Matt Snider - Letters from South Africa - Part I

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V - Home

Dear Ladies, Gentlemen, and Hooligans (you should know which category you belong to),

This is my first mass dispatch from bush country. It's been a while since I've been to a computer and right now I'm sitting in a grass thatched roof internet cafe in the thriving metropolis of a bush hub with a burgeoning population of some six thousand permanent residents. The weather is great down here, I was much surprised that I could see my breath most mornings (admittedly this could be partially due to the fact that we get up at five thirty) and after the sun goes down the temperature plummets. During the middle of the day the temp is quite warm sitting in the low eighties (and yes, Dina, that is quite warm) and the sun is much more intense than in the states.

Our work here is so much fun and my expedition is seventeen members plus eight staff permanently attached to the project. The make up is fantastic, there are four Brits (don't believe Mary Poppins, these lasses are vulgar!), a rollickingly fun Irishman, a really spicy Mexican girl, a bunch of Canadians (who all say, "eh" and "don't ya know", which I constantly grin at them for), a German girl who brings an accent that the Africans (Dutch heritage) find very confusing, a Chinese girl who we can barely get two peeps out of, an absolute livewire of an Aussie who has no qualms about telling it how it is and a few Americans. The Americans definitely bring flavor too because the there is a Cali boy who people constantly make fun of for his strong OC accent, a South Carolina lass who has since learned that when she gets angry everyone starts laughing at her because she lapses into a severe southern drawl to accompany her angry face. The staff is great, very friendly and so incredibly knowledgeable, especially the Afrikaners who make it really evident that they grew up in the bush. The way they track animals, these guys would put most of the stateside hunters I know to shame. It's like they can smell them.

The research itself is fantastic. We are studying predator dynamics here on a game reserve that was started by a coalition of farmer landowners that consolidated their land and started reintroducing species, both flora and fauna that were here before the land was cleared for agriculture. We focus on a small pride of Lions, six Cheetahs, Spotted Hyenas, and a bunch of Leopards who are resident here. It's a lot of predators but there are a ton of prey herds of all varieties which more than sustain them. The elephants have also proven to be quite amusing because then always seem to walk into the road when we are trying to get past them as if to say "Yeah, what now." A single one could roll our truck over if he (or she) wanted to, but that doesn't mean they should be able to bully us around. Or maybe it does.

Some of the wildlife is used to our group being around because the lions never seem to be bothered when we drive up. And I swear, Zero, one of the big males burped and blew it towards us this week. Usually we have baboons or hyenas that rummage around where we dump the compost to see if we have any goodies, and last week a hyena tried to walk on the veranda around our house while a bunch of us were sitting on the couches out there talking. She is a bold one and if I had to guess I bet she was the one who stole the bacon we were defrosting for lunch last weekend. Two nights ago we had an elephant in the garden and he got mad at our hanging laundry and knocked all my clean underwear down while we were watching from the house. I swear the ele's have it out for me. Yesterday, we were gearing up for afternoon drive and Sheliweni, the big man on campus of our resident leopards, was watching two of the girls sun bathing out back before we spotted him. He was about twenty meters away when we spotted him and only about fifteen meters from the girls. Looking him in the eyes makes me realize how slow, fleshy and weak humans are. Needless to say, the girls keep their bikinis tied when they're sunbathing now.

As another funny side note, I've learned how to drive manual down here. With the exception of a half-hour in Tyler's old truck two years ago stalling out in the Middlebury town pool parking lot, I've pretty much learned from the ground up here. (Thanks for that lesson though Tyler, without knowing the mechanism I would have been toast.) For those of you who have had the pleasure of riding with me before it was even more fun in this case (hard to believe, right?). The pedals are in the right places but they drive on the wrong side of the road, the stick is to the left and everything on the dash on the opposite side. So here I am trying not to stall out at the intersections, turning on the turn indicator as I'm causing the windshield cleaner to spray and the windshield wipers to go into hyper mode and looking the wrong way for oncoming traffic. Woo, Adventures!

Anyway, I need to run but I will try to holla at cha whenever I get back to civilization again.
Peace!
-Matt