Reflections on my studies.

Sitting at the dam near Pridelands Ecotraining camp, I have some time to think about the past weeks and where I am now. I haven’t been feeling really well for a couple of days, possibly the result of the throat infection I had a couple of weeks ago. Still coughing a lot. So I’m staying in camp today, enjoying the peace and quiet of the camp when everybody is gone on drives and walks. 
Time to reflect.

I’ve been thinking about the upcoming assessments a lot lately. The way things are at the moment, I don’t think I will succeed. 
For one, that is because I seem to have a problem learning names and ID features from trees and birds and arthropods by heart. Maybe that is because I’m not really interested in these species, but I can sit and learn the parapinnate leaf structure of a Weeping Boer Bean one night, and the next morning I see it out in the field and recognise the leaf as something I learned only recently but do not know the name of the tree belonging to it. It’s crazy, but I have not found a way yet to improve this.
The other reason is that I am not prepared to spend all my time studying while I’m here.
Nature is not something one should just look at in a book or in the field concentrating on “what species is this?”. It is something to immerse yourself into. Feel it. Smell it. Let it get under your skin and try to become one with it. Especially when you get the opportunity to do this in the African bush.
And I have allowed myself to spend a lot of time doing just that.
After all. What good would it do me to be back home and be able to identify the Lilac-breasted Roller by simply seeing it fly past or hearing its crow-like sound, when I have never sat down in the sunshine in the bush and admired its amazing colours?
Call me an idiot, but every time I sit down and try to learn something out of a book, and elephant or giraffe come to drink at the waterhole, my books are forgotten.

When I look back at what I knew about wildlife in common and that of Southern Africa especially when coming here, and compare that to what I know now, there is a world of difference. I’ve learned so incredibly much in the weeks in the bush and have seen so much of the complexity of this fantastic ecosystem. I never would have thought I can learn that much in such a short period. So even if I’m behind the rest of the group with learning names and calls and things, I still made a quantum leap in my own personal development in regards to nature. And certificate or no certificate is not going to change that.

And let’s face it. I never came to Africa to become a Field Guide actually working in a lodge. It is a job I don’t want. I’m sure I would be very good at it because I know I can be a good host to guests and entertain them with honest enthusiasm about the wildlife around us. But it is not what I want to do. I know that the Field Guide certificate maybe could have helped me to get a job with some environmental NGO (or at least so I hoped), but during my time here I found out that I would be happy to return to ordinary IT management work, if that allows me to invest time (and money) in conservation work.

So the way things are now, I will keep spending a lot of time just seeing, feeling and smelling nature, rather than learning about it in my study-books. I will keep listening to the information from our trainers and my fellow students, because I have learnt so unbelievably much from them. I will keep listening to the stories from the older guides and trackers because they open up a world of experience to me. And if I get to a point where I decide not to do the exams because I know it is a waste of time, then so be it. The amazing amount of incredible things I’ve learned can not be put in a certificate anyway.