Due to severe wandering withdrawals I have decided to use the month of April to wander virtually down travel memory lane. Here we go….
We are starting at Twee Rivieren rest camp in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.
I spent some time here as a SANParks People and Conservation intern. The internship was organised through an organisation called Global Vision International.
My lodgings – a shipping container village within the staff village affectionately known as Blikkiesdorp (Tin Town).
I remember the sound of the barking geckos of an evening, dodging scorpions on windy nights and the amazing family of yellow mongoose who kept the cape cobras at bay.
28 March 2020 8:30pm many acknowledged Earth Hour around the world. I happened to be in Twee Rivieren for the first ever Earth Hour. It was my task to communicate about climate change and its impact on this area of the arid North West. With not too many resources to hand and bearing in mind we are talking 13 years ago, I cobbled together a display, of sorts😀 I have included a pic of the display board in the Twee Riveiren visitors’ centre. We also parcelled up candles with a little info sheet for all the chalets, campsites and staff houses so guests as well as staff could participate.
More Kgalagadi wanderings tomorrow…. this time remembering many breathtaking moments with the incredible wildlife of this unique region.
I have been pondering this question over the week. It is the first task in my Awakened Woman journal.
What breaks my heart is humanity’s disconnect with Mother
Nature. It seems to me that we could
solve so many of our social and environmental ills if we could find this
connection again.
What breaks my heart is how we cannot seem to live in
harmony with wildlife in wild places as we once did. What happened to being open to learning from
Mother Nature? For She has much to share
with us about how we tread in this life.
In June we had World Giraffe Day. In August it was World Elephant and World Lion Day. September is World Rhino Month. And so it goes, on and on, each new day dedicated to another species in peril.
The CITES
CoP18 meeting took place in Geneva recently. The results of this conference
of the parties was mixed. While we
can take some hopeful moments away for some species after this year’s
conference, there is definitely still too much of a focus on wildlife as a
commodity for my liking.
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater” JRR Tolkien
The climate crisis continues. The Amazon is burning. In a world where we are bombarded with what
seem utterly hopeless and insurmountable odds, I want to share some examples
that I know of – examples of what is still fair and where there is still love.
The following are links to messages of hope that fill my
inbox, make up the social media threads I follow and come from personal
experience having met some of the individuals at the heart of these
organisations and collectives.
And many more… so I need to amend the statement I started
with… not all humanity has lost that vital connection we have with Mother Earth. There are still many of us who will continue
to use our voices for the voiceless.
And even more than the above examples we need to be
encouraged that every single individual action we take counts… we can make a
difference for good at an individual level.
It is about the second
thought you spare in your daily journey through life, being mindful of how
your tread, what and how much you consume, how you dispose of waste.
It’s about how we need to rethink education and empower the next generations to make better choices than we have.
And please understand even if you don’t care about animals and wild places, the changes all these people of are working for are in our own best interests too – the survival of humanity!
And so what breaks my heart is what we’ve lost but in the
same breath what shores up my heart and gives me hope is the countless daily actions
of compassionate individuals. It is this
conservation collective that will keep the worst case scenarios at bay. Or so I
choose to believe…
