, we were provided with blankets that kept us nice and warm.

Sunset

When we arrived at the game reserve it was already getting darker, it's amazing how fast the sun sets over here! Loyd confessed that there was a bit of trouble with the starter motor of the truck, so every time we wanted to move he had to get out and push, then quickly jump in before we rolled away into the bushes... Before the sun went down we drove through the bush for a bit, managing to find a male white rhino drinking at a waterhole and a few giraffes. Then we quickly made our way to a clearing where we could all watch the sun set while having a glass of wine and some biscuits... talk about luxury.

Sunset

When the biscuits were finished (mostly my doing) we set of in the truck again, but this time it was pitch black and all we had to spot the animals was a very strong torch that Loyd would move around with one hand while steering with the other. The trick for spotting the animals was looking out for the eyes glinting whenever the torch shone on them. Apparently animals have a layer in their eyes that reflects light instead of absorbing it like human eyes do. This made them easier to spot but was also quite creepy, like something out of a horror movie. As we were driving along later on, Loyd suddenly stopped the truck, jumped out and ran into the bushes, taking the torch with him. We were all left in the truck arguing over who'd drive us back if he got eaten. He returned quickly and showed us what had caught his attention - a tiny little chameleon. We have absolutely no idea how he managed to see it, it was dark and the chameleon was sitting on a bush about 30m away from the road... But from then on we called Loyd 'The Eagle' due to his astounding eye sight.

Further along the road we almost bumped into two buffalo - the only animal out of the big five (lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhino) that attacks without warning. I think it was more surprised than angry to see us coming out of the darkness, so we passed by unscathed. When we arrived back at camp we sat down together around the camp fire and ate 'bunny chow', which I first tried in Durban. It's half a loaf of bread hollowed out and filled with beef stew. Traditionally it was bunny meat and the chef told us that the bread is used as a bowl because people were too poor to afford a real one - I personally think it's much cooler and more practical... no dishes.

Bunny Chow

Camping in Africa is amazing. During the day it's beautiful but at nighttime so many different animals come out. While we were chatting we could hear lions roaring in the distance. We hoped to see them tomorrow because they were one of the big five that we hadn't seen yet.

Day 3

Another early start but this time we mentally prepared for a long, exciting day. We'd be touring Kruger in our truck all day - from 6am to 6pm so a solid 12 hours of insane wildlife. The day couldn't have gone better and even Loyd said he couldn't believe our luck, I will begin to explain why..

The weather was cooler that day so the animals were very jumpy, they had more energy because it wasn't as hot. The first evidence of this was when we passed a large female giraffe babysitting four calves, the calves were all chasing each other and bouncing about the place - apparently unusual behaviour for such docile animals.

Just before lunchtime when we were heading to the picnic spot, The Eagle spotted a herd of elephants heading for the road. It soon became quite obvious that the herd was massive, a total of about 50 elephants, including some little babies. About five minutes later they all crossed the road right in front of us - it was amazing being so close to wild elephants, even Loyd was astounded. We then realised that the herd  could be heading to the water hole just below the picnic area, so we zoomed off to have a look. Sure enough the elephants had all made their way to the water, where the babies were splashing about and the adults were drinking. We watched the action while eating bacon and eggs from the picnic viewpoint, still having to pinch ourselves that we'd been so lucky with timing!

Brunch with the elephants

Soon afterwards the elephants plodded off and we got back in the truck in search of more action. We'd been driving for only half an hour when we witnessed the coolest thing of the whole trip - a lion kill. We silently watched from the road as a small group of male lions stalked an unaware buffalo and then attacked it, bringing it down with a bite to the neck. The meat attracted a lot of other predators like vultures and hyenas that were waiting for the lions to move away so they could steal some scraps. We were all really happy because we'd finally seen a lion, not only that but during feeding time - also a very rare sight Loyd informed us.

We drove around the park for the rest of the day looking out for more animals and there was a very funny moment when we spotted a male giraffe eating leaves from the top of a tree near the road. Whenever we moved into a position where we could see him, he'd rotate around the tree so that he was hidden. Well, he thought so but his head still stuck above the branches...

We spent the final night back at camp huddled next to the fire, under the stars while eating our pasta. It's amazing how quickly you become friends with people when you travel, it's also very useful because I now have contacts in Sweden, Amsterdam, Germany and Sheffield... The Swedish pair told us that in Winter they have BBQs on the ice, cut a hole in the ice big enough to jump into and go for a dip - then quickly recover by jumping into a hot tub. Everyone also tried exchanging language tips which was a lot of fun. Something about Swedish means that they find it difficult to pronounce the 'J' sound, it just sounds like 'Y' so we kept giving them sentences like 'yolk is no joke' but it would just come out as 'yolk is no yoke'. This provided us with much hilarity.

Loyd then asked if anyone played guitar so I said yes and then strummed and sang a little bit for everyone. By that time  one of the Swedes had taken advantage of the free wine and was already very drunk, claiming with each note that he "KNOW DIS WAN!". It was very, very funny. At midnight we finally headed off to our tents, preparing ourselves for another early start and a long drive back to Joburg!

Blyde River Canyon (3rd biggest in the World). Stopped at a viewpoint on the drive back to Joburg.