Welcome Home

     So this post is much later than I would have liked but things got a bit busy since coming back and I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write! Last Tuesday I arrived at the airport early (6am) and waited a bit before mom and Grandma and Grandad showed up to pick me up. We headed towards home and decided to grab some breakfast at a little diner on the way. I then began the lovely process of unpacking and organizing my life throughout the day, contacting people, then had dinner at El Azteca with some of the fam and friends! It was great to start the rounds of welcome backs on this end, but I must say I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day. I forced myself to stay up until 8:30pm so I could try to get used to the time change, but was pleasantly surprised when it was still light as I was going to bed! I forgot just how long the days are here during the summer, and I think that has helped me adjust even more quickly. The next morning I went riding with Amy and had a lovely reunion with Charlie! It felt so good to get back on a horse and be out in the woods again. I was amazed at the trees! Not only is everything SO GREEN here (hello Spring!), I actually recognized and knew what (most of) the trees were. The leaves, the smells, the familiar sounds of birds and tree frogs – wow, it is nice to be back in my nature stomping grounds! I do need to brush up on my trees and birds, though.

      I was a bit worried that I would have forgotten how to play the piano, but after sitting down and opening up my Phantom of the Opera book and playing a few songs, I realized I surprisingly hadn’t lost too much! Other than finger muscles in my left hand.  

     I suppose the reverse culture shock hasn’t been too bad, but it has been hard to just try to step back in to American life. I feel like there was an African Ellen and American Ellen and I had to switch over when I got back. There are still so many things I miss about Botswana and I think some things will definitely carry through to my ‘American’ life, but for now I am trying to focus on the reasons why I was excited to come home and not how much I miss everyone and everything there!

    On Thursday I drove down to Blacksburg to enjoy graduation festivities with Chip and his family. It has been quite the whirlwind of eating and graduation (And getting my hair cut!! Woo!), but good fun meeting everyone and catching up with the Wesley people that are still around! It was super super weird to come back here. Over the past year I have grown out of the college stage of life, whatever that entails, but coming back and trying to fit back in was a bit odd.  Oh dear, I think that means I’m getting old!

    Well to continue with the choppiness of this post, I think I’ll include some of the lists of things I came up with before I left Botswana of things I would miss and were looking forward to (in no particular order):

Things I will miss:

- Wildlife, being minutes from Chobe National Park

- All my kids!

- Friday nights

- Friends!

- Bike riding every day, having time and energy to exercise

- ‘Life’ talks with Lipa

- Clouds/sun/thunderstorms/sunsets

- Being tan

- God time, relaxing

Things I’m looking forward to:

- chocolate chips (and ‘real’ brown sugar for baking!)

- washing machine/dryer

- mountains

- family and friends on the same continent

- efficiency/being able to accomplish more than one thing each day

- contemporary Christian songs/church

- having my own car/driving

- real milk

- piano

- horseback riding

- drinking water straight from the tap

- swimming in rivers and lakes without worrying about crocs and hippos!

- ice-makers

- not having to use adapters

     Driving has been really weird! I think I had gotten to the point where all my instincts were ‘left-side’ of the road, and now I have to switch back. I’ve only gotten myself in a couple of pickles, including walking across roads and looking the wrong way for traffic! That is quite dangerous… I just look both ways five times now and keep telling myself right, right, right, while I’m driving!

    It has been a great first week back, from here until mid-July I will be planning my travels and future in Oregon, taking the Praxis exam, catching up with people, and making my way out there. The thought of starting again in a new place is slightly daunting, but I’m also excited to start this new program in such a beautiful place and making a new home. Number four… As many of you way-faring individuals may understand, a little part of you is left behind everywhere that you call home. So my list is growing…. Highland, MD, Blacksburg, VA, Kasane, Botswana, and now Ashland, OR. We will see what the future holds there!

    This will be my last post of the African ELM sort, not sure if I will continue at all once I relocate, but it is a great way to make myself keep some record of what I am doing (really this is more for me than for you!) so I hope to continue recording my next adventures! Thanks for reading I hope you have enjoyed some of the stories and photos. I want to end similarly to the way I began, with the d365 devotion for today. Appropriately, it is about God’s creation and new beginnings. I am excited to continue sharing my knowledge and enthusiasm about God’s beautiful creations with others in my next endeavors in Oregon!

The sun gives rise to the newness of every day.
The moon and stars provide just enough light
To remind us of tomorrow.

The Spirit of God is at work in every moment,
So walk in whatever light you have,
Giving birth to the promise of God in you.

One Week

    My, how time flies. It feels like just yesterday I was getting off the plane with Kristen and being introduced to Botswana. As much as I am looking forward to coming home, each day a part of me gets more sad to leave! I did the dirty deed and pulled out my suitcase yesterday because I finally decided I needed to start making sure everything would fit to go back! I am sorting through things, figuring out what needs to come home, what can be left, what can be given away and what needs to be returned to the lovely people who lent me things for my house! Won’t bore you with the details, but the past couple weeks have been quite busy as I try to have my ‘lasts’ and say goodbyes in Kasane! Will try to hit a few highlights:

      Carrie and I (and sometimes Ketso) have been leading a Sunday afternoon ‘Teen Time’ with some youth from the church. A couple weeks ago we planned a grand finale party with lots of fun games and snacks. All the kids (including us) had a blast! This has been such a rewarding time that we get to spend with these teens to offer a safe environment for them to learn about God and how it relates to their lives. They are all such awesome kids it has been so great getting to know them!

Me, Maria, and Lipa

Morning in the park and goodbye Maria!! : ( Sad day as we said bye to our amazing veterinarian!! She is heading to Namibia then possibly SA to continue her career and gain more experience. The lab isn’t quite the same without her!

The 'slaves' taking a break! Jon, Octavius, me, Carrie, and Luke

    Trish and Carrie’s Birthday weekend at Muchenje! Trish, otherwise known as Mommy Trish, hosted a huge 60^th birthday bash at a new campground they are building as a retreat-type place for missionary families. It is not quite finished, but it was a great place for a party! Us kids were dubbed the ‘slaves’ and helped to cook dinner and had a blast singing around the campfire (3-4! 3-4! Projecttt!!) and camping along the river. Such a wonderful party and beautiful camping spot!

 On Sunday Carrie had planned a mini-olypmics day of games! Above is by far my favorite photo from the event – Octavius focusing very hard on catching the marshmallow after he catapulted it off the plate using the broom. We had lots of fun competitions such as sliding a cookie from your forehead into your mouth, flying a kite attached to a hat on your head, moving cotton balls using Vaseline on your nose, sorting Smarties candy, and a three-legged obstacle course!

Brave little Onalenna held the python almost the entire time!

May 1^st Holiday Conservation Club Fundraiser. One of my visions for my last few months with the club was to hold an Environmental Fair at the schools that would be open to the whole community and would involve many of the conservation organizations in the area. I found out, though, that there would be a similar event being hosted by the entire district sometime later this year, so decided to scrap that idea and change to a smaller-focused event in front of Spar, the local grocery store on Labour Day Holiday. I had the children make home-made play dough during club the previous week and we were going to sell it as a fundraiser (it uses cream of tartar, which comes from a Baobab tree!) and they had made posters earlier in the year about various wildlife and trees, and we were going to bring some snakes from the center down to do some snake education. While things didn’t go exactly as planned (do they ever?), I would say the event was a huge success! I had a TON of kids show up, most ended up running around with the bags of play dough trying to sell it to people (think half of it ended up in their pockets, but we still made more than 200 pula in donations!) and others hung around the snakes. The snakes were a HUGE hit, especially among the kids. A few even became the ‘handlers’ and were teaching the other people about them! Towards the end a reporter showed up from the Daily Newspaper and took some photos so hopefully the clubs will be featured in there soon!!

Knock Knock! Anyone home? One of the mongooses stops by my house to ask for some cheese, please!

     On a different note, I can check something else off my list! Last night was my first rat/mouse in the house. I have been expecting it from the day I moved in but have been pleasantly surprised by the lack of rodents so far. However, last night there was such a commotion on my roof it woke me up, then I laid awake for a couple hours listening to this horrendous scratching/nibbling coming from the loft above my bathroom that I thought could only be the neighborhood genet digging to China through my ceiling. I did the only logical thing and put my earplugs in and turned on the light, trying to trick it in to thinking it was daytime. Only after having a quite interesting dream during which a friendly wombat-looking creature had gotten into my home through an open window and settled into the loft, did I wake up to a mouse crawling across my arm. I think I found the culprit. Quite a brave one, too. Needless to say I will be taking a box trap home to catch him tonight and bring him to the center tomorrow. Poor thing had no idea what he was getting himself into when he came into my house….. he will soon be snake food! 

Snakes!

   I did my first solo snake presentation last week at the Catholic Mission where I have been going every Thursday to give conservation lessons. I have been doing this almost the whole year and I finally decided it was about time to show these kids some snakes!  Something that we do often from the center is use snakes for educational purposes and take them to various events to just let people touch or hold them and to teach them that snakes, although they should be respected, are not to be feared!

    The general attitude of people here when it comes to snakes is see it – kill it! You can’t blame them very much when they live in an area with some of the most venomous snakes in the world, but we try to teach them that it is not a good idea to try to kill the snake because you can hurt yourself even more (plus it is illegal to kill some snakes). The best thing to do when you see a snake is leave it alone! For some, I don’t think that is too difficult because the second they see the snake they run screaming in the opposite direction! But fear is the root of wanting to kill them, so by letting them have the opportunity to hold or touch a snake in a safe environment they can see that not all snakes are bad and there is no reason to just kill them!

    I took a Brown House Snake and a Southern African Python (Rock Python) to show to the group. These are two safe snakes that are very commonly found around here.  It is quite entertaining watching everyone’s reactions when you pull a snake out of the bag. Funny the children were much calmer than the adults! It’s so rewarding to watch people go from screaming and running away to actually coming to touch the snake (after they see others do it safely of course). Overall, great experience! Saving snakes, one human at a time….

Gingerdoodles!

I made these cookies last night just on a baking whim. I had all the ingredients from when mom made ginger snaps when she was here for Christmas, and I decided I should get another use out of those ginger and cloves! Boy are these cookies good!!!! I thought I would share the recipe, originally from http://www.laurenslatest.com/gingerdoodle-cookies/. Didn't get any photos, but they look a lot like a plump snickerdoodle, just a bit darker and yummy and gingery! These are tough competition for your ginger snaps, mom....

Gingerdoodles
yield: 3 dozen

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup granulated sugar, for rolling

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Stir in egg, vanilla and molasses. Whip 1-2 minutes or until it turns a light brown color. Stir in remaining ingredients and mix until dry ingredients are just combined.

Roll a heaping tablespoon of dough into a ball and coat in granulated sugar. Place on silicone baking mat, lightly greased cookie sheet or parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

Bake 7-9 minutes or until outside looks cooked but inside is still soft and gooey. Cool 5 minutes on cookie sheet before transferring to cooling rack.

Serve warm or at room temperature. Store in an airtight container until ready to serve.

Nata

   On Tuesday morning we woke up at oh-dark-thirty to hit the road. Mommy Trish was driving down to Johannesburg, so she was able to take Carrie and I and drop us at Nata Lodge on her way down. After a bit of a snooze and chatting in the car, we arrived nice and early at the lodge…. About 8 am. Sadly we were too early to check in…. so we got some coffee and started our relaxation by the pool! The summary of our trip is reading, swimming, and eating!! We were soooo blessed to have our lodging AND food paid for by Ellen and Trish, lovely ladies who must care a whole lot for us! Quite a gift for us budgeting girls!

     Nata is a town about three hours south of Kasane and is located in the Magkadigkadi Pans, the largest salt pans in Southern Africa (at least). These pans used to be an ocean (wayyy back) but now they fill with water during the rainy season and dry up during the dry season to leave all the white saltiness behind. During the rainy season they get many migrating birds to the pans, such as…. Flamingos!!!! We were able to just catch the end of the rainy season so when we went on our pan trip we got to see the flamingos, pelicans, avocets, etc. They were a bit far away but very cool to see! On that 3 hour trip we also got to sit on the edge of a huge pan that looked practically like an ocean and watch the sunset. It was a beautiful sunset because of two storms on either side of us. The landscape is soooo flat you feel like you can see forever! We could see rain that was probably hundreds of kilometers away. Huge sky! 

     The first night we had a full-course meal – a LOT of food! We started with a cheesy bun and salad, then moved on to our steak, veggies, and chips then ended with a waffle with ice cream and a slice of cheesecake. We are both pretty good eaters but we were both rolling back to the tent after that! But we couldn’t not eat food that was given to us! Also had a wonderful breakfast in the morning… even though we really weren’t that hungry!

   So I’m totally going out of order, but just writing as things come to me! The tent that we stayed in was en suite so it had a bathroom in it. Very awesome accomodation!!  It even provided enough room for the Cha Cha slide…. Exercise in the morning! I personally loved the shower – so neat to be able to shower under the stars! After our two lovely days of relaxation and reading a lot, we had to head back to Nata to catch the bus back to Kasane. We thankfully found a lift with a nice group of Germans that were heading that way and dropped us at the bus stop. After waiting for nearly an hour for the bus we were getting a bit bored….. so of course we resorted to food and bought a yummy bread patty thing. As we were sitting there eating our homemade bread/pancake thing, a man walked up and asked if we were going to Kasane. We said yes! And he offered us a lift. So we climbed into the back of his car which looked like a couch, complete with seat covers and throw pillows, and had a very lovely drive up. He was an excellent driver and we were quite thankful to have that ‘cushy’ ride compared to the bus! Sooo overall, we had an excellent trip! So glad I got to see another part of the country, now I’ve seen the Delta, the pans, and Chobe! Thanks Carrie for being my travel buddy!

     I had the pleasure of coming back to an ant-infested house. As we head back into dry season they are desperate for water and an entire ant colony seemed to think my shower would be a good place to set up camp! Let’s just say they are all now in a place with plenty of water…. down the drain!

 Unfortunately the pictures aren't loading on to this blog post... will try to post some pix onto facebook instead - got some really great ones!

Easter Travels

         As my time in Botswana draws to a close I am trying to squeeze some last minute traveling in! Since it is now a school holiday I don’t have to do any teaching so I can take some time off work. Last week, Carrie (who graciously offered to be my travel buddy!) and I traveled to a farming village called Pandamatenga, or Panda, where we stayed with a family we know from church. We got a ride with someone out there, about 45 minutes away, and unfortunately were a bit delayed, so arrived around dinner time. We dropped our stuff then went with the whole family (Dean and Ellen, who we were staying with, their two children, then Dean’s brother, his wife and two girls who live on a farm close by) out to a nearby pan to have dinner and watch the full moon rise.

     I rode in the back of the buckey with the two kids – lots of bumpy fun! - as we passed through fields of sunflowers, sorghum, and millet to cross through the farm fence that is supposed to keep out the lions, elephant, and other pesky wildlife that can so easily destroy a farmer’s crop or cattle. The scenery was unlike anything else in Botswana, my personal fave was the huge fields of sunflowers, which unfortunately I didn’t get a great photo of, but were just amazingly beautiful!

    Unfortunately we didn’t see much wildlife while we were at the pan. There are still many larger pans that provide water to the animals farther into the bush, so they didn’t have to come in closer to the one we were at, but we thought we heard elephants and lion at one point. Panda is known for having a huge lion population, but the most we saw of them were their footprints along the fence. Otherwise, we enjoyed a fire, the moon, and delicious food before heading back to the farm to tuck in for the night.

     The next morning we had a relaxed morning with lots of tea and flapjacks! A Canadian neighbor brought her <1yr old daughter over and Carrie and I sang some songs with the kids while the moms set up an Easter egg hunt for the kids. It is so interesting to hear everyone’s story of how they ended up here. There is such a conglomerate of nationalities and stories of why people are living in this tiny little corner of the world. For several of the farmers in Panda, the reasons were not by choice, but because they were forced off of their farms in the early 2000’s when the government in Zimbabwe ceased all of the country’s farms. But I won’t go into all of that at the moment….

A few butterflies playing in the garden!

     After lunch we headed out to get a tour of the farms and a new farm that they had purchased. We also stopped to watch a man and woman who are training falcons to be predatory birds to control the population of Quellea, which are the equivalent to Starlings in the States, and very devastating to crops. We watched them fly the birds for a bit. They are still training them until they can get them to the point where they will chase the pest birds off of the farms. They were hired to pilot this program so that in the future farmers might use them for pest control. It was really neat to watch them!

    That night we decided to sleep out under the stars! We had a wonderful set-up with mattresses in the bed of a huge trailer set in their front yard. We were all snuggled up as we looked up at the vast sky with the almost-whole moon! Early in the morning before the sun came up we spotted a few of the Bush Babies (nagapis?) in nearby trees. Very interesting creatures! We managed to roll ourselves out of our cozy beds to get breakfast and be on our way with a ride back to Kasane. What a lovely trip! Thanks Ellen and Dean for a wonderful visit!!

      Back in Kasane for Easter weekend, Carrie, Octavius and I enjoyed a delicious breakfast of cinnabon cake, bacon and eggs on Saturday morning – it was amazing! And very filling…..

 

On Sunday morning we had a beautiful sunrise service at the Seep, then a fun gathering in the afternoon to celebrate. I introduced Easter egg dyeing to the group and we had a good time coming up with fun designs! We swam and ate food, then went our own ways for the evening. I reclaimed my house from spiders the next day then went into town to get ready to leave for Nata on Tuesday morning.

 To be continued…. Figure I will post this while I can because it is taking so long to write! Will post about Nata after the weekend hopefully!

Around the Center

      Well last week was quite an exciting week at the center, so although this is a bit delayed, figured I’d share a few pictures.

      First, just wanted to do a compare and contrast of the center during dry and wet season. It is amazing the difference that rain can make!! Things are beginning to dry up as we start to head back into dry season again.... and winter!

October

Febraury

      Last Monday Maria found this skin shed by our largest Southern African Python – 3.75 meters long!! Very cool!

      On Tuesday we got a call about a side-striped jackal that was killed by a car and on the side of the road. After finding and retrieving testable organs and parts, we decided to ‘recycle’ it and feed it to the python. Below, she enjoys her tasty treat!

      Pythons are constrictors, so after we put it in and shook it a little bit to make her think it was alive she struck with lightning speed, bit the mouth and wrapped around it. She sat there for a while ‘strangling it’ then proceeded to swallow it completely whole! Snakes are able to dislocate their jaws in order to eat large prey. They are opportunistic eaters so if it is available they will eat, but they can easily go up to a month without food! Let’s just say this python shouldn’t need to eat for a while! She was quite content afterwards to sit in her water pool and digest this huge meal! Sorry I forgot to get an ‘after’ picture of what it looked like after it had eaten.

      On Wednesday, Enviro911, a cooperation between some members of the community and the wildlife department to monitor illegal environmental issues, coordinated a ‘snare sweep’ through part of the bush to find and remove snares set to trap and kill wildlife. Even though none of the people in my group found any snares, we were still proud of ourselves for surviving the potentially elephant, lion, and buffalo-infested forest! (I was, at least! Probably spent more time watching for animals than snares!)

      On our way back to the cars, Grant, the leader of Enviro911, got a call from a friend saying that there were three wild dogs and a hyena dead on the road to Lesoma. It is very weird for so many dogs to be killed at once, and they were spread out along the road, not all in one spot hit by one car. He suspected that they may have been poisoned, then disoriented and hit by cars. So we took a trip out there to take a look. Maria was going as the vet, but I just tagged along as the…. field assistant! When we got out there the Wildlife Department had already been out and decided that they had all just gotten hit by cars and they dragged them off the road into the tall grass. They had also found one dead Yellow-Billed Kite and one that looked like it was almost dead. We took the almost dead one and tried to help, but didn’t have the right treatment for poisoning with us. Unfortunately he died later, after we got back to the center.

      So the Wildlife Department left and we went to find the carcasses. They were a bit tough to find, but in the end, we found one really mashed up, another fairly intact, and the hyena close to each other, then one more wild dog down the road that Wildlife hadn’t gotten to. Four animals dead in about a four km stretch of road? Very odd, indeed, if they were all just struck by cars at different points on the road. It was quite sad to find four of an endangered species (one more Wild Dog turned up dead the next day on the same stretch of road) killed.

      Taking into account the dogs and birds, we suspect that a farmer poisoned a carcass and put it out for lions and other predators to feed on. They do this to kill the animals that may attack their cattle and other livestock. But, as we saw, you never know what animals will get ahold of this meat, including birds and endangered species! Unfortunately there is not much we can do about it. We were able to take samples from the dead animals and are hoping to send them to a lab to be tested, but even if they turn up positive, there is no way to tell who is responsible for the poisoning.

      So, trouble in paradise, and yet another lesson of the human-wildlife conflict that occurs here and how people deal with it. Sad story, but it was a very neat experience to be able to get so close and handle African Wild Dogs and a Spotted Hyena, even if they were dead….

And just an extra picture of a beautiful sunrise! 

P.S. - Home in 2 months!!