Life at Thanda - Week 3

Game drives

What I thought was a warthog from a distance, actually turned out to be an elephant – or rather the entire elephant herd. How embarrassing! Oh well, at least I found them as we’d been looking for them all afternoon. Out of all the places they could be in the bush, they were in front of the 5 star lodge.

Our guide, Marianna, had previously told us that a thirsty herd emptied a guest’s entire private pool. But what we didn’t realise at the time was that this was not just a once off, rather it seems to be a regular occurrence. The herd had just finished off a guest’s private pool when I spotted them. Evidently still thirsty, they then moved on to the lodge’s water feature. Luckily for the elephants it had just been refilled as we’d heard the lodge requesting water for it on the radio a couple of days ago. We raced up the hill to watch them drink from it and suddenly realised why you pay more to stay at the 5 star lodge – the animals come to you!

Another day we came across two lions stalking some kind of prey. We lost sight of them at one point and then heard this loud squealing. We raced off road into the bush to find the male lion keeping a firm grip on a warthog’s neck with his razor sharp teeth, and the lioness tucking in to its lower half. Unlike normal lion behaviour, the lioness ate her fill first after a bit of a tussle between the two of them. Then the male got his share. You could hear the crunching of bones and contented growls.

A crazy giraffe came nearby to see what all the fuss was about. Incidentally, so did another warthog but after a few bites of grass he walked off.

Fence building

The fence at Mdletshe school has been a long time coming from the initial planning months ago through to the raising of funds for materials and finally the build.

We were supposed to build the fence over two days but the materials weren’t delivered in time. On the first day, we hadn’t left yet so we went on two game drives instead. But on the second day, we only found out once we’d arrived. So instead, we split into two groups: one to make a soccer field for the kids, and the other to pick up litter.

Natascha, our Project Manager, was well aware of my ’10 pieces’ project and reminded me I need to pick up 10 pieces of litter for every day I’d been in Africa so far. It added up to about 200 pieces (roughly 20 days). I counted up to 200 pieces and then continued to fill several more garbage bags without counting. Kids from all over the neighbourhood joined in and began carrying our garbage bags around and helping us pick up rubbish.

Rocks, collected by the volunteers and the community, were lined around an area to make a football field for the kids. Thorny acacia plants grow abundantly in the area, and we had to remove the hardy roots with pick axes and brute force so the kids wouldn’t trip over them.

After a few games of soccer and some zulu dancing involving both the kids and the volunteers, we left as we were unable to start the fence building.

It wasn’t until the following week that we could get started. The poles, wire and cement were finally delivered. The day started out with us volunteers and people from the local community picking up poles and putting one in each hole. Then the concrete had to be made and poured into the holes, which were then lined with rocks, and finally covered with dirt.

The old fence at the front also had to be taken down. A man came past with wire cutters and then a few of us began rolling up the old barbed wire in case they wanted to reuse it. The barbed wire was getting stuck on my gloves with every roll, as were the thorny branches that had been thrown on top of it as an added deterrence. Again we cleared rubbish from the area as it had been stuck in the old barbed wire and thorny bushes.

Our lunch break involved playing frisbee with the kids and carrying them around - the last thing you really have energy for after working in the hot sun, but they were too cute not to.

At the end of a long day, we had to hand back the project to the community, who would finish it off over the next few days. The poles had been erected and the concrete just needed to set before they could put up the wire.

One local man said he was so grateful Thanda volunteers had helped his community by building this fence that he would give up hunting (read: poaching) on Thanda. That is an incredible piece of news for Thanda: one less poacher is a huge win. Not to mention his influence over others including potentially his children. That alone made the hard work worthwhile but most importantly, the fence is the first step towards the school being recognised as an institution so it can get food and other benefits for both the kids and the teachers.