louiseinlimbo

So, three weeks after my arrival I have rather more idea as to what I can contribute as a volunteer, mainly on the office (administration/accounting) side, although from day-to-day my contribution can cover all kinds of different activities, such as helping carry things from kitchen to dining room, turning off the generator at night - and working with the juvenile white-bellied pangolin that is currently in the care of the lodge.  The owner's wife was devoting herself to the care of the pangolin but she is currently away.  Thankfully I do not have to spend my nights out in the forest with him (this being a noctural species), as some Ba'aka trackers have been brought in to do that, but I had initially to give him the last few doses of a course of antibiotics, and now continue to ensure that the Ba'aka turn up for work and understand what they are to do, and act as liaison between them and the owner's wife - reporting back on his weight, his diet, his sleeping hours, etc.

After too much rushing around from country to country, and a quick visit to my Mum in Kenya, it was time for a completely different experience - a stint as a volunteer at an ecolodge deep in the rainforest of Central Africa.  I'd been here before (posted about it in July and August 2012) which is how I knew the owner and how I saw that they sometmes take volunteers, but spending a week somewhere as a tourist is very different from living there for six months as a volunteer. To be honest I had very little clue as to what I would be expected to do (and still haven't as I write this ten days after my arrival...).  The original requests for volunteers some years back were related to care of rescued pangolins, and this was what I was keen to do, but when I had a call with the owner prior to signing up, he dismissed my mention of pangolins, saying they now had a volunteer vet to do that.  He asked what I'd done for work, and when I started to summarise my career path he interrupt

From Harar we drove to the border with Somaliland, which we'd been warned could be a little chaotic.  We started badly as the guides didn't realise that a few people standing beside the road just before the Ethiopia exit barrier were there to check luggage, so we re-entered Ethiopia from no-man's-land to get our luggage searched.  Well, apart from me, who somehow got overlooked, but everyone else had to put their bag on the ground to be opened and given a cursory search.  Then back around the barrier to walk across the short stretch of lawless no-man's-land until we could enter Somaliland.  We'd been told to hold tightly onto our possessions and not engage with any of the 'helpers' who would offer to carry our luggage across for us, and we all did as we'd been told.  But this didn't stop one man running up to one of our group to try to steal her shoulder bag - he didn't get it, so snatched her hat from her head and ran off with that! Thankfully f

After the Danakil, we were joined in Ethiopia by a few more people (those who didn't want to camp out).  We explored Addis Ababa - the best bit for me being an impromptu evening out for some of us when a group member found information on a very hip bar with live music (Ethio-jazz followed by traditional music - drums and masengo) - and then moved on to Dire Dawa, where the highlight was the old train station, completed at the start of the last century for a train running between Ethiopia and Djibouti, and now partly abandoned but with some working to refurbish old wooden train carriages using salvaged parts and equipment left lying around.  Then we were off to Harar, a beautiful and atmospheric city I visited in 1997, but where I missed out on one activity, something I've regretted ever since.  That is the nightly feeding of the hyenas.  Started more than fifty years ago I think, first by one family and now I believe a second family do the same, just at the edge of the city, fe

Carrying straight on from Kuwait, with not enough time to finish mentally processing my Iraq holiday, I arrived in Addis Ababa and met some of my new tour companions as we boarded the internal flight to Semera.  Although I didn't meet two of them until I got into a car the next morning for the start of three days of sharing a vehicle ... wondering if I would have got into that particular car if I had known. For we were starting a three-day trip into the Danakil region of northern Ethiopia that included on the first day a six-hour drive along what has been described as the worst road in the world, bumping over the lava field iin the picture above, to cover a distance of just 80km.  Thankfully I enjoy road journeys.  Maybe in part because I've never driven, and so have no issues with someone else being 'in control', but I get pleasure from looking out of a window at the scenery, and I rarely experience any physical discomfort, no matter how long the journey. Here I was co