This is my last blog from South Africa. I seriously cannot
believe it. These four weeks have flown by and I just want to rewind and do it
all over again, or just stay here forever (just kidding Mom!). I’ll get back to
this in a minute, but I have so much to fill y’all in on!
It ended up being just a fun, relaxing day, which was
exactly what I needed. Then on Saturday, we went to the local pub and
restaurant for lunch! It was Liz’s birthday. Liz is actually my bunkmate! I
love that girl. We had so much fun out on the patio and the food was pretty
good! Petronel also made us play a little game of “who can spit giraffe poop
the farthest”. I had giraffe poop in my mouth! It wasn’t that bad though, and I
wasn’t even that good at the game. After lunch, Sam, our project manager who is
from Ireland, put on some Irish drinking songs and everyone got up and started
dancing. I love this group; we have so much fun together.
Trust me, I have more, but I’ll have to upload them later.
Now today is a big clean! We just do a deep clean of all the enclosures. Also,
we are helping build a new boma for Storm, Lunar, and Didi, the three rhino.
It’s going to be a long day, but it’s always nice to come into town.
I think I’m only going to be able to upload two pictures
since we’re not in town for long today. I’ll upload so many more as soon as I
hit the US; so get ready!
Overall, this experience has been absolutely, positively
INCREDIBLE. I want to thank everyone who helped me get here, whether it was
financially or even just supporting me and cheering me on. I have done things I
never thought in a million years I would get to do. I have seen animals in the
wild that I never thought I would ever see. So again, I seriously can’t believe
this happened. I have learned about hard work, patience, and especially how to
have fun and keep working even when you’re so tired you want to just curl up in
your bed all day.
The people here have made it so much easier to roll out of
bed. My main girls, Samantha, Alison, Liz, Erin, Karah and Tegan are amazing
and I’m going to miss them so much. Samantha is a fourth grade teacher from
Colorado, Alison and Erin are in vet school at Colorado State, Liz is pre-vet
at Penn State, Karah is about to start vet school at Ohio State, and y’all know
Tegan, the crazy Aussie. There are 15 of us total, and only two guys, Nixon and
Will. Nixon is in school in Colombia studying biology and management. He’s the
nicest person I have ever met in the world and gets a lot of nose bleeds (He
told me to type that, but he really is the sweetest). I’ve been helping him
with his English and teaching him valuable slang words, including words such as
“cray cray”, “wazup” and “yo”. Will is studying pre-vet and animal science at
Cornell. He was our newest member of the rhino team and is so much fun to work
with. Lucky we all get along well because we all have to share two small
fridges and a tiny stove. Then there are only 8 seats at the table so we have
to be really nice and share seats or stand while we’re eating. We also have our
two project managers Sam, who I mentioned earlier, and Angelique is from South
Africa and is absolutely wonderful. I’ll talk about the animals when I post
their pictures in a couple days!
I don’t want to leave this place, the people, or the animals.
I’ve been so blessed to get to experience this and travel. South Africa is a
beautiful country and the province of Mpumalanga where I’ve been in this whole
time, is amazing. My life has been completely put into perspective. There are
so many people and animals who need our help, and it doesn’t even take that
much to make a difference in someone or something’s life. Raking a rhino’s
enclosure may seem disgusting and pointless, but that rhino is one of the very
few left in Africa and that work is helping to keep it alive and healthy to
hopefully one day contribute to the rhino gene pool. It’s the littlest things
that make the biggest difference. Thanks again everyone for going on this
journey with me!
Love you all,
Llewy