Days 47 & 48

Ok So I have been rubbish at keeping these up to date, I am going to blame the bad internet in South Africa and then the lack of time since I have been back. Also as you will find out there was some pretty exciting news which we weren't putting on facebook so I didn't want to put on here either... Sorry guys...

Monday 21st November:
Today we had a meeting with William this morning and then went through to Grahamstown this afternoon, as it was Stacey's day off and we needed to get some things there ahead of the function later this week and Stacey needed to help her mum to move stuff from her old flat to the new one. When we got there some of the boys from Amakhala messaged us to ask what we were up to and they decided to come through and have dinner with us. It was really nice and we went to a place called the Rat and Parrot for dinner and then to the Lowlander for a few drinks afterwards. It was really good fun.

Tuesday 22nd November:
William picked us up at 6.45 this morning, we had about 10 minutes warning that he was coming. We went to Pumba to move Lion again. This time we darted two tawny females and the white male from last time. They were being moved to bomas on the other part of the reserve to be released again in a few days time. Everything went to plan, I was driving Uncle Bill's backie and Stacey and I had to stay and watch one of the females whilst Will went to dart the other two. She had her nose under her front leg and so Will asked us to correct her position and asked how she was breathing, so Stacey moved the lioness onto her side and then took my jacket and put it over the lioness' eyes and then put her hand in front of the lioness' mouth to count her breathing. Once we had done this we got back in the vehicle and radioed Will to tell him and he then said to us, by the way be careful there girls that lion might not have had the full dose of the sedative!
Once the lion had all been darted and loaded onto the back of backies we drove across the reserve to the bomas, offloaded them there and then waited while they woke up. Will was around the other side of the boma watching the lion and we started to pack up all the equipment. I was sat on the back of Uncle Bill's backie putting stuff away and Stacey went to the other vehicle to get Will's dart gun. When she turned back around to face the vehicle I was sat on she said 'Sian get off the back of the backie slowly and get inside', I said 'Huh?' and so she repeated it again. When I turned around to climb off the backie I saw why, about 2-3 metres away from where I was walking along the road was this huge bull elephant. The staff workers who had been standing around had seen this bull walking along the road towards where we all were, but hadn't said anything to us. So I climbed down and walked round and sat in the backie, my heart was in my throat I was so scared. About 2 seconds later Stacey climbed in beside me and grabbed my camera, as by this stage the elephant was walking behind the backie and so she took some photos, but they are mainly of the sky and the elephants bum, as we couldn't move to get any better shots. (This is one of those shots!)
This afternoon when we got back to the club we sorted stuff out and did some more paperwork and worked on the brochure for the club.