Saturday, February 18, 2012

People and Places this week

I had a (lucky) fly-in work visit to the northern reaches of South Africa, staying in the extreme north of the Kruger National Park and visiting the communities of Makuleke where I work with their children on environmental education.

There has been a lot of summer rains in the area so everything is one of the 100s of shades of green or mud brown.

The photos tell the story.

A sharp turn back over the tarred Punda Maria airstrip after checking no game on the runway before we land
 A young Nyala bull unperturbed by me on the deck of my tent
A platter-sized mushroom which we left out for the baboons - if they ate it, it would be suitable for our consumption too.  They relished it!!!!

Approaching one of the primary schools I work with
OMG!!! I was horrified when I asked to see the school library!!! Turns out this is actually the school storeroom of textbooks.  Still, I was not impressed with the state of the storeroom.
This is the actual school/community library next door to the storeroom - very neat and more my expectation of a learning centre.

 The schools have feeding schemes and each child gets a meal when they attend school.  Adults from the community come to school to cook for the children on the premises.

 Classrooms are overcrowded with too few teachers (between 70 and 90 children per teacher) so teaching also happens outdoors under the trees.

 Approaching one of the villages the schools are in.  Note the scourge of modern society - LITTER!!!!  Will we ever be able to get people not to litter?????????

 Typical homes in the villages I work with

 Normal village streets.  Note all households have access to electricity which works on a pre-paid system and many households cannot afford electricity so deforestation is still rife in the area with locals chopping down trees for wood to cook food.

 None of the houses have direct access to water so they collect water at the taps located on some street corners.  As with much of rural South Africa, local government is rife with theft from the coffers resulting in poor service delivery and these villages only have water three days a week and women and children have to collect water from the taps on street corners whenever water is piped through to the villages and this can be anytime of the day or night! (pic taken through car windscreen)
Wilderness Adventures Parfuri Camp manager, Landi, purchases crafts from local women to sell in the Camp Curio Shop.

A village hairdresser.
 Of course I did find time to explore the Pafuri Concession in the Kruger National Park - a yellow floral carpet.

 Babies everywhere!

 Lots of game around.

  And spiders
 A buffalo family on a termite mound

 Fever Tree forest
 Early morning dew on a spider web
 Green floral carpet in the fairyland of the Fever Tree Forest
 Gnarled bark on a tree branch

 We had to drive up and down the runway clearing the game away so the plane could land on Pafuri's gravel runway to take me back to Joburg to the overcrowded reality of city living!

 Flying along the Limpopo River looking over towards Zimbabwe.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Birth of the Kalahari Dust Bunnies



We all have dust bunnies. Even if we don't want them.  They are born all over the show. Only continuous use can prevent them.  Dust bunnies are those clumps of dust and fluff and spider webs and other bits of stuff that are statically held together. 

Much to my dismay, I have them too!  My dust bunnies are growing in my stored camping equipment and as I said USE is the only way to rid myself of the bunnies.

My friends Claire and Howard also have dust bunnies multiplying in their garage so we have decided to clean out our camping stuff with a trip to Botswana's remote Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in March.  Yesterday we had our first Trip Planning Meeting and this marks the conception of the next generation of dust bunnies which will come to life when the dust settles on our March Kalahari adventure.

I am now calling our trip the Adventures of the Kalahari Dust Bunnies and no doubt you'll be reading some tales here at some stage.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Happy New Year

 Oops - sorry  ...  where the hell did it go?

Here's wishing you everything good you wish yourself 
and a little more in

And for all those who believe 21 December 2012 is the end of it all, ENJOY yourself while you can.
The rest of us will be here to pick up the pieces afterwards.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Happy Christmas

To all of you celebrating Christmas, I wish you and yours happiness, togetherness and love.

With the Government declaring 27 December a public holiday in South Africa, I am now able to fit in a quick trip to the coast to spend Christmas with my family in Port Elizabeth **big smiles**