Last Days at Moholoholo

I'm sitting in the departure lounge of the airport in Johannesburg waiting for my plane for Frankfurt. It's time to say goodbye to South Africa and move on.

This month has gone by incredibly fast, I can hardly believe it, with its ups and downs and pretty low moments when I was wondering what I was doing here. Not enough work at the centre. Same duties day after day. And the similar 'young' crowd as the one I encountered in Thailand. Nice young people, completely immersed in their own lives as young people will be, with their concerns and sense of humor that I confess to not always sharing. Obviously, they thought the same. This past week, a couple of 'older' women arrived at the centre and that was a relief as I could finally have a normal discussion with them as they 'spoke' my language....

That said, just when I thought things couldn't get more boring, everything happened at once. Such is the nature of Moholoholo Rehab Centre. About a week ago, we were called by the owner of a nearby game reserve to come and get a baby zebra who was really in a pretty bad way. We never really found out what happened to its mother (poaching is always suspected of course). The female zebra was 3 or 4 weeks old. We brought her back to the centre and put her in the clinic on a bed of straw and started trying to feed her. She got constant attention with someone sitting with her all the time. She wouldn't drink milk, so we had to force feed her and put her on a drip. Unfortunately, her health went from bad to worse and she died two days later. It was very sad to watch as she tried to catch her last breath (I happened to come into the clinic right at that moment) and her whole system just shut down. Poor little thing.

The following day or two days later, we were called to go and get a baby bushbock only a few days old, whose joint in the right hind leg had been eaten by a baboon (though she still had her leg but in a very bad state). She was abandoned by her mother. We brought her into the clinic, Brian asked us what we thought we should do seeing that even if she were to be amputated, she could still lead a normal life at the centre and breed. So we all said, go ahead with the surgery, bring her to the vet straight away. Cost is always a consideration of course, but they were willing to give it a try. So we all piled into the bucky and drove hellbent into town to the vet's office. The vet operated for about one hour actually saving the leg, only to have the little thing die on the operating table, of a heart failure, probably due to excessive stress.

Things were getting tough, but such is life in Africa. You try your best and then move on because other animals need your attention.

And then, I had a wonderful surprise. Just when I was thinking I couldn't wait to get home, some of us were told we were being taken on a 2-day outing on a nearby reserve which belongs to the same owner as Moholoholo. So off we went to Nhoveni, bright and early on Friday morning. Brian was due to join us late morning and that, for me at least, was a real treat! In a nutshell, he took us on a 3-hour bushwalk on Sunday morning, two 3-hour bushrides Saturday afternoon and Sunday late morning. I truly think there is nothing that man doesn't know about African wildlife and it was just a very special moment. While up there with us, he relaxed, became really funny, telling us stories of when he was young and wild in the bush, calling to the birds, teaching us about tracks, trees and other vegetation....We were driving along and all of a sudden, he spotted the vultures going around in the air, sign of a nearby prey... Alive or dead? Difficult to say. So rifles in hand, Brian and Martin led us through the bush to try and find the prey. Suffice it to say, we were completely oblivious of the dangers involved. He wasn't of course and imposed absolute silence on us and extreme caution. Well, we did eventually find the birds' prey.....a poached white rhino, horns still intact, so we assumed that the rhino was shot, wounded, ran away to die a distance away and the poachers lost sight of her.

Rhinos are the most sought after animals in Africa at the moment. Last year, 333 rhinos were poached for their horns, this year to date, already 101 have been killed. As Brian said, in a few years , at this rate, we will be able to show our children pictures of rhinos, an extinct animal, and they will have no idea what it is. Poaching is a terrible problem. And the truth of the matter is that, the poachers are not the problem, for the most part they are very poor people who only want to feed their families. The problem are the people who commission the poaching out of pure greed: a rhino horn sells for 1 million Rand (a huge amount of money) and the buyers are for the most part the Chinese market who use it for allegedly medicinal purposes. Only the horns are taken, they have no use for the rest of the animal. As such, we found this female rhino is an advanced state of decomposition, horns intact. At least that is one pair of horns they won't get, but it is a life wasted and there is a baby rhino somewhere in the bush roaming around without its mom.

The two days were eventful as you have just read. We were lucky to see a couple of elephants, an injured hippo (probably poachers also), giraffes and zebras, many impalas and even a buffalo! That was a fantastic way to end my trip and I was very, very lucky.

When I think back on my month here, I realize how full it has been, although I didn't always think so at the time. Again, I have learned tremendous amounts, only to realize how much I still don't know. Daunting. I am not sure I will return any time soon however, it is a little too brutal for me and if one is not a meat eater, it is quite difficult. But, on reflexion, I'm glad I did it, it was one heck of an experience!

And now, in a couple of days time, I'll be off to England, London specifically, to lead a very large group of runners to the London Marathon. Talk about culture shocks...no time to adjust and I'm off again (I love it;-). So there probably won't be any further postings until I get to Israel and settle in to Kibbutz Lotan.

 A tender moment with 'Dela' our baby black rhino...

 This is 'Joly' one of our ambassador Cheetahs

Self portraits of 'Dela' and Della...

Cheers to you all and I hope most of you have Facebook to be able to see the full album of my stay in South Africa. Additionally, I will put more pictures on my blog as soon as I get home.

It's not for the faint-hearted!

Well, I now know from a first-hand experience that Africa is a brutal place indeed. When I signed up to come here, in the info pack I received, it said “It's not for the faint-hearted!” and this has proved absolutely true.

In my last posting, I spoke about the elephant killing for the purpose of culling. The way I understand it, culling started in the 60's when land owners came in to farm the land and decimated the wildlife. Nowadays, public outcry has made culling illegal in theory, so instead, trophy hunting has been introduced. But in actual fact, the result is the same. The population of certain animals being too great in proportion to the space they occupy, as in the case of the elephants, they are selected according to specific criteria, and shot down.

As I mentioned previously, Brian and the staff here at Moholoholo try to have us experience as much of Africa as possible so include us in most of the events taking place in the wild. Thus, a couple of evenings ago, I went to do one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do in my life. We went to cut up the elephant which had been killed that day. We all piled into the trucks, with extra water for the long drive, all weather jackets and whatever else was needed to be out in the wild for over 6 hours, and drove to the site. There, the elephant was lying on its side, two legs had already been cut off, the head was partially cut off along with the tail and one ear. It was a gruesome sight and I was devastated. The guys were cutting and hacking away to try and cut the animal up while the meat was fresh and get as much done as possible before night-time. I took one look at the elephant's eye which thankfully was closed, and I had the feeling I was looking into his soul. Everyone was taking pictures. I couldn't as I also felt that I would be robbing it of its soul, so you won't see any pictures of that when I get them all on Facebook. It was horribly difficult for me to watch, so I just sat in our combi waiting to take the first truck back to the center. At about 7:30 PM, we were ready to go back with the first load, I sat in front, two other students sat in back on the meat on which the rangers had placed a tarpaulin, and we were on our way. Had a flat tyre on the way back, but I guess that's incidental. All the other students got back to the center around 1AM covered in blood. I did help to unload the truck though, and all of us were complimented by Brian for having put in the effort. A graceful gesture on his part. Now just remember, they don't do this for fun, they use every bit of the meat, none of it is wasted. Of note however, the man who actually killed the elephant refused to touch the meat, which disgusted everyone, Brian included.

What else can I tell you? A 2,5 meter python was found in the snake snare the other day and put in a cage in our clinic. He unfortunately escaped and is still lurking somewhere not too far we assume. It is not a venomous snake but rather a constrictor, however I am not happy about it at all and try not to think about it. An ordinary occurrence here, snakes are everywhere. Fortunately, I have not been close to one yet and hope it stays that way until I leave!

Two of our hyenas, Luma and Shade, were finally put together in the same enclosure and seem to be getting along just fine, so that is nice. Our 8 week old sable, Maisy, who is being hand-raised by two of the students, is also doing very well and is gorgeous. Four of the servals here will be released any day now, and the sooner the better because every day I go to clean their foul smelling enclosure, they hiss at me and it is kind of scary. Dela the rhino, is her usual self, happily munching away at the trees. She too is being hand raised by Dave whose fee for staying here is being paid by Dela's future owner, and she will be sent to her new home sometime in May.

As far as my duties are concerned, every morning we start at 7. I go clean Woody and Bubbles' enclosure, two sweet natured blind owls. Then I go on to do the Giant Grey Owls who always look at me with their huge eyes...they actually look very funny, very stoic. Then, we clean the vulture enclosures, with the vultures inside with us. Rosie, a hooded vulture, is so cute, follows us around as we do the cleaning, trying to peck away at our pants or shoe laces. We are also meant to feed the vultures as part of their training program and ours as well, I guess. We put on a leather glove which goes all the way up to our elbow and the vultures are meant to land on it and munch away at the meat we hold out for them and wait for them to fly off our arm. For now, I have only managed to feed Rosie as she is quite light. The other two vultures in my enclosure are simply too heavy for me. But I haven't given up trying! Then, in the afternoon, we feed the owls little chicks, some of which need to be cut up in pieces. That is the one job I'm not willing to do. So as you can see, there are a lot of birds here, not to mention a very full aviary. Something I wasn't expecting when I signed up, not being particularly interested in birds. However, nature is nature, and here at Moholoholo, every form of wildlife is precious.

The rest of my duties involve cleaning the clinic, cleaning the animals' feeding cages and enclosures or camps, as they call them here and we are strongly encouraged to spend what extra time we have with the animals because interaction is important.

The center is enclosed for any number of reasons, safety being the main one. Our breakfast is at another lodge to which we can walk every morning. In the evening, we are driven there as it is too dangerous to walk through the bush at night-time. You never know when you'll bump into a rhino, or a snake, possibly a hippo....And in order to get out of the reserve entirely, we need to go through three gates....beyond that is freedom ;-) Yesterday, we went on a boat trip through Blyde Canyon and actually got to see some hippos from a distance (they are the most dangerous animals in Africa and have caused the most deaths). Then we went to a waterfall and had a great time jumping from up on high into the water. I surprised myself and everyone else by my daring, I was kind of proud actually. And tomorrow, finally, we get to go to.....

Kruger Park! And hopefully see the Big 5! (More on that later!)

Cheers!

Day 6 at Moholoholo Rehab Center

Day 6 at Moholoholo Rehab Center: today has been the perfect day! Early this morning, we find out that the bats we have been caring for since last Monday have found a new home and are leaving today! Finished the every two hour syringe feeding! Finished the mealworms! Finished getting up at midnight and then 6AM to feed them! We can finally get a good night's sleep and nobody will be on edge anymore and most importantly, we will be able to attend to our full time residents who need our attention such as......


Dela, our baby rhino ;-) Dela is short of 18 months old. She was brought here as a very small baby when she got caught in a mud mire from which her mom tried to extricate her for two days only to give up in the end and abandon her, reluctantly I'm sure. Dela was lucky indeed. Since she arrived at Moholoholo, she has been hand reared by our dedicated team of conservationists, bottle fed and cared for day and night (at the beginning). Now Dela is a sweet natured 350kg rhino who gets lonely when she spends too much time on her own so we take it in turns to “rhino sit” which is what I just came back from doing. And I just had to tell you all about it. Picture this: the sky is blue, just a few white clouds, the sun is shining, the Drakensberg mountain in the background, and me and Dela. Nap time. She is lying down next to me and I'm resting my head on her tummy or her paw.....I mean, how good can it get?? While riots are taking place in the world, bombs are going off, here we are Dela and I lazing around in peaceful surroundings without a care in the world..... amazing!

Day 8 at Moholoholo: I'm still rhino sitting. It's 5PM, the end of another very hot day in Africa and it is very peaceful save for Dela who is whinging because she is quite hungry and waiting for her milk, so I do have to keep an eye on her in case she gets a bit impatient.

At Moholoholo, I am not a 'volunteer' but a 'student' which means that not only do I partake in the duties necessary to run the center but I am also expected to learn a lot about animals, specifically African animals of course, Africa and its ways. That is one of the things I most enjoy about this place. You don't only come here to clean enclosures and feed animals, you also go home with a greater knowledge of this environment and the problems they are facing here.

Brian Jones is the manager of Moholoholo. He is certainly a character, rather difficult to describe, a showman certainly, opinionated, extremely knowledgeable, freaks out all the young 'students'. Born and raised in the bush, a white man among blacks, Brian is very much an African man. He is traditional through and through. We are allowed no apparent shoulders or knees, no alchohol, no girls in the boys' rooms and no boys in the girl's rooms, no frivolous magazines, well, you get the idea. He loves to tell everyone how his son in law to be courted his daughter for four years coming to see her once a month only to sit on opposite sides of the sofa. Brian wouldn't 'give' his daughter away until the young man had proven himself in more way than one. A very traditional man. From a very early age, he learned to talk to the lions, the cheetahs, he is an expert tracker and seems to have a clear understanding of the African ecosystem. Part of him is still living in 19th century. This morning, as part of our 'education', he treated us to a conservation talk to which one doesn't necessarily have to adhere but one must give it proper attention and consideration.

He wanted to emphasize that man is destroying the world. That there was a time when wild animals knew no borders. Game reserves and parks didn't exist and animals roamed freely from East to West Africa, from North to South, birds migrated all the way around the world, and so forth. Animals thus had a huge playground and the importance of this is that the ecosystem was regulated by the animals themselves. Everything in nature had a cause and a reason. Since man has started to interfere with nature, that fragile balance is no longer there. And I will describe just one thing which might shock many of you reading this but I will try to say it like he told it and you can all make up your minds. Keep in mind that this is very much an African story. Elephants. As I said, once upon a time, elephants roamed freely and their territory was massive. Now they are enclosed in parks such as Kruger. Instead of roaming in line, they are going around in circles. Kruger's capacity for elephants is 7000. At the moment, more than 16000 elephants are roaming around Kruger park. They are destroying the ecosystem by tearing down the trees (which is what elephants naturally do) and thus destroying the habitat of countless other animals driving some of them to extinction. The elephant population needs to be controlled in this situation. So every so often, a 'trophy' hunt is organized to shoot down an elephant (not at random but according to certain criteria). The money the park charges for this 'privilege' is redistributed to the park for the benefit of all the animals, the meat serves to feed centers like Moholoholo and the money to pay the local rangers who work in the park, thereby also benefitting the local population. So, a win win situation. Now, as I said earlier, this is a typically African situation and one cannot look at it nor judge it with the eyes of Westerners. I still believe that hunting has no reason to be in our part of the world. And while I abhore the idea of an elephant being shot down, I can almost understand what Brian means.

As I am sitting here typing this, the most humongous storm has just begun, sheets of rain streaming down, very scary, loud thunder right above our heads it seems. In fact, the loudest thunder I have ever heard. Drenched, I have just about made it back to my room. A lightning bolt just went through the keyhole of the door pushing the key into the room. How scary is that?!

Well, I will leave you with a very beautiful image, African of course....this afternoon, Lyn, one of our volunteer coordinators, took us on a hippo run, which means that we took the safari vehicle to go and find the hippos in the reserve to feed them. We didn't find the hippos but we did find quite a few giraffes and some zebras who actually came and ate right out of our hands. Another very special moment at Moholoholo.


Cheers everyone

First Days at Moholoholo Rehab Center South Africa

Well, here I am at Moholoholo Rehab Center in South Africa. The center is located about 30 km away from the town of Hoedspruit, 50km away from Kruger park, in the north east province of Limpopo, the closest border being Mozambique. Moholoholo comprises the Rehab Center, several lodges, and its main purpose is the rehabilitation of injured, poisoned, snared animals with the aim of releasing them back into the wild in what would hopefully be a safer environment than the one they have come from. The other very important purpose of Moholoholo is to do what they call here “Conservation through Education” hence the large number of groups which come through here each day and take part in the conservation tours offered by the rangers on duty.




My first couple of days here were truly disconcerting and I was going from a feeling of exhilaration at being able to touch, talk to and walk with “Dela” (yes, I'm not inventing that!) the resident baby black rhino, give a goodnight scritch scritch behind the ears to the hyena “Luma” whose enclosure is right in front of my room, put my hand through the cage and pet “Bullet” and “Juba”, our ambassador Cheetahs (more on that later), or even “high five” our lions......to one of total discouragement, because coming from WFFT where I had some much work and such diversity, in comparison here, there is much less to do.



I've come to understand that the very nature of the center is so different from WFFT. The country is different, the animals are different as are the concerns, issues and actions undertaken to care for African wildlife. Whereas many of the problems which the animals face in Southeast Asia are linked to the tourist industry, here in Africa, it is very much a local problem and tourism has absolutely nothing to do with it.



Wildlife covers a huge territory and obviously knows no boundaries. As such, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas and other predators are often found trespassing into private game reserves and killing local livestock to feed themselves. A common reaction to this is to kill the animals in question by ensnaring them or poisoning them. By their educational tours, the rangers at Moholoholo try to encourage people who find these injured animals to get in contact with the staff at the Rehab Center who will then come and get the offending animal, treat it and nurse it back to health and attempt to release it in another private game reserve willing to take it. This is a great part of Moholoholo's activity. As such, the animals do not end up spending the rest of their lives here unless they cannot be released in any way. The ones which cannot be released serve as “ambassadors” for their species by taking part in educational tours in the center and out, raising awareness. Poaching is also a huge problem. One example is the poaching of rhinos. Last year alone, 330 rhinos were poached in South Africa for their horn (and not for the meat) among which 174 in Kruger Park alone. Poaching is obviously illegal. There are anti-poaching squads within the Park but with the overall surface of the Park, catching the poachers 'in flagrante' is almost impossible.



Another aim here at Moholoholo is breeding. Whereas I have come to understand that in certain countries or with certain animals, breeding in captivity is questionable, here the aim of the breeding is to reintroduce into the wild animals which are on the brink of extinction. For example, the Serval Breeding Project has been very successful with over 160 servals bred and released into areas where they had become extinct. Reports have been received by the Center that quite a few female servals had mated with wild servals which is a sure sign of success.



The management and staff here are dedicated conservationists and their primary concern is the welfare of the animals, preservation of wildlife and the respect of the ecosystem. Now that I am here, I am able to “compare” the two situations (Southeast Asia and Africa) and I can say that they can't be compared, that each rescue center deals with the situation of its country in the most appropriate way possible and that, what is right for one would be absolutely inappropriate for the other. We shouldn't judge.



After reading this short introduction, you can perhaps see that things can change radically from one day to the next here at the Center and you never know what the next day will bring. Last week, 85 bats were brought in from a nearby Park because their enclosure collapsed killing a few on the way. Since then, we have been syringe feeding them (they are babies) every two hours up until midnight, which has been disrupting considerably the normal routine of the center (i.e. caring for the “Maisy” the Sable, “Dela” the Rhino, all the birds in the aviary, all the vultures and owls, the lions, cheetahs, leopard, hyenas and so forth). The volunteers have been tired, irritable and a bit short tempered at times as a result and we are looking forward to the bats learning to be self sufficient in terms of feeding. All animals get equal treatment here at Moholoholo!



On a more mundane level, we are lodged in very comfortable rooms, in my case, two to a room, with hot showers, water we can drink and fabulous breakfasts and dinners served in the nearby lodge where visitors stay when they come to visit. In the evening, a drive through the bush will take us to Ya Mati lodge for dinner, and we might encounter on our way a couple of white rhinos (huge) and even snakes (which I am not fond of as everybody who knows me will attest to and that is a huge understatement!). For security purposes, we are quite fenced in here and this, to prevent other wild animals living in the reserve to enter our natural compound. This can feel a bit claustrophobic at times as we have no days off and very few opportunities to get out of the Center.



I will try to keep you up to date with more info but things move at a slower pace here so postings might not be as frequent as for my Thai adventure.



Please note that I now have a Facebook page. This is not to share personal info for which I favor email, but rather to raise and spread awareness about animal welfare issues as much as I can. So please come and take a look every now and then for updates on that and of course, as soon as I get back from my trip, I'll put my photos on there as well. If you would like to become FB friends with the purposes of helping me in that endeavor, you are most welcome to!



Cheers,



Della