‘Africa gets into your blood’ as the saying goes. Since I lived in South Africa when I was younger, a force has kept pulling me back to the continent. This time, it’s for 7 ½ months.
We are currently living in a lodge in Thanda Private Game Reserve in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. For those of you who Google it, let me clarify, we’re not staying at the 5 star resort (sadly), we’re at the volunteer centre. And we’re on a volunteer wildlife photography and conservation mission.
There’s a water shortage at the moment across the whole reserve, so showers are super-quick and every drop counts. Even the elephants must have struggled to find water as we heard that at the 5 star resort, a thirsty herd emptied a guest’s entire private pool! Our pool is currently empty as is the waterhole the lodge overlooks. A tractor brings a load of water daily (unless it breaks down), and the animals get priority.
Our rooms are spacious though we have to share them with geckos who live in the thatch and always seem to direct their excrement over our beds. We find their pellets on our bed sheets most days but luckily it’s easy enough to wipe them off.
Lions and wildebeest have walked right by the seemingly flimsy wire fence that surrounds our camp. Inside so far, I’ve only seen warthogs, birds, an array of insects and of course geckos. However, we heard that just before we arrived, volunteers had seen hyena inside the camp!
The first week here included an intensive photography course by Emil von Maltitz, an incredible photographer and photography teacher with immense experience in wildlife and landscape photography. (Visit limephoto.co.za or his blog emilvonmaltitz.blogspot.com for photography and editing lessons and handy tips.) Most of our practice comes into play on daily game drives, either early in the morning or late in the afternoon when the animals are out and when the light is better.
Our drives tend to focus on only a few animals but we spend a long time with them so we can get to understand them and get the best possible shots. The animals also tend to get up pretty close and personal. On our first game drive, we hadn’t seen any animals for a while, and then suddenly a huge bull elephant appeared from behind a bush within a couple of metres of our vehicle. He was on musth and hence potentially more aggressive than usual. He decided to challenge our open top Landrover filled with the 9 of us volunteer photographers, our guide/driver and Emil. Thulani’s tusk came within inches of Keith in a threatening way, possibly to show him who’s boss. Understandably, Keith was a little shaken up afterwards!
Another day, we found two male cheetahs lounging around, grooming each other with their long tongues. They later arose and started walking alongside the park fence until they reached the park gate where a guard normally stands to check incoming and outgoing vehicles. This time he went inside his small office and we saw his hand reach out to the window and quickly pull it shut! There was also a lady in his office who must’ve been more lax as she was standing in the doorway with the door wide open while the cheetahs walked past within spitting distance!
There are two lion prides. Sadly the male, ‘Big Daddy’, died not long ago as he got caught in a snare. The prides are now both led by lionesses and each have three cubs. We’ve seen them several times now and narrowly missed out on seeing a buffalo kill just the other day.
Aside from photography, the other part of our volunteer work will soon be to join the researchers in activities such as fully identifying the elephant herd and lion prides, chromolaena plant removal (otherwise known as ‘alien plant’ removal), prickly pear removal, fence pole removal, snare sweeping, waterhole digging, wetlands restoration and litter picking. And yes, there will mostly likely be wild animals around when we conduct these conservation activities too. Before coming, I imagined myself pulling out an ‘alien plant’ whilst a rhino was right in front of me.
But life here at Thanda is not always so serious. There’s a sign on the research board that says: “Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant”. We also asked about the crazy questions tourists have asked and had to laugh at the following:
- When does the rhino lose his horn and become a hippo? (seriously…)
- Do giraffe hunt in packs?
- Do these [dirt] roads occur naturally?
- What kind of meat do wildebeest eat?
If you know of any other crazy tourist questions about wildlife, please share them!
