Meadow Commission

Since it’s almost time for me to leave SA, my boss has been trying to get me out in the field to balance out the shear mountain of time spent in the office at a computer. As such, the last 2.5 of my working days have been spent in the field. Much adventure has resulted.

Thursday and Friday I went out in the field with my SA officemate, who, despite working at the Department of Forest and Wood Science, is not a forester by trade. In fact, she's an arts kid, psych to be more specific!

Needless to say, she was entirely unprepared for the heat, dust and heavy machinery that awaited her introduction into the forestry industry. It probably didn’t help her opinion of forestry that our task wasn’t the most intellectually stimulating in the industry. In fact, my mother even suggested that the two of us could easily be replaced by a camera placed in a strategically high tree. To demonstrate the skill involved, our task was as follows:

Follow a skidder as it drags trees from where they were felled to the roadside and write down how long each step within this task takes.

In order to exercise our minds, forget the heat, and just generally pass the time, we played an alphabet game. Choose a topic (i.e. countries; designers; plants) and alternate listing off things that fit under the category in alphabetical order (i.e. Australia, Belize, Cameroon; Armani… I wasn’t any good at this one; Arbutus, Birch, Cyprus). It still amazes me that such a simple game can happily provide two days of eight hours each worth of entertainment.

Compared to Thursday, Friday was ever so slightly more eventful. We decided from the start to sit in the shade, since the day was much hotter and there was no wind. So we made our camp near where they were choking (attaching to the skidder…for all intents and purposes) the trees and contentedly sat on some branches. About an hour into our work, the skidder comes back from the roadside and the operator jumps out with the machine still running. He calls over one of the chokers and together they start trying to get some pieces of log out from behind the winch…WITH THE SKIDDER STILL RUNNING!!! At this point all I can think of is how I’m about to witness something so gruesome it would put WorkSafe BC Awareness videos to shame!

Once they had removed these chunks of wood, they began carrying them towards us. They brought us stumps! They brought us stumps, so we wouldn’t have to sit on the ground!!! I think I’m still a little in shock. This is possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. At least anyone I had only communicated with via the occasional “Hello” and smile. Stumps. Stumps! I spent the rest of the day regaling my poor officemate with various renditions of “Stumps! No one has ever brought me a stump before!” and smiling to myself each time I remembered. I don't think anything else I have experienced here better demonstrates the South African chivalry and lack of workplace safety.

…Stumps!

Hard Day's Work

~To the tune of Spiderpig~

Fingerman Fingerman
Does what ever a finger can
Pick your nose, scratch your bum
And your balls if you're a man
WATCH OUT!!!!
Here comes the Fingerman!

Oh and...

Happy Birthday, Kitty Kat!

Dances with Elephants

As I mentioned about a month/4 posts ago, my parents came to visit me in South Africa to see the country, but more importantly, me! I decided to take them to the Northeastern part of SA, mostly ‘cause I hadn’t been there and wanted to see it. We decided that, in order to see more of the country, we would take the train to Jo’berg. A decision that all of my friends felt was sketchy, but only took the time to inform me of this once I had returned safely home. Thanks a lot, guys…not that I would’ve listened. Anyway, we took the Shosholoza Meyl train from Cape Town to Jo’berg and weren’t murdered or robbed, so I’d call it a success. The train, however, was a bit (read 2 hours) late because, get this, they couldn’t find the engine. I mean last I checked train engines are, you know, quite large. It would take an impressive amount of magic (we’re talking Harry AND his friends) to just make one disappear. This unorthodox delay resulted in us getting into the Jo’berg station (that’s right in the CBD) just after dark and just after the car rental place had closed. Meaning that someone from the car rental agency had to drive from the airport, outside of town, to pick us up at the train station and drive us back to the airport to pick up our car.

After sleeping near the airport that night we left in the morning to go to Polokwane our next stop before Kruger National Park and a stop I remember very little about, probably because everything we planned to do around there was closed (except for the hot springs, but it was about 30 degrees that day, so really!?!).

Now the original plan was to stay in Shingwedzi camp the first night, which is about two hours into the park from the Punda Maria entrance. Unfortunately we arrived at the Punda Maria entrance at 5:50pm and the gates to all the camps close promptly at 6. IT being a little difficult to make a 2 hours drive in 10 min, they found us a spot in the Punda Maria camp, just 10min away from the entrance. Convenient. These 10min were probably the most eventful 10min in the history of Kruger. Ok, except for that youtube video where all the animals get in a massive gang war, but it was a close second. We saw lots of buck, giraffe, huge elephants about a meter from the car, and, as we pulled up to the gate, the guard told us to go down a Do Not Enter road for 2 min and we’ll see a pride of lions eating. It was amazing! They were so close to the car and you could hear them ripping the flesh of whatever poor buck is now known as dinner. This is when it started to feel like a vacation. Although I was a little concerned that after that, 3 days of seeing buck would get old pretty quick...

Even in the summer it rains on my birthday

But I had a lovely day anyway. My dear wonderful friend who, as of yet, does not have an acronym made delicious little cup cakes that spelled out Happy Birthday and brought them to work. She even lit candles and let me blow them out at tea time. Then after work the original plan was to go out for dinner than a movie 'cause I wasn't feeling well. However, dinner was so much fun and we had drinks before and dessert after so that we missed the movie. Definitely worth it! The socializing was much more fun, and we're going to see the movie tonight anyway :-) Coco Avant Chanel, so we can put my poor French skills to the test!