News Update from August 2005
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There were 6 students on the course, 2 from South Africa and 4 from overseas. All 6 students came on the course because they wanted to try and do something with their qualification from a professional aspect and so teaching them has been a real pleasure. It means a lot to me to know that I can help someone to achieve their ambitions in life by trying to pass on my knowledge and sharing special moments with them in the bush.
The course started off with a fantastic walk on the first morning when we encountered about 4 or 5 male elephants. We sat and watched them for some time from the safety of a rocky outcrop as they slowly sauntered past us oblivious to our presence. Once they were past us though, they smelt us on the wind and then took off at great speed. This was a real eye-opener for most of the students, some of whom never realised just how quickly and silently these huge animals can move. Since then we had numerous days when we encountered various elephants on the walks and drives. We also had several lessons in the classroom disrupted because of elephants visiting the waterhole or feeding on the trees in full view of the classroom.
I am never worried about stopping lessons for an hour or so as I feel the experience and knowledge learned from observations can never be taught from books.
We encountered many other animals on the daily activities also, including giraffe, waterbuck, kudu, wildebeest and zebra. On a couple of occasions we had very fresh tracks from both lion and leopard but we couldn't catch up with them before they disappeared into the bush. The one morning we returned from a walk only to find that a leopard had been to the waterhole in our absence. I later found out that she in fact had an impala kill in a tree on the neighbouring reserve.
For Itamar, one of the most memorable events happened one evening while he was cooking dinner outside on the fire. It was dark already and he heard something behind him so not sure what to do he picked up the spade just in case. When one of the other students came out and shone the torch for him he discovered that there was an elephant about 20m away heading for the waterhole. This really was a story about David and Goliath!
Summer is on its way although the rains have not yet started. However the reptiles are beginning to show themselves again and we have already had to remove one Cobra from the centre. The grass is still non-existant on the reserve but amazingly only a few animals have died as a result of the drought. The migrating birds are also starting to appear and as always this time of year is an exciting time for those keen birders amongst us.
Letaba Ranch again was successful from a game viewing experience with several herds of buffalo and elephant being seen as well as general game. It was slightly different this time from other courses in that I had been asked to try and give some local school children a tracking experience at the same time. This meant that I was able to walk my students along with the others into an elephant herd. It also meant taking a game drive for almost the whole day which was great but the first day was extremely hot and tiring. We had a couple of close encounters with angry female elephants whilst driving but we won the battles and no harm was done on either side.The downside to our stay was that the camp ran out of water which meant we had to make alternative arrangements for our showers. All in all it was a great way to end the course as always.
The privilege of being able to spend 6 weeks in an environment like ours can never be underestimated, watching how the plants respond to the prospect of the coming rains, with their flowers starting to show through and some trees already sprouting leaves in the hope eternal that the rains do not fail again just shows how resilient the bush can be. If only people could show this much faith in what goes on around them, the better our world would be.