Elephant Run

Safe and sound at our new African home:

Everyone is in this pic, minus Karen, who was taking this picture. Peter (bottom right) and Louise (lady with the shades) are the supervisors of the lab, and everyone else are the researchers that I live with. I'm sure stories of each of them will creep up into my blog throughout our stay. This was after we had just arrived on Wednesday and hadn't seen a bed for 2 days. Still happy, though!

I can only speak for myself when I say I had a wonderful night's sleep and woke up the next morning at 4:30am. I heard Derek (top middle) and Rich (bottom left) leave to do their field work for the day and, shortly after, decided to get up. I was completely awake and ready to explore - so I slipped on my running shoes and went for a run.

Running down the road, very cautiously, I saw some wildlife such as warthogs, a herd of antelope, and a bunch of birds. I was making lots of noise to make sure I wasn't going to run into any of the bigger animals.  After running a couple kilometres I turned back to go home (it was an easy running/exploring day). As I arrived back home, I nearly crapped myself when I saw this:

I had to cross his path to grab my camera and then I came back out and took the picture. This elephant's name is Rex and he's been hanging around the house for a while. Derek was going for a run the other day and Rex charged at him, which made me especially nervous to even take this picture, but I was near enough to our electrical fence that I could have darted behind it easily if Rex decided to try anything. 

Karen took some pics from inside the house. Note the perimeter fence we have to keep him out:

Anyways, there is another Rex encounter story, but I think I'll save that one for later. I apologize for my terrible writing, it's much more difficult for me to write these stories a few days after the fact. 

Until next time...

My journey to the other side of the world

A lot has happened in the last few days, which means I have to give you all an abridged version of what I've been up to since I've left Canadian soils. It's difficult to organize what I've experienced so far in just one post, so I might end up just splitting it all up into different posts. Let's play it by ear, shall we? Here goes...

It was only last Monday, January 7th, when I finished preparing for a 33+ hour journey and an entire year away from my Canadian homeland. Garett drove me to the airport that evening, and I managed to meet some members of my family (Brock, Kelsey, Mom and Nick) there as well. It hadn't quite sunk in, that I wasn't going to see everyone for so long. Not sure what to feel, I ended up feeling nothing. Mostly I just wanted to be on my way, since I had been preparing to go for about 3 months prior.

An excerpt from my journal reads, "It's hard saying goodbye to people I love when the reality of my travels haven't quite sunk in. I just hope I didn't come off as cold-hearted. Hugged my crying mother while trying to understand what the big fuss was about. I understood that it's a mother's love and I'll also probably cry when I realize I will have never gone this long without seeing her."

Haven't cried over my family, yet. I don't intend to, and the way things are going, I'm not sure I will. I'll miss them, but I'm completely happy where I am.  This is all just a part of the lifestyle I've chosen. Besides, people live away from their family all the time - even if they're in the same country!

The boyfriend is a different story, but I'll just keep that to myself for now ;)

Moving along...

The flights/layovers were awesome.  It helped that Karen and Miranda (my fellow researchers) were only 1 person away from me, in the same row, from Calgary to London. I didn't even know they would be on my flight! It was a pleasant surprise. Once we all got to the Heathrow Airport, we managed to meet up with Jon (another fellow researcher), who bought us drinks. I had slept so well on the flight that the layover was quite enjoyable.  Jon, Karen, and Miranda continued onto Johannesburg via South African Airlines while I caught a British Airways flight on my own. I slept most of that 11-hr flight, which was nice.

Landing in Johannesburg was stressful and exciting for myself since the gates closed for my connecting flight to Port Elizabeth at 11:00am.  I landed at about 9:40am, took until about 10:20 to get through passport control and then I had to pick up my baggage. Took me a while to figure out where to check my baggage in again, go through security and find my departure gate. I made it to the gate just as they started to board (about 10:40). I had plenty of time left to spare, but it was quite stressful considering I had no idea where to go and I hadn't had a proper night's sleep (bed and pillow) since Sunday night. By this time, it was Tuesday morning (local time).

The last flight was very short and easy. In fact, the airplane was practically empty. I arrived to the Port Elizabeth and was reunited with the others. From there, we were picked up by Derek (who had been living at our destination home for months and months already) and drove ~3 hours north to where we now live, on the Asante Sana Game reserve.

I think this post was really boring, but I felt inclined to document the journey anyways. There are some exciting stories to share already, but I'll save them for additional posts to prevent myself from losing your attention.

Until next time...

38 days away

I have about 910 hours (~38 days) until I depart Canada and head back to the African continent.  The last week or so has felt pretty scary, but am finding myself to be getting more and more excited, given the cold temperatures outside and the fact that I've almost completed getting ready for this trip (i.e. paperwork, moving, etc.).

It also helps that I know more about where I'm going to be staying, who I'm going to be staying with, and what I'm going to be doing. I might as well lay it out for all of you who are curious...

Here's the general breakdown:

Myself and a couple of other people I've met via email (Jon and Karen) will be helping a master's student (Miranda) and post-doc (Richard) with their vervet monkey research on the Samara Private Game Reserve in South Africa. I'm not sure what Miranda's thesis consists of, but I do know that Richard is working on some kind of behavioural thermoregulation project. This research is conducted by the Barrett-Henzi lab from the University of Lethbridge.

We (Jon, Karen, Miranda and I) will be sharing a project house on a neighbouring game reserve called Asante Sana. From the research that I've been doing on this place, it sounds like there are various large animals roaming the reserve such as elephants, rhinos, zebras and giraffes. I'm pretty much going to be living an African Safari for an entire year!

Which brings me to my next point - Yes, I will be gone an entire 12 months.  Never have I ever been this far away from home, not to mention for this length of time. But I am absolutely stoked! I feel overdue for my next adventure, and this is it.

Are you guys falling asleep yet? I still have to write down my goals! This blog post is more for me than you, so don't worry about reading the rest...

For the year 2013 I would like to gain more experience collecting behavioural data, meet more like-minded people that I can network with and learn from, and spend time figuring out what I would like to do for my own Master's degree (what general topic to study and what universities to apply to). And for a slightly unrelated goal, I would like to spend my downtime learning French.  Apparently Canadian universities require their PhD students to be bilingual. This is going to be a challenge. 

Anyways, that's the general breakdown. I'm sorry I'm such a horrible writer, but I think this blog will help me get back into putting my thoughts down into words.  Practice will make perfect - so expect more posts from yours truly!

May this blog help my friends and family understand me a little better. 

Peace and love,
Kira

links:
This is where I'll be working 12 hours a day, 5 days a week: http://www.samara.co.za
This is the Barrett-Henzi lab: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3098948/B-HWEB/index.html

The next destination is... (drumroll please)

It's been a long time since I've paid any attention to this blog, which means I haven't travelled anywhere lately. Since Ghana, I've spent the last year completing my degree, working a retail job to pay off some loans, and doing fun things like hiking, camping, and hanging out with some good friends.

The past couple of months has been challenging in terms of figuring out what I'm doing in life as a university graduate. I've been applying to every primate-related opportunity I find (even the ones I'm under qualified for). Alas, I've had no luck.

....until now!

Q: So, what's your next mission in life?

A: Getting more primatology field work experience!

Q: What's your next destination?
A: South Africa!

Woo! I'm excited!

More information to come later.

Okay, this is the end of my teaser post :) I wanted to post this news all over facebook but I don't want to tell everyone the news yet...so I had to kind of let it out on here. No one really reads this!

I'm going to attempt to log my experiences of this trip better than the Ghana trip. There is a possibility I'll have more access to internet in South Africa, but I still don't know much information about the field site. More info will come in time!

Cheers, everyone! I'm going to miss you (all my Canadian friends)!

Kira

Cool Ghanaian Bird

This bird was so cool! At first we thought it was some kind of noise coming from our shower.  Does anyone know what species this is?

Epic Travel Blog FAIL

Okay, so I've been back from Ghana since July 26th....and I look at what I accomplished with my blog for the 3 months that I was there...and let's just say it didn't turn out the way I'd hoped.  The internet was impossible to access in the village and when we were finally in town, the internet cafe's internet never seemed to work.  Siiiigh....oh well, so is life.  Anyways, to conclude on this section of my blog, I'd like to say the trip was epic. I don't have time, after the fact, to write down all my stories on this thing but I imagine I'll be telling them to friends and family for a while yet.  It was one of the coolest things I've ever done!

So...what's next?

Only time will tell.  I'm graduating from university in December and who knows where I'll end up after that.  The world is my playground....I don't doubt there will be adventures ahead (and who knows, maybe I'll be better at blogging them next time)!

Until next time,

Kira :)

At last...some pictures!