Coming Home For Christmas

So in December I left South Africa after an amazing 3 months. I surprised my boyfriend my coming home 5 days early which after lots of coordination between my mum, Jordan's mum and I we got him to the airport without knowing anything.

My time in Africa was amazing and I wouldn't change any of it for the world. There were plenty of hellish moments from being out in the rain, pulling my back, and having to walk over an hour to find my monkeys at 4am before the sun had even risen but I learnt so much about not only the wildlife present but techniques for analysing the area I am and I learnt a lot about myself.

Although I now think I don't wish to conduct pure research, (especially not on monkeys anyway)I would never have discovered that without this experience.

My last week was very different compared to all my other weeks as because I hurt my back and carrying a rucksack all day was too painful so instead I was helping out on the predator side of the project which meant scat (poo) analysis.  This meant that I was taking washed hyena scat and preparing the hairs present into slides so that they can be analysed and Katie will be able to see what the hyenas are eating.

 What brown Hyenas eat has only been looked at in more desert environments and so her PhD is the first study to look at brown Hyena prey in a mountainous region. This implications of this is obviously very important for the species conservation as understanding what they eat means that if their prey species decrease it will obviously have a great impact on the species survival in the area.

On Saturday I went to MOYO, which is an area of the mountain that some students at lajuma have camera traps. It was great to see a completely contrasting landscape to that of Lajuma and we got to see Zebra, blue Wildebeest and Giraffes which was an added bonus, huge thunderstorms started in the morning though and so we rapidly went from over 40degree heat to torrential rain just after we left.

On Sunday Larissa created an amazing little treasure hunt all around Lajuma to remind us of all the things we have done together which was incredible and made us all get a little emotional!

The vet has also been up the mountain this weekend to remove a collar of a baboon, as the collar had become too tight and so preventing her from moving her head fully and they were also trying to  collar a new monkey to place this collar on instead. When I left they still hadn't had much luck and the vet was leaving that day so I don't know if they succeeded or not.

I also managed to interview the vet for my project that I am conducting for my year out along with the other staff at the project and so with their help I can really begin that.

Watching the Sunrise

On Monday we had our last group breakfast but before then Larissa, Josh and I headed up one of the mountains to watch the sunrise and it really was incredible. Where we watched the sunrise there was also a troop of Baboons as well which made the whole experience even more special. After getting back to camp we all had a feast of pancakes, eggs, bread and potato chips which were amazing before heading into town.

Our final breakfast together

The rains really began on Tuesday afternoon and my group thankfully got back in time but to see how heaving the rain was watch this

The primate side of the project is currently trying to carry on with its long term study so that they can analyse how the seasonal changed and food availability effects the monkey troops ranging behaviour and so having a large data set of 4 years allows this to be very reliable and also publishable. They are doing this for all the monkey species and hopefully in the next year or so they will be able to compare the primate species movements with the predators especially as eagle data will hopefully be collected in the next year. For baboons their ranges has greatly changed in the past year or so and this could be in conjunction with the new macadamia farm which has just been planted this year. This in its self will be very interesting to see how, a new farm has affected the animals behaviour as they have removed part of their natural roaming area.

 The project is self will be providing a lot of new information in the next few years allowing a greater insight into the species and predator prey relationships in the area and to have been a part of collecting the data which will help to analyse this makes me very proud.

I am so thankful to everyone at the project for giving me the opportunity to work and gain so many new skills and all the amazing new friends that I got to make whilst there. One thing is for sure, working a normal 9-6 job now will feel like a piece of cake. If I can work from 4.30-19.00, I really do feel like I can do anything!

The view over Lajuma