Life at Thanda - Week 2

Animal antics

The highlight of the week was without a doubt watching two rock monitors wrestle. Very rare to see but also absolutely hilarious. So much so, we delayed our sundowner drinks as we were so mesmerised by them.

So how should you fight if you’re a rock monitor? Dirty. The most common move appears to be munching on your opponent’s leg and bending it behind their back.

At first we thought they were conducting some strange mating ritual, but after a while we realised they were not mock fighting, they were deadly serious. It could’ve been a fight over a female or more likely territory.

Funnily enough many of us went through two 16 gig memory cards and were still shooting them as ferociously about an hour and a half after we found them. Round 1 went to Sandy. Round 2 went to Rocky. And let’s not talk about Round 3, particularly when we read rock monitors fight to the death, as a vehicle from the 5 star lodge came and scared them off. Not the finish we were expecting.

On other game drives as per the photos below, we’ve seen wildebeest, buffalo, wild dog, hyena, lion, white rhino, giraffe and a batelier eagle amongst many many others.

Oh and I’ve begun a small collection of multiple headed animal shots. Here are my 2, 3 and 4 headed giraffe shots. Seriously, we spend loads of time with them so I decided to get a bit creative!

Community work

Community work became more a focus for our group this week as we had completed our photography course.

Our first job was controlled fire burning. We were given long wooden broom handles with rubber strips on the ends. These were for us to beat out any fire that spread across the road.

We were tasked with burning a block. In my mind, I had thought it would be about the size of a normal apartment block, but as it turns out, it stretched for a few kilometres on all four sides.

People took it in turns lighting the fire with a can of gasoline, and everyone else spread out down the road, ready to beat out any stray fire. The fire started out small enough, as it does, and then in parts raged and crackled like mad, often reaching heights of up to 6 metres. Chromolaena the alien plant burns like mad as it contains some sort of paraffin which shimmers as it burns.

My initial reaction was to get out of there as quickly as possible but then I realised we had a serious job to do. Another controlled fire burn in different reserve had previously gone wrong and several rhino sadly perished as a result. The area had been cleared of large animals prior to us going in and we managed to rescue a tortoise and a small green chameleon.

The fire spread to the middle of the road at one point and I ran in from one side and someone else ran in from the other and we quickly put it out. You didn’t want to stay there for very long as it was so hot. The flames felt like they were burning your skin even if you were a metre or two away at times.

The wind went against us most of the time and blew clouds of thick smoke towards us. By 12.30pm we needed a break from the smoke, and found out the other guys only finished the block at 3pm. It was still burning late into the night.

Another day we went to visit the kids at Mdletshe school. It’s over an hour away from Thanda in amongst the Zulu villages. We split into two groups and my group took Grade 1 and the other Grade 3. We taught them about three different African animals – the oxpecker, kudu and dung beetle. I had the dung beetle (by choice) and had brought in an elephant dung (dried) and a dung beetle ball so they could see the ‘before’ and ‘after’. No-one really wanted to touch it not surprisingly. I asked for a kid to volunteer so we could show the class how a dung beetle rolls his dung. I then lifted their legs as they stood on their hands and walked them backwards. They thought that was hilarious and many others wanted a go. Interesting fact on dung beetles - they can roll a dung ball that is up to 50 times their own weight!

I learnt my first click word too! It’s amaqanda. You say it as ‘ama’ then you click, then you say ‘anda’. It means eggs.

After the lesson, we blew up balloons with them and played in the yard. Some volunteers had a game of soccer with them. We’ll be back there next week for 2 days to help them build a fence around the school. It helps them get recognised as a government school which means amongst other things the kids can get free meals (often they don’t get any food all day long).

We also helped out with a wetlands restoration project to clean the grey water from the park’s headquarters and provide clean water to the animals. A pool size hole had already been dug out  and rocks had been collected by previous volunteers. Our task was to move the dirt into one big pile, lay out a thick plastic sheet across the bottom and then line the sides with the rocks. We formed lines to pass the rocks down to people at the sides who would then lay the rocks around the edges. Everyone enjoyed the physical exercise so much so we asked to stay for longer than required so we could power through the whole pile of rocks as a group. It was very satisfying once we had used up all the rocks. The next steps will be to lay down sand and pebbles in the base but we need a tractor for that and it is mostly occupied with providing water to the animals, guests and volunteers.

Weekend trip to St Lucia

Last weekend most of us volunteers headed to St Lucia where we could have long showers, eat out and most importantly get internet access.

St Lucia is not just any normal town though. Hippos literally walk around the town. Our photography teacher Emil was telling us a hippo once chased him down the main street, and we later heard this is quite a common occurrence. Vervet monkeys also run amok, and one was even attempting to steal our hotel cleaning lady’s cleaning products. God knows what it wanted to do with those! Apparently there are also up to 7 leopards in and around the town. One 85 year old local we ran into said he was doing his morning walk and a leopard jumped out in front of him. He froze and the leopard started snarling at him. After a few extremely long minutes, the leopard lost interest and just walked off luckily enough!

A 40 minute or so walk gets you to the old estuary which has since closed up. ‘Danger beware of hippos’ and ‘Do not feed the crocs’ signs warn you of the potential dangers but really you can see them for yourself. The hippos were lounging around on the river banks and the crocs were further downstream. Fishermen said they had to be aware of them at all times.

Many of us took a hippo and croc cruise which was well worth it as you get very close to many pods of hippos (we only saw one croc which looked as though it was sleeping). The hippos were mock fighting and obligingly going at each other with their tusks and opened mouths (a great photo opportunity!)