By Lindsay Cotnoir (University of Vermont)
March 29, 2015
5:30 – Wake up to the sounds of Reed Frogs clinking and a lion roaring in the distance. Crawl out of the tent and stumble over to breakfast by the light of your head lamp, admiring the amazing array of stars still visible above you.
5:45 – Eat a breakfast of oatmeal around the campfire, watching the horizon as the sky lightens and the sun rises. Recount and share funny dreams from the night before while downing your tin cup of hot black tea.
6:18 – A pack of Africa Wild Dogs amble by camp, giving you just enough time to watch them run off into the sunrise. Pack snacks and run around trying to figure out what car you are in, check if you packed your binoculars and make sure your tent zipper is shut.
6:30-9:45 – Set out on an herbivore transect in Uncle Duke (one of the trucks) with Vehi, Stez (an escort guide from Khwai Village) and Jackie (fellow student). Spend the next couple hours driving slowly on the rough sand track following the Khwai River. The newly risen sun coats the riverine floodplain with a soft golden light, but makes it hard to see the impala in the tall grass. Every time one of you spies an animal, the truck stop to record information. Most of your time is spent peering through binoculars to age and sex herds of impala weaving through mopane trees or trying to figure out what habitat to call the area in which the large male elephant is standing. Mixed species, mixed age vegetation or simply acacia woodland? In total, over the whole transect you see waterbuck, impala, elephant, kudu, giraffe, zebra and hippos. Munch on apples and way too many Eet-Sum-Mor cookies for sustenance throughout the journey.
9:56 – Receive a call from Sixteen once you get cell service again about a pack of lions near camp that have settled down in a patch of shade for the day. Bump along in the car until you find them, and then watch the four lionesses stare at you and lick their paws 30 meters from the car. You return to camp with great photos.
10:15 – You, Jackie and your escort guide sit down on camp chairs balancing the quirky old laptop on your knees to enter data from the herbivore transect. You plug in the GPS and go through the steps of downloading the GPS points and starting the excel file. The three of you squint at the screen to make sure it all is recorded correctly.
10:30 – Move your chair to join the other girls in the patchy shade of the camelthorn acacia near your tents. Pull out your handy course reader and find the article to read for afternoon discussion, but then get distracted by the yellow-billed hornbills that start pecking at the mirror of the car.
12:00 – Join the rest of the crew for a make-your-own lunch. The buffet includes cucumbers, cheese, bread, chips, canned tuna and (if you’re lucky) leftovers from the night before. Sit around the fire pit and chat about how hot the weather is today.
13:30 – Corral the wandering chairs into a single circle in the best patch of shade for discussion. You sit in your sweaty chair and talk about the research article you read, including your thoughts about the 2014 hunting ban in Botswana and how it affects the Community-Based Natural Resource Management in the country. The escort guides and Sixteen join in to tell us their views as well. Everyone gets distracted when “Dusty,” our daily elephant visitor, ambles by camp and shakes an acacia tree in the background.
14:45 – Try to keep the loose-leaf pages from flying away as you write your Species Account about the tsessebe you saw yesterday. Look up information in the boxes of animal and plant books by the food tent.
16:10 – Jackie reminds everyone that we haven’t done a workout today and herds everyone onto the shaded tarp laid on the ground. Add to the groans during the two-minute plank and pushups, and dance along to Maya’s One Direction songs when it’s all over.
16:40 – Abandon working on your Species Account and climb onto the roof of Francolin (the trusty Land Cruiser) to get a better look at the wildlife grazing in the grassland in front of camp. Watch a small herd of impala run through the grass, and a big male kudu with long twisting horns make his way through the scrubby Kalahari apple-leaf trees. A herd of zebra also amble through the scene, and you all coo at the tiny foal nursing from its mother. An older elephant with only one tusk joins Dusty eating grass under the acacia trees.
18:30 – One of the chefs (it’s Eda and Emma tonight) calls out that dinner is ready so you drag your chair over to complete the ring around the fire. Grab a tin plate and serve yourself some pap (a traditional cooked corn meal – the local staple) and stew. Sit down and watch the fire as you eat, chatting and laughing with the other students and escort guides. The sun sets behind it all in the western sky.
19:10 – Run over to your tent to grab your head lamp before it gets too dark to see. Return and sit down in your chair to pick acacia thorns out of your Chacos that you collected on the way. Make yourself a nice cup of hot rooibos tea with milk before settling back into your chair as the twilight deepens. Talk and laugh with the escort guides, other students and leaders around the fire, listening to the sounds of the night. A tiny Scop’s owl flies into the trees above the fire, calling loudly. Someone shines their maglite on it just before it flies away. Hyenas whoop in the distance, hippos grunt in the river nearby and francolins squawk loudly in the bushes.
20:45 – While walking back to your tent for bed, you see red eye shine of a tiny bush baby jumping around in the branches of the tree. Brush your teeth while listening to an elephant crashing around in the acacia nearby. Settle into your tent and fall asleep listening to crickets and sounds of the night.