We have a saying here, that we probably say at least five times a day, which is "We'll make a plan." This applies to just about anything that could arise, but usually when we are faced with some type of problem that could arise in the future. Examples are, "Where are we going to put two baby crocodiles that we just found out we are receiving in a few hours?" "We'll make a plan." Or, "What will we do with AN ENTIRE TRUCK FULL OF OFFICE FURNITURE?" "We'll make a plan." The ability to "make a plan" is certainly something that I am learning in this job, and I have to say things really do tend to work out. The truck full of donated office furniture was really something. We found out in the morning that it was going to arrive that evening, so we had to clear out our entire workshop to make space where it could be protected from the rain. I took over the morning's lessons with the kids, and the volunteers kicked the workshop's ass. The truck was supposed to arrive around 8pm from Johannesburg, but of course with the thunderstorms and our bush-roads, it didn't make it until about ten. We decided to unload the next morning, and then found out that the truck couldn't make it all the way into camp because of the roads, and had to park about half a mile down the road. So? We made a plan. We drove the bakkie (pick-up trick) back and forth about twenty times, full of loads of desks, filing cabinets, computers, chairs, huge whiteboards, etc. The kids unloaded in the workshop, a team worked at the back of the truck, and I worked with a few volunteers to do all of our "regular" chores for the morning, making sure all the animal cages were clean and the animals were fed. Afterwards we joined the lifting crew; the whole project began around 7am and finished around 12:30pm.
Anyway, I'm just trying to illustrate here the flexibility in our program. A few things also came up this week. One of our meerkats, Tiki, had been acting strange for a few days, not wanting to come out of his bed and being lethargic. At first we thought it might be because we had a few chilly days and the meerkats don't like the cold, but when he didn't show interest in mealworms on Tuesday afternoon we knew something was definitely wrong. Michele, Risette and I put on thick gloves and picked him up, suspecting (correctly) that he had "worms." The worms in question are actually the larvae of the Putzi fly (wikipedia link) which burrow into the bloodstream of mammals (yes, including humans) and grow and grow until they form tumors and need to be popped out. I couldn't make this up if I tried. Poor Tiki had about eight huge worms living in him, and we worked together to hold him still, pop the worms out, and disinfect the gaping holes they left behind. After a shot of antibiotics he was done for the day. It was really sweet the way our other two meerkats snuggled and protected him after the whole ordeal, and even though none of us could really look at our dinner after that it was totally worth it because Tiki is now back to his old self. We did a thorough cleaning of the meerkat camp and are hoping that we don't see too many more worms this season. The flies are attracted to anything that becomes wet and then dry again, which of course happens very frequently in the rainy season. This is the reason that all of our clothes, including underwear, are ironed after they are dried in the sun, because otherwise WE might get these worms, and that's the scariest thought ever.
I had a lot of other things I wanted to write about, but this is getting too long so I will update more this weekend. I'll leave you with a few photos of our meerkats (post de-worming) so you can understand how cute they are.
Here is Gasper snuggling Tiki who rolled into a little ball to rest after the trauma:
And here are the three of them looking goofy:
No comments:
Post a Comment