Rhino Tracking

I made my first attempt at rhino tracking yesterday. The rhinos were let loose about two years ago and are rarely seen, but they have set up motion-

activated cameras near the dam where they do occasionally see rhino tracks. I went with the wildlife volunteer to change the batteries in the camera and poke around the water’s edge for tracks. In all honesty, that will probably be the full extent of my “rhino tracking” during my time here. She gave me an impromptu lesson on wildlife tracks and poo identification. The guides she is teaching aren’t taking much interest, so she is happy to have someone who listens to her. I’ll be an expert before too long! We’re still having luminous thunder storms in the afternoons, so the air was lovely and cool at the dam. We saw a herd of wildebeest drinking at the water’s edge but they ran away as soon as they saw us. If you want to see the wildlife wandering in for a drink in the late afternoon, you really have to walk in, stake yourself a spot under a tree and don’t move. The lovely thing about being on a private guest farm is that you are very likely to be alone by the waterhole until 6:30pm. At 6:30 the “evening game drive” safari truck comes by with a load of tourists and a cooler full of beer for a sundowner. But that’s a good thing! The guides are my friends now and will happily provide me with a beer and a ride home. I went on the 7am “mountain game drive” yesterday. Wow! It was beautiful but STEEP!!! It felt like being on a bumpy roller coaster and you had to hang on for dear life on top of the totally exposed, rickety safari truck. I love the total disregard for safety in Africa. It’s such a change from the American nanny-state. There is a very odd species of mountain zebra up there somewhere, but we weren’t lucky enough to see them that day. I’ll have to try again. I went for a ride into Windhoek yesterday with the owner so I could pick up a broadband internet modem. There is no other (cheap) way for me to get off the farm other than catching a ride with the weekly shopping trip. It was so funny. A little more than a week ago I was a downtown San Francisco dweller – all sophisticated and urbane. This week I caught a lift in a dusty old Landrover into Windhoek and was walking around the mall wearing my farm clothes and my big hat, looking (and feeling) like a hick that had just blown in from the bush. There are so many Germans here, I can pass for a local and my accent comes across as “English South African”. I was talking to the guesthouse owner about the children at the kindergarten. For the first few days they were a bit difficult to handle, but now we have an understanding and I actually got them to complete TWO written tasks today. The trick is to hide the written task inside a coloring-in exercise. Patrick and Patricia are twins. They were born early and I think Patrick has some learning difficulties. Patricia is a sweet, very smart girl whose teeth are rotting out of her mouth at age 5. Their mother is HIV positive and doesn’t take much care of them and their father died of AIDS earlier this year. Patrick and Patricia were tested for HIV and they both are negative. The father was a loyal employee for many years, but now that he is gone, the mother and the two kids need to vacate the employee housing. The owner has given them six months to find a new situation and to get settled by the beginning of the new school term in January. Poor Patrick and Patricia. I wonder if it’s really possible to dig themselves out of such a crappy start in life. I hope so. I intend to arm them with their ABCs! I’m sure that will come in handy. Anyway, I finally got my internet connection set up today. It’s slow (literally it is 265kps – that’s kilobits!!). I’m finally up and running (well, maybe not “running”, maybe up and crawling), so I will try and post to this blog every couple of days. It took me three hours of frustration before I realized that my stone hut walls are blocking the signal, so I have to go outside to get online.