Mana Pools

I went to Mana Pools for a week and it was AMAZING!! Too good for words, unbelievable all that we saw. One of the best weeks the park has ever known!! It's the only park in Africa (or the world?) where you can freely get out of your vehicle and walk around. Elephants were roaming the park, it was always the big danger, making sure you're aware of where they all are, we had a couple incidents of hiding behind a big tree, and one of the elephant standing right next to the car, tusks over the bonet, with my window open, scary, but amazing.
From day 1 we saw the pack of lions, 6 cubs, 4 females (and two males that weren't always around) and the packs of wild dogs, one of 29 and one of 12. And apparently that's a rare site!
We saw them every day for 8 days (including the extra day we stayed longer coz it was so great!) as the first car (except for one day) and all this before 6:30 am. And I had the luck of being there with a tour guide with the knowledge of what to do and the eyes that could spot anything and I'd be looking for it for half an hour!
We saw the lions stalking the buffalo's, and the buffalo's coming back to chase away the lions, we saw the lions chasing after the wild dogs while the wild dogs chased after an impala. They didn't catch up, but it was impressive to see. To top it off, we manages to catch a beautiful view of the lions chasing and killing a buffalo, and then, as buffalo's are a close social group, the herd came back to chase the lions away, in that attempt they gave us a second kill, killing a little calf. During all this the herd of buffalo's came in our direction at one point so we all had to hide behind a tree, though at no point were they aiming at us. Adrenaline rush. Very impressive to see all this so clearly, and it's a very rare site. Amazing!
The wild dogs were, in general, fairly calm and lazy, but we did see some movement now and again, one time as they tried to chase a warthog that got away. Because they are so lazy we managed to get up and close to them, crawling over on hands and knees, an amazing experience!!! Very cute animals.

The camp we stayed in was at the very end of the whole site, and since it isn't fenced off we had daily and nightly visitors: hippo's, buffalo's, hyena's, elephants, and of course many many monkeys. It was awesome, just having some breakfast next to the elephant who's munching away on some bark. And at night stopping every so often to shine the torch around for anything interesting to see. The main rule is, if you don't disturb them they won't disturb you, and it works quite allright:).

All in all a great week's holiday!
And now, one short week left until it is the end of this amazing experience :(.

Pics to follow at a later stage

-3 weeks

With just over two weeks left, my bachelor degree in the pocket, it's time for another little holiday (in a holiday): one week to Mana Pools!
And then, with pain in the heart the very last week's countdown of my internship will begin..

Finally some sport done!

This week and weekend were very active, I took up my tennis racket and played three times in the one week! And three times in the three months! It was sunny, making it VERY good! Each time we played about 2 hours, very intense, and I was very sore!! Good week that was! A little swim added to that, making it an extremely sporty week and weekend!

Over the weekend I saw Juliet and her WHOLE family, which was very nice, a BBQ in the sun:). As we were driving we had a little experience: bumping into the president! And we really almost did bump into him. The FLOCK of cars were driving SO fast and the motor bike on the front, driving on the wrong lane really did not slow down when he saw we were actually still driving! Luckily Juliet immediately made the connection and we waited on the side of the road for the flying group of cars to pass by. That speed was definitely not safe! It is quite like an ambulance passing (maybe even worse), everyone is expected to move to the side and make the whole road free for the 20 cars (including ambulances) to pass through, and while they pass, you’re not allowed to stare. I’m not sure how that is avoidable, and have no clue how they’d control it! Needless to say I didn’t manage to stop him to pass on some greetings.

Another busy weekend

The weekend that marked the point of exactly one month left before I leave was busy busy once again and I was in a good mood throughout it because I received my first (and probably only) letter of the three month stay, that took two whole months to arrive!

Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening there was a “Christian Crusade” in Mabelreign that we went to. It was a church service in the form of a concert, so: many people, music, singing and dancing and preaching. It was very interesting, I really enjoyed it! And everyone always joined in with the singing, some slightly louder than others;)

Saturday I made pancakes for everyone - way too many as usual, but they were definitely a success! Just took slightly too long to get ready, as opposed to the usual fear of getting them burnt. But they were very nice!

Over the afternoon I saw Francy and Phillip, who I hadn’t seen since he was a Grade 4 - currently Form 3, all grown up! It was a nice afternoon, just chilling around. On my way home I passed by Juliet for a little chat and with that the day passed by successfully :)

 Sunday morning I had a little picnic with Tanya, she desperately wanted to have a picnic and I was always away at lunch time, so we had a breakfast picnic, with fruit, eggs and sausages, and a meli honey waffle (thanks to Frank :) ). She loved it!! It was great! So at least I made a little girl happy:)

Over the afternoon I moved to Hanne’s place, it was great how the boys loved to see me and when we went for a walk with the dogs at a farm, they both wanted to hold my hand, one on each side:) and I was also allowed to read the bedtime stories! I enjoyed that.. And like practice has taught, we had a BBQ with butternut and steak, never goes wrong!

Monday morning back at work marked the “one month left”, so a wakeup call to make the most of the time remaining! Not that that’s not happening yet!

End of internship part 1: evaluation

This week was the week that the evaluations had to be handed in, and it was done succesfully. During the evaluation chat I was asked to self-evaluate each of the points (eg. motivation, punctuality, completion of tasks, ...) which I did quite honestly, then asked to give myself a mark out of 10. So, for my evaluation from VVOB I got a 7.5/10! Not a bad result now it's waiting for the other half from university on the 15th, and then I will succesfully be a bachelor!
Now for the rest of the month continuing the internship, with the same spirit of making the most of it! And preparing for the Master year :)

And during this last month, the summer is finally coming along! smiles to that!