Sad times

So I had a fantastic time in Jersey, only had one day of rain (which was a bit miserable) and went all over the place, seeing tons of the place. I think I saw moer of the island in the first 2 days than my mother had done in a 2 week visit! It was hard work though!

The scary thing is that somewhere that small (the distance across the island is roughly the sanme distance as what I drive to get to university every day) has almost 110 geocaches! The other scary thing is that they were remarkably difficult to find, often involving climbing cliffs or racing off to castles and towers trying to beat the tide back! I will post a bunch of photos and stories soon! I was planning on doing that here, but I just realised that the photos are on my laptop and I'm currently working on my desktop, so that might not work... the stories are far better with pictures!

I got home on Wednesday morning, right before a long weekend, collapsed for a few hours and then had to rush in to do some admin before everything closed down for the holiday. My car wouldn't start and I had to buy a new battery, so I was in a pretty awful mood by the time I got in. There I got some terrible news from Luke.

Josh, the baby chimpanzee at the zoo, was attacked by the males and had been rushed off to hospital. Luke was in complete shock, I hadn't slept in a few days and was also wandering around in a dream world and Elaine was rushing around organising people to take over Althea's other monkeys so that she could stay with him.

I spent the following day with Thandi, the mandril and helped out with her as much as possible. Ollie, the spider-monkey went off to a babysitter for the long weekend - he's a lot easier to handle than she is!

She's really cool though and we get a long well. To tell the truth I never really got alnog with Josh, as much as I really did like spending time with him. That doesn't mean that I wasn't really upset that he was attacked, or when he died the next morning. I just found myself really worried about everyone who was close to Josh, who was devastated.

Althea vanished completely and we had no idea where she was or how she was doing. It's understandable, he was her baby after all, but at the same time it's incredibly frustrating when you know that someone you care about it having a really hard time but there's nothing you can do! A lot of people who were close to Josh weren't even told about the situation until a few days alter. Not because they weren't appreciated but because everyone was so wrapped up in their own shock over what had happened. Luke was very promptly 'looked after' by everyone around. I think he went to several hundred movies with concerned friends (me included).

So anyway that was the hectic week back. I'm waiting for a meeting now and then I'm hoping to go and see Thandi and Oliver again. This whole thing has made me very worried about their future! when Josh's intro seemed to have been a success I wasn't really stressed, but now I'm worrying about where the other two will be introduced and how it'll work out.

Here's Luke and Oliver, just to complete the monkey collection!

I'm sorry about the 'bit and pieces' nature of this post. It started a while ago and then I saved a draft and forgot about it. I'm not sure how to deal with Josh, so I'm not sure how else to write about him.

He used to fall asleep while the other chimps were around and then he'd wake up and panic and run off to rejoin the group. He was afraid of climbing. He loved anything sugary. He adored cucumber and beans. He was fascinated by shoes. When I stopped him from weating broken glass he decided that he hated me, but if I hung upside down from his jungle gym he would run over and stroke my face and try to figure out what my hair was.

He was a very special little ape. And he will be missed. A lot. I just hope that people remember all the happy times he ahd and the fun he had, not just the little chimp on a stretcher that was published in the newspaper on Thursday.

aaaah! aaah!

So after much running around with these stupid funding applications, I decided to go geocaching on my way home yesterday. It was a nice 30 minute detour, with a lovely view, and although it might not be the nicest area, I was able to park my car, run and get it and get back to my car in less than 2 minutes!

Last night Luke and I went off to have dinner at the house of one of our numerous zoo-staff friends, where we learned how to eat, drink and chat while fending off Thandi, the baby mandril. It was fun, even if it got really cold while we were saying goodbye and Luke wouldn't stop talking so Elaine and I had to share a scarf and hop around in little circles to keep warm!

This morning it was up early to collect my mother from the airport. I left super-early, way before there should have been traffic, and proceeded to get stuck in traffic, where it took me an hour to go 10 km and eventually took me 2 hours to get to the airport. I used some of my stylish back-route knowledge and got us home in just over an hour, after detouring through some of the most wonderfully dodgy (and yet somehow kitsch at the same time) areas of Kempton Park.

So now I'm trying desperately to finalise my funding applications before I have to go off home to pack for my flight this evening, except that I need things from people to finish and they're not helping by not being here, or not answering email, so I'm afraid Luke is going to be PAing for me while I'm away.. (yay! thanks! :) )

Anyway I was talking to my mom between fits of road rage this morning, and I realised that I know more about Jersey than she does, and she just went there! I guess that's the awesome thing about geocaching, I know about all these random locations where there are caches, so I can get a totally more awesome experiece! Plus, with my pretty awful sense of direction, I get to have a GPS with me so geftting lost is slightly harder, plus I've also been looking at maps and stuff a lto, so I have a general and very vague idea of where stuff is on the island.

The sad thing is that I will probably see very little of Jersey in the 5 days taht I'm there, as I'm scheduled to go and meet with the zoo people on my first day, and if it goes well I'll probably live in the zoo for most of my stay. Zoos have a way of doing that to you!

Stupid funding!

So, as I said, my 'birthday present' from the university was a letter refusing my funding application to go overseas. I wasn't too upset about it, I figured taht I would do some lab work here, and then do my fieldwork, and do the final batch of labwork overseas next year.

The only issue with this is that we've sent some equipment overseas for a service, and it hasn't even reached the palce eyt to be fixed up. Which means that it might be too late for me to get out into the field (if it gets cold there's nothing I can do!). So I started looking for alternative funding, and found that 99% of sources are only for postdocs or staff members. alowly PhD student, particularly one like me who skipped masters and thus has very little by way of credentials (I have 1 conference presentation, no publications and very little experience, just a bunch of prizes for being a good student).

It's been really stressful! The issue is also that I've always hated asking for money. I watch those TV shows where kids demand money frmo their parents, and wonder how on earth they do that! I've worked part-time from when I was 18, and I had holiday jobs from at least 3 years before that. Plus, I refuse to fund the entire thing myself. It's not my job, or my father's job to pay for me to do work that will help the university (it will help me as well, which is why I'm prepared to apy for some of it, but not more than 1/4 of what I need.

I just hate the red tape. I understand that there are a lot of people who want funding, but the fact that they won't even consider an application from a student drives me nuts! The students are the ones who do research almost all the time, we have a lower teaching load so we can get our projects done (although it can get pretty high). Plus wanting to graduate motivates us to publish, which makes out supervisors look good, which gets them more funding. And the government subsidises the university for each student they have, and for each student that graduates. Which makes me really confused as to why they're so much happier to fund people who are being paid a salary than to fund people who pay to BE there!

Fun times!

Birthday coffee!

So yesterday was my birthday! And it was a really really special day! Most of my friends remembered and sent really awesome messages, which was so nice. Luke was really fantastic, doing everything from going for ice-cream, to going geocaching, and driving everywhere. Thanks Luke, you is rox!!!

Duncan and Tom and Luke and I went off to dinner to an Indian place that I really love, and dinner was fabulou as usual. We went from there to a place in Greenside, where Luke found a fly in his drink (really!). It was so nice to not have to sit home alone on my birthday, so thanks guys! It was the best birthday present ever!

Jen and Megs got me an Espresso maker, and coffee grounds as well as a whole bunch of cool little things for my trip. I made myself WAY too much coffee this morning and am almost twitching! My mom got me really cute little Espresso cups, so I got to use one! Luke gave me a first aid kit (which is far more necessary than I'd like to admit...).

On top of all of that, all the well-wishes and fun that I had, it was the K-I-D-Ses that really made my day special! One of the secons year students sent me a message the night before asking to arrange a meeting because some of them were confused about an assignment that was due yesterday afternoon. I panicked a bit becasue I didn't really remember that section very well, and dashed into my lab, reading over everything quickly before they arrived.

Then the door opened and about half the second-year class trooped in. I though "Oh boy, it must be a really big problem!") when all of a sudden they presented me with coffee, choc-chip cookies and a whole bunch of coffee and choc-chip muffins (I like coffee, in case nobody noticed). There was no problem, they just wanted to give me a surprise! It was so totally unexpected, I was stunned! Then in the lab in the afternoon Luke gave me a cupcake and I wandered around while random groups of students sang happy birthday to me and behaved really really well (for a lab).

Its day like that that make all the marking and drudgery and explaining and re-explaining worth it! So I guess I love my friends AND my students and everyone else!

Birthdays rock!

The only negative (unless you count the fly in Luke's drink) is that I got an email from teh faculty saying that they won't fund my trip overseas to do lab work. Not sure what I'm going to do... Plus I got an email saying that the equipment we just sent off for a service (a week ago) has not yet arrived in the states, which means that I won't be able to begin fieldwork on schedule. So if I have to postpone fieldwork ANd lab work to next year, it'll make my life very difficult. I'm going off now to try and make a plan!

looking back

So tomorrow is my birthday, and I feel like indulging in some reminiscing about the last year. Because I can!

It's weird, I feel like I've never actually been 22. about 8 months ago I though I was 23 for some reason, and have been preparing to turn 24. Except that I'm still 22. Almost exactly a year ago I took my first long trip that I drove on (previously the furthest I had ever driven was a 150km field trip), taking myself 950km away from home all alone. I spent my birthday at Augrabies, the most beautiful place in the world, and spent the day watching some pretty awesome lizards. I drove home the next day. On the way down my CD player stopped working, so I ended up spending 11 hours listening to OFM (the sound of central south africa), with their million repeats of Justin Timberlake songs, and weird adverts for butcheries ("Manny's meat, waar goeie vriende...MEAT!"). On the way home I listened to it again. That was the day of the highschool shootings in the US, so I had a rather unpleasant trip back, thinking about violence, and kids, and what it all means.

The day after my birthday I also got my first ever ticket, for running a stop-street in a tiny town in the northern cape. The sign was almost hidden, the lines on the road were faded and it was raining. The people in front of me didn't stop so I didn't know it was there. Unfortunately, coming the other way was a van full of policemen on their way to lunch!

22 was the year when I came to grips with being a PhD student, and learned a lot about friendship and the incredible support I got in a decision to start a doctorate at 21. I still have days when I feel like I'm just pretending, like a little kid dressing up in adult's clothes that are waaay too big, but I also know that I ahve a supoprt system for days like that, and I'm eternally grateful!

I started geocaching, which has shown me exactly how much we walk past every day without knowing that its there! I went to the Wild coast for the first time and had my first real holiday in years! My brother got married (ok, I was still 21, but it was a big event!) as did a lot of my friends. I got tickbite fever for the first time! and sunstroke for the millionth. Elvis began his travels, after I got him in an experience where I laughed so hard I couldn't stand up!

I did my own fieldwork for the first time ever, and realised a lot of what was gonig on while I was a field assistant and I didn't necessarily understand why people reacted they way that they did. I learned to spend time alone, and take long walks when I got frustrated. I leanred to love the simplicity of waking up every day witha simple task, and working non-stop to do whatever needed to be done. To be the one who has to make the decision when things go wrong, and to make a plan to stop any other mishaps. To get back to Joburg has never been harder!

There have been a lot of firsts in the last year, and a lot of times that I didn't feel like I was coping. Which meant that I learned a lot about how much I can actually deal with, when to stop and give up, and when to keep going. I learned about support systems, and how when you leave friends behind for 3 months at a time, you can pick up right where you left off, as long as you remember that they didn't stop living when you weren't there.

So much happened that I can't explain, or write about properly. I guess I'm scared, with so much happening in one year I'm not quite sure I can handle any more in the coming eyar. But if nothing new happens... I don't think I could handle it either! But I guess I will, because I always do. And that's a good thing! I think.

Logic

This morning I was reminded of those jokes we used to tell when we were younger. I've seen them on various emails over the years as well. Things like:

Q: how do you put an elephant in the fridge?
A: open the fridge, put elephant inside, close the door.

The point of them was to show that as adults we tend to overcomplicate things. Most adults get it wrong (and have gruesome discussions about hacking up elephants) while little kids get it right pretty easily. The reason that I thought about it was that my friend EEbEE sent me a link for a game he had been playing all morning that was driving him absolutely nuts. It's called petals around the rose and you have to guess the total when a bunch of dice are rolled (not the totals on the dice, its something you have to work out). There are 3 things they tell you and then you have to think about it. EEbs had been going for AGES and was going nuts, and I managed to solve it relatively quickly. this drove him nuts, until he figured it out a few minutes after me.

So try it out if you have some time and some pent-up anger to release by yelling at your PC. And think about the elephant in the fridge!

Friendship

Oh and next week is my birthday and I'm thinking fo having a movie night to celebrate. Any suggestions on movies for about 10 or so people with vastly different tastes? Otherwise we'll fall back to our old standby of Settlers and Cranium. Which is always fun.

I've decided that although International Friendship day is only in August, I will be in the field then and will probably forget that it IS sunday...

So in honour of it not being International Friendshi0p, I would like everyone who reads this to post a list of 10 things that they love about their friends. I just think that a lot of people are having a pretty rough time at the moment and its time to be happy and thankful for those incredible people in our lives!

I love my friends because:

1. They all rock!


2. They're so different! I love that each person seems to belong to a completely separate planet, but they fit together so well. No evening is ever the same!


3. We have awesome adventures together.


4. They make me laugh! And they can always make me feel better when I'm upset.


5. We always end up giggling helplessly at inappropriate times (like that conference...).


6. They put up with my weird ideas (like geocaching in the rain, at night!)


7. Cream Soda!


8. Random discussions about anything!


9. Late-night messages on Mxit when I can't sleep!


10. The way that some of my closer friends aren't afraid to tell me the truth, particularly if I'm being silly or over-reacting or being arrogant. They'll look me in the eye and tell me to pull myself together. I used to get really defensive, but I've come to realise just how special it is, and how lucky I am.

I'm a really lucky person :)

The waiting game

So I'm basically just sitting in my lab, waiting for my supervisor to give some work back to me with comments. I remembered that I used to write arb stuff while waiting before and I thought I'd try again. I really miss having a blog going all the time. It got annoying when people I didn't want reading it read it, but I guess that's part and parcel of sticking something on the internet isn't it?

I just realised I made some coffee right before lunch when Luke came, proofread my work (not sure how carefully, considering that he had an hour to collect me, drag me off for lunch and then get to a lab. Thanks Luke, you is totally rox as always! The coffee is still sitting there... it's in a travel mug, but not the best one, so is probably lukewarm at best (no puin intended!).

Oh! and there was some guy in the Matrix (our student centre) dressed all in black with a floorlength leather coat, just like Neo in "the Matrix" How cool? He was kind of old and had this funky mohawk-with-recending-hairline thing going on, but it was very exciting!

And I was supposed to go to the zoo today, but I don't think I'll make it :( sad times. I missed out on a lot of work because there was no power at university for the whole of yesterday afternoon. Sad times once again! And I went to bed late because I was watching Bones (with some guilt, because I am the anti-crime show person, but I love it! I like the nerds in the lab, I can relate!). It makes me laugh! Not the dead people part, that's pretty gross, but the people are fnuny!

Oh yes, for the record, the coffee is just lukewarm enough to not be cold. And I have nothing against cold coffee. So I will leave it for a while. Hopefully I will not leave it standing over the weekend. Like last time...

I'm listening to Fool's Garden. I don't know anything about them, but they're cool. Funny. Funny is good these days. I tried to do stats earlier, and found out completely, totally and utterly that there is no relationship between 2 variables. Fun times! I got 3 stats books out the library and am attempting to brush up on my somewhat rusty knowledge! Teh annoying thing is that I really like the theory of stats. I love discussing it and figuring out what goes where and what it all means... but actually doing it is difficult! Which is just incredibly frustrating!

Fool's garden is... OH! They're the lemon tree people. That makes so much more sense! thank you Wikipedia! I was about 10 or 11 when Lemon Tree came out and my cousin and I sang it CONSTANTLY! And I wasn't exposed to contemporary music at all as a little kid... except Bon Jovi which my best friend loved. They came and played a concert here when I was around 10 or so, the first big concert I remember. I think a lot of bands stopped coming with the violence and the poilitical situation and stuff. I don't remember.

This is a bit of a random post. I'm sorry it's been a while!

not being needed when you don't have time to be needed anyway

So I worked at the zoo as much as possible, rushing through the day to finish early so that I could go there, or going before university in the morning. It was fantastic, watching teh death rates drop and seeing the animals in better enclosures. There's something really really satisfying about husbandry! Then I went away on a fieldtrip for a week.

It was a really nice trip, partly becasue the people were great, and partly because we were ridiculously overstaffed, so I didn't have to stress about anything. It was weird going abck to the place where I do my fieldwork with a bunch of other people. I slept on a different bed to usual, and found myself automatically walking to the wrong bed, or getting confused when something was in the wrong place in the kitchen. I took a lot of walks back to my old spots, but it's really overgrown (grass over 2m tall, we measured!) so it was hard to get anywhere.

So anyway I got back and rushed off to the zoo the following day. The main quarantine staff were away so I was there a lot until they got back. Then my dad booked me a ticket to visit him in Jersey in 2 weeks time (England Jersey, not New Jersey), so suddenly I had a week less to organise everything... Plus there were some raised eyebrows at university about the amount of time I was spending at the zoo (even though it never cut into my studies at all), so I had to cut down on zoo time quite substantially.

So basically I'm there on weekends and for an hour or two during the day. But now ehne I call to see if they need me, most of the time they've already finished for the day. the staff, plus one volunteer (who used to need supervision becasue she was really inexperienced but now is pretty much ok on her own) are coping without me. It's so horrible!

I love that the animals are ok, and that is my primary worry. And I'm relieved that I don't have to divide up my pretty limited free time so much anymore. But it also sucks. There was something really special in being the only volunteer down there. And that I was one of the more experienced people helping with the animals, that I was trusted to be there on my own or to be in charge on a Sunday. And not being needed anymore hurts a lot more than I'd realised. And I know that I'm going away and that there won't be any unresolved issues with my leaving is fantastic.

But helping in quarantine with those incredible animals has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I've learned so much about everything, about the zoo, about the animals, about me. I don't regret all the time, or the boiling hot rooms or wearing dodgy overalls and gumboots. If I had an option I would do it all again in a heartbeat. So I guess I should stop feeling rejected and just enjoy what I got out of the experience. I hope that somewhere along the line I made a difference to those lizards. Even if one survives that wouldn't have otherwise it will be more than worth it!

It was worth it!

Zooing

So I've been really quiet lately because I seem to be spending more and more time at the zoo these days! First of all some relatives came out from the UK to visit family, and I organised a special tour for my uncle. He's blind, so most activities are really bornig for him, but fortunately I got my friend Elaine, who works at the zoo, to arrange for him to touch a whole bunch of animals, to get an idea of what the look like. She did an incredible job, and it was very special to see how touched he was to realise that monkeys have hands!

This got me involved at the zoo again (Luke and I have semi-lived there for about 4 years now, including Luke's masters being based on zoo animals), as I hadn't spent too much time there recently with fieldwork and work and everything else. There are curretly two baby monkeys being hand-reared, so I started spening lots of time looking after them to give Althea (their 'mom') some time to get her other work done. Then, about 10 days ago, a whole bunch of animals from Madagascar were confiscated from the airport and put into quarantine at the zoo. By a whole bunch I mean several hundred! It was insane, the zoo wasn't really equipped to handle so many animals in a wuarantine that was designed for the occasional animal being sold or bought or exchanged, and the people who work there don't have any experience with Madagascan animals so trying to figure out husbandry for several hundred animals ni pretty bad condition was really really hard work! On top of it all they had to contend with me jumping up and down begging to be allowed to help! Fortunately (for my sake) they let me help out, but this quickly became a large part of my day. Feeding 600 animals takes a long time, and I try to help as much as possible so that the vets have time to treat the sick ones.

It's been really awesome to see some of the most stunning animals in the world. I've fallen in love with the little tree frogs, the big tomato frogs, the big day geckos (and the small day geckos) the huge panther chameleons and all the other incredible animal there. But at the same time I would dearly lovfe to remove the kneecaps of everyone involved in taking these animals out of their natural habitat, packing them in tiny little boxes and sending them voerseas to be sold as pets. It makes me so angry. I understand why people would want these animals as pets, they're very cool. But to take them away from where they should be... I just don't get it.

A long time ago I made a decision to never buy an animal that wasn't bred in captivity. Before that I decided to never ever buy an animal from a petshop. This was even before I refused a job at a petshop that sold animals. My point is, yes, that chameleon in the petshop looks really cool. But do you really want a pet that has been through so much? An animal that makes it to a petshop is probably among the 20 or so percent that survived a trip in horrendous conditions. I don't understand people. Really, animals are way cooler!

evil tracksuit people

Generally at the end of fieldwork I'm super-fit and feeling great, and then when I get home after a few weeks of sitting behind a desk and eating moms cooking (which is great, but generally when I'm away I eat much simpler food, and less meat, because I'm too lazy to cook much at the end of a long day) I'm right back to where I started. which means 2 things: 1. whenever I go to the field/on a fieldtrip the first few days are always really difficult. 2. I never feel as good about myself when I'm at home.

So on monday I went back to the gym and got a new contract. It was pretty expensive, althugh I got a lovely 20% student discount, so I figured that that would be a great motivator to get the best value out of said contract and make sure I go regularly. Which meant that I left home just after 5am on Tuesdayt morning and went off to gym. By the time I'd arrived, got past security (I didn't have a membership card yet) and got going it was almost 6, and after jogging a little bit I saw that the 6am class was starting, so I figured I go and join in.

Big mistake! Firstly it was a combination of cardio (stepping and suff), weights and random other exercises that involve all those core muscles that I think I was born without. They were also the kind of exercises that I might almost manage, except for the fact that we were expected to do them all with a whole pile of weights. When we finally got to put the weights down they strapped them to out ankles and made us do other stuff.We also got split into groups, and I was paired up with a lady who obviously runs 45 kilometres every morning before doing pilates and then aerobics and then spinning, all ebfore breakfast. She was the kind of person who would use the rest periods (when the rest of us were collapsed in a puddle of sweat) to do her own exercises. It just wasn't cool. I was tempted to slap her and say something along the lones of "yes, look at you. You're so fit! Oh wow. One day when something goes wrong on the flight to Mauritius or the Seychelles and you end up stranded on a deserted island, you'll regret your 0.2% body fat! You'll have to eat your own leg to provide energy for the 10km hops around the island that you'll probably want to do every morning." But I didn't, I just battled through, sharing pained looks with the other participants.

That afternoon and the following day, I could hardly walk. Jen had advised me to keep going to make it hurt less (I couldn't sit up to get otu of bed, couldn't sit, couldn't stand up...) so I went off to gym the next morning, avoided all calsses like the plague and managed a limping jog and a few weight machine before hobbling off to the showers. The rest of the next day was even worse! In the evening, after a long and quite hilarious lab where I couldn't sit down for 3 hours partly from busyness, but largely due to the pain, as well as Luke's not even veiled sarcasm) I went home, sank into a hot bath with this weird mustard homeopathic stuff I used to use for stiffness after hockey (not the ice variety, but normal on fields hockey) tournaments when I was at school.

So this mornign I woke up feeling fantastic. It was the weirdest thign! so I went off to gym, had a fantastic run dashed off to wits, and foudn that climbing stairs still hurts, but not too badly. Jen already gave me the 'told you so' talk, but I don't mind. So here's hoping it never gets that bad again. And also hoping that I manage to keep going every day without giving up because of the horrible soccer-moms with too much free time for exercise!

Oh, and I must also write about the monkeys, I keep forgetting!

The book quiz

So I was arbing around waiting for my lab lock to be fixed (I feel nervous leaving my stuff in the lab when the lock occasionally falls off the door... It's also hard to lock i the first place! So I found this book quiz. this is what it came up with:

You're The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!

by C.S. Lewis

You were just looking for some decent clothes when everything changed
quite dramatically. For the better or for the worse, it is still hard to tell. Now it
seems like winter will never end and you feel cursed. Soon there will be an epic
struggle between two forces in your life and you are very concerned about a betrayal
that could turn the balance. If this makes it sound like you're re-enacting Christian
theological events, that may or may not be coincidence. When in doubt, put your trust
in zoo animals.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Interesting huh?

cooking (and cooking and cooking and cooking)

So there's a fieldtrip that goes to the east coast every year to teach the little second year students all about the marine ecosystems and the stuff you find living there. As well as basic ecology and systematics and experimental design. That's in 10 days! 8 if you don't count travelling days. It's an awesome trip and I really love it, you get to go to all these incredible places and look at things that are so interesting and so different from the usual stuff we do at university that it feels like a break in another world. In the previous 2 years I went as a taching assistant, which was awesome because I got to do all the cool stuff without the stress of the exam at the end. This year I wasn't invited. Rather, I was not invited as teaching staff, but rather as 'caterers assistant' by the caterer who has become a good friend of mine after I spet the previous 2 trips helping her in every spare moment. The cooking facilities are really bad and feeding around 50 people is a big job!

So I agreed. I figured that I would still have time to help students, plus I love the trip so much I thought it would be worth cooking (something that I hate) just to be there. I was wrong.

Firstly, I had no idea how living in the middle of nowhere for 3 months had affected me. I've actually become somewhat antisocial and having 45 people around all the time drove me crazy. I actually started taking breaks where I would go and walk on the beach for an hour or so and just take some 'alone time' to breathe!

Secondly I hate cooking. The facilities consist of microwaves (in separate cottages. I did a lot of runing from cottage to cottage) and stoves the size of microwaves with a hot plate on top. Either the hot plate OR the stove could work at one time, and if too many cottages were using theirs our food didn't cook. Often I would have pots going in adjacent cottages and just sprint back and forth to stir and so on...

Third, we had load shedding. That is where our infrastructure can't handle the electricity requirements of everyone using power, as well as power stations needing maintenance, so random areas have power cuts that last up to 2 hours, often twice or three times a day. If that happens just before dinner, you're in a lot of trouble! One day we had to make 45 individual pasta salads,and we had a power cut, so when it came back on I sat until 2am cooking pasta (the caterer was feeling sick, and I let her sleep through the whole saga). To this day I can't eat pasta without feeling ill!

Fourth. It's hard to say this without sounding egotistical. Basically, I know the work. I really really do. I loved the course and worked really hard, to a point where I very nearly left my current university to go to the coast to study Marine biology. So as much as I enjoyed the fact that I was making their lives easier and making it possible for the kids to work without worrying about anything else (and for the record, they were the nicest group of students I've ever encountered on a fieldtrip, always volunteering to help, and nice to chat to), I came to resent to people who were there to teach, and I also resented the fact that whenever I wanted to participate I had to cook. There was even a day when I came down with heatstroke on the beach and went to lie down, only to be woken up half an hour later to make lunch. Yes, it's why I was there and I was happy to do my job with a smile. But it shouldn't have been my job.

It was possibly the hardest 10 days I've had in a long time. I had to think through my priorities and my rationalising being there. Fortunately I have some really supportive friends (on and off the trip) who were always willing to listen, even when I just needed to complain to get the nasty thoughts out of my system. I realised that I was holding onto something that ended when I wasn't invited back. And as much as I love the trip, I don't love it that much. So, unless I get invited as a teaching assistant again, that was the last time for me and the fieldtrip. I'm glad I got to spend it with such fantastic kids, and sad about the politics going on amongst the staff that very nearly ruined it for me. And at least every time I cook now I can rejoince in the fact that it's only ONE tomato! or one cucumber. Not 10 or 500!

monkeys and sunshine and rain

So I got back from the field feeling quite odd about life in general. Partly I was really glad to be home, and rushed around like a maniac (it was almost 3 weeks before I managed to stay home for dinner one night) trying to see everyone and spend time with the friends who I had missed so much. On the other hand, I'd come to like the solitude of living in the middle of nowhere (or rather half an hour's drive from Somewhere, which is a lot more convenient than Nowhere!) and it was really difficult to come to terms with all the noise and rush of being back in Joburg.

Joburg is an awesome place, really. It's just that everyone here is always in a hurry to be somewhere and do something, and the overall sense of hurry and business had finally left me (without my even realising it) until I got back to feel it seeping back into my bones. I miss the quiet, and not worrying about crime as much. I miss being able to go walking whenever I have a free moment. I miss the simplicity of having a set job to do and doing everything to complete it. Life back home is so much more complicated.

Anyway, three weeks after I got home was Christmas, which was pretty quiet, except for a mad dash tpo the emergency vet quite late on Christmas eve, while my parents were off at church. That was exciting, particularly when Max (the dog) managed to bite the vet several times, while wearing a muzzle!

New Years was equally low-key, just spending time with friends and generally keeping busy. Then, two days later I headed off with Luke to meet his cousin Duncan down in Sedgefield. Sedgefield is a tiny little place on the Wild Coast (it's right at the bottom of south africa, but if you call it the 'South Coast' people get upset because that's actually a chunk of the East Coast, slightly below the North Coast. Don't ask me.) about 30 km from Knysna. It was the most relaxing week ever! I'd never realised how long it had been since I'd had a real holiday, and we had tons of fun. It was also really beautiful. I'd never been there beofre, and Luke and Duncan were very patient in letting me drag them on random paths through the forest (the Knysna forenst is amazing!) in the rain.

I also got to see the very exciting process of filming, as Duncan had decided to make a music video. I realised very quickly that I have absolutely no calling to be an actor of any description, but holding the camera and planning shots and stuff is a lot of fun!

The rest of the time (when we were not putting up the beach tent inside out and wondering why the valuables bags were on the outside) and swimming in weird black seaweed, we went geocaching. I won't go into detail here, as I think Luke has posted a bunch of stuff about it on his blog, except to say that I find it tremendously exciting and that Luke deserves a medal for putting up with me when:

1. I didn't realise that the cache in the lagoon had been missing for 6 months, and then laughed at Luke for freaking out at the squishy mud. It was funny!
2. Dragging him off on a 4km hike where the river crossings were flooded, and then feraking out at each and every one of the five river crossings we had to make. In flip flops.
3. Making him dive in after I lost Elvis at a river crossing.
4. I lost the fish. Long story. Rather, the fish went missing, and it was probably my fault. Of course I had made the fish, so it was my fish to lose.
5. That rather unpleasant vertical hike up a sand dune that involved scrabbling, rock climbing and a lot of trying to figure out where the path was. I was in flip flops, but Luke was barefoot, and as you must know, fynbos is rather sharp and pointy!
6. Doing the rather long hike to Gericke's point twice, and never actually getting there...

Anyway, that's all for today. If I get around to blogging inthe next six months I'll explain the whole Elvis saga, otherwise the world will always be left to wonder!

nearly there!

So, after 2 months of living in the middle of nowhere, the end is in sight! i recaptured enough lizards to make a fasible sample, altough not as many as I would have liked. This is pretty impressive considering that I think I've recaptured more than most people woud have expected, particularly considering that the weather got so horrible and hot and humid that the lizards were only really trappable between 6am and aroun 8:30, so I spent a lot of days getting up at 5 and rushing off to the rocks that were already hot and steaming. I'm sure the humidity is good for me, sweating out al the toxins and so on! All in all it was pretty unpleasant and I felt like I wasn't going to make it to the end here without deregistering quietly and moving to sweden or something.

I've also been collecting insects, which hasn't been going too well as I'm trying to catch the things that i've seen the lizards eat, but all those insects are really really tiny, and hard to catch, and to get enough to do a real chemical analsis when I get back, I'm going to need millions.

Watching the lizards has been a whole bundle of fun too... they're really skittish and its hard to get into a position where I can actually see them well enough to identify individuals. on top of that they move superfast so I can't stay in one spot to watch them, and they generally run around for a minute or two and then vanish into a crevice, only emerging afer a few hours.

Then on thursday it started clouding over. By the evening it was freezing cold.By morning it was still freezing and rainy and we had no power. Ingrid decided to go to nelspruit to have unch with a friend. An hour after she left we had a downpour like I've never seen before. The power came back on in the early afternoon and there was no sign of Ingrid. I did all my work in a hurry so that if the power went out again it would be ok. She got back after dark, all the power in Nelspruit was out, so there was a gridlock around every intersection.

It rained for two more days, torrential rain that made me wonder if the Lowveld gets a monsoon season. We even had purple sky at one stage! It was quite scary! And, contrary to our normal experience the power stayed on! I was quite happy about thata, although also glad that I'd made the trek to Kaapmuiden a few days before to get ive to pack around my samples in the freezer in case it went off again. Kaapmuiden is a tiny tiny town around a train station. When I say tiny I mean it makes Kamieskrron look like a thriving metropolis! It's quite scary too, all sort of ding and dodgy, complete with random dogs running around. I can't even say around the streets because there aren't any. It's a train station, about 10 houses, a bottle store and a general store and that's it.

Yesterday was better and I went out bug-hunting, and today is freezing and clouody, so i'm not too sure if it'll clear up enugh to go out today. But I cna't be lazy because I need to get everything done before I GO HOME! i'm so glad I'll be able to sleep in my own bed, see my family and friends and animals again!

Of course the fact that I'm looking forward to it means that I'll get home, be exhausted and grumpy, and then fight with everybody I care about. fun times!

walking

Since I got here, almost 2 months ago, every evening/late afternoon I've taken a walk. It varies, from rather ambitions exploring and finding all kinds of new outcrops and plants and running ito kudu ALL the time, to days that have been hard work and i'm feeing a bit down so I'll walk to one of the outcrops, lie on my back and stare up at the beautiful blue sky until it starts getting dark when I'll walk back. I always hate going back, into the brightly lit house. I take a torch with me, but rarely use it, unless I left a bit later than usual and then get a bit more ambitious than I'd intended. There are a lot of big loose rocks on the roads and paths here, and it can be really dangerous to walk in the dark, particularly with my track record for injury!

For a few weeks I would walk along a really narrow path, through grass that is as tall as me, to a flat bit of road that isn't too rocky, where i would run for a bit. That was fine, but when I got really badly sunburnt and sunstroke it had to stop because moving too much hurt. I'm still relishing the ability to sleep on my back, twist to grab something, bend over...

Lately I've been pretty lazy in my walks. Its been raining a lot, and I got frustrated, but never walked far. When it doesn't rain it gets so blisteringly hot (and humid) that I get home from the field and collapse, having had at least 2 1/2 litres of water in the four hours that I was out and still being thirsty.

Today was a bad day. It was raining when i woke up, so i went back to sleep. an hour later the sun was coming out, so I dashed off, set up traps and it because so hot that nothing moved, and I caught a few lizards for the Masters student, but nothing for me, which was exhausting and frustrating! I came home, did some work with the lizards that I have here and slept until I had to work on the lizard (yes, just one) that I caught yesterday. After helping the masters student (who officially doesn't lift a finger to help me, and it really annoys me) with the lizards I had caught for her, I went for a walk.

There is a tiny little outcrop a few hundred metres from the house, where there is a tiny population of lizards, with one male who I hae never been able to catch. I figured I'd go there, its a fitting place for frustration. In the first few weeks when I was really upset with the other student I would go down there and call Lara for smpathy and advice. I got there in under a minute and then looked up at the road. The first time I went walking was during the first week that I was here. I walked long the road, took a little path and got totally lost in a clump of trees, but managed to find my way back because the lights in the house were on.

I realised that i hadn't taken a proper walk in ages, so I followed the road around the small loop, which goes past the closest outcrop and then back to the house. it's a hilly walk, but not long, probably around 2km or so. I've done the worst parts carrying equipment before and survived. So I walked the loop, stopping only to take a large roll of rusty barbed wire out of the road (I have to dodge it when I'm driving to the farthest outcrop every day and it gets quite hair-raising!). By the time I got back it was almost dark. the frogs were out in full force and it was deafening, but not unpleasant. the moon is a crescent, and looks bigger here than it is at home. I could almost imagine the little kid from the dreamworks logo sitting in it and fishing!

So that was my day!

The little things in life

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while! I was planning on using this as a record of my first field season, but it just hasn't happened. Firstly, everything here is always hectic, and secondly... life in the field is tremendously dramatic and exciting when you're there, but in actual fact, when I try to explain what's been going on, I always realise how incredible boring it is. Here's my basic schedule:

06h30: wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, pack equipment for the field
07h30: leave for the field
07h40 - 08h00: walk from car to field site, taking two trips because of all the equipment
08h00 - 12h00: trap lizards, getting sunburnt, exhausted and often injured in the process ( I consider a day that I don't bleed as a day wasted)
13h00: leave field site, get back to the house and process samples. If possible take a nap on he dodgy futon couch thing (photos will be added as soon as I get home to faster connection speed!
14h00: start other work - either processing lizards - which can take hours, or else walking around the farm for a few hours with traps, trying to get extra lizards.
17h00: start finishing up the previous days lizards, do readings on the other student's lizards
23h00: bed

That's it, 7 days a week! if it rains, I'll use the opportunity to catch up on sleep, get my work done slightly earlier and take walks for fun instead of for work. Nothing too exciting to write about! Occasionally something will happen - like I'll be bleeding more profusely than usual, or the time I got sunstroke and was unable to sleep for 3 days because I was too burnt to lie down in any workable posiion. Or the power failure the other night, which had a nasty effect on our food which i only realised 2 days ago, after cooking with some of said food and becoming violently ill for two days. There was also the day I pioneered a new lizard-trapping strategy, of hiding in bushes and then jumping out to scare lizards onto traps. it worked very well until I realsied that sme of the farmers from next door had just driven past, and found me tumbling out of bushes to be mildly amusing!

I can't really think of anything else interesting.

Its coming close to the end of this season's work. I'm a bit stressed, I have a lot to do in the next 3 weeks, and am not nearly where I need to be. We lost 6 of the last 8 days to rain, which also doesn't really help too much! I can't wait to get home and see everyone again, but I'm also dreading all of this being over. Its kind of nice, being in charge of my own schedule, knowing that if I don't work hard enough I have to answer to myself. I've also grown to like the farm, its really beautiful, especially at aroun 5 or so in the afternoon, when I take a walk, and its all quiet and cool, and still. I really love the fact that if I can't sleep, I can also go for a walk, without worrying about anything more than disturbing a sleepy kudu along the way. It took the farmers next door 5 weeks to realise that we were here, we're so isolted. It'll be hard to go home to the noise and the rush of joburg, where there are people everywhere and traffic and the noise which gave me such a headace when I went home for a couple of days a little while ago. The idea of having to switch my priorities from catching lizards to having a social calendar and christmas shopping and having people around all the time... I miss the people back home lke crazy, but I'm not sure I can handle going home just yet!

ok, so that was boring!

I just realised how incredibly boring the last few posts were! So the daily updates will be stopping, effective immediately!

Right now I am one of two people in South Africa (the other one is the masters student sitting a few feet away) currently NOT watching us play in the world up rugby final. I get occasional updates from people at home, and fortunately I can get an internet connection through my phone so i can watch the "live" score updates, although they're a bit slow to update - obviously the people in charge are kind of caught up in the watching and don't update all to often.

Fieldwork is going fine, it's been cold and rainy for a few days, which has given me a bit of a break and time to breathe a bit! I've also got used to walking a lot, so I got a bit cranky from sitting around so I carried on with my afternoon walking all over the farms, and occasionally I go running as well. I'm pretty pathetic and don't go very fast or far, but I enjoy it. We're also watching loads of DVDs, nothing particularly inspiring, but we've watched a LOT of stuff (I've watched almost an entire season of Ally McBeal, but reached the point of NO MORE this afternoon. Weird how being in the middle of nowhere makes you enjoy stuff that you'd normally avoid (not that I avoid it usually, but I can't get through that much in one sitting).

With the bad weather (which according to the 5-day forecast isn't going to improve) my entre schedule has been pushed back a few days, which is worrying as I was scheduled to finish retrapping before I have to go back home for a day or 2. As it is I'm going to have a bit of a gap in my data from that. I can only hope the wether is lousy while I'm away!

Otherwise I'm drinking a lot of tea waiting for 10pm so I can measure my lizards again and then I'm going to bed! AAARGH! this rubgy is killing me!

fieldwork days 2-7

sorry, I've been super-hectically busy and this is the first evening I've fiished before about midnight. It's ridiculous! thejurnal stopped at day 10 (which was about 10 days ago...) out of sheer pressure for priority from a million other tasks. Here's some of the rest of what I wrote (mildly edited I'm afraid - don't want to offend too many people!)

Day 2
I woke up to realise that the room I’m staying in is east-facing. And it has no curtains. So I woke up at about 5:30 because it was so bright it was unbearable! I watched the very pretty golden beams of light on the wall before I realised that that was the sunrise and I was missing it. So I jumped up and looked – it was really pretty. So I got up and tried to keep quiet until about 6:30 when I felt like I was justified in getting up. So I went through to shower, waking up my supervisor on the way (he kind of groaned so I felt really bad). We made coffee (in the plunger Jenny gave me) and sat at our desks typing away. Occasionally one of us would get up and have breakfast or go to brush their teeth or something. After about an hour when I’d finally got the testosterone and DMSO to thaw (it freezes really easily!) we made the implants. It’s pretty tricky as it involves squirting really tiny amounts of liquid into really tiny tubes ad then sealing the end with glue. There were a few false starts of reading the numbers on the syringe wrong, but eventually we got it going pretty well.

By then it was really overcast so we went into Nelspruit to get a bunch of house stuff. As we left the farm the sun came out and it was hot! We bought a bunch of stuff, like a new kettle, cutlery, plates and stuff and cleaning supplies. As we got back to the farm it suddenly clouded over. Coincidence?We unpacked and I washed all the new dishes while the others had lunch. After that we loaded skink-trapping equipment into the bakkie and went exploring. It was loads and loads of fun! We drove all over and pretty much followed any road that looked interesting. M supervisor decided he needed to use the four-wheel drive but didn’t know how to, so between my instructions and his reading the manual we managed to get over some pretty impressive roads! I even got to see the spots where they had got stuck the day before; there were some incredible tyre tracks and rocks flung all over the place. It was pretty chilly and although we saw one or two lizards, we didn’t try any trapping. As it was, I wasn’t too stressed as I had to wait a few days for my implants to dry out. I was more worried about remembering where all the spots were – the farm is bigger than most people realise!

After all that we got back and had chicken pitas for dinner. We sat around talking (I got quite a headache from it all!) and then, after the dishes were washed, sat at our respective laptops seemingly working hard while the masters student occasionally broke the silence to discuss things like her ex-boyfriend (again).

Day 3

We finally had a day that wasn’t entirely overcast, so we headed out (with me driving) to find some skinks. It got pretty hot, so a lot were out, so we managed to catch 15 skinks, a really tiny baby lizard and a baby plated lizard which managed to detach the gluetrap from its presstick and flip it over. He was really calm and I fell in love with him right away. The baby lizard was adorable, and really interesting as it had a blue venter, unlike the white that I'm more used to.

When we got back here we saw my first tree agama, which didn’t have the super-blue head, but it was pretty cool. I also learned there’s a bird that looks like a lark that’s called a longclaw.

After lunch – peanut-butter curry and rice sandwiches (and feeling slightly ill…) we started processing lizards. It took hours. Firstly she has no experience of handing them, besides what we’d taught her that morning of how to get one off a gluetrap, oil it (which she overdid and we had these dripping lizards…) and bag it. So between us we showed her all the morphometric techniquesand I scribed while the two of them took measurements

The funniest part was when she grabbed a juvenile in the bag and he dropped his tail. She was traumatised and felt so bad! And we just laughed and told her it was ok and to try feed it to the lizard… she felt terrible and it was so funny! Another incident was when one of them dropped a lizard and I leapt up to close the door and succeeded in knocking my chair over which promptly dislodged the seat and by the time I’d disentangled myself he had caught the lizard already. And he found it very funny to tell her all about poor number 7 being ‘loose in the lab’ last year.

After all that I started measuring the colours. I’m not sure why I was the one doing it, but I was super-excited to be doing colours again. Her lizards have really interesting colours too, and i got pretty involved. I'll leave out the descriptions here because it's not my project and I dont want to bore people.

We discussed my changing my roject to work on her lizards, and I said I'd think about it, but to be honest, it was a pretty obvious 'no' - my lizards are just so much cooler! and really charismatic and adorable! After all that he made us pizza while the masters student did pretty much nothing and I processed her colour data (involving a long and drawn-out fight with the geekish formulae my brother and I made last year) and then when I offered to do a demo right after we’d done the dishes she insisted on doing the dishes while I showed him. I’m a bit confused – he doesn’t do colour, he has no data that really needs looking at I don’t think. She’s the one who really needs the help. But she seems totally not interested. So if she doesn’t care, I’d be happy to do all the colour stuff, it’s so exciting I never understand why people don’t seem too interested. Maybe I’m just turning into an academic after all!

Day 4

So I barely slept at all, partly from excitement and trying to plan studies on her lizards, partly from considering whether or not I should work on them. After a pretty horrible night I got up at around 6 and watched two common duikers that were just outside my window. One of them was scent-marking everything and the other was staying nearby, but running off anytime the other one even almost looked at him. Eventually they were pretty much dancing around this banana-palm! I snuck through the house (for once he didn’t jump out of his skin as I walked past!) and showered, and when I got back they were still sleeping so I gathered cleaning supplies and started cleaning the ablution blocks. The men’s area was ok, a few spider-webs but otherwise fine. The ‘ladies’ was a disaster, full of dirt and leaves and rat-droppings and all kinds of stuff! So I swept windowsills and poured Domestos in toilets and started sweeping. After all that it looked a lot better and we went back for breakfast before doing the first performance trials. The treadmill didn’t work, but sort of lost traction and stopped. I changed the tension and it helped, but the others (with some unhelpful comments about the treadmill design) decided that we should make a circular runway for her lizards to run around. As it was raining again we went into Nelspruit and got some supplies. They got wire and cloth and sandpaper, and I got rubber bands to improve the traction of the shaft driving the treadmill. I was in a terrible mood with a bad headache, so I was really super-unfriendly and very out-of it. When we got back we had a lunch break, but I felt too sick to eat, so I dozed on one of the free beds until they were ready to start building the racetrack. They saw I was sleeping and were really polite, whispering until he realised I’d woken up and was right behind him. I was also feeling a bit better so was in a much friendlier mood.

Building the racetrack was fun. We dismantled an old swimming pool (we asked permission and gone ahead anyway) so we will have to buy a replacement as permission WASN’T granted - and made a big circular track. I had a lot of fun cutting wires and using the pliers and figuring out the best way of fitting sandpaper into small places between the wires. I also figured out the way to make the width of the track even and fit the sandpaper properly and all these other things that were just common sense but all worked for some reason! The other student was a complete dead-weight, often just sitting around while he and I worked like maniacs. All in all it took us around 6 ½ hours to finish it. Let’s hope it works properly when we put a lizard in it!

After all that he read the paper while I sanded white standards and she lay across two chairs complaining about how tired she was. Eventually I moved to where he was sitting and he told me all about travelling and what some countries are like and the best way for going around them. It was very cool. Then he made us dinner – fish and potato-bake (forgot the vegetables). While he was cooking I was chatting to Jo and Lara on MXIT so I kept asking for Afrikaans words, which was pretty funny! I ended up on MXIT the whole was through dinner, which I know is rude but I miss Lara so much I couldn’t not speak to her!

It poured with rain all day, so it was really really sucky, but at least it rained or else we’d have lost prime lizard-catching time to building the racetrack without any help from the person who will actually be using it. It was so annoying! She kept sending him these looks (basically saying she wanted to kill me – I should know, I send them about her all the time!) as if I was the annoying one. I’m sorry for helping her! Although it was fun building it! I don’t usually get to wield pliers and wire-cutters and all kinds of stuff! After all that and dinner and everything she went off to bed and I sat typing this when he called me to look at frogs outside. After all the rain there were tons of them! There was either a sharp-nosed frog or a grass frog on the stoep, and a red toad on the steps outside the front door.

Day 5
I woke up to find that I couldn’t even see outside my window because the mist was too thick. It poured with rain all morning. We ran some lizards on the racetrack, which worked pretty well. After about lunchtime (I skipped lunch again for some reason, not sure why) I measured the colours on the baby lizard and we went rock-hunting to find a nice rock to photograph the big lizard. We didn’t find any but I found a very cute frog and we had great fun helping take pictures of it! I was worried about the spec – it showed UV where it shouldn't which makes no sense- so I came back and used the other white standard and measured it again. Still had UV – if not more than before!

It looked like it was clearing up, so we went off to the field and caught 11 more lizards. We photographed the big lizard and let him go, and he promptly ran onto another glue trap! So I picked him up and we took more pictures, on the roots of a fig tree and when I let go he didn’t run off. So we decided I could keep him as a pet. I picked him up again and bagged him, but then the other student went off on this tirade about how cruel that would be, so I changed my mind. The others went off to the outcrop Dee surfed down back in third year and we found a fig tree LOADED with figs! I stayed to monitor the traps and found that she had left all the stuff on top of a rock that had traps around it. So I figured any self-respecting lizard would have run off, and I looked under the rock to see a skink staring at me! So I jammed about 5 or 6 traps under the rock, as far as my arm would reach (this left me smelling like lizard pee).
I was summoned to see the great fig tree (it’s loaded, it’s quite scary!) and when we walked back to pack up she hadn’t found all the traps under the last rock. So I stretched underneath and retrieved them to find that I’d caught the skink! So unorthodox glue-trapping can work! Then I let the big lizard go, after posing for a photo with him. He’d make such a perfect pet! We also decided that if he gets himself caught again we’re keeping him! It was only afterwards that she said she found him creepy – probably a big reason why she argued against keeping him!

We got back to the house and ran the lizards again. After that I got an sms from the chairman of Biosoc saying he’s bringing 20 other students here for the weekend! So I ran off to try and figure out where they’re going to sleep. After that my supervisor went off running again (crazy person) and I went for a walk so I could phone Luke and talk about some of the stuff going on without feeling like the world could overhear me. I nearly got lot again, and only just made it back before it got completely dark - the moon is rising really late and the clouds block the stars, so I would have been in a bit of trouble. So he and I (he did all the tricky stuff, I chopped and stuff) made dinner: tuna, red kidney bean, tomato, yellow pepper and chakalaka pasta (he actually chucked the pasta at the ceiling and it stuck!) with gem-squash and baby marrows. It was good.

Then I cleaned the kitchen and did the dishes while we had a weird conversation about porn and weddings and making people cry. After that she went off to her laptop and probably sat on the internet again. She does that a lot. He watched some Richard Dawkins book reading and sat with is headphones giggling like a little girl! Eventually he showed us some of it, it was boring as well as annoying. Richard Dawkins irritates me so much! And I think he missed the point in discussing the origins of morality, but later I talked about it with him and maybe I didn’t understand what he was saying. So I went to bed and sat up reading the world’s most terrible book. It’s supposed to be about kids in Kenya growing up and struggling with the changing politics, which could be really awesome. Instead it’s effectively Mills & Boon set in Africa.

Fieldwork - Day 1

So I finally got an internet connection in the middle of the gammadoelas! Yay! Besides the fact that I was going mildly crazy fter 2 weeks without my email, I had a few situations back home to sort out. The university is great at creating admin.

So for the first 10 days or so I kept a kind of diary of what was going on, so I figured I might as well post it. No photos just yet I'm afraid, basically this place is just wet and cold and rainy and miserable, and occasionally so hot and humid you want to keel over and pass out.

Here is day 1:

So I stayed behind to finish getting everything ready and drove up one the Thursday in the gigantic 4 x 4. It was a horrible day, pouring with rain and freezing cold. I also got the news from the zoo that they weren’t happy giving me sheep blood, which is a problem. The drive was relatively uneventful. Besides the handbrake refusing to go down at one stage and the steering going ballistic every time I passed a truck, the car was pretty good. Not as powerful as my little Jetta, but few are!

On the way I stopped at the Zasm tunnel, right outside Watervalboven. It’s a tunnel for trains, built in the 1800s, by Paul Kruger or something. My history isn’t great. Anyway they had something like 2000 people – 1000 on either side of the mountain, tunnelling towards each other. The tunnel isn’t exactly straight, which makes me wonder if they nearly missed, making 2 parallel tunnels! Out of the 2000 they lost about 200 people either to rock-falls or malaria. It’s pretty amazing. The other thing is that steam trains used to go through there, and people would be walking through because it was the quickest way of getting from Watervalboven to Nelspruit. So they made a tiny little ‘room’ on the side of the tunnel, and if people heard a train they’d run and hide there. It must have been so scary!

Anyway, the reason I went there was because I recognised it as somewhere my parents had taken us when we were small. I have a vague memory of walking through it with my family and then walking back and having a picnic while Douglas and I tried to climb the rocks around the tunnel mouth. So driving past with Ingrid a couple of weeks before I got really excited, but we didn’t stop. So this time I took the opportunity to have a look around. The biggest change is that they have tour guides now. I went through with a guy called Ben who was really nice. Apparently the crime in the area was really bad, where you’d park on one side, be mugged in the tunnel and come back to find your car had been broken into. So eight of the unemployed people in Watervalboven made an arrangement with the police to run tours and look after the cars and stuff. It’s for a donation, which they don’t get to keep, they’re actually using it to raise funds for building a coffee shop and education centre or something. Once that happens they should be earning enough to get salaries. It was amazing to talk to Ben all about it. He said he has a little son just starting school now, and he often isn’t even able to give him school shoes. But there’s no work and he doesn’t want to go live in the towns again because he just gets sucked into crime – he’d rather rely on tips to look after his family. At the end he gave me a phone number and said if I come through again he’ll take me on a better tour, up to the top of the waterfall.

So after all that I arrived at the Farmhouse, swearing because I only had half a tank of petrol (forgot to fill up at Nelspruit, no filling station at the next tiny town) and because the road really is bad. I was amazed that we ever managed to get Ingrid’s car over it! So I finally got down the hill to find The American and my supervisor – sans Condor. They asked if I noticed anything missing and I asked about the car – turns out they’d driving into a ditch and were unable to get it out. When we checked the 4 x 4 and found that there was no towrope my supervisor ran off with a spade to try and clear the road and I swept the house and started wiping down tables and things. It was pretty disgusting. Anyway he arrived triumphantly driving the Condor and proceeded to go for a run, while we cleaned some more. I’m really not a neat-freak, but the idea of living in dirt for 6 weeks was more than I could handle! After that my supervisor and I glued up one side of our implant tubes and then we all made dinner – my leftover peanut-butter curry and then we made a stirfry with peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, beans and baby sweetcorn with perinaise sauce. It was good!

Finally after much chattering about random stuff and all sitting at our laptops I decided that I had to go to bed before I collapsed. My supervisor was reading his book and decided to discuss chunks of my project with me. So I stood on the stairs, swaying slightly, trying to decide on the best measures of immunocompetence and frequency of measuring it. Finally I just went to bed.