Daktari: Week One

First off, a big shout out to Giti, who got married yesterday in California. Missing this wedding (and one more to come in September) is actually one of the hardest things about being out of the country for 7 months. I know it was beautiful, and I can't wait to see the photos.

Secondly, it has been too long since I posted and I know I will not be able to capture everything. I know that I will be here for a very long time so I haven't been taking any photos yet, I figure I will have a lot of time for that in the next six months. This week my main job was to watch everything that happens during the week, because it is my job as Volunteer Coordinator to make sure that it all happens properly. There is a bit of a learning curve, of course, but I want to be able to do my job as quickly as possible.

The basic premise of Daktari is that we run a wildlife orphanage full time, and from Monday-Friday we also have 8-10 kids from a local village here to learn about their environment, job opportunities in south africa, and to do lessons in english, science, math, and biology. There are volunteers from all over, although mostly from Europe, whose job it is to lead all the lessons, chores, and generally make sure the camp runs smoothly. My job is to manage all these people.

Every evening after dinner I run a "board meeting," which takes place in front of a big white board in the Lapa (meeting area/dining hall). This board tells all the volunteers who is running which lessons for the following day, as well as what chores everyone is doing. We begin every morning at 7:00am with coffee, and then at 7:30 we take the four dogs for a walk on a loop outside the camp. When we get back from the dog walk, we do chores around camp. The chores involve cleaning and feeding all of the animals who live here, including (but not limited to) warthogs, porcupines, donkeys, goats, owls, meerkats, mongeese, a genet, ostrich, tortoises, and a leopard. Volunteers lead the chores, but the kids help out. After chores the days all look a bit different, but generally contain lessons in our classroom (where everyone must speak English) as well as fun games and social talks, which are less structured conversations about the environment, drug and alcohol abuse, and safe sex/HIV/AIDS. The kids go to bed at 8:30 (followed shortly by most of the staff), and then we start again the next day. This is why I haven't had much time to write.

There is a very intense 73 page "teaching program" that we follow, and I am slowly but steadily learning all of it so that I can help the volunteers teach the children. Volunteers come for different periods of time, with the shortest being 2 weeks, and the average being 3-4 weeks. They do not all come and go at the same time, however, so in a few weeks I will have a full changeover where all old volunteers leave and new ones arrive. This is sort of a deadline for me to know everything about my job - because there will be very few people left for me to ask.

One of the hardest things to adjust to is being the only American here, for the first time in my life. At last count we had 5 French volunteers, 3 Dutch, 2 English, 1 German, 1 Swedish, 1 Australian, and me. There are just so many things that only Americans do/say. Also for the people who have trouble with English, apparently my American accent is tough to understand. I also tend to use big words, which I am trying to phase out of my vocabulary because of the amount of blank looks I get. Some things I knew that only Americans did (like feet/miles, although the English do this too) - but some things are a surprise every day. For example, what we call a "period" at the end of a sentence is apparently called a "full stop" everywhere else in the English-speaking world. Who knew?

On Wednesdays we take all the kids to a game lodge next door where they take a tour of the lodge and learn about all the different job opportunities that are available there. We tie this into wildlife conservation by teaching them about tourism, and the fact that many tourists come to South Africa to see wildlife, and that they create all these jobs when they visit. Therefore if people kill all the animals, all these jobs will not exist anymore. Part of my job is going to include driving all the kids to Makalali, which would not be a problem, except for the whole stick-shift-on-the-wrong-side thing. It turns out that's another area where America is either ahead or behind of everywhere else in the world - I am definitely the only one here who doesn't know how to drive a manual car.

Last night Ian, the director, decided that I should have a trial by fire as he wanted my "lesson" to take the form of driving everyone home from a lodge/bar where we went to watch the rugby game. I actually did mostly OK on the stick-shift front, but driving a 14 seater van full of tipsy adults on small roads when sitting on the wrong side of the car was a little bit tricky. I need a bit more practice before Ian will want me taking the kids out all by myself.

Another funny thing to get used to is the odd variety of animals that are constantly walking around. Particularly the warthogs, Samantha and Miranda, who curl up in the dog beds, follow you around whining for food, and generally just want attention all of the time. It was also surprising the first night to turn around at the dinner table and see a huge porcupine behind me eating a potato. All these animals were bottle reared here at Daktari, and many of them were released into the wild but come back at certain times most days for a snack.

I will try to write more before next weekend, but it seems like weekends might be the only time I have enough time. Please continue to send me your feedback, I love to hear that you know what I'm doing!