Apologies for the lack of a blog update over the past month. Since getting back to selati from my leave the focus has been passing my level 1 qualification. We had a couple of weeks to go over everything as well as 1 week of first aid and wilderness medicine which was a unique experience in itself. The guy running it taught us first aid by scaring the living day light out of us! Video clip after video clip of very stupid people doing very stupid things with guns, knives, fire, wild animals etc etc. you name we saw it.
It was actually a very well taught week and i learnt a lot as well as completing the course with a level 2 qualification. Our final test was a pretend rescue situation. A guy had been walking in the river bed outside our camp and got bitten by a crocodile! it was pretty realistic with blood and amputated arms etc! As a group we had to assess the situation and address the wounds appropriately, perform CPR and stretcher him back to camp. Needless to say we all found it rather funny but also discovered our bandaging needs a little work!
Our final week in Selati camp brought new challenges for me specifically as I had been bitten by something other than a mosquito and started to feel a little off. But the exam and practicals we in the next couple of days so i held off whatever the problem was and focused on getting through the next few days. My practical assessment was a 3 hour guided drive in which i had to cover a whole host of topics including, birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, amphibians, climate, geology, history of the area, stars (on a morning drive!) grasses, animal behaviour, trees, situational awareness and scenarios the list goes on! I got lucky with my assessor, a guy called Les who was a great guy and always had an interesting story up his sleeve. It went well and I felt pleased at the end of the 3 hours which felt like 3 minutes. Feedback at the end was very positive and i was give the green light of passing!!!! over the moon and on to the exam!
THe exam was a couple of days later and as long as I kept the neurofen pumping round my system the fever was kept low and the headaches at bay. The last few days of cramming definitely helped as the exam was a particularly strange set of questions which are pulled from a database of over 1000 questions. We had some real easy ones and then some super difficult ones! Definitely not your standard exam like the mock papers we had been given to practise.
15 of us sat the paper in the morning and had a nervous analysing couple of hours where by the "what did you write for this one and ......oh no i didn't put that i must have failed" usual post exam chat every single one of us has experienced pursued! Just after lunch we got called in one by one for the results, each person coming out smiling and returning to the group to a big round of applause. Unfortunately 2 people didn't make it through but we have every faith that they will pass in January when they re sit. Luckily for me though.......
I PASSED AND AM NOW OFFICIALLY A QUALIFIED SAFARI GUIDE!
Job done you are probably thinking. well not quite, the purpose of the one year course is to get a whole range of qualifications making you very employable at the end of the year. Next up was our advanced rifle handling in the stunning Makuleke camp in northern kruger park.
But first stop was straight to the doctor to find out what was wrong with me, I had shown my now black scabby bite the size of a 20p piece to the Head instructor who almost immediately said i had tick bite fever. Not life threatening but a pretty nasty virus to have and has to be treated by antibiotics. So that night whilst everyone was busy celebrating I was lying in my tent feeling close to death as my body temperature soared and fell every 30 minutes. The doctor in Phalaborwa (45 mins away) in the morning ran some tests and confirmed tick bite fever, prescribed me antibiotics and some fairly strong painkillers and sent me on my way!
6 hour drive north to the new camp through kruger park was stunning and we arrived in a very remote location where "no one can hear you scream" so to speak! not even cellphone reception! the camp is located in a private concession area of Kruger, meaning not even tourists are allowed in the area but the animals wonder freely. We had the place to ourselves and it was stunning. The purpose of being here for this week was to go through our Advanced Rifle Handling course and take our exam at the end of it. we had 4 days on the range and had to complete 6 different exercises, each one increasing in difficulty. You have to passed each one to proceed to the next. By day 2 I had the first 5 exercises under my belt and completed which was a great feeling to be ahead and shooting well. Unfortunately I had to spend day 3 in camp whilst many of the group still had the majority of the exercises to complete and need the day on the range to catch up before day 4 of the final exercise.
This meant i had a day when i could have been practising or attempting exercise 6 but was unable to, frustrating but this did mean i could go on a walk with Bruce Lawson - one of the best regarded guides in the business and incredibly knowledgable. I jumped at the opportunity and joined him on a 2.5 hour walk where we covered 6 kms. We walked through a fever tree forest, amongst a huge herd of buffalo, got surrounded by nyala jumping through the forest, watched zebra drink at the waterhole below us and watch a beautiful african sunset over the floodplains. It was the best walk in the 3 months of the course and one i will not forget in a hurry!
The exercises we had to complete were:
1. load a magazine blindfolded in 15 seconds
2. fire 5 rounds into a 15m target and hit the bulls eye zone
3. Shoot at the 15 m, 10m and 5m target each time scoring 10 in 14 seconds
4. Fire 3 rounds into a 10 m target dealing with a misfire round in 13 seconds
5. Shoot the bulls eye on a 12m and 8m buffalo in 12 seconds (don't worry not a real buffalo!)
6. Simulate Lion charge - controlling your guests, getting down on one knee, chambering a round and firing hitting the bulls eye before the charging lion reaches the 10m target!
Back to the range for the final day - Simulated Lion charge, the exercise known to rip your ARH qualification from under your feet. And it did just that, I had two attempts and missed the bulls eye by a couple of centimetres. Very frustrating as I had been shooting well all the way through. So I didn't pass and out of the 17 of us attempting ARH only 4 got it. So i will take it again on the 5th jan and hope this time i can nail it!
3 months of training in the African bush are complete, with my FGASA level 1, Wilderness medicine and first aid and my track and sign level 2 i am pretty happy with all i have achieved so far. Now its time for a decent break and 3 weeks off over christmas. I am now in Namibia and have already had 4 great days at Harnas catching up with friends and animals alike (Harnas update to follow!). The next few weeks will be spent between Pattricks farm (Vergeneog) and swakopmund where we have rented a self catering apartment on the beach for the 4 days of the christmas weekend. It will be a little different to the usual big family christmas in cold and frosty England. But absent friends will still be toasted at 2.15pm, crackers will still be pulled and the obligatory bread sauce will still be created! As for the turkey stuffed by granny, mums pheasant casserole and the huge pile of presents under the usual 16ft christmas tree well ....maybe next year!! Dad is also heading out soon after christmas for 10 days of touring Namibia, we are heading up to Etosha National park where i hope to dazzle him with my newly acquired knowledge, just please let the birds be the same!!!
This experience has been everything I had hoped and dreamed for the past 3 years, no regrets only assurances that i made the right decision to move here, the next 6 months are going to be pretty exciting and who knows where i will end up on my lodge placement in february, but no doubt it will bring new adventures, new birds to identify (oh gosh i am turning into a bird nerd!) and more awesome people to meet.
I hope you have all had a fantastic 2011 and have a very merry christmas!!
More from me in 2012 and maybe even a trip home in July to see you all
lots of love
xx
