Regardless of last night’s festivities, Wednesday still had an early start. Today I drafted a few different newsletter updates for the different organizations and people that are integral to supporting and allowing this program to run. There was lots of edits, but in the end they both looked and sounded really good.
The other exciting task I had for the day was designing shirts for the program. One area that we wanted to improve in the program was the visibility of the volunteers, etc, etc. We wanted to help brand them with BPCT, to make them stand out help, but also to pass on an important message. They looked pretty sweet, and I do hope that I end up getting one…though I don’t know when I would be back for one!
This was also the last day that work was going to be done on the Conservation Centre/Campsite. Today they were putting the final touches onto everything and also painting a massive mural on the back wall. I managed to make it out in the afternoon to help a little bit with the final projects as things we wrapped up. Tomorrow we were all leaving for Namibia and therefore we didn’t have much other opportunity to get stuff done.
Mickey, the headmaster at Matswane, held a Braii for us – at the Conservation Centre/Campsite that night. It was a really nice celebration of all of the work that has went into the program and how much further forward it has been brought in the past weeks given all of this extra help.
We had a nice big fire, wine to drink and plenty of food to eat – and we spend a long time just sitting around chatting. It is definitely comparable to campfires back home, but a little more intense. It basically starts as soon as it is getting dark. The fire is started and everyone just chills. After the fire has created some really nice embers they shovel them out and create a little cooking area out of bricks and a metal frame. The meat gets slowly cooked over the embers, infused with the entire aroma of the fire. The whole time people are just drinking and conversing, waiting for the meat!
Once the meat is finished people start lining up – and they each take a few pieces, which they then to do whatever they want with – eat it straight, make a sandwich, or a salad, it doesn’t really matter, but it honestly tastes so good. There were potato salad and other delicious dishes to the spread, and everyone just kept eating until they couldn’t anymore…and there was still lots to eat! Luckily that day was also one of Lesley’s son’s birthday – so she had baked some cakes and we managed to put down some of that too before calling it quits!
Since this was the last night that the students would get to spend in Maun – they would be off to Namibia and then back to go into the bush for a few days before the end of their time here – we decided to spend one last night at Trekkers. Wednesday wasn’t the biggest night at Trekkers so we didn’t have any problem getting there or getting in. The club was relatively empty and we enjoyed the entire dance floor to ourselves. We ran into a few of the local people that we had met, and we had brought out some of the locals that we worked with so we had a pretty strong contingent, haha.
I don’t ever know how these things get started, but we ended up having a dance off with basically everyone in the club – or for you Ukrainians it was much more like a Milanka (spelling?!). It was definitely the highlight of the night as we saw some really interesting local dancing flavour and even though we weren’t particularly amazing – the locals loved all of our North American signature moves. The club closed down by midnight and everyone headed home for some rest before the big day of travel ahead of us. Tomorrow I was going to Namibia and I couldn’t wait!
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