Blog Nov Week in Life 1

Blog 44 – Nov '17 – A Week in the Life (Part 1)

I’ve recently returned from holidays during which I decided that my next blog should give everyone an overview of my average week. So, I decided to choose my first week back. By all planning it seemed like it would be a fairly normal week - so, here’s how it went.

Day 1 – Monday

Today was a usual run around town day – something that we usually do every 2 weeks. As I was already in Maun, it made sense to use the day doing ‘chores’ before heading back to camp. I had a day full of grocery shopping, fuel restocking* and hardware store visits. The hardware stores seem to be my second home in Maun – this time I needed to stock up on items needed for our community members to burn chilli (mostly gloves, goggles and masks). Me and the team also had a meeting with a local cattle and game farmer scheduled – the farmer works in an area in which we are hoping to extend our research interests to and to do so we need the farming community on our side. Thankfully the meeting didn’t end with him telling us that we should “just shoot all the elephants, and even if you don’t kill them, you will injure them badly until they eventually die”, because quite frankly it wouldn’t have been the first farmer interaction to end like that. And I am not sure how many times I can be told that, while remaining calm and professional. Once all was sorted in town, myself and my team piled into the car and headed off on our 150km journey home. As well as 150km, there are about 1000 potholes and a pretty unreliable ferry between Maun and home. So, despite the 120km/hr speed limit, this journey took a little over 2 hours. The day ended with the usual scramble to unpack the car and pack everything away before night fell and the mice came out to eat any food yet to be put away.

*We live approximately 150km from town so we rely on a cage full of jerry cans to keep us moving between supply runs.

This goes on for about 40km…and as you can tell by the road created on the left, it is better to go off road than over most of the potholes unless you want to break your car in half

Day 2 – Tuesday

Tuesday, we got in the car in camp at around 7am, drove to the Park gate and crossed back across the river to the community side on the ferry (which has the pleasure of charging us $20AUD, one way, for a crossing of less than 100m). We then spent a couple of hours rounding up farmers and driving them to our Community Officer’s field which we use as a demonstration plot. A measly 1.5hours late, our workshop commenced – pretty good timing considering Botswana time. While the workshop got underway, one of my staff and I drove around town trying to find some food to buy at the local tuckshops – the culture here is that if you put on a workshop, even for a couple of hours, that you should give the attendees food and cordial, otherwise next time you may not have attendees. After finding an assortment of biscuits, chips and crackers we headed back (where cordial already awaited). A couple of hours seated in dirt, in the burning Botswana sun, and it was time to feed the troops. They had spent the morning being taught about how to use chilli to keep elephants out of their fields by our Community Officer and our Research Assistant. I on the other hand spent the morning watching their reactions – I don’t speak Setswana so the workshop itself wasn’t helpful to me, but gauging the interest of our farmers is – it means I know who are the ones trying the hardest and taking initiative, which is an important part of being involved with the project.

L: The farmers huddling under the diminishing shade to learn about chilli burning. R: An ‘embowler’ used to burn chilli, with a roof to make sure overnight rains don’t put the smouldering chilli dung out.

I also spent the time liaising with a couple of French journalists by email. They were my next stop – a meeting with one of them to see what footage and sound bites they wanted to capture over the coming week. Sitting down, in sweaty, dirty clothes covered in chilli and elephant dung**, and having recently been doused by a quick rainstorm, I was none too impressed to be asked “Can I film this interview?”. I politely, but with the speed of a striking cobra, declined. After the meeting with the journalist, we set up camp for the night – we were hosting a documentary night in the town hall for all of the community to attend and because we can’t cross back to the park at night, we need to camp in the community on these nights. The documentary night was a hit – we played my personal favourite Africa to a packed house of 71 attendees. The community were enthralled by the giraffe fight in the Kalahari episode and in fits of giggles as the dung beetle fell and rolled down sand dunes in the Sahara. After a hearty dinner (a peanut butter sandwich), and waiting for a snake to leave the doorway of my tent, I went to bed.

** The farmers burn a combination of chilli and elephant dung on the periphery of their fields – the chilli deters elephants because of their great sense of smell, and the dung (a plentiful product in these areas!) keeps the chilli smouldering throughout the night.

Day 3 – Wednesday

After packing up camp and filling up all our water jerries*** we crossed back into the Park for a day of office work. I had three weeks of emails and accounting to catch up on, thanks to time spent out of the office and holidays, so my day flew by as a whirlwind of numbers and “Regards, Rebecca”s. That evening was our Research Assistant’s turn to cook, as we cook dinners on a rota, so we had a local meal of beef stew and pap. Pap is a maize flour, polenta-type, carb-loaded meal prevalent in southern Africa.

*** The water that we get out of the tap in the middle of camp is quite disgusting, owing to it not being treated and being exceptionally high in sulphur, so we get our drinking water from the community side when we are there and lug it down and across the river with us.

This is the ferry that we cross into the Park on. As you can see by the state of the life preservers…they take safety seriously!

Part 2 will include days four through seven…