Vegans Love Carnivores

These last few weeks have mostly been centred around two things:  the plague in my eyes (aka styes of doom) and insomnia.  I apologise if most of this entry is babble, but I’m working on a sleep debt of 500 hours now (or so it feels like) so even breathing is an arduous task.  Ever since we got a load of new housemates, I’ve found it really hard to sleep: our walls are so thin that I get woken up whenever anyone unlocks a door, opens the door, closes the door, goes to the bathroom, etc. etc., so because the five people I live with all go to bed at different times, I basically have to wait until the last person goes to bed (around midnight) only to get woken up when the first person gets up (around 6 am).  What makes things worse is that usually I’m so frustrated by midnight that I haven’t been able to sleep, that I find it really hard to get to sleep, so am not usually asleep until around 2 am.  And then of course people get up in the middle of the night to go t...

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...