Getting to the CCF…


…is almost an adventure all by itself. After we had been picked up by our driver John, a cheetah tracker, we went for a quick ride to Windhoek where we would fetch Matti. So Markus, Sonja, Eva, Jourdan, Christina,  Matti and me squeezed into the suddenly not-too-spacious bus we had previously filled with our luggage. It wasn’t a particularly comfy ride, but after two tank stops and one at the Superspar supermarket we were directly on track to the Cheetah Conservation Fund’s headquarters. We arrived shortly before dinner started – quite neat considering that last time all the delays that had piled up on the way to the CCF caused us to arrive at midnight.

The first part of the following day was spent introducing us to the CCF’s goats and, as one would expect, letting us help clean the pens. Surely not one of my favourite jobs, especially because the goat’s constant baaing. Oh – and they’re not food for the cheetahs (these get horse and donkey meat, but more about that another time). Quite the contrary, actually, since the CCF has an important livestock management programme running. The goats are part of a model goat keeping farm that allows farmers to see how successful the ways of keeping predators off lifestock are. The most prominent example would be the Anatolian shepherd dogs the CCF breeds. These dogs grow up with goats, bonding them to these animals and thus making sure the dogs will fight to protect them. The dogs are then given away, still as puppies, to a farmer that then undergoes training in how to treat and care for such a dog. Since they obviously need to keep poachers away from the herd as well, not too much interaction with the dogs is allowed, so they eat and sleep with the animals they are supposed to guard and not with humans.

After lunch I was supposed to get onto the ride with a few of the other volunteers in order to check the cheetah enclosure’s fences. Too bad I didn’t show up… accidentally. Note t0 self: Afternoon activities start at 14:00, not at 15:00. I then went and assisted Eva with cutting some videos Laurie was aiming to get exported for her two-month trip to India. The crappy (read: slow) Macbook Air took its time, though, and iMovie wasn’t exactly helpful either. Had I known before, I would’ve been able to help using my Laptop and decent DVD authoring and cutting software. Well, maybe next time, if there’s one.

The second day started in a similar manner: Clean the goat pens, their water troughs needed to be scrubbed and refilled. After that I really didn’t have anything to do for a while because I was supposed to be scanning, but Leigh, our volunteer coordinator, didn’t really know what I should scan. She then got me another job, but this one was cancelled as well, so I just sat around for a while and typed an email full of suggestions and comments to Patricia Tricorache, one of CCF’s biggest helpers and an important person when it comes to media and advertising on the web. After a while I then got my original assignment back, and started scanning the Cheetah Studbook, which are records of how cheetahs in different zoos all around the world are related to each other, ultimately allowing keepers and management to look for the most distant relatives in order to try to get some diversity back into the cheetah’s genetic pool. Since there are not many left, and because less cheetahs means less diversity (especially in the wild), this is an important effort that I’m gladly supporting. After lunch we then headed out (not too far, actually) in order to clear the Hot Spot’s waterhole (this is close to where the staff and volunteers eat). This was a ton of work, especially since my cutters didn’t quite work as I wanted them to. Yet, I was able to (almost) singlehandedly remove 1.9 acacia bushes. And trust me on this one: stepping on the thorns isn’t funny unless you have a steel sole on your footwear. Suffice it to say I didn’t. I still have a thorn about two millimeters wide stuck inside my sole, although it’s not protruding through the shoe itself and I thus didn’t even feel it. After dinner we decided to join the others in a movie evening and watched Blood Diamond. Good thing Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t look like Leonardo DiCaprio in that movie. The fact it had a cheetah in it made the film even better.

Today commenced with another goat pen cleaning. This time we even had to clean two, with one being the easier one because it had a lot of hay on the ground. The other pen, however, was a bit more difficult to clean since it was mostly dust and gravel we shoveled into our wheel barrows. Too bad we didn’t have a sieve, because there really wasn’t that much excrement left. While Markus got to get some pictures of himself while replacing films and batteries of camera traps, where I was originally supposed to go with him, I got to do some data entry. Together with the new French volunteer Adeline we looked at the past pictures of those traps and entered time, date (where visible – red on red-ish sand isn’t very legible) as well as species of the animal(s) photographed – if any, the cameras are sometimes taking pictures without visible reason – into an Excel spreadsheet. Some of the highlights were leopards as well as cheetahs known as the Wild Boys, two brothers that tend to hang around CCF property a lot. James then asked Sonja, Adeline, Markus and me to design a new poster for one of the Education Center’s information tables since there’s been a hole in the wall for quite some time. We didn’t quite get anything ready yet, but I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

So far, so good. I’m still looking forward to doing anything directly cheetah-related, but I’ll hopefully go feed the females in Bellebenno tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted on how it works out!