With 7 horses in the lorry

Hello, Bonjour and Salibonani from Cawston Wildlife Reserve, Northern Matabeleland where I stay for about 2,5 months and help with the horses. As every Saturday we were dipping horses and donkeys to prevent too many problems with ticks, after we found all 14 donkeys in the bush. Ticks are unfortunately a bad problem here, as there are plenty and they cause severe injuries. But some good news: one of the female donkeys is highly pregnant and we separated her from the rest with her son to stay in the ostrich paddock. We might get a little donkey foal very soon!

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During my last days here, I understood much better what it means to live in a country that is economically not stable: Internet prices just almost tripled over night and there is nothing you can do about it. However, I got Ecocash now and can pay with the „Zimbabwean currency“, bonds. This helps a bit to reduce prices as the exchange rate is right now something between 4 and 5 bonds per USD. Again, this exchange rate is very prone to changes on a daily basis, it actually seems to depend on what the other person is willing to pay you.

For the very first time, a groom and I rode the 4 year old stallion, Zambezi in the lunging arena. Afterwards, we went with him into the bush and back to the stables. It was the very first time someone rode him outside the arena. He was doing well, just very lazy and slow. Therefore, we decided to put him on a lunge that I was holding in my hand while riding ahead with Starlight. I believe the 4 of us looked quite funny.

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The evenings were full of great fun times, one night we had a braai and roasted a dove that one of us shot during the day while at the same time having some biology class and we learned how the heart, liver etc. looked like. Everything was really small, but the meat tasted so good! Another night, Chris and I drove to the pumps, which supplies Mpofo to change the water, watched jupiter rising in the dark, clear sky before heading to the butchery and getting some warthog and wildebeest meat ready for the delivery to Vic falls. A big truck was waiting for us at the main road to hang up the meat pieces and get ready for the drive up North.

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The next day, I went to Umguza to ride another 2 horses before driving into town and do some stocking in Bulawayo for the upcoming safari in Matobo.

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We left Umguza with 7 horses and myself in the lorry for a 1,5 hour drive southwards to track the white rhinos.

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3 nights and 2 full riding days after we couldn’t spot any rhino, only the spoors. Nevertheless, the landscape was just gorgeous here and I enjoyed very much the 5-6 hours riding per day!

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Getting up at 5am to prepare breakfast and get the horses ready becomes much more natural to me and I like grooming the horses under the dark sky full of billion little stars. We did a game drive and a short hike to Cecil Rhode’s grave during the last afternoon and here he was the big rhino drinking at a waterhole, what a beauty! So happy to have the chance to see this guy before we packed everything and drove back to my homebase Cawston.

My new lessons learned while helping at Cawston and being on safari in Matobo:

1. Ecocash facilitates your life – it is definitely  worth to get an account and trade USD into bonds for payments.
2. Not all stallions are full of energy – sometimes they need special attention to walk on.
3. It’s not so easy to spot rhinos in a rocky area – you have to carefully watch for moving rocks.

Cheers to wandering the world and the wonders of our lives, hope to see you soon after next safari days in Hwange National Park – bye bye, salut and lisale kuhle ∞