Greetings from Namibia following a successful Week 2! It was another week full of animals, new friends and good vibes, so I’ll get straight into it.

Day 1

On Monday, my two roommates and I made our way to the main camp for breakfast, but not before seeing some giraffes on our way. My task today was to support with small animal feeding, which is not for the faint stomach. The small animals include meerkats and baboons, and each meerkat has a tailored diet of different meats, which we diced up and fed to them. In meerkat groups, women are the dominant ones and can get very aggressive, and so in each enclosure, one woman and one male is kept together. They were all there for various different reasons, but largely injury related, unfortunately. It was an exciting morning though because as we were feeding them we noticed a little baby in the baboon cage, clinging onto its mother. We flagged it with our coordinator, who looked very surprised as all the males there have been vasectomised as it is illegal to breed in captivity, unless the species is critically endangered. Baboons are not. We later learned that they believe a wild baboon managed to break into the fence at some point and had his wicked way….very monkey-like behaviour. Later that morning, we filled a bathtub full of fruits, gone off foods, and lots of other things that didn’t smell good and divided it into crates for the baboons.

In the afternoon, I helped with carnivore cage cleaning, which involved us going into the big carnivore runs and picking up bones and poop and clearing out their water trough. It did mean there was another opportunity for us to see lovely Shakira and many more cheetahs. That evening ended similar to the other evenings – good food, a sunset, and many chats with new friends.

Day 2

On Tuesday, Team Cheetah were down to do horseriding. As it was a new week, our team had somewhat changed given that many went to different projects on Monday. This meant that Team Cheetah had shrunk a bit in size. To make things worse, while we were in our morning meeting, my lovely teammate, Nicole, fainted. Nicole had been very excited to do horses as she’s a big horse person, but the team didn’t allow her given what happened. Fair enough. Before trekking, we cleaned up poop, refilled hay and water, and took special care of the pregnant horse, who was due to give birth that week. We then brushed and prepared our own horses. I was, by chance, given the horse Dawn, who I renamed Dwan in my head. Dawn was so lovely on the trekking and she brought me so close to the zebras and ostriches, who are very interesting creatures.

In the afternoon, my team had squeezed down to just me, as the other girl was now sick too. It was a tough afternoon as we had to cut hay in the blazing heat. However, because it was just me and my guide, the work felt very productive and meaningful, unlike some of the tasks where it feels like there is simply too many people there. It was tough, there were many horseflies and many hidden bushes that would scrape our legs, but it felt like an afternoon of good, hard work being done. The pint I had that evening felt very deserved, as did the great sleep.

Day 3

All week, I was very excited for Wednesday to come as I was down to do Rhino Rangers. I shall explain shortly what that is, but for the morning, I helped out feeding the baby baboons and taking the teenagers out on another walk. The babies are so adorable in how they hold the big bottle with their hands and their concentration to make sure they drink as much as possible, so I was very happy with that morning. The teenagers were extra playful that morning as well, and I regularly had two jumping on me and trying to push the other off, which made for a bit of entertainment. At lunch, I loaded up on some good food and then ran back to my tent to pack up my bag for the next exciting 24 hours.

Rhino Rangers involves accompanying the APU rangers in the reserve, where the wild animals live. As the name would suggest, there are many rhinos in the reserve: up to 16. There are also 3 elephants, the lion (Luke) who only got released the week prior, and many zebras and giraffes. We met our ranger, Saki, after lunch with some delay. Earlier that day, the rangers were very busy as they had to dart one of the elephants and replace his tracking device. From what we learned, it’s a very complex mission where an all-hands-on-deck approach must be taken, and so our rangers were slightly delayed as they had to make sure everything was safe before we could go in. On our pre-sunset game drive, we spotted one solo rhino, but unfortunately nothing more than that. In order to make use of the light, we drove to our campsite, which consisted of a few tents and a picnic table. We set the table and got tucked into the food that the kitchen had kindly prepared for us, and the chats began to flow. We learned a lot about Saki and his life. He is quiet but once he gets chatting he can chat for hours and crack the odd terrible joke. He told us a lot about Namibia, its culture and its beliefs, but he was quick to say that while he is Christian, he does not believe in Jesus. We quizzed him. He believes that God doesn’t have a colour or a gender, he is a larger than life entity that doesn’t take a physical form in the way we imagine, and so Saki doesn’t believe that God would have chosen to send a white man to Earth to represent him….some food for thought.

After food, we hopped back in the jeep and began our night patrol. The rhinos were definitely now out. I don’t know how Saki spotted them in the dark, but we say 11 of the 16. They do look slightly like rocks initially, but they are very beautiful. We saw many families, where the baby would keep very close to his mama as she would graze the grass along with dadda. We did see some family tension, however, where two teenagers were giving their dad a bit of a hard time. Losing his patience, the dad turned towards us and slowly made his way. I began to get a bit edgy, but calm Saki just flashed his torch very fast at the rhino, causing him to back off. After the drama, we made our way back to our tent as it was getting quite late. It was another incredibly starry night, and I wish I could describe the views that we had of the savannah under the brightest stars you could imagine, but I don’t think I’ll ever do it justice.

Day 4

In the morning, we had some breakfast and packed up our things for a final game drive. This time, we saw some of the grazers, including many giraffes and zebras, though the giraffes were less afraid of us and made it known that they wanted to cross the road, bringing us to a halt. The babies kept close to their parents as they ran across with their awkwardly long legs – they are so amazing to see so I was chuffed. We dropped off some other rangers (who were carrying guns!!) to a patrol spot – I didn’t pick up whether or not they had seen a poacher as I couldn’t tell if Saki was joking. Either way, they had a gun so I’m sure they would have sorted out the ranger if needed.

We arrived back at our main camp early enough, where I got some time to chill by the pool before lunch, where I reunited with my campmates. I was down for carnivore feeding today, which I was very excited for, though I did have to handle all kinds of strange meat – again, not for the faint stomach. Our guide felt very strict, and at the start nobody quite knew how to act, but as soon as we were in the car he began telling some of the worst jokes I’ve heard, though he got a great kick out of it. We fed hyaenas (they look so mad – like a dog with a giant head), karakals and cheetahs, including Lucky, the three-legged cheetah. Lucky lost his leg as a pup when he was chasing his mum and got his leg caught in a poacher trap. The pup was found and brought to N/aan Ku Se where the vet had a look. Originally, they just had to amputate a bit, but following a check-up it had become evident that infection had formed and the entire leg had to go. Lucky is unlucky in other ways as well. He has developed leukemia and has to be kept separate to the other cheetahs because cheetahs are able to spread cancer through their saliva, so everything Lucky touches has to be sanitised. Lucky has his name because, against all the odds, he is very lucky to be alive. The last animals we had to feed were the lions, a male and female. I was most excited for this. We were told a lion’s roar can be heard from 7km far and it made sense when we were there because the ‘purr’ that they let out has such a loud rumble, it sounds like its coming from a cave and not a big cat. The female lion has an interesting story – females are usually meant to be in packs, but as this one has been solo for quite some time she begins to produce more testosterone to take on some of the survival traits that a male has to survive solo. This means that female lions can grow mains, though slightly smaller than that of males #womeninmalepositions.

In the evening, a group of us booked dinner in the fancy Bush Camp restaurant as it was many of our last nights. We all got done up, ate some great food and drank some lovely drinks before going back to main camp for the fun. Games were played, henna was done, and many laughs were had. It was one of my favourite nights so far, even though we knew our time as a group was coming to an end.

Day 5

Unfortunately, I had a disappointing start to the day. I was supposed to check on the wild meerkats with my team, which essentially consisted of a sunrise game drive where you would also see plenty of other wild animals as they’d graze before the heavy sun. However, there was some mix up in the office and our drive was, in fact, cancelled, so despite getting up at the crack of dawn, I had a morning off. I used my free time to research activities for the remainder of my trip and also keep up to date with this blog.

Friday would mark my last day in N/aan Ku Se as I was set to go on another project on Saturday morning – Neuras, the wine and wildlife reserve just a 7-hour drive from Windhoek. Because I would be gone for a week, I had to spend the afternoon packing up my things and clearing up my lovely room of two weeks. Once I was packed up, I went for a final swim in the gorgeous Bush Camp pool, before getting ready for a fancy dinner with our big group of girls. Many of us were going on different projects and from there we would be going home or further afield, and so this marked the last official night of our gang in N/aan Ku Se. It was a lovely dinner of exchanging stories and recapping our experience here so far. We said a sad goodbye, but with the hope that our paths will cross again in the near future.

Day 6

My Saturday began at 6am, with a departure time for Neuras set for 6:30am. I boarded the packed van and made myself as comfy as I could for the next 7 hours…until I was woken by a loud crashing sound. The back windshield had smashed from a rock, and we were only half-way through the journey, stranded in the desert. We had no choice but to continue, despite being covered in hot dust. After a stopover for lunch, we eventually arrived at our new camp. There was a team of 7 of us and we were spoilt by our surroundings, which consisted of a volunteer area with a TV, WiFi, greenery (!!!), and a swimming pool. And a peacock named Cairo.

Our first night was spent around the pizza oven getting to know each other and our guide, Saya. We would become family over the next week, but for now we were just making initial introductions. We consisted of four Dutch girls (two of which are rising TikTokkers), an American, a Swiss, and me, the only person above the age of 20. We were an odd bunch, but we would find our groove in the week.

Day 7

On Sunday, we would take on our first hike as a group. It was a GPS tracking hike, so we didn’t know where we were going, but we would have to follow a compass and input coordinates as we came across them. It was 10km through these amazing canyons, which don’t come through on the pictures, but you did feel as though you were on a different planet. We had to beat a time of 1:50mins (the previous group had set that record), so the race was on. This hike would also hint at the dynamic we would develop as a group, with the American marching on, telling me and the Swiss where to go, and with the hope that the Dutch would keep within eyesight so that they wouldn’t get lost. Our system worked, and the American made it back with 1:43mins. Let’s goooooooo! We also came up with our team name on this hike – Team Dragon, because our lovely American who was becoming the butt of the joke looked like Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon. The group dynamic was starting to find its groove.

The afternoon was spent feeding the reserve’s cheetahs, who are kept away from N/aan Ku Se as they are more wild and so were better suited to the wider spaces in Neuras. The evening was spent having dinner, some drinks, and some games as Saya pursued with his mission of turning us into a “unit”.