This Blog

Welcome to my blog. From August 2011 to December 2011 I travelled through Namibia and felt at home enough to say I was temporarily living there. My main goal was to work on a research project on the Pangolin, but I also got plenty of safari time and took part in some other volunteer opportunities. On this blog I did my best to keep a detailed account of my experiences.
To start from the beginning, click this link: http://emielkaza.blogspot.com/2011_04_03_archive.html

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12/16/2011

EHRA 1


Ive just spent 4 days doing hard manual work, sleeping on a sheet outdoors, with a limited supply of water, food, a long-drop toilet and no other facilities.

After leaving Windhoek, saying goodbye to the nice lady who had lived in England and to Beth, the PAWS guide who was coincidentally also staying there, in a shuttle bus with only locals. The trip was 4 hours long, and the landscape gradually got flatter and sparser. We left the commercial farming area, but unlike crossing the red-line up north, there was no sudden transition to communal and tribal farms. Instead the fences simply disappear, but there are still no settlements or domestic animals roaming around. There are big yellow grasslands with dramatic mountains behind, and I saw a free-moving herd of springbok. The grass continued getting shorter, until it was only shrub, and then rainless lichen fields. Finally, it was just flat sand, ugly, until eventually Swakopmund appeared with watered palms and other non-desert vegetation surviving under human care. 

Swakopmund is a very quaint, Germanic town - very safe to walk even at night with wide streets and lots of shops.  I stayed at a backpackers which had been booked for me by EHRA and met the rest of the group. After dinner we went to a restaurant for drinks, and it was good to hear also the stories of the previous group. Many of the people here have been here for a while, and there are really only 5 of us newbies.

On Monday we drove north and then east into Damaraland. A vast government-owned wilderness of arid savannah sprinkled with big mountains and huge heaps of volcano-deposited boulders. Namibians can pay a very small fee to farm here, and many people herd their cattle or goats to water and to grazing. The EHRA base camp is in the shade of some trees besides the dry Ugab river. We have bed-rolls which we used to sleep on a platform in a tree, and there is a shower block built slightly up the nearby cliff. EHRA stands for Elephant Human Relations Aid, and the logo shows an elephants trunk and a human hand reaching for eachother.
Our leader is a very young Mauritian named Chris. We also have an expert tracker called Matthias who is from Rundu. He is over 60, but is a beast of a man – lifting the heaviest rocks with ease. He sings and talks to himself, and sometimes even dances. He swears a lot when things go wrong. Hes quite a character, in short. Finally there is Hendrick, a Himba who is the community liaison and travels around to talk to the villagers. He seems to have quite a vision for conservation and appears very intelligent.

After one night at base camp we loaded a minivan and a land cruiser and set off to Otumwe, a farming area far from the main roads, down hours of dirt tracks. Our goal was to finish building the last wall of the year around the farm’s water supply so that elephants cant get to it. We camped out in the open in the shade of two big trees, and erected a kitchen tent and toilet. We had only the water in our jerry cans, so understandably I didn’t have a shower or wash for 4 days. On the second day feral dogs began to hang around and ask for food, some of them were sweet sometimes, even coming to sleep by our feet. Though sometimes aggressively trying to get to our dinner, resulting in a kick.

The wall we were working on was a 100m from us, and we worked 6 hours a day. Driving to collect rocks from the nearest cliff face and then cementing them together. Hard work. Various insects and scorpions passed by to keep our interest, and herds of farm animals came to drink besides us, 2 cows even fighting and skidding across the ground close by. The local farmer would come to watch the animals, and then hung around in the shade watching us work. We did manage to succeed on the very last day after a lot of problems. On the second ‘rock-run’, as we call it, we ran out of fuel and Matthias sent myself and one other dutch guy, Bruno, to walk back to camp. We made it back quickly in a hour and I accompanied Hendrick in the minivan to bring fuel. The minivan has a long wheel-base and is not at all designed for difficult driving. A few kilometers outside camp we got stuck in the sand, one wheel being very deep. We tried a lot of things but nothing succeeded, and sent two local girls to fetch Chris from camp. They returned quickly, and eventually we got out after jacking up the back and then propping the car up on rocks. On the road we encountered Matthias walking in the opposite way, and brought him back to the land cruiser. The rest of the group had walked ahead to the rock cliff, so I stayed with Matthias to fill the land cruiser while Hendrick went ahead with water. The rocks got back late in the afternoon and we rushed to finish the last section just before dark. 

Were now back at base camp, preparing for the end of year party. Im helping Hendrick with the spit-roast sheep which Im looking forward to and a local woman has come to wash our clothes. My muscles ache.
Next week well go on ‘elephant patrol’!

A namibia board game involving holes and stones called Owela, or something with clicks in Damara, which I bought in Okahandja  turns out to be very strategic and Hendrick and Matthias play obsessively with a lot of foresight. Weve spent many evening playing.
 
Did I mention that at Okonjima I touched the electric fence and got a 7000V shock? It didn’t hurt but I blacked out for a fraction of a second as it forced me back a meter.

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