Namibia - volunteering at Harnas
Trip Start
May 01, 2008
1
3
Trip End
Jul 01, 2008
Gobabis,
Namibia
Thursday, May 29, 2008
I've finally decided to post a little something about my adeventures in Africa. Its the same as what I've emailed outto some people but I thought I'd put it on here in case you hadn't received it etc...
As I didn't have internet access in Namibia (or anything reliable atleast) I'll just give you a summary of my time at the Harnas wildlife foundation. Its quite a long one so I don't blame you if you don't make it to the end!
Harnas is a wildlife farm set up to help rehabilitate wild animals that have been brought in by farmers who would have otherwise killed them (as the predators are a threat to their cattle) or mistreated by previous owners
Pride and Cleo
. Its based in Namibia near the area of Gobabis and its absolutely huge! Once you go through the Harnas gates, its another 20 minutes before you reach the volunteer area.The volunteers live in a little 'village' where there are showers, toilets and an area for eating meals, which we were served 3 times daily. The facilities were a tad basic, in that you had to light a fire to heat up water for a shower, but adequate all the same. Then there is the area called the 'Lapa' where the family who own the farm live, and where guests visiting the farm stay. A lot of the animals are also housed in this area, including: cheetahs, baboons of all ages, vervet monkeys, a baby leopard, squirrels, crocodiles, owls and parrots, wild dogs, a baby giraffe, meerkats, wild cats as well as domestic dogs and cats.
Outside of the Lapa area there are larger enclosures for: cheetahs, baboon, wild dogs, caracals, vervet monkeys and lions. And then outside of those enclosures is an area called the 'lifeline' where animals that are being rehabilitated are released. There is also game in the lifeline such as duku and eland (deer like animals but huge!).
Goeters being cute
There were approx 40 volunteers at Harnas, 20 that had been there for atleast 2 weeks and 20 newbies. There were a lot of people form the UK but then also a lot of Americans, a couple of Canadians, Germans, Swedes and Dutch. Everyone was about the same age (18 - 21) but there were a couple who were a bit older and it was really easy to make friends.
When we first arrived we had a couple of days being given a tour of the lapa and the animal enclosures. We were then all split into 4 groups and were shown how to do 'food preparation' by the volunteers in our group who had already been at Harnas 2 weeks or more already. I was in group 1 and we were responsible for feeding the following: Turmella (the parrot), Cleo and Pride (cheetahs), Suki (a tame wild cat), Suli (an African spotted wild cat- looks like a mini leopard), Bourky (an adult baboon who has epilepsy and so has to be separated from the others and given medicine everyday), the teenage baboons, the domestic cats (there are about 50!), the adult and baby meerkats and the mice.
Everyday we had breakfast at 7am, followed by a morning meeting at 8am where the tasks for the day would be allocated within each group
Duma
. The tasks included food prep and also the following:- Lost walk: you take the baby leopard, Lost, out in the jeep with La La one of the domestic dogs, and then you're all let lose. Its more Lost taking you for a walk rather than the other way round, and La la plays with her along the way.
- Cheetah walk: this would be either with Cleo and Pride or Duma and Jony and was similar to walking Lost. I quite liked the cheetah walks as you could run along with a toy and the cheetahs will run after you - apart from you're running as fast as you can and they're just gently strolling behind you! My most eventful cheetah walk was when we took Cleo and Pride out and it was just me and a Dutch boy called Jesse. We looked up and suddenly Pride had disappeared - she'd spotted some goats in the next enclosure and had jumped through the fence. I had to run after her, squeeze through the fence and then prize apart a cheetah from the goat it was trying to strangle! It all worked out ok, and the goat managed to escape unharmed, as did I!
- Baby baboon walk: One of the more unpopular tasks - mainly because although the baby baboons can be incredibly sweet, especially when they're being bottle-fed, they can also turn on you and leave you with a nasty bruise (or completely ripped trousers as my friend Sarah found!)
Our dinner at the damhouse
. Luckily I only ever received one bite and it really wasn't that bad. On the walk you just walk along in between trees and the babies raise their arms up to you - asking to come up - and you pull them up and they sit clinging to you around your waist or on your shoulder. It was a really amazing experience to carry a baby baboon, but there was always the risk of them pooing/weeing/being sick on you!- Dog walk: because the domestic animals needed care and attention too. I quite liked the dog walk because it was nice and peaceful and there was no risk involved whatsoever - quite a novelty at Harnas!
If you were wondering, the reason the animals are taken on 'walks' is just so they can have a little more freedom, rather than being in their enclosures all of the time. Its not a perfect situation, but if an animal cannot be rehabilitated, its seen by Harnas as the best quality of life that can be offered. We all also had the opportunity to walk with one of the lions, but with Frikkie who raised Zion and Trust since they were babies. It was incredible to be able to stroke a lions back, but also quite scary - you had to make sure you never turned your back on him, or he would pounce
Gommie the cheeky vervet monkey
!Other tasks:
- Farmwork: this was always a lucky dip as it could be amazing or it could be terrible - and they'd obviously never tell you before you chose to do it. My best farmwork was when they were capturing Eland using a helicopter and vast pieces of netting as a trap. It was pretty scary too though because sometimes you were inside the netting when there was an Eland trapped inside - and they are huge and pretty dangerous! It was really exciting though and amazing to see the animals so close up. My worst farmwork has included: de-ticking goats, collecting fire wood and 4 hours spent collecting cans in the blistering sun!
- Game count sleepouts at the treehouse and dam house: This was an afternoon/evening activity whereby 4 of you would be driven to a house within the 'life line' with binoculars so you could monitor and record the game within sight. The main reason we chose to do it though was because you got left food to cook for dinner (such as pasta, a carrot, baked beans and some sort of flavour powder) and then you had to work out how on earth you were going to cook it which was pretty hilarious (at the treehouse there was no running water and its basically a shack suspended precariously on a tree...). When me, Meggie and Sarah stayed at the treehouse, they even forgot to give us cutlery, so my pen knife was used for buttering, stirring and allsorts. In the end we had soggy pasta with charcoal-tasting beans mixed in, which we ate using mugs - so it was just as well we all brought our chocolate supplies!
Kathrin with a baby meerkat
- Sleeping with the animals: this was something that you could do any night, but you had to be prepared to get little or no sleep! I only did it once for this very reason; me and my friend Michelle slept out with Cleo and Pride. Pride pretty much half-lay on me all night and his purring was soooo loud! It was pretty cool apart from the fact that they wee'd practically everywhere!
We also had a couple of mystery activity days - where there was much secrecy and gossiping between the volunteers. The first activity was designed to help us bond in our groups and improve communication with each other. It was called 'Survivor'; we were split into our task groups and dropped off at random places in the life line. We were given a compass and a set of instructions and had to make our way to the finish which was a campfire. There were times in our group where I thought we were going completely the wrong way and I was very aware that it would get dark soon and that there were lots of snakes and spiders in the bush. However, our group won, and in record time! The other 3 groups even had to be rescued because they had gone so far wrong!
The other mystery activity day was called 'Fear Factor'. We were all told that we had a Lapa dinner ready for us - only for them to serve us one single piece of bread! We were then split into 2 groups and had several tasks including eating food that you'd probably like to avoid (dog food etc) - hence the 1 piece of bread. We also had to go in with the wild dogs in their enclosure, and find keys in jars at the bottom of the pool (the pool is so dirty that the water is completely opaque!)
Klippy the baby giraffe
. But the worst part was that the teams drew! So we then had a sing-off to decide the winner, but Juan couldn't choose between the 2 groups so both groups got a breakfast at the Lapa!We also were allowed to have a leaving party every 2 weeks, so I had 2, one saying goodbye to the old volunteers and then my own leaving party. We had a meal at the Lapa (which was soooo good compared to the standard volunteer food) and then the bar was ours! The best part was that we always came up with a fancy dress theme. It was pirates the first time and then at our own leaving party we had the theme of 'come as someone at Harnas - animal or human'. So I came as my friend Sarah; she had a huge crush on Marcel, one of the long term volunteers who was now part of the staff. I made a t-shirt to wear which said 'I love Marcel' on the front and 'I love stalking' on the back - she freely admitted that she was stalking him! It was really funny, I think everyone managed to get a photo of me with Marcel looking slightly embarrassed!
I'm sorry it been so much of a mammoth email but theres so much that goes on at Harnas that can't just be casually mentioned without explanation (such as baboon walks!)
the mummy meerkat
. Heres a list of some of the things I'll remember about Harnas:- Extremely precarious and unsafe transport - balancing on firewood/cans/rocks on the back of a van going 90miles an hour through the bush!
- Nights round fire drinking 'Tefal' the local beer (70p a bottle!) and feeling like its 11pm when its only 7pm
- Sunday football - volunteers against the bushmen - they beat us every time
- Having to light a fire and waiting 40 mins to have a luke-warm shower
- Being totally freaked out when warthogs starting digging under our cabin the first night (we all had no idea what it was and jumped to the most plausible possibilities - we were all convinced it was lions)
