Anna's travels

A city girl, with a tendency to wander; but not all those who wander are lost. Follow me on my adventures!

[travelinganna]

Here is an update from the wildlife center that I worked at in Africa. The new lion, Simba, finally arrived at the sanctuary last week after traveling for over 20 hours. Simba was only 8 months old when he was taken from the wild and kept as in a lorry trailer in France. Eight years later, he finally returns home to Africa where he will be able to live in peace and open space.

[travelinganna]

Hello! No I did not forget about this blog. I still have yet to sort though all my pictures and write. I will soon! Picture was taken at Tsavo East National Park in Kenya

[travelinganna]

I'm back home in NYC and currently trying to fix my jet lag. I will be posting full posts soon!

[travelinganna]

Today I spent my last day on the trip in Nairobi, Kenya. I had a morning flight from Mombasa and from the airport, I went to David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage and the Giraffe Sanctuary straight away. The elephant orphanage only offers visiting hours from 11-12pm and my flight got in at 10am but luckily i made it in time! The elephants were super cute and the sanctuary really does an amazing job in rescuing these baby orphans. At the giraffe sanctuary, I was able to get up close to the giraffes and feed them, and even kiss them haha. They have really long tongues! I am reaching the end of my journey, and wow, what a journey it has been. I kinda don't want to go home... I have a flight tomorrow at 1:30pm with a 10 hour layover at Saudi Arabia. I will do a thorough run through of all the places I visited when I am able to upload photos from my cameras. Thank you so much for following me so far!

[travelinganna]

Sunset at Tsavo East National Park

[travelinganna]

“Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well.” On my way out of the safari park, lots of butterflies flew into our safari car. I think the wind current pushed them into the car accidentally. Or maybe they wanted to be there. My coworker and I spent some time catching them and releasing them back to freedom. Some silly ones were even trapped between the windowpanes! It was pretty cool though and some Kenyans were laughing at what we were doing haha. Butterflies are good omens though so I think it was a good sign! Saving the wildlife, no matter how tiny they are. Be free!

[travelinganna]

Some more safari photos :)

[travelinganna]

Yesterday and today, I went on a safari at Tsavo East National Park on Kenya. It was pretty awesome and I was lucky to be able to see a lot of wildlife. When I was booking the safari, the travel agent warned that it’s not guaranteed that you will see animals. Some people can drive for days without seeing anything. I was lucky enough to see elephants, zebras, tons of antelope and birds, buffalo, and even lions and a cheetah (which are rare). I also saw giraffes too, but they were too far away to take pictures of.

These photos were taken on my iPhone. You can imagine how close I was to the wildlife to be able to capture them on an iPhone. It is really awesome to be able to see animals in their natural free state and not held captive in a zoo. Sadly, I am pretty sure I will not be able to see rhinos or leopards due to their endangered status. It is sad that the numbers of these iconic animals decrease every year from poaching. I definitely recommend everyone to explore Africa before the wildlife disappear completely. Tsavo East was a wonderful park!

[travelinganna]

Greetings from Kenya! I know the photo looks similar to my introductory photo, but it’s just coincidentally the same shirt.. and hat. I am currently in Diani Beach in Mombasa, Kenya. I am being housed by Andrea, who run the Colobus Conservation, a monkey sanctuary. Please check them out! They were so welcoming and their house is literally 10 steps from the beach! I arrived at night time so I was unable to explore but tomorrow, I will be spending a day at the beach. I will check out the sanctuary on Thursday, and go on a safari on Friday to Sunday.

While passing through the city of Mombasa, I noticed it was a lottttt more modern than Lilongwe with a lot more people. I am super happy that I am by the ocean! (No offense Malawi). I can hear the beach waves from where I am staying. I arrived at Mombasa around 8pm and there was still people out and about. I had to take a ferry to reach Diani beach and on it was tons of people just getting off work. It definitely has more of a city feel than Lilongwe, but of course, it is also two different countries. I will give a full recap of my experience in Malawi when I get back home.

For now, please check out the Colobus Conservation! http://www.colobusconservation.org

[travelinganna]

My friend Morris, a local Malawian, who made two paintings for me. Here is of the paintings! He paints them with acrylic paint on fabric. He has also helped me get around town a few times. Pretty lucky to have met him!

[travelinganna]

Diversity

One thing that I love about this trip is it’s diversity. Over the span of my three weeks at the wildlife center, I have met so many people from different countries. Although most of them are from England, others come from all over Europe such as Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Portugal, and Germany. We also have people from Canada, Israel, and Australia. And of course, there are also Malawians who were born and raised here in Malawi and has never left the country. Of course, it is not that I am not accustomed to diversity. As a native New Yorker, I was born into it. However, interacting first hand with people from different nationalities is always so eye opening.

As the only American, sometimes I do feel weird that, to them, I am the only one with a funny accent. Also, sometimes they don’t understand my jokes completely and I’m the only one laughing to myself. It is also a bit different being someone who is more accustomed to a huge city rather than a small town. It’s easier to connect to someone who was from London or Copenhagen vs someone who is from a town that is miles from a city. An example would be a volunteer who is from Israel. She lives a few kilometers from the Jordan border and she explains how she can hear bombings in Jordan from where she lives. “It’s sad because you know that there are people dying,” she tells me. How scary is that! She also tells me how some of the stray dogs cross the border from Jordan and how in her town, there are reported cases of dogs with rabies there so they can not walk their dogs outside. Scary!

One of the things I keep telling my friends is that I’m going to come home with a British accent. A few nights ago, a bunch of us was just sitting in the living room and we began to compare the differences between American and British accents. I’ve noticed that instead of ‘thank you’, they like to say ‘cheers’. Instead of the ‘bathroom’, it’s ‘loo’. Aluminum, tomato, water are just some words that are pronounced differently. It was pretty amusing because we spent 20 minutes comparing accents. I’ve also notice that Europeans travel a whole lot more since the countries are right next to each other and they are connected to two other continents. A lot of volunteers come are on a “gap-year” where they take a break after finishing high school and before thy go off to university. They dedicated an entire year just traveling and volunteering. Most of them are going to to other continents such as Asia and South America after their stay here. These 19 year olds have more balls to travel than me! I also wonder where they get the funds to pay for all their travels but I was told that they work for a few months before the trip to cover the expenses and they save. Now I wonder what the pay rates in England are…

Of course, I can’t forget about Malawians. Malawi is known to be “the warm heart of Africa” and the people here are notoriously known to be nice. Overall, Malawi does leave me with that impression. I’m going to have a formal post about the county later on but in short, Malawians were pretty welcoming. The workers here always say hi when you pass them and ask how your day is. I’ve been stopped while walking outside the center by Malawians who try to strike up an conversation with you and ask you where you are from since we are foreigners to them. They even asked to take a picture with them “so you can remember us”. It’s a little scary but amusing at the same time. There are also a lot of ex-pats here in Malawi, and also a large number of Chinese and Indian residents. It’s nice to see such diversity in a third world country because I feel that Malawi has a lot of things that are lacking and with proper education, it could benefit from it enormously.

I am always amazed by what you can learn from each other. Humans are actually all the same- we breathe, we eat, we sleep, we live, and eventually we die. Our experiences and our habitats are what makes us different from each other. Like different breeds in a species. Our DNA might be the same, but we have tiny features that shape us. I am gratefully that this trip reminded me that maybe the world isn’t that small after all. There’s is still so much to learn, and there is so much world out there that we have yet to see. It’s easy to forget when you are so use to the environment that you are accustomed to.

If we can all be so open minded of one another, hopefully one day we can achieve world peace!

[travelinganna]

I went hiking today around the sanctuary. It was my first time doing some real hiking and being one with nature. It was a bit rainy so the trails were pretty muddy. We had to cut down stray trees and branches to clear the trail more. Well.. the guys that I went with did it while I trailed behind them. It was pretty cool! On the trail, we bumped into a wild bush pig that came towards us and it was pretty scary because they’re pretty big. Luckily it just ran off. We also saw wild monkeys and some guinea fowl (a bird that reminds of a chicken). It took us about 2 hours overall to do the longest trail around the sanctuary. At one point the grass was higher than me!

[travelinganna]

Emergency and critical care on monkeys

Today I assisted in a emergency surgery procedure on a monkey that was attacked by baboons. The baboons were able to grab into two vervet’s tails and pull them through the enclosure fence, pinning the vervets against the fence while they attacked the vervet. One vervet had a huge open gash on it’s right side as well as deep puncture wounds. Since we did not have a radiograph machine, we could not check to see if the puncture wounds reached any internal cavities. He also had wounds on his shoulder and the back of his hand. The baboons really got him good! I had the opportunity to place a catheter on him and manually administer IV fluids at a rate of 0.5ml per minute as well as any medications intravenously.

The procedure was pretty tricky. At one point, the anesthesia was pretty light and he was starting to wake up. It was a bit chaotic because two new volunteers were in the surgery room with us because they needed to be trained before I left. So with 4 pairs of hands on the patient, it gets cluster phobic, especially when the new volunteers are not use to taking heart and respiration rates and monitoring anesthesia. Also knowing that every minute counts is very because the monkey can wake up suddenly is very stressful. Plus it felt like a hundred degrees in the room from the humidity.

After the wounds were sutured up, we had to slowly wake up the monkey. Since the anesthesia was a little complicated and we had to administer addition sedatives, the recovery was a bit complicated as well. When he was put in the carrier for recovery, he started violently thrashing while mildly sedated. It wasn't a seizure but he wasn't fully awake nor was he fully asleep. We ended up having to take him out of the carrier and administering a medication rectally so he would fall asleep and not injure himself further. Overall the procedure took 2 hours and he currently still needs to be monitored.

Although I am use to stressful conditions and I am use to monitoring sedations for cats and dogs, being in Africa taught me to be resourceful and to be quick on my feet. You try to not waste any supplies but you also have to deal with supplies that are a few years expired. Also, since the animals are not completely sedated and incubated with a continuous supply of oxygen, keeping track of vitals and communicating the information to the vet is super important. You really need to improvise what is the best solution per case, and every case may be different. Usually you have a 30-40 minute window to do what you have to do. I also learned to whisper during recover and crucial times because any noise can startle them. You don't want them to jump up suddenly and hop off the table. Every minute counts.

I only have a few days left here since I am leaving next Tuesday. I am glad that I am doing a lot more clinic things and my skills are being put to good use and I am able to teach others. I can say that I placed a catheter, gave subcutaneous fluids, and placed ear tags on a monkey!

[travelinganna]

It's currently 12pm Monday afternoon and I already helped monitor anesthesia for two baboons- one a yellow baboon, and the other an olive baboon. Both had severe open wounds. It was super stressful and thrilling. I will make a formal post on it when I can and have access to internet on my laptop. But what an exciting morning it has been!

[travelinganna]

My apologies for the lack of real posts. I'm having problems connecting my laptop to the internet. I already have some posts up and ready to go, but I can not connect to the internet to post them. Third world problems :(

[travelinganna]

So maybe I'm not hugging lions here but at least I can say I pet one! This is Bella, our resident lioness. She has been living by herself since she was rescued from a zoo in 2009. Next month, they will be integrating in a new lion, Simba, who is also a rescue. Hopefully they will get along well and Bella will be less lonely!

[travelinganna]

Power outage

It’s currently 9:40pm here and the power just went back on. There was a nationwide power outage earlier that lasted about an hour and a half. At first we thought it was just the center so a bunch of us were going to go out to get some food. I really wanted to get Chinese food since today is Lunar New Year but due to the circumstances I was unable to. I also didn’t have a lot of food options because there’s no electricity to cook.

To be honest, when the power outage first happened, I was really nervous since no one knows when it will come back on. As it prolonged, it really sunk in that this is what people here live through. It may not be occurring all the time but it happens more often than none. I’m not even sure if some people even have access to electricity at all. And it sucks to say that while I was freaking out, everyone else in the house was pretty calm. I felt like such a huge baby. I was pretty hungry though and I was sad that I wasn’t able to have some real food.

This experience really made me appreciate what I have back at home. Although my Lunar New Year meal consists of cookies so far, now I can at least try to cook. And at least now I know to be better prepared when the next power outage happens. But hopefully it doesn’t happen anytime soon. I’m half way through my volunteer stay, and it has really opened up my perspective on many things. There are many things to write about but I just need to find the time to gather all my thoughts. Tomorrow I hope to have a post about my first experience monitoring anesthesia for a monkey.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Lunar New Year back at home! I am looking forward to a prosperous year and may the Year of the Horse bring you wealth, and good health, and good fortune.