I HAD A BABY....ELEPHANT!!!!!!!

Okay so I had been training with all three elephants and one was pregnant and due at the end of May. So every morning i would tell Mondevu (the pregnant ellie) that i would buy her special treats if she had a baby when i was still here and she had until the 30th of April. THe good thing is that an elephant gift is nothing like the price of a push present in the States because we just bought her a HUGE bag of oranges. So I wake up on my last morning in Zim EXTREMELY sad and i told them that i didn't want to get out of bed becuase i didn't want my last day to start. But i wake up that morning and as soon as we are getting ready to go out and start our day at 6am, Reilly runs around the corner saying "GET IN THE CAR MONDEVU IS HAVING HER BABY!" I almost peed in my pants! We all jumped in the car and RACED to the ellie pens and on our way I asked how we knew it was coming and he said one of the handlers came biking to the house to tell us they saw a FOOT! So at that point we all knew this was happening. We got there and unfortunelty had missed the birth which Bright (our guide but lives with the Ellie and guided the birth) said "it just dropped out" and then four of the handlers had to pull it away and keep it away from the mom becuase mom elephants will stamp the baby to death becuase all they know is that is what caused them pain. So they got it away and when we got there this little tiny morsel of an elephants was wet and trying to stand. OH MY WORD IT IS THE CUTEST THING EVERRRRRRR! They are going to name it Zambezi ( as it is male and they wanted to name it after a river and the guys are canoing down the Zambezi river to raise money for the Rhino so i think that will be the name). I couldn't have had a better last day if i tried. It was so shocking and the whole day we just spent with the baby elephant, although we also did some games with the kids from the compound where all the handlers families live. The last day was hard but that made it unforgetable! You all will soon see Zambezi as I stole him and brought him in my bag.

Life in Zim

Oh i have been busy.  Plowing the ground with a plow that is pulled by an elephant.  So much harder for the people then the elephants though.  We have had SERIOUS issues with the power out here and haven't really had any power for about 5 days now...and it was off and on before that.  The problem with no power is the generator is too expensive to run AND the cell phones dont work without power..i don't get it but it is Africa and some things you just have to say "okay, doesn't make any sense but it still happens."  I deliver hay and food every monday morning with Miceala and it is some serious hard work but it is god exersize.  I will write more later but I unfortunelty have to run all the time and so now is another time.  We are in rush but I wanted to tell all that I have stayed busy and I am living up my last week here and I am EXTREMELY sad to leave here....it is amazing!  Okay i hope all is well and i wish my brother a very HAPPY BIRTHDAYYYYYY!  Lots of love to everyone and i am sorry about the lack of pictures...they will come some time i promise.  

ANIMALS!

So I can't even remember all that i have written but here is the deal at Imire. There are about 11 wil d griaffes that just roam around and no one really works with besides giving them some pellets sometimes to bring them close to the game drive truck. There is a new 3 week old giraffe and i think it is possibly the cutest thing. I would take it home but i have already packed my bag with the cook at our house becuase she is good, nothing like Jason's cooking, but close, and i also am packing a baby zebra and the cook, Liz said she would take care of the baby zebra in my bag. So there are also Zebra here who are wild and just observed. Then there are a few types of antolope...impala, tesebbe (fastest anelope in africa), Blesbok (who sound like they are sneezing all the time bc they get bugs (like magets) that grow in their nasal canal...yes i know so aweful and we have all decided that is NOT what we want to come back as), Kudu, Waterback, and then there are Sable and horses, and they have cattle ALLLL OVER. THe cattle are used because then the people can bring in the cattle and "dip" them (which is a spray to keep off ticks) and then let them loose with the other game and keep down the tick population because ticks kill a lot of animals. Then there are two black rhino that hang out together all day, then two tohers that also hang out with a wharthog (and the two and the warthog live in pens at our house), three elephants who i train with and ride. We had to ride the elephants with manure to bring to the schools garden the other day. THere is also an elephant who lives with the buffalos. THere are a few confused animals on this farm....a wharthog who thinks she is a rhino, an elephant that thinks she is a buffalo, a zebra who thinks he is an impala, and a hyena who thinks he is a dog. The parents of the guy that runs the volunteer program have a hyena, Tsotsi, who they have raised from a baby (the baby hyena, baby rhino (tatinda), and baby warthog (pug) all were raised by Judy and John (the owners) because all these animals were orhphaned at the same time). The hyena does go out and hunt all day and only come in at night adn will attack strangers. I have hung out with him three times and almost pee in my pants everytime....not so enjoyable but the family ABSOLUTLY LOVES HIM! I think that might be all the animals...oh and a crocidile, a lion, 2 wild hyenas, a hippo and some cats and dogs. I have also learned tons of trees, and birds. So for now that is it...oh there are pythons but i just like to think htat they don't exist. So i will update you if I think of any other animals here. Hope everyone is well!

chopping trees and camping out

So I forgot to blog about my AMAZING skills at chopping trees. I have gotten better as I have had to do it a few times in the last few days. So first I have to chop down small gum trees to make sign posts. Then give them to the elephants to bring home...no blisters from that chopping expereince. Then we are going to build a climber for the lions because at the moment there is only a female lion but in a week (possibly a week, a month, a year...it is all the same in africa..it happens when it happens) Irime (the safari Ranch i am working at) are getting a male lion. This climber will be with the lions so they can play but to make the climber we had to cut down BIG trees. You begin to appreciate everything that is electric or gas run...TRUST ME! We chop with axes or these sorry looking knive things. Okay that expereince elicited 2 blisters. THen there was another wedding this weekend and they needed our house so we packed EVERYTHING back up and went camping on the farm end of the safari park. It was absolutly unreal, so peaceful, on the dam, and we had a great time. It was me, the guy (Riley) who runs the volunteer program, his cousin who helps with the volunteer project (Maceala), and our guide who is with us all day from 6 am to 6 pm (Bright). But yesterday we had to make spoons out of a bIG chunk of wood! Mine is amazing (it is actaully a stirring spoon). We worked so hard on them that Maceala said she is putting hers in her will becuase it is so importatnt to her now! I got a nice amount of 3 more blisters from that. We also set up an outside shower and it was so great! But anyways we are back now to head back home as the wedding party has hopefully left!

Daily Routine

Okay again there are no pictures but we have figured a way to get some pictures up so we will hopefully do that soon for all of you that are eagerly anticipating animal pics and me training with elephants. So in the mornings (we are up at 5:45 am and at the elephants but 6:30) I go and watch the elephant handler train the elephants to know the parts of the body and they can also kick a soccer ball, better then me. By the end of my time here the handler said i will be working with them on my own. CRAZYYYY! Isabelle, I know you said you would be jealous if i rode an elephant but i have to tell you about it becuase you wouldn't believe how cool it is. We ride them some days for a bit in the morning to keep them used to having clients ride them and it is so cool because they eat the whole time and just DESTROY trees as they walk. The elephants get a hold of one branch and just RIP it down and take almost the whole tree with them. It is so funny but so destructive. Dad, if you thought deer were bad you should get some elephants and you would have no more trees. We also walked with the rhinos and learned what they eat and what they do and they are so cute becuase they have to take naps in the day. And yes Jason i do smooch their ears and the elephants ears everyday! We had a wedding here this weekend whcih was so fun and crazy and they had the elephants walk in the background and some giraffes walked by...the giraffes are free to roam as most animals on here are and we just cound them each week, but the rhinos and the elephants have handlers with them all day and night due to poachers. Anyways i have to run but wanted to wish everyone a happy easter and hope all is well. Miss everyone, pictures are to come!

Beautiful Zimbabwe...at Imire Safari Ranch

These are some photos of just how beautiful it is there! It was breathtaking! Also the second picture is from one morning (among many) of training with the elephants in the rain, Bright and I were walking home for breakfast and there was this amazing rainbow....i made Bright wait so i could take a picture. I LOVE rainbows....they are like earth saying "have a great day!" When I was there it was beginning to be winter (since we are below the equator) so that is why there was a lot of brown and not a lot of green.

Confused Elephant Syndrome

This is Nzou (means Elephant) which is funny because she is the only elephant that is confused about her identity. There are a few other animals who are confused about their identity at Imire as well. But we will start with Nzou who one day took to the buffalo. Now these buffalo are MEAN and hard to manage so it is nice that Nzou is there because the guys who work with the buffalo will just work with Nzou and move her around and she will get all the buffalo to follow. Usually with buffalo there is one dominant male....well meet Nzou the dominant elephant. Nzou has been great help though. One time a buffalo was going to attack a guy who works on the safari and Nzou got in between them and saved the guys life. She has many times pulled out baby buffalo who get stuck in mud and holes and such with her trunk. She is PRETTY cool but yet confused....see we all have a calling!

game Drive feeding different rhinos

Okay so this is me feeding the rhinos on the game drive, only because the they are handled more and they were behind this fence. Okay funny thing about rhinos is that even though they could OBVIOUSLY power threw this little wire fence if a rhino is ever coming at you all you have to do is stand behind like a tree. now the interesting thing is it could be a tree the size of your wrist it is just that there needs to be a barrier between you and them. I know all of you in NYC are worried about Rhinos attacking so you can thank me later for this advise. So this little fence in between us is enough for the rhinos to not attack. The bigger Rhino here is Shanu, the female and she is not what you would call "nice" she liked to attack me ALL the time. Then the little one is the male, Tatinda, and his names means "thank you" becuase he was the baby that was the only one who lived through a massacre of the rhinos that happened a year ago. The poachers thought he was dead because he had blood on him but he was actually alive, so John and Judy raised him. When they took Tatinda in to raise they found this baby abandoned warthog, now named Pug and she was raised with Tatinda, and an orphaned hyena (Totsie) so this is why here in these pictures there is a random warthog there. Pug and Tatinda have never left each other's side, and Shanu just had to accept the warthog too. Okay Pug would also like to attack me everyday if possible. The last picture is of the entrance to the Lodge area as we returned from our game drive. I loved these trees! The Rhinos tongues are strong so you have to make sure they don't suck your hand in when you feed them....note to self for you NYCers!

Game Drive...monkey business

They call these monkeys something different every where I went but I think here they called them black face monkeys....they are a little crazy and all over the place. I LOVED these two pictures of him just chilling on the post and then itching his head....oh monkeys make me laugh!

Game Drive ELEPHANTS!!!!

Oh these guys are AMAZING. So this is the first time I met the eles and we couldn't get out or anything just look. But Miceala said "oh these are the elephants you will be working with" and I was awe struck and excited! So the one with what looks no tusks is Mondevu (spelling?) and she is the only female, and in this picture she is pregnant with Macavuse's baby. Macavuse is the largest male who is in the first two pictures, one with Mondevu and the other of his face. He is the dominant male. The one who is trying to sniff us with his trunk out is Toto (who DOES NOT like white people as he was previously abused by his white owners. No white person can ride him alone or he will shake until you fall off, also Toto has a great personality but not so social. They all have amazingly different personalities! Okay here is my elephant interesting facts....One is that they have a gland on the side of their face that can ooze out liquid...if the liquid is clear they are cool if it is white they are MAD. Then they have a gland inside their mouths that other elephants can smell with their trunks and this smell from the gland will tell the other elephant what type of mood they are in. I guess i wouldn't have a job as a psychologist if we were all like elephants and you just had to smell their gland to find out their mood, or how weird our society would be though...haha.

Game Drive extras

The first picture is of the houses where the staff live, they were actually in the process of installing everything so they will soon have power. The elephants and two rhinos are kept there over night. Then a scenery shot, and impala peeking up over the grass, and I believe these were Blesboks. If they are here is a little info on them...they have bugs that live up in their nose so ALLLLLLL day long they are making sounds like blowing their nose. Poor guys...but they are mellow, like deer. The first picture of them that is a baby one too.

GAME DRIVE....GGGGGGiraffes!

Okay REALLY could Giraffes be any goofy looking. I love them, they just chill, ALWAYS grinding their teeth and eating (they must get major headaches) and doing their thing. So little lesson on giraffes...the darker the spots the older they are. And if the horns are flat they are a male (like the one with the bird flying over...i love that picture) and if the horns have tufts on them they are female. I know you are all feeling smarter already! I put the picutre with the person's hand in to show you how close we were. Later you will see REALLY ridiculously cute pictures of the mom and baby giraffe who was just born. I love these guys. These pictures are for my mom, who really loves them, and Diana's sister (i think) that likes them too...ENJOY! There are about 10 or so I think at Imire but they are really left alone except we would check on the baby and mama to make sure they were safe.

Rhino lesson

Okay here is a quick lesson in the difference between black rhinos and white rhinos (oh Imire staff should be proud of all they taught me!). FIRST it is not related to color in fact "white" rhino is actually "wide" rhino because of their either wide mouths or body (can't remember which) and ended up turning into "white" rhino. SECOND black rhinos are branch eaters (haha i love how i say that and all these black rhinos are eating grass....well they can eat branches and like it but they eat ALL the time....kinda like me...and so grass is there only option right here) BUT black rhinos have a sort of tongue part to their upper lip that you can see in this last picture. It works like a tongue and can wrap around branches so they can pull them off and eat them. They know naturally what they like to eat and what will kill them. White rhinos are grazers and they have a wide mouth and no tongue lip thing...they only eat grass and are like a lawn mower when they eat. Imire now has some white rhino but i never got to see them. But that is a HUGE step for them to try this breeding with white rhinos since they were the first to do it with black rhino! All Imire's rhino are owned by the government and that is some of the reason that this ranch never gets taken over by the government, because they sort of already own it. Thanks for coming to Rhino class 101!

game drive....RHINOOOOOOOOS

Okay for some reason these pictures are doubled sorry. BUT these were my first rhinos all trip and I LOVED them. These are not the Rhinos I worked with or that lived at our house. These two black Rhinos live with the elephants over in the area where all the workers live. They are penned up at night because of "poachers" that come and try to cut off their horns. They want the horns because they can get A LOT of money for them because some cultures think they have healing powers but they are just made out of Carotene (like your finger nails). Imire saws off their horns once they get a little long and donates them to the game park reserve so that people aren't tempted to kill the rhinos for their horns. There is a really sad story but i will tell it later. ANYWAYYYYS these two rhinos are Guomo and Comchacha (spelling?) and all I know is that Comchacha means the bad word for "female dog" in English, and she kinda is one. HAHA. These guys are intense! They aren't handled as much or around people as much, just their handlers who walk with them all day everyday so no one tries to kill them. But rhinos like to charge and pretty much hurt you because they can't see too well so they charge and intimidate but sometimes don't know their strength and kill you soooooo needless to say we stayed in the trailer pulled by a tractor we were riding in.

GAME DRIVE...haha hyenas

Okay so we met at the lodge and began our game drive....first stop...HYENAS. They may look cute but um no they aren't. So this safari only has two animals penned up, the hyenas three of them (although there are wild hyenas around, who stalk these ones at night around their fence, and another one that lives with John and Judy which they raised), and the female lion (now also a male lion who i never met, oh and suposadly a wild lion who we never saw but saw prints who made me nervous!). These two animals are in pens (which are spacious) because if not then the visitors would not be safe, we could not walk and do game count, and the other game would be harder to manage as these guys would be eating them, and the handlers of the elephants and the rhinos would not be safe. So our first stop was these guys. I do like their ears! They have a weird body type with short back legs and their body is on an angle. but their jaws could pretty much crush your bones with one bite down.....so they are welcome to stay on that side of the fence and me on the other. Oh while i was there one of them was pregnant and so the black guys who work there (because these hyenas are only nice to black males, i know it seems racist to all you americans but its the way of nature for some reason) would go in and look around so that they could take them out of there safely before they hurt them. But i think they killed them after she had them because she magically wasn't pregnant and the babies were no where to be found. Yes jason "Nature is harsh!" Oh one last thing..hyenas cries/laughs makes me VERRRRRRY nervous, it is kinda scary....NOT funny!

Landscape of Imire...DAY TWO

Here are some pictures of the landscape of the Imire Safari Ranch. The second day I got there I went on a game drive with the visitors from the lodge so I could get an idea of the layout and the different animals on the safari. Miceala went with me, she is the cousin of Reilly Travers (who's grandfather started this ranch) and Reilly runs the volunteer program. Miceala showed me all around and it was great....she was such an awesome tour guide! The posts after this will show you all the animals i saw.....get ready! The last picture on this post shows the Impala, which are like the deer of the Northeast of America.....they are everywhere and they kind of jump/hop as they run. They are fast little suckers....