I’ve been working here for three weeks now – hectic, busy weeks – and I thought someone might be interested in what exactly goes on in this little corner of Namibia. Let me clarify first what ‘working here’ means for me: I had been trying to organise a nice fieldwork-based MSc for a year and a half when I finally got through to Dr. Laurie Marker the executive director of CCF. After several emails back and forth, I realized that she was one of the only people I have talked to about doing a Masters project that was actually as keen on the idea as I was. That was a great start so in the middle of Feb I packed my bags and flew to Windhoek via Johannesburg.
After I landed I got a taxi from the airport to Windhoek (about a 45min drive), where I stayed with a wonderful couple who are involved with CCF. The next morning I was picked up by John, a guy who helps look after and train the livestock guarding dogs at CCF. So we drove to Gobabis, a town on the eastern side of Namibia, not far from the Botswana border. When we arrived there we gave a few Anatolian puppies to farmers in the area; we then drove back to Windhoek (about 250km one way) and from there headed north to Otjiwarongo (300+km away). CCF is based about 45km from ‘Otji’ and comprises several large farms.
When we arrived at CCF I was completely buggered and happy to collapse into bed. The next morning, I found out how pretty the area is around our house (known as Boskop farm) – the sun rises right over a dam only 100m from the house and paints it golden orange for a few minutes before rising further to reveal bushveld as far as the eye can see. All CCF property is teaming with game such as gemsbok, red hartebeest, warthog, kudu and black-backed jackal; if you’re really lucky you can even see African wildcat, leopard and wild cheetah. It is a bit of a cheat to see the wild cheetah though (excuse the pun), because there are two males that hang around the pens of the captive female cheetahs held at CCF. One of these females that are kept near the centre seems to be on heat, so we’ve seen the two ‘wild boys’ just about every day for the last week.
A word about the captive cheetahs at CCF: there are 49 of them all in large enclosures (usually connected to smaller pens) that are dotted around the CCF farms at varying distances from the CCF centre. I have been lucky enough to have been ‘introduced’ to all of them and I can now identify some of the more striking characters. I have also been involved in feeding them and picking up their scat (a pretty grim job, really) for a few days now, as they are part of a study on the stress levels of captive cheetah. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a few photos of them on the blog soon – if our painfully slow dialup network connection allows it.
Now I know some of you will be wondering what exactly I’m going to be doing here – other than having fun with cheetahs. Well, my Masters is going to be on the use of livestock guarding animals (Anatolian shepherd dogs and donkeys) to protect livestock from being eaten by predators. The idea is that if the livestock are protected from predators, then farmers won’t need to set gin traps all over their farms or shoot anything that looks like a predator on site. The livestock guarding dog programme at CCF is already 14 years old, so I will have a strong base to work from and I will have many people I can rely on for advice and/or help with my thesis. In addition to my MSc work, I will be helping wherever I’m needed on projects including game counts, radio tracking black rhino on the CCF farms and moving cheetahs from one area to another as they start doing medical checkups on all the captive cheetahs. So basically I will be very busy, mostly exhausted, but always in a good mood – how can you be in a bad mood when just outside the office lie seven beautiful spotted felines?
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