Hluhluwe Game Reserve

Jessica Stralkowski
Group Journal: Hluhluwe
7/30/07

Jessica Stralkowski
Group Journal: Hluhluwe
7/30/07

Thursday, July 26th
It was Thursday morning, and 7:30am quickly approached and past as the majority of our MSU group waited impatiently for the bus to arrive and begin our four day excursion to Hilltop Camp at Hluhluwe Game Reserve. At last, our main man, BT Gumede, arrived and we began to pack up the bus with our belongings and our group of extremely excited student teachers packed themselves into the bus for the 1 ½ hour travel to the reserve. But before we could arrive at Hluhluwe, we stopped at Ilala Weavers, a craft and gift store that we had been told to wait for when it came to buying gifts. And did we ever buy gifts…presents for parents, friends, family…it is safe to say our group alone made a pretty hefty dent in the plethora of beautiful baskets, trinkets, jewelry, figurines, masks, blankets…pretty much anything you could imagine you could purchase to capture the beauty of South Africa for those back home. Two hours of shopping and a quick lunch later, we departed Ilala Weavers and made one more stop at the grocery store before we finally headed towards our destination. As we got closer, our surroundings became more and more amazing. The seemingly never-ending valleys and rolling hills were almost too much to try and capture on camera. As we began to enter the park, chaos began to erupt inside the bus as we saw our first animals of the park, including zebras. As we neared the entrance, JACKPOT…an elephant stood in the grassy land within 50 yards of us. Our first elephant, and we were barely even in the game park yet!!! We enter the winding roads uphill towards Hilltop Camp, arriving to our site of rondavels, our accommodations for the next 3 nights. The rondavels slept two people each, and were furnished with two very comfortable single beds, a fridge, sink, and cookware for the communal kitchen we could cook in. Once we all settled into our rooms and unpacked a bit (taking pictures the whole time, as usual), we made our way over to Anne and Margaret’s cabin across the road for our first class session in Hluhluwe.

Class Session 1
Our first session of class began at 4pm on Thursday, with Margaret exclaiming how excited she was to be here with us, our group in particular, and how well our whole group, grad students and teachers combined, were meshing so well. We got our layout for the next couple days, involving a morning walk and game ride on Friday, and additional rides on Saturday if we wanted. Then we finally got into the bulk of the session with Margaret sharing stories and memories of our teaching from the past two weeks as she visited each of the eight schools we are placed in. We had all been with our host families and not with each other for this long since Musselcracker, and there was definitely a desire in the air for each of us to share our experiences. Margaret shared a small moment she had been a part of with each of us in the past two weeks, and was connecting all of our different experiences and proving how similar our experiences really were to each other. We then all went around and shared one moment of our own from our schools that left an impact on us. There wasn’t a single story that didn’t leave us in awe or left an impact. Some were positive, others were humorous, a few crash and burns, and every single one was an empowering moment. It would be wrong to not include that there were some tears definitely shed among the group. No matter how different our experiences have been with our South African students, classroom, staff, or school, somehow we found ourselves understanding and immersed in each other’s situations wholeheartedly. Looking around the room, it wasn’t difficult to see that we were all sharing South Africa with each other to benefit each other as teachers, no matter where in the world we would go after this program. It’s safe to say that this class session will stay in our minds for quite some time.


Morning Walk, Friday, July 27th
Friday morning we woke to prepare for our morning walk, which would begin at 9:45am. We all met at the Hluhluwe reception, separated into two groups of eight, and hopped into our game ride vehicles that would take us into the park to our walking tour. I departed in the second group and we left around 10am. It took us about 15 minutes to get to our walking destination, in the heart of the grassy wilderness hopefully in the heart of the animal sighting! Our ranger introduced himself and went over the rules very quickly. The rules were simple: stay in a single file line behind him, and do not talk until the ranger said it was okay. The ranger carried one weapon: a gun with a belt filled with bullets. As we took off, all you could hear was the crunching and crinkling of the grass and ground beneath our party of nine. We obediently followed the ranger down into the tall grass and park around us, cameras ready for action and lips sealed tightly. Our first sighting was a single white rhino, high up onto a hill above us. As we walked further, our next sighting was groups of zebras and giraffes. We hiked on through the brush and tall grass with the hot sun scorching down on us. We moved quickly, trying to get closer to the giraffes and zebras. About half way through our hike, we stopped and took a break beneath some shady trees. Our ranger let us all pose with his gun, which we had obviously been awed at the sight of since we had begun. We asked how often rangers had to shoot animals, or if there had been many people that had died with animal attacks at the park. He responded it was very, very rare, and that at Hluhluwe alone there had only been one death he had known of since he had worked there. He also included there had been a death recently in Zimbabwe, both Hluhluwe’s and Zimbabwe’s situations involving camera flashes startling the elephants. We finished our break and headed back towards the road where BT would pick us up. Our walk lasted about 1 1/2 -2 hours long, and we hurried back to the camp to get ready for our second class session.

Class Session 2
Our second class session occurred between our morning walk and our game ride which would begin at 5pm. This session opened up discussing a very infamous issue that affects South Africa…AIDS. Beginning with some statistics, we learned from Ann that nationally, 20% of South Africa is infected with HIV. In the area we are in, KwaZulu-Natal province, it is even more of a problem, being around 40% affected. This area is the highest of all the provinces. We then began to break down the economic and social reasons that AIDS has been so devastating, along with the type of people that are being affected by these issues. To begin, all of South Africa is obviously affected by this epidemic, but to be more specific, young people and those in their 30s and 40s who are running the economy are being harshly affected. Work productivity has dwindled because of those sick being less productive at work. Funerals overwhelm people’s weekends. The economic costs of AIDS, not just social, is a huge hit to the country. The amount of OVC’s (Orphans and Vulnerable children) is increasing. But these are all intertwined with the social and cultural affects that AIDS is leaving on South Africa. Why is the fight so hard? South Africa’s social attitude towards sex, gender roles, cultural violence, and beliefs on medicine all contribute all hinder the fight against AIDS. To begin with, the historical attitude towards sex and gender is that virginity is valued in women, but not in men. Because of this, men are accepted as being entitled to as much sex as they want, because they “need” it. Commonly, it is accepted for men to sleep with women besides his wife, because it is their right as men. The most dangerous detail of this is the use of condoms, or more specifically, lack of. Women are not really given the option to say no to sex, because it is seen as their duty or obligation to a man. Second, once a woman must oblige to have sex, it is seen as a bad reflection on her if she requests that the man wears a condom for protection. This idea roots from the woman’s place in their culture and the home, where they are expected to be dependent of a man, and to not be able to say, “no.” Violence against women, especially rape, is even sometimes seen as a form of entertainment among men, with this idea even in the minds of the students at our schools at this moment.
As all these social problems involving sex and gender contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS, it is even more troubling to be informed of the government’s own responses to these terrible issues. Even until very recently, the government has been in serious denial against medicinal treatments appropriate for HIV/AIDS, promoting traditional South African methods over anti-viral treatments. It was even announced through the government that the HIV virus does not cause AIDS, and that POVERTY is causing AIDS. Even more startling, at a recent worldwide conference in 2004 on HIV/AIDS treatments in Canada, South Africa stunned the world and caused an uproar when they filled their treatment table of traditional vegetables and remedies, promoting them as cures for HIV/AIDS. They were forced to take down this display and put up an antiviral display. Even the Vice President, Jacob Zuma, who was accused to rape of an HIV positive female, testified that he did have sex with the woman, it was consensual, and that he would not get HIV because he had taken a shower afterwards. Finally, as South Africa begins to focus on the facts of HIV/AIDS, they have adopted an acronym, ABC, which stands for Abstain, Be faithful, and use a Condom.
Although measures are finally being taken on the social beliefs of sex, gender, and HIV/AIDS, our own experience with talking to South Africans is a rude awakening of how far the nation really has to go. Some of the MSU students have heard South Africans say they believe two condoms are safer than one, that AIDS is a punishment from God, and that violence against women is still very, very common in households. From these statements and actions (and many more, we assure you), it is obvious that it is not only students that need to be educated on these issues, but their mothers, fathers, older sisters and brothers, and friends.
The last question that Ann posed for us is, “Who is deciding the needs of Africa?” Although it is true that HIV/AIDS is very well-known as a killer disease in the nation, many in America and around the world would be surprised to know that there are other issues that are killing more African children than HIV/AIDS. Malaria, malnutrition, and lack of clean water are all much more common killers of South African children. So why is the fight against AIDS so much more popular and well-known in America? Why aren’t poverty, malnutrition, and malaria getting as much of a fight by music artists, celebrities, and all the well-known faces in society? And what can we do to change that?
At the end of our class session, it was apparent there is a bridge between the historically accepted social issues and the affects of these issues that South Africans are dealing with, and dying from, today. Gender roles, violence towards women, the government response, and education about HIV/AIDS are all trying to be fought slowly, but until they are looked at in correlation and connection to one another, South Africa will still struggle to fight towards the their value of life.

Night Ride, Friday, July 27th
“What’s the date today?!” More than one person whispered this to me as we were in the midst of our first night drive in Hluhluwe Game Park. It was 6:30p.m., and darkness had set in less than an hour ago. It was now pitch black, with an exception of a spotlight that our driver Semo, our choice driver, had in his front seat. The spotlight is shining directly into a large patch of trees, where we hear continuous crunching, steps of something, hesitating, but coming closer with every second. We suddenly look forward as Semo shines the light directly in front of us. An elephant, less than 100 feet away, is standing directly in our road path. He is slowly moving from the right side of the road to the left. As the elephant moved towards the left, we moved a bit closer so that he was now directly to the left of our jeep. No more than 15 feet away. To our direct right, the rustling and crunching of grass continued, and it was getting closer. The rest of the elephants were trying to decide if they should cross also. It’s complete darkness again, and we all are holding our breath, watching both to our right AND left, not knowing what could be more dangerous to us…the elephant we could see, or his friends we couldn’t. We finally move away from the herd of elephants, and as we pick up speed, I heard one of us exclaim, “July 27th, 2007…best day of my LIFE!”
Our ride had begun at 5pm, roughly lasting for three hours. We took off from the reception at the camp, once again, and began our journey to find the “Big 5”…and then some. For those who don’t know, the Big Five are Buffalo, Rhino, Lion, Leopard, and Elephant. So far, most of us had seen a buffalo, rhino, and elephant, and were determined to get our cats. As we rode down and through the hills of Hluhluwe, none of us could believe the beauty of our surroundings as the sun set over the hills and valleys. As the night got darker, our sightings became more plentiful; our first big sight was a family of elephants in the distance. There was a mother and three siblings, one looking to be barely six months old. We watch as the baby tries desperately to keep up with its mother’s lengthy steps. We then moved onto seeing a white rhino, buffalo, and even two hyenas, with one sleeping on the side of the road. As we watched him from less than five feet away, he would open one eye and look us up and down, seemingly annoyed by our gawking, internally exclaiming, “are you humans done shining this light in my face so I can get some sleep?” We later saw the others walking into the grass, separate from their sleepy friend. Towards the end of our ride, we came across a pack of giraffes, most who were kneeling down to sleep in the grasses of the game park. We were told giraffes only sleep 45 minutes a day, so lucky for us we were at the right moment to witness this. Our encounter with the elephant and his “invisible” friends on the path was probably the highlight of our ride, and none of us will ever forget the sights and sounds of the elephants, the hyenas, and the ½ fear, ½ excitement we felt during every moment for those three hours. July 27th, 2007…what a night.

Saturday, July 28th
Session 3 & Conclusion of the Trip

Our third session of class came at 11am, Saturday morning. We began the class by pairing up into groups of two and getting 10-15 minutes to construct an animal of our choice with limited paper materials, paper clips, tape, and colored pencils. The animal had to be 3D. We all worked quickly, trying to make our animal the best in the bunch. With all the animals we had seen, almost everyone had the same idea to create a giraffe, with a couple lions and rhinos thrown into the works of art. We all displayed our creations, each one very different and reflective of our creative skills and imaginations. Our next project was to write another, “one moment” on a piece of paper, one moment when we had a great learning experience as a child or adult. We shared them with one other classmate, and once we were done, we all put our individual “moment” on a list on the refrigerator. The moments ranged from riding a bike, to learning to drive a stick shift, to even understanding the concept of death. They all shared similar characteristics, however, of a moment when we all went, “aha!” in our lives, moments that you cannot learn in a book, moments that involved reality. Our next activity involved Powerful Learning by Ron Brandt, where we worked on taking quicknotes when reading. Quicknotes is a note taking tool that can work for both students and teachers alike. A way to teach students how to take effective and quick notes (hence the name), it helps students become more accustom to summarizing information in a short amount of time. We then concluded our session outside, discussing the articles with each other involving an inside/outside circle activity, and also creating a choral reading poem in groups about South Africa, involving the emotions we have had during our time here. Very seldom can you say that every poem was outstanding, but in this group, it was very true. We all enjoyed hearing each other’s most prominent feelings and emotions come out about their own experiences via poems, and they all spoke to each and every one of us.
Our last group get-together with everyone was at dinner at the Hluhluwe Restaurant, where we enjoyed the buffet and drinks, discussing our weekend’s events and chatting about how much we didn’t want to leave. The next morning we would leave at 9am and begin our journey home, with all of us very disappointed to say goodbye. We had seen so many amazing animals and such beautiful surroundings. We even discovered a little about ourselves as teachers and humans interacting with this country of South Africa and its people. We’ve got hundreds upon hundreds of pictures, probably the same amount of stories, and most importantly-our own memories-to take back with us to America and share with our friends and family.