Already 3 months have passed since my return to the Netherlands. 3 months of getting used to the colder temperatures, time keeping, public transport and overload of road signs and information. Sometimes I feel completely comfortable again with the Dutch way of living, but at moments I still feel like a stranger in my own country. My time keeping is still quite disastrous, when I’m on a train station I sometimes still feel overwhelmed by all the information, all the materialism in the Netherlands annoys me, and I really don’t get the fuss about dirty trains and the problem with waiting a while for an appointment or something. Who cares!


Of course I would like to share the achieved results of the first year WATERS-project in Nsanje with you. Together with my Malawian colleagues Mr. Mc Duff Mwafumu and Ms. Esther Chilongo, and with the dedication of the community of TA Malemia we achieved the following:

•  Realisation of 9 Village Natural Resource Management Committees (VNRMC’s);
  
•  Strengthening 5 already existing VNRMC’s and women’s groups;
  
•  Realisation and/or strengthening of 14 tree nurseries, managed by VRNMC’s or women’s groups;
  
• The planting of almost 300.000 trees in the problem area by local communities;
  
• Knowledge exchange in 25 villages about reforestation, sustainableland use, ecosystems and natural water management. The villages are spreading the knowledge at the moment on their own initiative;
  
• Training of committee members in 25 villages on management, monitoring, and administration of their activities. On their own initiative some committees organized an administration and monitoring system together to keep track of the cutting down and planting of trees;
  
• Training of 25 traditional leaders on management, leadership, climate adaptation, and reforestation;
  
• Realisation of local laws relating to cutting of trees, agriculture, encroachment, water sanitation, and use of natural resources (e.g. for traditional medicines) in 27 villages in TA Malemia. The local laws became official in May 2014, signed by all traditional leaders in the TA and the District Council; 
  
• Training of local officers on climate change, reforestation, ecosystems, climate adaptation, sustainable land use, and project management.
  

This was only the first year of the project!

I’m still in touch with friends and colleagues in Malawi. My colleague Jared took over the work and will stay in Nsanje till March 2015. I’m really happy to hear the progress of the WATERS-project from him and friend and colleague Doris. In the few months Jared is working they already realized 4 more tree nurseries, involving 5 schools in the project. On each school, besides setting up the nurseries, officers teach students on the importance of reforestation and biodiversity, and work to improve water sanitation. At the same time Jared works together with the executive staff of the District Council to include climate adaptation, reforestation, and sustainable land use in the District’s management plans. He is also still working with the traditional leaders to decrease careless cutting down of trees, encroachment, corruption, and burning down of land. At the same time Doris works on a plan for the WATERS project 2.0 to continue after March 2015.

Looking back on the year I spent in Malawi, I can say that I am pretty content with the achievements we made. The project didn’t go as we expected on beforehand; we were forced to improvise and change our focus more on working directly with the local communities and less on a management level with the District Council. But in the end I am really happy we made that choice. The eagerness and hard work of the communities made the traditional leaders and officers realize they had to step up and act, and make it possible for Jared to work on management plans on a higher level in the second year of the project. I’m still involved in the project (from a distance) and will post new events and results once in a while. 

Malawi has a custom that is very weird to me: when you organize a workshop or a meeting you have to pay participants to attend. They call it ‘lunch allowances’. But it has nothing to do with lunch, as you also have to pay these allowances when the meeting is only in the morning or in the afternoon, or when your colleagues simply can go home during the break, just as they would on a normal working day. Even when you arrange a lunch, you still have to pay them lunch allowances. When I told my colleagues that back home in the Netherlands I would get paid to facilitate workshops like these, they didn’t believe me and started laughing. Getting paid to give workshops, no, that is weird.

To some extent I do understand this tradition of allowances to attend workshops and meetings. When I organize a workshop at community level, participants have to give up a working day to attend. That means they can’t go to the market to sell their produce, work on the land or find day-jobs. Of course, in the long run they can earn back the money with the things we teach them. But most of the local people do not have time to wait for the long run. They can’t miss the short-term income of a working day. I don’t mind at all to pay these people 1000 Kwacha (2 Euros) to attend a workshop. In the beginning I was afraid that they would just come for the allowance, pretending to be interested in the subjects. But I was wrong; the majority of the local people have proved themselves to be active and very willing students. Even when we had to cut down the allowances because of lack of budget, they still showed up and were equally enthusiastic. OK, they did complain a bit, but they were there.

I had more (moral) problems giving out allowances to my colleagues. They are officers who get a monthly salary to do their jobs, and still I had to pay them to come to my meetings and workshops. I was teaching them, to improve their skills, extend their knowledge and to help them manage projects, and I had to pay them for it? I still think this system of working is completely insane. In the beginning I was very reluctant to receive or pay any allowances, until one of my colleagues explained to me why they are so important for the Malawian officers. When he told me how much they earned a month I was shocked. The salary of government officers, with a college degree, is notenough to support their families. They need the extra allowances to pay school fees and uniforms for their children, to pay the rent of their house. Mind you, this is the so-called middle-class of Malawi. In my opinion, this system is rather problematic. Working for an NGO, with the same education and degree, you earn at least 3 times more than an officer. Of course ,everyone who has the opportunity will transfer to an NGO. Naturally these are mostly the men (or women) who are best at their jobs. I can’t blame them.

As a result a lot of the officers are poorly motivated and always looking for better opportunities. They try to attend as many workshops and meetings as possible, no matter what the subject is or its importance to them. I quickly discovered that handing out invitations to workshops is a pretty sensitive business that should be handled carefully. They all want to come and will demand an explanation when they are not invited. In the beginning I was flattered that they were all so eager to attend my workshops. It didn’t take long, however, before I discovered the truth. Officers are quite good at getting these allowances without actually participating. They simply walk in at the beginning of your workshop, write their names down on the attendance list and walk away after a few minutes pretending to answer a phone call. When you are closing the workshop, they return and stand in line to receive their allowance.

I can’t even blame them. It is the system that is to blame. Salaries are fixed on national level, and  bureaucracy impedes changing the regulating systems. Raising salaries and do away with the allowances would be a good development for Malawi, since the allowances add to corruption and cause all kinds of problems (not in the least that not one of the attendance lists of my workshops is accurate). It is so much integrated in the Malawian culture, however, that the Malawians can’t think of any different way of working. While I can at least understand the behavior of my colleagues towards the allowances, I discovered to my shock and horror that even well-paid specialists, NGO-employees, managers etc, are doing the same tricks to get allowances as less-earning Malawians do. They cheat with attendance lists, reimbursements and fuel receipts. Whatever it takes to get more money. And everyone thinks it is the most normal thing to do. When I try to convince my colleagues that this is a form of corruption, they deny. It is just the way it is. This is how Malawi works.

During the past year I discussed this issue a lot with the Malawians, both NGO and government employees. I noticed that especially with the NGO’s, the opinion is losing ground that it is ‘just the way it is’. But it is still way too much accepted. There are no penalties whatsoever for cheating with the allowances. A friend of mine experienced this herself. When she caught a colleague swindling and stealing, she decided to report this to her company’s director. His response was that they should pray for the colleague, and to ask God to give him the strength to change his behavior. I highly doubt the effectiveness of this measure.

The only thing I can hope for is that the elections in April 2014 will start new discussions about the current system. At the moment a huge corruption scandal is getting out in Malawi, which includes the current president. The Malawians are sick and tired of high-placed officers and managers stealing money. Let’s hope the elections will nudge them to speak up and slowly change the way Malawi works. 

New holiday, new pictures. During Christmas and New Year the office was closed for a few weeks. A nice opportunity for me to go and explore the north of Malawi. The planning was to spend most of my time in the north of Malawi watching birds. Especially in the Livingstonia area, since I was there all by myself. No-one I could annoy with my habit of turning around in the middle of a conversation or standing still at a tree for ages just because I heard something.

But turned out I got a little bit disappointed. While I expected a bird-walhalla in the hills of Livingstonia. It was quiet, to quiet. Turned out my timing of coming to Livingstonia was a bit unfortunate. Because of the time of year most birds had left the area. Bummer, didn’t think of that.

But while there was almost no bird to hear or see, I did find a new way to entertain myself. While the birds all had left the area, the butterflies most certainly did not. Everywhere I looked, I saw the most amazing and beautiful butterflies. So I took my camera and tried to shoot them instead of their feathered, well friends I wouldn’t call them I guess.

To be honest, I am not that familiar with the species of the butterflies I captured on camera. That is something to focus on in the future. But the pictures are beautiful! And lucky me, on one of my longer walks I still did find a place with a lot of birds. I have to say I found that place completely on accident. I was going for another destination, but due to my talent to forget to pay attention to where I am going and completely lose my way, I ended up at a lovely stream and fields somewhere in the rural area. Thanks to the locals and my GPS (I always have that with me, I have some self-knowledge) I had one of the most beautiful hikes in Malawi. With some amazing birds like the African Cuckoo and Narina’s Trogon (last one only by hearing).

The other places I have been were Thunduzi beach, close to Livingstonia at the lake and Nkhata bay, a bit further to the south. Especially our lodge in Nkhata bay (the Butterfly lodge) had an amazing bird life. Which did my friends wonder why it took me more than an hour to go to the toilet early in the morning and why I needed my binoculars and camera at a toilet. The answer to that was quite simple. That toilet cabin was one of the best birding huts I have ever seen! An amazing view over the tree tops and the lake and, in case you had to go, the toilet was nearby.

One of the big, huge, enormous frustrations I have in Malawi is the waste and I can’t do anything about it, which frustrates me even more. Now I think of it, there are so many things that frustrate me over here that I am wondering how I lasted for almost a year already. At the same time, the (lack of) waste management in Malawi is one of the things that reminds me of how West-European I am. Or maybe it is just because I know what problems the waste is causing, that I am so revolted by the way Malawians deal with it.

In Malawi there is no waste-system. Everybody just burns it behind their houses, if lucky. Because often the waste is just thrown out the house, garden, car or wherever they are. Bushes, gutters, side of the road, it all looks like a refuse-dump. People in Malawi think it is the most normal thing in the world. When I refuse to throw my waste out of the car or bus they look at me as if I were crazy. In some ways they are right, because the pile of plastic bags with waste (just plastics, I have a compost heap) is piling in my backyard and I know that one day I have to get rid of it. And that day is coming soon because in 2 months I will be leaving and my replacement is going to take over my house. I can hardly offer him a house with a personal refuse-dump in the backyard, now can I? I’ll have to figure out how I am going to do it. Probably by throwing it over the fence and hold a burning match against it. Burn a pile of plastics… I can’t get myself to do it. It is totally against everything I stand for, which is foolish since I don’t have much choice here.

My colleague, the environmental officer, want to introduce some kind of waste management in Nsanje boma. He wants to construct a refuse-dump and decrease the waste on the streets. Pretty ambitious since it is a completely new concept for most Malawians. When I just arrived, I talked a lot about this issue with him and there are so many challenges. Who is going to collect the waste and how? Money for a car is not there and no-one has ever heard of waste bags to put the waste in. Who is going to pay for it? The government doesn’t have the money. After some discussion he decided to try to make a start with trying to get the market and bus station clean. Even this will take years and is a huge challenge and the Malawians react the same as any Dutch would do: “Not in my backyard!”.

Because of our conversations I really thought my colleague was very aware of the waste problem and would try to set a good example himself. Can you imagine how surprised I was when I saw him throwing plastic bags with waste out of the car when we were driving to a meeting?! This happened many months ago, but it still bothers me. I mentioned it to him. Why do you throw your waste out of the car, when you know what problems it’s causing and you want to decrease the waste on the streets yourself? How do you expect the villagers to change, when you set the wrong example yourself!?

He looked at me in surprise. “But” he said: “what else do I do with it? This is how we always do it. Someone will burn it. Maybe…” I could only take a deep breath and sigh. Malawi has a long way to go.

Today I met a girl on the minibus. She was obviously pregnant and very young. In mixed Chichewa and English I had a conversation with her. I found out she was about 12 years old. Last year her parents’ harvest failed and her father married her off for a dowry. It was better for her and for her family; she’d have a husband who could provide for her and her family would have a mouth less to feed. In order to get married she had to quit school. Looking at her small body, I wondered how she was going to get through giving birth. I cried inside. She is not the only girl being taken out of school and forced to marry way too young. The #1 death cause of girls aged 15 to 19 in Malawi is pregnancy complications or death during labor.

This happened barely a week after I got another eye-opener on these kinds of practices, when I did a vulnerability mapping with my communities. One of the questions asked was how they cope with disasters such as floods and droughts. The communities told me that one of their coping strategies in times of food insecurity is to marry their daughters off. The dowry will sustain the family for a while and the girl has someone who takes care of her. The fact that she won’t be able to go to school anymore and that pregnancies are dangerous at such a young age is not their biggest worry. Let alone the phychological damage to the girls.

It is one of the practices in Malawi that is breaking my heart. There are a lot of things that make me sad; there is just too much misery and poverty in this area Sometimes, however, I notice that I get quite insensible about it . I literally step over the beggars at the market. I barely see the dirty, underfed street kids anymore and if they are blocking my way I shove them aside. Blind people, elderly, scarily thin mothers with crying babies, mentally challenged people, they are a part of daily life. And as a white person you attract them as flies to syrup. The Azungu in Nsanje have an agreement to never give money to any of these people. Tough? Yes, often it is. But we simply do not have the resources to help them all. And giving money only makes the begging and often even aggression against us worse. There is no sustainability in it.

One of the things I can do to help these girls is making sure that the bylaws in my project area will become reality. As I wrote in my latest blog, the communities in my project area are demanding the making of bylaws from their Chiefs and other traditional leaders. Because these bylaws are crucial for the success of my project, I decided to support them by facilitating the necessary meetings and workshops.

What are bylaws exactly? Bylaws are nothing more than local implementations of the national law. In Malawi the government is very centralized; one of the former presidents simply fired all local politicians in an attempt to become a dictator. His early death saved Malawi from this fate, but the government was (and still is) a mess. In additionMalawi has many traditional leaders: the Chiefs (village headmen), group village headmen and Traditional Authority (highest traditional authority). They are a heritage from the tribes’ lifestyle from the times before the Europeans came to Africa to ‘civilize’ the continent. In many of these former tribes the traditional leaders decide what is good and what is wrong. Sometimes they follow the national law, but often they are corrupt or simply act the way they think is right, which is not always according to the official laws. Besides, it is often almost impossible to directly apply national law to local situations By national law, for example, it is forbidden to carelessly cut down trees; but what is ‘careless’?

Bylaws take care of these things. In the bylaws a village or a group of villages formulates specified agreements, like how many trees are allowed to be cut; how many have to be planted back; which areas are intended for the building of houses; how many natural medicines, tree roots and wild fruits can be taken from a forest; how many animals can be hunted; etc. But the byLaws are not only meant to protect the environment. Other agreements can be that every house has to have a latrine, what the punishment is for domestic violence, and at what age a girl is allowed to be married. Things that seem to have nothing to do with the environment at first thought, but nothing is farther from the truth. Latrines improve hygiene and prevent sickness. Healthy people are less vulnerable to poverty and poverty is one of the reasons to cut down trees. The same goes for the early marriages: if a girl can stay in school longer, she’s more likely to become more independent, less vulnerable and more capable to take care of a family and her environment. Education is crucial for the development of a country.

This is the main reason I believe the making of the bylaws is of major importance. If implemented correctly, they will not only improve the ecosystem and environment, but also the social and health standards of the communities. An example of a holistic approach, exactly what the Ecosystem Services Approach stands for and what we try to teach the local officers. Hopefully this will show them what can be done when working cross-boundary and inspire them to do the same.

Most of the work I am doing is with the local committees. These committees exist out of local villagers who are trying to make a difference. The committees I am working with are all focused on Natural Resources, most of them VNRMC’s (Village Natural Resource Management Committee). The  members have to work with minimal resources and are dependent on the support of the local chief to achieve something.
 
Most members never have been out of their village and a lot of them barely have  gone to school, this causes a lack of knowledge and management skills to effectively run the committee. Here for most of the workshops I have been facilitating the past 9 months were to enlarge their knowledge about forestry and ecosystems and improve their management skills.
 
To give the committees the opportunity to exchange their knowledge with committees in other areas and to inspire them we brought 12 representatives of the committees and 1 chief to Zomba. Quite a challenge since most of the representatives never been out of their home area, stand alone ever slept in a lodge with showers, doors with locks and all kinds of luxury. And most of my representatives are female and they can’t leave their babies and toddlers behind. We rented a minibus to transport the people, babies and toddlers and while I was sitting in front with my colleague, the forestry officer, I felt like a teacher going on a schooltrip with a bunch of very excited children. Singing, laughing and chatting non-stop during the 7 hour drive up to Zomba. During this drive I again was reminded about the role we, female volunteers, have in Malawi. My colleague translated some of the  conservations and a lot of them were about the women telling their toddlers to work hard and go to school so they can grow up to be just like me… Especially the mothers telling their daughters not to give up, to take example out of me, because for them I am the proof a woman can achieve something and be independent. It is something that put’s quite some pressure on us. In Malawi I am not only ecologist, climate adaptation advisor, manager, accountant
and facilitator, I am also a role model and feminist. 24/7. A role you get involuntarily just by working and living in Malawi. But more about that later. 
  
In Zomba they followed a three day workshop facilitated by LEAD. LEAD is working on a climate adaptation project in the catchment area of Lake Chilwa since 2008. A lot of the activities we are doing in our districts are based on the  successes of this project. During the workshop we taught the representatives more about reforestation, conservation agriculture, monitoring of wildlife and management. And we included a fieldtrip to a committee in
Machinga that achieved a lot on forestation and conservation agriculture. The committee showed our representatives around, discussed activities and measurements that are successful and danced and sang the whole day long. For us a great day in the field with a lot of Malawian culture and off course the women had to give us some dance lessons, which caused a lot of hilarity among the Malawians.  
 
The workshop was hugely successful and caused quite a revolution in my district. Most of the chiefs in my project area are corrupt and/or lazy. They don’t step up against offender who cut trees or open vegetable gardens in
protected forests. Contrarily, they give away these areas in exchange for money or are cutting down the trees themselves. In Zomba the committees saw what happened and what they could achieve when they have strong leaders, who respect the law and give support. After the Zomba workshop my committees stood up against their chiefs, demanding by-laws and the end of corruption. I almost felt sorry for the chiefs, who were with the 5 of them against almost 50 very angry and frustrated women. But we made a huge victory. The chiefs confessed there
mistakes and together we are now going to work on the formulation and implementation of by-laws on natural resources, sanitation, gender, HIV/AIDS, corruption and education in all my villages (22) and some neighboring villages. For me a huge amount of work since I have to facilitate and manage the whole process, but I am very excited about the achievement and, finally, I have most of the officers in the district active and cooperating. In a next blog I will tell more about these by laws and the importance of them for the development of Nsanje.


Off  course I wouldn’t want to deny anyone the opportunity to watch our dancing  skills, here for I uploaded a video that gives an impression of the workshop we did  with the committees in Zomba and Machinga. You can watch the video on the By Nature You Tube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbqgrx3sTcc

Over the last decades the biodiversity in Malawi has decreased massively, mainly as a result of a dramatic loss of habitats . Unsustainable land use practices cause fragmentation of populations and habitats and isolation of remaining communities. Agriculture, urbanization and human settlements are the major forms of land use, with immense effects on nature and biodiversity.

Biodiversity
For the ordinary Malawian, biodiversity means sources of livelihood. Nature offers food, honey, income, energy, medicine and cultural services. They believe nature and biodiversity are God-given and therefore unlimited. Luckily the awareness is growing that nature is not to be taken for granted. Local communities do see the necessity of managing and taking care of nature.

In the past, Malawi had quite a few special (endemic) species, not only in the lake (700 endemic Cichlid species and 15% of the world's freshwater fish) but also on terrestrial level. Unfortunately, today there is a lack of knowledge of the distribution and the status of many endemic and/or rare species in Malawi. To give an impression of Malawi’s biodiversity and its protection:

• The total number of terrestrial plant species in Malawi is not known but available records indicate that there are approximately 6000 plant species, of which 89 are vulnerable, 14 endangered, and 25 critically endangered species. Approximately 114 plant species are known to grow only very locally in Malawi, but none of these are formally protected. Only eleven plant species have legal protection in Malawi (2002 IUCN Red Data List of Threatened Plants).
• 140 species of reptiles are recorded in Malawi. Very little is known of their conservation status. Twelve species are thought to be endemic to Malawi.
• There are about 648 species of birds, 456 of which are resident. Over a third of all bird species in Malawi is considered to be uncommon or rare and should be of long-term conservation concern. 94 birds in Malawi are restricted-range species, found in only one or a few biomes.
• About 188 species of mammals have been recorded in Malawi. Seven of those - African wild dog, cheetah, lion, African elephant, black rhinoceros, red-bellied coast squirrel and chequered elephantshrew - are listed in the 1996 IUCN Red Data List of Threatened Species.

Protection of Nature
In the 1920s the Malawian government set up protected areas as a conservation measure for its unique ecosystems, habitats and species. Nowadays three main categories of protected areas (national parks, wildlife reserves and forest reserves) together cover approximately 20% of the total land area in Malawi.

That sounds like an awful lot. But in reality the plants and animals in these areas are far from fully protected. All Malawian parks suffer from poaching, illegal felling of trees and charcoal burning, illegal fishing and opening of vegetable gardens . Poachers use awful traps; when wounded animals like elephants go berserk in the neighboring villages, the only solution is to kill them. Another way of poaching is to set the forest on fire; when animals have no way to hide, they are an easy catch.

There are laws against poaching and other illegal activities in the protected areas. But offenders often get away easily. The punishment for illegal cutting of wood, for example, consists of confiscation of the tools. This is a huge deal for the poor farmer, who takes a few pieces of wood for his own family. But it does not really harm offenders who take huge stocks of wood for the market. Officially these offenders can be sent to jail, but in reality this rarely happens. The same goes for poachers. Catching a poacher is difficult. The punishment is sentence to jail, but there are not nearly enough rangers  to patrol the large areas . Some reserves and parks are fenced, which is effective against poaching but also prevents animals from migrating.

Solutions
Solving these issues is difficult. Many illegal activities in protected areas are linked to poverty and a weak government. Can you punish hungry people for catching birds to eat? When Lake Chilwa, an international protected bird area under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, almost dried up in 2011, fishermen and their families were starving. Some migrated to other areas, but the remaining fishermen survived by eating birds. Can you really put someone in jail for simply trying to survive? And how do you distinguish between a poacher, who kills for money, and a farmer poaching for sustenance? Isn’t it better to teach the latter alternative ways of livelihood, so he does not need to poach anymore? As long as the government is as weak as it is and as long as the traditional chiefs are corrupt, there won’t be a solution on these issues.

Luckily more and more Malawians do recognize the problems and step up against their chiefs, demanding by-laws and protection of their land. They work hard to recover forests and degraded land, and to change agriculture methods. I see it happening in my own project area as we speak, and gives me reason to be hopeful. It still is a long way, however, until these strong local people will truly influence the government and get their so much needed support.

Last weekend I did a bird count in the Ndindi marches. Close to the village Ndamera, in the southern most tip of Malawi, on the border of Mozambique. The Ndindi marches cover an area of more then 40 km long and several km width. The data will be used by Wetland International, but above all it was just a very pleasant morning in a beautiful area. In a traditional canoe, watching and counting birds, visiting fisherman villages; the poorest families of Malawi. Villages without clean drinking water, latrines or access to schools or hospital. And those people were welcoming us by giving us sweet potatoes. Just because we were there.

The marches are hard to reach. To get there I had to take a bicycle taxi for 30 km, stay the night at a friends place to be able to go to the marches early morning. The next day traveling back again by bicycle taxi, with a detour this time, experienced a flat tire on the way back and saw a Malawian cycle repairer at work. His wife would not let me go without giving me bananas and ground nuts. Why? Just because I was there.

And the results? A total of 360 birds, 42 different species in 3 hours time. I was happy! (and I had a sore butt from the taxi's....)

The 12th and 13th of October I participated in an annual game and bird count in Lengwe National Park in the South of Malawi. With the game counts the National Parks are able to keep trends of the animal stock. There are two different kinds of game counts; the transect count and waterhole count. During a transect count the participant walk in groups transects through the park and count the animals they encounter. These type of game count is also very effective to catch poachers in the parks. During a waterhole count the participants stay in hides at the waterholes in a park and count all drinking animals. This type of count is more reliable to make an estimation of the stock. Most antelopes drink only once every 1 or 2 days. By counting only the drinking animals you make sure that every animal is only counted once and that you count most animals in the park. 

The count in Lengwe NP was a waterhole count. The target animal to focus on was the almost endemic nyala.  How many are there in the park, how many injured, adult males and females, calves, male young and female young.  Aside the nyala the goal was to count all drinking warthogs, buffalo's, impala's, bushbucks and kudu's. The count was done in shifts of 3 hours. 3 hours in a hide, 3 hours to travel back, get some rest and travel to the next hide and then another 3 hour shift. In temperatures of 35 degrees and higher.

Aside from the game count I also made a start for a bird count. To update the parks birding list and check if some of the known residents were still there. This meant for me that when I was not needed in the hide I was wondering around in the surroundings; birding and checking nests. And in between the shifts I spend my time birding and making lists. Following a collection of pictures of the game and bird count.