After our stop in Harkerville, we moved onto the Conservation Academy, another day’s drive away in the VW buses. The Academy is the home of Wayne and Trelles Voss and their three children. It is a privately owned property in the midst of game reserves at an intersection of several different ecosystem types, also known as an ecotone. The compound lies in the belly of a valley which is green and wetlandy at the bottom, and sparsely dotted with dry-adapted desert-like vegetation at the top with intermittent thickets on the slopes. The first day we went for a hike up the ridge and explored the vegetation and interactions between the different systems. We saw baboons on the rock in the distance, which was a cause for excitement in the group. After the trek on the ridge, we hiked down through some nasty thickets (got some lovely Acacia thorn signatures on my arms), and we hiked back through the grassland valley bottom past Wayne’s livestock. We spent four days at the Conservation Academy. We did everything from plant ID to attending lecture at nearby Rhodes University. We all bonded with Wayne, who seemed to be some figure comparable to the late Crocodile Hunter with the wit and ferocity to outrun a charging rhino. Which he did somewhere in between culling elephants and saving the planet. We also bonded with his dogs, Stella and Cinnamon, two very flea-ridden lap companions of the Jack Russel Terrier variety.
Leaving the Conservation Academy was sad, but we knew it was just one step closer to the final destination: The Haven.
Of course in all these descriptions, I’m leaving out the determinant factors of the group’s mood.
Deterrents to joyousness:
Many lectures a day
Exhaustion from constant mental and intermittent physical stress
Spiders
The death of Joe Paterno, which we were informed of after a debrief
Group formation issues and personality compatibility troubles within small groups
LOTS of work

Catalysts of joyousness:
Stella and Cinnamon
Wayne
Off the Verandah bonding, which took the form of the group females chopping all of my hair off and taping the cut ponytails to the door of the boys and the door of the professors with a note stating, “OFF THE VERANDAH” to indicate the female willingness to transcend the limits of our current abroad state.
Taping said hair to VW buses before long bus rides
LEARNING! YIPPEEEE
Delicious braai (South African non-barbecue. Don’t call it a barbecue. But it’s cooking seasoned meat over hot charcoals)

Location: Grahmstown, South Africa