8/22

Landed in Atlanta this morning. Blog over, maybe.

8/16

So on Saturday morning I got to go out with a wildlife vet, he was moving Black Impala from one farm to another. The whole process of what happened would take a while to explain, but I'll give a brief recap. The vet is up in a helicopter and they find the impala, he shoots them from the air with a tranquilizer dart and then there are about ten of us on the ground who follow him to the impala. Once the impala is drugged we chase it on foot, which gets easier the longer the drugs are in, once we get there we tackle it so it can't run away. We then use an injection to wake it up right away because it might die if we don't. We then carry it while it's awake to the pickup truck, which drives it to a transport truck where we give it some antibiotics and then put it in the truck. I was involved in the chasing the impala on the ground and injecting the antibiotics. I also got to ride back to Grahamstown in the helicopter, so for about 45 min. The whole experience was incredible.

And now I have an eye infection that has gone through the Eksteen family, so I guess I'll be stuck in the house for the last few days of my trip.

8/10

Not a whole lot going on for the last two weeks I'm here. All three of Walter's kids have had eye infections the past couple days, so hopefully I won't get sick as well. It's cold and rainy out right now, hopefully it will warm up again before I leave.

The teachers across South Africa were on strike today, they apparently want higher wages, more housing allowence, and better medical help. That made things at Good Shepherd today pretty slow. Only two teachers at Good Shepherd weren't there today, but only about 30 of the 250 kids were there. It would be nice if things were resolved today and school could start up again tomorrow.

This Saturday St. Andrews plays against thier rivals, Kingswood, in rugby. That's going to be an exciting game to watch. The boys all cheer really loudly during the games, it's fun to watch them cheer too.