Elephant in the Room…Almost...

Greetings from Zambia!

Starting Work

Sunday saw us start our ‘work’. Anna had returned from the UK with 5 big sacks of children’s clothes and seven sacks of School Uniforms from Operation Sunshine. These needed sorting into age, size and the uniforms also in colour for various schools, for instance Navy Blue for Kawaza Basic School. Starting early in the Chipembele Centre in the coolest part of the day, Kaye and I sorted the casual clothes according to age sizing. Making a spreadsheet for stocktaking as we went. The big pile of beautiful quality school uniforms are still to be sorted, but hope to have this well underway today.

A Bright Sprite Moment

One bright moment on Sunday was meeting Sprite – the 9 year old bushbuck – who, orphaned in 2001 came to Chipembele for rehabilitation and release. Sprite still returns from time to time, her latest offspring, an almost adult daughter, accompanies her – but she stays well away from the house. Kaye gave Sprite apple and carrot treats and it is always such a privilege to be up close and personal with a wild animal. It is also a real testament to Anna and Steve’s good care – that Sprite has learned the bush sense to survive these 9 years.

Heading into Town

On Monday Anna, the Chipembele Driver/mechanic Victor and us two headed off on the 45 minute bumpy trip to Mfuwe. On the way we stopped to meet Karen and Dave the managers of Project Luangwa. Their house is set in the ZAWA compound – and has a stunning view over a dambo. As we talked about their project and shared a cup of tea – the Hadada ibis and other birds picked their way across the green expanse.

On to Mfuwe proper and stopping at the BP we met up with 5 young men who were engaged to work on the road leading to Chipembele. The Chipembele Wildlife classes start again on Wednesday 9^th May – and the children come to the centre in the Chipembele truck. The road, in places is very rough – and the men have been employed to fix some of the worst spots so we don’t lose any kids ‘overboard’!

Meeting Chipembele Team Mates

We were really excited to meet Rochelle, the Chipembele Conservation Outreach in Schools Manager for the first time. An Australian, Rochelle arrived in the Valley in January and since commencing work has made great headway in the curriculum and connecting with the Conservation Club members. It was great to meet her after so many Skype sessions and emails back and forth. The Computer Resource Centre Manager and Pupil Mentor, Eunice is just lovely and we look forward to our plans of working with Eunice to develop a programme for the newly established Girls Club while we are here.

Victory for Victory Community School

We visited the newly built Victory Community School and met the head teacher James. Some of you may remember the urgent work done on the old school in 2009, the roof was leaking badly, so we raised funds to re-roof with thatch. The front wall of the school collapsed last year – and Schuls Projekt Sambia has provided the funds to build the new class room block. This will be officially opened on Monday.

The Elephant in the Room – Almost!

After a quick shop at the market and picking up the five men who are the road workers, we returned to Chipembele – to find Elephant browsing on the campus grounds. We made cuppas and sat just inside the doors of our Bush House and watched as Elephant wandered right up beside us! He was so close we could have reached out and touched him.

Snakes Alive!

Sundowners was once again splendid – subdued by Luangwa standards – but came to an abrupt end when Coco, one of the two delightful and full on Jack Russells copped a spray in her right eye of spitting cobra venom when she shoved her face in an interesting hole in the bank of the river. Anna grabbed Coco and we ran the 100 metres up to the house – Anna and Jude flushed the venom for two full minutes with the hose and applied antihistamine eye cream. This morning Coco’s eye is swollen and red and she is obviously still in pain, however her instant treatment has bought good results.

Steve has rushed up to the house with us to care for Betty; who was clinging to Anna for dear life, wide eyed - with all the fuss about. Kaye was left behind in Cobra Territory to put away the chairs!

Route Reconnoiter

This morning Kaye is out having a driving lesson with Steve in the 4x4 and to learn the route from Chipembele to Mfuwe and back – there are many side tracks and diversions around gullies and fallen trees and the like – and we would hate to have to “call home”, if we could even get a signal!
Ring Ring

“Hello?”

“We are lost!”
“Where are you?”
“We don’t know…we are near an elephant and there’s a big forked tree”…

Hopefully, the reconnoiter will forestall such an event!

All for now, until next time. Much love and waves from the Luangwa…

Jude and Kaye

PS: OUR SLEEP WAS DISTURBED 5 TIMES LAST NIGHT WITH THE DEEP ROARING OF LION - CLOSE! This morning Moses, one of the men who work at Chipembele pointed out the lion paw prints about 5 metres from the Bush House! WOW!

Livingstone at Last!

Greetings from Zambia

Finally! No more countdowns. Sure you are relieved about that!

It started on Saturday, when Jude’s brother, Rob and his wife, Kara arrived to pick us up to take us to the airport. We were, understandably under a bit of pressure but Rob and Kara, calm and collected, helped immensely by doing last minute hanging-out-of-washing, changing a light globe, and making us a cuppa. Nice. Thanks you two. XX. Dave arrived – he is the fur-kids ‘uncle’ for 3 months living in our home and looking after Patti and Bronte. He is calm and dog savvy so we expect all to be well on the home front! Yay! THANK YOU Dave, your contribution to our “Going for Good” trip is much appreciated. XXX

Off to Perth and we were so excited to arrive at Grandview B&B – a balcony with awesome view of Perth, nestled into bush land on Gooseberry Hill. The B&B was beautifully appointed, Geoff and Leanne our hosts, lovely people – but BEST of all was a deck stretching across the back of the house with a lounge where we could smoke and take in the view.

Amazing and much appreciated was the bird life there. Three Kookaburras came and sat on the rail at the far end of the deck. Beautiful parrots, called locally “28’s” visited the bird bath. Best of all was a lovely young Grey Butcher bird who landed on the deck railing about a metre away and sat and watched us very thoughtfully for a long time, before hopping down to sit on the lounge arm about 8 inches from Jude’s face. Magical moment! Wildlife encounters before we even left Oz! Whoo Hoo! Bodes Well for Africa…

Our trip to Africa started so well – if we were prone to believe in ‘omens’ then our stars had aligned.

The Qantas / share South African Airlines flight was only half full. We asked for an exit seat for Jude’s long legs, but they were all taken. Crestfallen we asked, with little hope, if we could have a row of four to ourselves. Yes! So after a meal, and a wee bit of help with a Serapax we passed out for 6 hours and before we knew it arrived in very familiar territory at Jo’berg airport. After a fight with the reception clerk at the Mondior hotel about a smoking room – we got what we wanted…Up at 3.00 am Monday we smoked our heads off until breakfast at 6.30 and onto our Zambia flight! Whoo Hoo.

The lodge we are staying at is called Bushbuck River House, a lovely semi-self catered place (Breakfast and tea included, lunch not) right on the Zambezi River about 16K’s upstream from the mighty Mosi-O-Tunya, The Smoke That Thunders… aka Victoria Falls.

Today has been an adventure of waiting. We are sure that ‘Africa” in translation means “Wait”. So we are practicing our ‘waiting skills” neither of us having had much practice before. Twenty minutes to buy a scone and two coffees when there were only three people in line, 10 minutes to be served, then 30 minutes to get our burger and chips for lunch. That’s nearly an hour of waiting! The anticipation of the drink and food is much enhanced by having to wait for it, so much so that the goods tended not to live up to the enhanced expectations! :-P

The other adventure is the currency. $1AUD = K4500 such an easy conversion… (The exchange rate for Australians wanting to buy bananas is excellent, though, costing only K2,250.)

We went to MTN (Internet and phone company) to buy a mobile phone and a ‘dongle’, this cost us K855,000. You do the math. God knows Jude tried and did some serious damage to her neuro-circuitry. We will get the hang of it though, for sure. The young women who served us at MTN thought we were hilarious and took pity on us, loading the sim card and the dongle with everything we would need for speed. Well, for a connection in Zambia, anyway. A far cry from the mad dashes, pay by the minute in internet cafés on our previous trips to share our news with you all. We feel incredibly competent having managed to navigate Livingstone, find the MTN store – make our purchases and catch a taxi back to the lodge. Small triumph but heartening for us as we prepare to ‘live’ in rural Zambia on our own account for two months.

A lovely serendipitous moment happened while Kaye was sitting outside Shoprite where Jude was in doing more confuzling maths at checkouts. A white woman walked by Kaye and the woman smiled at her – Kaye said G’day, of course and the woman was overjoyed to meet another Aussie and hear an accent from home. Pippa is travelling on her own, so we have arranged to meet her at the Waterfront Hotel, where she is camping in the grounds there, for lunch tomorrow. Another Africa-Nut who is ready to sell her house and move here lock, stock and barrel. We have much in common!

We sit now on the first floor balcony of our thatch-roofed room with a pleasant breeze blowing from the Zambezi River. We are surrounded by splendid trees – huge cassias other natives. In one a pair of Hooded vultures are making a nest. This is their territory, we wish we could sit and wait and watch for the eggs to be laid and the chicks raised. Not much wildlife about here as they are all skittish from the many pressures of people and poaching ‘for the pot’. We have seen impala and dead waterbuck in a waterhole, which miraculously disappeared overnight – no doubt for the pot. We have a gorgeous foam frog living on the white ‘carriage’ type light outside our room. It is a pure white frog today – they are chameleon-like and change their colour to suit their surroundings. We would love to put one on a multi coloured rug and watch him change! J but won’t because you don’t want to interfere with the wildlife!

Last night just after dinner, during the second blackout for the evening, we looked at the massive dome of the African Night Sky awash with stars – the Southern Cross front and centre. A lion roaring way off in the distance on the Zimbabwe side of the river. Magic! Must be in Africa at long last.

With love and warm waves to you all,

Jude and Kaye

PS: Extra special love to our wonderful Mum’s Shirley and Evelyn XXXX (HUGS)

Foam Frog staking out our balcony light! 

Chameleon like it is white because of the lamp colour.

Two Weeks and Counting...

Jude and Kaye - Pom Pom Camp
Okavango Delta 2008

Kaye and I are flying to Southern Africa to begin our fourth trip to this amazing continent on Easter Saturday. That is exactly 14 days, 4 hours, 33 minutes and 22 seconds from now. Whoo Hoo!

In 2005 we went on our first ever overseas trip. We went camping for three weeks through the wilds of Botswana - Here is a naive and bouncy 'Trip Report' about that trip.

Falling head over heels and planning to once more immerse ourselves in Africa became our reason for living/working/breathing. In 2008 we super-sized and travelled for 60 days through Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.  There is a tiny selection of our 10,000 photographs from that trip here

In Zambia we visited Chipembele Wildlife Education Trust, a small NGO located near the South Luangwa National Park. We were amazed and blown away by the Wildlife Education Centre Anna and Steve Tolan had built in 2001- and their projects and programmes teaching local children the value of their wildlife so it may be conserved for present and future generations...

We decided on our return to do anything we could from here in Adelaide, South Australia to assist Anna and Steve in their work. graciously they allowed us to help out with some online activity - social networking,updating the website and assisting with funding applications and other admin work we can do from 11,000 kilometres away. 

                                                  
Three years later we are permanent volunteers and very much part of the Chipembele Team. 

We are heading to Chipembele in just a few short weeks to volunteer our time in helping Chipembele to celebrate 10 years of achievement of wildlife education excellence as the official "Cheer Squad" leaders. 


So we are kind of  Going for Good 

How very privileged and lucky are we to be  living at Chipembele? We will be close by to our good friends, Anna and Steve. We will awaken every morning in this beautiful landscape, living in a great bush house in the South Luangwa Valley. And the most exciting bit of all... with Elephants wandering by... *heaven!

We hope to be able to bring updates from the field...

So please watch this space as we share being...

At Large In Zambia...

*Of course, we can say 'heaven' because we won't be trying to grow our own food there. The local people, majority subsistence farming - are at the pointy end of the wildlife human interface. They live and grow their crops bang up against the beautiful wild and thriving South Luangwa National Park. Human wildlife conflict is inevitable and the Communities, Chipembele, South Luangwa Conservation Society, Zambian Carnivore Programme and  the safari tourism operations form an important coalition in protecting, educating, researching and conserving this rich and diverse eco-system. We so look forward to living and working in this community.