Sleeping Bag Stretchers, Emotional Exits and Skanking ‘til the Early Hours = Outward Bound Staff Taming/ Training Week. (May 2013)

Depending on your literary standing and general interest in that sort of thing, you may or may not have noticed that my posts have once again taken on the annoying voice of past tense/ story mode, which must annoy some of you.

Besides the fact that I’ve been having far too much fun in the bush to think about blogging in the present, it’s not like I’ve been overwhelmed with access to the resources to make it a possibility; the closest thing to technology I was exposed to for the whole of May was a walkie-talkie, FYI only to be used in emergencies and not for ‘chit chat’ (as I found out too late through a direct message from the Lapalala game rangers after a lengthy conversation speculating the origin of a peculiar species of grass snake).

I know I’m a bad, bad blogger. Please forgive me!
But I digress.

After our excursion into the Lapalala wilderness our next stop was Potchefstroom, where all Outward Bounders were headed to answer summons to an impromptu week of staff training. Which wasn’t exactly a hardship – Outward Bound SA is a pretty tight-knit group of misfits and life’s generally a party when we’re all in one place.

Training involved things like emergency search and rescue scenarios (constructing stretchers out of sticks and sleeping bags and testing them – as the lightest group member I had the pleasure of being stretcher guinea pig), experimenting with new group dynamic exercises (playing ‘zap’ and doing animal impersonations) and discussing certain policies where ‘grey areas’ have arisen over the past few months (a toilet-digging workshop, complete with exhibitions of different squatting techniques).

We also had a visit from the director of the President’s Award for South Africa (alias Duke of Edinburgh Award) for a talk about what is expected of Outward Bound when we run courses in conjunction with their programme, and to define what ‘adventure’ means (which is a lot more complex than you’d think!).

On the last day of training we performed an old Outward Bound tradition – a closing circle for an instructor who’s leaving the family. We each got to say goodbye to Bizo in our own way and share what we’ll remember about him when he’s gone. For my part, Bizo, as you now know I’ll always remember you for your legendary fear of the Sedgefield bush pig that outstrips any of the rest of our inhibitions by a clear mile! Things got emotional, as is usual when an Outward Bounder leaves the fold; you get so used to gravitating around one another that anyone’s absence is keenly felt straightaway. But Bizo’s got an awesome time ahead of him so although he’ll be missed, naturally we all wish him luck (not that he’ll need it with his flair for photography).

It was a really fun few days and it was awesome catching up with faces that I’d not seen for a while. And of course when training was over there was the obligatory Outward Bound, erm, for want of a better word, pyjama party = drinking and dancing in our dorm until the early hours before collectively collapsing in a drunken mess onto a mini-kingdom of mattresses and sleeping bags in the middle of the floor. One of the best things about the people I work with is that when work is over and the sun goes down, dancing like a mad fool is part of our religion.

One of the many reasons why I love being an Outward Bounder.

So, Hippos Are Naturally Aggressive with Violent Tendencies? You Learn Something New Every Day. Lapalala, May 2013.

Hi there. Just in case you’d started to wonder, yes, I’m still alive and kicking in the South African bush living and working the not entirely risk-free life of an Outward Bounder. My line of work still stands as my explanation for my appalling lack of blogging – particularly over the last month, which I spent working with Outward Bound in the Lapalala Wilderness Reserve, Limpopo – as far flung into the bush as I’ve been since arriving in South Africa by a long shot.  The drive up there almost killed the lot of us off; it was only our (relatively) top banter and copious amounts of caffeine that pulled us through in one piece.

           

Although I’d been told of how completely surreal and wild Lapalala was, nothing could have prepared me for the drive into the biggest private wildlife sanctuary in the world. Once we’d passed the outer perimeters of the reserve there were no fences or signs of human interference to be seen apart from the dirt track we were driving on, and I didn’t find this particularly out of the ordinary until we nearly ran over a sounder of warthogs that decided to cross over almost directly under our tyres. Our speed decidedly slowed after that and I spent the remainder of the drive with my head flung out of the window as more and more sights and sounds of the wild made their presence known. There were giraffe, zebra, kudu, baboons, wildebeest, a few impala crossed our path and there was even a crash of rhinos not far from the track (I refused point blank to simply drive by and made Chris, our designated driver, come to a complete stop so that we could all ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ appropriately).

For the amount of animals we saw we might as well have been on a game drive, only without the guide and binoculars. And we hadn’t even properly arrived yet.

           

            The house designated for Outward Bound staff to bunk in on the reserve is situated atop a huge hill forming part of the undulating Lapalala savannah.  There’s no electricity or signal up there and the closest thing to neighbours from hell that we had to contend with were curious vervet monkeys and baboons, that were always on hand to try their luck with our doors and windows in the hope of a scavenge of our food and other apparently interesting possessions. Needless to say we were exceptionally vigilant with the locking of all entrances to the house for the duration of our stay. The bats however had already established a permanent residency so we had no grounds for termination of their tenancy, to the annoyance of some of the instructors. For my part I thought it was pretty cool to have them swooping in and out of the loft above my bunk at night, and hanging above the bathroom door during daylight hours.

Besides the critters we were sharing the house with, other close neighbours ranged from skittish zebra clans to herds of wildebeest and impala to psychedelically-coloured tribes of furry caterpillars. It was like living in a different world.

 

            ANYWAY, about the actual work that we did up there. Outward Bound courses in Lapalala are run in conjunction with the Lapalala Wilderness School – the students spend half of their time on course out in the bush with us, following a hectic schedule of hiking, abseiling and camp craft and the other half at the school learning about the wild, its animals and general environmental education. Our courses were with Kingsmeade Girls’ School and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy (OWLA) Johannesburg respectively and while most of the girls embraced the outdoors and the pleasures like stargazing and campfires that it has to offer, some of them took to life in the bush like a duck to, erm, not water… fire juggling maybe? Not very well and often with hilarious results is what I mean.

One thing that never fails to amuse me when working with high school girls is their reaction to finding a girl so similar to them in age and appearance living in the outdoors voluntarily. I’ve been faced with a few dumbstruck schoolgirls when my response to their incredulous ‘You chose to work here? Why?’ is a variation on ‘Believe it or not, I like living like this.’ Or if I’m feeling particularly cheesy ‘Campfires and saying goodbye to cell phone reception is good for the soul!’ It makes me laugh every time.

 

I learnt very quickly that running courses in an area so exposed to the wild and its inhabitants comes with a whole new set of risks and rules; and, as is usual with me and the cretinous blunders that I make on an almost daily basis, I learnt this the hard way and almost at the expense of my life (or at least a significant limb) through the medium of a too-close-for-comfort brush with a couple of very angry hippos.

 

Me and a couple of other instructors were hanging out at the water’s edge one day when we saw (we thought) only one hippo lingering on the surface some distance away, and (logically) I assumed that as long as I kept my eye on it there was no reason not to get closer. So skipping along the rocks on the bank I went, until I was maybe fifty metres from the visible hippo.

You can imagine my surprise a few moments later when another previously unaccounted-for hippo broke the surface of the water less than thirty metres from where I was standing.

Now imagine my intrigue when said hippo apparition continued its advance, mouth agape with gargantuan teeth on show while I stood mesmerised on the bank – only to be jolted from my stupor by a frantic yell from the rapidly retreating game ranger stating that I didn’t have a hope in hell of outrunning said hippo once it reached the bank, where it would proceed to reach a speed of around 45km an hour.

The hippos were not stopping.

I have never run so fast out of sheer terror in my entire life.

IT WAS AWESOME (apart from the minute or so of manic terror during which I genuinely feared for my life and cursed having the shortest legs of all the pursued).

            After this encounter I read up religiously on hippo habits and the dos and don’ts when faced with them in the wild, and I discovered that hippos are responsible for more human deaths per year than crocodiles. Which is… interesting.

 

            The time we spent in Lapalala was absolutely amazing and when it was time for us to leave at the end of May I was exceptionally blue. I feel very lucky to have been able to live in close proximity to the wild in such an exclusive reserve that is otherwise closed to the public for the protection of its wildlife, and I learnt a lot about the animals monitored in the reserve and the struggle for their protection from poaching. I also picked up a SUPER COOL Lapalala WS t-shirt.

Priorities people…

Wolf Wanderings and Other Sunny Shenanigans, with Intrepid Adventures on the Horizon.

Sometimes, when there aren’t any courses running, I get leave given to me by Outward Bound without a choice. And when glorious weather coincides with this enforced downtime, it would be morally wrong of me not to take advantage of these virtuous circumstances. Which is why I’ve spent the last ten days (rather wisely, in my opinion) riding horses, taking trips to the beach and walking a pair of dogs whose appearances and idiosyncrasies liken them so much to a couple of wolves that I will from here on out be referring to them as such.

            Said horses and wolves belong to a friend of mine named Andrea, who also lives in Sedgefield. Her bartending six days a week doesn’t leave her much time to walk her exceptionally energetic wolf pack, Jealous and Cheyenne, or exercise her two recently acquired rescue horses, Jinx and Mercury; so I naturally offered up my services while I’m around with no work to do. Because riding and dog walks on the beach in the sun we’ve been having are so taxing…  

            Last weekend me and Zoe even ventured to George for the night with a friend of ours, a trainee pilot named Skye, and a good and drunken time was had by all, in spite of it not being our original intention to wake up to find ourselves inexplicably still in George the next morning. Then I got to watch Everton beat Fulham on a hangover, which was a nice recovery after our terrible show at Sunderland the week before.

            These blissfully sun-lilted days are soon to come to an end though, as Saturday is a work day and on Sunday we’re back on the road, this time to Potchefstroom as the first leg of our epic pilgrimage up to the Outward Bound base in Lapalala, Limpopo province. It’s as far north as Outward Bound goes in South Africa and sits at the very top of the country, and the base is known for its proximity to wild game like lion, cheetah and hyena… without fences. So life will literally be on the wild side. So the next month looks something like: Bloemfontein – Potchefstroom – Lapalala – Potchefstroom.

Then Zoe, Lucy and I have collectively taken 18 days leave and are attempting to plan the following road trip for that time:

Botswana – Johannesburg – Swaziland – Umtata to visit friends volunteering at various projects.

If we manage to pull it off it’ll be a miracle and small hiccups are to be expected, but as long as we get to see who we want to see and get back to work in one piece I’ll consider it a successful venture.

 So, adventurous times ahead along with a foreseeable lack of blogging opportunities as I’ll be busy running for my life from wild animals as part of the usual nine-to-five/ bussing it around the continent, but I’m looking forward to getting back on the road with my Outward Bound family; our drives are always a laugh and when it’s all over it’ll be an experience to travel outside of South Africa!

 

If you need me, for the next two months I can be found at Intrepid Explorers R Us.