Life in Africa
Keep thinking I will Blog every day but the time slips past
so this first Blog will be a one week impression of Namibia and life at the
Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) which are two very different things.
Life at CCF has settled in quickly. I started work the
second day here and we work a real 8 – 5 schedule. I am working in the
education program and they have numerous things they would like me to
accomplish. I wonder if I will actually be able to get any of them to
completion in 3 months. Currently I am trying to find out what the education
standards are for students and how accountable teachers are to those standards.
Hopefully I can arrange some meetings with principals next week. I will also
get in touch with the universities in Namibia that offer education degrees and
try to meet with some of those people.
So that is the work situation.
CCF owns a huge amount of land. There are 7 different farms.
Goats and cows are raised here as are livestock guarding dogs. There is a creamery – Dancing Goat Creamery - where
they make feta and chevre cheese along with ice cream. These are sold here at
the café and also in town at the farmers market. The main center for CCF is the
area that has the visitors’ center, café, gift shop, offices and supporting
facilities. There is a veterinarian clinic, genetics lab, education center,
animal husbandry office, library, museum, and barns. The Namibian workers here
at CCF are given a weekly ration of 2.5 kilos of game meat. The animals are
hunted here on the property. I was in the barn one day when they brought in
several warthogs and an Oryx to butcher for the workers. This is to keep them from poaching and it is
part of their pay.
The captive cheetahs, most of which cannot be released, are
all kept around the main site which is also where most of the staff and
volunteers live. Only 5 cheetahs are in an area that can be seen by the public.
The others are in 4 or 5 different enclosures a distance off. There is the area
for the old cheetahs, 3 of them being 16 and one who is blind. There is also an
area for the cheetahs that might be able to be released at some point. They see
very few people. The problem with releasing cheetahs is not the cheetah, it is
having a place for them. Imagine trying to rehab a wolf and then finding a
place for it in eastern Oregon. Like wolves, cheetahs are thought of as
livestock predators and many people have no love in their hearts for them. We
have 33 cheetahs on site.
The cheetahs are feed horse and donkey meat. Farmers
throughout Namibia sell or donate their old animals. These are held on site,
butchered when needed, cut up and big chunks feed once each day. I think they
go through around 5 donkeys a week. The cheetahs here at the center know when
it is feeding time and start coming in from the far reaches of their
enclosures. There are two young girls who are a pair and a sibling group of one
male and two females. These are the cheetahs the tourists see. They can pay
extra to be allowed in the enclosure when the cheetahs are being run. There is a system based on the Greyhound dog racing
system that is used to get these cheetahs exercise. They are the only ones run
like this. I was in with the cheetahs and that is where I got my first good
pictures of them. Pretty exciting actually since they come within 2 meters of
where you are standing. The others are run in their much bigger enclosures.
Those cheetahs follow the truck as it races around the area. Then the truck
stops, they get a treat (liver bits) and off it goes again. Treats are thrown
out the window. I got to do this one day. At the end of the runs the cheetahs
get their big chunks of meat.
Most of the staff and volunteers live down the road a bit
from the Visitors’ Center. It is maybe an 8 minute walk. We have a dining area,
4 rondovals like mine, a dorm with 6 double rooms and a wash room, 4 double
duplexes and another rondoval. These are
scattered far enough apart that it does not feel crowded. My rondoval looks out
onto a termite mound, an open field and some trees across the field. I have
seen lots of birds and warthogs at my door. Someone saw a jackal in the field
yesterday. A yellow billed hornbill, Africa’s version of a toucan, is nesting
near the dining hall in a nest box. The female gets mudded into the box by the
male with just a small little opening big enough for the male to poke food
through. She is in the box sitting on eggs. It will be quite exciting when the
eggs hatch. The male comes and goes all day long.
Sunrises and sunsets here are astounding. I got the most amazing
photo of a giraffe with the sunset behind him. This was one night when I went
for a drive with two of the staff. We went into the “reserve” area. It is 15,000 hectares. The animals are free to
come and go but it is a protected area which hopefully means little or no
poaching. That night we saw several Oryx, steenbok, duiker, two pairs of
ostriches running, black backed jackals and most exciting of all an aardwolf.
Aardwolves are thought to be the smallest hyena although there is some
discussion about that. They are insectivores eating primarily termites. They
can eat 250,000 a night.
So this is life in Africa.
