Science, Sustainability, Adventure, and FUN!

Wow! This was my second trip with ISV and I honestly didn't know if this trip would live up to my last trip... but it absolutely did! I volunteered doing conservation work at Masebe Game Reserve in the Limpopo province of South Africa. The work we did was hard, rewarding, fun, and extremely valuable for anyone looking to have a career in the life science. Our project leader Kirsty, and the researchers Norman and Edward were extremely knowledgeable of the bush-veld ecosystem and the many organisms that inhabit it. We learned about everything from invertebrates, lichens, and vegetation to mammals, birds and reptiles! Each day we would do a three bird point counts in which we would go to different areas in the reserve and form a circle and call out the birds we saw and or heard. To do these accurately we first had to learn the common birds by sight and call. Next we would do VCA's (Variegation Composition Assessment) in which we would work in the bush-veld running transect lines, forming quadrats and measuring vegetation. This was time consuming and required a bit of hard work and concentration to ensure accurate data. We would also stop any time we encountered a Giraffe and record how man we saw and the gps location. In order to get all this work done we had to leave each day at 6:00 AM and brave the cold of the South African Winter. However it was worth it, to be out in one of the most amazing environments in the world to learn valuable skills from real experts! We also had small lectures with our project and or researchers to discuss different environmental and social issues facing South Africa and the world. These lectures were extremely informative and thought provoking and broke down misconceptions we may have held. We stayed in the Telekishi Cultural Village which was composed of mud and manure buildings that were not only extremely nice but were very effective insulators and fully equipped with electricity. The head of the cultural village was extremely knowledgeable of the area, its history and the people and he took us to the nearby village and around the reserve to teach us about the cultural, historical significance of the area. The head researcher Norman also runs an environmental education program with the village school that we got to assist him with. Over the course of the two weeks on project i learned a plethora of information as well as made some life long friends. The other volunteers are some of the most amazing people i have ever met and i have no doubt in my mind that i will be friends with them for the rest of my life! After project we set off on a two week adventure tour in which we met up with a tour leader Tasch (who was hilarious and extremely knowledgeable) as well as the other volunteer from the other ISV South Africa programs in which i made even more friends! With our tour group we visited Swazi Land, Mozambique, and more of South Africa. We went to Kruger National Park and saw lions, zebras, elephants, rhinos and more! We stayed in a variety of resorts, and did everything from SCUBA, snorkeling with dolphins, Kloofing, hiking, game drives, and caving! This trip was nothing short of an amazing, life changing adventure in which i gained invaluable professional experience, world perspective, and made amazing friends!!!!