Dumelang!
I'm back and have mostly recovered from the shock of coming home to sea of people everywhere.
so i guess i'd better continue where i'd left off the last time.

6 jan 2006
There had been a spare mozzie net and i'd been spared from the blood-sucking monsters. I was finally able to fall asleep to the mild buzzing of the mozzies a net away.
We have been doing transects everyday and have seen so many animals. i had been snapping on my camera like a lunatic, taking about 20 pictures of giraffes, for example. On the second day i got here, we had a potential cheetah sighting. the figure was pretty far and it ran so quickly we were quite sure it was a cheetah. the i spotted a big herd of springboks so we were quite sure even though we did not get a clear visual.
doing the transects was something i really enjoyed, being able to pop my head out of the truck like a dog, now i know why dogs like to pop their heads out!
Just yesterday, the field biologist came across a female cheetah and 4 cubs resting under a tree. they had moved away by the time we got there so we only got to see the spoors. it was useful to have the spores as a reference since we look for cheetah and brown hyena spoors during all our transects. we have to look out for the brown hyena ones as well since they compete for prey and the numbers of cheetahs are co-related to the number of brown hyenas in the area.
anyway, we made casts out of the spoors and each of us got to keep one.
today, we visited the diamond mine in the park that is owned by de beers. i thought the trip was quite a waste of time since i don't fancy diamonds and we only went to the excavating pit. the only highlight was the monster truck they had so i took some pictures and i even got to climb up to take some more pictures. there were 4 other german guys who worked for the zepplin helium airship that surveys the park. they went on the tour with us and they were all into the technical stuff which bored me to tears. the security was really tight and we were not allowed into the sorting area that day so we ended the tour earlier than usual, thank god!

9 jan 2006
i have been reading the harry potter series here and i'm addicted. i had been reading non-stop, especially during the weekend.
we had bedsheets yesterday and i was so happy to be able to sprawl out on the bed instead of being confined to my sleeping bag. yeah, you'd be confined to your sleeping bag too if you'd seen how dirty the mattress was.
we went to the field biologist's trailer to watch tv occasionally, tv being a huge treat since we don't have a tv in camp. then we also get to play with toes the cat who is a cutie pretending to be a tough cat.
it was nice to get a treat like that, especially when we slaughtered our first donkey today. i tried to tell myself that the donkey is sacrificed for the cheetahs we are looking after but it was still really tough. we had some help from a zimbabwane guy and he axed the donkey at the throat to kill it instantly. of course i wasn't looking. i knew it was going to happen and walked a fair distance away to escape from any noise from the killing that will haunt me for the rest of my life. luckily the donkey didn't cry and it was a quick death. it didn't stop me from crying though. i was tearing the whole time, trying to stifle any sobs that was trying to escape. i really didn't want to seem like a wuss so i held on and proceeded to skin it and help chop it up into smaller bits. there was a little cat stealing scraps and i missed my kitty cats back home. we took almost 2 hours to finish the job and just as we'd loaded the bags of donkey meat, it started to pour. the downpour lasted about 3 hours and i was freezing! we were given a break that afternoon since it was our first donkey slaughter and needed time to recover from the trauma, ha ha...