By Sam Wasserman (Colby College)
After driving along the dirt roads of northwest Namibia for 8 hours from Windhoek, we arrived at Wereldsend, our base camp oasis in the middle of the desert. We all eagerly moved into our tents, contemplating the fact that these canvas walls will be our new home for the next 3 months. Program instructors Rebekah and Vehi made us dinner over the open fire, and we all sat around the heat of the embers, looking out upon the glowing red savanna in comfortable silence admiring mother nature’s warm welcome to Palmwag Concession.
Giraffe in Palmwag Concession
When the opportunity arose to join our neighbors, Save the Rhino Trust (SRT), on a sunrise game drive in search of the beautiful black rhino, there was not a single peep of objection from any of us. The next morning we woke up while the stars were still out and took a second to admire the constellation of Orion perfectly outlined in the sky looming directly over our tents. We ate a quick breakfast then gathered our water bottles, binoculars, notebooks, sunscreen, hats, and cameras before jumping in the back of Hardy Sue (our trustworthy Toyota 4×4) to follow behind our friends at SRT.
Soon after we turned off the main “road,” the members of SRT, local masters of tracking in the bush, leaped over the side of their pick-up and set out searching for signs of the rhinos. While they did the heavy lifting, we merely sat in awe of the enormous fresh rhino prints and scat laid out across the sandy gravel. After a couple hours of searching the dry Springbok riverbed, the SRT members did in fact find a mother and calf; however, they hurriedly fled into the hills before we had a chance to catch up with them. As we headed back to camp, a having been so close to seeing our first rhino, our spirits immediately soared when we came upon three giraffes merely 30 meters from our car. After snapping some opportunistic shots and learning how to identify the sex of giraffes (useful for our field studies), we continued on through the riverbed back to Wereldsend.
Elephants in Palmwag Conservancy
After being here for exactly a week, we are about to start officially gathering data, but in order to do so properly and efficiently we first had to practice. This morning we set out on a practice game drive, where three members of our group sit in the bed of Hardy Sue equipped with binoculars, a compass, and a range finder, as we set out along a designated transect to find and record any game wildlife we see. After seeing many oryx, springbok, Hartman’s mountain zebra, and a couple of ostrich, we arrived at a spring where we set up a camera trap to compliment our game drive data. Leaving the spring, we came upon fresh elephant spoor heading off into the distance. With Vehi, a jack of all trades but an especially impressive tracker, at the helm, Hardy Sue and the gang ventured farther out into the desert in search for some massive pachyderms.
As we came to yet another river bed, we drove to a high vantage point where Rebekah quickly exclaimed, “I see them!” as she withdrew her binoculars from her face. A wave of excitement permeated through all of us as we pleaded for her to show us the exact location of the elephants. But a long shot view of elephants was not satisfactory; Vehi tactfully maneuvered the vehicle down into the riverbed, over rocks and around trees, until we came to a clearing with an entire herd of desert elephants peacefully feeding about 100 m in front of us. There were around 11 elephants including a couple babies enjoying the tasty branches of Phaeoptilum spinosum.
We all sat silently for about 45 minutes watching them be and taking their pictures. It was the easiest 45 minutes of my life. Before, I had only heard of these stoic beasts through National Geographic or seen them at zoos, but now I was staring at 11 of them in the middle of the Namibian desert without a single distraction or thought on my mind other than the beauty of nature.