African Adventures Part 3

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My life here is governed by 2 or 3 letter acronyms. Our dail acitivity schedule contains what, at first, was a bewildering list of duties such as EH (elephant herding), BPG (maintenance of the lion enclosures at the breeding programme), CLW (client lion walk) and SS (snare sweep). But the acronym that sits above all others and is used on a daily basis is TIA - This Is Africa! That encompasses everything from working to 'African time', making do with primitive equipment and improvising to the daily power cuts. But this week it also covered the arrest of two of our volunteers, working on the community programme, for 'illegally working' in Zimbabwe.

The government here doesn't understand the concept of volunteer toursims and they don't have that option on the visa form so you just have to put 'holiday' as the reason for visiting. Two of the volunteers were helping out in the local clinic when the police arrived and promptly arrested them. It was a pretty scary experience for them as they were driven around in a police car for an hour before being taken to the police station and threatened with deportation. Fortunately the organisers here setpped in quickly and managed to secure their release, and without the customary bribe. We all had to have photocopies taken of our passports and visas for a meeting between representatives of Antelope Park, the local government minister and senior immigration officials in Harare to try to make sure there would be no more arrests - TIA!

On Sunday some of us went to visit a traditional small settlement just outside the park where the father of one of the staff lives with his 2 wives and about 30 kids, ranging in age from 2 weeks up to early 20s, plus assorted goats, dogs and chickens. The children can dance as soon as they can walk so there were lots of drums and dancing and then we helped make lunch of sadza and a thin stew. Everything was done in traditional style with the men sitting around on benches drinking beer while the women did all the work. We then helped them serve the men their food and were supposed to kneel before them while doing so - TIA!

This week I also went on a night encounter where we take the hunting lions out after drak and follow them in jeeps as they hunt for game. The guides use red spotlights to seek out the game and, when a chase begins, the jeeps go crashing through the bush following the lions. We saw a few chases which was exciting but unfortunately no kills.

Another task in a very varied week was clearing the 'vultures restaurant'. This is an area of the park where they throw out all the bits of animal the lions don't eat and you hide and wait for the vultures to come and feed. The 'restaurant' hadn't been tidied for some time so there was lots of skin and bones lying around. We filled up the back of a big truck but had fun along the way trying to find enough bones to reconstruct a cow and by decorating the truck by tying a large skull to the front and a tail to the back. Now that it's been cleared we hope to do a vulture feed soon.

It's amazing how quickly it feels perfectly normal to walk with lions and elephants every day and see zebra, impala, kudu, giraffe or wildebeest while your on your way to 'work' - TIA!

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Comments

[Lindsay B]

What a week!
Your weeks get more and more exciting! The night encounter sounds awesome, real high action stuff! How scary for those poor people that were arrested though, bet it'll take them some time to recover from that! I'm so looking forward to seeing your pics when you get back! Life continues as normal here - TIA, This Is AEGON! We definitely miss you though!!!! xx

[simoney]

TIA-OK
"Everything was done in traditional style with the men sitting around on benches drinking beer while the women did all the work." Sounds like the majority of household activities on a Saturday in England. Please don't get arrested!