The aftermath of our floods.

Life here is slowly returning to normal. Social conversations are still all about what happened and who was badly affected.  Most of us – but not all, have our electricity back on and we can get where we need to go, although there are roadworks everywhere and a few detours still.  The vegetation next to the rivers looks ravaged and huge trees are lying sadly on their sides with withered leaves.  There will definitely not be a shortage of firewood here for a while.

Our water on the other hand is still quite disgusting

I put this water into the bottles 10 days ago hoping to be able to sediment out the sand and get clean water.  To date there is very, very, little sedimentation and it still looks just as orange as when I bottled it.  I have tried filtering it through cloth and coffee filters but nothing comes out.  Ceramic jug filters just get blocked so they are no good either.

A city 100km’s away from us sends a huge truck filled with water to our town every day and we can collect water.  For a day or two all bottled water in the stores was sold out but they are all fully stocked now.  I looked at some prices for those who purchase their water – Pick ‘n Pay R18.95 for 5L, – Labamba R12.95 for 5L and Oasis, R13.95.

I use our purchased bottled water for cooking and drinking. Even Cleo and Savannah get bottled water to drink.  We shower in the orange water but I just can’t bring myself to wash our clothes in it.  Our laundry pile is quite huge.  I met a lady yesterday who is taking her washing to Nelspruit (2 hours away) to get it done in a laundromat there.  I will have to make a plan to get some washing done somehow as it does not look like this problem will be resolved in the very near future.

The small roads on and around our farm are in a state of disrepair.

These gullies will have to be filled with rock and sand to avoid further erosion when it rains.

Some good news though, is that our new baby giraffe is fit, fat and flourishing and survived the rains well.

 

 

 

 

 

Giraffe crisis – the full story

Those who follow me on my Facebook page will have heard a little about this story, but may be interested in the details.

Around noon on new years day a pregnant female giraffe was spotted on the farm with one of her babies legs sticking out of her rear end. She seemed to be in distress. By 2 pm we were getting worried about her so we called the local vet to attend to her.

We had quite a bit to prepare before the vet could dart her. We had to have 8 adults who could sit on her once she was darted and we needed many liters of cold water to keep her cool while the vet worked.  We recruited everyone we could find and filled up our fire tank so that by the time the vet arrived we would be ready.

At 2.30 we could not find the pregnant giraffe so search groups were sent out to look while my sister and I let the vet into the reserve.  He loaded up his dart gun and we joined the search groups just as they found her. The baby had just fallen to the ground. (3pm)

Our vet explained that this was very unusual because if only one leg is out they normally get stuck.  He was relieved though, because if he had had to dart her, the chances of the baby surviving were very low.

We all sat quietly about 50 meters away from the baby and mother behind some trees and watched the baby try to stand.  They are normally on their feet within 10 minutes.  If they are not up by 20 minutes one starts to worry.  Our baby tried very hard but could not get up.  The long and difficult birth had tired it out.  We left it as long as we possibly could because one does not like to meddle in the natural cycle. If you interfere with the baby you run the risk of the mother moving off with the herd and then we would have had to hand rear the baby.

After we waited an hour the vet said that the baby would die if we don’t get it up so he walked in very carefully trying not to chase the mother off too far but not wanting her to defend her calf, and he lifted the baby to its feet and held it up for a few minutes and then moved away so that the mother giraffe could approach her baby again.  He walked away and the baby fell to the ground after a minute or two of standing on its own.  After another 10 minutes he again went in and lifted the calf.  The situation was getting difficult now because the only way the baby would get some strength would be if it could drink some colostrum from its mother.  After a few more minutes the baby fell down again.

We then started calling around to cattle farmers in the area trying to find some cow colostrum but we were unsuccessful.

The vet left us at this stage and told us to keep lifting the calf every hour.  At 5.30 we went down to lift her up again and were so happy to find her on her feet.  We checked again at 6.30 pm and she was still up and was now moving around. She must have fed from her mother by this time because she was looking so good.  By morning the herd had moved off with the baby in tow.

Yesterday while on a game drive I spotted her with her mom again – looking well and happy.

Here are a couple of pictures taken by my friend Rina, of the calf with the vet as he was getting her up.

It was quite an eventful new years day and an awesome thing to experience.

The blog post that should have been.

So I was busy preparing to write a blog post to show you this….

My home-grown, totally organic tomatoes picked fresh of the vine,  and this……

my first gooseberries from the tiny twig that thinks it’s a gooseberry bush.

All delicious by the way. I gobbled the gooseberries right there after I took the photo and the tomatoes were served with our dinner – just sliced up with a little salt so that we could see what they really taste like.  There is NOTHING like a home-grown tomato!  Anyway – I digress.

Then I was going to tell you how dry it is and how much we wait for the first spring rains here – it’s a regional past-time, guessing when it’s going to finally fall.  Waiting for those first big hot drops to fall onto the dusty red sand.  It hasn’t come yet, but the first beautiful tiny green leaves are starting to bud on the trees. So I thought I should go out and take a photo of the first greeness arriving when I heard STOMP! CRASH! SCRAPE! MUNCH! MUNCH!

I swung around on my chair (it swivels :)) to quickly look out the door, camera already in hand and who should be standing right there………..

eating all my new fresh leaves that I have been waiting for ALL WINTER!  Man oh man. So that was the end of the blog post that was planned and you get a photo of a greedy giraffe instead. (but you can actually see the greeness starting up can’t you?)

Not as planned but still quite awesome, isn’t it?

(this photo was taken from my study desk in my room)

If you have any questions that you would like to ask about our life in the African bush, please just post them in the comments.  When I have enough questions I will answer them all in a post (so long as I don’t get disturbed by another animal…… come to think of it – we had an incident with a legavaan today too… hmmmm)

Taking a break – bush style

After the miserable end to last week, I spent the weekend in the bush with some of my old colleagues who were up in Hoedspruit for a meeting. The break was very welcome and the work we did helped keep my mind occupied. Here are a couple of my favorite photo’s from the weekend – they were taken on a game drive at Matumi Lodge.

 

 

Sunset on the farm

Wild animals

In a very unfortunate incident, a local 25-year-old girl was killed a few days ago on a nearby game farm.  She was kicked to death by a giraffe.  Apparently she was out in the bush walking with her dogs when her dogs  ran towards some giraffe.  A mother giraffe who was protecting her baby kicked out at the girl who was trying to grab her dogs.  My colleagues all knew her and her family.

Giraffe are naturally placid creatures who will run away from anything scary – however, they are still wild animals who will die trying to protect their young.  When I sit and watch them on my land – I am amazed by how gentle they are.

We need to remember – they are still wild animals and as such, are potentially dangerous creatures – no matter how gentle they seem.

Necking?

This morning I awoke to fresh footprints outside my cottage

I wish I had been awake to see my visitor.

The giraffe is one of my favorite animals.  Early written records described the giraffe as “magnificent in appearance, bizarre in form, unique in gait, colossal in height and inoffensive in character.

 Ancient cultures in Africa revered the giraffe, as some modern cultures do today, and commonly depicted it in prehistoric rock and cave paintings. Unknown outside of Africa, this animal so excited man’s curiosity that it was sometimes sent as a diplomatic gift to other countries; one of the earliest records tells of a giraffe going from “Melinda” (presumably Malindi) in Kenya to China in 1415. The animal was thought to be a cross between a camel and a leopard, a mistake immortalized in the giraffe’s scientific name of Giraffa camelopardalis.  I always wondered where the Afrikaans name for Giraffe came from – Kameelperd.  The latin name explains it all.

On our reserve we have 9 giraffes – two of which were born this season.  The babies were gorgeous but have grown so fast – they look like teenagers already.

Here is one of the babies peeping out of the bush at me. 

When we first arrived on the reserve, the animals were not used to people being around – most owners only having empty land or holiday cottages.  We are the first permanent humans on the reserve.  It was so hard to see the giraffes because they would run before we got near.  Now, with W doing a lot of walking in the bush, we have discovered how to get closer, and the Gerries are getting used to us.  W whistles to them and they really seem to know him already.  They are VERY inquisitive – even when they are scared they still want to see what we are doing.  We have found that if you do not make eye contact with them, and pretend not to look at them, they believe you havent seen them {talk about an inferiority complex – how the heck could you miss such a huge animal!} – Anyway – we get quite close now.

It is quite easy to tell the difference between male and female adults and a little more difficult with younger giraffes.  The older males have worn the hair off the tops of their horns from necking (giraffe fighting).  The females have quite fluffy tips on their horns and the horns are closer together and more delicate looking than the thick stubby male horns.  I still find it easier to look at their bellies and see what “bits” are there or not.

Female giraffes are pregnant for 13 to 14 months and they give birth standing up.  The new baby falls about 1 – 1,5 meters to the ground as it is born.  The baby is about 1,8 meters tall (6ft) and they live for about 20-25 years.

I love watching them drink water.  It’s quite an awkward thing and they are very vulnerable to attack when they drink so its a nervy experience.

A giraffe has a valve in the blood vessels in its neck that closes when it puts its head down. This stops all the blood from rushing into its head. You will see, when a giraffe finishes drinking, it will give its head a little shake to open the valve again.

One of the weirdest things to me about a giraffe, is the way it walks – one of the only animals that uses both its right legs and both its left legs at the same time, instead of alternate legs as most other animals.  The minute it starts running however, it changes to an alternate gait. If I tried that, I would fall on my butt nose. {maybe thats why I only have two legs}

Hope you learned a little about one of my favorite animals.  Which other animals would you like to hear about?