First day...

It’s interesting to go back through my diary entries to see what I wrote about my experiences at Harnas. My first night staying in the volunteer village I noted that I came across two oryx in the dark, standing only a few meters away, their eyes spookily reflecting in my torch light. I remember how both freaked out and excited I was by this encounter. It’s strange that by the end of my four weeks on the farm, an oryx was no more exciting then coming across a roo in the bush.

The volunteer village itself was about a kilometre from the farm central and was located in an area that had hundreds of antelope, meercats, ostrich, warthogs and giraffe roaming about. We were kind of in the buffer zone between the farm with the smaller animals (eg, vervets, teenage lions, baby baboons, jackals and bat-eared foxes) and the ‘Lifeline’. An area used as a temporary release site for some of the other animals, including hyenas and a single cheetah called Pride. Beyond the volunteer village and the guest challets were several massive enclosures that held numerous adult male lions (close enough that their roars coaxed us to sleep every night, and were the first thing to be heard as the sun rose every morning), 50 or more cheetahs, hundreds of baboons, wild African dogs, hyenas, and vervet monkeys. The farm was huge to say the least, but not nearly big enough given the large number of animals they cared for and the many new arrivals they took in every few weeks. At any given moment they could receive a call to go and pick up anything from abandoned cheetah cubs, to a lion harassing livestock. There was never a dull moment.

For us new arrivals, our first day involved an obligatory induction lecture about the farm, the animals, and it’s ethos about educating the volunteers in more than just wildlife husbandry, but also self-exploration and discovery based on the companionship that we would soon develop with the animals and with each other (there were about 40 volunteers from around the world staying on the farm). This highly inspirational talk was soon interrupted though when Frekkie (the volunteer coordinator) received a call over the two way radio asking if he’d seen a particular volunteer who hadn’t shown up yet for the morning chores.  He said that he had sent her to the wild dog enclosure to check on them.

‘On her own?!’ the response came.
‘Yeah’, Frekkie nonchalantly replied. ‘Has she not returned yet?’
‘She doesn’t know that she’s not supposed to go in there on her own!’
Exasperated Frekkie replies, ‘I didn’t ask her to go in there. She was just supposed to check on them.’

Meanwhile we the newbys are all looking back and forth between each other, wondering if this was really happening.

‘We’ll send Esben (student doing an internship on the farm) to check on her’
‘Right-o, let me know if you find her’

Frekkie tries to return to the induction and discussing the importance of communication as if nothing has happened. We’re all sitting around seriously questioning whether this guy is for real. Static soon blares out of the radio with Patrick (another coordinator) shouting that they’ve found her. She was in the enclosure and it doesn’t look good.

‘Should we radio for the medi-copter?’ the barely concealed paniced voice asks.
‘Get the stretcher and bring her to the farm house’ Frekkie calmly responds. ‘We’ll decide from there’.

Frekkie ushers all of the new volunteers out of the open bar area and onto the grass in front of the building. He wanted us to see what happens to volunteers that don’t follow instructions. We’re all seriously freaked out and wondering what the hell was going on, this guy was acting far too cooly for what has blatantly just happened. Then, there they were, four guys running across the grass towards the house, a limp, blood streaked body lying in the stretcher between them, an IV hanging from her arm…

…Oh… my... god!!!

My brain stands still for several heart beats, before I realise that Frekkie is herding us back into the bar area, saying something about Ashley (the limp body)… that she should have known better and that this should all be a lesson to us to never go inside the wild dog enclosure on our own. Was he for real? The life of a volunteer hangs in the balance and he’s claiming it was her own fault? I was struck mute while a few of the others around me were whispering furiously to each other… Was this what we had signed up for? To be led by a guy that was clearly out of his mind?

The radio crackles again with Patrick’s relieved voice coming through, ‘She’s come to. We’ve managed to stop the worst of the bleeding. It looks like she’ll be ok.’
‘Good. Now send a few of the others to make sure that the dog pack is ok.’ Is Frekkie’s curt response.
‘Roger’

And so, as if he has been informed of nothing more than what’s on the menu for lunch, Frekkie continues with the induction seminar. Most of what he says passes straight through me as an irrevocable fear of the African wild dogs blossoms within me.  I have to survive four weeks of this people. FOUR… WEEKS!