Highlights: The highlight of my volunteer experience was the volunteering! It was amazing to feel like I was actually making a difference in something I really care about. It’s really great to care so much about anything, but sometimes it can feel as though there isn’t much you - as one person - can do to make a difference. So it was really good to see and feel the tangible results of our work. Additionally, meeting like-minded people was a big highlight. My experience has shown me that that there are lots of people who care just as much - if not more - than I do about animals and conservation, and they are beautiful, wonderful, interesting people from all walks of life! It sounds so cliché, but this experience changed my life. Not in any huge and obviously discernible way, but in small ways that are important and real. I’ve definitely changed - and it’s difficult to adequately put into words - but it’s absolutely for the better.
Morning: Our typical morning as a volunteer in Swaziland began early! We woke early to beat the heat. Breakfast was usually around 6am and we endeavored to leave camp by 6:30 or 7am. Some days, we traveled to the nearby game park to track leopard tortoises that had previously had GPS trackers and data recorders attached to their shells. Some days, we walked deep into the bush and set up camera traps to monitor baboon activity in the area. We worked Monday through Friday, so on weekends, we had free days which included sleep ins, tours of nearby villages and townships, meeting the beautiful locals, tasting the local cuisine (which is delicious!), lazy afternoons at the country club and game drives!
Afternoon: After working in the mornings, we went back to camp to have lunch. After lunch and depending on the weather (heat and/or rain) we went out again in the cooler hours of the afternoon for more tortoise tracking (usually for another attempt to find the tortoise who successfully evaded us earlier in the morning), to collect the 45 camera traps we set up earlier in the week or to repaint signs for the game park the we were camping in. We usually finished working around 4:30 or 5pm. Sometimes we went back to camp; sometimes we went down to the local pub for a beer!
Evening: Evenings in Camp Sara were lovely and relaxed! We had a cooking and cleaning roster, so while those who were on cooking duty prepared dinner, the rest of us had amazing showers after our hot day. The showers were open air, atop a cliff and they looked down onto the beautiful African landscape that was the game park we camped in. After dinner, we went around the table and did ‘Compost and Daisies’. After compost and daisies, we played board games, wrote in our journals, roasted marshmallows by the campfire or headed to bed.