School – but not as we know it.

Hearing Maria call out the dreaded words “Cheetahs are in school this afternoon” struck fear into our hearts. We’d seen the exhausted Crocs as they staggered back the night before, heading straight to the bar. We’d seen Simon’s point blank refusal to ever do it again; (he seemed to have a golden ticket to do whatever he fancied, I suspect his frequent assertion that he is leaving all of his money to animal charities might have something to do with that. And being 78, so no longer giving a fig.) We’d seen James’s video of a few of the 5 year olds massacring a white doll. Make of that what you will. The crocs had stayed until 6pm, thowing down a gauntlet. The instruments sent to me by Sue Bullimore, an old school friend, helped enormously. For around 10 minutes. Then we played a version of “It” that was perhaps unwise in 40 degrees. Clive managed to then muster enough energy to play football with the balls we’d brought, but the rest of us could only lie on the floor in a pool of our sweat while the children bounced on our heads. The quiet stillness of their teacher, a quizzical smile on her face as she sat behind her desk watching us slowly dehydrate from grapes to raisins, showed the way it should be done. We sidled off at 4.45pm, on our hands and knees, muttering “never again,” and in my case “Mother, I salute you.” (she taught primary school children for 40 years).

The Lifeline clinic.

 The clinic is around an hour’s drive away and a source of great interest to many of the volunteers. Helen Bennett, a nurse from Clive’s art group in Minstead had given us a defibrillator as well as a spanking new digital thermometer and 10+ sats monitors. We also had 12 contraceptive injections and bags of sanitary towels. Theo, the clinic’s manager and chief nurse, had put the defib at the top of a wishlist sent to us in the UK. He received it with such joy and enthusiasm, the battery having expired 18 months ago on their previous one. Due to an admin snafu they have had no doctor for the last two years.

We had come with 6 “special guests”, Austrians staying at Harnas for two weeks like us but only doing “fun” jobs like cleaning the lion’s den, which is fair enough, I am sure they paid a lot for this. But they showed very little interest in the Clinic, spending most of their time smoking in the shade of a bbq area. A shame as so many of the, shall we call them “bog standard” volunteers, wanted to come and see it and even a short time in this place might have influenced their choices in life. The clinic itself covers a vast area, Theo sometimes driving 100 km to deliver babies as the ambulance service is busy elsewhere. There is a massive problem with malnutrition, fulled by a drought that means they can’t grown their own food, and are dependent on imported South African food which means inflation is stratospheric. Unemployment is also a real problem. They deal with a lot of drug addiction, depression and homeless children left because their parents have committed suicide. There were only two volunteers working there, Maria a medical student from Brazil  and Jessica a nurse from Romania.

They cooked a huge vat of mainly vegetables and pasta every morning and then doled it out every lunchtime, to all comers. They came to Harnas at weekends, and found the sheer amount of food given to the animals quite shocking compared to what they had to give to the people in village. It is true that the Harnas meerkats get better quality meat than the Naankuse clinic kids,, each meercat getting a succulent piece of horse meat twice a day, while there is a small piece of meat cooked more to add flavour than calories to the village pot. 

  One of the special guests, whom I will call “Brows”, kicked off about having to wait to drive back to Harnas so that one of the local women could have her depo injection. She had been seen throwing her teddy out of the pram on several occassions while waiting at the bar. It’s fair to say this ran on “Africa time.” A favourite saying I heard a few times – “I will do it now-now,” means sometime, maybe soon, maybe not, depending. They were also extremely busy, and had to cope with frequent power cuts, which I loved, as the silence washed over us, the only sounds the lions moaning in the distance, birds clamouring in the trees, the parrots kicking off as soon as anyone raised their voice, Olivia the three hoofed Oryx’s snuffling breath as she snuggled up to your ear, gas lanterns throwing light across the happy faces of our fellow volunteers as we drank together at the end of our own busy days.

We now head up country, to pick up the camper van and head off for more adventures.