Vegans Love Carnivores

Winter has finally arrived in Namibia, which for a desert country, means warm days but VERY cold nights!   It got to -3 ⁰ C in the capital city of Windhoek last week and the release team that were out monitoring rewilded cheetahs had to come back in because their drinking water stayed frozen until 10am!   For some reason this cold, dry weather causes electricity to build up and every time I touch something metal, I get electrocuted!   Laurie and I were in Windhoek last week with another CCF member of staff for the annual tourism expo , and whilst there, I bought a sleeping bag in preparation for my trip around southern Africa in August.   I was so glad to have it with me as we slept in a hostel overnight and the thin blankets were certainly not enough to keep us warm!   The expo itself was pretty fun and we advertised CCF as a tourist destination, as well as tried to get business for our goat cheese products and donations for our fundraising gala next m...

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...

Last weekend I drove to Windhoek (the capital city of Namibia) with the CCF genetics technician, Janine, to run a promotion at Spar supermarket to advertise for our goat cheese (yes, I still find it ironic that I am somehow involved in cheese here being that I’m a vegan).  Now, for those of you who have been reading my blog from the start, you may remember me reversing a brand new Land Cruiser car into a ditch whilst I was in Zimbabwe.  Suffice to say, I’m not the best of drivers, and have had barely any experience a) driving off-road, b) driving four-wheel-drives, or c) driving anything larger than a Ford Fiesta.  The vehicle we were driving was a Toyota Quantum, which is an 11-person minibus.  Now, I have mentioned repeatedly to staff here that I’m not comfortable driving here, especially not in large cars or through bad weather conditions, because I don’t want to be responsible for crashing, especially with volunteers in the car.  However, alas no one has...

After being noticeably ill for a week because of my spider bite, my manager decided that I needed a break from CCF.  As a couple of staff members were going to Erindi Private Nature Reserve for a weekend anyway to collect two radio collars for two cheetahs we are giving them, he thought it’d be nice for me to go along too.  What a great suggestion! We left last Friday morning and set off for a 3-hour journey to the reserve.  The place used to be a private hunting lodge until, 5 years ago, they decided to turn it into a nature viewing destination instead.  It’s home to the Global Leopard Project run by a lovely lady called Natasha, who knows more about leopards than anyone I have ever met before.   I’d heard of Erindi a couple of years ago from an ITV documentary with Steve Leonard (from Vet School/Vets in Practice) and had wanted to visit ever since – especially to see Natasha and her leopards! Upon arriving, we were escorted to a delightful bu...

It appears that I was correct in assuming that the wound on my leg I that I was complaining about in my last post was in fact a spider bite.  I took the advice of my mum and my friend Nick, and decided to bite the bullet and just go visit the doctor on Monday morning.  I am pretty glad I went! When I told the doctor I thought I’d been bitten by a spider, he looked sceptical at me, but as I explained further my symptoms (painful sore on leg that didn’t hurt when I was bitten, but that I noticed in the morning, so must have been bitten at night; the wound got worse as the days went by; it started to ooze pus; the red lines that showed up along my veins; the headaches, fever, joint pains, nausea, dizziness, fatigue [I slept for 13 hours straight on Saturday night, and usually I am proud if I sleep 6 hours being that I’m an insomniac!]; the swelling and redness of the area) he began to become convinced that my initial thoughts were correct.  I then showed it to him, u...

After going near-crazy with lack of sleep, I went to the doctor a few weeks ago, who has prescribed me with super strong hypnotic sleeping tablets.  They seem to be doing the trick, but I'm just a bit worried what will happen when they run out, as I've not been able to sleep without them.  If anyone has any good cures for insomnia, do let me know! My second stye that I mentioned in my previous post did not go away by itself, unfortunately - this required another trip to the doctors.  I was expecting him to make a small incision into my eyelid to squeeze out the pus, as he had suggested he would do, but instead he grabbed my face in his palms and squeezed my eyelid so hard that it gave me a black eye!  It did, however, manage to get some of the pus out, but OH MY GOD it hurt!! Whilst we're on the subject of illnesses, I appear to have been bitten by a spider on my thigh, which turned from a small ulcer to a red, inflamed and extremely painful swelling, with red ma...