Vegans Love Carnivores

Last month was my birthday and I celebrated it in a relaxed and chilled way with friends – always a good thing!   In the morning I watched a cheetah run and then went to the office to work for a couple of hours.   I then went into town with some CCF staff for lunch, followed by a bit of shopping and then my first ever massage (full-body; it was amazing!).   We then went home and I hung out with the Ambassador cheetahs for an hour before going to dinner, upon which I filled myself up on far too many chips and chocolate cake!   After that we hung out in the common room watching Zombieland and chatting.   All in all, a very nice day! I now only have less than 2 months left at CCF – a slightly scary thought! To gout with a bang, I have booked a two-week trip across southern Africa at the end of my stay here.   We will be travelling up Namibia to Zambia and visiting Victoria Falls on both sides (the Zambian and Zimbabwean sides), then heading down to Bot...

It seems that if you want to work in a conservation organisation in Africa you need to be able to work 80+ hours a week without any days off!  I was hoping that things would be a little more relaxed here at CCF, knowing that I was told that I’d be able to take 1.5 days off per week, but it seems that this is not the case.  There are people who have been working here for 6+ months and may have only take 2 days off.   Some of the staff who work on the cheetah reintroductions work two straight weeks of 18 hour days – how does anyone do that without dying of exhaustion?!  I have no idea.  I asked Laurie when was the last time she had a holiday in the last 10 years and she said “make that 40 years”.  I honestly have no clue how you can go on that long without needing some time out.  In any case, I am HOPING to take my first day off today.  I already managed to sleep in until 8.30 am, which was amazing.  However, I do have a small excuse as to...

I am finally beginning to settle in to Namibian life now after a brief panic period not knowing at all what I was doing!  I arrived into CCF the day after the previous ecologist had left, so I have had no one to mentor me whilst here, which is a bit of a scary prospect.  I have also been pulled between two tasks whilst here:  going to lectures for my course on human-wildlife conflict and learning about the tasks required of me as the ecologist.  However, as 90% of my time has been spent in the course, I’ve barely had time to figure out what I’m meant to be doing elsewhere here.  I keep having the students and interns I’m meant to be supervising coming up to me to ask for advice, although I have no idea what their projects are on or how I can be of assistance.  I keep feeling that I’m slightly out of my depth here, but I hope things will get easier as the days go on. Fortunately yesterday I was able to spend the majority of the day in my office figuring out...