The Next Two Months in South Africa

After spending some time in Skukuza working on the invasive snail project, we moved further north in the Kruger National Park to a camp called Tamboti. The plants and animals here were a little bit different; for example, we saw a lot more giraffes and zebras than in Skukuza. Tamboti was also where I saw my first wild leopards. On one sighting, the leopard got up and starting walking towards our vehicle and was right by the side of the road before leaving. In our camp, we frequently saw vervet monkeys (especially drawn to breakfast), and at night, we saw honey badgers (which have a very fearsome reputation) and a genet (a cat-like animal related to the mongoose). At Tamboti, we did a project on camera trapping in which we placed cameras at various places in the bush to photograph whatever animals walk past them. My group’s cameras picked up various animals such as impalas, elephants, a leopard, and a rare cat called a serval.

One of the leopards we saw near Tamboti Camp

 We later went to Shingwedzi, another camp in the far north of the Kruger. The landscape is much more flat and open up there, and one species of tree dominates. Our course carried out a few more projects in this area. Working with renowned South African botanist William Bond, we recorded the plants found in transects in different types of environment. This data will be used to compare the effects of fire and herbivory on the plants of a landscape, since the Kruger has exclosures in which both fire and large herbivores have been excluded for decades. Our other Shingwedzi project involved observing the feeding behavior of oxpeckers, which eat ticks off of various animals.

We left the Kruger National Park to go on homestays in the HaMakuya area. With three other students and a Venda translator, I went to a small village called Mukoma. The village had a great location next to a river and mountains and with lots of enormous baobab trees. We had a task to interview several members of the community about their access to water and their perceptions of its availability and quality. This region is very water stressed, and like most people in the village, we had to carry buckets of water back for our own use. The village’s many children loved drawing us into their games and showing us around, and they never seemed to run out of energy. On our day off after our homestays, our program visited a huge baobab called the Big Tree. Everyone could easily fit on the branches at the same time, and there were many branches to climb and walk on.

At this point in my program, we left the bush to spend some time in the cities. For our one day in Johannesburg, we visited Lilliesfield Farm, where Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress leaders hid out and were arrested during apartheid. After that, we went to the Apartheid Museum to learn more about the oppressive regime of institutionalized racism that governed South Africa until 1994. I enjoyed these chances to learn more about the interesting history of the country I am visiting. Following our brief stay in Johannesburg, we all flew to Cape Town for our mid-semester break. We had several days to ourselves to spend as we chose. Among other activities, I hiked Table Mountain, the iconic plateau that rises above the city, and I went snorkeling feet from Cape fur seals. As a group, we also visited Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. Our tour guide was actually a former political prisoner who now lives on the island. His and others’ capacity for forgiveness was incredible to witness.

Some of us enjoying the view of Cape Town from a hill © 2014 Leigh West

The next place we visited was De Hoop Nature Reserve, which was quite different from the savanna we were used to. The habitat there is considered fynbos, which the term for a South African Mediterranean type ecosystem. This biome has over 9,000 species of plants, and even small areas have immense diversity. The reserve was also along the coast, near the meeting of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In addition to several academic assignments, I helped with two scientific projects. One involved looking in tidepools to see the factors that affected the number of species in the pool. For the other, we shone bright lights near a bat cave to see if the light pollution would affect their willingness to emerge from the cave.

Me enjoying the octopus we found © 2014 Caroline Schechinger

Now, we have all travelled back to Skukuza, in the Kruger National Park, where we will spend the remainder of our time in South Africa. In the coming weeks, we will design our own scientific studies, collect and analyze data, write a paper, and present our findings to South African National Parks. Time is going by really quickly, so I will have to take advantage of my last month in this country.