Village and work scenes

A typical Nwamitwa house.

A family walks by the newly cleared dam wall.

Daily task of firewood collection by our work site.

Cleaning the field of rocks and debris.

Lunchtime at the site - our wonderful new cooks, Esther and Thande.

Andrew's tricks at lunchtime football.

Lunchtime

Funerals for those who have died of HIV/AIDS consume every weekend.

The Mswazi Dam (reservoir) at our work site.

January's garden and Babanana village.

Our house in Letsitele.

Eating grapefruit at home at the end of the day.

Kruger National Park

The maximum speed on the "tar" roads is 50 kph, and 40 kph on the dirt roads. Isla took the wheel on the dirt roads. Those are impala in the background.

Through the back window.

Elephants eat for about 18 hours a day.

Wonderful landscapes.

Buffalo with shy baby.

Evening on the Olifants River.

Our bungalow at Olifants Rest Camp, one of the (fenced and guarded) self-catering camps run by the parks service.

Female kudu.

Sunrise from Olifants camp.

Lion wakes after a mid-day snooze (five friends nearby).

32 elephants at a water hole. Water is managed quite intensively to increase the carrying capacity of the park.

Hippos in Olifants River.

Spotted hyena.

Will learns to drive in Kruger.

Municipal elections are this week in South Africa. The main focus of the elections is government services.

Isla with a small gecko.

During the hottest part of the day our kids retreat to the shade and Will helps Isla with her math homework.

Will and Isla help remove vegetation from the dam wall. It's hot work and most of the vegetation has a lot of thorns. We are setting up a composting facility, which will turn this material into organic fertilizer for the fields.

Chris, Andrew and Robert at lunchtime.

Mahlaltze, Isla, Norah and Will.

Discing the soil to prepare it for planting.

January provides morning instructions.

Examining a black mamba snake, the fastest snake in the world and the most poisonous in Africa. Wikipedia has scary things to say about this snake. The cobra we found the next day didn't seem nearly as frightening.

Liz pacing out the dimensions of the fish ponds. No, it's not about to rain.

Ivy hands out lunch that Isla and Liz prepared at the house in the morning. A young woman graduate from the Fit for Life program has been hired as cook starting Monday.

Every shrub or tree seems to have thorns.

First ride in the back of a bakkie (pickup truck).

January's wonderful produce at his farm.

January describes to Todd his farming methods and successes.

January Mathebula with his bakkie full of young workers at the end of the first day.

A visit to the nearby Vervet Monkey Foundation rehabilitation centre. The centre has about 300 individuals in various states of rehabilitation, with the aim of releasing them into the wild. Isla and Will are interacting with the young timid ones, usually brought to the centre when orphaned.

Nibbling on Will's fingernails.