Matt Snider - Letters from South Africa - Part III

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Hello One and All,

It's time for the next installment of "Has Matt been eaten yet?" Fortunately for you guys the answer is No. Well fortunately for most of you at least. Things have been the usual sort of busy around here. A group of us spent this past week in the mountains about three hours from the permanent base here in Venetia and it was beautiful. We had spectacular weather and there were tons of animals just strolling about. We were there in practice to help do some manual labor in setting up a guest lodge, but we all turned out to be pathetic at digging up trees and were better suited to bringing food and drink to a bunch of locals who proved to be the real muscle behind the operation. I think the manager brought us in for comic relief too because I've never seen grown men laugh so hard when one of our group fell into a freshly dug tree whole with a full tray of lemonade. We made friends and I think everybody had a good time. I liked how the operation was set up because the manager was teaching these locals a whole set of practical skills that will help them get work at lodge sites all over the place. He was showing them how to do these beautiful mud sculpture and wood statue carving decorations as well as landscaping and painting. These are all skills that are currently sought after as there are guest lodges going up all over South Africa right now and tourism is booming.

We came back down from the mountains and went right into our day off this past Friday. We didn't have anything better to do so we did what most other wildlife nuts would do in our situation; we went out and watched animals anyway. This time we headed to another reserve and scoped out some good spots. One place had a great hideout overlooking an active waterhole so we hung out there in the comfort of seats and shade for most of the day. We arrived and opened the viewing windows to find herds of Impala, Wildebeest and Zebra all taking their turns coming down for sips. It was seriously right out of The Lion King and one of the girls started whisper/singing the opening song before we smothered her so her banshee calls wouldn't be taken for a dying giraffe and scare everything away. After lunch we left that hide and drove around for a little bit when we came careening into a small breeding herd of elephants. They were about as surprised as we were and everybody was dead still waiting to see if the other was going to freak out until one of them farted something violent and went back to feeding. Way to break a tense moment. A few hundred meters down we came across a pulverized section of fence covered in elephant tracks which represented the only border control between Botswana and South Africa. Apparently these particular elephants didn't think much of the visa process that has been giving me a pain in the butt.

We returned to the hideout in time to see a big male elephant giving himself a mud bath complete with back scratch and tusk polishing. I have never seen a tree more distressed than that but thinking about it I would feel pretty distressed if a multi-ton elephant backed into me and started scratching like Balloo from Jungle Book.

Speaking of ele's their activity around base has picked up recently. A bunch of us were trying to wash dishes when suddenly the water pressure died. We went outside and a big male named Max was in the midst of holding one of our pipes in his trunk with a really guilty look on his face, like a kid looking at a broken window still holding a baseball bat. Joke was on him though because the only water that came out was the scalding hot water from the boiler that I had lit that morning in hopes of getting a hot shower. I think he burned his trunk a little bit because he sprayed out all the water, gave us a snort and stomped off.

I can't precisely say what it is but it seems like the animals have been really bold over the last few days. This morning I came out of my tent and sitting on the path less than three meters in front of me were a pair of monkeys who looked like they had been contemplating coming in. We looked at each other and my first two thoughts were "What are you looking at?" and "Please don't bite me, I haven't even had breakfast yet." One of those responses is conditioned by instinct and the other one by college. I'll let you guess which is which. I'm not sure why I put my personal safety on par with getting breakfast, but looking back I feel like rushing to a hospital bleeding from a monkey bite would have negatively impacted my breakfast schedule. Anyway I ended up not having to worry about it because after a few seconds one of the monkeys started wailing like I had stolen its lollypop and we all took off in different directions. Needless to say breakfast tasted really, really good.

On the future outlook scope, I just found out a couple of days ago that I was awarded an internship at site I did my five weeks! That means they will catch the bill for me to stay over the next fourteen weeks after my course ends in two weeks. That means I'll be in country at least until mid December, Woot Woot! Sarah's a little bitter but I said I'd try to bring her back a Cheetah so I think she'll be ok with it.

Hope you all are doing wonderfully and keep me posted on your going on's!

Buyadankie!
-Matt