One week in - work and wildlife

On Tuesday, I awoke feeling as though I could sleep for another 10 hours. Unfortunately I didn’t have that luxury – at 9am Chida and I were taken to the Sustainable Seas Trust’s new office where we met the other members of the Grahamstown team: Seb, Kyle, Sirkka, and Viv. There are people who work for SST all over the country, like in St Francis where the other two Canadians are, but the Grahamstown team is the largest.

There are tons of SST projects on the go including the development of educational booklets and videos; fundraising and increasing membership; planning trips, presentations and talks; working on the website (check it out here: http://www.sst.org.za) and furnishing / decorating the new office. Subsequently, working for the SST has been busy from the get go, and the first week flew by.

The weather in Grahamstown is quite interesting – since the town is located in a valley, the temperature changes rapidly. The first few days were cold, rainy, and blustery and I was constantly chilled (I drank lots of rooibos tea to keep warm!). When the sun finally came out at the end of the week, I was quite relieved to put away my long johns. As it gets colder back home in Canada, it gets warmer here in South Africa as we move into summer.

After a non-stop busy week, it was time for a bit of a break. Seb offered to take Chida and I to the Kwantu elephant reserve on Saturday. Again on the drive we saw lots of wildlife - zebras, warthogs, blesbok, and more! When we arrived at Kwantu, we waited in an immense banquet hall fit for a wedding before being taken outside to the elephant pen. The elephants were enchanting – they performed a whole routine for us before we were able to feed them, stuffing their greedy trunks and gaping mouths with grass pellets. These four female elephants were saved from certain death; in game parks, a number of elephants are killed each year to prevent over population. The Kwantu elephants were all lined up for this fate before being taken to the reserve.

About 10km further down the road is the entrance to the Kwantu game park and predator rehabilitation centre. We took a tour of the area where they keep predators in order to breed them and release them into the wild. We saw Bengal tigers (not native to SA), African lions, a breeding pair of white lions, and a pair of cheetahs (unfortunately in this case the female cheetah had no interest in mating with the male, much to the frustration of the Kwantu employees). The big cats were all beautiful and magnificent, and it was a bit sad to see them all locked up. However, by breeding them and releasing them into the wild, they are helping to maintain healthy population levels of these rare animals.

These big guys don't often get along so well...

Lonely male cheetah with no one to love him...