I can hardly believe that in just a bit over a week from now, it will all be over. We will leave Pridelands and our lives in tents in the bush to travel to Joburg and back into “civilisation”.
Some of us will still have some days/weeks vacation, which they spend in Southern Africa, some will go back home to study or to find or start new jobs. I will, of course, go to Zimbabwe where I will finally get the chance to drive from Victoria Fall to Chizarira National Park all by myself. An opportunity to enjoy nature without group, without restrictions. 

It is strange, but lately I more and more felt the need to be out there on my own. Just me and nature. And the only opportunity I had to do that was when I was in Hoedspruit a little over a week ago.
Yes, I got sick again. I wasn’t feeling well and spent a few days in camp not really doing anything at all. After a few days, I decided to go to the doctor once more. As it turned out, my throat infection still wasn’t gone and had started to play up again. So I got new medicine and the advice to stay out of camp for a few days.
This time, I decided to follow doctor’s orders immediately. So I arranged for a place to stay, went to camp to get some stuff and went back to stay in Hoedspruit for 4 nights, until Monday the 18th. It was a good decision. This time, when I got back to camp, I didn’t feel like there is still something not quite ok and I stopped coughing, so finally all is well.

But with yet another 6 for 7 days lost, I decided I will not do the assessments. Catching up all I’ve missed would have taken me a lot of time, the assessments starting less than a week after I came back and I don’t want to miss enjoying nature. So when I got back in camp, I told Craig (our trainer) and he fully agreed that the opportunity to “live” nature as much as possible is more important than to study and not enjoy the wild.
So from that moment on, I tried to enjoy every minute outdoors even more than before. And there were a couple of drives where I got confirmation that my decision was right. Like when we went out with just a few students, because the rest needed/wanted to learn, and we had this amazing Leopard sighting of a female with two young feeding on a kill in a tree. Or the time where, again, a lot of the group needed the time to study, and we came across Lagerhta, a lone lioness that lives and hunts much like a leopard. Looking into her eyes was an experience I will never forget and I would have missed it if I had tried to catch up for the assessments.
There is a disadvantage though. I have more time than the others to go out, but I’m not allowed to. Ecotraining rules are that no student is to leave camp (other than in cases of sickness or emergencies) for the whole 55 days of the training. Which means I can not go out by myself and am not even allowed to go out with some of the backups or with Morris, the tracker here in camp who is a bit of a tracker-legend and with whom I would love to go on a walk.

So by now, I’m longing more and more for the moment I can go out just by myself with the freedom to sit and walk where I want, when I want.

The extra time I have on my hands is spent with studying (even though I am not doing assessments, I still want to learn as much as possible), reading some books with stories from rangers from the early days, working on some photographs and reflecting on some of the topics I’ve come across during my time here and which I find interesting enough to take a closer look at. 
For example the project from Michael Stone, a guide and dreamer from Hoedspruit who developed a steel fireplace which does not smoke, is very economic on firewood and enables baking of bread (the main source of food in many of the poorer villages in Southern Africa) in a very short time compared to the traditional ways. He also set up a program for the usage of the coals from these fires for fertilisation by enriching them with human urine and having them crushed by spreading them in the entrance of Kraals where livestock will trample them. An amazing sustainable procedure which is perfect for the poor communities.
And of course I still help my fellow students where possible.

In between, I enjoy the unbelievable moments at the waterhole, when Ellis, Buffalo, Giraffe, Zebra, Wildebeest or Impala come to drink. Lots of moments for good photographs.
And for talks with wonderful people, like the young Tsundzukani Hlongwane. Tsundzukani is a young man from a small village who works as a tracker for Ecotraining. When he was young, he was one of the boys who might have ended as a poacher, because that was more or less what his friends did. Only when they wanted to go hunt animals in the Kruger Park did Tsundzukani draw the line and started listening to is father, who was a ranger in Kruger. From there, he has made it his cause to teach young children about wildlife and the need to conserve it. He took them out on trips and frequently sat with them to teach them about the beauty and the importance.
When he had to leave his village because he started to work for Ecotraining, he dedicated land owned by his family (about 3 hectares) to the village community, but they must keep teaching the children about wildlife. Believe me, meeting people like Tsundzukani and having time to talk with him is priceless.

All in all, I have mixed feelings at the moment. Looking forward to the moment I can go my own way, but also dreading the moment this will all be over.
One thing is certain. Africa is a place I will return to.

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.

Wow, I can’t believe it has been weeks since I last wrote a blog post.
Time really flies here in the bush. Before you know it, we will have our assessments and it will all be over.
I’m hoping that despite several days not participating in the training (my throat infection kept me occupied for a couple of days after I visited the doctor and when it did not get any better, I spent 4 days out of camp in Hoedspruit) I will be able to make it through the assessments. But oh boy, is there a lot to learn.
But that is exactly what I came here for. To see the complexity and the variety of nature and to learn as much as possible about it.
And I will certainly have learned a lot, even if I do not pass the assessments.
And one other thing is taking form. My idea of how I want to live is taking more and more shape. It was a great decision to come here and see for myself how much needs to be done in terms of conservation. And I feel more and more that I really want to be a part of that. I want to help projects, invest my time, knowledge and also money in them. I want to do it mostly from home close to my family, who I dearly love, but regularly spend time in the bush or in the wild and support on site. It is a goal that just feels good. I’m actually, for the first time in many years, looking forward to maybe taking on a management IT job again for a certain period, to support my goals. 
But for now, I need to concentrate on my learning and our assessment. And on enjoying my time here as much as possible. Because it will be over much too soon.