I’m starting to have my doubts whether spending R13 000 each (a chunk of my pension) on a 28 day Field Guide Course is a good idea for me. I’ve checked out job offers for couples at Game Lodges and they seem to want the guy to take the people into the bush to look at the bokkies and they want the chick to stay home and answer the phone. Probably rightly so since imagine me out there in a jeep with 6 Americans in the back going Oh My God, Oh My God as I disappear into the sunset without a clue as to where I’m going. I rely heavily on GPS and without my glasses I wouldn’t know the difference between a baobab or a boa constrictor.
One of the subjects the course covers is Astronomy. My current knowledge of the stars is that if you join the dots then you can outline pictures of Greek Gods and scorpions but you have to stretch your imagination big time and I know the southern cross is supposed to help you find your way but I’m not quite sure how it works. I mean if I follow a star like the 3 musketeers did, the direction seems kinda vague. I’d just keep going and going in a straight line as if I was chasing the end of a rainbow to the end of nowhere. Can’t see how that would get me back to the lodge after a night of game viewing with 6 Americans fretting in the back seat.
Another subject is Amphibians. I think that’s creatures who live in the water but who aren’t fish. And I have a feeling its limited to fresh water i.e. an octopus is not amphibian but a frog is. I’d need some brushing up on that I suspect.
Reptiles. Crocodiles are dangerous and you can make handbags out of them but I’m not sure what they do with the pointy bits. Face inwards possibly? Digging for a tampon in the bottom of your handbag would be a mission mind you.
I’ve just checked - another subject is Arthropods. And here I thought that was the name of a fatal disease. After reading further I realized its spiders and insects. Funny, I’ve been pondering about Mosquito’s lately. As far as I know it’s the female who bites you and sucks your blood for a meal. So what I’ve been wondering is what does the male mosquito eat to survive? The female? I mean what species, (other than humans where the male can survive on meat and the female on chocolate) do the males eat one thing and the females eat a different food type. I’m puzzled.
Actually all the subjects offered in the Field Guide Course do intrigue me. I’d like to know more about the moon and how it magnetically pulls the water in my body towards it. I’d love to know more about animal hierarchy – I think animals are way more intelligent than humans realize. I’m also intrigued by mans development through the stone and iron age. Learning about botany (possibly even lobotomy) wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I think it will come in handy when the budget is stretched and we need to know which leaves are edible to chuck in the stew.
So doing a field guide course would be interesting and maybe I wouldn’t be expected to be all gung-ho and carry a machine gun over my shoulder to protect the Americans from a charging rhinoceros. Mind you it sounds more appealing than hanging a toilet brush over my shoulder and answering the phones.
I’ll think about my options some more while I try and figure out where the heck Mpumalanga is. I still work on the old system of Transvaal and Free State so I think I have enough stuff to think about before I find time to count the legs on spiders and insects to see what category they fall into. Next week I’ll get the magnifying glass out cos I’d be expected to know the difference between a millipede and a centipede and as far as I can remember we’re talking a lot of legs here.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round
The bus is parked along the side of the house and my mom is keeping a watchful eye on the state of each blade of grass underneath. I’m really glad that we settled on a smaller vehicle since this one is just about ready to go which makes things much easier. The bus is actually a converted D400 Ford truck. Still has the chassis and engine but aluminum caravan type body. Theo drove it down to the garage at the crack of dawn to get the tyres pumped and to get the hang of taking a corner before the rest of Monte Vista woke up. The seller had delivered it to us so it was Theo’s first time behind the wheel. The sweat poured off him since the bus doesn’t have power steering and maneuvering the thing was a new experience. I bounced up and down with excitement on my couch seat while he worked on his abs. We were both grinning from ear to ear by the time we stopped at the garage and everyone came over to inspect our “tortoise house” as they called it.
Our goal now is to get the necessary stuff finished to be able to roadworthy the bus but we fiddle around with other fiddly bits as well. I’ve had my head and shoulders wedged into a dark rusty storage box in the floor to hold the back of a nut in place for Theo to screw the bolts in place. I’ve had the vacuum cleaner hose inside the engine housing box (which is inside the bus nogal) to suck out cobwebs around the engine. We’ve bought a spare tyre – I’m talking truck tyres here which don’t come cheap and a deep cycle battery to give us power. Theo has almost finished with the lights and fixed the handbrake cable, bled the brakes and needs to replace a metal plate on the under carriage which is too rusty. He sorted the front wheel bearings out - the master cylinders had to be resleeved before it moved anywhere. Holding thumbs the back ones are ok. We are also pottering around inside fixing door handles etc and I’m making curtains. I’ve made a headboard and am having all the cushion seats recovered. Theo still needs to sort out the shower floor, the roof vent, build a small cupboard for more packing space, and he’s had a look underneath and is pleased that we have water tanks, sewage tanks and there’s space for our vegetable oil tank. Remember, our idea of running on cooking oil? Well that part must still be sorted but will come later. And then of course there’s the trailer or possibly some kind of hydraulic ledge for the bikes and the storage box.
We are working at a leisurely pace but hope to get going the beginning of April. We both resign end February - thats like in 3 weeks - ooh scary - no turning back now. I work to end of March but luckily Theo is able to take leave after his resignation date so he will have time in March to pick up the pace a bit. He writes his code 10 learners on 1st April - ominous date I know, and then we are both doing a 3 day first aid course at St Johns before hitting the road.
Yeehaa - cant wait for end of March to come.
Our goal now is to get the necessary stuff finished to be able to roadworthy the bus but we fiddle around with other fiddly bits as well. I’ve had my head and shoulders wedged into a dark rusty storage box in the floor to hold the back of a nut in place for Theo to screw the bolts in place. I’ve had the vacuum cleaner hose inside the engine housing box (which is inside the bus nogal) to suck out cobwebs around the engine. We’ve bought a spare tyre – I’m talking truck tyres here which don’t come cheap and a deep cycle battery to give us power. Theo has almost finished with the lights and fixed the handbrake cable, bled the brakes and needs to replace a metal plate on the under carriage which is too rusty. He sorted the front wheel bearings out - the master cylinders had to be resleeved before it moved anywhere. Holding thumbs the back ones are ok. We are also pottering around inside fixing door handles etc and I’m making curtains. I’ve made a headboard and am having all the cushion seats recovered. Theo still needs to sort out the shower floor, the roof vent, build a small cupboard for more packing space, and he’s had a look underneath and is pleased that we have water tanks, sewage tanks and there’s space for our vegetable oil tank. Remember, our idea of running on cooking oil? Well that part must still be sorted but will come later. And then of course there’s the trailer or possibly some kind of hydraulic ledge for the bikes and the storage box.
We are working at a leisurely pace but hope to get going the beginning of April. We both resign end February - thats like in 3 weeks - ooh scary - no turning back now. I work to end of March but luckily Theo is able to take leave after his resignation date so he will have time in March to pick up the pace a bit. He writes his code 10 learners on 1st April - ominous date I know, and then we are both doing a 3 day first aid course at St Johns before hitting the road.
Yeehaa - cant wait for end of March to come.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
BUSH BUS
So I think our camper bus needs a name. My mom said that my dad used to call us the Flintstones. I can’t imagine why – I don’s see the link even if my mom does – anyway we considered using it as we will be getting back to our roots. I prefer the name Bush Bus since we will be spending a lot of time travelling through the veld going nowhere slowly. Getting a bum rash from our Baz Bus. Say that fast after a tequila. It’s not really a bus though, nor is it a regular camper. Maybe we’ll just call it the van. So long as it gets us there. There being wherever we’re going. We probably do need some kind of direction. We want to stop off at a few friends around the country and from there explore Mozambique and then end up on back in the bush.
Actually I have done loads of investigating and in the beginning my idea was to work at game lodges doing something involving nature. I never knew exactly what but I wasn’t too worried and visions of me walking around with a chimp on my hip sounded fantastic. Theo had visions of himself shooting the odd rabbit or guinea fowl with his pellet gun and cooking it in some unusual way out in the veld, possibly with a pigeon up the bum; the guinea fowls not his. I’m not sure if he was hoping to bump into a bushman soon after the kill to pluck or skin the thing for him although he’s not sqeemish and has gutted and skinned a small buck in our backyard once when his folks accidently knocked it down, killing it. That important lesson in life was if the intestines are damaged the meat will taste like shit. Literally.
Anyway so all my research came up with some feasible options. I found a cool link called www.woofing.co.za. (World Organization of Organic Farming). They are much bigger overseas but there are some in SA as well. They are organic farmers who take on volunteers offering them a room and meals in exchange for free manual labour for a minimum period of 2 weeks at a time. There was one particular one which caught my fancy. A piggery taking volunteers to help make smoked bacon etc. Theo would be in his element to be able to churn out km’s of chorizo sausage and see how other people process pork. I’d be able to work on getting a flat stomach shoveling pigshit for free board and lodging. How cool is that. Another farm which caught my fancy was the dairy. Free opportunity for Theo to make all kinds of smelly cheeses and I could fondle cows udders and shovel more shit. I worked in a cow shed on a Kibbutz 20 years ago and loved it. Getting cow shit splattered in my hair won’t faze me.
Working at game lodges would probably be easier if we have some kind of formal training so I scanned the internet until I found something to get us started. I’ve printed loads of online info about safari tour guides, eco guides, front office and game ranger training courses and am sucking up every bit of info I can and loving it. We are also going on a first aid course which will help for employment in that line as well as being useful for us on the road. Theo will get his code 10 and PDP, necessary to drive the van and also necessary as a game guide.
Theo might be able to supply farm stalls with his booze making, sausage making, atchars and pickles or he might be too busy leopard crawling through the grass to shoot a dassie for supper. Me, I might be in the background practicing to kickstart my dam bike and developing thunder thighs to match my wash board stomach from all the shit shoveling.
Can’t wait to find out what lies ahead.
Actually I have done loads of investigating and in the beginning my idea was to work at game lodges doing something involving nature. I never knew exactly what but I wasn’t too worried and visions of me walking around with a chimp on my hip sounded fantastic. Theo had visions of himself shooting the odd rabbit or guinea fowl with his pellet gun and cooking it in some unusual way out in the veld, possibly with a pigeon up the bum; the guinea fowls not his. I’m not sure if he was hoping to bump into a bushman soon after the kill to pluck or skin the thing for him although he’s not sqeemish and has gutted and skinned a small buck in our backyard once when his folks accidently knocked it down, killing it. That important lesson in life was if the intestines are damaged the meat will taste like shit. Literally.
Anyway so all my research came up with some feasible options. I found a cool link called www.woofing.co.za. (World Organization of Organic Farming). They are much bigger overseas but there are some in SA as well. They are organic farmers who take on volunteers offering them a room and meals in exchange for free manual labour for a minimum period of 2 weeks at a time. There was one particular one which caught my fancy. A piggery taking volunteers to help make smoked bacon etc. Theo would be in his element to be able to churn out km’s of chorizo sausage and see how other people process pork. I’d be able to work on getting a flat stomach shoveling pigshit for free board and lodging. How cool is that. Another farm which caught my fancy was the dairy. Free opportunity for Theo to make all kinds of smelly cheeses and I could fondle cows udders and shovel more shit. I worked in a cow shed on a Kibbutz 20 years ago and loved it. Getting cow shit splattered in my hair won’t faze me.
Working at game lodges would probably be easier if we have some kind of formal training so I scanned the internet until I found something to get us started. I’ve printed loads of online info about safari tour guides, eco guides, front office and game ranger training courses and am sucking up every bit of info I can and loving it. We are also going on a first aid course which will help for employment in that line as well as being useful for us on the road. Theo will get his code 10 and PDP, necessary to drive the van and also necessary as a game guide.
Theo might be able to supply farm stalls with his booze making, sausage making, atchars and pickles or he might be too busy leopard crawling through the grass to shoot a dassie for supper. Me, I might be in the background practicing to kickstart my dam bike and developing thunder thighs to match my wash board stomach from all the shit shoveling.
Can’t wait to find out what lies ahead.
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