Baby Rhinos! Save a Rhino...Hunt a Poacher!

We had a wonderful Wednesday, Kelly had no school due to exams, her classmates were all taking the Afrikaans language exam (Kelly doesn't take that but continues French instead), we let Katie stay home as well (she impressed her teachers with her performance on her exams over the past few weeks).  The kids, Colleen & I headed to our nearest Nature Reserve about ten kilometers from our front door!  (Greg missed the fun and headed for another trip to Botswana)

When we arrived (and payed our entrance fee of about $12.00 US for all of us! )  They told us the water buffalo and rhinos were at the coffee shop.  So we thanked them for the tip and headed for the coffee shop!  On the way (on the road) we saw a herd of water buffalo-very cool!  We stopped the car and watched them for a bit.  When the road was clear (of buffalo) we continued.  Before the shop we saw a Mother and Baby rhino in the grass and we watched the mother nudging the baby and the baby would run along.  We thought that was pretty amazing, until we parked at the coffee shop and went behind it to see a father rhino and baby about 5 feet from us!

The rangers throw down hay for the animals to come and eat, they even let the kids throw hay to the rhinos! You may notice that the rhinos have no horns, the ranger answered Katie's question and explained that the horns are removed to protect them from poachers.  They tranquilize them and then cut them off with a chainsaw.  The horn is made of keratin (like fingernails) so it doesn't hurt them.  Then the city of Tshwane (new name for Pretoria) locks the horns into their vault so they can't be stolen & sold.  The rhinos need all the help they can get- in today's paper there was an article about another rhino being poached in Kruger Park, which is the big game park everyone puts on their list for South Africa.  (you have to be careful in planning your Kruger trip though, it is in a malaria area so you have to take medicine in advance)  There have been close to 540 rhinos poached in South Africa this year-381 in Kruger!

We saw a bumper sticker here in our first few weeks and bought it, its been waiting on our fridge for our new car...car is still waiting for us...bank loans take FOREVER!  The bumper sticker says, "Save a Rhino, Hunt a Poacher".   We are firm believers-who could hurt such an amazing creature?

Dad & Baby!  There are 3 baby rhinos in the park and us lucky ducks saw 2 of them!  

Two adult rhinos that hung out for a very long time at the coffee shop.  We also saw the father rhino challenge these two when he thought they got a little too close to his baby & the hay!  There was much snorting, stomping, dust everywhere.  Kelly just missed filming it!  We were glad that Charlie had not climbed down there to be in the middle of the rhino battle-he was talking about going down the steps you see on the right only moments before the excitement!!

Charlie pondering jumping down and taking a ride on the baby's back!

Our water buffalo herd.

I think they have the cutest ears- they remind me of Shrek's ears!

We stayed at the coffee shop forever drinking tea & hot cocoa and watching the amazing animals.  Then we headed for a few bird hides, and tried to find some hippos.  However there was a high school bus load of kids at the hippo area and the hippos were nowhere to be found, I guess they find high schoolers to be a scary bunch!

A pretty awesome Wednesday in my book! 

Kelly and her crew! We have a phone!

Term 2 at school is winding down, Kelly has started exams so she was done early and was able to join Charlie, Colleen and I on an outing to a playplace/restaurant.  South Africa has all of these great kid friendly places where parents can hang out while kids play and as our friend Doug says, "neglect your children".

The place yesterday had a go-kart track that was very cool, Kelly got a workout driving Charlie and his buddies around.  Katie is not very happy that she doesn't get to leave school early!

Kelly thinks the Leary kids would LOVE this place!

Other exciting news, we are fully functional with our internet connection and now have our internet phone hooked up, you can call us at our old Wakefield number and you don't pay international charges!  Our # is 781-245-4509.  (Not sure if you need a 1 before it or not.)  The person I could ask is the telemarketer who called last night wanting to come and show us solar panels for our Stark Ave home.  Greg kept telling the guy he was in Africa, and the guy couldn't believe it!  "How is that possible?" he kept asking, I was cracking up listening to their conversation!

We also went to a play last night at the University of Pretoria, the play was called LA Charades, it was about a private detective agency in LA in the 70's.  The girls and I enjoyed it, lots of laughs, Charlie and Greg had a good movie night at home because I wasn't sure he would sit through it!

Mandela's Birthday-Incredible Tribute & Not at Wakefield High SchoolAnymore!

Long post-if you don't have enough time to read it all, skip to the video link at the end!

We experienced Nelson Mandela's birthday in South Africa.  We started the celebration last night with a trip to the Canadian Embassy where they had a cinema under the stars showing of the documentary movie, "Music for Mandela" which showed the importance of music in the whole movement for the South Africa we are experiencing today.  I really liked the movie but did not see the end because Charlie was asleep on me, Katie was fading fast, and the girls had school in the AM. (highly recommend it for your netflix list)  It was a great prelude to today's events!

Today was Mandela's birthday and it was Google's page today, it also was on all the radio stations here and on the front page of the newspaper.  In SA all, South Africans are encouraged to do 67 minutes of volunteer work on his birthday.  I'm proud to say that the American Embassy rose to the occasion in a big way!  They had a group of about 70 people hop on a bus and ride to a township school to paint and do improvements to a high school.  A few months ago I had no idea what a township was....it is a "shadow" black town from the apartheid days where people still live in terrible conditions.  Basically in shacks, with rocks holding on their flimsy roofs, hand laundered laundry hanging out to dry and children playing in the dirt.

View of township from the bus window-those are not garages- they are HOUSES!

We drove through it all in our coach bus, and rolled into a high school where almost 3000 students attend, the school only has desks for about half that many students, and we had 3 main tasks for our group, painting walls in about 15 classrooms, building about 100 additional desks, and trying to organize the library.

These are the desks, moved out into the halls so we could paint...and they don't even have enough of those!

Charlie and I chose the painting crew, Colleen chose the library (and a grumpy Kelly and Katie were at school for the day).  I spent a great deal of last summer in Wakefield High School classrooms making sure wiring was done properly so that the students could have wireless access in the rooms, today, I painted over grafitti standing on deplorable desks and chairs so that students could come back from "winter break" and see some fresh paint in their classrooms.  Everything that we agonized over in my old life, all the technology and new library designs for a brand new middle school back home was all irrelevant here.  These kids had NONE of that and sadly our efforts were tiny compared to all that is needed at the school.

Here are some photos of our work...the rooms before we started, we had to paint the areas above bulletin boards & chalkboards, not the bricks.

Charlie and I do the low areas in many rooms.  Easy to reach without standing on the rickety desks...eventually we did that too!

Trash in the school yard, my old Superintendent would have had the head custodian on the line in no time had he seen that, however that is the least of their worries here.

96 desks rebuilt by embassy volunteers today. (symbolic number for Mandela)

Volunteers working to reorganize the library...if only I could put all of the amazing Wakefield library ladies on the next plane over...I need tickets for Kelli Parece, Trudy Conley, Anne Miller, and Kim Hartmann.  They would give that place the overhaul it really needs!

Before we departed, they gathered everyone together for a quick photo, the Principal of the school thanked us all and we sang Happy Birthday to Mandela.  I thought that was great, then the most moving thing was the crowd broke into this song for Mandela, I don't know the words or the language, I just know it was the most moving thing I have experienced.  I was lucky enough to capture a little on video, note the boy in the blue hat in front clapping along!

http://youtu.be/1-FHuOCOqmM

What a legacy for Mandela-people spending time on his birthday to honor him by doing good works for the country that he loved!!

Rugby's newest fan!

We attended our first rugby game, Pretoria has it's own professional team called the Blue Bulls, we watched them win at home.  Charlie LOVED it!  He now has a rugby ball, Blue Bull hat, and Springboks shirt(SA national team).  Sadly our rugby player Dad was traveling and not at the game, he also hasn't been here to tackle Charlie with the rugby ball. I have been doing my best but Charlie tells me I don't do it right!

We look forward to Greg coming home Thurs, I will turn back into a rugby spectator rather than a participant!

Happy 4th! "YOLO"

We had a great time the embassy 4th of July Party, which was hosted at the Community Center, which is this beautiful place next to the American Ambassador's residence.  It has a playground, basketball court, swimming pool and a new gym.  It is walking distance from our house (the first time we walked it was on the 4th to bring down the decorated wagon).  The kids spent all of July 3 decorating bikes, scooters, and our red wagon for the big parade.  Kelly was determined that we should win the prize.  Our neighbor kids were also part of the fun, their middle daughter volunteered to ride in the wagon because Charlie told the girls he wanted to ride his own bike.  (we took off his training wheels about a week ago and he is so proud to balance)
The event was kicked off by the Marine Color Guard, here is Katie and her friend from school with the Marines..

They had CRAZY moonbounce options for the kids, one was this two story thing that you sit in a seat that lifts you to the top and drops you.  Kelly started yelling out "YOLO" (You Only Live Once) and got all the kids doing it.  They pretty much did that ride the entire time.  They also had a mechanical bull inside a blow up enclosure that was a hit as well.

Here is Charlie on the bull with the crazy two story moonbounce in the background!

The bucket seat you sit in and get lifted to the top for the big drop!!!  (we think this would be a great addition to the Labor Day Picnic- Candy & Paul!)

Our big parade entry, Kelly pulled the wagon, Katie & Liza rode scooters, Charlie his bike with Captain America shirt & shield, along with our 3 neighbors, Ruby, Coral & Opal.

They get called up on stage to claim their prize!

Shot of the winners with their prize!  (ice cream bowls and some candy)

The only thing that was missing was fireworks, this was the place we always needed to be when we had dogs that hated fireworks!   

We hope all of you on the East Coast had some celebrations despite the bad hurricane weather!

Our First Visitor & First Safari!

Greg's Cousin Sally's oldest daughter, Colleen arrived on Friday and this week the girls were off for a mid-term break, so we headed to Marakele National Park (which is about 3 hrs North for our first big five park). We were staying at the Guest Cottage at the park, which was about 30 kilometers from the main gate.  Which you would think you could drive in just a few minutes...it took us almost an hour and a half to reach our cottage.  It is tricky driving on little dirt roads, avoiding elephant & rhino poop and trying to to scratch a rental car!  We did manage to see many animals on our way in, we saw our first wildebeest.

Then a pack of monkeys crossed the road in front of us...a Mom even had her baby on her back!

We made it to our cottage and the guys who were taking us on our 4pm game drive were waiting for us, we knew better than to take hungry kids on a 3 hour game drive, so we made the guys wait and fed them first! Glad to not be rookie parents in this case!  The big open, game drive vehicles that you sit up high in are very cool, Charlie was SO excited to go!

Colleen & the girls up high in the back!

Dad & Charlie, Papa O'Brien-Charlie has his trusty binoculars with him!

We see many animal signs (warthog holes, elephant & rhino footprints, we learn how to tell white rhino dung from black rhino dung (white=grass eaters, black=leaf eaters in case you were wondering), we see one giraffe way off in the distance, we see tons of kudu, impala, zebra...but sadly no elephant, or rhino, or lion.  We get to see the sunset and finish our drive at night, the guide busted out big spotlights for the kids to shine in the bush, they loved that and shined them on the moon, the mountains, everywhere! We headed home, chilled to the bone, sitting in an open vehicle and once that sun drops it gets cold in Africa!

We cook our dinner on our "braii" (SA word for charcoal grill) using amazing charcoal that Charlie picked out at the meat store, turns out it was some kind of wood from Namibia-cooked super hot, fast!  

This is a morning picture of "Charlie's Charcoal".  The stars at night were spectacular, no pictures could do them justice!  We could see the whole Milky Way and it was so neat to be out in the middle of Africa all by ourselves!  (there was a high electric fence around our cottage grounds to keep out any lions)

The morning was peaceful, Greg headed out early to do some animal surveillance, by the time I made it out there with the kids, he had his spot picked out where he could watch two roads in the park at the same time...the guide said the animals do like to travel along the roads as it is easier for them too!  He never saw anything but he and Kelly are pretty sure they heard a lion roaring! Here is a shot of morning surveillance!

Tons of acacia trees everywhere, thorns are HUGE, as you can see one next to Charlie's hand, elephants eat the leaves & thorns, and we were warned not to drive over elephant dung because the thorns can still be intact and can puncture your tire!

Colleen & Katie in the morning, looks like Colleen needs coffee!

 

The Hughes kids climb a cool Motswere tree that was in front of the cottage, it is a tree that can live for 1000 years, then stand dead in the bush for another 1000!  Our guide told us they are protected trees that you can't chop down.

We packed out of our cottage and started the long drive out of the park.  Our most exciting animals this time were three warthogs that Colleen spotted, we chased after them down the road (us driving, them running) until they lost us by jumping over a log that was blocking the road they ran down- they really are cool animals and it was fun trying to keep up with them (even though we were cheating!)

We broke up our drive home by stopping in a town called Bela-Bela and going to a place called WarmBaths Resort and buying day passes to an outdoor waterpark.  The water was super warm and Greg had me cracking up at the top of the one big water slide when he was saying should I check with the guy to see if its okay to go?  Why it was funny is its Africa and there is no guy at the top (or at the bottom) the only thing were crazy teenage kids in the middle all along the slide that asked you if you wanted a spin in your tube!  The girls thought they were workers, but we reminded them that in America they would have had lifeguards in the slides, but not here!  What does a day pass run you ask?  (80 Rand, which is about $8.00 a person, you can't go to the movies for that in Massachusetts!)

That's all for now, I have to get to bed, big 4th of July festivities tomorrow, kids have been decorating bikes and wagons all day in preparation, the girls and I baked an apple pie for the pie baking contest!