Yet again
guys, yes, I’m alive and well. Those that read my blog last year know that my
blog posts were much more regular then than they are this summer. The reason
certainly hasn’t been lack of material! I’ve been very busy here at CARE pretty
much since I first arrived here. Today actually makes exactly one week that
I’ve been here at the sanctuary, and what a week it has been! My last blog post
was written and posted on Thursday, so I guess I’ll start this one with Friday.
Friday was an easy day for me in terms of work since I wasn’t really feeling
too good. I think I must’ve gotten a small cold after arriving here, and the
worst of it came on Friday. I felt mostly fine Thursday night, but when I woke
up Friday I let Sam, the volunteer manager, know how I was feeling, and she
gave me a few easy jobs on the schedule, giving me some free time during the
day to relax. Friday evening there was a “braai”, or South African barbecue,
out by the clinic area, so the volunteers all walked over there and sat under the
beautiful night sky, eating the delicious barbecue and talking. Last summer,
the night sky in Grand Teton National Park was the most beautiful sky I’d ever
seen. That has now been bumped to second place. I’ve never seen the Milky Way
so clearly before in my life. It’s an absolutely breathtaking sight.
Saturday Sam
was nice enough to give me a pretty easy day again, which gave me a full three
hours with the little baboons. My first shift was the babies down to the river
to play around. In the morning four of the babies go- Mr. Darcy, Yolo, Yana,
and Mika. After an hour of playing down there, Mika and Yana get dropped off
into their troop while Darcy and Yolo go back to the nursery, where I then had
another hour with them. As usual, Yolo picked me to carry him to and from the
river, which I absolutely love doing. Saturday afternoon we picked them back up
at the nursery to go down to the river again for another hour of playtime, then
we return them to the same troop as Yana and Mika for the rest of the day.
Saturday was
an interesting evening in that I had the bedroom to myself. My three roommates
went to the release sight Saturday morning to camp out there. I think I’ll
definitely do that at some point here too, but since one of my roommates is
only here for one more week and I still wasn’t feeling 100 percent, I let her
take the last spot for this trip. May 12th was my last night of
having a room to myself, and I’d almost forgotten the luxury of it. Being able
to play my music without headphones, not having to ask anyone else when to turn
off the light, and other nice little things that I hadn’t gotten to do in about
five weeks, so it was nice to have that back for one night.
Sunday’s
schedule was actually even better than Saturday’s because I got four total
hours of baboon time- two shifts with the babies by the river, one shift in the
nursery with Yolo and Darcy, and a one hour social with the lovely Patats, who
is the absolute sweetest baboon around. The way she just comes up to me when
I’m sitting in her enclosure, looks me right in the eyes, hugs one of my legs,
then starts to groom it is just so adorable. It’s amazing to me, as I’m in
there with her, to think that she was so mistreated by people for years, but
can still be so calm and gentle around me, even though she’s strong enough to
do some real damage if she wanted to. Those four hours with the baboons,
followed by a shower, great dinner, and hilarious game of Cards Against
Humanity with the other volunteers made for an absolutely wonderful Sunday.
This morning
I had the job of making bottles for the babies at six, which is a job that only
two people get a day, and they try to rotate it so no one has to do it too
often. Getting up that early made me feel kind of like I was back at White
Shark Projects, but since it’s not as cold here as it was there, it wasn’t so
hard to get up this morning. After making the bottles, I had an hour hanging
out in the nursery with the babies. It was my first shift being in the nursery
with all the babies. We have five that are in there in the morning, before
going to the river- three girls and two boys. They certainly all have very
individual personalities that make them easy to tell apart. Princess is a bit
of a brat in the nursery; she loves to scream and just overall be kind of
annoying. She’s also the only one that doesn’t go down to the river at all
since she likes to run away. Yana is almost always eating in the nursery, so we
can tell her by her full cheek pouches. She’s also a bit of a bully, especially
towards Yolo. Mika is the lowest ranked in the baby troop, so she’s the
smallest of them, which is weird because we think she’s the oldest. She’s also
the cheeky one of the group; she loves to try to steal my cap and sunglasses at
the river. Mr. Darcy seems to be the leader, so he likes to chase and fight
with the others. He also has a very adorable way of sleeping in the nursery by
sitting on someone’s lap and propping his head up with a bottle. Last is Yolo,
who’s pretty low ranked, though he has to be my favorite. He’s a total klutz,
which makes him really funny to watch. We think he may have even had some kind
of ear injury before coming to CARE since his balance is so off; it’s not rare
for him to sit up on my knees to drink his bottle, then just randomly fall off!
This morning in the nursery he burrowed up under my shirt and fell asleep in
there to keep warm.
After my
time in the nursery, followed by cleaning one of the enclosures, then lunch, I
returned to the nursery to collect Yolo and Darcy to go back to the river for
their afternoon playtime. As usual, Yolo picked me to carry him to and from the
river, even though there were five volunteers going down there. My time with
Yolo is always my favorite part of the day here at CARE. After dropping them
off with their troop for the rest of the day I had another bottle making shift,
then ended the day walking the dogs around the sanctuary. The enclosure that
was cleaned today was one that was especially hard to clean, and all the
volunteers had at least an hour and a half working on it, so Sam said that, as
a reward, we were ordering pizza for dinner tonight. It’ll be another fun
evening here at the Mountain Lodge! This post’s food for thought: “You can
judge a man’s true character by how he treats his fellow animals.”- Paul
McCartney
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