The nests of the Kalahari

Here are photos of some of the amazing giant nests we saw from the sociable weaver birds.  These giant nests are everywhere on the larger trees, dead trees, and telephone poles.  They are made of small sticks and twigs, and they typically the size of a typical American sofa, although some are much larger, like the size of a mini-van or two.  They look like crazy mushroom caps, or something even more Seussian.  Hundreds of birds live in the nest, and when they get too heavy, they can break a huge tree limb.  That's pictured here.  Once on the ground, the snakes move in, so stay away!

One photo in here shows several owls that have moved into a stolen weaver nest.  Look closely!

Meerkat photos

Day 6 - April 28th 2017 - African Bush Braai

So as not to confuse anyone - this entry was written a week ago but i couldnt post it until just now. It was our last night in Krueger. 

We ended our day yesterday with a traditional African bush braai which is essentially a barbecue or cookout out in the bush. After we saw the leopard our guide Edward drove us back towards our camp and then passed it to a turn off where it looked like no path existed. And in fact there was no path, just a clearing with the tracks of other cars that had been there before. We drove for about a mile basically in the middle of the savannah and then eventually came to a clearing. Edward turned out his lights so we could see the lanterns that had been lit and spread all around in a circle and on three tables that were nicely set with white table cloths.

The cooks had already prepared the food and there was a bonfire in the middle of a pit that was lit the entire time. We were literally out in the bush, no fence around us and an armed guard kept watch the entire time including escorting us to use the toilet which was a few yards away. 

Dinner included two types of salads, pap (a type of polenta) with a tomato onion sauce, steak, chicken and roasted vegetables. For dessert we had malva pudding with amarula custard. Amarula is a liqueur made with fermented nuts from the marula tree. Everything was delicious, made especially so by the act of eating out in the African savannah, surrounded by lanterns and the spectacular night sky above.

After dinner,  Edward pointed out some constellations including Scorpio.  The Milky Way was clearly visible but Orion had already set, although we saw it earlier just after sunset.  Finally it was time to head back to camp and we returned tired but feeling like we had a perfect ending to an amazing day.

Walk in the dunes

Visit to a Bushman family

After our school visit yesterday, we drove a bit further out in the Kalahari, and stopped to visit a family of Bushmen, the Raats.  This is a family that lives with one foot in each world, and is interested in keeping and sharing their traditional culture.  It was quite interesting, as when we arrived, most were wearing fully western clothes, and then some changed into traditional Bushman clothes.  They live in a woven grass-sided house that really should be called a hut.  But they sleep in beds, and have an outdoor toilet and shower with grass walls.  They cook both inside on a hot plate and outside directly in the fire.  They served us lunch and it was mainly vegetable and very delicious.
After lunch, we went on a bush walk with some of the men.  They showed us the traditional plants and hunting methods and talked about some of their traditional culture.  They were wearing the traditional animal skin loincloths, and they had spears and bows and arrows.  Walking out in the midday sun was really hot, and really sandy, and it kept feeling realer and realer.  When we came back towards the family compound, our host, Barbara and her daughters were waiting, wearing their traditional clothes, to show us how to make Bushman jewelry.  They make their own beads and ornaments from material such as ostrich shell, hollow sticks that have been decorated with dark burn patterns, seeds, small rocks, fuzzy seed pods, and turtleshell.  We got to see how they used sticks to drill holes into the beads, and how they used hot metal to make burn patterns.  We also saw how they used sharp stones to carve traditional Bushman designs into ostrich eggs, and then rub wet ochre into the patterns to make them stand out.  We each got a a little bag of bead they had made themselves, and we each got a piece of bone with a traditional Bushman pattern burned into it to use a pendant as we each made our own necklace or bracelet.  Mine is a scorpion, but we had antelopes, hunters, lizards, birds, and spears.

It was starting to get dark as we got back to the main area, and as we waited for dinner, we watched the sunset and sat on the back bumpers of our mini-vans while our guide Hermann started us on a game of charades (or sha-RAHds, as Mariam calls them).  We can't laugh at Mariam's British accent too much, because it's turns out she's really good at sha-RAHds.  She managed to guess the film 'Top Gun' from Donato just miming putting on sunglasses, so...

After it got dark, it was really dark.  Deeply dark.  We had an amazing dinner of mutton cooked over the open fire, and then the family danced some traditional dances for us.  It was cold.  It's so interesting, but when the sun is out, it's incredibly hot (and right now it's heading into winter), and when it was dark, it was really cold.  The temperature must have swung about 40 degrees, and it just felt extreme.

Some of us slept in tents, while some of us slept in grass huts.  And that's the story of our night sleeping out in the Kalahari with a Bushman family.

Photos from the school

The Kalahari and our school visit

We arrived in the Kalahari yesterday morning, with an early flight to Uppington from Johannesburg.  Uppington is a small North Cape city, way up close to the border with Namibia.  It's dusty and small and mainly industrial.  This area of South Africa was highly dominated by Afrikkaners, and you can tell it's been very westernized, with Afrikkans the dominant language.  We didn't stay long in Uppington, just long enough to stop at the local mall to pick up sporting goods for the school we were planning to visit later in the day.  Students fundraised before we left, and we used the money to buy soccer and netball equipment for the school.

We jumped in our mini-buses and started driving north.  Everything was dusty, scrubby, and sandy.  Or course we were now in the great Kalahari desert, or, as the local spelling goes, the Kgalgadi.  Think of those 'g' sounds as really deep back of the throat noises, and that's how it's really pronounced.  This desert is filled with clumps of tough-looking light greenish yellow grass, with a bit of dark green grass, and some small shrubby looking trees.  While photos make it look like it's a grassy savanna, it is really clear that this is a sandy desert, because the deep red colored sand is everywhere between the grass clumps.  It rolls up in long dunes, like waves, that go on and on and on for hundreds of miles.  These dunes are probably about 30 feet high, and very long, all rolling in the same direction.  Then sand is really fine and soft, and so very red from the iron oxide.   Near water sources, the sand lightens, and there are more trees, mostly medium sized acacia trees.

We drove out for several hours to the border of Botswanna to visit a school in the tiny village of Askham.  The J.J. Adams Primary school is actually a fairly large regional school with kids from preschool to up to pre-high school.  We had the chance to meet the students in an assembly, where they sang for us, and we heard the principal give a speech.  Most of the students in this region don't start learning english until they are older, so one of our guides, Hermann, translated between us.  The little kids were curious and flirty, some of them performing flips and cartwheels for us as we waited to go in.  Others shyly approached for high fives and fist bumps.  We donated piles of books and school supplies to the school, as well as the sporting equipment, and then we had the chance to break into small groups and visit different classrooms.  Some of our students did songs or told stories, others tried other forms of communication.  It was a great visit and a great opportunity to see what a westernized school looks like in a rural area.