Schlagwort: Southern Africa

Hello, Bonjour and Salibonani from Cawston Wildlife Estate, Northern Matabeleland where I help for about 2,5 months with the horses. The Cawston family is still growing and a second little foal was born, which we were waiting for the last couple of days. It’s a very cute and healthy little male with dark brown fur and a white star on his face. He runs around with our little female foal that was born almost 2 weeks ago (see this post) and the other donkey babies.

We just finished one horse safari on Cawston Wildlife Estate and started a new one. It’s always fun times even though it can get quite hectic. This will be my last safari in Cawston where I help Ridezimbabwe to operate the bush rides before I will head southwards to Matopos National Park.

Unfortunately, I still struggle with my tick bite fever that has just possibly turned out to be a spiderbite according to my second visit to the doctor. It’s actually really confusing to me what it is and how to treat it. However, I really hope it’s going to get better just now, which can be basically everything between a couple of days and some months. I really want to go out on outrides in the bush and join the safaris for my last few days in beautiful Zimbabwe.

Everything in Africa bites, but the safari bug is worst of all!

Brian Jackman

Meanwhile, I had the possibility to join two hunts, one for an impala and one for a zebra that was needed for lion bait. We never found an impala on that one day, but I enjoyed walking through the tick bushes, where I got caught up in the thorns every now and then. Whereas the zebra hunt was very quick and successful. We started first thing in the morning just when the sun was rising over the horizon showing off with the most lovely orange colored sky. We stalked a herd of zebras for a short time but they noticed us and ran away. So we drove to another spot, where we saw zebras just in front of the car. The shooting was so quick, I couldn’t even take a picture. Afterwards, we had to load the zebra on the truck and we drove straight back to the butchery. The job was done by early morning so there was plenty of time left to cuddle with all the foals.

I spent my first Friday night in town and got to experience the Bulawayo bars, which was lots of fun. As there was a power cut that day, we were dependent on the generators and hopped from one bar to another and back again to the first place. Funny enough we started and ended in one place that I saw when I had just started my Zimbabwean journey as it was a bar in front of the stables, where I helped with the donkeys and rescued horses. It turns out that Zimbabwe and it’s community is smaller than I thought.

The next morning, I got to experience the real city vibes of Bulawayo as I went to the bend over market, where you can basically buy everything from clothes to make-up. It was very interesting to see this kind of African flee market. However, I am very happy to have left the city and be back in the bush!

My new lessons learned while helping at Cawston Wildlife Estate:

1. You can be bitten by plenty animals in the bush, but it’s still the most lovely place to be.
2. Going on a hunt can be a very quick job.
3. Bars in town close whenever the generator will be switched off.

Cheers to wandering the world and the wonders of our lives, hope to see you soon – bye bye, salut and lisale kuhle ∞

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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 ∞

Hello, Bonjour and Salibonani from Cawston Wildlife Reserve, Northern Matabeleland where I stay for about 2,5 months and help with the horses.  Before I took my very first day off, I had to accomplish and survive one last task during the evening hours, where it is pitch dark in Zimbabwe: helping to move one of the beehives away from the workshop.

The bees had decided to sattle down in a huge box and now they need to be moved. I have to say that bees are most likely the animals I am the most afraid of, this seemed therefore to be the hardest task to accomplish here. Luckily, I was left in the car, being told to be the driver. I think I can handle that! So all I did was waiting for the bees to be carried out in a box, being put on the back of the truck and drive off. I have no idea how the bees were all put into that box but I guess I am just happy they are. Off I drove, unfortunately I forgot what I was told: should I drive slow or fast? Well, I have this box full of bees in the back of the car with Chris holding tight to them. Poor him, I decided I better drive fast through the darkness on the sand pad so we would reach our goal quickly. This was however not the right decision as all the bouncing apparently made it hard to hold on to the bee box and I was shouted at from the back of the car to slow down. I believe it took me a while and a couple of gear changes until I realized I have to slow down now. We finally arrived at the place where the bees were released into their new home. I just hoped they would please stay outside and not come inside the car. Not quite sure if this was the case during the drive back. Happy I survived this mission, I just had to learn that we will do this for a second time as so many bees are in the workshop. Oh my dear, a second time moving the bees and driving through the pitch dark to find a spot to release the second swarm. Everything went fine, without any troubles or stings. I really think I deserve my next day off to just relax!

And yes, the next day was my day off and I wanted to finally sleep in. That didn’t work quite as good as I wanted, at 5.45am I was wide awake and finally got up a few minutes later. I spent the day enjoying the view on the waterhole from my happy place. Really great!

Next morning, I had to drive into town, Bulawayo for the first time since about 3 weeks to renew my visa. Unbelievable that I am in Zim for 30 days already. It was very easy to get my visa renewed and didn’t take more than 5 min.

Afterwards, I found myself at the vet in town to drop some blood samplings from wildlife such as wildebeests, Kudu and Impala that needs to be tested. The testing would take about 3 weeks and one of the staff person told me „you know how things are here now“. I was just looking at him, thinking to myself well I just renewed my tourist visa, no I absolutely don’t, but kept quiet and walked on to get the next task done.

Now, I had to get a horse box for a horse to be loaded on and brought to the vet. Getting the box was easy but then 4 days were needed to load the horse that had definitely decided it would never ever get back in this box. Slow progress was accomplished during the next days. Plenty of horse food, cubes as well as grass later we had the horse in the box. However, we didn’t succeed to load her the day we had the vet appointment. So more work needs to be done until end of May. We will see if the horse will be loaded by then…

During the evening, I enjoyed sitting by the fire at my happy place, there were even bushbabies joining me and I heard my first leopard calling. Apparently, there is one walking close by my room during the nights, looking for the ostrich chickens. However, I never hear it. The same with the hyenas that were calling one night close by my room. I somehow always miss these exciting things.

My new lessons learned while helping at Cawston Wildlife Reserve:

1. You can move beehives even if you are afraid of them – all you need is someone competent who does it for you!
2. Sleeping in isn’t as easy as it sounds – your inner alarm will tell you early enough when it’s time to get up.
3. Loading a horse into a horse box that is determined to not go in is interesting – all you need is about 4 days of patience and lots of working time with the horse.

Cheers to wandering the world and the wonders of our lives, hope to see you soon again after my next safari time that will be in Matobo – bye bye, salut and lisale kuhle ∞