first day

i awake to the sound of my 7am alarm. emily and i both head out for breakfast, rugged up against the chilly morning air, where the first thing i notice is a baby baboon in a nappy running rampage on the tables.. after overcoming my initial surprise, i turn to notice the garden is pretty crawling with animals - a bunch of hens, a cat called pervy (she apparently sits and stares at you when you're in the shower), a goose called norman begging for food, even a little duiker antelope called sylvie who timidly nibbles at pieces of toast presented to her. i'm pretty sure i'm gonna like this place (: i make myself my first rooibos tea since my south africa trips and re-discover my love for rusks!! (hard bread/buiscuitty things you dip in tea that soften and crumble in your mouth).

as all the volunteers slowly arrive, i'm introduced to rudie, the little baboon, who is being such a cheeky bugger - running off with people's cutlery, trying to steal food, eating paper, swinging off the tablecloth. turns out he's the youngest of the baby baboons and is the one who can't yet sleep alone, hence the nappy. looking at him sprinting around the place i find it hard to imagine getting any sleep at all when my turn comes to have him in my bed!!

but anyway. come 8am it's time for the morning meeting - we all make our way down to the food prep area where i properly meet the staff members. the volunteers here are divided up into 3 groups and each group has a delegated set of jobs for the day that rotate around. every morning during the meeting the staff run us through our responsibilities for the day and make sure we all know what we're meant to be doing (: for me, however, it's induction time so as the group separates i'm taken into the induction room. elzette, one of the staff, briefs me on N/a'an ku sê's history, vision and aims, as well as familiarizing me with the various animals i'll be working with (: [ it really is an amazing place and although i'm not gonna write down everything she said i'll be more than happy to tell you about it if you're interested!]

once induction is over, i make my way back to the communal area for muffin break (the routinely 10am bout of temptation) where the 3 groups congregate after completing their morning tasks. the lovely bushman cooks have prepared these incredible donut-y sugar-coated muffins, still warm and steaming from the oven.. so, so cruel!! i love listening to two women chatting, clicks bouncing off their tongues so smoothly and rhythmically..

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as muffin break draws to an end the members of my group tell me i'll be taking the baby baboons for a walk and suggest i get rid of every scrap of jewelry on my body and empty my pockets as well as wearing the least fiddly clothes possible and leaving behind my camera. i'm a little disappointed at the camera mention, given i want to document everything, but i'm guessing they know best so i act accordingly.

within about 30 secs i'm 100% grateful to them for discouraging me camera-wise.. we walk towards the cage with stu, another staff member, open the door and all hell breaks loose. there are 5 little baboons: elvis, rudie, carola, rafiki and shauna. imagine 10 of the most hyperactive, badly behaved, ADHD kids on the planet and they have nothing on this lot. the baboons immediately jump all over us, tugging at clothing, pulling at shoelaces, screeching in delight at being let outside.. 3 of them climb up onto stu to perch on his head/shoulders/back, obviously loving him, the other 2 on two of the girls, and we walk out of the farm buildings and onto a dirt track. the babies just keep tumbling off their human perches, rolling in the dirt, chasing each other around, climbing up legs, leaping from one person's head to land on another's.. it's so hard to keep track of them!! we arrive at a big tree after 10min or so and the real playtime begins. the baboons run up the tree so quickly, then proceed to propel themselves off branches and onto us humans down below.

we all sit down on the grass.. two of the monkeys proceed to groom stu's dreadlocks and carefully inspect his ears, his mouth, the inside of his nose.. carola comes over to me and i'm suddenly so glad i have no jewelry left on me - her little hands go everywhere, into my pockets, down my shirt, scratching at freckles on my skin until she finds the buckle and zip of my shorts and proceeds to try and tear them off me. i gently push her away.. big mistake!! immediately she starts jumping up and down and screaming, giving me the evil eyes and feigning bites. stu reassures me it won't get too out of hand and i calmly stand my ground. eventually she forgets about it and moves on to tug at meike's long blonde hair. that's the thing with the baboons.. like rude kids, they hate being told no.

all in all it's pretty crazy though - 5 bundles of fur running a muck all around us. they each in turn come suss me out (being the newcomer).. i ruffle their fur, pretend to groom them, swing them by the arms like children.. i can't believe i'm actually playing with baboons!! i mean that's purely and simply what it is - playtime. it's eventually time to head back for lunch and this time on the way back i've got little monkeys jumping on my hands, wanting to be swung up onto my head.. they use my hair as climbing vines, swinging down onto the ground, climbing up someone's back to jump off and land on another person's side.. they're so unbelievably agile!! getting them back into the cage is a mission, especially with shona and carola, the two girls, who i've already learned are the difficult ones. it's a good thing stu is so great with them - men automatically have more authority with the baboons as they're closer to alpha male stature.

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1pm is lunch, then something a little different - on saturday afternoons we're taken out for activities and today is abseiling (: we jump into the back of 2 big land rovers and i leap at the opportunity to perch myself up on the roof. it's a 15-min drive to the lodge (a more luxurious accommodation on the N/a'an ku sê property) where we'll be spending the next few hours. the landscape is so different to what i've left behind in kenya - long, flat plains of golden and almost silvery grass, clumps of scrub and acacia trees, the blue silhouette of mountains in the distance.. it's so dry and dusty. the place we stop at is a sort of river flowing between two big rocky faces, upon one of which is perched the lodge.. here the staff pull out the rope, harness and helmet and set up the climbing wall. as a few volunteers take turns at climbing and abseiling, i walk along the rocks enjoying the countryside. then it's my turn and i'm pleased to say i climb up and abseil down in record time (: eventually one of the utes heads back to camp and 5 of us remain behind to try a more challenging climb.

this time the rock face is a bitch - it starts in the river, effectively soaking your shoes, then climbs up to a ledge (which is too narrow to stand on) and then a practically smooth wall with hardly anything to hold onto. the stone is brittle and the only dents in it are sharp so i end up slicing my fingers and legs open, but stubbornly will my limbs to cling on and work my way up to the top. only stu and i make it all the way. apparently brad pitt and angelina jolie's kids climbed the same wall but the staff member belaying us admits he pretty much pulled them up there (;

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back at camp, i have my first hot shower in 3 months. i don't think words can describe how unbelievable that feels.. and i have clean feet in clean socks too!!! amazing!!! the girls laugh to see how excited i am by this as i run around the communal area praising the showers aloud (: it seems silly but i don't care, you will honestly never realise how divine hot water is until you have to go without it for that long. especially when it's this chilly in the evenings!!

[something i forgot to mention is this weird bite on my leg (i think it might've been a mosquito but i'm not sure) that has over the past day and a half progressively swollen up and by this evening really started to throb and redden.. rudie, marlice van vuuren's husband (the owners & founders of N/a'an ku sê) is a gp and is kind enough to drive to the farm to have a look at it - apparently it's well on it's way to becoming an abscess (yummy!!) so he gives me enough penicillin for a 5-day cycle and an antiseptic cream to try and fight the infection.]

then it's 7pm and dinner time and before too long i'm feeling really rotten - my eyes are watery and puffy, head aching, i'm sneezing incessantly and a nasty cough has picked up.. i guess the 13hrs in mombasa airport wind corridors have finally caught up to me and i'm so annoyed it's here that i'm getting sick for the first time on my africa travels! and for such a stupid reason.. but regardless, an early bedtime seems the best option for me and i head off to sleep, pretty amazed by how full my first day has been and excited for what's to come.