Wow

2 February 2011

When I heard about a nature preserve not far from campus, I decided that in spite of not knowing where it was nor having internet access, I must go there. After sketching our route based on the map of Pietermaritzburg hanging on the wall of the library, disentangling ourselves from two extremely chatty 70-year-old Jehovah’s Witnesses, and eating sandwiches at Braai and Bakery, three friends and I set out on the trek. Roughly 4km later, we reached the park. We learned from a passing driver, who unlike all the other South Africans we’ve talked to assured us that we’re quite safe here, that we should turn left to find the park entrance. The first animals we saw after entering the park were …horses! Not very exciting. A worker sent us back the way we’d come but inside the fence to find a pedestrian entrance to the game reserve, and within just a few minutes, we spotted a zebra, and soon a group of several more zebras. Then I saw a pair of very long legs, and as we looked more closely, several pairs of very long legs.

 It’s amazing to see five zebras run across the path in front of you.

 

This was designated as the picnic area, and there were giraffes and zebras everywhere!

We also saw many beautiful butterflies, but these were the only ones that understood that they should stay still long enough for us to take a picture.

These grasshoppers seemed too cool to be real.

I have to include a fungus picture.

 We also glimpsed three monkeys moving in the trees a little way from the path.
In this picture, you can see woven inhlokohloko nests across the pond and another woven nest hanging from the cattails in the foreground. There were bright red birds presumably chasing potential mates across the pond, and a couple types of duck-like water birds swimming.

 When we circled back, we got really close to a giraffe. There are no fences between me and that giraffe.

It was awesome to watch it grab a branch with its long, black tongue and then jerk its head back, making the boughs shake as it pulled off the tiny, tough leaves. After every few chomps, it would move its head down toward us as though it was making sure we weren’t a threat. Don’t come away from this video (if it actually works) with the impression that you know what it’s like to stand five meters from a grazing giraffe; it’s much more breath-takingly amazing in person.

 

The zebras tend to stand paired up like this. Maybe on the long-awaited day when I get my hands back on Wikipedia, I’ll learn why.

As I watched the seemingly awkward legs of five giraffes run swiftly and gracefully to a new cluster of trees, I couldn’t help thinking of what the Jehovah’s Witnesses had told us that morning about God creating the creatures on Earth for people to enjoy, and I wished that I had some way of explaining to them how much more deeply a knowledge of evolution allows us to appreciate these creations.

Important lesson #3: When you're near the equator, the sun is almost directly overhead. Wherever you are, the sun is very hot. Wear sunscreen.

Birds

30 January 2011


When Becky and I woke up, we noticed that our hotel had a balcony, and that we could see a beautiful yellow bird in the tree just beyond the balcony. There were multiple nests hanging from the tree branches, and we saw the bird repeatedly carrying pieces of grass into two of them. That afternoon, we stopped by the library and learned that the bird was an inhlokohloko, or southern masked weaver in English, and that the males are polygamous and build multiple nests.

 Our campus, and apparently all of Pietermaritzburg, is filled with these birds. By consulting two South Africans, my Zulu-English dictionary, and a humongous old book of South African birds, I determined that they are called amankankane in Zulu and Hadash ibises in English. They make extremely loud screeching sounds, eat garage, and walk in a really hilarious way that looks like high-stepping.

Language Barrier

30 January 2011

Today at the Johannesburg airport, when I got to the front of the line to check in, there was an employee to direct me to the appropriate counter. She said, “Good morning sir,” and then slowly realizing the hilarity of her error awkwardly corrected, “I mean, good morning ma’am. Where are you flying today?”