Kwantu
So, as I was saying in my last blog, I was not happy with my accommodation at Kwantu. I spoke to the management and they moved me up to the hotel into a private room. It sounds nicer than it was. The room was dark, only one window in it and it couldnt be opened. The glass for the window was made so you couldn't see out of it and no one could see in. I felt like I was in a dungeon. At least it was quiet, the shower had good water pressure, hot water and a ceiling fan so I overlooked the other things.
Next issue, the veterinary internship turned out not to be a veterinary internship. The first week I did get to help with the elephant abscess but that was the extent of it. That elephant needed sedation so the abscess could be surgically opened and the core inside debrided. The veterinarian, Ru, said we could do that the following week as he was waiting to receive a shipment of medications from the supplier. Well, Ru's wife back in Zimbabwe ended up getting very ill and he had to return to Zimbabwe. He was supposed to be gone one week but did not come back after that time. The management did not know when he would return.
When Ru was gone from the reserve all of us "veterinary" internship volunteers worked with the conservation volunteers removing alien tree species from the reserve, weeding the herb garden, road maintenance, game counting and environmental beautification (picking up trash). I was really unhappy. Not that I mind doing those things but that is not what I was there for. One day we did get to do necropsy an adult blesbok and a baby blue wildebeest (separate incidents) that were found dead in the reserve. The only reason we got to do it was because we begged and I said I could do it and teach the others.
I asked to speak to Kwantu's CEO and I had a meeting with him one evening. He apologized for the situation and offered to let me leave the program 2 weeks early with a partial refund of the money I paid to be there. I accepted the offer even though I feel like they should have refunded my entire fee. The facilities and the internship were not what was described through my booking agent's website. It was no one's fault that Ru had to be gone but they really should have had a back up plan in place in case something like this happened. I really enjoyed the game rangers and the other volunteers I met but the program was not up to par. I'm so disappointed as this was the part of my trip that I was most looking forward to.....Oh well, everything happens for a reason I guess.
Some of my great guides and fellow "volunteers":
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| Faith, me and Peter |
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| Lucas, me and Freedom |
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| Some of the awesome volunteers |
Silver Lining
Four other volunteers from the project were leaving the day after I had my meeting with the CEO to go on a 6 day tour of the Garden Route. They graciously allowed me to tag along with them. The Garden Route is a stretch of the south-eastern coast of South Africa. The name comes from the ecologically diverse vegetation encountered along the route and the numerous lagoons and lakes dotted along the coast. The route is sandwiched between the Indian Ocean and the Outeniqua and Tsitsikamma Mountains. It's supposed to be amazing. We are traveling about 800km of it. We will end up in Cape Town at the end of the 6 days and I then need to decide what to do from there. I'll have one week before my friend Judy arrives in Cape Town. We are doing a 12 day tour of South Africa then I'll be homeward bound.
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| Garden Route Crew: Emily, Dave, me, Tom and Ally |
Next blog will be all about the Garden Route! More to come!
"Make new friends, but keep the old; Those are silver, these are gold." - Joseph Parry
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