Each day begins at 6.30 when the elephants are prepared to go out to the field; from there we are time tabled to do different things throughout the day. This included, helping in the boma; helping the boma guys clean out the enclosures, preparing the milk for Mashudu and Thato the volunteers become there mum! To then helping with alien invasive removal; pulling out plants which are not native to the area, helping with vegetation surveys, maintenance work, cleaning and the rest of the time spent on your projects you get assigned with. Not to forget chopping fruit…. A mass of oranges, pineapple, sweet potatoes, squashes, pumpkins… carrots, beetroot, spinach, apples…and more….and white buckets……..when I was handed a machete and told to chop the fruit with it….!!!:!!! One of my favourite things to do! I think it’s a new way to go if you want to speed up your soup preparations chop with a machete…. (4weeks later still have 10fingers!)

Today I learnt about my project which will become something very interesting, for 3 days each week I spend the whole day out in the field. 6.30 until 5.30 therefore from when the elephants go out to when they come in which can vary in time dependent on how the day has gone guests etc. Where the elephant goes I will go. The activity budget is designed to record 1 elephant for a whole day, this involves recording the elephant’s behaviour every 5 minutes; this includes grazing, walking, standing, forced walk or anything else the elephant is doing. Combine this with the elephant’s interactions with other elephants you have an overall day of the elephant’s behaviour which has been recorded quite scientifically. The recording of this data is just as important as processing it, this involves typing what you’ve recorded into spreadsheets and then creating graphs to allow you to see the percentage time spent on a specific behaviour. The interactions are also graphed and results compared from previous months. This is relatively new an the overall aim is to create a data base for each elephant to see its normal behaviour and if there is any change in behaviour it can be easily identified this is very useful in terms of an elephant getting sick and also you can see which of the elephants spend more time together. During the next 4 weeks this will be something I will find to be extremely interesting. The day will be long but tomorrow I will start my project.