So so sorry my blog has been falling behind! Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have an
excuse for it…my laptop has completely broken on me! We came back from Sossusvlei on Sunday night
and when I went to update my blog, my laptop screen was completely gray and I
cannot access anything on it! Thankfully
I should have most of my documents backed up and the girls on the trip have been
gracious enough to let me use their laptops when I need to!
Now—where to start?!
It has been so long…Two weekends ago, we took our trip up to Northern
Namibia for six days. There, we
experienced the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Otjiwarongo, Etosha National Park,
an introduction to Desert Dwelling Elephants with Dr. Betsy Fox in Otjiwarongo,
the Ondao Mobile Schools, Uanee’s school and farm on the outskirts of Opuwo and
so much more! To make this massive post
more manageable, I’ll divide them up in to events!
The Journey North
with Cheetahs and Elephants
We left Windhoek to travel a few hours to Otjiwarongo where
we stayed the night at the Out of Africa Bed & Breakfast. The B&B had these hotel rooms where each
room was an individual “hut.” It was a
very beautiful campus with a pool, amazing landscaping and scenery. However, McKenzie and me’s room had a bit of
an ant problem. That night, I was just
thankful we did not have a spider problem!
That night after dinner, we met with Dr. Betsy Fox who works
for the Elephant-Human Relations Aid (EHRA) and it was so fascinating to learn
about the relationship between the Himba and Herero people and the elephants in
Namibia. Many of the people on farms in
Northern Namibia believe it is back luck to come across an elephant so they often
end up killing it and that is a major problem here because their numbers are so
low already. Not to mention a Desert
Dwelling Elephant’s gestation period is 22 months and then a mama elephant can
nurse her calf for up to two years!
Thank God we aren’t elephants!
Many mother elephants also wait about four years between calves and even
when they do have a calf, the mortality rate is around 50% because they often
times cannot keep up with the rest of the herd when running or they get
trampled in a stampede. After learning
all that fascinating knowledge, it was easy to see why Dr. Betsy Fox was so
passionate about educating Namibians to conserve the Desert Dwelling
Elephant.
Another reason why EHRA is so amazing in educating Himbas
and Hereros about elephants is because they show them how to “elephant-proof”
their farms. Many people are scared of
elephants because they will come through and completely destroy farms in search
of food or water, as it is scarce here.
So, EHRA will help communities and farms build stonewalls around their
windmills, watering holes and gardens so the elephants cannot trample through
them and destroy a community’s access to food and water. However, the stonewalls still allow the
elephants to access the water from watering holes and EHRA helps the people
realize that it is okay if the elephants take some of their water, as they have
earned it because they have found it. As
Dr. Betsy Fox said, the water in the watering holes is no more the human’s
water than it is the elephant’s water.
Dr. Betsy Fox also showed us some of the characteristics and
body language of elephants and what to do if you come across them, which
actually came out handy when we went on our game drive through Etosha National
Park! (Now you’ll have to keep reading!)
Fun Elephant Facts:
·
Elephants can be left or right tusked, just as
humans are left and right handed. You
can tell this because that one tusk is often more worn.
·
An elephant’s gestation period is 22 months.
·
An elephant calf nurses from its mother for up
to two years and can eat solid foods at 5 months.
·
EHRA has found that when you clap softly and say
“hoova, hoova, hoova” the elephant will go away quietly and quickly without
disturbing the farms or communities.
This is another strategy they teach the Himba and Herero people.
·
Elephants live 60-70 years.
·
Elephants continue to grow throughout their
entire life.
·
Elephants’ tusks continue to grow throughout
their entire life as well.
·
They can hold 12-15 liters of water in their
trunk.
·
They have six sets of teeth throughout their
life but the last set starts to wear out in their 40s or 50s, so sadly, many
elephants die of starvation because they cannot chew and digest their food when
their teeth wear out.
·
Elephants digest 40% of their food. Many other animals live on their dung.
·
When mating, males have temporal lobes that are
prominent because they’re filled with liquid and dribble urine down their back
legs to look for females. Female
elephants have smaller heads and secrete liquids from their temporal lobes to
communicate their moods.
·
Elephants are known to climb hills and rocky
places.
·
The older elephants have hourglass shaped heads.
·
An elephant’s footprint is unique just like our
fingerprints are unique.
·
Myths of elephants are that they kill you, eat
you, are vengeful and if you come across them mating, they will kill you. These myths contribute to reasons why Hereros
are scared of elephants and often end up killing them.
The next morning, we woke up early to visit the Cheetah
Conservation Fund outside of Otjiwarongo where we took safari vehicles through
their parks and observed the two different groups of cheetahs. They were absolutely fascinating and I was
amazed at how tall and lean they were.
Visiting the Mobile
School
After the cheetahs, we continued driving north, through
Outjo where we all bought beautifully carved Makalani nuts and ate at a
delicious bakery before hopping back in our van. Hours later we reached Opuwo, where we stayed
at the Okahane Lodge and had dinner with Mr. Kapi who was the principal of the
Ondao Mobile Schools project. He told us
about how the schools got started and how many of the children who attend these
schools live in rural farms and will travel over 20 km, or 12.5 miles, to go to
school everyday! The next morning, we
drove down a very gravel, very unpaved, very bumpy, very unreliable
road for about an hour and finally reached the Okarukoro Mobile School where
there was one tent of lower primary children and one make shift building of
upper primary children. We donated some
pencils, books, stickers, chalk, pencil sharpeners, papers, colored pencils,
flour and maize to the school because the tent had literally nothing but a few
tables and a mobile chalkboard. After
seeing that school, it made St. Barnabas look like it had resources! The children were so beautiful and so
thankful to be at school. Some children
were dressed in traditional Himba clothes and some were dressed in more
“western” or modern clothes. They were
so excited to be stocked up with school supplies and they sang us some
beautiful traditional songs. As I’ve
found at St. Barnabas and at the mobile school, all the students have their own
part in a song and will sing harmonies with the melodies so listening to the
children sing an amazing song gave me goose bumps and I found my throat
swelling shut and I was fighting back tears—absolutely beautiful! Unfortunately, our lack of music skills
followed while we sang “Blessed Be Your Name” and “The National Anthem” to the
children.
Our van getting stuck on the "road" to the school.
The tent mobile school and one of the tables.
Village homestead on the way to the school.
Traditionally dressed Himba children.
The tent school.
Himba children
Passing out supplies
Paula and a little friend donating supplies.
After we spent the first half of the morning at the
Okarukoro Mobile School, our guide Uanee took us to the community he grew up in
where we saw his farm and the school
he went to. When we arrived, the
children were not in school, but as 13 white people piled out of the van,
school quickly got in to session and we distributed more school supplies to the
children and, yet again, they sang us beautiful songs. This time, we were more prepared so we were
able to sound more musically gifted while singing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and
Toes,” “The National Anthem” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in rounds. After we interacted with the children, we
spent a couple hours outside interacting with the adults in the community and
it was absolutely amazing! There were
traditionally dressed Himba women with their children as well as traditionally
dressed Herero women all hanging out under a large tree, waiting for the
Emergency Food bags to be dropped off to the community.
Himba women
Herero woman in the green and a himba woman in the back
Traditional himba woman
Their hair is and skin is a reddish color because it is covered in red paste and animal fat to protect them from the sun as well as portray their beauty.
Singing Head Shoulders Knees and Toes with the children.
Lions and Rhinos and
Elephants, Oh My!
The next day, we entered Etosha National Park through the
western gate, which is pretty special because you need a guide to enter in that
way and this time of year, it is your best chance of seeing elephants as they
have all migrated to the western side of the park. When we entered Etosha, we drove to Dolomite
Camp, where we were staying for the night and it was absolutely breath
taking. It is a lodge/resort that has
only been open for two years. It is
located on the side of a mountain in the park, so that meant two things—a lot
of hiking to and from our room to the infinity
pool and that there could be wild animals around us at any given time. Sure enough, in the hour we were there, there
was an elephant roaming around the outskirts of camp walking to and from the
watering hole!
After we had a few hours to relax, sit in the pool while
enjoying the amazing view of the African savanna and watch the elephant, we got
in the car for our first game drive in Etosha with our guide, Uanee. We set out on the adventure (and I was lucky
enough to sit shotgun with Uanee) with our hopes sent on seeing elephants and
lions. Uanee informed us that it was not
the right time of day for lions to be walking around in the hot sun and the
chances of us seeing elephants were slim, as the last two years PLU students
have driven in Etosha, they have not seen a single elephant.
Then, about an hour in to our drive, we came around a turn
in the road and immediately to the left of me, was an enormous mama
elephant! I tried to contain my
excitement as I motioned to Uanee we had just hit the jackpot! We stopped briefly and watched her until we
realized that further up the road was another family of elephants—five
more! We quietly and slowly inched our van
up to the elephants and watched them graze on the trees, watched a baby
elephant hide in the shade of her mama and watched them watch us watching
them. The longer we sat there, the more
of the herd we saw. In the silent
forty-five minutes we spent completely taking in the elephants, we saw over 20
elephants! They were anywhere from 10 to
15 feet from our van and it was so exhilarating to watch these massive,
majestic and powerful animals stand so close to us. For anyone who has heard my Minke Whale story
from my journey to Antarctica, this experience was very similar. Once again, I felt so small and insignificant
in life. Often times at home, in the
city, at PLU or teaching in the classroom, it is so easy to feel as if you are
the authority figure and the world revolves around us at humans, yet this time
I spent watching these beautiful animals put me back in my place. I could not help but think that, if the
elephants wanted to, they could easily ram our van and send us tumbling down
the opposite side of the road, kicking us like a piece of scrap metal, much
like the whales could have done to our small, inflatable zodiac in the middle
of the Southern Ocean. It would have
taken one of the 20+ elephants to completely demolish us, yet they trusted us to
leave them alone and watched us watch them in complete peace. For the umpteenth time on this trip, I found
myself speechless with goose bumps on my arms and tears beginning to well up in
my eyes. Needless to say, our first game
drive was more than successful, so we headed back to Dolomite and had a
fabulous dinner with Jan, Paula, Steve, Uanee and the rest of the students in
our program. After dinner, Nataly and I
spent time completely soaking in our room—it was something straight off The Bachelor where they go to a random
destination in the world with the most beautiful views and rooms. Nataly and I felt as if we were on our own
honeymoon and I can only hope to have my real honeymoon there one day. A girl can dream, right?! We sat out on the balcony of our hotel “hut”
and star gazed before I took a shower in a bathroom surrounded by windows. It was as if I was standing in the middle of
the savanna with a 270-degree view.
The next morning we continued driving on to Okaukuejo Camp
and spent the day by the pool before we embarked on our second game drive
during the afternoon. This time, we
spotted and followed a wild cheetah
through the savanna. When we first saw
it, it was walking towards a group of wildebeests and I thought we would
definitely see the cheetah attack one of the babies. However, the male wildebeest stood in front
of its herd as big as it could and the cheetah passed through the herd and went
to the watering hole. We intently watched
the cheetah drink for 25 minutes before it continued on its journey into the
sunset as it walked right next to our van, about 20 feet away from us. Being this close to such a large, fast and
strong animal was so exhilarating because it was wild. We were so close to
the cheetah that the sunset reflected in its eyes and it just looked different than the cheetahs at
the conservation fund—it just looked and walked like a wild animal.
That night after dinner, I sat by the watering hold at
Okaukuejo Camp and watched two black rhinos and a giraffe come drink. This was yet another experience that I
completely took in and could not even put it in to words.
We were on a mission during our last morning game drive in
Etosha. We had already seen hundreds of
giraffes, zebras, oryx, kudus, springbok along with dozens of elephants, a
couple rhinos and a cheetah. The only
other “stereotypical” African animal we were missing was a lion. So, we got up before
the sunrise to see if we could catch a pride of lions roaming around the
savanna before the sun got too hot. So,
we started driving around the National Park and…sure enough! Shortly after the sun rose, we spotted a
lion, two lionesses and two lion cubs in the grass off in the distance. We watched them roam around for a while
before turning around to drive back to Okaukuejo for breakfast but on our way
back we spotted another lion with three lionesses! This time they were way closer to our van and
soon enough we watched them cross the road right in front of us. It was so amazing to watch another massive
wild animal so close to us and there was a mutual trust between the animal and
us not to hurt each other. This pride of
lions was so amazing because it was clear they had just killed their breakfast,
as there was blood all over their faces and front arms.
I felt so blessed to experience the animals we experienced
during our three days in Etosha because we were able to come close, observe and
soak in everything about beautiful wild African animals. The PLU groups in the past have not been
lucky enough to see animals such as elephants; cheetahs; lions or rhinos and we
were lucky enough to see all of them throughout the three days we were
there!
Fun Facts:
·
Oryx are the national Namibian animal and is
absolutely amazing! They have horns that
are attached to their skulls with bones in the middle of them and once one of
them breaks off, it cannot grow back.
Oryx can retain over 90% of the water they take in and can go up to 7
days without drinking water. They can
also survive off one Nara melon for up to a week. Needless to say, they are definitely adapted
to the Namib Desert.
·
Black rhinos are gray in color and have a hooked
lip. They also have two horns on their
nose where the first one, closest to its face, is much bigger than the second
one. They are grazers where they eat
shoots and leaves off plants and bushes in the savanna and live
solitarily. Black rhinos also have very
poor eyesight but have great hearing and a great sense of smell.
I know I still have about two weeks of blogging to catch up
on—about a week and a half of teaching and a weekend at the sand dunes and I promise that will be updated before next
week!
More pictures to come!
