Volunteering Begins

When we arrived at Miambo Lodge, we met some great people, and were put to work pretty quickly. Not only was the staff amazing, but the work was also pretty fun! We met Sarah, a volunteer from England, who warmed up to us after a few days. We scared her pretty bad at first with our loud and overwhelming American-ness. :) She was great, and we had a lot of fun getting to know her. Jerry and Kailos, our guides, taught us so much, and took us on a lot of great adventures. Miambo is next to a national park, so we also got to do some volunteer work in the national park. I'll go into more detail a bit later. Here, Sarah, me and Jess are learning from Jerry, that some trees are not only good for making rope, but also for eating!! Who would have thought? We sometimes went for game count drives where we would head out in the safari truck and go into the local bush or the nearby national park and keep a count of all the animals we saw. Other game counts consisted of us heading to one local watering hole in the national park, and along with a packed lunch, keeping track for a day, of how many animals came and visited the watering hole. On some of these game counts, we would be ambushed by huge but very rapid storms that would sweep through the area, dump tons of rain, and wind on us, and then disappear just as quickly!! It was always exciting, and helped to cool things down, as the sun that close to the equator has a specific and harsh bite to it.