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Published: March 19th 2007
Today the main staff joined the advanced team here at Field Base. The additional fourteen comprised 11 project managers and three medics. Phil, our deputy expedition leader, had a fast-paced few days mapped out for us. Day one involved some basic practicalities, including a tour of Field Base, medical one-to-ones and personal admin.
On day two we set off early for a long weekend of camping and hard skills training at Dann Vilioen, a nearby game park, home to some of Namibia’s wildlife, including wart hogs, zebra, kudu and giraffe. We had a session on manning Raleigh’s HF radios, brushed up on our navigation skills, learning the theory of latitude, longitude and GPS and had a briefing on various medical procedures.
Day three saw us set off at the crack of dawn on a six hour trek, negotiating the steep shills and blazing heat of the game park. We donned our backpacks, containing all our camping kit and food supplies for the weekend, and followed the route set out on our hand-held GPS’s. One group was lucky enough to get within metres of a family of giraffe, including some babies. Others were content to spot zebra and springbok. The
trek tested our radio skills as we radioed in for a basic sitrep - a situational report - and a mock medevac - medical evacuation - in response to some convincing acting on the part of one of the team.
We spent our evenings contending with frequent bursts of rain as we lit fires for our long-awaited meals, approaching our ingredients in the style of Ready Steady Cook. We came up with some interesting concoctions from the various tins and packets provided and probably have never enjoyed a meal quite so much!
Project teams have now been allocated and the various project teams departed for their project planning visits - this morning. They will return at the end of the week to report on their findings. We then embark on a further two days of training ahead of participant arrival in just over a week’s time.
Next time we’ll include more details of 07D projects. Until then, thanks for reading and please keep your comments coming.
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Sue Kinnie
non-member comment
Getting the camp fire started?
Looks more like Stuart fell asleep on the job! Great to find this web site Stu, very interesting projects. I look forward to viewing more on Raleighs work in Namibia. Glad you returned to the field, thinking of you...