Serenity

On Sunday night I was happily sitting at my laptop measuring a HUGE pile of lizards when my phone rang. i looked at the caller ID and saw that it was the head of our department. I wondered why on earth he'd be calling me on a sunday night (at around 8pm), but I figured as a worst-case scenario my mother was concerned and had spoken to him or something and he was checking up on me. so I answered. He basically said:
"Hi Helen, we're about 30ms from Nelspruit, so we're going to stop for dinner and drive through. Is the gate code still XXXX?"

BAM! new worst-case scenario!

So I had to decide: do I finish measuring lizards, or clean up the houe? I decided to measure lizards, which gave me just enough time to hide my dirty laundry under my bed (it was in bags waiting for me to get around to running a load of washing), wash the dishes and call Luke in a flat panic and figure out why nobody had warned me.

Basically everyone thought that everyone else ad warned me, so I ended up sharing the house with 4 botanists for 5 days. Firstly, they ahd a caterer. So actually 3 botanists needed someone to cook and clean for them. She was very sweet and quite mediterranean, and fed me non-stop, which was nce as I'd been super-busy and not looking after myself very well. I was pretty sick for the first day or so, it deems that my body had got used to a diet of ceral and fresh fruit and proper, cooked meals were more than I could handle.

As for the botanists, there was the head of school, who is a... difficult persoon at the best of times, who has a disturbing tendency to walk around in nothing but tiny tiny shorts. And two honours students who were doing a 5-day practical exam. The students were nice, one of them is about a year oler than me and he's the kind of guy who has huge long legs and arms and tons of exuberant energy that makes me smile. The other was a woman I'd never met before who looked about my age, maybe slightly older until I found out that she's been married for almost 20 years and has 3 kids, one of whom is almost finished high-school.

They filled the houe up will all kinds of plant stuff, and then proceeded to fill the house up wth plants. On the plus sie, the caterer scrubbed the house from top to bottom, which made me feel a bit guilty seeing that I'd let it get dirty, but means that when I go home soon I won't have to spend an entire day scrubbing floors like I did last year.

In my defence, the house wasn't that bad. i always make sure that the kitchen and the bathroom and the room where my lizards stay is spotless, but the house is big and there are a lot of areas I don't use, so I let the dust accumulate because I see no point in keeping rooms clean if I never use them. I'd had a tough week, so the kitchen floor was a bit dirty and my stuff had cluttered the main living area a bit, but otherwise most people wouldn't have seen the need to scrub for a solid day.

I checked my messages a bit later and found that people had been calling and leaving messages but I didn't get any notifications. One message was the standard bi-montly mesage from my supervisor asking if I was still alive. I called him on the Monday to update him, assure hm that all my limbs were attached and complain about the invasion of botanists when he dropped the bombshell. There is a conference at the end of November and I WILL attend. I've known about the conference for a while, but I hadn't sent in an abstract and I'd assumed I might not be back rom fieldwork in time, but then I caught 40 lzards in 2 weeks and everything changed. In the meantime Luke and another friend have been qualifying as scuba divers and they'd invited me to go with them for their first ever sea-dives!

The idea of leaving here in a few weeks and going to the beach with friends I have missed to have a real breaak after working 7-days a week for 3 months was all that was keeping e going! In fact, that lead to the kind farmer's wife helping me catch lizards by trying to chase them with a leafblower (I will explain that later I hope) after she gave me a cold glass of coke and I broke down into "I just want to go HOME!" So the idea of leaving 3 months of wall-to-wall lizard work to go to a place I don't like very much to discuss lizards for another week really didn't fill me with joy.

Anyway, afer many exciting plans for how to get out of the conference (and a very accomodating Duncan, ThankS :)) I managed to agree to the conference on the understanding that I would leave early, and Jen would fetch me on the way to the coast so I could go diving anyway. my supervisor isn't happy, but as far as I'm concerned he can... you get the picture.

so today the botanists packed up, loaded their plants into their vehicle and left. And the peace and quiet return. And a rainstorm, which is why I'm not outside lstening to the frogs. There is totally a tree frog that I've been hearing and I chased him for about an hour last night but didn't manage to find him.

aaaah!

I'm sorry, I've been meaning to post for a long time and I just get sidetracked... everything has been superexciting too, besides the already promised story of the bathtub guy with the baby bushpig, I also have a story of wrongful accusation by the husband of the lady with the leafblower, the incredible kindness of said leafblower lady as well as my latest brush with death on the cliff of Doom.

Stay tuned and I promise I'll post them soon!

Update

I'm afraid I've become a really awful poster on this trip - usually I get lonely and write a lot more, but between the heat and the arrival of the masters student I've been pretty busy. I have some exciting things to write about (like ouotdoor-bathtub guy with the pet baby bushpig, and the incresible hotel/motel), so I'll try to do that as soon as I can!

Panic stations!

So I've been fluctuationg between enthusiasic and productive, and sitting in a heap wanting to cry. It rained all weekend, so I used the opportunity to sit in a heap and not do much, and then had a great trapping day yesterday. today was brutally hot, I saw about 7 or 8 lizards and proceeded to spend all day in the hot hot sun not catching any of them. I got myself a pretty impressive case of sunstroke, and a talking-to from a friend back home becasue apparently I shouldn't have taken aspirin for the headache that came with the package. Seriously, it's like tickbite-fever bad but without the glamour of the fever and the nausea... actually I think I prefer sunstroke!

Anyway, I am one of very few people in this world who has a custom-built lizard treadmill. It's of vital importance for my work, nd was built by a combination of an engineering student friend (who, back in the day, beat up another kid for pulling the tail out of my My Little Pony) and a friend from my class at university. It's had it's issues, as it was designed and built with very little by way of specifications (I gave them a size and a speed required) by two people who have never worked with lizards.

I spend a lot of time ever few weeks fixing up little gaps with duct tape (a lizard can squeeze through a microscopic gap! and adjusting it and so on. This trip it's been working perfectly though, until tonight! I was running a set of lizards when one of them managed to get his tail between the belt and the rod thingie that it wraps around. It happens occasionally, and usually you just stop the treadmill and extricate the lizard. This guy had really got himself stuck though so i had to dismantle part of it, remove lizard and then put it back together.

Then it started acting p. Nothing major, just the belt slipping to one side, or it went too slowly, and I had to play with the tension a bit. Finally, it all looked like it was going to work properly when it ut stopped. There was an aweful noie from the motor and nothing moved.

So I'm going to be spending tomorrow in town trying to hunt down an engineer (fortunately there is a university with an engineering department nearby) to fix it, and if I can't fid anyone here I will have no option but to put it in the car and go home for a day or two to get it fixed by the engineer who made it.

To tell the truth, today was a really unpleasant day, and I would like nothing more than a day or two at home to 'recharge' a bit, but at the same time the weather is good for lizards, and I never know when I'm going to lose time to rain, so going home seems like a waste. At least the masters student is rriving tomorrow so I'll have someone here to feed lizards if I have to go.

So anyone at home: watch this space, you might be running into me in the near future!

So...

Remember that song on the mission impossible soundtrack called "So..."? It's stuck in my head right now. Nothing too exciting to say about it. Except that I am not a Mission Impossible nut, just that I was about 10 at the time and the soundtrack was my first ever CD. I didn't even have a CD player yet, but after my brother and I had run in to the CNA (a newsagent) for the gazillionth time and listened to the theme song on the dodgy "try out your CD first!" headphones, my mother ether let me buy it or bought it for me. I can safely say that I think I knew every note and every word and everything on that CD by the time I was 12 or so, as well as developing a slightly weird addiction to Songs by Skunk Anansie (however you spell that. I was 10!). Weird because I was a pretty quiet kid who's only other CD was by Shampoo. Yes, I'm cringing now!

Anyway, it's been a rough week. I was going to post about how miserable I was yesterday, but I only finished all the work I had to do by about 10pm and I didn't have the energy - considering that it's been so hot I have to get up at about sunrise to get any decent trapping done before it gets to molten-lava level of hot.

I was enjoying the quiet of a KIDS-es free house, when we got hit by a mega heatwave. It's supposedly spring, but I've been here in midsummer and it was never this hot and humid before. I HATE hats with a passion, but it got so hot that I had to wear one, which meant that I was running around with hat-hair and a hat-induced headache. Since as long as I can remember I've hated having things on my head or on my hands. In cold weather I will give in and wear gloves, but I really, really hate hats.

Back on the topic - I caught a single lizard in two whole days of trapping! And I wasn't being lazy either, the lizards were there, and I was working darned hard to get them and they were all evading me. There is a series of huge boulders where a bunch of them live - I've caught a bunch their before by putting a circle of traps around it and in the little spaces in between rocks. this time though I'm not sure what happened, maybe one of the storms, or a tree falling over, but there was sand EVERYwhere and I couldn't trap a bunch of the usual spots. And the lizards ran past giggling occasionally.

Just to make things better, I decided that having cereal for dinner wasn't a good thing after about 3 days and so I made some very nice pasta-sauce type stuff with the vegetables I got last time I went into town. I didn't feel like the whole schlep of making pasta, so I thought I'd make myself a baked potato.

The bonus of living here is that we have an awesome microwave with a bunch of AUTO settings. So for a potato, you put a potato in, press POTATO and when it finishes you turn said potato over and press POTATO again. Voila, a perfectly baked potato! So, I got a potato, cut the eyes off and so on, put it in and pressed POTATO. After a minute or two it was done, so I turned the potato over and pressed POTATO. I have done this many many times and never had a problem. I realised a little while later that the potato had been in there for a rather long time. I dismissed the thought and went back to what I was doing. Then I heard a strange noise and I went to investigate.

I am not kidding when I say that the potato in the microwave had full-on burst into flames! The smell was awful, there was black smoke seeping from around the door and the potato was flaming away, rotating slowly inside the microwave that was STILL COOKING IT! I had the presence of mind to hit the off switch and leave it closed in the microwave to stop it getting any more oxygen and rushed around opening doors and windows before removing the charred potato.

Bearing in mind that I'd had a horrible day, been in full sun for several hours and not had much success, I wanted to cry. Instead, I decided to make some pasta and eat my dinner. So I lit the gas-stove and made pasta. The pot has handles that get really hot, so, as usual, I used a cloth to take it off the stove and pour the pasta into a colander. Once I'd done that I looked down and realised that the cloth was on fire - it had obviously dipped into the flame.

For the record, the pasta itself was fine, the dinner was delicious, and i had leftovers to sustain me for two days.

Today was cloudy and cold this morning so I got to sleep in until 7! The sun came out mid-morning so I dashed off to the most dangerous outcrop on the farm and managed to catch 4 lizards! I was really happy - this particular outcrop is really steep and slippery, and can either be fantastic for finding lizards or absolutely abysmal, but it takes so long to get there that if it doesn't go too well you've effectively lost a day. I guess after everything being so difficult, I thought about life a lot and came to a lot of conclusions. I won't share them here just yet, because they're a bit whiny and I have a headache from wearing a stupid hat. Plus it's past dinner-time so I should go and burn some stuff now. But the bottom-line is: I'm feeling better about everything, and I hope I can hang on to my inner-optimist for a while!

KIDSes

The anti-poaching guys finally left! I was so happy about it! Then, as I was enjoying my newfound slitude, I got a message .

Last year we had the same thing, which was totally disastrous as over 20 kids arrived, got completely trashed and were all over the house, in my equipment, throwing up in the bushes, screaming at me...

This time there are only 6 of them, they've been really polite so far - I know them pretty well from teaching them over the years. Unfortunately they also know me from trips where I'm not doing my own research, so they're a little bit too relaxed... I would like them to be in a state of mild terror, afraid of touching anything of mine... instead they've already set up a sound system the size of a small power plant and are moving between cooking dinner, rolling joints and smoking outside, while the musi thumps through my house...

I'm glad of th company, but I really really wish this didn't make me feel so old...

Machete-ing is an art form!

So yesterday I went back to one of the new sites, caught 3 lizards pretty easily and went after a fourth - the problem was that the fourth was under a thin flake of rock, halfway up a very sleep slope, so I couldn't do anything from above...

I tried to give up and go across to the other new site, but after I got stuck in my millionth thorn bush I gave up. Let me just add, that I HATE thorn bushes! I understand that the plants don't want to be eaten and so on, but can't they do it in a way that doesn't hurt me? Like tannins, or growing taller or something... my arms and legs and hands are covered in scratches and I don't like it, because I'm always just sunburned enough to make it sting a little bit more than I can ignore...

So I went back and tried to get the last lizard. The problem was that although I could just about reach the area where it was, the whole base of the slope was covered in thorn bushes, trees and dead branches from thorn trees that made a kind of thorny mesh that was completely impenetrable. I managed to get through and break off enough of the dead branches to make it almost accessible, and then climbed up a few feet to set traps. About half an hour later when I hadn't had any luck, I went back and adjusted them. I climbed a few feet higher to be able to work more effectively, ,and then, a few minutes alter, realized that the foothold I was using was not only smooth granite, but smooth granite with lichen and twigs on it. I might have done it myself from disturbing so many trees, but either way, my foot slipped and I tumbled off the rocks and into the thorn mesh...

I scrambled furiously at the rock, but wasn't able to stop myself, and succeeded in scarping down an adjacent rock with a very sharp edge. In the chaos, with me falling, bits of rock falling, traps falling... the lizard finally made an appearance and hid under a rock the as completely covered in thorn bushes. I gave up and gathered my things, to feel something cold on my leg. I looked down and realised that I'd cut my leg open -a long gash along the inside of my calf, from my knee to my ankle, and it was bleeding quite impressively.

The worst part is, besides losing the lizard, i went to the other site today, armed with a machete for the thorny bits, an found that it's actually incredibly unsuitable. It's all big boulders, which are fun to climb, but almost impossible to trap, and the lizards that live on boulders are invariably more intelligent than the ones on flat outcrops.

For the record though, swinging a machete is both incredibly therapeutic and incredibly ineffective! But from the way my arms are feeling, it's also a good workout!

An action-packed adventure saga!

I just finished another exciting evening of playing with numbers and scary formulae... and decided that rather than having the world see me as a total and utter loser (I had a breakthrough and got very excited) I would talk about the last few days.

Firstly, I haven't blogged in absolute ages. we had a heatwave - on a cool day (I think it was Wednesday) when I enjoyed myself because I wasn't dying of heat, I measured that it was 28 degrees in the house, 31 in the shade outside and 34 in partial shade. I was too scared to find out what full sun was, as I'd just finished a morning sitting out in the sun and didn't want to know. In Fahrenheit, for you non-metric people (I will save up the rant about Fahrenheit for a day when I have a few cool points (no pun intended) saved up), that's 82 inside (I love old houses for their ability to be cool on a hot day and warm on cold day), 88 in the shade outside and 93 in partial shade).

I know that the weather will only get hotter, and I managed 10 weeks of proper summer (I'm here almost a month earlier this year than last year), but I'm not used to this yet, and I think I got a bit of heatstroke and felt really sick after drinking about 4 litres of water in a few hours - I was desperately thirsty but couldn't drink anymore!

So anyway a few days ago it went cold, and I relished the opportunity to spend a morning in bed (I had a fever and therefore insisted on a morning off) and go into town to get a few groceries. It's almost an hour drive to the nearest shop, and it's quite a pest because when the weather is good I hate having to take an afternoon to go shopping or go to get petrol for the bakkie, so I've learned by experience to use the bad days as much as possible for things like laundry, shopping, writing up results and the all-important sleep.

Quite often though, the rain will last for up to 4 or 5 days, and then you sit and go crazy because you were super-efficient on the first rainy day (or just don't feel like working). Last year my 6-week trip became a 10-week trip because of the weather, although I must admit, I have developed an incredible talent for predicting the weather from looking at the sky in the evenings. One day I will write a list of all the extra things Ive learned on fieldwork and that will be on it.

Back to the point - the day after that (yesterday)it rained, so I couldn't even go for a walk or anything. Fortunately, although it had been cold, it was dry the day before and I'd taken a long walk in the early evening so I was able to sit in the house without going nuts. I predicted that it would be rainy this morning but clear up in the afternoon, and I was wrong - it was partly-cloudy and cool, warming up in the afternoon. I spent the morning driving around exploring new tracks around the conservancy with mt traps and everything ready in case it cleared up. After about an hour I gave up and sat at the house pretending to work, but actually listening to music for an hour or two. Then I realised that the weather was perfect to take a hike to where I thought there might be some nice lizard habitat, which I thought might be near to or connected to a big outcrop just up the road from the house. It was quite a walk to get there, there are a lot of tiny thorn bushes that can scratch through your clothes in quite a painful way. Then, while you try and untangle yourself you invariably walk past a couple of thorn trees. I got away with a few minor scratches today, and no big thorns to the scalp - unlike Tuesday's getting stuck in a thicket saga (ouch!).

It was very exciting, the outcrop I've seen tiny bits of turned out to be quite ice and big, and as I got there the sun came out from behind the clouds and a beautiful lizard ran out and looked at me. I half expected to hear a chorus of "oooooh!" from the clouds at the same time. It was also quite a nice vantage point for a couple of hills that I've never really considered trapping on before, and I could see another outcrop nearby that's not as nice, but definitely is worth trapping at for a day or two!

I decided that I didn't want to go back through the thorn bushes today and I knew that I was relatively close to a huge outcrop that overlooks the house. we call it the Sundowner rock because on most undergrad field-trips we take the KIDSes up there for sun-downers one evening. I didn't realise (possibly because I'm usually on TOP of said sundowner rock)that it's surrounded by a thick tangle of thorn bushes. By the time I realised that an intelligent person would have turned back about 20 minutes before, I was kind of in a get-hurt-either-way situation so I kept going. It was amazing, after the huge thorny hedges (for lack of a better word) I ended up in what felt like coastal forest, with a relatively clear floor and huge vines. A lot of the branches belong to a weird tree that only has leaves for a few weeks a year or something, but the branches are covered in giant thorns. I don't know what it's called but we use a branch to teach the undergrads about thorn structure at the beginning of their plant-identification course. I had never expected to be stuck in a maze of them though!

Part of me was really sad that I never came here as a little kid, there were all kinds of awesome places that I would have loved to play in when I was little! I remember spending hours under the hedge in our driveway... using the petals from the flowers as currency, yellow was highest if I remember correctly. But, I digress, back to the adventures: so I managed to climb over and under and around the thorns without too much damage to myself. A lot of the branches were dead or rotting and I managed to clear a bit of a path. Then I finally reached the base of the sundowner rock (rock sounds small, it's probably nearly a square kilometer, and made up of a bunch of little outcrops connected by a ridge of grass along the very top). and realised that I was facing a 50-100 metre sheer granite wall. I realised that I hadn't been thinking too clearly - this is the East-facing side that I've never trapped on because it's too steep for me to climb down without someone else there to call the ambulance if something goes wrong (drama-queen? me? NEVER!. Fortunately it was dry, even after all the rain - climbing on wet granite is to beg for a Darwin Award - and I clambered up a big boulder to where I could see a deep fissure running up the length of the slope - looked like the best spot to hold on! On top of the boulder was a smaller, but still considerably large and stable looking rock, so I climbed up, to feel it rocking gently underneath me. I froze and climbed back onto the bigger rock very carefully and then tried a few other routes up. Nothing felt safe enough for me to try. I'm not a stranger to falling, and I usually don't mind pushing my limits somewhat, but the idea of falling that far down onto a tangle of the massive thorns... not so much.

I looked around and decided that my best option was to get off the rock and walk along the base of the cliff (for lack of a better word) to where I could see there was a bit more of an incline and a few handholds and things. there was a big tree at the base of the rock, so I leaned my foot against it so I could shuffle down and jump off. Well, to cut a long story short, the tree was hollow and rotten and fell over. I got the fright of my life and did some spider-man-style backpedalling and then jumped off the side of the rock.

After all of that the climb was pretty uneventful, the incline was slopey enough for me to climb and my shoes were fantastic. I got new shoes a little while ago because my old field-shoes were all but worn out. I had to try a different brand and I haven't liked them too much so far, but today they definitely did the job!

to jump topic completely (it will make sense shortly) one of my favourite memories is of a school trip when I was 15 or 16. The staff at my school stated calling me the "happy camper" because that was the week where I came out of my shell and actually poke to people and participated. I had always been super-shy but for some reason that trip I wasn't and I think it was very much the turning point for me where I stopped being quiet and well-behaved and became... me. Anyway the trip was a week of kayaking, raft-building, archery, obstacle courses, hiking and... rock climbing and abseiling. I was near-phobic of heights, to the point where I could hardly stand on a chair without getting shaky, and that week i started my long journey of getting over it. I think if I could show my 15-year-old self the places I climb now, I would never have believed it! I managed to climb the 20 metre rock face, which was a huge step for me! Of course, most people did it in five to ten minutes, and I took almost an hour, stopping only to swear loudly at a sometimes friend of mine (I think I was the most-quoted person on the trip as nobody had ever heard me swear before either). i felt quite bad about it later as she had been trying to shout encouragement, while I had been trying to focus, but she claimed to be proud to be the person who finally got me to yell obscenities. For the record I didn't manage the abseiling, going into hysterics and climbing back up after a few metres, but I can still remember the cheering when I made it to the top!

Anyway, the guy who was running the climbing section became a good friend of mine on the trip. he was a huge Afrikaans guy with dreds, called Isaak and we used to chat about life in general most evening. He was the type who would go crazy staying in one place for more than a few months and had backpacked around Botswana a month or two before, and I asked so many questions about his travels that it amazes me that he didn't smack me on the head and tell me to shut up.

so, to the point of the story, while I was climbing today I kept hearing his voice in my head saying "the trick to rock climbing is to stay as close to the rock as possible. Don't lean back, lean forward. Plan your route up and then hug the rock. Stay as close to the rock as you can." It was kind of weird. I haven't thought about that trip for ages! For the record, a friend of mine went to work at the camp a few years later and the staff there remembered our group. Might have to do with an unfortunate injury I inflicted on the boss during a game of pool volleyball/rugby (word of advice: if I have the ball do NOT grab on to my foot from behind. I will kick. Hard). Isaak has, of course, moved on by now and nobody hs a clue about where he is.

So after all that I sat at the top and admired the view of the farm. The rain has cleared the dust haze and I could see forever! Plus it gave me a chance to recover from the adrenaline-shakes. And I walked across the outcrop and down the path to the main road. The other day when I missed the path and got stuck in some thorn bushes I smelled something odd and thought I'd stepped in some baboon dung. The smell was worse today, and pretty unmistakable. An animal has died, near the path. How on earth people do jobs with decomposing bodies, I have no idea, I ended up running back to the house to escape the stench. Which was fun - not the stench, the run. Last year I went running nearly every day but I haven't yet on this trip.

And then I sat and fought with formulae and numbers and finally finished a section of what I've been working on for the last 6 weeks. So all in all it's been a good day! And now that I've finished my evening cup of Rooibos and evening biscuit I'm going to head off to bed so I can get up early and machete an easier path to the new sites before I have to start trapping.

Either way, I think I've more than made up for the recent lack of posting by the length of this! I didn't realise how long it was getting...

I am such a nerd

I've been batlting with a particular dataset for about a month now, and I just got it to work. And I did a happy-dance around my living area. I think the anti-poaching guys think I'm nuts...

For the record, I'm really not making massive strides, but little steps make me happy...

A random day

I'm writing this while itching with sunburn - yes, it warmed up today, no, it's still windy as anthing and the lizards aren't cooperating.

I should have known that it wasn't going to be a normal day, when i slept through my alarm this morning, and then woke up and dashed off to the field site, to find baboons and giraffe all over it! I've got to know the giraffes relatively well, there are usually 3 of them and they stay in a pretty small area. It's so dry at the moment that I'm seeing a lot more of the big mammals than usual, I think they're battling to find food. There was a fourth girafe today, which was quite exiting! I used to get stuck behind a single giraffe on the road all the time, I wonder if that's him, if he's made a few friends... I hope so.

I should have gone to a different site straight away, the lizards are very wary when it's cool, and something like giraffe trampling around means that they might not coe out of hiding for at least several hours, but it was still windy, and this site is one of the more sheltered ones, so I stayed. Bad move.

Firstly, my back and arms got fried today! I'm usuall realy good about sunscreen, but with the wind blowing it didn't feel too hot, so I forgot about it.

Secondly I decided to bite the bullet and trap one of my least favourite sites on the outcrop. It's very sheltered and away from the worst of the giraffe-baboon invasion and I can usually bank on getting quite a few lizards there. Basically it's a long, smooth slope at about 45 degrees, kind of convex, with big boulders at one end, a long crevice at another, and a long convex rock in-between. the rock has been named "the bitch" because it's about 5 metres long, and every single lizard in that area runs under it at some stage during the day. this means that it's incredibly important to set traps under it properly, and incredibly difficult to do so. Generally it involved a lot of me setting three or four and then falling to the bottom, swearing as I do it!

Unfortunately it's been a while since the last burn (and with this dry wind it will be a while until the next one) so the bottom of the outcrop is surrounded by thorn bushes, shrubs, fallen branches from the windstorms and a lot of dead leaves - all in all not the sliding and thumping own on my feet onto earth that I'm used to. So I went aong the bottom, wading through the leaves, and traping the long crevices as I went. When I got to the bottom of the big rock, I started laying traps along the edge, and then climbed a bit up and set some more. this was all carrying a large, purple bucket full of traps! When I couldn't reach anymore I mnaged to somehow get the bucket wedged at the top of the rock, only raining a few raps down onto my head, and started to climb. I was only a few metres off the ground when I realised that I was completely and utterly stuck. I couldn't turn around to slide down because I had switched feet on the one and only foothold in my direct vicinity and there was no way of switching back. the nearest hndholds were out of reach, and the closest little nubs of rock weren't enough (with my female-typical upperbody strength) to pull myself up. My other foot was splayed across the rock face onto an almost-foothold, but more to stop the cramps in my other foot than for any actual purpose. I've climbed a lot of rocks here, and I understand that almost foothold + almost handhold = a bad idea.

I couldn't go back down, I couldn't jump down without risking a pretty bad injury, and I ouldn't go up at all. My left leg, which had been supporting me for about 20 minutes on a pretty sharp piece of rock was cramping and I didn't know what to do. I used to be really afraid of heights, and it was like I was 8 years old on the high-dive board all over again. I coulnd't move, I was terrified, I started shaking.

Then something weird happened. I leaned across and put my right foot back onto the slightly rough patch of rock that might almost be a foothold and then I watched as my arms seemed to move by themselves, onto the almost-handholds and pulled me up. I could feel my arm muscles straining and my leg pushing as my left foot finally left the uncomfortable spot and my knee came to rest of a slightly rough seam of rock. I came to my senses enough to pull muself up to the top of the big rock (it's a thin, long rock, so its kind of a sharp top, but stable enough for the moment) and I sat down and pulled myself together before setting the rest of the traps.

The weird thing was that a while later I was at the bottom again, checking and fixing up traps, and I found myself wating to climb the rock again. I thought that I ahd done it, so it was possible, so why not? Then the logical part of m brain told me to shut up, and I went bak up the easy way.

Dreams

I don't have much to say except that today wasn't particularly fun. It was cold, and the lizards were barel active. I have a game-plan for tomorrow though, so I'm not feeling too bad. I had turned off the geyser for one of the bathrooms (there are two outside bathrooms with shower-stalls and toilet cubicles and stuff, as well as the two indoor ones) yesterday and I discovered when I came back from the ield, complete with oil and dust covering and oil in hair, that I'd actualy turned both of them off. I figured that i was tough enough for a cold shower - I've been on enough cmping trips and so on to know wht they're like. In summer here, when it gets super-hot I take them by choice! Plus when my girlie side makes me wash conditioner out of my hair with cold water (akes our hair shiier and doesn't fade your colour as much) I've had enough cold showers to be pretty ok with the concept.

Wat I didn't thin about was that it wasn't a very warm day, and I'd been in the sun all day watching out for lizards, so I was nie and warm. I also didn't think about the fact that we have a borehole, so the temperature of the cold water fluctuates pretty wildly depending on the weather (it's pumped into an above-ground reservoir).

The excruciating nature of the shower cannot be descibed. All I know is that it was the fastest shower I have ever taken, and I was almost blue afterwards, when I came inside and put on 3 layers of clothing and shivered for the rest of the day.

I took a nap a bit later, although I didn't sleep well, it got really cold. Anyone who has ever been camping with me will tell you that I don't sleep when it's cold. I drift around the campsite clutching a cup of tea, until I hit exhaustion and sleep the next afternoon, which leads to me sitting up all of the next night with my cup of tea...

I had some really bizarre dreams too! I can't reember them, but I woke up freaked out and disoriented. I turned on my laptop to liten to music while I made dinner to find that the first song that came up was "dream a little dream of me." Weird.

I find lately that I have weird dreams after I watch weird TV shows. Prison Break, anything random and scifi-ish, the new wizard of oz miniseries... and redaing Hrry Potter books - which is why I still haven't read the last book.

cloud shapes in the wind

So I drove down to the field yesterday, and halfway down I started worrying about the car. I had to aim about 45 degrees left all the way and I was convined that I would have to stop along tehe way and get the wheel alignment sorted out. When I stopped at Machadodorp for lunch and got out the car, I relised that it had nothing to do with the car, but rather the gale-force winds! I had to stagger in to the bathroom and then fight the wind behind me all the waay back. I had been frying in the car, as the sun was pretty hot, but it was even worse outside as the wind was also very warm. I managed to get the last paddle-pop in the star shop (seriously, people have to start stocking more purple and yellow paddle-pops!) and went on my way.

I was running seriously late, after going out with Lara and crew the night before and only really paking in the morning. Typically I can pack for a trip in about 2 minutes, but as I'm in it for the long haul (at least 2 months) I took a bit longer, partly because I as trying to find extra bags for al the little things that I kept adding in. Here's some advice for anyone going on fieldwork; take a few things that will keep you sane, even if they are totally impractical. I have a white jersey, among other things, because when I get back from a day in the field, hot, dusty, usually bruised and bleeding and often with glue in my hair - the idea that I could (if I wanted to) get showered and change into something clean and pristinely white - it really makes a difference. The chances of my wearing it on this trip are practically nil, but at least I know that it's there, and as such it plays much more of a role than many of the things that I use relatively often.

I got to the shopping centre at around 3:30 and took my time doing the first big grocery shop. the sense of deja-vu-but-not wasn't as strong as before, possibly because I was expecting it, but probably because I was tired and hot. I got to the house before it got dark, unpacked and collapsed into bed by about 7 or so, where I picked up the book I was reading last time and tried to figure out where I left off. It didn't grab my attention enough for me to start all over again. The kudu were in the garden again, like a milk-moustached welcoming committee that ran away as soon as I walked anywhere near them. I wonder how the baby is doing, I'm sure he was there but he's grown too much for me to ecognise him!

thi morning was windy gain, although not as bad as yesterday, so I headed off to an outcrop that I know to have a few sheltered areas. I caught two lizards before I packed up - the lizards werent super-active and the wind was picking up so that the traps were starting to strain at their press-stick a bit. The coolest part was when I sat watching some of the traps and a female stuck her head out of a crevice right next to my. She freaked and ran back in, but then stuk her head out again, watching me. I didn't move and she kept going in and out, until she ran out, probably only 5cm from my knee, rushed about 2m to where was traps were, grabbed a mantid and then ranced back nto the crevice. I felt very Attenboroughesque being right next to the action like that!

Once I got back the wind was really picking up, and I rushed inside with all my equipment to spin my blood samples down. An hour later I coouldn't see even the nearest trees from the window. There was so much dust from the wnd that it looked foggy. the house, despite not having a single level patch of floor, is really solid, and I felt safe, while I watched tree branches floating past the windows. At one stage wen it calmed a bit I walked around outside, where I felt the same kind of exhilaration that I usually get from walking in the rin, except that instead of having to towel off when I came inside, I had to put in eyedrops and brush the sand and twigs out of my hair.

And house after that I sat inside trying to figure out what the shapes flying past the window were. It was kind of like pictures in the clouds, except that there were actual possibilities that I was right! At one stage I could have sworn I saw a branch go past wth a surprised vervet monkey attached, another time I thought I saw the purple-crested lourie that I see on our roof sometimes.

Other than that I took a nap, did some work and have been fighting the internet ever since. It's good to be back!

I'm leaving. No, really!

So everything is pretty much organised, I have the few little things that always get forgotten to sort out and pick up and pack (oh yes, I haven't packed yet!), but I'm on track to leave early tomorrow morning for two months of solitude. I'm not sure if I'm really all that happy about it, but I've finally lost the feeling of dread that I felt every time I thought about fieldwork. I think it's because I went and bought traps yesterday - which is usually the last thing I do before I leave.

I got a new DVD drive yesterday, it has light-scribe which is super-cool! Now I just have to find compatible DVDs... so I can back-up my work while I'm away, as well as watching movies on rainy days. Seriously, HOW did people do fieldwork before laptops and Ipods? If it wasn't for my internet connection and DVD collection I think I would die out there! And before cellphones? Mxit? I will have to ask an old scientist. Maybe my supervisor has forgiven me for laughing at his Frisbee-themed desktop background...

I had dinner with Jo on Wednesday, which was nice (pizza!) - I'm going to be back in the gramadoelas soon where I go shopping every 10-14 days, so junk food is pretty much out of the question. Well we have a snack shelf in the cupboard, but take-out isn't really feasible. The scary thing is that I don't miss it at all! I miss Thai food. I'll have to see if there's a Thai place in Nelspruit.

Everything is so hectic - the last day in 'civilization' usually is, I suddenly realise everything I need to do. Fortunately Nelspruit (the nearest town, except for Kaapmuiden which scares me) is pretty big and I can buy anything I forget to take/find out I need later. but now is the frantic rushing around to say goodbye to everyone and make sure that I've RSVP-ed a 'no' wherever necessary and try to spend time with the people I'm going to miss without offending other people by overlooking them.

I remember last year, when I spent 3 months or so on fieldwork I came home twice - the first time was for a meeting, and I have two nights at home. I barely blinked the whole time as I rushed from place to place and besides having my meeting and organising everything and updating my supervisor (I'm really not very good at sending updates when I'm out there) I managed to see most of my close friends, do all my laundry, have a games evening... and by the end I was so totally exhausted I was in slow-motion when I got back to the farm! I was also completely miserable at home because I'd got used to the quiet of being in the middle of nowhere, and the traffic and noise and pollution gave me a blinding headache. At the same time, the giggling at games, and the time that I spent with people I had missed, gave me memories to hold on to when I went back.

The second time I went home was for one day. I had to bring a vehicle back and take another one, so I got home one night (gave my family a huge fright when I walked in for the first time in over a month!) stayed for the following day and left the morning after that. And that time I hadn't told anyone that I was coming home, so I ended up spending time with the people I ran into rather than planning to see everyone. Nobody was offended, as I hadn't planned the trip and I didn't have time to organise anything before I left, and I ended up having a lovely, relaxing day with people I care about. And it gave me the strength I needed to go back and finish up.

I can't believe it's been almost a year since I left for my first big field-trip. and I can't believe that it feels more like going home than leaving.

And I'm going to miss everyone like crazy! When I get back, a lot of the students who were in my class the whole way through will have finished their masters and left. And I'm so sad that I won't be here to see the end of their studies.

I can't really focus now, so I'm going to go and check that I packed all of the right equipment!

Why do I do these things?

Yesterday was the honours student's birthday, and I didn't know until I decided to indulge in some Facebooking tonight. Now I feel terrible! We'll have to have a ... what are those thing called? A pinata? I've never seen one before except in weird TV shows... I felt really bad today because a few of his lizards died and he nearly cried.

So anyway today I discovered that the major issue I've been having with my equipment was NOT a hardware fault, but a SOFTWARE problem. I think. so there is hope that I might actually be able to leave, and take all the readings that I need. There is hope!

The masters student also wanted to measure the colours of the paints she's using before I go away (potentially taking the specs with me), so she went off today and bought a ton of different paints. She had tried to go the scientific route and use a paint company that measures their colours that could match it more exactly, but they messed up, so she picked out a whole bunch of colours and then we measured patches of each one and picked out the right colours, or chose which ones to mix and stuff. It was quite fun actually!

So, to get to the actual point of the story, one of the colours was supposed to be a light orange. It turned out to be a super-hectic lumo orange! It practically glows. I was completely in love with it right away (bear in mind, my hair has gone from blue to fire-engine red in less than 2 months, and the last shoes I bought were bright yellow... I like bright colours!) so I decided to make a sign fr the door with it. I ran out of inspiration though and ended up just painting random abstract symbols on a piece of paper (yes, I have two degrees. Your point being?). I also repainted the practice model lizard by adding orange stripes. It looks like he's been outfitted in camo-gear now! with orange eyes and nostrils. He's scary!

So after I'd walked Luke to his car and had enough of fighting with the equipment, and not feeling like playing with the honours student's data yet (I said I'd have a look, because he's totally stuck), so I boiled to kettle for chai tea and then caught sight of the tube of orange paint. If it was a movie there would have been alternating shots of my eyes, the paint, me, paint, me... in quicker and quicker succession. With the music doing a dramatic crescendo.

So while the kettle boiled I found a paintbrush and painted my nails with the bright orange paint.

It was a messy job, but I figured it's just acrylic (or so I thought) and I could just neaten it up with some wet paper towel. When I tried I succeeded in smearing orange paint all over my palms, a lab coat, the sink, my tea-mug my lower arms and possibly my face (no mirror in the lab and the honours students next door were looking at me oddly, but I have no way of figuring out if that was a result of paint on my face, or paint all over the rest of me. It's also pretty much indelible. Whoops.

So I went outside and chatted to the honours students, and they were all stressed out,. so I felt all patch adamsish because they couldn't look at me without giggling. The plus side was that I didn't want to touch my keyboard until the paint was totally dry! I'm just hoping I can soak the orange off when I get home. Whoops. Oh well, live and learn I guess! and it is a VERY funky orange, so maybe if I paint over it with clear nail polish when I get home. Actually I have clear nail polish here, from the skeleton-reconstruction it ended up in my dissecting kit... I'm going to go and do that now!

Fun times!

hmmm

am so never leaving Joburg! And as much as I don't want to go, I'm still frustrated and wanting to get some work done! I know I'll be happy when I'm there, I was just as upset about leaving at the end of last year! And I want to go to Madagascar! I'm tempted to apply to go from May to July next year as a volunteer, I'm hoping to do something involving the pet trade, but anything really...

Problem is:
1. I have a PhD to finish
2. I'm supposed to be going Brazil/the states at the end of July and I don't think I'd have everything ready if I was off gallivanting in the forests with the tree frogs...
3. I don't have 2500 euros to pay for vaccinations, flights and so on
4. I haven't spoken French in a very long time, so I would need a crash-course. they only accept applicants with an acceptable level of French. Why didn't the Afrikaans people colonise somewhere cool? I speak that well enough!
5. If I raise the money and volunteer in Madagascar, I probably won't be able to volunteer in Antarctica, which has been my dream for much longer than Madagascar...

I'm still waiting for help from the company that 'fixed' my equipment in May, I really wish I'd thought to check the set that I don't usually use back then! Or that I could use the other set to measure anything. I've done all the troubleshooting I can, without actually opening the thing up, and everything is working except for the component that we had checked and serviced!

Right now the annoying KID-ess masters student is doing his proposal presentation. He's a lot more nervous than he's admitting, and wearing a smart shirt and shorts... with a belt buckle that is shiny and the size of a dinner plate. At least it doesn't say "stud" like the last one!

The honours student and I have just used black cotton to tie his backpack to his keyboard. Should be fun...

I want to go to Fiji!

So the last post was cut short by Luke who very kindly phoned (from about 200 metres away) to remind me to go to a seminar. It was given by a guy who recently finished his masters and wet to work for the WWF in Fiji! And now I'm desperate to go there!

And my supervisor is a fruitcake...

and now that the piece of equipment that was giving me trouble is fixed, something else is broken, so I'm not sure when I'll be leaving Joburg. The most frustrating part is that I can't decide what I feel about the whole situation - I was frustrated as anything and really want to get going until the equipment was fixed, when suddenly I really didn't want to leave tomorrow.
I know that I'll miss my friends like crazy, but I also know that once I'm there and settled in I'll be happy as well and then I won't want to come home. Who knows...

Here are some pictures from my trip to Jersey. I know that it's totally unrelated, but I haven't posted photos for a long long time, so I figured I might as well now!


This is an adorable rabbit that I met while waiting for a bus one day. This was shortly after a random car screeched to a halt to rescue a duckling from the side of the road and move it further away from an impending doom of squishedness. I was really touched by the people's concern, but as I had just finished a 10km hike along cliff paths in a little over 2 hours (after a whole morning of running around, no lunch and in blazing sun, when all I had was a single Smint!)

The side of a castle. Doesn't it make you want to go and do some exploring (in true Enid Blyton style)?

A lizard. I fell down some stairs to get some not-fantastic shots of my first wild reptile in Jersey. They were really cute, and two of them had an awesome encounter where they circled and showed off and it was really awesome. I don't know if the tour group that I held up thought so ...(I was doing the real touristy thing with my dad that day, rather than my normal taking the bus to somewhere obscure and hiking randomly around the countryside).

I was desperate to visit this lighthouse and finally managed to squeeze it in with a short geocaching stop on the way, to run down to the base, take a picture and sprint back up the rather long hill to the bus stop. Father was still in tow (and might have outrun me slightly. Bearing in mind that this was on the same day that I fell down stairs chasing a lizard, and the day after a pretty long and brink hike, I feel justified in blaming the leftover lactic acid at this point).

I like taking pictures of fishermen, but in their absence I will make do with a canoeist/kayaker.

A graveyard in St Helier, that hasn't had the grass cut or the plants trimmed or anything in years. They like thinking of it as a nice little oxygen source or something. I thought it was more beautiful in its overgrown-ness than the usual neatly trimmed cemeteries. It was peaceful.
I think they kept pigeons here.
A 'labyrinth' - not quite creepy in the Pan's labyrinth style, but very pretty. I got the feeling that a lot of brides-to-be want to have their picture taken here. Although the ground leading up to it was kind of soggy so they might change their minds...
The view from another rather long (although not so brisk) cliff-path expedition. I loved the fact that you can go almost the whole way around the island without using the roads, and the paths are really well maintained with lots of benches, and grids over slippery spots and things. I did get very lost and in a patch of stinging nettles at one stage, so the signposting could use some help, but otherwise I loved it!
A boat. There were a lot of them. I thought this one was cute though! The tide goes out ridiculously far, so most of my pictures of boats are scary and sad ones of tons of boats lying on the bottom of the harbours, so it was nice to find that I actually had a picture of a floating boat!

The wrong elephant

The title is the punchline to a joke I heard at a 21st on friday night (yes, I dragged myself, hacking and wheezing to spend about 2 hours with a bunch of kids who made me feel old, while spending quality time with a few friends of my age who felt equally old to be surrounded by a bunch of 16-year old goth and emo kiddies who were plastered by 8pm (to the point of breakdancing and hugging me). It was fun, although I was glad to leave when 9pm arrived ad I was exhausted from a week of waking myself by coughing several times a night, and apparently an hour after I let the kiddies (and the birthday girl) threw up uncontrollably and passed out, so I missed the 'fun stuff' and just got the chatting and dancing and other 'old person fun' before I went home ridiculously early.

I'm getting old!

I went home and straight to bed, where I coughed all night and woke myself up several times (it's kind of like an auto-reminder for cough mixture: yep, 3 hours is up, I can have another dose!). After work at the vet on saturday I went straight hmoe and back to bed, where I stayed for the next 18 hours or so. So thanks to the commentors on the last few post - I heeded your advice! I've been trying to sleep in a relatively sitting-up position to avoid getting a chest infection, and I think I was finally tired enough to sleep in that rather weird position. I think adding another pillow and a bundled-up blanket helped too.

I woke up on Sunday still achey and tired, but able to breathe, not coughign as much, and able to go out in public without a box of tissues wedged under my arm. I decided to spen my morning doing something useful, and as my supervisor had emailed me a new paper, I went off to university and spent a very relaxing (if not necessarily productive) afternoon in the lab.

Losing faith in soup

So I was still completely miserable yesterday. My voice is all crackly and about an octave deeper than usual, I'm coughing all the time and my nose started running. At lunchtime, after a very frustrating morning of discovering that one of the pieces of equipment essential to my work isn't working (and it was fine a few weeks ago...) Luke dragged me off to get lunch. All I wanted was soup, and for some reason (this isn't the first time) nowhere on campus had it! I had started feeling really nauseous, so anything else was out of the question (scary stuff: I'd been helping mount UV lights for the honours student's lizards, and he's had the same flu. Apparently vomiting is scheduled for me for the next day or two...).

My supervisor was also around for the first time in over a month (he was conferencing overseas) and I had to get him to let me into the lab after I locked myself out, and then he had to take the offending piece of equipment to be fixed after it became very evident that if I had to handle our scary Russian maintenance guy it would end it tears.

By the end of the afternoon I was sounding really bad, but I'd got one of the new programmes working with my equipment (I don't understand the readout, but we're getting there!) so I went home and stopped for soup along the way. And it didn't work.

Admittedly it wasn't my old standby tomato, it was a fancy tomato and red pepper with basil, but I still coughed all evening and ended up waking up repeatedly until at 3am, when I was coughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face (from impressive bloodshot eyes!) I dosed myself up on decongestants cough syrup (I restocked along with buying soup), painkillers and throat lozenges. I'm feeling better now (i.e. I can breathe again) but I'm tired and I don't wwant to go oout tonight but I promised and I have to get a new DVD drive for my computer and go pick up equipment and figure out the stupid readouts. It wouldn't be so bad if the soup had done its job. I'll have to go back to plain tomato tonight and see if there's a difference.

Oh, and as it was very rightly pointed out, I haven't posted a picture in a while! Here is the view from one of my trapping sites. The house I stay in is at the bottom left, on top of the little hill (the line of trees hides it).

Should have had more soup...

I felt a whole ton better yesterday, and had a fairly productive day! After I left the lab I went off to the vet to tell that that I will work this Saturday (I figured that a cold front and flu makes going on fieldwork 2 days earlier a bit silly) and then went down the road to say hi to Jo and to get more soup.

I think the whole of Joburg has this flu - they were out of cough mixture, medlemon AND all the nice soups. Joey was awesome though, she saw me, told me that I looked 'really sick' (i.e. terrible) and made me mint green tea. She also insisted that I stay with her for a few hours so I decided to skip having a nasty soup and have dinner with her.

It was fantastic! I haven't much time with her lately, considering that we used to go for coffee at least once a week, often more than that but I've been so busy buried in the lab that I've neglected her slightly. We both pulled out our laptops and discussed our photos (she is also a professional photographer, although I wonder about her style sometimes), showed her pictures of all the people I work with and places I go to regularly. She was very funny in her reactions to some of the people, I guess I talk about the lab and the people here so often that she had a mental picture of them that didn't quite add up.

A few other people came to visit, and before I knew it I had been there for 3 hours and I was exhausted, so I went home. I woke up at 2am unable to breathe, and I realised that as great as the Thai food was, soup would have been a wiser option! At least I got up early! Coughing works so much better than my alarm clock! And now I'm off to calibrate equipment and try and figure out exactly how it all works...

Once again, the restorative powers of soup!

I discovered yesterday that although allergies may have played a role, that I had full-on flu. After an entirely non-productive morning where I nearly cried at the futility of my attempts at visual modelling and Luke was really kind and offered sympathy and bought me popcorn (I will write something about the restorative powers of popcorn at some stage, although it is only a temporary fix - a bit like a band-aid when you need a cast and a hospital bed).

Just after lunchtime when I went all over campus looking for lunch and deciding that I didn't want anything I gave up and went home. I took some work with me, but halfway home I realised that with several layers of clothing, a scarf and the heater on full I was shivering violently. By the time I got home I had all of the aches and pains of flu to go with my fever and I couldn't even swallow the cough syrup that I hadn't poured all over my carpet the night before.

So I made a hot water bottle and crawled into bed. I woke up at sevenish and went to a 24-hour grocery store to get throat lozenges and tomato soup, and then went straight back to bed. I woke up this morning a little bit congested but otherwise fine! As I felt like death after my 4 hour nap in the afternoon, I must give credit for the recovery to the fantastic restorative powers of tomato soup!

So forget the flu-caps and vitamin C, just drink soup!